{"id":474,"date":"2008-02-11T06:23:56","date_gmt":"2008-02-11T13:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/monday-musing-uks-good-beer-news-overlooked\/"},"modified":"2008-02-11T06:23:56","modified_gmt":"2008-02-11T13:23:56","slug":"monday-musing-uks-good-beer-news-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/monday-musing-uks-good-beer-news-overlooked\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday musing: UK’s good beer news overlooked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Protz rightfully asks<\/a> why the British press hasn’t been all over the news that beer sales by members of the Society of Independent Brewers were up nearly 11% in 2007.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\nThis stunning success story – at a time when giant global brewers are reporting a sharp downturn in sales in Britain – has been met by a resounding silence by the media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Michael Hardman, SIBA’s<\/a> press officer, tells him, “This is a great British success story – but nobody wants to know.”<\/p>\n

Protz pulls no punches:<\/p>\n

The reason is not hard to understand: the media is obsessed with “24-hour” drinking” and “binge drinking” and doesn’t want to write about a good beer story. As Hardman adds, “If you substituted ‘beer’ in the report with the word ‘wine,’ the media would be falling over themselves to write glowing stories.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not like the ongoing success of “craft” brewers in the United States doesn’t get pretty good coverage.<\/p>\n

\"Philly– I’ve tried not to spend too much time looking at the Philly Beer Week<\/strong> schedule<\/a>. I know my head would blow up were attending an option. And that’s a best case scenario. If it didn’t then I’d surely destroy at least some of my internal plumbing. They should call it Philly Hedonist Week.<\/strong> Best I stay here in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

But it does make you think about Philadelphia boldly declaring itself “America’s Best Beer-Drinking City.” This has led Stephen Beaumont and Don Russell to debate Philadelphia’s beer cred in Ale Street News<\/a>. (So far just in print, but look for the story to pop up online.)<\/p>\n

I’d say I was staying out of it, but since last week I casually mentioned that any such debate begins and ends with Portland, Oregon (see, Jeff, I wrote it again), I’ve already taken a stand.<\/p>\n

Were I getting further involved<\/em> I certainly would use Russell’s post Saturday about the demise of Ludwig’s<\/a> as evidence for whatever other side. Geez, if Gibson City, Illinois, can support a German restaurant<\/a> with a solid beer selection shouldn’t America’s Best Beer-Drinking City?<\/em><\/p>\n

– Conversations here sometimes go directions I would not have anticipated. One last week about buying habits of Gen Yers<\/a> turned into a discussion about authenticity. Enough to talk about that Lew Bryson then added much you should read<\/a> at his blog, including an important comment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I meant everything I said at the beginning of the post about what “authentic” means to me, and that’s what I want…but I want to define it for myself, and I would just as soon not see claims for it made by brewers when it’s not clear what it does mean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A reminder we all our own definitions, and biases. Me, when I read something like this from Beerdrinker of the Year finalist Matt Venzke<\/a> I want to shout hallelujah:<\/p>\n

“Small breweries are one of the few remaining vestiges of local uniqueness. Internationally, breweries reflect the local character, history and flavor.”<\/p>\n

Your mileage may vary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Protz rightfully asks why the British press hasn’t been all over the news that beer sales by members of the Society of Independent Brewers were up nearly 11% in 2007. This stunning success story – at a time when giant global brewers are reporting a sharp downturn in sales in Britain – has been … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beers-of-conviction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-7E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","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=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}