Good Monday morning: (almost) always for pleasure

Third Eye BrewingI’m not promising to lead off with links to beer pleasures every Monday, but I was happy with the way it went last week. So here goes . . .

– In Croatia and Montenegro, “There’s still a thrill of the hunt in this kind of craft beer environment, which is obviously long, long gone in the US, perhaps to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to breweries. And you quickly become so much less jaded in a scene like this . . .”

– Third Eye Brewing was a big winner at the Great American Beer Festival. David Nilson’s story focuses on the joy of drinking their beers.

– I 100 percent endorse a visit to Augustiner Bräustuben in Munich. “It’s a classic beer hall with character to spare, more down-home than other beerhalls in the city.”

– Stephanie Grant shares (almost) everything she at and drank in San Diego. And we’re not just talking beer.

– Coors threw a party Saturday to celebrate 150 years in business, and Axios published this 8 fun facts about Coors Brewing you probably didn’t know. There’s a 9th less-known one. We live about six miles from the brewery.

– When The Beer Nut writes “At the end of the glass I felt like giving it a standing ovation” that’s a beer I’d really like to taste. A little surprised to see the hop Luminosa that far from its Oregon home. I’d write more about its heritage, but that might be construed as gatekeeping (see next entry).

Gatekeeping
Consider this: “The neverending impromptu pop quiz from the older, wealthier white man who has more knowledge and will grill you at the drop of a hat still has me on edge, and now I see it in modern beer spaces. I’ve spoken to many other working-class people who feel the same. It’s a ritual of gatekeeping and wealthy white men aren’t the only ones to do it.”

This story about tasting tools is also relevant. And because beer isn’t the only arena where this is happening, an interview with the author of Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution.

Good for business
– The socio-economic value of local pubs. This is a press release, so consider the bias.

– Cask ale revealed as the core of today’s UK pub culture. Another press release, and about a study conducted by a brewing company. Tread lightly.

Final words
“We want different views, we want a vibrant and rich ecosystem.”
– Alan McLeod, A Good Beer Blog

Monday beer links: pleasure and business

A pint at Machine House Brewery
Last week, during two sessions at the Great American Beer Festival and an afternoon at the Denver Rare Beer Tasting conversations with friends fell into two categories: a) pleasure, bouncing between talking about what was in the glass and catching up on life events; and b) the beer business, including if the sky is falling.

The three days were beyond pleasant because there was much more a) than b). On an average Monday here, and this week’s list will be short because three days of GABF festivities were proceeded by three days on Washington’s west coast, there is more b) than a). Thus, in not exactly catching up with what I missed online, this in the last paragraph (buried the lead, Mr. Alworth) of a post mostly about the competition related to GABF, reminded me I might be doing it wrong:

“I have been somewhat dismayed by how much beer chat has turned into industry and/or business chat. Discussions of the pleasurable turn quickly into the salable. The GABF is one antidote to that. People get together in a large hall to select the tastiest beers in the country, and later thousands more gather in an even larger hall to guzzle beer for the sheer pleasure of it. It’s a reminder that the root of our passion isn’t measured in dollars, but something only our tongues and noses can tell us.”

Indeed.

I don’t know that the balance will change here, but let’s start this week’s short-ish list with pleasure before moving on to business.

Did I say pleasure? While Investigating Festbier Boak & Bailey conclude “Festbier is not built for us.” But there is a journey, and discussing what we don’t like is part of understanding what we do.

A new home. That’s a proper pint of Machine House Brewery beer pictured at the top. It was disturbing to read earlier this year that Machine House Brewery had learned its lease was not being renewed. It did not seem like good news. Red brick and archways made the original location feel more “authentic” but owner Bill Arnott speaks well of the new neighborhood, and that ultimately determines how welcoming a pub is.

Speaking of authenticity. I too might be tired of reading about “How Modelo’s Marketing Beat Bud Light,” but this story behind at paywall (story) hooked me with a story about how the brand has leaned into “authenticity.”

As Modelo Especial’s marketing team worked through the final stages of scripting a commercial about a Hispanic matriarch making tortillas from scratch with her granddaughter, company lawyers had a note.

