The big news Friday was that billionaire Hamdi Ulukaya, the Turkish-born CEO and founder of Chobani, has purchased Anchor Brewing, lock, stock & steam. The stories will keep coming in the next few days, some with bits and pieces that have not been previously reported. We’ll have to wait for the most interesting ones, which will come from on the ground and be about what hasn’t happened yet. When I see them, I will pass along links.

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Step away from the beer bubble for a moment to consider style. It is a function of culture, right?

Let’s start with the conclusion of Jeff Alworth’s riff on a post about XPA at Hop Culture, which goes, “Style is one useful way to think about beer, but it’s not the only way. Too often, it blinds us to something more interesting.

“As a final comment, I’ll connect this point to the discussion last week about hazy IPAs. See what happens when you think of them as less a style than a function of beer culture. Does that change the way you think about them?”

Has “beer style” disconnected from “beer culture,” and if so, when and why?

Read more

Sunday, Boak & Bailey wrote about the pleasure of a pint at the end of a hike (see below). Later in the day, we were hours away from beer when I took this photo looking southeast* across Black Canyon of the Gunnison. But eventually, there was a lager flavored with hops from nearby Billy Goat Hop Farm. Small world.

* Looking straight south offered a spectacular view of the San Juan range, but not as revealing a look at the canyon.

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I do not agree every word in the paragraph that follows, but Alan McLeod provides context for considering the links that will follow.

“What Andy does not seem to want to admit is that it’s not about the rise and full of each particular form of drink but a greater overall trend. These sugar bomb beers that are labeled as Hazy IPA are nothing more than the beery sibling to RTDs, coolers and hard seltzers. Interchangeable. Forgettable. Cavity causing. They may sell but they are part of that continuum that speaks to a candy fixated palate. Kinderbier. Easy to make and easy to sell with the right cartoony can wrapper. In fact, their rise was perfectly culturally appropriate for the troubled times, a perfect drink for an era of crisis that started with the shock of Trump getting elected and then continued on through the daze of life in the pandemic. They are booze for unsettled people who have bigger things to deal with, those who don’t want to think about it. Any of it. The ‘eating a box of ice cream sandwiches standing by my fridge because I can’ of beers for folk who no longer can muster the energy to give a shit. What sort of industry bases its long term health on that sort of consumer? By all appearances, this shrinking one called craft.”

Jeff Alworth writes he “has been seeing a lot of grumbling” about hazy IPAs, a sense of lost fun, and a generalized mood of dyspepsia.” He points to thoughts from:

      * Stephen Beaumont.
      * Pete Brown.
      * Drew Beechum.

Alworth asks, “Are things really very dismal, and if so, how dismal?” He quickly adds, “I think things are actually pretty good,” and then provides context.

On another Monday, I might choose to add additional context. But it is Memorial Day in America and “sure is gonna be fun.”

Instead, a single thought. A certain amount of back and forth following Evan Rail’s post earlier this month has been about how so little in beer these days is new. Beechum writes it is no longer hip.

Here’s the thing. Hip is seldom forever. That is a feature of hip. In “Hip: The History,” John Leland writes, “Once opposed to mainstream values, hip now seems merely a step ahead of them. It is taken for granted that what is hip today will be mass tomorrow.”

Perhaps that is a cynical, commercialized view. What is not cynical is that the beer from [                    ] is not going to be mass produced. Fill in the space between the brackets with the brewery of your choice. Zebulon Artisian Ales would be a fine one. I would suggest more, but it is Memorial Day in American and I have more James McMurtry to listen to.

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KICKER OF THE WEEK
As opposed to the regular Lede of the Week

To criticize an active and engaged audience of hazy IPA drinkers just because you don’t personally prefer the style or think they should be drinking helles is self-defeating. Hazy IPA has helped connect younger drinkers to craft beer. Unless you want a taproom occupied by a handful of 55 year old dudes grumbling about the good old days on RateBeer and BeerAdvocate, I’m not sure that shitting on hazy IPAs makes any sense.

— From the aformentioned Hazy IPA Conspiracy Theories in All About Beer

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“The problem with this flavor thing is that eventually you’re a kumquat”

— JB Shireman of Arlington Capital Advisors, from Beer Crunchers

PUBS

– Pubs: They’re quite good
This is related to the ongoing discussion about beer writing, including at the top. From Boak & Bailey: “We’re absolutely not objective when it comes to pubs. We’re highly emotional and irrational. We think they’re a good thing and that it shouldn’t be left to the market, and cold-hearted commercial logic, to decide whether they survive.

