Blogging and the Internet – Page 6

The Problematic Third… No, FOURTH (!) Week Of The Intern’s Beery Links

Week three.* I understand this is when a beer blog intern really lets the side down. I mean there is gardening to do, day dreaming about ice cream making demands and quality napping time to be enjoyed. Me, I weeded the leeks and harvested the garlic just yesterday. I’ve no time to write my own stuff. I clearly need a need a break. Fortunately, others have been doing a particularly swell job keeping an eye on the ball so there has been lots to think about this week.

What Is Bad Aurosa and What Isn’t

First, my co-author-in-law Robin LeBlanc wrote an excellent piece on a beer which neither of us are likely to ever see on a shelf let alone buy. Aurosa, a Czech brand aimed at… women. All of them apparently. All at once. But that, as you know, makes no sense. Robin deals with this handily:

…the type of women they have in mind are a very specific subset. Usually white, thin, rich, and the type that identify deeply with Kendall Jenner’s instagram account. There is nothing wrong with this type of woman, but if you’re going to market to all women you have to acknowledge that we’re not all one type and that is why women don’t need a brand of beer specifically for them.

This has wider implications beyond this mockery attracting form of thick-headed sexism… which, BTW, can in turn attract casual hate. The fact is beer is not manly and also not not manly. It isn’t noble or ignoble. It’s a fluid that gives you a buzz for lots of your money which can be branded in any number of ways, even the quite stupid – and, as Maureen wrote about in 2009, even the blatantly racialized. Why all the attribution? Money? Money.

I illustrate the tendency in reverse. One aspect of the chameleon-like status of gender and brewing has been the presentation of early brewing as all female, an argument often begins with a paragraph on that Sumerian goddess. It is that, yes, and more. And less, too. Jay some time ago posted a helpful list of all the goddess and gods and neutral deities of brewing. The list conveys the many labels cultures and eras imposed on the joy juice. We make of it what we want. Or someone wants to tell us to want.

As with many things about beer, along with the money I blame the alcohol but if we do consider the many faces and facets of beer and brewing over time and cultures, for me, the interest lies in the diversity of ways it acts as a conduit – a trigger even – for both the highs and depths humankind can come up with.

Lars Travels East So You Don’t Have To

Clearly driven by more than booze and cash, we have Lars. Is there any more dedicated beer researcher than Lars Marius Garshol? This week he is sending tweets from out front, where the new ideas and ancient ways are to be found. The eastern front that is. He sent out this update on Tuesday:

On the road to Kudymkar. Car shaking so bad I can’t look out the window sideway, or I’ll be sick. Should be there in an hour or so.

According to wikipedia, Kudymkar is a town and the administrative center of Komi-Permyak Okrug of Perm Krai, Russia. Lars took himself there to document traditional rural farmhouse brewing techniques and his twitter feed is on fire. Well, it’s not. OK. It is not flammable. But it is a hot take! Fine, it’s not – as it is actually well researched and properly considered. Let’s just leave it that his work is fascinating and valuable. This one tweet is more marvelous that 98% of the entire internet. What did you do for beer this week? Not much, right?

Rich Brats Pay Others To Make Beer

Much has been made of the article in Forbes on the three sons of rich people who are starting a brewery. The reality that money speaks for money may underlie the very access to the publication. Fun making of the three lads and story’s errors is to be found at Beervana but the best thing is the plan they proudly describe to make “pilsnar” – it’s the bestest dumb thing about beer of all this week.

But the matter may have gone to far with this question posted by John Urch: “Have three more arrogant, hubristic people opened a brewery?” As we all know, the answer is yes (and you can all name them.) Often it is a requirement for big craft success.

Andy Crouch on the Need for Transparency

The release by tweet of Andy’s July 2017 column for BeerAdvocate has caught the attention of more than a few. There was even the obligatory if weak gotcha .gif sighting. In his column, Andy* argues that the problem with big beer buying into craft bigly is all in the disclosure:

…consumers have a right to know about this. If you’re a Big Beer-affiliated brewery, own that. Don’t hide it. In your company’s “About Us” or “Brewery History” page online, don’t omit that AB InBev owns you as almost every formerly independent and now High End brewery does. Don’t play cute about it with the press. Stop telling consumers nothing has changed. Anyone saying that is either lying or negligently naive.

