{"id":18274,"date":"2024-05-13T08:40:34","date_gmt":"2024-05-13T14:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=18274"},"modified":"2024-05-13T08:40:34","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T14:40:34","slug":"monday-beer-reading-ipa-we-hardly-recognize-thee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/monday-beer-reading-ipa-we-hardly-recognize-thee\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday beer reading: IPA, we hardly recognize thee"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I commented in reposting Alan McLeod’s link to his weekly roundup<\/a>, many of the prominent stories last week were best read with a British accent. Give them a read<\/a>, because there are too many to repeat here.<\/p>\n

Top of mind, for me, were these three:<\/p>\n

– Thornbridge Brewing is keeping (part of) the Burton Unions alive<\/a>. Pete Brown has that story and the role Garrett Oliver played in making this happen.<\/p>\n

(Offering a Continental hot take, Andreas Krennmair suggests Thornbridge should use their Burton Union to ferment a Bavarian Weissbier.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

– Brewdog boss and co-founder James Watt said he would be stepping down from the top job, and Hannah Twiggs writes about “how the anarchic brewery went from progressive to problematic.”<\/a> It is a long, but worthwhile, read, because you’ve probably forgotten some of what transpired during the past 17 years.<\/p>\n

(Additional reading. A fresh post from David Jesudason: BrewDog Waterloo & sexism – ‘working here scarred me.’<\/a> BrewDog Waterloo’s female staff speak about how they were treated at the London pub.)<\/p>\n

– Pete Brown (that guy, again!) on The Sad Demise of Worthington White Shield.<\/a> “Bizarrely, all this means that to many drinkers the last surviving heritage IPA was, paradoxically, not an IPA at all. It wasn\u2019t hazy and didn\u2019t taste like grapefruit, so how could it be? The American Beer Judge Certification Programme (BJCP)\u2014the self-appointed guardians of beer style definition\u2014would seem to agree. According to their latest guidelines, the IPA category is now \u201cfor modern American IPAs and their derivatives,\u201d specifically excluding anything that resembles beers like White Shield that gave the style its name. Apparently, IPA doesn\u2019t even stand for \u201cIndia Pale Ale\u201d any longer; according to the style guidelines, \u201cthe term is intentionally not spelled out as \u2018India Pale Ale\u2019 since none of these beers historically went to India, and many aren\u2019t pale.\u201d I\u2019m not making this up. I wish I was. Not least because I would be hailed as the finest satirist of our age.”<\/p>\n

LEDE OF THE WEEK<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the 90s. Life was as simple as a pair of 501 jeans and a flannel shirt.<\/p>\n

For me, it\u2019s a marker in time. I remember exactly where I was and who I was with when I drank my first pint of Mac and Jack\u2019s beer. I was at a patio party at Grazie Ristorante, the long-since-closed location in Bellevue. It wasn\u2019t a fancy affair, which is good because my hair was impossibly long and I was probably wearing the aforementioned 501 jeans and flannel shirt.<\/p>\n

Mac himself poured that first pint for me from a red and white jockey box. I liked it. I remember thinking that it tasted like a hoppier version of Alaskan Amber, which is what all the cool kids were drinking in those days. We talked about beer and brewing. I shook my head in confusion when Mac told me the brewery was in a garage at his buddy\u2019s house. It was the 90s. Life was simple. <\/p>\n

— From Marking a huge milestone at Mac and Jack\u2019s Brewery<\/a> by Kendall Jones<\/em><\/p>\n

QUOTE OF THE WEEK<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we opened, we thought, \u2018If you build it, they will come.\u2019 That was not how it ended up working out. We\u2019ve definitely been making it up as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Josh Martinez in Mixed Results: How Sour Ale Producers Make the Numbers Work<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n

WHAT DO THESE BEERS HAVE IN COMMON?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coors, Fosters, Tiger, Moretti, Lagunitas, Murphys and Beamish.<\/p>\n

— From A visit to Heineken’s Murphys brewery<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n

ON WRITING<\/strong><\/p>\n

So perhaps it\u2019s not that what we write about beer has to change, at least not in the sense of the form of that writing. It might be more like we have a new opportunity to focus on truly great writing: not getting there first, so much as covering the subject beautifully; not breaking news (though of course that can be important, too), so much as understanding and explaining its nuances; not reporting on every new beer or brewery that opens (an impossibility, given our current numbers), but writing more selectively about the ones that truly matter.<\/p>\n

— From Writing Our Way Through It<\/a> by Evan Rail at Good Beer Hunting<\/em><\/p>\n

Like fighter pilots, journalists must be well-trained and confident but without being cowboys. Meekness produces journalism as gray as dishwater and no more tasty. If journalism is ever to regain its former \u2014 and rightful \u2014 status, it must first regain its swagger.<\/p>\n

— From The Collapse of the News Industry Is Taking Its Soul With It<\/a> by Jack Shafer at POLITICO Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I commented in reposting Alan McLeod’s link to his weekly roundup, many of the prominent stories last week were best read with a British accent. Give them a read, because there are too many to repeat here. Top of mind, for me, were these three: – Thornbridge Brewing is keeping (part of) the Burton … 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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[703,292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-links","category-musing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-4KK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274","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=18274"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18283,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274\/revisions\/18283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}