TWTBWTW: Beer history, reality check & pub porn

Miller Lite Christmas decorations

Call it Beer History Week. There’s Ales Through the Ages in Williamsburg, Va., and Beer Culture Summit in Chicago. They are both hybrid conferences, that is in-person and virtual.

So first up today, Martyn Cornell — who’ll be presenting at both conferences — digs deep into a new book that “picks up a tall stack of received wisdom on the origins and development of two of Belgium’s most iconic, most revered beer styles (lambic and geueze) and smashes it all on the floor.”

He writes, “for me this is exactly reminiscent of the situation surrounding the histories of porter and IPA at the start of this century: lots of terrific stories, repeated by everybody, all unfortunately powered by myth, misunderstanding and a total lack of actual evidence to support them.”

I’m pretty sure sorting out myths from terrific stories will be discussed in after hours drinking socializing in Williamsburg.

Reality check: brewing is a business, a changing business

Hitting reset. The headline on this story summarizes it well, “The Lost Abbey shifting its model to match current industry trends.” As does the headline on a second story, “Vow of Modesty — Amidst Sales Pressures, The Lost Abbey Downsizes to Preserve a Longer Future.”

Beyond . . . well, something. Lost Abbey made its way into pretty much every trade-related conversation I had after their right-sizing story posted Tuesday. Whether the people I was speaking with were at small breweries content to remain small, at somewhat larger (but not really large) ones in the midst if figuring out how large they should be, or hop vendors who sure as shootin’ need to know how their customers are doing, the news was not shocking.

I don’t doubt there are brewers out there who thought, holy shit, what business have I got myself in to? And others who still consider themselves immune. They just don’t happen to be the brewing types I talk with regularly. It understand this is a luxury, one consumers may also enjoy. So two paragraphs from this story about non-beer from beer pioneers:

– “Today’s craft breweries of a certain size are morphing into multi-threat operators whose foundational fealty to ‘traditional beer’ has been tempered by drinkers’ changing tastes, increased competition, and investors’ demands, too. Or they’d better start soon, because there’s a paradigm shift afoot: The country’s biggest craft beer producers are becoming ‘beverage companies,’ like Boston Beer Company and those dastardly macrobrewers before them.”

– “Don’t fret if you’re a longtime craft beer fan who loved the whole small/local/independent thing, either. There are still, like, a bajillion beer-making craft breweries out there for you to patronize.”

Personally, I value the “making a connection” and “brewing interesting beer” thing more than the “small/local” thing, but it does seem the two are often intertwined.

Is this cheating? We used to live around the corner from Jason Pellet of Orpheus Brewing in Atlanta, and I know the lengths he goes to in order to add unusual flavors to his beers. (You’ll find him quoted in this story.) I appreciate the effort, but I’m not going to spend much time worrying about if a brewery I have no connection with is flavoring its beer with an Amoretti product. That is somebody else’s fight. But it seems like a statement from the company that they are working with half of the 9,000-plus breweries in the country requires supporting evidence.

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Kölsch noir. Koln in black and white.

The class of 2012. This story fits under the umbrella of the business of beer, but it also touches upon how what we expect from breweries is changing. Not only what’s in the glass, but what roles they play within the various communities that support them, including financially. As Jeff Alworth points out, more than 7,000 breweries have opened during the 10 years the nine breweries he focuses on have been operating. Together those breweries are part of a big story.

There are hundreds, well thousands, more small stories. They are often similar, but still unique to their place. The neighbors drinking excellent lagers at Fritz Family Brewers in Niwot, Colorado, don’t give diddly-squat that Varietal Beer in Sunnyside, Washington, had four fresh hop beers on tap during hop harvest. I look forward to reading (or listening to, because: podcasts) stories about such breweries. The stories don’t have to be 2,000 words long and it is OK if the people within are as ordinary as you and I. (Don’t take that wrong. You may be special. I can be ordinary enough for both of us.)

ID required. The link may get you past the age gate or you may have to plugin a birth date (your own or a random stranger’s). Honestly, I included the link so I could post the picture at the top. Bigger Beernaments and adding keg functionality to a tree stand? Not on my wish list.

Pubs. The pictures in this new book and the descriptions of the four finalists for Pub of the Year 2022 . . . they seem like magic, don’t they?

Are you prepared to define ‘craft beer culture?’

Horizontal fermentation tanks

Thanks again to Alan McLeod, for keeping me abreast with what I would otherwise miss on Twitter. Two questions popped into my mind after I read Michael Graham’s tweet.

