Stray thoughts and links for a Wednesday:<\/p>\n
– Chicago.<\/strong> Forty-eight breweries? No wonder there are something like 48 stories this week.<\/p>\n * The Battle for Chicago.<\/a> As somebody who started buying mimeographed copies of Bill James’ Baseball Abstrac<\/em>t in the 1970s (yes, Bill James predated Sierra Nevada Brewing) I really need to write something about this concept of “Beers Above Replacement.” Having a problem wrapping my head about the pale ale\/first baseman analogy.<\/p>\n * Craft Beer Boom Embraced in Chicago’s Neighborhoods.<\/a> And now Jonathan Cutler<\/a> is an elder statesman.<\/em> <\/p>\n * Chicago\u2019s brew future: new breweries on the horizon.<\/a> There are fourteen more<\/em> about to open (suburbs included). <\/p>\n * Man, We’re Gonna Have A Lot of Breweries.<\/a> The guy who wrote the previous story (for Time Out Chicago<\/em>) has more to say. <\/p>\n – Paragraphs I could never write,<\/strong> which is probably just as well. From Ben McFarland’s article, “Raising a glass to Britain’s craft beer heroes,”<\/a> in The Telegraph:<\/p>\n Citra, Oakham Ales, 4.5%<\/strong><\/p>\n In a derelict warehouse somewhere in Peterborough sits the Citra hop, its arms strapped behind its back, its feet shackled to a chair built from pale malt and wheat. Surrounding it, their eyes a maniacal mix of menace and madness, are Oakham\u2019s brewers going to work with hacksaws and hammers in each hand, the Citra squealing gooseberry, greengage and grapefruit. A superb single-hop beer. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are more,<\/a> just as fun.<\/p>\n – A point of order.<\/strong> When you put the word “unique” in the headline my first thought should not be “but what about [fill in the blank]?”<\/p>\n The headline in the Boston Globe<\/em>: “Beer bistro owner plans unique brewing facility.”<\/a> The nut: “[Daniel] Lanigan is preparing to build what he says will be the country\u2019s first brewery entirely devoted to contract brewing: the making and packaging of beer to meet the exacting specifications of commercial clients.”<\/p>\n That it will be the first must be news to the investors who’ve put $100 millions behind Brew Hub,<\/a> which I understand will be open by next summer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Stray thoughts and links for a Wednesday: – Chicago. Forty-eight breweries? No wonder there are something like 48 stories this week. * The Battle for Chicago. As somebody who started buying mimeographed copies of Bill James’ Baseball Abstract in the 1970s (yes, Bill James predated Sierra Nevada Brewing) I really need to write something about … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-337","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11725"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11729,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11725\/revisions\/11729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}