I spoke up thusly: “Add transparency about contract brewing + non-ownership financial arrangements, too. Maybe records of health + safety orders.” See, what matters to me has little to do with ownership but plenty to do with interests. I don’t care to spend my money on bad employers or false fronts. If we benefit openness and transparency, let the light shine everywhere. I want to know who is getting paid by whom, who is contract brewing, who is cashing out, who isn’t a good employer, and whose civics are admirable.

Other Stuff

More fun hate on for BrewDog. Why do they make it so easy?

Our stunned Jim Koch quote of the week explains what his version of big craft thinks of some of its customers – those who like to think:

It’s a dilemma other nationally distributed craft brewers have faced, including Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer, which makes Sam Adams and has annual sales of $879 million. “If you make great beer,” Koch says, “and people love it and drink it, and more and more of them love it and drink it, the beer geeks will turn against you. You’re talking about roughly 5%, but they’re an influential 5%.

If you are reading this – heck if you are reading about beer at all – that’s you. Get in line. Money needs more money!

Presenting a far more coherent grasp on reality, Stonch returns us to the topic of pie and mash reviews, with Jeff’s deft hand giving grace to an otherwise modest corner of English culture found in a car park.

And finally, Stan wrote a well thought out piece on what it means to be a brewmaster. Another form of over-reach, self-promotion exposed in a way. Is that all this is about?

And there we end your Monday morning story time. The book is being gently closed, your blankey adjusted, you can finish off the last of that nice warming drink and go back to quietly dozing at the office for another summer’s week.

*No, it’s the fourth, you dope.
**Disclosure: we hung out once four years ago.

The Intern’s Beery Links For Mid-July

Ah, the mid-July week off. Nothing teaches you more about how life is a fleeting interim stage than July. The poppies and irises are already in the past. The last of the early radishes have long been dug under. Time is passing. One day you wake up and discover you are a 54 year old intern for some guy named Stan. Hmm.

What’s gone on this week in beer?

When The Selling Out Game Has Some Weird Players

The BeerCast has posted an excellent unpacking of the sale of the discount shelf of London Fields (mothballed) brewery by an experienced guest of the Queen to those oddest of flatmates, the Danes of Carlsberg and the Empire State folk at Brooklyn Brewery. Expect a shedding of everything associated now with the name and then a massive leveraging of the name. For a mere four million pounds, most owners of craft beer won’t get out of bed in the morning. Given the situations of all involved, this deal looks like and smells like money all around.

Cheery Not Niceness

I enjoy these teletext messages from Matthew Lawrenson on Twitter. They retain his snappy direct humour but it’s like the words are coming out of the mouth of Tinky-Winky. I love the format he is developing. Thirty years ago visiting family in Scotland, I would sneak into the TV room to play with the remote, exploring teletext. Checking the weather forecast for Skye in multi-colour dot matrix… then checking out the soccer scores. All while the TV plays on underneath the text info. Magic. As a form of brewing and craft commentary this singular and effective. This one was posted Friday morning my time here in North America. Note the author. And the cheeky image.

Being Nice

I am less certain about this conversation one Twitter – while making no comment on the particular conversation. It’s the pattern. You see it quite often, a double form of delicacy. The desire to speak discretely of a brewery or bar doing something wrong being jumped upon for either (1) not name the names or (2) raising the real issue without naming the names. I am never quite sure what makes folk more upset, not getting all the juicy gossip or finding fault with a craft community member without first satisfying a level of procedural test for bringing evidence before a criminal court. Yet, it is only beer. I dunno. Folk seem happy to slag airlines and coffee shops. It seems a particularly southern Ontario concern but you see it pop up in England, too. In this case, the misapprehension that brewery or bar staff have some deep loyalty if not a monogamous bond with the boss seems the root of the problem.

