Motueka, New Zealand
“These are my moisture meter,” said Brent McGlashen, a fifth generation hop grower, well into a day last week punctuated with frequent grabbing, breaking and smelling of freshly picked hops being kilned on one of the Mac Hops farms.
Queenstown, New Zealand
Christchurch, New Zealand
“For drinkers to enjoy the foam, it needs to stick around. Although the foam lasted the longest for the highest temperature and pressure studied, the relationship wasn’t as straightforward as it was for foam formation. For pump pressures of 1 bar and 0.5 bar, the foam stability was higher at the intermediate temperature of 10 °C than at 15 °C.
“The reason is the distribution of bubble sizes. At lower temperatures, the bubbles have a fairly uniform size, but at higher temperatures, the sizes vary. The pressure difference between neighboring large and small bubbles causes the large bubbles to siphon off the small bubbles’ gas until the small bubbles wither away. And thus the foam dissipates faster.”
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 . . .
– 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.”
– 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.