The lawyers wanted to show the grandmother flipping a tortilla with tongs, rather than the traditional, more risky technique of using her fingers. The marketing team pushed back, arguing that the commercial should depict authentic traditions, people involved said.

The final ad released this spring featured a finger-flipped tortilla plus the disclaimer: “Do not attempt.” The commercial abides by Code of Advertising regarding responsible behavior while remaining authentic, Modelo said.

What next, who next? I brought up this story a couple of times Friday and, not surprisingly, the brewers I was talking with hadn’t had time to read it. They promised to and I expect we’ll be talking about it before long. The nut: “As figureheads within the (craft beer) industry depart, it’s not clear who will succeed them—or whether national craft beer figureheads are even possible in an industry that’s increasingly crowded and specialized.” Put another way, change is gonna come, and who will initiate it?

Catching up on Anchor. The Anchor SF Cooperative (ASFC) has grabbed attention with thousands of donations to a GoFoundMe campaign, but their effort to buy the brewery still looks like a longshot. The head of the firm in charge of selling Anchor’s assets “emphasizes that he sees a real opportunity to sell Anchor as a going concern. ‘There’s going to be a future for Anchor Steam.’”

Reading the beer links: Heritage, authenticity & nostalgia

Hops and hop people in the Yakima Valley and the Willamette Valley commanded my full attention last week, so pardon the brevity today. (Speaking of brevity, a programming note: no links next week, and perhaps the week after. Holiday, then GABF weekend.)

It was Sunday before I had time to read Alan McLeod’s Beer News Notes and Boak & Bailey’s nuggets. If you haven’t visited those two, now would be a good time to head there and click on.

One quick bit of musing about heritage, the result of a Pete Brown post at X that McLeod points to. The photos at the top and bottom were taken in USDA research fields near Prosser, Washington. The babies in the seedling field (top) are cute, don’t you think? The odds are very much against them ending up with a name and being used to brew beer. But if that happens, farmers will know they are agronomically prepared to survive in a climate wild hop plants in Mongolia did not know five million years ago.

A constant topic of discussion last week was the Great Centennial Disaster. In recent years, farmers in the Yakima Valley have harvested about seven to eight bales of Centennial per acre planted. This year, some fields produced only two-plus bales per acre. Not every field was such a disaster, but when the USDA releases harvest data in December the results will not be pretty.

This raises a question about if it is environmentally responsible for brewers to make beer with hops that require farmers to use additional resources as the climate changes. Centennial is a pretty special cultivar. Try to imagine Bell’s Two Hearted without it. Can’t do it, can you? I’m not prepared myself to answer the question about environmental responsibility when it comes to Centennial, Saaz, Hallertau Mittelfrüh or several other wonderful hops. But I’ll keep asking it.

An aside: As well as the discussion about heritage and authenticity that followed Brown’s question on X there was Josh Noel’s post showing vintage beer hats for sale. That’s nostalgia. Heritage and nostalgia are not the same. The distinction is important.

Finally, the hops pictured below are a reminder of why they are categorized as experimental. This plant won’t be returning in 2024.

Hops in the USDA experimental field outside of Prosser, Washington

Labor Day beer links: Don’t be ‘that guy’

Experimental barely at Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery

Credit to occasional commenter Dave Lavery for this first bit of fun reading: An Interaction with Scotland’s Most Inane Bar and Restaurant Manager, and its Aftereffects.

I have no words, other than the thought in the headline.

Labor Day
Dave Infante has done the heavy lifting with a wall-to-wall worker special in honor of Labor Day 2023. It’s a free edition Substack newsletter, and he would appreciate it if you consider buying subscription.

If it can happen in Denver it can happen anywhere . . .
– Brewery Closings Are on the Rise — Is the Local Craft Beer Scene in Trouble?
– Last call: Two Pittsburgh-area breweries are closing their doors.
– As national craft beer market contracts, Grand Forks brewers feel the squeeze.
More breweries will open in 2023 than will close, but this is also a fact: “In Grand Forks, the microbrewery scene — known for being tight-knit and community-oriented — is often making ends meet by the skin of its teeth.”

