About A Good Beer Blog – Page 5

Thinking Back To Blogging When We Was Young

I heard the news about Aaron Swartz like everyone else. And then I heard another way as way back when I started blogging I belonged to the Berkman Thursday discussion group through the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I still get the digests via email when something is posted coming up on a decade after it was busy. This week I received this:

It is with great sadness that I share with you the news that one of tech’s bright minds and a blog group participant, Aaron Swartz, has left us. Many people are sharing thoughts about this amazing fellow. I’ll share a few links below. Some local memorials have already happened and more are yet to come. Since Aaron was on the MIT Mystery Hunt team sj and I and several other blog group folks are on, we are tentatively planning a gathering during the Hunt. If you’re participating in the Hunt, keep an ear out for more info.

It was sad news. I knew the guy was young but when I look back I really had no idea that in my late 30s I was in a chat with folk then only a little more than a third of my age. It was interesting stuff and the discussion was hopeful. There was lots to dream about. I saved stories to my blog like this one from 2004 about how blogs might make money one day. I wrote hopeful things this even though for the life of me I have no idea now what I meant to be saying. I argued. And on Thursday evenings for a while I would fire up the computer, turn on the speakers and listen as the Berkman bloggers’ group talked. There was a chat function – was it on IRC? – that allowed anyone to participate. So I have this dim recollection of chatting about blogging with a lot of people including Aaron. Maybe I just listened or watched his words pass on the screen.

At some point I got less interested in the theory. An argument point developed that somehow folk were able to appropriate the works of others. I didn’t disagree with the point as I had no clue what the heck was meant. The idea generally faded but it took a number of years for the fine points to come to the surface. No one speaks of a “mash up” world any more like in 2004. But Aaron did, I think.

I won’t connect dots and I don’t expect you would either. As was pointed out, there was depression involved. At least one pal of mine died at his own hands due to depression. It’s sad. Does not take a grand design or conspiracy or even anything that makes very much sense. But when I think of the keen interest I had a decade ago and the voices that I listened to in pursuit of that interest, his was in the forefront. And he was so young. As young as my kids now. Sad news.

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The Greatest Cease And Desist Letter Ever!!!

And just in time for Christmas…

Normally, one would not like a cease and desist letter claiming that one had breached someones intellectual property rights. I mean we as bloggers are supposed to get all hot and bothered about these things, right? We’re living in the post-legal mash up paradise promised by the Boingsters back when blogs were new, right?? Well, that all came crumbling down yesterday when the following love letter popped into my inbox:

The undersigned declares under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of the above referenced author, the owner of copyright in the Intellectual Property, and Hachette Book Group, Inc., the exclusive US publisher of the Intellectual Property, including without limitation, the cover and other art incorporated therein (collectively, the “IP Owner”). I have a good faith belief that the materials identified below are not authorized by the IP Owner, her agent, or the law and therefore infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to federal and state law. Accordingly, we hereby demand that you immediately remove and/or disable access of the infringing material identified below.

Frig, said I. I am a lawyer. I know when the jig is up. For a second, it was like the ending of “The Public Enemy” and I was Jimmy Cagney. But when I looked at the link I knew what was going on. See, six years ago, I posted about how great it was that I had found the text to a 1987 article in The Atlantic magazine called “A Glass of Handmade” by William Least Heat Moon, a bit of writing that was my introduction to thinking about good beer. And I tucked away a copy of the text in the articles section of this blog because I was sure it was fluke that I had found it and that I would never find it again, assuming all copies of that issue had long been sent to the dump or lodged in the back of a barbershop I would never visit. Flash forward six years and, once I realized what was going on, I removed the article from public view and, just like that, me and the lawyers at Hachette Book Group were at peace. In fact, they were quite nice about it and let me know what is going on and it is good news:

Thanks for removing the essay from your site. We appreciate it! And, yes, it is included in Here, There, Elsewhere which comes out on January 8th.

So, now no need to have the article squirreled away from fear it would disappear from knowledge. You can get your own copy of Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road by William Least Heat-Moon on discounted pre-order from Amazon right now. A little late for Christmas but as important an essay on early US craft beer as there is. I can’t encourage you to get your own copy enough.

