— Henry Louis (H.L.) MenckenA prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn't care to drink with,
even if he drank.
Ah, the beauty of cask-conditioned 'real ale.'
Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served [without extraneous gas pressure] through a process called secondary fermentation [and served at what is called 'cellar' temperature —in the low to mid 50 degrees Fahrenheit.] It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers, and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.— CAMRA [with edits].
Cask Marque, begun in the U.K. in 1997, is a voluntary accreditation scheme that allows publicans to display a special symbol indicating that their cask ale is of good quality, as judged by a series of surprise inspections.
In the late 1990s, I attended a Craft Brewers Conference (then, a much, much smaller affair than now) in Seattle, Washington.
Paul Shipman, CEO of Redhook, gave the keynote address. Gloating in smug self-appreciation, he told us that his minority sale to Anheuser-Busch (itself not yet devoured by InBev), was the best business decision he had never made. Get big or die he seemed to tell us. A friend whispered to me: he's telling us to bend over and take it from A-B.
Where is Shipman now? “He calls the decision to partner with Anheuser-Busch 'the defining error of my career.'” In creating the brewery Craft Brew Alliance, Redhook would be, for all intents and purposes, subsumed by its bigger partner, Widmer Brothers Brewing. The Craft Brew Alliance itself sold a minority stake to A-B. And the [U.S.] Brewers Association punished it by rewriting Rob and Kurt Widmer out of the community of 'craft.'
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Time was, preserving a leaf under a flyleaf was a life memento. Nowadays, there are e-variants thereof. Here: colors of autumn, from October 2019, seen in and around Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Bricker is blessed with perfect pitch, clear diction, more than average range, and a knowledgeable sense of the lyrics and feel for the beat, all packaged in a clear, cool set of vocal pipes.— All About Jazz
The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold.
I see your lips, the summer kisses,
The sun-burned hands I used to hold.
Since you went away the days grow long,
And soon I'll hear old winter's song.
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall.
Like a fine port, Old Stock Ale is intended to be laid down. With an original gravity of over 1.100 and a generous hopping rate, Old Stock Ale is well-designed to round out and mellow with age. It’s brewed with classic Maris Otter malt and Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops, all imported from England.
- 11.4% alcohol [by volume]
- 34 [?] IBUs [International Bittering Units]
I put out the word on the interwebs: where to go for good beer in Sarasota, Florida?
And the word came back from 'craft' beer professionals on Facebook. Go to Calusa Brewing.
So, I did (on 5 October 2019).
The brewery sits in unpretentious surroundings in a light-industrial/business park. Rusting cars and totaled light-engine planes sit in a junkyard just beside it. The brewery building itself is corrugated metal.
Inside, it's, again, corrugated industrial with high ceilings. A long bar with several draught-beer taps sits against one wall, communal stammtiche tables in front of it. Windows to the rear provide a peek into the brewhouse area. Bourbon barrels filled with maturing beers sit to the side.
And those beers...!
16 rotating draft lines of traditional favorites, hazy hop bombs and mixed-fermented/fruited sour beers.
Not John Goodman, maintaining his cool.
28 September 2019: a very hot and humid late September day for the East Atlanta Strut, in Atlanta (East Atlanta Village), Georgia, USA.
-----more-----The East Atlanta Strut is East Atlanta's free annual one-day neighborhood festival, always on the third Saturday in September featuring a parade, food, live music, art, and events. The festival is held to highlight the businesses in East Atlanta Village as well as raise funds for schools, senior programs, and Neighbor In Need East Atlanta. The festival is run completely with volunteers.
We teamed up with Germany’s Bitburger Brewery for a festbier [with] a rich amber color and smooth malty flavor. We brewed Oktoberfest with Bitburger’s custom yeast and secret hop blend called Siegelhopfen, meaning 'Sealed Hops'—two house ingredients never shared outside their walls until now.
