Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 3/4, 2017.

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

Weeks 3/4
15 - 28 January 2017

• 28 January 2017
  
  • Brooklyn, New York District Federal Judge Ann Donnelly blocks part of President Trump's immigration order, staying deportations.
  • Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia issues a temporary restraining order instructing authorities to "permit lawyers access to all legal permanent residents being detained" at Dulles Airport [in Virginia] and forbidding the deportation of detained permanent residents for seven days.
  —Via National Public Radio.


• 27 January 2017
  Arthur Rosenfeld, an experimental physicist who set aside his decades-long study of subatomic particles to help design energy-efficiency standards and technologies, reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and saving everyday Americans billions of dollars each year, died 27 January 2017 at his home in Berkeley, California. He was 90.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 27 January 2017
  President Trump signs executive order banning almost all permanent immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, including Syria and Iraq, for 90 days, asserting the power to extend the ban indefinitely. More than 50 years ago, Congress outlawed such discrimination against immigrants based on national origin.
  —Via New York Times.


• 25 January 2017
  Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors slash U.S. barley purchases, by as much as 60% in Montana.
  —Via Great Falls Tribune (USA Today).


• 25 January 2017
  The Georgia Senate passes bill to allow state breweries to sell up to 3,000 barrels of beer on-the-premises, the equivalent of 744,000 pints per year. Georgia and Mississippi are the only two states in the nation that still forbid on-the-premises sales at (production) breweries.
  —Via YFGF.


• 25 January 2017
  Better than click-bait. Food and Wine Magazine's listicle, "The 25 Most Important American Craft Beers Ever Brewed," actually puts an emphasis on historical importance over current favorites. Number one on list is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
  —Via Food and Wine.


• 25 January 2017
  The world just became less witty.

  Mary Tyler Moore, whose witty and graceful performances on two top-rated television shows in the 1960s and ’70s helped define a new vision of American womanhood, died on Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. She was 80.

  —Via New York Times.


• 22 January 2017
  Sierra Nevada Brewing, the nation's second largest 'craft' brewery, recalls several brands of its beer —but only those bottled at its North Carolina plant— due to the possibility of glass shards in the beer.
  —Via USA Today.



• 20 January 2017
  Donald John Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States.
  —Via YFGF.


• 18 January 2017
  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's annual State of the Climate report finds 2016 to be the hottest year since scientists started tracking global temperatures in 1880 (topping 2015, itself a record). The global average temperature in 2016 was 1.7°F above the 20th century global average.
  —Via NPR.


• 17 January 2017
  

  Ordinary bitter, as a category, is perhaps the single greatest achievement of British brewing, managing to combine a huge amount of character, flavour and variety into something that, by international standards, is untypically low in strength.

  —Via The Pub Curmudgeon.




• 16 January 2017
  “Why it's time to say no to cask ale.”

  We're always saying cask ale is special, unique, a cut above other beer, that it requires more care and attention. If you're not prepared to treat it like that, you're not supporting cask ale - you're wrecking it. [...] Do yourself, your customers, and cask ale brewers a favour and stop selling it.

  [The Morning Advertiser had originally published the headline of the piece as "Just say no to cask ale," a photo of which is cached from the interwebs above. They have since altered the headline to read, "Just say no to bad cask ale," which was, of course, Mr. Brown's point in the first place.]
  —Via Pete Brown, at Morning Advertiser.


• 16 January 2017
  [U.S.] Brewers Association creates the position of Quality Instructor —to work with the Association’s Quality Subcommittee to develop content for and deliver presentations that address brewing quality practices, systems and parameters. Appoints Mary Pellettieri, past quality manager for Miller Coors, as first Quality Instructor.
  —Via [U.S.] Brewers Association.



• 16 January 2017
  Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, died 16 January 2017. On Apollo 17, in December 1972, Cernan became the eleventh person to walk on the Moon. As he left the lunar surface, Cernan said,

  America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. As we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

  —Via NASA.


• 15 January 2017
  The oft absurdity of beer style management. That time that judges at the World Beer Cup deemed Fullers ESB —the originator!— out-of-style for an ESB, that is, Extra Special Bitter.
  —Via The Malting Floor.


• 15 January 2017
  Just over a year after they were discovered in China, bacteria that can fend off colistin —the antibiotic of last resort— are being found all across the world.
  —Via The Atlantic.


• 15 January 2017
  The Craft Business Daily posts behind a paywall, but short tidbits can be gleaned. Such as these, interesting and troubling.

  Earlier this week, Barron's picked up on some Boston Beer c-stores numbers buried in a recent Wells Fargo report. It only covered the four weeks to 12/31, but it was ugly: for the period, Boston beer was down 23.4% in dollars, far worse than their 12-week trend of -17.6%, and almost twice the declines of the next most challenged beer supplier for the period, Pabst (down 14.4%), per Wells Fargo report.[...]The final stretch of 2016 was a struggle for some of the nation's top craft brewers, but not for Dogfish Head. Chief Sam Calagione tells CBD that their 'growth rates really accelerated over the last few months' and set them up for a strong finish to the year.

  —Craft Business Daily, via YFGF at Facebook.

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• Clamps and Gaskets is a bi-weekly wrap-up of stories about beer (or wine, or whisky) and other things.
• Today's edition of Clamps & Gaskets is one week overdue. My editor is not amused.
• The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created for YFGF by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.


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