You might also enjoy
– Soil To The Sun — Long Man Brewery’s Regenerative Agriculture. Interested in trying a beer made with grain grown using regenerative farming techniques on this side of the Atlantic? That’s how Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery in Virginia grows the grains on its property. The brewery also cooperates with Virginia Tech to breed barley better suited for the region (that’s a test plot in the photo at the top). The farm brewery is located not far north of Dulles International Airport, but their beer also shows up at places elsewhere on the East Coast, such at Tørst in Brooklyn.

– Brewing Craft Beer for an Underserved Audience. This is one of several posts from SevenFiftyDaily focusing on “innovators,” many of confronting equity issues.

– Breweries, College Athletics Try to Cash In With Co-Branded Beers. “The same university that sued a Georgia beer company is now seeking out sponsorship deals with alcohol companies. It shows you how far this has come.”

– Nostradouglas’ Fall Predictions. Passed along to give me an opportunity to write I don’t care about Black IPAs.

– Where Are All the Celebrity Beer Brands? Once again, I don’t care.

On closings, unions, Anchor beer & Kirby Pucker Lemon Blueberry

Back in 2011, Joe Stange asked this question in The New York Times: So is there a limit to the number of craft brewers that locals are willing to support?

“Seriously? It’s beer,” answered Dylan Mosley, the head brewer for the Civil Life Brewing Company in south St. Louis. “You know how many people drink beer? If I opened a hamburger joint, nobody’s going to be, like, ’Hey, you know how many hamburger joints there are?’ They’d be like, ’Sweet! Another hamburger joint!’”

The hamburger joint-brewery analogy has lived in my head since. Hamburger joints close for a lot of reasons, often with barely a mention why. Now that there are more of the 9,000-plus breweries in the country and many have been around for decades, sometimes they close just because it is time.

That seems to be the case for LowDown Brewery & Kitchen in Denver. Owner Scott O’Hearn said the brewery, which will close this week, was not struggling and was profitable. “When you look five years [out], it becomes a little riskier. Not necessarily to lose money, but to not make enough to be worth staying open,” he said.

On the other hand . . . here’s an interesting take on Epic Beer entering liquidation in New Zealand. “There is a sad reversion to historical reality happening, whereby as the consumer becomes more price-conscious, they tend to shift back to beers put out by the very major breweries that brands like Epic existed to challenge. And in so doing they wear away at the spirit of innovation which helped fuel the craft brewing movement.”

But . . . Epic lives on.

“Well it sure has been an intense roller coaster ride over the last month,” founder Luke Nicholas said. “But we now can see some light at the end to this liquidation process with a successful purchase of Epic Beer. It means Epic will continue and I will be involved going forward. Exactly how and what this means still needs to be determined.”

Public service

Eight San Francisco Bars Where You Can Still Buy Anchor Steam Beer. Including the current status of what is in inventory. Generally, not much.

You might also enjoy

– Workers at Elysian Brewery Vote to Join Teamsters Local 117. “This is an opportunity for us to shape the future of the industry and to pave the way for other breweries by showing them that union representation is possible. It’s time for us all to stand up for what is right and make history in the process.”

– The New State Fair Beers of 2023, Ranked by Their Minnesota-ness. Where to start? Kirby Pucker Lemon Blueberry. Vacation Mullet. The Funnel Never End.

– Wayward Lane Brewing and the History of New York’s Hop Houses. Brewing in a former hop house is much cooler than in a railway arch.

– If it’s Tuesday, this must be Kölsch. Martyn Cornell joins a tour that takes him to Cologne, Dusseldorf and several other places, including almost a complete set of Low Countries brewing abbeys AND St Bernardus, one of his favorite breweries. Part One is followed by Part Two and Part Three. He’s not done.

– Book review: Cask by Des de Moor. “It’s not a beer or pub guide but an attempt to think about cask from every angle: its history, the culture that surrounds it, the science, and the appreciation of the beer itself.”

– An Israeli beer brewed with 3,000-year-old Philistine yeast strain. “You might have seen headlines that declared: ‘Want to get drunk like a Philistine?’ or ‘Drink the beer that Goliath (or Cleopatra or the pharaohs) had!’ or even ‘A taste of history in every gulp!’You might have seen headlines that declared: “Want to get drunk like a Philistine?” or “Drink the beer that Goliath (or Cleopatra or the pharaohs) had!” or even “A taste of history in every gulp!'”