Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 48/49, 2014.

A bi-weekly, non-comprehensive roundup
of news of beer and other things.

Weeks 48/49
23 November - 6 December 2014

• 2014.12.06
  The new owner of The New Republic —Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes— announces plan to re-fashion the long-time literary bastion of the left and neo-liberalism from a magazine-focused institution to a “vertically integrated digital media company." Mass resignations ensue.
  —Via Washington Post.
  
  
• 2014.12.05
  Primates' ability to digest alcohol may have been one key to survival, ten million years ago, when the the ADH4 enzyme —which enables caloric metabolism of alcohol— started showing up in the ancestor humans share with chimpanzees and gorillas, around the time they started eating fallen, fermented fruit off the forest floors.
  —Via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (at NPR Food).
  
  
  
  
• 2014.12.05
  The British Guild of Beer Writers awarded the 2014 Michael Jackson Gold Tankard for Beer Writer of the Year to Ray Newman and Jessica Slack, who blog as Boak and Bailey, and who this year published "Brew Britannia: The Strange Rebirth of British Beer."
  —Via Roger Protz.
  
  
• 2014.12.04
  The Washington Post writes that young adults are eschewing beer for wine and spirits.
  —Via Wonk Blog.
  Beer blogger/author Jeff Alworth debunks 'craft' beer claims of above article, cites the paper's use of old data.
  —Via Beervana.
  
  
• 2014.12.03
  A brewer returns a medal for having inadvertently entered his beer in the wrong category. Judging panel failed to distinguish between brettanomyces [funky] and lactobacillus [sour].
  —Via All About Beer.
  
  
• 2014.12.03
  The 2014 grape harvest in Virginia and Maryland should produce a "classic" vintage of "elegant wines with ripe flavors and moderate alcohol levels."
  —Via Dave McIntyre.
  
  
• 2014.12.02
  Patrick Rue (of The Bruery, in California) and James Watt (of BrewDog, in Scotland) become only the 8th and 9th Master Cicerones [beer 'sommeliers,' as recognized by the Cicerone Certification Project] and the only brewer/brewery owners to do so. Watt is the first European to achieve the accreditation.
  —Via All About Beer.
  
  
• 2014.12.02
  Rolling Stones' saxophone player Bobby Keys has died at age 70.
  —Via Associated Press.
  
  
• 2014.12.01
  Draft Magazine's list of the top 25 beers of 2004. Includes the only Trappist beer brewed in America (Spencer) and a recreation of a bygone "Berliner Weisse/Märzen marriage," from August Schell, the second oldest family-owned brewery in America (1860).
  —Via Draft Magazine.
  
  
• 2014.11.29
  Dan Fox —past beer advertising executive— corrects the record when the Wall Street Journal incorrectly claims that Anheuser-Busch has abandoned its successful decades-long Christmas advertising campaign featuring the brewery's Clydesdales horses.
  —Via Hey, Beer Dan.
  
  
• 2014.11.27
  Le Jour de Merci Donnant: past humorist/columnist Art Buchwald's classic 1953 column, explaining American Thanksgiving to the French.
  —Via New York Times.
  
  
• 2014.11.27
  The true story of "Beere, the Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving."
  —Via YFGF.
  
  
• 2014.11.26
  The top 25 beers of 2014, according to wine magazine, the Wine Enthusiast. At the number one position is Serpent’s Stout, an 'imperial' stout from Lost Abbey of San Marcos, California.
  —Via Wine Enthusiast.
  
  
• 2014.11.25
  'Craft' beer reached a milestone in 2013. Combined, the industry sold 16.1 million barrels of beer, more than the 16 million barrels of Budweiser beer that Anheuser-Busch InBev sold.
  —Via Slate.
  
  
  
• 2014.11.23
  Some of the best beer writing of 2014. The North American Guild of Beer Writers (NAGBW) awards.
  —Via YFGF.

-----more-----

• Clamps and Gaskets is a bi-weekly wrap-up of stories most of which deal with beer (or wine, or whisky). Some do not, but all are brief, and many are re-posts from my Twitter feed: @cizauskas.
• The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.