Don’t Save the Planet for the Planet. Do It for the Beer.<\/a><\/strong> We\u2019ve Created a Monster \u2014 What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?<\/a><\/strong> Four days in, it should be pretty obvious not everybody is looking at #FlagshipFebruary,<\/a> the reason it began, what flagship fatigue might mean, or, heck, what qualifies as a flagship beer the same way. Follow the hashtag<\/a> and prepare to be even more confused. A taste.<\/a> <\/p>\n Global Craft Beer on a Sea of IPA: Sameness Masquerading as Difference?<\/a><\/strong> Is American Homebrewing Dying?<\/a><\/strong> I might need to get out more, because these two were all over my Twitter feed.<\/p>\n The (Other) Stephen Foster Story: Kentucky\u2019s Craft Beer Con Man<\/a><\/strong> Tiny Bubbles \u2014 How Nitrogenation Changed Beer Forever<\/a><\/strong> Millennials are talking but the wine industry isn’t listening<\/a><\/strong> if you disagree with this i need you to please not @ me cause i can't deal with your bullshit<\/p>\n — Kyle Kastranec (@Beer_Notes) February 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nBeer is an agricultural product. This is a story about barley — and be warned, much of it about what A-B InBev is up to. But there’s a similar story to be told about hops. Dr. Eric Snodgrass, director of undergraduate studies for the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois, talked about all things weather last month at the American Hop Convention. Growers and brewers in attendance walked away realizing that turbulent changes in weather that have affected hop production are not an anomaly. Drought and heat have devastated the crop in Germany and the Czech Republic two of the last three years. The Czech harvest of 4,200 metric tons in 2018 compared to 6,800 in 2017 has been labeled “catastrophic.” Farmers in the American Northwest have avoided similar results because they irrigate their fields. But drought and extreme heat will continue to threaten crops every year. Beer is an agricultural product.<\/p>\n
\nYou guys are overthinking this.<\/a><\/strong>
\nI could have lumped the links that follow together, added more, and commented it depends where you are looking from<\/em> and what direction<\/em> you are looking in. Jeff Alworth used Conan O’Brien’s “tour” of the Samuel Adams pilot brewery (which has more than a million views on YouTube<\/a>) to make that point about the “beer world\u2019s insularity.”
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\nFranz Hofer asks, “Are we content with a re-homogenization of beer that tends to favour a narrow set of styles at the expense of indigenous styles? Are we content with a variety of beer styles, that, ultimately, amounts to a kind of globalized infinite substitutability, a sameness masquerading as difference?” Is that what is happening? I use the example of the United States because that is what I know and also where drinkers, brewers, whoever started talking about “craft beer” being different than beer. It might have been easier to find a hoppy brown ale in the United States in 1999 than 2019, but it sure is heck is easier now than in 1979 (BSN – before Sierra Nevada Brewing). It is certainly easier to find a saison, a gose, a southern German weiss beer, or a perhaps bastardized approximation of a beer people in Germany call Köolsch than it was 40 years ago. Yes, the marketplace could use more beers described as subtle or nuanced. It may sometimes appear that sameness has won when a bar chooses to devote 10 out of 12 taps to various forms of IPA, but those beers are still making inroads.<\/p>\n
\nMike Tonsmeire sounds the alarm. The comments that follow nicely describe the view from there, and from there, and from there.<\/p>\nYOU SURELY HAVE SEE THESE, BUT IN CASE . . .<\/h5>\n
\nSomebody must be at work on the screenplay.<\/p>\n
\nI write a bit about science related to brewing itself, but scientific advances also happen outside the brewhouse.<\/p>\nWINE<\/h5>\n
\nHealthy matters. Unique flavors. Personal experience. Sound familiar?<\/p>\nFROM TWITTER<\/h5>\n
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