Because Monday beer links always include overthinking

Patrons at a Seattle pub

When you consider it, business stories focused on the fermented beverage made with malted grain and hops are almost always about The Future of Beer. That is capitalism in progress. In that sense, they are about pleasure; what may be available to drink, what we want to drink, how much it will cost us. There seem to have been an above average amount of such stories last week, but before listing them, a few just to read for pleasure itself.

Overthinking It: PB&J Mixtape
Actually, PB&J Mixtape isn’t a beer at all. It is “totally gluten-free (on a seltzer base) and made with real roasted peanuts.” Nonetheless, Jacob Berg writes, “The aroma transported me, Anton Ego-style, to a specific place and time. Boom, I’m a latchkey kid again, getting home and opening the crinkly plastic wrap on an after-school snack.” Definitely some overthinking going on here, including about Untappd ratings.

How a Chicago Brewery’s Staff Builds Authentic Connections with Latinx Communities
“Creating partnerships with Latino-owned businesses and having them come to Marz and be here has helped a lot. When I first started here, it was definitely a way more white-centric customer base, but I have seen a super huge increase in more Latinos coming here.” Marz is located in Chicago’s McKinley Park neighborhood, which is roughly 55% Latino.

The Shirker’s Rest is “the silver bullet to the heart of” exclusion
Consider this a bit of foreshadowing to discussions about The Future of Beer, particularly the investigation (links in business section) into what the next generation is drinking. “In London you don’t get multi-generational spaces very often—apart from a Wetherspoons on a Friday night. When you get the mix right of the young, the old, the poor, the rich, then magical things are going to happen.” Related, a Q&A with David Jesudason, who wrote this article.

The Wonderful World of Women Brewers
People not males spotlighted at Shondaland. Which is great, although if you’ve been paying attention these are the “usual suspects.” There are a lot more women brewing beer who also deserve to be written about. Anyway, these names are likely new to most readers at Shondaland, and perhaps you, so this is a good thing. In it, Celeste Beatty speak a sad truth:

“There has been little change at all in terms of any significant increase in Black and brown home brewers, brands, and commercial operations. There is certainly a lot of discussion about diversity and plenty of culture incorporated in branding, but a lot of work [is] yet to be done.”

The business pages
Start with the Big Picture and that Despite ‘Sober’ Reputation, Gen Z’s Eclectic Tastes Are New Force Within Alcohol. Move on to Young Drinkers Won’t Settle for Beverages of the Past, and that this is not your father’s beer . . . or maybe any beer.

Meet people like Amanda Thomas, a 23-year-old junior copywriter in Seattle, who agrees that a person’s alcoholic beverage of choice signals something about them. “In general I feel like people my age are drinking for a personality. There’s a beer girl personality that’s pretty fun and I love meeting beer girls. But there’s also seltzer girls,” she says. “I’m a beer girl. It’s fun, it’s grungy.”

Boomers and maybe even members of younger generations may not think she has earned to the right to be taken seriously. I disagree.

In Seattle. Pike Brewing is ending their decades long in the First & Union Building attached to the Pike Place Public Market hall. The 34-year-old craft beer pioneer, Pike Brewing, moving to a state-of-the-art facility located in the SoDo neighborhood in January 2024 for beer production. The Pike Pub and Pike Fish Bar will continue to operate in their current locations. The photo at the top looks down on a bar at the pub.

Across the Atlantic. “American Craft Beer Sales — and Influence — Fizzle Out.” I’m not sure the story totally supports an assertion that beers from America aren’t influencing change. But there is no doubt “their economic power has rarely matched their cultural cachet.”

In Vietnam. “Brewers get creative as economy loses fizz.” Reading this story I learned what “Khong say, khong ve” means.

In Texas. “They’ve been dropping like flies since last summer.”

Monday beer links: Hops, pumpkins, raw beer & more

Morning in the Halltertau region of Germany. Hops and corn that will soon be harvested
Morning on a farm in Germany’s Hallertau region. They grow hops here, but also corn.

The most widely read beer related story last week was surely the one about a study published in the journal Nature detailing the impact of climate change on hops grown in Europe. No surprise, things are not looking great going forward. It seems as if every large publication in the country had a take on it. Jeff Alworth at Beervana summarized the study nicely.

I am all for anything that draws attention to what global warming is doing to the planet, although, quite honestly, there are more and larger disasters looming than the demise of certain hop varieties. Even the ones I love. But I do wish the authors had acknowledged there are more agronomically vigorous cultivars available. And that there are new ones on the way. Now is the time for brewers to consider using them. More of my thoughts in the most recent Hop Queries. The newsletter is archived here. You may subscribe here. It is free.

Speaking of hops
As well as writing about why wet-hopped IPAs went dry, Doug Veliky offers suggestions about how brewers outside the Northwest (where unkilned, or “wet,” hop beers continue to thrive) may make them more relevant.

