Do you know the real reason Millennials have fallen for Guinness? It’s because we are all severely broken, and we crave nothingness in the form of pints; oubliettes of pure darkness into which we can repeatedly descend. Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
— Matthew Curtis (@totalcurtis) March 17, 2024
LEDE OF THE WEEK
Every Friday evening during the school year, I cajole the children into the bike by 18.40. I cycle them up the hill to the local municipal swimming pool and wave them through the door by 18.50. By 18.55 I’m sitting in the pub around the corner with a beer in front of me and a book in my hand. By 19.45, I’ll have finished the second of two beers, made no headway in the book, paid up at the bar, and be out the door so I’m back at the pool for the end of class at 20.00. Then it’s pile them back in the bike, and cycle them home where my Friday night routine ends and their bedtime routine begins. Lather, rinse, and repeat the following Friday.
— From On Routine (I): Friday Night Swimming.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I’m thinking that now there might be a market for television or drama that’s the opposite of the grabby, ‘Something’s happening all the time, don’t look away!’ kind of thing—that Netflixy thing,” she said. She cited the example of “The Beatles: Get Back,” the Peter Jackson documentary about the 1969 recording of “Let It Be.” Watching that was more like listening to a chatty podcast: “You could wander away and come back, because there were lots of scenes of these incredible geniuses creating in a room together, but they were also being, like, ‘Shall we have some tea?’ ” It suggested to (Lucy) Prebble that she might want to experiment with “doing shows that feel like having a bath—where you just want to be in that environment for a long time.”
— From “Lucy Pebble’s Dramas of High Anxiety”. Are you ready for less “grabby” beer?
RECKONING OF THE WEEK
“In May of 2021, it was like a rapture took place in the City of Philadelphia. The buildings remained in place, and so did the people. The sun rose and set, Phils fans still cursed the God who hated them, and clouds still fell as gentle rain.
“What seemed to go missing was just about every Tired Hands beer tap within city limits.”
— From The Brewers Building a Better — and Less Toxic — Philly Beer Scene.
IT’S JUST BUSINESS
Speaking of grabby . . . As always, Doug Veliky shares ideas worth thinking about. “On March 1st, I worked to bring these two art forms together by joining forces with Warrior Wrestling, an independent promotion, to put on an absolute spectacle of a show that nobody in attendance will forget. The entire build up toward the event, behind-the-scenes planning & logistics, and execution on the big night helped reframe how I’m going to look at IPA from here on out.”
And this could have been the quote of the week: “Spending too much time around industry members and beer fans who have been into beer for a decade+ could make one think that people are tired of IPAs. This is a dangerous echo chamber to be influencing strategic decisions.”
Of Course America Fell for Liquid Death. “All of this, in one way or another, is about building the brand, because the brand is what’s important; the brand is all there is.” [My emphasis.]
AND SOMETIMES ‘JUST BUSINESS’ SUCKS
Monster Lays Off 12 Cigar City Workers in Tampa. There is plenty of other sucky brewery news, adding up to lots more than 12 jobs lost. But one of the 12 is Wayne Wambles, the founding brewmaster. They guy who created flagship Jai Alai IPA and a bunch of other beers the brewery was built around.
Death by ubiquity. When Spuyten Duyvil opened in Williamsburg in 2003, it stood out for its selection of imported European beers — “the beer you couldn’t find anywhere else,” says Joe Carroll. “Now you’d be hard pressed to find any place without it.”
YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY
Four Years Ago the World Stopped. Jeff Alworth has made a list of what the disruption meant to beer.
Sustainability. Scientists have now found a way of selectively capturing metals from a waste stream using spent brewer’s yeast. . . . Not only that: the yeast can be reused, making the process even more eco-friendly.
Lacada Cooperative Brewery: A fostering dynamic. “From the get go the character of the enterprise seemed to be locally celebratory, exulting local knowledge, produce and skills as well as drawing on local geography, history, myths and legends as inspiration. There was a fostering of relationships between the surf scene, local artists and musicians like myself, as well as the exciting café and food market culture that was beginning to blossom. This dynamism had existed disparately in one way or another for years, but for me the mentality of collaboration and cooperation really helped build something that feels harder to move away from.”
That comment about how easy it is to find formerly rare imported beers everywhere re: the closing of Spuyten Duyvil: reminds me that living in the heart of a large city can skew one’s impressions of ubiquity. I’m in the Chicago burbs, and while I know that I can find bars in Chicago that echo what Spuyten Duyvil offered and look forward to my occasional visits, the availability of said beers in the burbs has gone from near-ubiquity maybe ten years back to scarcity: especially at bars, but also in retail establishments — even ones that specialize in beer. The large chain retailers such as Binny’s have shrunk their Belgian offerings, the number of wholesalers handling imports have dwindled, and the smaller curated beer shops overwhelmingly focus on local offerings. Supermarkets might carry Hoegaarden and one or more of the Delirium Tremens brews. Whole Foods might have a few Trappist or Trappist-adjacent brews, but…
I think Jeff Alworth did a piece a few weeks back on beer categories: while beer imported from Mexico is up dramatically, beer imported from overseas is down dramatically. If one is operating in (or writing about) the food and drink scene from the midst of NYC, maybe this wouldn’t be apparent, but for folks outside of said tiny geographic area, the kinds of beers served at Spuyten Duyvil are indeed difficult to find.
A good point, Bill. The store about a 15-minute walk from our house has a fabulous selection of American-brewed beers, many from rather small breweries. But a very limited selection of non-American “classics.”
There is a store a 15-minute drive from our house, in another suburb, that still carries a nice cross section of Belgian beers that a I used to be able to find in a grocery store close to our house in New Mexico. That was a dozen years ago. I don’t think this is a change for the better.