And I can confirm that this endorsement is not part of any legal settlement!

An Apology And Thoughts About My Lawn

It was with relief and pleasure that I was able to share emails with Jason Fisher of Indie Alehouse in Toronto today after our strong disagreement over the weekend. Others have suggested that, on one hand, I was well out of line and, conversely, entirely in the right but it still was not a good thing for me to do… calling him a jerk. So, I am sorry. I told him so in an email last night and slipped a note in the comments this morning. An apology is a good short cut to getting to where you want to be – especially if you have never met someone you owe an apology.

That being said, and as I told Jason, I am not sure that resolves our disagreement even if it civilizes it. See, there was enough brain imploding stuff in the message for me that I not only disagree with where he was going but was also left wondering if someone gave out a vital message about my blog and blogging in general that I missed. It comes from these lines of Jason’s:

I’m not sure why bloggers at the same time feel like journalists but also refuse to do any basic fact checking or follow up. Did you contact anyone to clarify anything before writing? It appears you didn’t even fully read the article… .. Keep the standards high and please feel free to reach out with questions to the subjects you write about. You would be surprised how much help you will get if you are open about your intentions and honest in your writings. Thoughtful criticism is amazing, but get’s muted when others just spew hate or nonsense.

You will note the potential to read this statement to suggest that I am like a journalist – not to mention a spewer of hate or nonsense. I am not a journalist. True, I like to write about good beer and journalism and enjoy my many conversations that follow posts about that such as this recent one. But asking questions about journalism as applied to good beer doesn’t make me a journalist. I have written and sold articles but, frankly, being shocked at the pittance the path offered by way of reward have since declined further offers. You poor bastards, I think whenever I read an article.

In my 2008 review of Michael Jackson’s last edition of Great Beers Of Belgium, I got as close to where I think I have ever got to expressing how many different sorts of writing can be applied to good beer. And of those sorts of writing I’ve decided that what I do is write personal essays about my relationship with beer presented to the public through this medium. The post I wrote that triggered Jason’s strong response was no different. And I even considered it supportive. Still do. Not boot-licky but certainly supportive. I was in particular interested in the complex environment of microbes sitting on a grape monoculture and discussed that quite briefly in a very brief post. I did also reiterate that I hoped the resulting beer from the wild yeast project was not sold for twenty bucks a glass and continue to have that strong hope even if it was a source of unhappiness. What was most missed, however, in that welling up of emotion were three statements that I also continue to keep close to my heart. The project in question is a great idea, I hope the beer will be yummy and also, just to drive home the point, I hope it is tasty, too. Hardly, Mr. Hate-y McHate-ster.

So? Why is this continuing post of confession of iniquities worthy or at least driving into another paragraph? Because some anonymous wit tweeted “Wow… talk about get off my lawn syndrome” which is odd because this is, in fact, my lawn. I write my own stuff here, don’t expect anyone takes much from it, like having interesting conversations but do pretty much what I want. See, this is also my lawn. I explore suburban food gardening out there. Here I explore ideas about beer in here. I don’t write with ambition. I don’t write for readers. I don’t certainly write articles. And I really don’t care much for anyone’s opinion as I don’t owe strangers, even you reading this now, anything through my writing any more than I owe the neighbours lettuce because it falls within their view. Don’t confuse me for a booster. Or a ready or implicit PR source for your interests of business. Or someone needy for a relationship with a brewer. Or a ready object for your judgement. Or someone with an agenda that needs to be parsed from tone when the express words don’t suit yours. Or even part of your scene or community or industry. I am just a guy writing. Because I like writing. Like I like green beans and raspberry plants.

Where does that leave us? Stan put it well when he set the rule that it is only beer. But another person I have never met even on -line may have put it better when he interjected in the flow that the best beer is a shared buddy beer, a great reminder of the proper point of the entire hobby – because this is all a big hobby, right. Assuming someone is needing pointed interjection is a pastime of the congenitally misguided as well as the nicest sort of folk you may encounter. Finding malice where none exists is such a waste. Don’t bother. Not on my lawn at least. So you can believe me when I repeat that I am sorry, Jason. But believe me also when I write I think the project of wild yeast inoculation is a good idea. Because I do.