A pub on the edge of reality
“After hours with the sea on one side and woods or open land on the other, you become gently disconnected from reality.

“It becomes about putting one foot in front of the other, warding off the sun, warding off the rain, and negotiating never-ending ups that lead into never-ending downs, in never-ending cycles.

“This has the effect of making almost any pub you reach at the end seem idyllic, and any beer taste like nectar. In this case, though, the pub really was special.”

– Infinity lost.
“The pub was a bigger landscape that stretched beyond every horizon. Now it feels like the last days of a zombie film, where only the main protagonists linger on. The characters that weren’t important at the start have long gone. But, beyond fiction, they were important, despite what James May says.”

– On loneliness part II
“Why does time spent in the pub help alleviate a sense of loneliness? My belief is that you are around people, but not with them, and therefore free from any responsibility for them. You overhear conversations which, in my case as a writer, are a seam to be mined with the utmost vigour and energy. You are on the edge of gatherings, a spectator of family and friends getting together and the energy comes to you, though not in a vampiric way, but maybe it is like being at a gathering, a gig perhaps, or watching a TV drama in which you are incredibly engrossed and invested in. Energy shared.”

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY

– Some Craft Brewers Just Aren’t Built for This Market
And perhaps they should look before they enter a market that was not built for them.

– Up in Smoke — Lagunitas to Close Chicago Plant as Brand Continues to Wobble
The news was greeted with alarm in social media, and no doubt some drinkers will miss visiting the taproom. But this was not a local institution, nor one offering beers totally unlike you could buy nearby. In contrast . . .

– How Dovetail Brewery Uses Engineer-like Precision to Master Neglected Beers
. . . there is this brewery.

Here are six seconds from my weekend (click on the photo to start video).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Stan Hieronymus (@stanhieronymus)

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Evan Rail’s essay about beer writing that I linked to last week continues to inspire comments on social media and in the blogosphere. Jeff Alworth asked, “Is Beer Less Interesting, or am I?” and Alan McLeod provided context.

I would add this thought. What is new to me or Evan Rail or Jeff Alworth or Alan McLeod might be different than what is new to somebody finally getting around to visiting a new brewery because one opened in their neighborhood.

And consider this. Saturday, Boak & Bailey wrote, “We’ve been pondering why we like the beer and brewery profiles at Craft Beer & Brewing so much. Because, in some senses, they’re quite boring. But perhaps that’s a feature rather than a bug? There’s comparatively little ‘storytelling’ or mythologising, on the one hand, and a decent amount of technical detail on the other – but pitched at a level we can follow. For example, what makes Rothaus Pils taste the way it does?”

There are many opportunities to write something new, for both the beer experienced and the beer inexperienced audiences.

Or, thinking about publications rather than single stories/posts, there are places where readers from both inside the niche and outside the niche may be served. For instance, looks at the table of contents for the most recent issue of Final Gravity. “Our entire goal is to publish the beer stories that don’t (or rarely) find a home in traditional outlets. We just need more people to be aware of it,” publisher/editor David Nilsen wrote via email.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK

Tropic of chancer

— From The Beer Nut

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I was racking my brain for quite a few weeks and eventually realised just about the only thing I could use from the camel to make a beer is the dung.”

— Maris Biezaitis, of South Australia’s Robe Town Brewery

POINT AND COUNTERPOINT

– “Lost in a haze: North American craft beer searches for mojo”
“The once-dynamic North American craft beer market is now stagnant. A lack of innovation in a sector awash with hazy IPAs has been blamed.”

– From X: “Hazy IPA is killing North American craft beer lolololololol.”
Click to see the photo that makes the counterpoint, and perhaps to follow the lengthy discussion.

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY

– Let’s Make Craft Beer Great Again
A checklist.

– Why Modern French Beer Culture Never Took Off.
“To the French people 15 years ago, beer was not a product for the table. It was a product for poor people.”

– Character assassination at BrewDog destined to happen
“The problem inherent in (James) Watt’s strategy is the very nature of punk. If it’s true that all political careers end in failure, then all punks end up selling out. Punk is a short, sharp, shock. It’s not meant to last.”

