#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.

TWTBWTW: Is anything better than an everyday beer?

Zymurgy Live - New Zealand Hops

Programming notes: Travel in the next many weeks means Monday recaps of the beer week that was will be intermittent through early May, and probably brief when they do show up. This next weekend I’ll be at the Ohio Hop Conference. Wednesday the 22nd I’ll be talking, virtually, to members of the America Homebrewers Association about New Zealand hops and otherwise answering questions about all things hops. If your are a member, please stop by.

Upfront, Weed v wine: The aesthetics and terroir of cannabis presents this question: Is weed ready for the same connoisseurial approach as wine? Why not beer? Why not consider the fact that weed and hops share many of the same odor compounds. Why isn’t the word dank used even once in this story? Seriously, California is rolling out an appellation system for cannabis. As I prepare to post this, the domain name appellationweed.com remains available.

Cask beer
– Around the world, Part 1. Who drinks in pubs around the world serving cask beers? What kind of experiences are they looking for?

– Stateside. “There has been no noticeable shift in cask beer consumption. Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s not getting better, but it’s also not getting worse.”

No avoiding AI
– This might be AI week upcoming at Beervana. So be on the lookout, because I won’t be here next Monday to remind you.

– An AI created brewery taproom menu. Scroll down a bit. Personally, I want a bit more than a hint of hop character in a classic pilsner.

– A chat bot does drink reviews. “I paired this Pinot Noir with a home-cooked meal for my dog.” Oh, boy.

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– An everyday beer. “I don’t really want to break it down into its constituent parts, and the sun shining through the window behind me is warm, and I am comfortable and in good company.”

– This one-woman brewery brings Middle Eastern flavor back to craft beer. “I thought I was a pretty good chef; brewing can’t be that hard.”

– Sustainability. A business in Yokohama in Japan has started upcycling brewers’ malt lees waste to produce “craft beer paper.”

Who said what about beer last week?

Fish Scales, Nappy Roots, Atlantucky Brewing

“This is another industry that we should be cashin’ in on just like everybody else. Young men can grow up and be brewers— that’s a real job that you can do. You look around our neighborhoods, we’re buyin’ beer, why don’t we make it? Why don’t we buy our own beer? That’s just another thing that we need to make a little Blacker, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

– Atlantucky co-founder Fish Scales (pictured) in a story about the brewery’s first anniversary party (this past weekend).

“Customers will change. Demographics are changing. We’re going to get new drinkers, we’re going to get changing drinkers.”

– Brewers Association economist Bart Watson speaking to members of the Ohio Craft Brewers Association.

“10 years ago if you had asked me to tell you what I thought craft beer would be like in 2022, I would have taken a guess. Now if you asked me to tell you what I think it will be like two years from now, I wouldn’t even attempt that. It’s actually a lot of fun. You get to really flex your skills and use different techniques.”

– Great Lakes Brewing brewmaster Mark Hunger. (A thought so terrific Alan McLeod also singled it out last Thursday, along with feather bowling.)

“This is what micropubs make possible: new ideas about what a pub can be, and which rules of the game it is obliged to follow.”

– Boak & Bailey, writing about The Dodo in London.

“Changing the recipe of Fat Tire is not just something I consider to be a poor marketing decision. It’s sacrilege. The wholesale abuse of a genuine icon. We were once bold enough to call the emergence of American craft beer a ‘revolution.’ This feels like a revolt.”

– Matthew Curtis, offering this week’s deep thoughts about Fat Tire. How many more weeks in a row will there be a noteworthy comment about the former icon?

“This is a potential home that had a working microbrew at one time you can rejuvenate the microbrewery or expand the home and take over the microbrewery area, there are many options for the creative person.”

– From home for sale listing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Homebrewing at a different scale, I guess. 5,000 square feet!

You might also enjoy:

Meet Day Bracey, The Man Behind Barrel & Flow — America’s Most Progressive Beer Festival. Would this have been your answer if I asked you what might be America’s most progressive beer festival?

A journey to the birthplace of lager beer. h/t to Don Tse and his newsletter. (Also for the next link.)

Assessing the influence of colour and glass type on beer expectations. Among other things, glass type makes a difference in expectations only in certain colors.

Beer predictions from Rolling Stone. I will leave it to somebody hipper than I to explain the cultural ramifications.