Sad News Of A Beer Fan’s Passing Earlier This Summer

cka I took down the little logo for the Cracked Kettle beer store in Amsterdam today. I removed it after getting an email advising that the shop closed a few months back and that owner Jeff Cunningham had died in June after a few months of terminal illness. Sad news. I never met Jeff but had worked with him now and again since the late fall of 2006. His shop paid for the ads in beer shipped to me and other writers then populating the blog as proof of how fine the service was. Knut, micro-famously, had to sit around waiting for a delivery and then got hit by the Norwegian tax man. They also sent care packages to me, to the States and to England, too. In 2008, Lars won a t-shirt from Cracked Kettle in the Christmas photo contest. Ah, for the days of free style happy go lucky beer blogging.

Jeff, along with partner Andy, ran a shop that struck me a something of a ground breaker even if it was only six years ago. Rereading his emails, it is easy to see how he was really excited to be stocking some of the great beers of Europe, providing solid service – and figured he had managed a way to make airlifting it direct to beer fans make sense. And bringing US craft to Europe before others. From the Wayback Machine, it appears that the shop started as a plan to make a micro-brewery in Amsterdam in 2003. Sad to hear of his passing. Some beer fans left their thoughts over at RateBeer.

What Is My Methodology? Perchance Schmethodology?

I have found myself wondering what the heck I am doing with all this Albany Ale stuff but I’m not too concerned. It is interesting in itself and I think it is informing me on a pretty interesting big picture question – what makes the Albany and the Hudson River so different from the St. Lawrence Valley, my river. You will recall that during Ontario Craft Beer week this past June, I wrote a number of posts on the development of Ontario after the American Revolution but it is important to remember that, like the Dutch in the Hudson, the upper St. Lawrence also had a 1600s existence when it was all New France.

The big question I have is why did Albany create this export trade while my city did not? There are some basic answers around the odd semi-autonomous existence of early Albany while Kingston has been firmly tied to its Empires. Also, there is simple geography with Albany being a deep water seaport while Kingston has always sat behind rapids and locks. Difference makes sense. But is that it? Looking more closely, there are the details. And details can get obsessive with a range of ways to get at them:

Who is doing what? You can find this information in newspaper ads, business directories and gazetteers. People have always been obsessed with what others are doing and putting it in a central place so thoers can see it. Google is making this information available to all for free without travel.
How is it being taxed? Beer has attracted excise and sales taxes for centuries. This is Professor Unger’s approach. I have not really gotten into this level – yet.
What is being brewed? Ron Pattinson’s obsession with day to day brewing logs is a less to us all in detail. And he is getting some of the brewing replicated as his trip to Boston this weekend shows.
Who is allowed to deal with beer? Beer is also regulated along with all booze. Tavern and brewery license records exist as do the court records of applications and charges for violations. Taverns and Drinking in Early America by Salinger is largely built on this sort of analysis.
Where does the beer go? Pete Brown has taught us a lot about that. Mapping trade routes is another avenue to this stuff. I have asked about Dutch East India ale as well as Bristol’s Taunton ale. What made for the demand for these beers and what made them eoungh good value to the other end of the world to buy them?
Beyond all this, there is Martyn. The funny thing about Martyn’s work for me is that I can’t understand where he gets his data – his focus on words amazes me. I don’t know if I could be so elemental and authoritative. But West Country White Ale inspires.

So, there is a lot there – a lot for anyone in any town to use to figure out the path of their local brewing trade. And there are a lot of other people hunting as well. Me, I have no idea what I will learn about Albany or Kingston or beer or anything else. But it is worth the hunt. And why not? Weren’t we all supposed to be citizen journalists, historians and novelists? Isn’t that the promise of the internet or is it really more like that personal jet pack we were all supposed to have by now? I think you might all want to get all be scratching around a bit – even if not as obsessively as others.

