Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 24/25, 2015.

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

Weeks 24/25
7 June - 20 June 2015

• 2015.06.20
  Patagonia (Chile/Argentina), Bavaria (Germany), Frohberg (Germany), and Saaz (Czech Republic). The history of lager yeast, and the creation of a new hybrid lager yeast.
  —Via Beer Strength Matters.


• 2015.06.18
  U.S. homebrewers vote for their favorite U.S. beers and breweries, and imports. This is the seventh year in a row American Homebrew Association members chose Russian River's Pliny the Elder as the top beer, and the sixth consecutive year that Bell’s Two Hearted Ale came in second.
  —Via Jay Brooks, at Brookston Beer Bulletin.


• 2015.06.18
  Roman Catholic Pope Francis I releases Laudato Si, an encyclical stating that the “bulk of global warming is caused by human activity."
  "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth."
  —Via Washington Post.


• 2015.06.17
  On the evening of June 17, 2015, a mass shooting took place at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Nine people were killed, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; a tenth victim survived. The congregation is one of the United States' oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights. Police arrested 21-year-old Dylann Roof. an avowed white supremacist.
  —Via New Yorker.




Beer garden at Wild Wolf Brewing, Nellysford, Virginia.
Courtesy Lucy Saunders: Dinner In the Beer Garden; 2014.
All rights reserved.
• 2015.06.17
  A list of twenty-two of the best beer gardens in America, as compiled by Time Out New York.
  —Via Time Out New York.


• 2015.06.16
  To further American craft beer promotion and education in Europe, the Brewers Association (BA)—the non-profit trade association dedicated to American small and independent craft brewers—has hired Sylvia Kopp as its first-ever American Craft Beer Ambassador in Europe.
  —Via Brewbound.


• 2015.06.16
  American farmers planted more than 44,000 acres with hops in year 2015, an increase of 16% over year 2014. In 2009, 69% of hop acreage was devoted to alpha hops (hops used for bitterness rather than aroma), while in 2015 only 23%. The percentage of acreage of aroma hops has more than doubled from 31% in 2009 to 77% this year.
  —Via June Hop Acreage Report by (U.S.) Brewers Association.


• 2015.06.15
  The Magna Carta (Great Charter) was signed 800 years ago, on 15 June 1215, by England's King John and rebellious English barons and nobles, providing protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, providing access to swift justice, and imposing limitations on feudal payments to the King. It effectively established the principle of English law that "nobody was above the law, and that the rule of law was paramount." The Magna Carta contained 63 clauses, including one on the sale of beer and wine.
  "Let there be throughout our kingdom a single measure for wine and a single measure for ale."
  —Via Washington Post.


• 2015.06.14
  A newspaperman's newspaperman. John S. Carroll, acclaimed newspaper editor for Lexington Herald-Leader, Baltimore Sun, and Los Angeles Times, winning numerous Pulitzer prizes, has died at age 73.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 2015.06.12
  After several years of promoting competing bills for excise tax relief, the Beer Institute and the (U.S.) Brewers Association have agreed on a compromise bill, the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act.
  —Via Brewbound.


• 2015.06.11
  Ohio supermarket chain, Heinen's, has removed a Maryland 'craft' beer from its shelves, after customers complain about the name: Sweet Baby Jesus, from DuClaw Brewing.
  —Via Cleveland.com.




• 2015.06.11
  Ornette Coleman, one of the great innovators of modern American classical music, jazz, has died, at age 85.
  —Via New York Times.


• 2015.06.10
  The decline of hops in German pilsners? The Journal of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling has published a study that indicates that the bitterness level of German pilsners has has dipped, now brewing with about 27 International Bitterness Units (IBUs).
  —Via Stan Hieronymus, at Appellation Beer.


• 2015.06.07
  Bright, filtered, unfiltered natural, or murky? The case for cloudy beer.
  —Via Stephen Beaumont, at The Globe and Mail.


• 2015.06.07
  The 17th/18th-century English story of porter. Three-threads was NOT porter; it was tax-dodging beer-blending.
  —Via Martyn Cornell, at Zythophile.




• 2015.06.07
  Beer color for beer geeks: vocabulary, SRM, hexadecimals.
  —Via Jay Brooks, at Brookston Beer Bulletin.


• 2015.06.07
  Obituary for Reg Drury, 1939-2015: the brewer who saved cask ale at Fullers Brewery in London. Worked for the brewery for 40 years, ending as director of brewing.
  "When he retired from Fuller’s, he became an assessor for Cask Marque, the industry-funded group that monitors the quality of real ale in the nation’s pubs. Statistics released just a few days after his death showed that sales of cask beer, the style he helped improve and foster, have grown appreciably in 2014 and 2015. Reg was good beer’s best friend."
  —Via Roger Protz, at The Guardian.

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• Clamps and Gaskets is a bi-weekly wrap-up of stories  not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not.
• YFGF has been remiss: Clamps and Gaskets has fallen several weeks behind the calendar. Until things are set right, there will be a weekly —not bi-weekly— Monday update.


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