First, wtf is craft beer culture? Second, I suggest reading the book “the conquest of cool” when considering the cool, hip, whatever turns the sliver of the beer industry many call craft has taken in the past 40 years.

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Cultural Moneyballism. “Cultural Moneyballism, in this light, sacrifices exuberance for the sake of formulaic symmetry. It sacrifices diversity for the sake of familiarity. It solves finite games at the expense of infinite games. Its genius dulls the rough edges of entertainment. I think that’s worth caring about. It is definitely worth asking the question: In a world that will only become more influenced by mathematical intelligence, can we ruin culture through our attempts to perfect it?”

Intriguing idea of the week. The question: “What if booze was a public good?” This might entail reducing the density of liquor stores, increasing pricing and reducing industry profits. You don’t have to be a Marxist to read and contemplate, but you need to be a Fingers subscriber to listen to “Drinking Up a Revolution” author James Wilt explain the logic behind this. I suspect a conversation between Wilt and “Cool” author Thomas Frank would be equally interesting.

Wine is agriculture (as is beer). “It is not exempt from the conversations about food justice, soil health, and climate change that have permeated other agricultural sectors.”

Before beer was cool. New York City’s Upper East Side is rich with inviting places to drink that have avoided the hype.

Cringe/cringy. Apparently the word of the week. As seen here and here. Spoiler alert: not for fans of Brewery Ommegang and IPA.

AleBlazer. This is a job for a true believer.

TWTBWTW: Monks, kveik & complexity

Here 'ripens' Westvelteren Trappist beer

When Pete Brown asked participants on Twitter* why they read beer writing and what they want from a book or piece of prose he got plenty of answers. [Hit “read replies” to see them.]

I’m always on the lookout for stories to link to here and what I choose can be pretty arbitrary. I seldom think about what you expect, desire, whatever. Perhaps I should.

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A Paul Simon moment. A story about GABF from my wife and daughter. Of course I’m putting it first. Extra credit because it is at the (thank goodness it is back) All About Beer website. Daria and I first wrote about GABF for All About Beer in 1993.

From Norway with love.
– “Particularly since the dawn of what we might call “kveik consciousness”—the realization that what these brewers do is remarkably rare and interesting—the brewers now know each other, interact, trade yeast, and get together at least once a year to celebrate their old craft. The geography that once created a tradition no longer limits communication, but nevertheless, brewers stick to the ways of their parents.”

– Kørnolfestival is a bucket list adventure.

Impressions of Nuremberg. Also important life lessons, such as “never look up your first love.”

Rhythms, in brewing and in life. Those who have sat in on one of my presentations about monastic brewing have heard me talk about this before (thus the photos from Westvleteren at the top). Mark Dredge finds his own during a week at England’s only brewing monastery.

How long must this keep going on? French Women Are Sick of Waiting for Their Beer Revolution.

Beer travels. Because, pubs.

Word of the week: complexity. The story is about wine, but you will likely find beer connections within. “It took the 20th-century inventions of stainless steel, temperature control and anaerobic fermentation conditions to create purely fruity wines. So, in honesty, all wines once were complex—that is, they were laden with multiple flavors, aromas and textures that were not merely fruity.”

* h/t to Alan McLeod’s weekly beery news.

Beers for the future and thoughts from the past

Sir Isaac Newton Belgian Quadrupel

As the hours pass at a beer festival, sometimes a bit of beer is spilled, in this case Saturday during Blacktoberfest in Stone Mountain, Georgia. (If you find some irony in a black beer festival held only a few miles from Stone Mountain Park, where the road into the park is called Jefferson Davis Drive, good for you.) Ale Sharpton suggested the day before the event would be “epic.” Change is underway in Georgia, and it is accelerating. More later.

Meanwhile, a few links you may want to click . . .

But not a drop to drink
More on the discussion about if peasants in medieval times regularly drank beer instead of water because water was unsafe to drink. The latest from Lars Garshol, in which he concludes it is “abundantly clear by now that in the past lots of people did in fact drink beer against thirst every day.” And a recent post from Martyn Cornell the explains why this was not possible for much of the population.

Questions not asked
“Despite its rosy self-mythology, the craft beer landscape used to be full of pieces of shit. It had exploitative owners, power-mad managers, cruel and entitled customers.”

This, from Dave Infante, seems like an overstatement.

