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

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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.

Monday beer briefing: rhetoric and craft beer morality

04.15.19, BEER LINKS

Travel plans during the next two months mean transmission of Monday beer links may be erratic for a while. When dispatches do arrive they may be late and they will be, let us say, succinct.

– “Hand-Raised Wolverines” is the most terrific song on Tom Russell’s latest, October in the Railroad Earth. And there is a beer connection. He uses craft beer to provide context in a story that includes change, pop culture, fear and more.

Now it’s snowing down there in Florida
And Niagara Falls is frozen
And all the rhetoric and craft beer morality
Is coming at us line to line

– Another study documenting gender bias in beer.

– London pubs from a woman’s perspective (1964).

– 17 years later, Skip Virgilio is brewing again in San Diego.

– Ed Wray wonders about the moment that keg beer becomes evil. Pray for his soul.

– What happened to calling a beer bitter?

– Phoney Peroni.

– How Greg Higgins made beer “visible” in Portland’s best restaurants.

– Beer writers guild announces diversity in beer writing grant recipients.

– You’re either on the bus or off the bus. Out of the loop or in.

– An argument that terroir comes at a price.

FROM TWITTER

Everything you always wanted to know about “hop creep.”

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

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