– Is the Good Beer Guide trusted?
“In short, the GBG isn’t the trusted resource it once was.

– ‘I flew to Spain for one beer – turns out it’s in my local but brewmaster blew my mind’
Credit to Alan McLeod (again) for pointing to a tweet from Pete Brown (again) that led me to this. It goes back to the subject at the top; what gets written about beer, who writes it, and who it is intended for. This was not intended for me, and that is OK. But their surely is an audience for it. One that is more patient than I about pop ups and the number of times you need to hit an x to close something in the way of words. You have been warned.

As I commented in reposting Alan McLeod’s link to his weekly roundup, many of the prominent stories last week were best read with a British accent. Give them a read, because there are too many to repeat here.

Top of mind, for me, were these three:

– Thornbridge Brewing is keeping (part of) the Burton Unions alive. Pete Brown has that story and the role Garrett Oliver played in making this happen.

(Offering a Continental hot take, Andreas Krennmair suggests Thornbridge should use their Burton Union to ferment a Bavarian Weissbier.)

– Brewdog boss and co-founder James Watt said he would be stepping down from the top job, and Hannah Twiggs writes about “how the anarchic brewery went from progressive to problematic.” It is a long, but worthwhile, read, because you’ve probably forgotten some of what transpired during the past 17 years.

(Additional reading. A fresh post from David Jesudason: BrewDog Waterloo & sexism – ‘working here scarred me.’ BrewDog Waterloo’s female staff speak about how they were treated at the London pub.)

– Pete Brown (that guy, again!) on The Sad Demise of Worthington White Shield. “Bizarrely, all this means that to many drinkers the last surviving heritage IPA was, paradoxically, not an IPA at all. It wasn’t hazy and didn’t taste like grapefruit, so how could it be? The American Beer Judge Certification Programme (BJCP)—the self-appointed guardians of beer style definition—would seem to agree. According to their latest guidelines, the IPA category is now “for modern American IPAs and their derivatives,” specifically excluding anything that resembles beers like White Shield that gave the style its name. Apparently, IPA doesn’t even stand for “India Pale Ale” any longer; according to the style guidelines, “the term is intentionally not spelled out as ‘India Pale Ale’ since none of these beers historically went to India, and many aren’t pale.” I’m not making this up. I wish I was. Not least because I would be hailed as the finest satirist of our age.”

LEDE OF THE WEEK

It was the 90s. Life was as simple as a pair of 501 jeans and a flannel shirt.

For me, it’s a marker in time. I remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I drank my first pint of Mac and Jack’s beer. I was at a patio party at Grazie Ristorante, the long-since-closed location in Bellevue. It wasn’t a fancy affair, which is good because my hair was impossibly long and I was probably wearing the aforementioned 501 jeans and flannel shirt.

Mac himself poured that first pint for me from a red and white jockey box. I liked it. I remember thinking that it tasted like a hoppier version of Alaskan Amber, which is what all the cool kids were drinking in those days. We talked about beer and brewing. I shook my head in confusion when Mac told me the brewery was in a garage at his buddy’s house. It was the 90s. Life was simple.

— From Marking a huge milestone at Mac and Jack’s Brewery by Kendall Jones

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“When we opened, we thought, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ That was not how it ended up working out. We’ve definitely been making it up as we go.”

— Josh Martinez in Mixed Results: How Sour Ale Producers Make the Numbers Work

WHAT DO THESE BEERS HAVE IN COMMON?

Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish.

— From A visit to Heineken’s Murphys brewery

ON WRITING

So perhaps it’s not that what we write about beer has to change, at least not in the sense of the form of that writing. It might be more like we have a new opportunity to focus on truly great writing: not getting there first, so much as covering the subject beautifully; not breaking news (though of course that can be important, too), so much as understanding and explaining its nuances; not reporting on every new beer or brewery that opens (an impossibility, given our current numbers), but writing more selectively about the ones that truly matter.

— From Writing Our Way Through It by Evan Rail at Good Beer Hunting

Like fighter pilots, journalists must be well-trained and confident but without being cowboys. Meekness produces journalism as gray as dishwater and no more tasty. If journalism is ever to regain its former — and rightful — status, it must first regain its swagger.

— From The Collapse of the News Industry Is Taking Its Soul With It by Jack Shafer at POLITICO Magazine