Oliver Grey expanded on this concern mid-week. He primarily discusses the tribal divide between big craft and big beer, framing it from the perspective of Campbell’s narrative structure:

I get it, the hero of the story needs a villain to triumph over. I wrote about it at length. But it’s important to remember that to the villain, the hero can often look like a terrorist. For every story a perspective, for every perspective a truth. Therein, the issue slumbers.

Seeing as he has to deal with fools like this, I get the point. But there is the greater risk that is engaged with far too much in beer – the Hosannas, all the Hosannas. Given alcohol makes you initially feel good, it is not unexpected that people like saying nice things about it but taking the next steps of treating it like something beyond criticism and discord has always struck me as a bit weird, leaving ideas and interests unexamined. Give me cheery naughtiness anytime.

Mentioning the Bad

Jeff Alworth made a promise on Friday that definitely borders on the niceness question:

…enough of the excuses: Boak and Bailey are right, I should be writing about bad beer more often. I’m actually going to start looking for them. Rather than just writing scathing reviews, though, I’ll use it as an opportunity to discuss why I think the beer is bad, because “bad” is in many dimensions an objective evaluation. A good brewer may fail to execute on a vision, which is one kind of bad. A mediocre brewer may compose an uninspiring recipe, a different kind. Or the beer may have faults and off-flavors, a kind of bad that is now rarer, at least in these parts. Beer may be bad because of technical, aesthetic, or other reasons–and there’s actual value in discussing the nature of the problems.

I am delighted by this declaration, if only because it is framed as contrary to the Jacksonian model we have inherited. I would note that it is not what was first given that was inherited but what was later devised. Change is good. Let’s change some more, please.

Jet Setting

In an effort to bite the hand that feeds me (not), I wonder about this tweet:

It’s not that I equate this sort of event with junketeers who dash off to lap up the gravy and PR before regurgitating some or all, then claiming to be clever. My question is whether this is simply another form of the internationalization of commodity craft, that globalist mono-culture that leaves nothing local in its wake. I would be thrilled to hear about what local beer questions and successes were discussed in South Africa by South Africans. Not sure I will.

Other Stuff

Interesting to see that Diageo via Guinness USA has a money flow to another beer site on the internets. GBH calls it underwriting. Beervana calls it sponsorship. This pays for interesting writing. Good. Also interesting that this goes largely uncommented upon especially compared to other funds flowing from other big drinks empires into smallish bank accounts. Just to be clear, I have happily spent sometimes shockingly generous sums for running ads on this website and its predecessor. To be fair, they were largely from outside the brewing world due to my (way back then) huge following. I call them ads. In the glory days, it paid for a lot of travel. Still, interesting quiet little pay packet play.

Yes, Mirella. Very good tee.

And finally, the best use of a GIF ever. Thanks Zak. This is going to end up dumber than “crafty” isn’t it.

Craft? Why Not Micro Brewing? Heck, Why Not Mini Brewing?

One of the interesting things about the language of beer is how little we think about it. Sure, there have been useful churnings over the origins of “craft“* and discoveries that before it became the popular term a little over a decade ago. But the reality is in the thirty plus years of this revival of good smaller scale brewing, “craft” is a word that has had its day. Refer to the new Brewers Association logo if you don’t believe me.

So, before we had craft when all the current commentators were still in high school we had micro brews made by micro brewing at micro breweries. But why? Why was “micro” the prefix of choice? The image above is a passage from that bedtime favourite Seminar on Micro-local Analysis by V. Guillemin, M. Kashiwara and T. Kawai published by Princeton University Press in 1979. “Micro” at that time was a science word. Which make sense given since at least the later 1800s interest in the microscope was a popular interest. In the book The Micro-macro Link by Jeffrey C. Alexander, published by University of California Press in 1987** the progression of the concept of “micro” is described in this passage in the introduction:

Although the micr0-macro theme has entered sociological theorizing as a distinct and firmly established issue only in recent decades, its prehistory can be traded from late medieval thinking through postwar meta-methodological debates over science, epistemology and political philosophy.

