Exit through the bottle shop

Altes Mädchen Braugasthaus

If a beer writer falls down in a bar and there’s no one there to hear it, do they make a sound? Or do they just Instagram it instead?

– Pete Brown

Craft Beer Store, Hamburg, GermanyThe photo at the top was taken at Altes Mädchen Braugasthaus, a sprawling brewery, bakery, restaurant, biergarten and bottle shop in Hamburg. (Customers pass through the Craft Beer Store entering and leaving.) As well as Ratsherrn beers brewed on site, there’s plenty of other beer from small and larger breweries inside and outside of Germany. It is a fine place to land after a day or two of Christmas markets and other Hamburg experiences, such as the sobering St. Nikolai Memorial and museum.

The evening and the beer were different than at Banana Jam Cafe in Cape Town, South Africa, at Brewberry in Paris, at Turtle’s Bar & Grill in Shakopee, Minn., at Cervejaria Unika on a Brazilian hillside, or at scores of locations I somehow ended up in last year. And that is how it should be. It’s not like I didn’t already know how big and diverse the beer world is, or that sharing time over beer shouldn’t be just about the beer.

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Monday beer links: Sexism, pastry stouts and pickle beers

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 12.11.17

Adminstrative note: Monday links will be on hiatus until Jan. 8. Get your weekly links fix from Boak & Bailey, consider the not-quite-every-week suggestions from Timely Tipple or Alan McLeod, or wander further afield with Read.Look.Drink at Good Beer Hunting.

– That there are stories like this one about female brewers in Florida does not change the fact there is sexism and sexual harrassment in craft beer that extends beyond objectionable names*. So, as Jeff Alworth suggests, if “we want to change society, we all have to participate.”

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Book report: ‘Beer is for Everyone’

Once you’ve condensed what might be an entire post to a blurb that fits on the back of a book it may not rehydrate easily, not even with a healthy dose of beer.

So this is what I wrote about Beer is for Everyone!:

“The value of a fresh pair of eyes — or in this case a fresh pair of glasses — is apparent on basically every page. The author, who doubles as protagonist, foregoes making beer formidable and instead invites a newcomer to be comfortable. To adapt a line from page 89, ‘This book was meant for fun.’ ” I wish that I had included Jay Brooks’ suggestion that “it won’t be until later that you realize how much you learned about beer.”

But I think what remains most important is that the book is just plain fun. Author/artist Em Sauter is plenty serious about beer, which is obvious when her character speaks objectively about beer and brewing. It is equally obvious when she speaks subjectively. For example, see pages 104 and 105, where she describes Firestone Walker Pivo. “The beer bombards the senses in an utterly wonderful way. Bready. Spicy. Floral. Woody.” (Appropriate artwork accompanies the words.)

She also offers pairing suggestions: “From sushi to swiss cheese.” No surprise there. But then comes this: “Or from karate to knitting.” Not the way I’d think about Pivo, and maybe something that doesn’t even make sense to me. That’s fine. A discussion about the need for different voices broke out a while back. Listen to one of those voices.

The rehydration of thought stops there, but for more about what is in the book, and additional pages, see what Jeff Alworth had to say.

Monday beer links: Monks, Dixie, and flutes

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 12.04.17

– “I guess we have to talk about Dilly Dilly.” No, actually, we do not. To his credit, Jeff Alworth, points out that we live in little silos. Dilly Dilly has not made its way into mine. This does not bother me.

Mount Angel Abbey brewing equipment

– I am, however, perfectly delighted to talk about construction of a brewery at Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon. Jeff Alworth, again that guy, has plenty of history and new details. One point of order. The brewery tanks (pictured above) haven’t just started arriving. They’ve been sitting a short walk down the hall from where Father Martin brews for almost three years; monastic patience on display.

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Session #130: Ron Pattinson’s dream festival is good enough for me

The SessionYour dream beer festival?

Free admission? Nothing but 100-point rarities you’ve never tasted before? Only local beers? Only brewers pouring? Only eight-ounce servings (or 1 or 4 or 16)? No lines?

Host Brian Yaeger has asked us to write about designing “your dream festival” for the 130th gathering of The Session, providing a list of criteria to consider (size, style, location, you get the idea). And he suggests that we conclude “with a note about why you can see trying to make this fantasy fest a reality or why you’ll never advance this idea of yours beyond the Session post!”

The thought occurs to me that if you dream big you should find somebody else to take charge of execution. Or to phrase that idea as a confession: Part of what makes it a dream beer festival is that somebody else organizes it.

Ron Pattinson has the right idea. He assembled a collection of historic lager recipes he’d like breweries to make and serve at a festival. He found somebody — Florian Kuplent, diploma brewmaster and co-founder of Urban Chestnut Brewing in St. Louis — who thinks this is a good idea. UCBC has recruited breweries from across the country to make beers from these recipes. Planning is ongoing, but 20 to 25 lagers will be poured March 3 April 22 at the brewery’s Grove location. Ron Pattinson will be there, and so will I.

This is a better festival than I could have dreamed up. It’s the one I am most looking forward to in 2018; closely followed by Fonta Flora Brewery’s State of Origin Festival in June in North Carolina (one I’ve wanted to get to the last couple of years, but didn’t fit into the schedule). The one I wish I could have attended this past year would have been the Norsk Kornøl Festival in Norway.

That these began as somebody else’s dream is fine with me. I prefer writing about other people’s dreams to revealing my own.