I Am An Ontario Craft Beer Week Event

I love it. Things are getting interesting. In response to Troy and Cass setting up a beer crawl, I asked and have been personally declared an Ontario Craft Beer Week event in my own right. Me. Not me going somewhere. Not even me doing something. Just me. Mr. Event. I had some Beau’s in the back yard this evening. Event. I am doing some research into beer in my town in 1810 to 1830. Event. Woooooooooooot!!! Here is what the listing in the beer week events calendar says:

Alan McLeod will spend all week blogging about the OCB. He will include craft beers from Ontario and will explore what Ontario’s great beers mean, where they have been and where they are going. Historical, observational, poignant and humourous, Alan will take readers on a journey that will surely leave them thirsty for more.

Get out your kleenex everybody because I am taking a journey. I am told I am even going poignant, for God’s sake. I have no idea where they got that idea but I guess it means that I have to tell you about that time I had some Ontario craft beer and… it was on a moonlit night… and … no… I am getting verklempt. Not ready to share.

Anyway, like the idea of having a province-wide craft beer week, this is a hoot. We are going to talk a bit about what beer means around here, how long it has been here and what I think about its future. You join in, too, because this is not just about me. I hope to have some good local beer, to visit a few craft beer places in my town and hover expectantly over some great craft beers I have yet to try. Ontario Beer week runs from June 20th to 26th. Be prepared. Brace yourself.

You Were My First Blog… But I Forgot You…

It’s not like I’ve had unkind thoughts about you, Gen X at 40, but with the busy beer blog, Twitter and Facebook I hardly have any time left. Heck, I haven’t even checked my email accounts this morning. Plus I get up too late. You understand. Right? And it’s not like I am all that clever before the caffeine kicks in. You should be happy for the break once in a while. It’s the pros. That’s what it boils down to. The invasion of the pros. It happened to amateur political rant blogs back around 2007 and now it’s even happened to beer blogs. Even the aggregators are going. Remember them? The places that were supposed to kill blogs are being killed off themselves. No one even spams the comments anymore.

Sorry about yesterday, my oldest blog, but these things happen.

My Computer Screen Is Dying And I Don’t Mind

I am actually sympathetic as my back is still stiff and wonky, having good days and bad. The screen narrows, flickers, gets wavy and even reboots of its own accord. Once upon a time, this would have been a source of anxiety. How would I pay for the replacement? How will I get along without checking in. But there are other surplussed screens around the basement as well as that laptop I picked up at Best Buy on sale. I have a better screen sitting on the 1995 Pentium 75 “Asteroids server” right now. There is other equipment floating around going back fifteen years and I consider myself a latecomer to these things. My computer screen can die without me noticing that much.

My computer screen is a lot like a fork to me now.

What Was My Best Beer Thing Of 2009?

It has been a good year both inside and outside that beery part of my life. It is hard to measure what that means in some ways as If I was reporting to higher authority, I can state that I have put good beer in the hands and glasses of more of the uninitiated than in earlier years. It is a good thing to do but I am not reporting to any higher authority, just noting for myself and those of you that care about what I have seen and enjoyed in 2009.

Best Beer Books. This has been a phenomenal year for books on beer. I name three of the best. Pete Brown’s Hops and Glory, supposedly an examination of the route IPA took in the early years of its travels from Britain to India, is actually a book about Pete. Ben McFarland’s World’s Best Beers has updated the bazillion beer review format and breathed new life into what had become a bit of a musty concept. Beaumont and Morin in The Beerbistro Cookbook have given us the best book on beer and food which, while suggesting recommendations, has saved us from the shackles of overly specific “pairings” instead encouraging us all not only to explore beer but to explore with a sense of one’s own taste.

Best Beer Trend: It has to be the setting of the sun on the tyranny of extreme. Finally, beer is learning what everyone but skate boarding thirty-year olds know: extreme may be more than a gimmick but not very much more. Few beer fans are really begging for even more hops and booze and barrels in 2010. Conversely, bigger craft brewers and even some regionals are making interesting beers which are not bombs. Lew recently noted both Magic Hat Odd Notion Fall ’09 and Narragansett Porter both of which I also found to be stunning for their value as well as their elegance. Yesterday, Andy was thankful for well crafted simplicity. Expect 2009 to be remembered for how we learned that cacophony in glass is not a brewers or a drinker’s “go to” brew.