If you are having a session and want a beer that doesn't just fade into the background, go for the Sierra Nevada.
- Sight - deep orange, tight ivory head, excellent retention
- Smell - toasted cereal, light cinnamon, bready malt
- Taste - brown sugar, juicy sweet malt, citrus hops, subtle lemon and lime, clean finish
- Sweet - 2.5/5
- Bitter - 2.5/5
Orange-red appearance, Sierra Nevada/Bitburger Oktoberfest pours from the bottle with a scant head but lasting carbonation. There's an aroma of toasted cracker...and, in distant second and third: plums and spent matches. In flavor, add brown sugar and hints of lemon peel and mowed grass (the "secret" hop blend?). The finish is Goldilocksean: not too sweet, not too bitter, not too short, not too long. American Oktoberfests sometimes have a fruity/marshmallow character and/or a burned malt flavor. Not this.
On parle de la conversion de l’eau en vin, à la nôce de Cana, comme d’un miracle. Mais cette conversion est faite tous les jours par la bonté de Dieu, sous nos yeux. Voilà l’eau qui tombe des cieux sur nos vignobles, et alors elle entre dans les racines des vignes pour-être changée en vin. Preuve constante que Dieu nous aime, et qu’il aime à nous voir heureux.
We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!
When life gives you brown bananas, you make Banana Malt Bread.
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There's sad news out of Baltimore, Maryland, where humans live.
Baltimore Beer Week will not be held this year. If it had been, this would have been its 11th iteration.
As the organizers state, the festival may have been a victim of its own success. The very number of breweries in Baltimore, and of all of Maryland —and more broadly noting, the numbers throughout America now— vs. the smaller numbers of even a decade ago might negate the purpose of such a gathering or at least create too much 'noise' to make it viable.
Pop quiz. What do cotton candy, chocolate chip cookies, and mini-donuts have in common? Give up? They are all flavors of beer.
And YFGF tweeted: “An 'approachable' beer is one I approach. A 'drinkable' beer is one I drink. The best donut beer is a beer in a mug and a donut on a plate.' [laughter] I mean...whatcha want me to say? If he's wrong, tell me he's wrong, but I don't think he's wrong. [...] And it's just that simple wisdom like 'an approachable beer is a beer I approach.' Boom! One of y'all is going to print that on a tee-shirt and make a lot of money.”
"Would you try a jalapeño cream ale? Maybe a cotton candy milkshake IPA? If your answer is yes, you should head to Minnesota. The North Star State has a booming craft beer industry. But that wasn’t always the case.
Not long ago, craft beer wasn’t nearly as widely available in the U.S. as it is today. Between 2002 and 2007, employment at breweries across the country declined as large corporations like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors consolidated. In 2012, these two companies controlled nearly 90 percent of beer production in the country.
But between 2008 and 2016, the number of brewery establishments — many of them small businesses sextupled. The number of brewery workers grew by 120 percent. In the same period, shipments from the five major brewers (Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, Heineken, Pabst and Diageo) fell by 14 percent.
Minnesota was no exception to the trend. In 2011, the state was home to 35 craft breweries. Today there are more than 170 breweries operating in the state. Those breweries pump out nearly 650,000 barrels of beer a year.
At the Minnesota State Fair, local breweries show off their classic brews as well as their more experimental ones, which feature a wacky variety of flavors, including dreamsicle, elderflower, lavender, dragon fruit, push pop, pumpkin seed, cake, chocolate chip cookie, dill pickle, funnel cake, maple bacon and s’mores.
[...] We sit down and sip at the Minnesota State Fair to talk and taste with the state’s craft beer insiders.
So gradual in those summers was the going of the age it seemed that the long days setting out when the stars faded over the mountains were not leaving us...— W.S. Merwin: The Speed of Light.
Here's a recipe for Vegan Summer Potato Salad. You don't have to be vegan and any season will do.