In brief, in the 1970s and early ’80’s the use of “micro” as a handy catch-all concept was relatively new. It appears to me that the route “micro” took from egghead to everyday was computing. We have the 1980 text Distributed Micro/Minicomputer systems: Structure, Implementation, and Application, for example, in which the future was described in this way:***

The continuing decline in processor and memory cost couples with the lower cost communications based on fiber optics, micro-wave transmission, and satellite communications, to use a few examples will hasten the development and widespread use of distributed systems based on micro- and minicomputer [technologies]…”

One is reminded of the SCTV character Gerry Todd from 1981-83 played by Rick Moranis to be brought back to the era when issues around what we might now call “personal” technology were sufficiently new and niche to be mocked.**** It is, in fact, always necessary to seek to place yourself back in a context when searching for a particular meaning. Otherwise, we are left with recollection and a lot of IMHOs which are often worse than useless. Fortunately, digital records give us a chance to reach back and pretend to relive the past – or at least can be used to cross reference the to often positive recollection.

Applying that principle, we see another interesting thing that is interesting for immediate purposes because it is included in the heading for this blog post.***** We see the words “micro” and “mini” bandied about. What did they mean in relation to the trendiest thing at this point in time? No, not beer… computers. Consider this articles in The Times Union of Albany, NY from March 11, 1986 under he title “Overbooked Libraries Seach for Space May Be Overdue”

At the central library of the Schenectady County Public Library across the street from City Hall, a space shortage has forced books to be stored on the second floor where administrative offices are located – off-limits to library patrons. Staff gofers bridge the gap between floors. “The lack of space is getting pretty serious,” said Ronald Lagasse, director of the Schenectady County Public Library. “The problem is we’ve had to increase the variety of formats of information we provide.” A micro-computer requires 200 feet, space the books used to get. Videocassette recorders, microfilm readers and printers and the storage for them have further eroded what was once the sole domain of books.

First, shoot the person who put that pun in the headline. Then – notice that “micro” was not very… micro. Now, look at this schedule of events and the mid-afternoon listing under the title “Wildlife Expo is Four Shows in One” published by the same paper five days later:

*2 p.m – Bruck Brodsky of Upstate Computer will feature “Home Use and Education With Micro and Mini Computers.” Attending this one will surely help you in the operation of many computers used throughout the Expo.

Hilary Dustin of U.S. Forest Service will lecture on the Finger Lakes National Forest.

“Micro” and “mini” are two things, two points on a scale. Why do we care about this? Because “micro” and “mini” brewing may also be a bit older than you realize. Look at these images:

The image to the left is a Schlitz ad from Schlitz ad found in Black Enterprise magazine’s October 1977 edition. A similar ad ran in U.S. News & World Report and Saturday Review in 1977 as well as Business Week in 1976. This use of “mini-brewery” was the same as Bert Grant’s Ontario-based pilot brewery operated first at Carling in the 1950s and then at his home in the early 1960s. See also Food Engineering, Volume 43 from 1971 which described producing beer in a “laboratory mini-brewery.” Scientific beer.

The other two images above are for another thing. They are ads for Bierhaus International’s “mini-brewery” as seen in Mother Jones Magazine Feb-Mar 1981 and Feb-Mar 1982 editions. Variations of the “Try My All Natural” advertising were also placed for years in magazines like in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Field and Stream, Popular Science and The Old Farmer’s Almanac. Tremendously manly and busy ads they are, too. I hope someone will be able to tell me about Bud Weckesser, the president of Bierhaus International Inc., if only because he clearly seems to be a man of international intrigue.† More to the point, he was selling a “mini-brewery” to subscribers of those fine journals. Science at home.