He writes they can been good relationship builders. In fact, growers and brewers in several states have figured that out. In September, Billy Goat Hop Farm in Colorado hosted the second Southwest Freshfest. This past weekend, 14 breweries poured beers in Cincinnati that were made with fresh hops from six Ohio farms.

Pumpkins for pleasure
Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice. “Regrettably, it’s not uncommon for pumpkin beers (or really, pumpkin anything) to be mocked and feminised, written off as gross, girly, or both. And of course for a lot of people, it’s neither of those things—it’s just not to their taste. I have found, though, that there’s one consistent exception: ‘Not (Southern Tier) Pumking, though. Pumking is great.’”

The best of St. Louis. Noteworthy because Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale is, I am told, one of the best in the country. And 2nd Shift Brewing, which when we lived in St. Louis had pledged never to make a pumpkin beer, now brews one called When Pumpkins Fly.

You might also enjoy
Raw beer is having a moment. In New Zealand. “It was the best brew day ever. It was incredible. Hard work, but I loved it.”

19th century Bavarian beer halls in Berlin. “Some contemporary publications commented on this as a ‘Bier-Kulturkampf’ (beer culture war) between the classic Berlin beer culture of top-fermented white and brown beer and the newfangled Bavarian beers that made an impact on Berlin architecture.”

The allure of Guinness. According to the World Travel Awards, a gala that has annually celebrated the best of travel, tourism and hospitality since 1993, The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is the leading tourist attraction in Europe. Other nominees included Buckingham Palace in London, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the Acropolis of Athens.

The beer can as a canvas. “Is the chicken being hypnotized or is the chicken doing the hypnotizing? That’s the question.”

Your taste buds at 30,000 feet. Alaskan Airlines had created a blend intended to prove airlines coffee does not need to taste bad. “Taste buds react differently at high altitudes, and this blend was crafted with this in mind. Specifically, in an arid and pressurized environment, our palate’s ability to perceive nuance is diminished.” What might that mean for beer?

TikTok at its best. Jon May, a 25-year-old from Britain, plans to drink 10 pints of beer a day for 200 consecutive days. “On the one hand, you’re essentially killing your liver, and on the other, you’re doing something mildly impressive.”

Brewing with rice, the A-B way

Budweiser beer truck

(A quick warning: This post quotes a 19th century newspaper article that includes racist language.)

Here is a truck that last week was parked at the entrance of the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas.

Anecdotally, it wasn’t necessarily helping Budweiser sales. When I asked a woman at one of the beverage stands if more customers were buying Budweiser or one of the beers from Lost Forty Brewing in Little Rock 120 miles away, she quickly answered, “Lost Forty, the (Rockhound) IPA. I don’t think we sold a six-pack of Bud all day.”

Nonetheless, I give Anheuser-Busch credit for putting “rice” in big letters on the side of trucks that deliver beer. Some things about Budweiser may have changed since the 19th century, but rice is not one of them.

Founder Adolphus Busch, who ultimately had made the decision to brew Budweiser with rice, spoke often and bluntly about his distaste for beers made with corn. “Our main argument must be the quality of our product, that we do not use any corn,” he said in 1895. “While nearly every other beer brewed in this country, with hardly one exception, is made of cheaper material, viz: corn; that such a beer is not as wholesome or digestible as pure barley malt beer, the small addition of rice only improving it, and that the use of corn makes a very inferior article. The difference in the cost of manufacture between a barley malt and rice beer and corn beer is one dollar per barrel in favor of the latter, as a matter of course.”

Busch was not alone. On January 30, 1881, a full-page article about beer in the Chicago Daily Tribune stated, “Corn beer is not a drink for Americans or Germans. It is good enough for the Spaniards, Greasers, Indians, and the mongrel breeds of South America.” Instead the author lauded the exceptional crisp taste that resulted with rice, and added, “for years the ‘blonde,’ or light colored beers have been fashionable and grown into public favor in America.”

In 2015, when I was researching Brewing Local, A-B was the largest buyer of rice in the United States, and using about about 8 to 9 percent of the total crop annually. I was told that in some years, depending on both the barley and rice crops, that rice ended up costing A-B more.

On any given day, their St. Louis brewery took delivery on about two million pounds of grain—malt, corn grits, and rice arriving in railcars that held about 200,000 pounds, depending on their cargo.

The process was repeated daily in 56 breweries around the world that were brewing Budweiser in December of 2015.

First thing after arrival, a worker would take a composite sample out of each compartment in a rail car. “If there is a taste issue we will reject the whole car,” said David Maxwell, then brewing director at Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“We don’t want grassy (like fresh-cut grass),” Maxwell said. “Mold will jump out at you, like walking into a basement.” They are looking for a starchy taste. Rice has a higher starch content and lower protein content than any other cereal adjunct. “We want quality starch,” Maxwell said, and freshness is the key. A-B has strict guidelines for transit times; 21 days from milling until it is in silos ready to use. “It’s all about time. After you mill it time and temperature are the enemy,” he said

The recipe for Budweiser must be adjusted based on the specifications of the current crop of barley, malted of course, and rice. The rice is milled to break it down into the smallest starch particles so it easily liquefies. It makes up about 30 percent of the Budweiser recipe. The rice is added to the cereal cooker with about 7 percent malt, enough to kick off enzyme activity and gelatinize it. It is brought to a boil, and then boiled for 15 minutes. “You really want to break it down. You can see it gelatinize,” Maxwell said.