We can talk about that another time. Instead, consider this. “Fawning fluff gives pieces of shit room to fester; puff pieces underwrite the status quo.” Hard questions can be hard to ask. I’ve mentioned before that I once worked for a newspaper where the publisher told us, “If we (publish) something about a person, we should (write) something good the next.” Really. Easy questions made his life easier.

By chance, I was still thinking about Infante’s story when I came across this one about a woman who has worked at Deschutes original brewery (a brewpub) for 32 years. In we learn, “(Melissa) Talbott says she has looked at exit plans regarding retirement, but for now, she says she has at least another five years left in her.” And I wondered if she has earned some sort of pension from Deschutes or if the company provides health insurance. Should those questions have been asked and addressed? Asking for a friend.

From the cask
– Pete Brown offers six reasons cask ale-loving publicans should immediately whack the price up.
– Coming soon. Cask Beer: The real story of Britain’s unique beer culture.

Beer writing wanted
– Alan McLeod revisits the why question. “It’s only in the writing that the fixation becomes of value . . . This is the problem with the British Guild of Beer Writers and NAGBW shift from talking about ‘writing’ to the thinly smug language of ‘reporting’ and ‘journalism’ over the last few years. Not only does it smack of needy niche (and also pretendy-ism… yes, I said it) it misses the fundamental point that most of this is obsession, not reportage. Write!”

– Cutleaf in partnership with All About Beer is thrilled to offer a call for submissions for beer-related writing. Share with us your short stories, personal essays, poems, or hybrid work in which beer is featured.

Real, natural, authentic, and local

The Atlantic has a story about pawpaws, the “quintessentially American fruit,” and why they are so hard to buy.

This is not news to brewers.

“Brewing Local” includes a recipe from Fullsteam Brewery in North Carolina for making a beer with pawpaws and a story about why Piney River Brewing in Missouri has made a beer called Paw Paw French Saison. Here’s a bit of the Piney River story:

Brian Durham was listening to National Public Radio on his drive to work one morning when he heard a report about preserving Pawpaw French, a disappearing dialect in the Ozarks. “I thought, ‘That’s it. We’re getting some pawpaws, we’re buying some French (saison) yeast,’” he said. Piney River Brewing was going to brew Paw Paw French Saison.

Piney River is located on a farm five winding miles outside of Bucyrus, Missouri, because Brian and Joleen Durham live on the farm. They bought their house in 1997 and the rest of the 80 acres they live on five years later. They raise beef cattle on the property, but were too busy with the brewery in 2015 to get around to selling any. They feed spent grain to the cattle and a sign on the long gravel driveway leading to the brewery warns, “Caution, cows may be drunk on mash.”

Pawpaws (do not) not scale. “You find it all around here in the river bottoms. Good luck getting them before the critters,” he said. They buy their pawpaws from a farm in Ohio.

Pawpaw French is far rarer than the Cajun French that is essential to the culture Bayou Teche is intent on preserving. It is considered a linguistic bridge that melds a Canadian French accent with a Louisiana French vocabulary. The French originally settled Old Mines, Missouri, around 1723, back when the area was part of Upper Louisiana. “My father and mother spoke French very fluently, but they didn’t want us to speak it because it (caused) such trouble in school,” said Cyrilla Boyer, a lifetime resident who was interviewed for the NPR report. She said in the 1920s and 1930s teachers would smack students’ knuckles for speaking any French in the classroom. Pawpaw French persisted in Old Mines primarily because the town is so remote.

Historian and musician Dennis Stroughmatt is Pawpaw French’s ambassador to the outside world. He first visited Old Mines back in the 1990s, and there were still hundreds of pawpaw speakers. “It’s like eating candy when I speak Pawpaw French. That’s the best way I can say. It’s a sweet French to me,” he said. He knows better than to expect the language to make a comeback, but hopes parts of it will survive, and that kids will learn some phrases, and will understand the area’s slogan: “On est toujours icitte,” which translates to, “We are still here.”

The Atlantic reports on efforts to breed “a better pawpaw.”

It might be best to pause and consider this: “It may not be the worst thing in the world for pawpaws to play hard to get. Even if it was possible to scale production and ship the fruit nationwide, doing so would be at odds with the urge for local, sustainable food that fueled the pawpaw boom in the first place. Planting huge pawpaw orchards might just add to the ecological toll of mass farming. Breeders could use genetic modification to improve the fruit, Brannan said, but ‘that’s 180 degrees from what people think of the pawpaw. The pawpaw is real, natural, authentic, and local.’ For all the weird, frustrating aspects of pawpaws, they are a reminder of just how far food science has come in a century-plus.”