Like the Schlitz and even Bert Grant’s pilot breweries, the Beerhaus International set ups were small. Small enough to fit in a home. Schlitz’s was only a five gallon set up providing “a world of care in miniature.” So you would think that “mini” is less than “micro” right? Not always. At least when it comes to brewing. Let’s have a look at that bit of the end of an article placed in the May 1982 edition of InfoWorld 17 magazine entitled “Micro Firms Vie for European Market at Hannover” in which the following is stated:

You can take comfort from one thought in all this scale. Although Information Technology is growing incredibly, it is still not the biggest section in the seven-pound-plus Fair catalog (supplied with extra-strength handles). That is reserved for Electrical Engineering. When you reach the part of Fair reserved just for new railway locomotives, you begin to grasp that there are still worlds for the micro to conquer. There aren’t any micros used yet in the mini power station, not the mini brewery that run each year for only eight days in the Spring as part of the Fair on the flat German plains of Hannover.

It’s a delicious description of a transition point. [The heavy catalog has handles alone was worth the price of admission.] “Micros” are under too new to be pervasive but the “mini” brewery seems to have been around for yoinks. “Mini” is just small. “Micro” is both small and new.

So what happened to mini? As we see today with “independent” being proposed as the new “craft” just as “craft” was once the new “micro” we know these things are propped up and then later taken down once stale. But did “mini’ ever get its day in the sun? In the 1989 Canadian book Ale & Beer A Curious History by Alan D. Butcher published by then powerhouse bookseller McClelland & Stewart we read this lovely transitional passage:

…scores of other mini-breweries are also simply satisfying local tastes? Upper Canada Brewing, an Ontario-based “micro” brewery, sells across Ontario and has recently entered the European market.

A few years earlier, the Australian publication Beverage Review appeared to use the term generously. In 1984, The Economist magazine’s Intelligence Unit published an issue on retail business which contained the description to the right. It describes a Whitbread pub, the still operating Alford Arms, as then having a brewing set up in house. A mini-brewery appears in this context to refer to the equipment more than perhaps than the business model. Similarly, in a 1986 publication from the apartheid era South African Information Service South African Panorama a similar description is used:

Barney’s Tavern and Heritage Brewery, which are administered by South African Breweries. The beer is brewed on site and Is called Digger’s Draught. The brewery is the only fully-fledged mini brewery of Its kind in South Africa.

The term shows up in the USA as well. A 1986 article on plans for Kentucky’s first micro, the Oldenburg Brewery, stated that it:

…will be a mini-brewery licensed under the new Kentucky microbrewery law enacted by the legislature in 1984. The brewery will have a limited capacity of 12,500 barrels of traditional German beer made only with malted barley and hops …

And in the 1982 travel guide Making the most of Sonoma: a California guide by Don Edwards we read one of the founding American micros being described in this way:

A wine country mini-brewery, New Albion, produces traditional British-style ale, porter, and stout— all good companions to Sonoma’s cheese, bread, and sausage.

And then? Not so much more. “Micro” soon starts to go macro as the inevitable dreams start to kick in. It then reigns for the best part of twenty years before it became clear that micros were not going to be in view of mini in the future. Change and growth occur. The idea that New Albion might lead to international scale big craft would have seemed very much a dream (if not a farce) to those sipping a stout with their Sonoma bread and sausage. Language needs to compete, keep up or fall away. “Mini” just never really got very deep into that game.

*Which includes some of the best sources ever including this clever one: “New Belgium is one of several breweries Alan McLeod, co-author of The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer—A Rant in Nine Acts, describes as big craft. “What bugs me about ‘craft beer’ as a term is that it arose to cover up that micro beer was less and less crafted and more and more industrialized. It is double speak,” he wrote via email. “… New language was required to mask the industrialization and then nationalization of what is now big craft.”“
**Note obvious use of egghead texts found on Google Books to laydown a questionable baseline of cleverness.
***Interestingly, a now charming foreshadowing of only the nonthreatening parts of the argument of “Why the Future Does Not Need Us” from 2000. I actually cited this in my 2000-2001-ish LLM thesis so I don’t feel entirely dirty writing this footnote.
****But were more likely then thought of as “home” technology. Note: I also still have my rude 45 of “Turning Japanese”… so there.
*****You don’t post a blog. You post a blog post to a blog. Blog is short for “web log” which makes it a log and a log has entries. A log is not each entry. It is the total of all entries. A blog is not each post.
†More here.

