TWTBWTW link and run edition

I miss the days when Jay Brooks would dissect a beer-stupid story line by line, taking no prisoners. Should you be wondering, I’d have him begin with this story, which asks, “Can AI perfect the IPA?” I wouldn’t know were to start.

Pardon the brevity on this last set of Monday links until April 10. Although there will be no Monday links, feel free to drop in from time to time to see if there is a random photo of a field of hops near Tapawera (New Zealand) or from the Waitoma glow worm caves.

The beer week that was last week included important news — “The Lost Abbey exiting its longtime home” — and excellent news analysis — “Go Big or Go Home — AB InBev Makes Regional Craft Staff Cuts to Refocus on National Beer and Spirits”.

Beyond that . . .

Hoplark hop room.

– Story A and Story B about hop water suggest a trend is developing. The photo above is from the hop storage room at Hoplark in Boulder, a short drive from our house. I wrote about the company in Hop Queries last summer.

– This week in authenticity, “(A version of) Kelham Island Pale Rider lives.”

– This week in tradition and culture, “A Fifth Season — American Craft Brewers Embrace Munich’s Secret Starkbierzeit.”

– This week in terroir, “Wine, Terroir and the Human Touch.”

– This week in trading up, The New York Times writes about “premiumization.” Beer is not mentioned, but from the get go higher prices, justified because what is in the glass is somehow special, and what some call craft beer have gone together.

– This week in thiols (a sulfur compound found in hops), “Thiols and barrels and bears, oh my.”

Bud - Frozen Eggs Products - Prohibition

– This week in hey this story mentions a cannister we have sitting above our kitchen cabinets, “Over a Century Ago, Coors Made a Milk Alternative Before It Was Cool.” As you can see, the can from Anheuser-Busch once contained eggs.

TWTBWTW: Broken dreams, dreams fulfilled & new dreams

Books about creativity and artificial intelligence

The beat goes on . . .

Appropriately datelined Plain City, because it could happen anywhere. The story often begins this way. “People started liking my beer. I started winning awards on my beer,” says Pat Winslow. Then there was a crowdfunding drive. “This is way beyond my wildest dreams at that time. I feel really fortunate and very humble to be part of this organization.” What followed was, and is, a business story not easily understood. But Pat Winslow is not longer making beer at the brewery he started.

A ‘dream come true’ that continues to get bigger and bigger. You’ve definitely heard this one before. “I opened this business to be happy with my life. I was working in corporate America. I was sick of being a number and a pawn.”

“I always wanted to do my own thing. It’s kind of every brewer’s dream.” An easy-drinking beers and game-stocked taproom in Houston. The core beers are an IPA, a pilsner, a helles and a hazy IPA. “I’m not doing anything revolutionary. I try to make beers people can drink six of.”

“Traveled the world, fell in love with beer over in Germany and Europe.” You’ve also heard that more than a few times. What’s different is Robert Young III is Black and has plans to open a brewery in Augusta, Georgia, called Tapped 33 [The original post had 13 – Thanks to Dan for the noticing]. “Augusta is located on the 33rd parallel on earth. Prohibition ended in 1933. And then I wanted to tie it back to Augusta, James Brown was born in 1933 as well.”

His Good Googly Moogly was one of the best beers I drank last October at Blacktoberfest in Stone Mountain, Georgia. (You might pause to consider the cultural significance of such an event miles from a park famous for the world-record-size stone engraving of Confederate leaders.) I had a great, if too short, conversation with Young. We didn’t talk about dreams; instead about the beers he has in his head. I wish the attention showered on AI and particularly ChatGPT focused more on what it means to be creative; in the case of beer to imagine how old and new flavors may work together. That’s why I plan to visit Augusta once Tapped 13 is open.

On (beer) writing
– Last Thursday, Alan McLeod suggested are “a few main themes in pub and beer writing: (i) industry writing, (ii) trade friendly writing, (iii) politico-socio justicio writing and (iv) innovative creative writing.** Is there a fifth category worth mentioning?” The details are in the asterisk (don’t be shy, click and scroll). Don’t know if it is a fifth category, but what I miss is the “Link + quick comment” aspect. And comments, definitely comments.

– Jeff Alworth on AI Nightmare Scenarios.

– Robin LeBlanc and Jordan St. John put themselves out to pasture.

– FiveThirtyEight looks beyond the hype. “What do Americans think AI is good for? Recipes, roadside assistance and coal mining.”

– The best story I’ve read so far about how ChatGPT works and its relationship to the original writing humans sometimes do. “Our first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.”

#nottwitter 18 – Shakes head in disbelief

The mutilated portrayal of history you discover sitting in the Columbus, Ohio, airport.

“In 2011, Greg Hall, owner of the craft brewery Goose Island retired. AB Inbev stepped in and bought the brewery. They kept the name but cut corners, reducing the beer quality in every measurable way.”

The headline that sucked me in? Why craft beer fosters better communities than its corporate competitors.

My first thought was that this could be a product of AI. But apparently it is an act of promotion for this book: “Producing and Consuming the Craft Beer Movement”. The hardback edition will cost $160, almost $10 a page.

Bear Republic Racer 5. Now that’s a flagship beer

Beer Republic Racer 5

Remember Flagship February?

Stephen Beaumont and Jay Brooks started it in 2019 and it continued for two more years, because “Our thinking is that flagship beers have much to teach new drinkers and remind older drinkers, and if they fall off the radar so far that they disappear completely, we will all be that much poorer for it.”

(You hit the second of those two icons on the right of any page at the site and you can scroll through the full list of featured beers. I wrote about Fat Tire in 2019. Humbling.)

I mention this today not because it is February, but because Brooks posted a bit of a scoop yesterday about a merger between Bear Republic Brewing and Drake’s Brewing.

Within in you will find this tidbit: Bear Republic’s Racer 5 accounts for 92 percent of the brewery’s sales. That’s a stunning number.

Brewer Rich Norgrove wrote about Racer 5 in Flagship February Year III, including that to “many Racer 5 IPA is more than just some award-winning West Coast style IPA; it’s the first beer they shared with friends, an adventure in discovery.”

It would appear they shared it a second and perhaps third time as well.