As you likely know, the big story in The Beer Week That Was was Sapporo giving up on Anchor Brewing. I have nothing to add, and you’ve probably read enough already (including the stories I would link to), so I will simply point to one about the property the brewer is sitting on.

Otherwise, here goes:

– Mike Royko’s 1973 Foreign Vs. Domestic Beers Test Will Be Restaged
A pretty good way to pass a summer Sunday afternoon in Chicago. Here are the results from 30 50 years ago.

– Kölsch Night in the Boonies
It’s a story about beer and community. Give it a read. My comment as only tangentially related to beer. First, I cringe when I see “boonies” in a headline, or story, for that matter. Fairbury is located along U.S. 24 in Illinois. I know this because I used to live along U.S. 24. I’ve been to Fairbury, and I’ve also been to Havana, which is located along another stretch of U.S. 24.

People who live in such smaller town don’t take kindly to having the places where they live described as the boonies. I was once hung in effigy in Havana because I wrote a story, one meant to praise the “big city” confidence their high school team played with, in which I rattled off the way others viewed small towns.

Anyway, Prairie Central High School is situated in Fairbury. It was formed in 1985, combining Fairbury-Cropsey High (a 1951 consolidation) and Chatsworth and Forrest-Strawn-Wing. Prairie Central’s sports teams are nicknamed the Hawks. Fairbury-Cropsey’s nickname has been the Tartars and F-S-W’s was the Eskimos. Two great nicknames wipe out in one consolidation. Consolidation is not only bad for brewing diversity.

– The death of the beer festival is jolting the craft brewing industry
Todd Alström posted a link to the story in a Beer Advocate forum and a discussion much more interesting than anything similar that would occur on Twitter (or Threads or, sadly, Mastodon) followed.

– How hazies changed West Coast IPAS
It feels like a humble brag to point a post that starts with an observation I made 14 years ago, but Jeff Alworth turns it into something more modern. “The freedom to be indifferent in these after-hazy days has gone. … A whole new generation of beer drinkers has come along with no memory of beer BH (before hazy).”

– Down on the Farmhouse
“Folks can come here, order a pawpaw beer, and then wander down to the orchard and read about pawpaws, look at pawpaws, while they’re drinking a beer,” says co-founder and brewer Todd Boera. “You know, that’s just kind of something that sticks with people and is meaningful. You can’t do that anywhere else.”

Wine specific, but beer related

– The latest alcohol advice ignores the value of pleasure
“A pleasure-agnostic approach to health advice is now in vogue even outside the domain of alcohol, and is filtering down to the general public with sometimes absurd results. Recently, a reader asked me: Is there any data on health benefits to orgasms? I am not aware of reliable data from randomized experiments suggesting that having more orgasms improves health. That isn’t the point of orgasms, anyway. The point of orgasms is that they are fun. We do not need to prove health benefits to want to have them.”

– Profit-Sharing is Taking Root in the Wine Industry
“Profit-sharing is still far from the norm in the wine industry — and agriculture, generally — a sector that is notoriously asset-heavy, cash-poor, and has long relied on a low-paid migrant workforce to turn a profit or just break even.”