The barley will be mashed in at the same time the cereal mash begins, sitting basically long enough for a protein rest before the cereal is pumped in. That will bring the mash to conversion temperature, and conversion could take 30 to 50 minutes depending on the crop year. When a new crop comes in brewers at the pilot brewery evaluate it, then provide the parameters for a blend.

“They’ll say it is in this window,” Maxwell said, rather than specifying an exact amount of time. “Then we’ll lock it in the brewhouse.” There will continue to be variables. For instance, long grain and medium grain rice gelatinize at a different rate. “We’re trying to hit a (gravity). I know where I have to be at. How do I get there?”

First up for Monday a.m.: Alcohol and pleasure calculation

Candice Ivory at King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas (2023)
Candice Ivory and her band rip it up at King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas

Cotton, ready to pick
It’s time to harvest cotton in the Delta, and picking cotton looks much different than picking hops

Drive-By Truckers, Overton Park Shell, Memphis (2023)
Drive-By Truckers cast giant shadows at Overton Park Shell in Memphis

Happy Indigenous People’s day. Daria and I had a busy weekend out and about in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas. We got knocked to the ground by a car just walking (with the light) across a Memphis street, but otherwise had too good a time to be yammering on here. Pleasure was always top of mind, so starting there again this week.

A formula for pleasure. Search for the word wine. Replace it with beer.

Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thanks to @thebeernut for pointing to this story on X (just when you think you are out a gem like this suck you back in). In case you woke this morning thinking “Why cork bags?” Now you know.

Love hops? Love lager? Or if you woke up this morning wondering what defines a West Coast Pilsner, here you go.

Duff beer luggage tag

Duff in the real world. That’s my Duff luggage tag. It is the second one I’ve owned. Not sure if the first one accidentally came off in transit or was stolen.

Is cask ale right wing, left wing, both, or neither? You can have the same discussion about “craft beer” in the US. In fact, Dave Infante has in his Substack. Ask a subscriber to forward you a copy, or subscribe yourself.

What comes after umami? Scholars have discovered evidence of a sixth basic taste. This is very early research and nobody is talking about the implications of what this might mean for understanding more about how we taste beer.

GABF streamed. The Beer Crunchers GABF Running Diary is much more coherent than I would have managed. “Go for the people, the conversations, the research, the inspiration, and the chance to get out of dodge and reset your mind a bit.”

The 10 oldest beers in America. Maybe.

Good Monday morning: (almost) always for pleasure

Third Eye BrewingI’m not promising to lead off with links to beer pleasures every Monday, but I was happy with the way it went last week. So here goes . . .

– In Croatia and Montenegro, “There’s still a thrill of the hunt in this kind of craft beer environment, which is obviously long, long gone in the US, perhaps to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to breweries. And you quickly become so much less jaded in a scene like this . . .”

– Third Eye Brewing was a big winner at the Great American Beer Festival. David Nilson’s story focuses on the joy of drinking their beers.

– I 100 percent endorse a visit to Augustiner Bräustuben in Munich. “It’s a classic beer hall with character to spare, more down-home than other beerhalls in the city.”

– Stephanie Grant shares (almost) everything she at and drank in San Diego. And we’re not just talking beer.

– Coors threw a party Saturday to celebrate 150 years in business, and Axios published this 8 fun facts about Coors Brewing you probably didn’t know. There’s a 9th less-known one. We live about six miles from the brewery.

– When The Beer Nut writes “At the end of the glass I felt like giving it a standing ovation” that’s a beer I’d really like to taste. A little surprised to see the hop Luminosa that far from its Oregon home. I’d write more about its heritage, but that might be construed as gatekeeping (see next entry).

Gatekeeping
Consider this: “The neverending impromptu pop quiz from the older, wealthier white man who has more knowledge and will grill you at the drop of a hat still has me on edge, and now I see it in modern beer spaces. I’ve spoken to many other working-class people who feel the same. It’s a ritual of gatekeeping and wealthy white men aren’t the only ones to do it.”

This story about tasting tools is also relevant. And because beer isn’t the only arena where this is happening, an interview with the author of Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution.

Good for business
– The socio-economic value of local pubs. This is a press release, so consider the bias.

– Cask ale revealed as the core of today’s UK pub culture. Another press release, and about a study conducted by a brewing company. Tread lightly.

Final words
“We want different views, we want a vibrant and rich ecosystem.”
– Alan McLeod, A Good Beer Blog