A bi-weekly, non-comprehensive roundup
of news of beer and other things.
Weeks 52/53 *
20 December 2015 - 2 January 2016
- 2 January 2016
'Craft' beer pioneer Charlie Papazian —founder of the American Homebrewers Association, the Association of Brewers (predecessor of Brewers Association), and the Great American Beer Festival; author of the seminal (Complete) Joy of Homebrewing; founding publisher of the magazines Zymurgy and The New Brewer— to retire.
—Via Brewers Association. - 31 December 2015
"I really didn't say everything I said.” A few notable deaths of 2015.
—Via The Atlantic. - 31 December 2015
Liberal standard-bearer newspaper, Washington Post, fires its longtime labor and democratic-socialist columnist, Harold Meyerson, without explanation.
—Via Talking Union. - 30 December 2015
Eight ways wine will change in 2016, including the growth of English sparkling wine and the mainstreaming of 'natural' wine.
—Via Bloomberg. - 29 December 2015
North Pole at 35 degrees Fahrenheit. “Something in the atmosphere has gone 'dreadfully wrong.'”
—Via The Atlantic. - 29 December 2015
"A new generation of ['craft' beer] drinkers is being taught to appreciate bad beer."
—Via The Growler. - 28 December 2015
Lemmy Kilmister, founding member and frontman of band Motörhead, has died at age 70, from virulent form of cancer. Motörhead's ferocious hard-rock style rejuvenated the metal genre in the late 1970s and inspired everyone from Metallica and Guns N’ Roses to Dave Grohl.
—Via Consequence of Sound. - 26 December 2015
Winter beers are more than a marketing whim. Barley sown in winter and harvested early the following September needs about six weeks of "dormancy" and up to 10 days of steeping, germinating and drying to become malt. Brewing can then begin in late October, and the beer will be mature in November for drinking in December. The timetable, which dates to the days of the farmer-brewers, remains much the same today. Most winter beers are accented towards the sweet, sustaining malt - rather than the dry, appetising hop - usually with a good belt of alcohol to create at least the pleasant illusion of warmth.
—Via Michael Jackson: The Independent, 1992 (Online at Beer Hunter). - 25 December 2015
A very Beatles Christmas. It has released its entire catalog for streaming.
—Via Slate. - 23 December 2015
When we look back over the history of American brewing, 2015 may well be remembered as the year “craft” died. Not the craft segment, with flavorful IPAs, pilsners, and wild ales, but the very idea of a small, independent craft brewery making these beers in contrast to large, faceless multinationals that make only mass market lagers.
—Via Jeff Alworth at All About Beer - 23 December 2015
Spain's Mahou-San Miguel Brewing Company is considering buying a stake in venerable U.S. 'craft' brewery Anchor.
—Via Bloomberg - 22 December 2015
Anheuser-Busch InBev is making its third craft brewery purchase in the last five days, today announcing the acquisition of Colorado’s Breckenridge Brewery [70,000 barrels in 2015]. The news comes just one day after the company acquired London’s Camden Town Brewery, and four days after it said it would buy Arizona’s Four Peaks Brewing.
—Via Brewbound
A-B has now acquired seven U.S. craft breweries since 2011, including Goose Island, Blue Point Brewing, 10 Barrel Brewing, Elysian Brewing, Golden Road and Four Peaks Brewing. All seven breweries are part of what A-B calls “The High End Division,” which also includes brands like Stella Artois, Shock Top and Virtue Cider.
The company has expanded its interest in the craft category globally, too, purchasing five international outfits — London’s Camden Town Brewery, Toronto’s Mill Street Brewery, Brazil’s Cervejaria Colorado and Cervejaria Wäls and Colombia’s largest craft brewery, Bogota Beer Company.
In August, A-B announced the purchase four wholesalers in Colorado and an A-B wholesaler based in Odessa, Texas.
[Some redaction of original passage.] - 22 December 2015
The confusing (and forlorn) saga of brewery taproom beer sales in Georgia.
—Via YFGF - 22 December 2015
The menu-nutrition ruling for restaurants of the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) will not create onerous requirements upon 'craft' breweries.If the specific type of wine, beer or distilled spirit offered for sale in your establishment matches the description of the types of beverages that were used to determine the caloric or other nutrient content in the USDA database, then the nutrition information from the USDA database can be used.
—Via Queen City Drinks - 21 December 2015
[U.S.] Brewers Association announces that it is "pleased" with end-of-year tax breaks and regulatory relief for 'craft' breweries.Congress has passed favorable tax reforms that will significantly benefit small brewers. Additionally, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau (TTB) updated and expanded the formula rule, providing long-sought-after exemptions for the industry. The tax extenders package for small beverage alcohol producers includes favorable reforms related to bond requirements and extended filing periods. The plan makes the tax cuts for equipment permanent, while also significantly raising the qualifying threshold. Additionally, the bill includes language that would keep any of the funds made available by this or any other act to be used to implement or enforce any provision of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
—Via [U.S.] Brewers Association. - 21 December 2015
The American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) is “disappointed” at the decision not to include a federal tax excise (FET) reduction in a new bill passed by the U.S. Congress.the trade body has worked to help craft distillers by campaigning for a reduction in FET, which currently comprises 54% of the cost of a typical spirit product. The ACSA argued craft spirits producers are in fact at a greater disadvantage to craft brewers and wineries, which receive “significant” reductions in their FET rate, meaning craft spirits producers pay 5.4 times more than craft breweries and 16.4 times more than small wineries.
—Via The Spirits Business. - 21 December 2015
Jason Pratt —Manager of Beer Education for Tenth and Blake Beer Company (Miller/Coors)— has become only the eleventh individual (sine 2007) to earn the title of Master Cicerone® awarded by the The Cicerone® Certification Program, “through a series of exams culminating with two days of intense written and oral questioning about beer styles, draft systems, beer evaluation, brewing technology and beer and food pairing.”
—Via All About Beer. - 22 December 2015
96% of today's 4,100 U.S breweries make fewer than 15,000 barrels of beer per year.
—Via Julia Herz (of [U.S.] Brewers Association. - 20 December 2015
Nearly three hundred pints (37.5 gallons) of water are required to make one pint of beer ... for the cultivation of barley alone (and thus excluding the water footprint of hops). —Via Water Footprint Network. - 20 December 2015
More than 2,000 U.S. cities contain a brewery within their limits; nearly 1,000 U.S. cities, with populations greater than 10,000, do not. —Via [U.S.] Brewers Association. - 20 December 2015
How early 20th-century Guinness brewer William S. Gosset created the concepts of statistical significance and industrial quality control.
—Via Priceonomics. - 20 December 2015
Kurt Masur, the music director emeritus of the New York Philharmonic, who was credited with transforming the orchestra [as music director from 1991 to 2002] from a sullen, lackluster ensemble into one of luminous renown, died on Saturday in Greenwich, Connecticut, from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 88.
—Via New York Times. - 20 December 2015
David Hummer, the astrophysicist who co-founded the Boulder Beer Company in 1979, pioneering the then-novel idea that a 'craft' brewery could succeed commercially, has died at the age of 81.
—Via Denver Post.
- * Why Week 53 of Year 2015?
"The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) week date system is a 'leap' week calendar system that is part of the ISO 8601 date and time standard which has 52 or 53 full weeks, that is, 364 or 371 days, rather than the Gregorian 365 or 366 days. Weeks begin with Monday. The first week of a year is the week that contains the first Thursday of the year (and, hence, always contains 4 January)."
—Wikipedia - 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.
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