MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 11.24.14
Place-based beer, a world-wide local movement and Place-based beers and 13-year-old Special Brew. The first link is to the transcript of a talk about “beer and terroir from an international perspective” Martyn Cornell gave in Denmark, and the second is about what he found while he was there. They are both about beer from a place, beer terroir, indigenous beers. Like I wasn’t going to make these the top links for the week. I sure as heck want to try some of this “Hay Ale.”
Mark Hø Øl (“Hay Ale”) from the Herslev bryghus. Made with hay from the field at the back of the brewery: hay goes in after the wort is boiled, and fermentation using yeasts and other micro-organisms in the hay is allowed to take place for two days. The ale is then boiled again, and a “combinational yeast” added – and more hay. The result is a sharp, pale, flat beer with a taste of what I can only call “fruity feet” – but in a good way.
[Via Zythophile]
Now on tap: Beer brewed with zebra mussels and milfoil right from Lake Minnetonka. I can’t start linking to every story about beer made with local ingredients, but this is a perfect companion for the two from Cornell.
[Via StarTribune]
How Craft Beer Fails Its Female Fan Base. Listen up, people, this is important.
[Via First We Feast]
The Belly of the Beast: A Trip to Anheuser’s Research Pilot Brewery and The Man Who Dumps More Beer Than Most Brewers Produce. Two different, but not entirely different takes, on a press trip to the Anheuser-Busch pilot brewery in St. Louis. Notice the additional attention lifestyle publications are giving beer? A few years ago, when Paste magazine was something you looked for in print because online there wasn’t much, they briefly hired Stephen Beaumont for a series of authorative articles. Then they didn’t, presumably because their audience wasn’t ready. Now it must be, because there have been seven new beer-related stories in little more than a week. My favorite is the carefully researched history of craft (and crafty) beer by Daniel Hartis.
[Via Paste and Men’s Journal]
Beer Advocate and the United States of Beer: The Complete Series! Bryan Roth consolidates links to series of posts thick with numbers, but with words that help make sense of them. I think he’s wrong about the Dakotas.
[Via This Is Why I’m Drunk]
Free State & Boulevard Newspaper Clipping from 1989. A newspaper article, old school style (a pdf rather than a link). It’s pretty obvious Boulevard Brewing founder John McDonald never expected this brewery to grow to the size it has (and will). He says, “We feel like we have to establish a local market. We don’t do that we don’t have any business shipping beer outside the city.”
[Via KC Beer Blog]
How Climate Change Will End Wine As We Know It. How the wine industry is — and isn’t — reacting says a lot about the future of agriculture. And beer is an agricultural product.
[Via BuzzFeed]
The 2014 Xmas Photo Contest Is On!!! The deadline to enter is Dec. 12. The rules might be the same as last year.
[Via a Good Beer Blog]
My daughter had already sent me the article about how craft beer fails its female fan base. It’s unfortunate that it’s so easy to come up with examples from brewers, craft or otherwise, that are stereotypical, demeaning, or outright sexist. But it’s also unfortunate that so many see this as an explanation for why women aren’t drawn to beer in the same numbers as men. For every negative example, there are dozens if not hundreds of examples of craft beer presenting itself in a gender-neutral way. Would a woman really be less likely to drink, say, a beer from Sierra Nevada or Founders because they’d seen Tramp Stamp on a shelf the week before? You’re right, Stan, this question is very important — but it’s also a lot more complicated than articles like this would make it seem.