Taking beer seriously in this week’s links

MONDAY BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 2.08.16

Living with Beer and Mental Health, Part One: Geoffrey Did it Wrong.
Expect to feel uncomfortable reading this, whether it is because this story is so private and honest or because of what it leaves you thinking about. Before you begin, understand a) it is 2,328 words by my count, and b) there are paragraphs like this: “I often wish my Dad had died but he has proved himself immortal. I never thought I’d share these stories before his own obituary but I find it prudent to share them now. If you ever feel you don’t have control over your drinking, if you ever begin to do it to guide you through every day, if you ever feel that you HAVE to drink for whatever reason that is, then seek the help you may need. It could really be the start of something serious that won’t just destroy your own life but all those around you who love you.” [Via Beer Compurgation]

Still Not Backing Down For Four Hundred Years.
There’s already been plenty of chatter about Budweiser’s #NotBackDown Super Bowl commercial (40 0,000 views on YouTube for the full versionbefore the game even started) and we can expect plenty more on Twitter, in blog posts, and in online publications. Alan McLeod’s post will be the best single thing you read. I spent considerable time the past year scrutinizing what was going on in American beer the last 400 years, but through a different prism. Different enough it will take a full post to explain. So it’s not the best single thing you will read because I agree with it, but because these are things you should be thinking about. Agreeing is not required. So even though Alan describes Budweiser as “unpleasantly bitter” (huh? bitter?) take him seriously. [Via A Good Beer Blog]

The Unsessionability of Session IPA.
[Via Pencil & Spoon]
Defending the Session IPA and the American Palate.
[Via All About Beer]
Mark Dredge’s thesis, put forth a couple of weeks ago, is pretty straightforward: “I’ve never tasted a Session IPA that’s sessionable in the British sense and they are almost ironically unsessionable; too dry, too bitter, too intense in aroma and flavour – they are unbalanced towards the IPA instead of the Session.” And Jeff Alworth’s reply, “We want them ‘unbalanced toward the IPA'” is equally straightforward. “We” being Americans, and both writers acknowledging differences in culture and palates. But to really understand the cultural differences, read Tandleman’s comment.

Burgundy vs. Champagne: An 18th Century Flame War.
This discussion is not nearly as civilized as the one between Mr. Dredge and Mr. Alworth. For instance, “The wine of Reims is thin, not quite wine-flavored, and acid, which, like most other white wines, has the strength to make urine, but very little to nourish & to warm.” [Via Gargantuan Wine]

#Indie Beer – How the American Beer Scene and The Protestant Reformation Actually Have a lot in Common.
[Via Literature & Libation]
Indie Beer and the Importance of a Name.
[Via BeerGraphs]
There was more back-and-forth on Twitter about the term “Indie Beer” than there were blog posts (or I missed them) than in the beer blogosphere. So maybe we will be spared endless discussions about possible definitions. It does provoke interesting thinking, a) being the analogies from Oliver Gray in #1, and second the conclusion Eno Sarris draws in #2: “There was a reason we started calling some music indie. There was a reason certain crews stopped using that term. There was a reason we started calling beer craft. There is a reason for some to stop using that term.”

Office Space: Did a loss of authenticity doom the Rolling Rock brand to failure?
[Via Reading Eagle]
Bruce Springsteen, ‘The Ties That Bind’, the Working Class, and Authenticity.
[Via PopMatters]
Indeed, discussions about authenticity and beer or brewing can make our heads hurt. But since we just dippied into the Indie music world . . . Was Rolling Rock authentic for you (even if you didn’t like the beer) before Anheuser-Busch bought the brewery? And does considering the relationship between art and authenticity tell us anything about beer? You are not required to care about either, but I spent a fair amount of time thinking about what brewers creating in writing the first chapter of Brewing Local (now working its way through the production process). I wish I’d read the second linked story first.

Working class beer is not a myth, but sometimes it feels endangered. So maybe an art/music analogy tells us something. “Art is the wrench in the gears of authenticity’s easy association with working class music. It creates contradictions and layers of meaning, complexity and ambiguity, and mistakes, misfires, but it’s also how a real voice for the working class can exist in popular music, and most importantly, how that music can be more than the singer’s voice, more than the critic’s voice, more than official history’s voice. If we stop being obsessed by the authenticity of the artist, we might discover the truth in what he says.”