Best Beer News. What is beer news that isn’t brewery PR, advocacy group paranoia or corner store failed robbery? Not much really but that does not make it a waste of time. The biggest beer news was Obama having a brew courtside last March. Best saucy beer news was the announcement that BrewDog complained on itself to the shadowy Portman Group, aka the competition. Other than that, it’s all about naked drunk frosh being caught on security cameras at corner stores in Kansas. Jay has a better list of big news stories of 2009 – though I have to admit that Beer Wars is more likely to turn out to be the Ishtar of beer documentaries. It was news because of the irritating PR.

Best Bodyslam Of Beer Pros By Beer Bloggers. This is a new category for 2009. First we had the ridiculous lecture from small market western Massachusetts beer columnist George Lenker whose pomposity triggered a response that Stan anointed as “The Beer Link of the Month (or Maybe 2009)” which made me get all verklempt… seriously… but which saw George drowning in his attempts to explain while sorta still insulting people. Then, we had Roger Protz, one of at least the top 20 beer authorities on the planet, freaking out over Brewdog and then get all superior and “begone you plebs” over bloggers correctly pointing out how little he understood the topic at hand. Then, just this week, we hear that there is some guy called Alan Brewer going all “pro” on poor old Max the Pivní Filosof alleging that, by hiring Max a mere a beer blogger, a Spanish beer magazine has “allowed the fox into the hen-house” and says that “if the hiring standards of the magazine have fallen so low, he could recommend a homeless man he knows, who is an expert in strong canned beers of less than a dollar.”

Sounds like a call for a good rumble of rock, paper, scissors between paper based semi-pros and web based semi-pros. Cherry belly time. Because let’s be frank. There are about 12 people in the world who really make a real living from writing about beer. The rest have other business interests in the hospitality world, a separate professional career or sources of other family income and patience. And there is that other thing: the Internet is not going anywhere. It’s a good thing, too, because anyone who says that the quantity and quality of beer writing on the web is not a good thing is a fool. A rising tide raises all ships and the more good discourse about good beer the better.

I’ll leave it at there for now. I think I have picked a beer of the year and a beer photo of the year for more than half a decade now and who am I to break the rules of convention even when it is my own.

My Week In Beer… Or “I Travelled For No Beer”

Well, at least I did have a beer today – a Sacket’s Harbor IPA at the brewpub with lunch. I was at a thinking session so I won’t get into it but suffice it to say that Sackets Harbor Brewing Co. on a warm spring day is one of the nicest spots to have a beer I have ever come across. But the weird thing was that I came back across the border with not one bottle in the van. Mad? No, I am just planning to spend Victoria Day Monday in New York State’s 48th senatorial district inspecting the Crown’s former territories and I expect to hit Oswego’s C’s Farm Market with gusto. I did stare at a six pack of Sierra Nevada IPA for $9.49 at the gas station just before I crossed back across the border but I really have a lot of beer from the recent trip to Quebec as well as kind travelers to Michigan and Wisconsin. Do I need more?

I don’t know what is weirder – coming back from the USA with no beer or what Greg Koch wrote in the comments on Wednesday. But what is weirder is that my post about “Hooray for Everything” rates #5 on Google right now for “American Craft Beer Week” so I suppose some pip squeek like me being less than wholehearted about one’s PR campaign might be the cause of some unhappiness – though others seem to have the same questions. But these things pass – Google rankings, PR campaigns, internet squabbles. Greg makes very good beer and that is the main thing.

I don’t know if I could sustain a “My Week in Beer Series” – I live in such a bubble and don’t get out much. What would it be like to live like Knut who nips south to Rome’s Football Pub, where a bar stool calls for me, when the slightest whim moves him. What would it be like to be Jeff, who runs the other greatest pub in Europe – grabbing a cask, conditioning it brilliantly and making a living from it. Such dreams. Jay still has the news, Stan is still on the trip and Lew has the blues. Such lives.

Me, I have a 3 Monts, a favorite pale ale, and spend Friday night watching Doctor Who with the kids. Beer in the rec room. A great end to the week.