Monday beer briefing: Isn’t always about the future?

05.20.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Administrative note: Another hiatus (and not the last of the summer) the next two weeks. This one you can blame, at least partially, on @Thirsty_Pilgrim. Briefings will return June 10.

1) Jeff Alworth wonders why more startups don’t use the Other Half/Great Notion model — “bright cans of hazy IPAs and pastry beers, the long lines of young people.” He concludes “brewers start them because they have a vision for the beer they want to make, not because they want to print money.”

I agree, but would another clause. These brewers do have a vision for what they want to create, but they also have enough of an ego to think that they are making beer that will appeal to an audience broad enough to support a thriving business. They may not want to print money, but many like ending up on something of a stage and more look forward to feeling money in their pockets.

2) Before helping establish a union at Anchor Brewing Company, Brace Belden volunteered to fight with Kurdish leftists in Syria. When he was younger, Belden said communism “was just another way to be bad.” Later, he began thinking more seriously about class consciousness, and today he is a firm believer in the Marxist notion of a global class war.

3) Josh Noel adds to what he already wrote in “Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out” about the lack of transparency about where Anheuser-Busch products are brewed. I guess I should start to look the labels on bottles of Elysian Space Dust and see what they say whenever I visit stores these days, because when we were in Phoenix a few months ago we heard Four Peaks Brewing is now among the breweries making Space Dust.

4) If Carlsberg’s new lager is not the future of beer, and Martyn Cornell makes it pretty clear he doesn’t think so, what is? He suggests, “You don’t have to stare too deeply into a beer-filled crystal ball to predict that there will be a constant flow of launches of floral/fruity lagers.”

5) A rant, in German. Basically, “craft beer” is “totally overpriced and tastes of soap.” Google will translate it all for you. “Wäre Bier ein Kaiser, müsste man sagen, Craftbier ist nackt.”

6) Gaming Untappd.

7) Ever wonder why there was no Gary Vaynerchuk in beer?

8) Before there was Gary Vaynerchuk there was Robert Parker, and now he is retiring.

FROM TWITTER

Warning: You may get sucked in.

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ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.

Monday beer briefing: Waking up with stout, porter & coffee

05.06.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Greetings from Cartagena, Colombia. I’m here to judge beer and talk about beer. Before boarding a plane Sunday, I slapped together a few things, including plenty of tweets, for you to read.

– The strange dominance of Irish stout in West Africa.

– A porter story, for history nerds and pedants.

– You knew this. “People like the way coffee and alcohol make them feel.”

– Check out the titles of these term papers.

– Is it beer, wine or cider?

– On writing. ”Question everything” and “do not mistake your own opinions for facts.”

FROM TWITTER

Thread.

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ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.

#FlagshipFriday #2: Alaskan Smoked Porter

Glacier field, AlaskaSmoked Porter is the first beer from Alaskan Brewing Company that I ever drank.

In Twilight of the Gods, author Steven Hyden writes, “The experience of discovering an artist after he’s built a body of work is much different than following an artist as that work is created in real time. For people who grew up with (Paul) McCartney, it’s the hits that matter, because those are the songs that soundtracked your life. But if you come to an artist later, after all that music is released and initially assessed, the perspective often skews away from hits, which seem overfamiliar, and toward the lesser-heralded gems, which are fresher.”

The other day, I thought about these things in the context of considering flagship beers while looking over the pretty decent beer selection at our local Kroger grocery store (in Atlanta). We all come to a brewery’s beers at a different time in their history and a different time in our own histories. Our Kroger sells just one Victory Brewing Co. beer, Golden Monkey, a 9.5% ABV Belgian tripel. If I hadn’t read Bryan Roth’s story last year I would not have known that for several years Golden Monkey, not HopDevil IPA, has been the brewery flagship, the best-selling beer that introduces new customers to Victory.

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Monday beer briefing: Resilience, the future of lager and Bitter?

04.29.19, BEER LINKS

– Resilience. As well as everything else as astonishing about this beer, a logistical masterpiece.

– Breaking Surprising news: Spotted Cow contains no corn.

– Could lager be headed to decline (at least in the UK)? This leads to a larger question: How do brewers (everywhere) duck the “what your dad drank” bullet?

– Pete Brown explains why it’s OK to be sad about the demise of the word bitter, but maybe not bitter.

– Do the people who drink Steel Reserve care about rankings like this one?

– A millennial question: Is my wine (or beer) more interesting than avocado toast?

FROM TWITTER

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ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.

Monday beer briefing: The sameness of craft, Beer Jesus & adorable cans

04.22.19, BEER LINKS

Draft beer selection in Manhatten– “Regional variety is exciting,” and . . .
Will Hawkes worries about craft beer “making everything the same, everywhere.” Saturday, Boak and Bailey commented regional beers aren’t generally that hard to find and, “The international craft beer approach might seem to dominate the conversation, but it’s a parallel dimension, clearly signposted, and easily avoided.”

Having spent much of last week in the boroughs of New York City, I poked my head into plenty of places with more than a dozen beers on tap and none of them from the state of New York. Fortunately, I entered with no thought of actually ordering beer and already knew the next brewery taproom where I would drink one, but that parallel dimension is a scary place.

– As promised, Joe Stange provides insights about Stone Brewing and Berlin from where is happened.

-A shot over the bow of the Brewers Association, a dissenting view, and a follow up.

– As adorable as they are, will smaller cans catch on in a way nip-size bottles did not?

– What might pub chain’s ban on cell phones mean for Untappd and other similar apps?

– ”Day in the life of a brewer” stories were once standard fare when print publications rule the brewing earth.

– South Africans experiment with social justice-oriented grower cooperative.

– Meanwhile, “Why is the wine industry ignoring black Americans’ $1.2 trillion buying power?”

FROM TWITTER

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ReadBeer, every day.
Alan McLeod, most Thursdays.
Good Beer Hunting’s Read Look Drink, most Fridays.
Boak & Bailey, most Saturdays.