Monday beer links: The CliffNotes edition

Tap handles at Structures Brewing in Bellingham, Washington

We left home early last week and are still traveling. The photo above was taken at Structures Brewing in Bellingham, Washington, where we had an excellent lunch and outstanding beers in their waterside restaurant. The tap handles are made of cattle bones.

Things seemed quiet in the beerblogosphere, giving me an excuse to link to this from The History of the Web. Beyond reminding us of the distinction between “free beer” and “freedom of speech” there is a call action.

“Put something on the web. And do it for free.

“This will require, first and foremost, your time. That is no small ask, time is the most valuable thing we have. But I can tell you one thing that’s become readily apparent to me in my decade of research of the web. It is only through people’s time that we’ve gotten to where we are.

“Here’s the thing about you. You know something nobody else does. You have a perspective that nobody else does. Information doesn’t have to just be information, it can be whatever you want it to be. Start a blog. Post an art project. Write a poem. Create a fan page. Contribute to a Wikipedia article you know something about. These little actions, these little contributions, are the best way we have to claw back to a truly free web.”

To this I will add a couple of quotes from “The Freaks Come Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture.”

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Monday beer links: Assembly required

Brayden Rawlinson at Fork and Brewer in Wellington, New Zealand

Bayden Rawlinson on the deck at Fork & Brewer (See Beer Name of the Week below)

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QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“Malting is about getting the barley to do what it wants to do in the field, but on our terms.”

          — Will Durrant, Bairds Malt
From Some Kind of Wizardry — Malting, Climate and the Future of Barley at Baird’s Malt

*****

People still “miss the good old days of being in a cowboy town where they’re used to having a $5 pint.”

          — Jaime Torres, taproom manager at Silva Brewing
From Why a Famed California Brewery is Going Under

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

I remember the first time I went to Banana Jam Café. It was 2011 and we were broke – a freelance writer and a Master’s student saving for a wedding. We used to walk straight past the bright yellow façade of the Kenilworth-based Caribbean restaurant to drink pints of Castle Lager for R12.50 in Hobnobs, the sports pub next door. Then one day we spotted a sign outside Banana Jam advertising free craft beer tastings.

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Still celebrated after all these years

Where to find Sierra Nevada Celebration in Denver, Colorado

Sierra Nevada Celebration isn’t too hard to find in Denver these days

Doug Veliky has written an ode to Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale that could be the chapter of a book. No reason to repeat much of what he wrote.

Instead, a bit of history, because obsessing over Celebration goes way back, at least in craft beer years. In 1995, Sierra Nevada brewed only 35 percent of the amount of Celebration they knew they could sell. Meeting demand for its core beers — Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Porter and Stout — meant they wouldn’t be shipping any Celebration east of the Rockies or making almost any 1996 Bigfoot Barleywine.

“We can’t run out of pale ale,” marketing and sales director Steve Harrison said at the time. “It’s on menus in restaurants, it’s a permanent product in chain stores . . .”

As a result:

– Ken Ficherea, a Brooklyn accountant, used his frequent-flier miles to fly from JFK International
to San Francisco and back in the same day to pick up four cases of Celebration.

– Understanding that there were only 140 barrels of 1996 Bigfoot (compared to 11,00 in 1995, Ken Papai and Charlie Gow, two Bay Area residents, made two road trips to Sierra Nevada’s Chico brewer to buy Bigfoot.

In the first, they formed a three-car caravan with Dan Brown. “Dan couldn’t wait,” Papai said, and as a result, Brown was pulled over by a state police officer, although he didn’t receive a ticket.

Two weeks later, Papai and Gow realized they needed more beer — most of it was earmarked for friends across the country — and headed north again, this time in the same car.

After they filled the car with beer and had a few pints at the pub, they tried to take a shortcut during the 200-mile drive home, missed a turn and ended up stuck in the mud in a wildlife preserve. (Papai’s longer version of this story was quite entertaining, but the tl;dr version is that Gow passed a sobriety test, and the car was towed from the mud.)

Back in 1996, the year after Sierra Nevada had only 30 hours downtime and managed to produce 201,000 barrels, Harrison was not predicting how much Celebration would be available later in the year. “We will not contract brew, and we will not change the way we brew,” he said. “Just think how much noise they (in online beer forums) would make if we started contract brewing.”

Monday links: Hotbier, side pulls & best beers

Very hot rock plunging into wort at Scratch Brewing

Hot bier at Primitive Brewing in Lafayette, ColoradoMany, many breweries and events are showcased in Breweries Are Turning Up the Heat on Winter Beer, including Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois. The photo at the top is a very hot granite rock plunging into wort when a team from Jester King visited Scratch in August six-plus years ago.

This Imbibe story about winter activities. “To attract more customers to taprooms, festivals, and holiday markets, breweries are turning to longstanding European traditions that turn up the thermostat on beer drinking.”

Primitive Brewing’s Hotbier Fest, here in Colorado is not mentioned. It is Dec. 21, and here are details (scroll down a bit). The photo on the right was taken last year in Lafayette. Or checkout this video on Instagram to see exactly what happens when a hot poker meets beer.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The Lukr [side-pull] faucet comes to mind. Don’t get me wrong, we have three of them [on-site] and we use them all the time. But the faucet worship to me is kinda silly. It assists in foam breakout and makes for softer foam, and you should get one. But don’t worship these things, because they’re a tool, just like many other items in your brewery or bar arsenal. It’s only beer, folks.”

          — Todd DiMatteo, Good Word Brewing
           From What’s the Most Overrated Beer Trend?

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

With summer in the rear view mirror and dry January less than two months away breweries and taprooms are falling off like fresh hop ales in the fall. The turning of the season means change, not all of it is bad news as much as it is metamorphosis of a saturated beer culture always looking to the next thing whether that’s a winter warmer or a non-alcoholic IPA. But while we were distracted by the latest triple double hazy release and brewery pop-up, a few Portland-area breweries and taprooms succumbed to their wounds.

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Not exactly a dive bar

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NM

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NMFrom NYC’s craft beer scene faces sobering challenges as closures and mergers reshape the industry:

In the early years, many breweries were so beer-centric, they ignored decor, food concepts and beverages beyond their own beer and refused to even hang televisions — an approach that is no longer effective, said Aaron Gore, who has consulted with over 70 breweries on three continents.

He said while the spate of New York City brewery changes now feels jarring, it’s actually a “typical adoption curve.” Approaching a decade since its peak, craft beer is now a “normal good” that can be found even at many dive bars, said Gore.

The Hopper Pub and Pizzeria is not a dive bar, but it is also not what Suds Korge and Dregs Donnigan would have called a fern bar. It’s located in a strip mall behind a gas station in Rio Rancho, N.M. (shout out to Glengarry Glen Ross), and the walls are decorated with silly signs as well as beer signs and neon. A particle board floor is utilitarian.

However, the crust on their wood-fired pizza is perfect and the beer list has something for pretty much everyone. That they post the names of the beers are listed sans breweries indicates a certainly level of customer knowledge. Bone Shaker? From Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe. You know if you know.

There was live music last Monday, Veteran’s Day. That, it seems, is celebrated year round at the Hopper Pub.