Lingering matters

foam
The hurricane party’s windin’ down
and we’re all waitin’ for the end
And I don’t want another drink,
I only want that last one again

– James McMurtry, Hurricane Party

Revisiting long established flagships tastes of antiquity, success, failure, unfulfilled dreams of resurrection, and ultimately nostalgia. A place in time to momentarily revisit if only to remind you how far you’ve come but rarely a place to linger long.

-Andy Crouch, on Twitter

Flagship February#FlagshipFebruary has begun. The website is live, listing participating locations and various promotions. Stephen Beaumont has written about Samuel Adams Boston Lager, the first of daily essays. I’ll be contributing words about a specific beer later in the month. (Yes, I know what it is. But I took a blood oath, let Jay Brooks stick a needle in my finger and everything, to keep it to myself.)

Read more

Monday beer briefing: Fuller’s, Fuller’s, Fuller’s, Natty Light

01.28.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

This happened. And there was plenty of reaction on Twitter.

Read more

Monday beer briefing: How much should you ask of beer?

01.21.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

Why does craft beer think it can save the earth?
Thanks to Will Hawkes for helping me think about a question that popped to mind read last week. He writes, “A sense of purpose is part of what defines ‘craft beer’: it’s a campaign as much as a drink.” And he concludes (spoiler alert), “Why does craft beer think it can save the earth? Because that’s the entire point of craft beer.”

Those are pretty high expectations. The question that came to mind last week is, Why do we have these expectations for this thing people call craft beer? And why should they be different for breweries than for bakeries or bookstores or car repair garages? Not the first time I’ve wondered, and I still don’t have an answer. The question was provoked by Bryan Roth’s long examination of workplace harassment in breweries. Once again, jumping to the conclusion.

Read more

Monday AM beer briefing: When The Wall blocks flow of new beers we’ll all drink flagships

01.14.19

I put together a new bookcase last week, which led to a certain amount of moving books around, a dangerous process because I have plenty of new books to read, yet here I was with Tom Wicker’s On Press from 1978 in my hands, and already thinking about journalism in general when Alan McLeod referred to beer journalism as a rare bird.

I don’t seek out journalism in the support of beer when I choose what to post here on Monday (FYI, my arbitrary rules). As McLeod wrote, writing about beer may fall into many different categories. It is not always clear which intersect with journalism, so not to belabor the point here I’ll suggest NiemanLab’s “Predictions for Journalism 2019” if you don’t have a copy of On Press. And I offer three examples of stories that may or may not accomplish something that is essential, that is making the important interesting rather than simply searching for purely interesting.

The Male Gueuze — Cantillon, Cabaret, and Context.
Beer is only part of this story. The male gaze and the associated objectification of women are evident in much of our culture. From the difference in marketing campaigns directed towards the two most common genders to the representation of women and the female form across advertising and pop culture, there’s plenty of evidence to support (John) Berger’s theory.

Read more

Monday beer links: From the outside looking in

01.07.19

Tilting a glass sideways casts the liquid inside in a different light. Best not attempted with a full shaker pint.

Hop compound biotransformations.
Biotransformation of hop compounds
I use the the diagram above* when I talk to brewers about research into biotransformations. This excellent story explains what is and is not understood about the process in plain English and in a way that is informative for both brewers who crave know more about what the heck is going on with these hops as well as drinkers, who may choose to know as much or as little as they like. Either way, Tom Shellhammer at Oregon State University provides important perspective. “I worry sometimes that what happens in the research world—it’s new, right? So there’s a new discovery, and the brewing community views it as the latest answer to everything. And people perseverate or maybe even fetishize [it],” he says.

Read more