Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 34/35, 2015.

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

Weeks 34/35
16 August - 29 August 2015

• 29 August 2015
  Beer historian Ron Pattinson looks at the historical record to determine the real differences between porter and stout. It involved a process called parti-gyling.
  "The difference between porter and stout? All stouts are types of porter. But not all porters are stouts. Only the stronger ones."
  —Via All About Beer.


• 29 August 2015
  Whenever breweries produce beers with ingredients and processes other than the 'standard' water, malt, hops, and yeast, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) requires pre-approval of the formula. In 2014, the TTB relaxed those standards just a bit. Certain processes —such as aging beer in barrels containing NO DISCERNIBLE QUANTITY of wine or distilled spirits— and certain fruits and spices were exempted.
  —Via Brewery law.


• 28 August 2015
  The Washington Redskins football team relents, decides to offer locally-brewed beer at FedEx Field. Maryland and Virginia beers, but, despite the team's name, no beers from Washington, D.C.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 27 August 2015
  Dudes Brews in Colorado produces a legal marijuana beer. No physcotropic tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) but plenty of cannabidiol.
  —Via Craft Brewing Business.


• 27 August 2015
  A not insubstantial portion of 'craft' beer's recent growth has been based on beers that don't taste like beer.
  —Via YFGF.


• 26 August 2015
  Ninety-five years ago, on 26 August 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, guaranteeing American women the right to vote.
  —Via History.com.


• 26 August 2015
  Researchers at Texas A&M’s Transportation Institute have determined that the Washington, D.C. area has the nation's worst traffic congestion.
  —Via WTOP.


• 23 August 2015
  The Answer Brewpub (in Richmond, Virginia) wins Best of Show at The 2015 Virginia Craft Brewers Cup, announced at the Virginia Craft Brewers Fest, held in Roseland, Virginia.
  —Full list of winners, via Virginia Craft Beer Magazine.
  


• 21 August 2015
  A nascent industry in Maryland: farming and malting of brewer's barley. and how that could help preserve the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay. a nascent Maryland industry.
  —Via beer historian Maureen O’Prey, at Behind The Craft.


• 20 August 2015
  Byron Burch —American homebrewing educator and author, and ‪early 'craft' beer‬ guru— has died in Santa Rosa, California, at age 75.
  —Via Bill Swindell, at Santa Rosa Press Democrat.


• 20 August 2015
  Was this the first commercial brewery in America?
  "According to Henry Gusmer, at A. Gusmer, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey, can boast the first brewery in America, dated as far back as 1642. Jan Putten is purported to have built the first 'brouwerie' on Castle Point close to the many resorts of Elysian Fields memory [an early 20th century resort, itself purportedly the site of the first-ever organized baseball game]."
  —Via beer historian Rich Wagner, re-quoted at YFGF.


• 19 August 2015
  "Craft breweries have a soul, and I think the big money coming into the industry is kind of a challenge to that soul." Steve Hindy of Brooklyn Brewery, discussing the current large, and growing larger, interest of investment firms in 'craft' breweries.
  —Via Reuters.


• 17 August 2015
  The sorites paradox of 'session' beer: "When it comes to our body’s alcohol intake, what’s the real difference between 4% and 5% alcohol by volume?
  Much more than 25%."
  —Via beer writer Joe Stange, at Draft Magazine.


• 16 August 2015
  "Julian Bond, a charismatic figure of the 1960s civil rights movement, a lightning rod of the anti-Vietnam War campaign and a lifelong champion of equal rights, notably as chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., died on Saturday night in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He was 75."
  —Via New York Times.


• 16 August 2015
  University of Wisconsin scientists have sequenced the DNA of Saccharomyces eubayanus, the non-European parent of lager beer yeast. In the process, they discovered that the two principal modern strains of lager yeast, Frohberg and Saaz, had separate origins, not a single precursor, as earlier hypothesized.
  —Via Los Angeles Times.

-----more-----

• 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.
• The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.


• For more from YFGF:
  • Follow on Twitter: @Cizauskas.
  • Like on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
  • Follow on Flickr: Cizauskas.
  • Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.