I adapted it from Julia Child and Jacques Pepin's 1999 (non-vegan) cookbook, Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. I've added a lot of ancillary ingredients; you could easily simplify it with only the first three.
The recipe holds a special place in my heart (my gullet?). It's one I often cooked at the old family homestead. And, in August 2015, it was the last dish that I would ever photograph in the kitchen there.
Today is World Photography Day. Unlike other marketeers' fanciful markers, this date is rooted in actual history.
In 1839, Frenchman Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype process, the first publicly-announced and commercially-viable photographic process. Although crude photographs had been attempted before Daguerre, the year 1839 —180 years ago— is generally accepted as the birth year of practical photography.
Telling a story is what good photograph should do. Here's one I took with a simple point-and-shoot in 2012 ... of beer and a beer drinker, of course.
'Craft' breweries make pastry stouts and beers with fruit loops. Mega-breweries do this.
Michelob Ultra has surpassed Miller Lite as the third-best best-selling beer in the U.S. Bud Light and Coors Light remain at number one and two, respectively.
Michelob Ultra launched nationally in 2004, and, according to sales data, it’s now the third-largest beer brand in America, with Miller Lite slipping to number four. That’s by dollar sales, though, not volume. Because Michelob Ultra costs more than Miller Lite, it still sells less by volume than Miller Lite, but rakes in more money.— Kate Bernot
'The first two years [of Michelob Ultra sales] were ridiculous and it’s been a double-digit growth brand for a decade. There’s nobody else except for upstart brands that can lay claim to that,' Bryan Roth, a beer writer who’s covered Michelob Ultra extensively, tells The Takeout. A piece he wrote for Good Beer Hunting last year calls Michelob Ultra 'the most important American beer since Bud Light.' [...] 'The way the brand has integrated itself into the lifestyle activity and the minds of people consuming it is a true differentiator. It’s built this ‘better for you’ category for modern beer audiences.'
The TakeOut.
Anheuser-Busch In-Bev' Brewers Collective has purchased 20,000-barrel-per-year* 'craft' brewery Platform Brewing of Cleveland (and Columbus and Cincinnati), Ohio.
ABIB announced:
[Platform's] unparalleled creativity and experimentation has resulted in more than 600 recipes that include a variety of unique seasonals, sours, ciders and fruit ales, barrel-aged beers, and a line of hard seltzer.
Platform offers beer slushies, beer cocktails, seltzers, and hazies. [...] It doesn’t seem like a stretch to suggest ABI will be using Platform to reach younger Millennials and Gen Z drinkers.
Benner said the Ohio craft brewery began “exploring different investment mechanisms” about six months ago in an effort to continue the company’s upward growth trajectory. Ultimately, Benner said he and co-founder Justin Carson were attracted to the “autonomy and independence” A-B provides the founders in the daily decision making of its acquired craft brands. “As we became more educated on what that partnership actually looks like, it became more and more clear this was the best option for us for the short-term and the long-term as a company”
Iris domestica (aka Leopard Lily or Blackberry Lily) was introduced from Asia and naturalized fairly quickly in the U.S. Recent molecular studies have revealed the flower to be in the Iris genus. Blackberry in the common name comes from the tight clusters of dark seeds the plant produces.— Wildflowers of the United States
Furnari took issue with an Uproxx story that named half a dozen female Instagrammers as beer influencers worth following. Before naming the accounts, Furnari says the list “goes to shit and it's all chicks who basically take photos of themselves in like low-cut tops with beer.”
Denizens Brewing co-founder Julie Verratti, who, with her wife, runs what the [U.S.] Brewers Association says is the only female-owned brewery in Maryland. The topic: diversity and inclusion in brewing.
I feel the hosts were actually speaking up for women by chastising those whose personal branding suggests that their chests are more important than their faces and that their bodies speak louder than their minds.
Since 1997, Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the U.K. has been in perfect condition. Qualified ass...
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