Your Monday Morning Beer Links For Canada Day Weekend

As threatened and then oddly certified, I am stepping in for July as Stan has scampers off somewhere. And it seems Boak and Bailey are putting their feet up, too. So my July 2nd and a bit of the 3rd will be spent pounding the keyboard for your sideward glance – instead of focusing on the can of Bud and Coors Light like most beer loving Canadians will be doing. No rush. I have to make the best use of that lawn chair out back. Hmm… has there been anything going on worth discussing?

Wine News

As is Stan’s habit, I begin the week’s highlights with news from Clarence House. Prince Charles and herself spent a part of last Friday about an hour’s drive west of me partaking of the wines of Prince Edward Co., Ontario. I have written a few posts in the past about the region which you may wish to review before checking out the story as covered by the UK’s Daily Mail. Excellent exposture to the greater world market likely means my local prices go up. Thanks, Chuck.

In other wine news, Eric Asimov in The New York Times has made the case for simplicity and pleasure in his regular “Wine School” column:

That is especially true with the thirst-quenching wines we have been drinking over the last few weeks. These easygoing wines are primarily focused on the No. 1 task of any wine: to refresh. They do so deliciously, but these wines don’t offer much to think about. They are the lawn-mower beers of wine, ready to stimulate, energize and invigorate. They provoke physical reactions, and do not leave much room for contemplation.

I can hear the teeth grinding but being honest – for 99% of the time 99% of beer drinkers don’t sit around and contemplate 99% of their sipping anyway. Thinking about such things might include less thinking about such things. Think about it.

The Logo

Once again, the US Brewers Association PR committee has made a bit of a botch of a well meant bit of communications. At the start of the week, they revealed a new logo for their organization, then limited its use to only members who signed the special pledge and watched as their plans for market share demarcation got ripped. Given these folks came up with the fabulous failure of “craft v. crafty” what were we expecting? So many fonts for one image – is it five? And that weird outline. And an upside-down bottle.

The really problem the BA faces is that it can’t use the proper word that beer fans are really interested in – local. This is because it has spent a decade chasing the false promise of national craft with truckloads of California beer selling in New York gas stations and corner stores while Maine brewed Belgian-styled ale sell in Hong Kong and Dubai. So, the campaign and the logo have to fall back on second rate concepts.

The key concept in the messy logo is something called “INDE… PEN… DENT” which sits uneasily along with inordinate use of a “TM” and “CERTIFIED” given the limited visual geography. [Note: I couldn’t find the image’s trademark registration when I looked for 47 seconds and nothing about the logo relates to certification.] The problem with “independent” as a core message is that big industrial macro is independent too and the diversity of small local brewers can hardly be expressed with the “one ring to rule them all” approach that centralized trade industry branding offers. Plus anything can be “independent” can’t it.

Jeff Alworth takes a different approach which is quite compelling, separating message from branding. He argues that by moving away from “craft” and embracing “independent” as the core concept, the BA is taking back control of the debate. Bryan Roth also explores “independence” more from just the branding angle. But, for me, both these approaches (as both Jeff and Bryan state) are not without long term issues. Consider Mr C. Barnes at The Full Pint who is even less hopeful.

The Video

This is even sillier. Andy called it correctly when he called it “whining and whinging.” You may have more thoughts on the thing but I don’t see why anyone would bother. Why make that sort of ad when you have made this fabulous one?

Other things

The Sun newspaper-like thing reports that hipster craft is causing an inflationary effect on the price of lager. Who saw that coming?

The Sammy Smith “no swearing in our pubs” rule has led to at least one pub closing up for an evening due to naughty bad bad people being rude. Pete Brown, no fan apparently, called Humphry Smith, the head of the company behind the scheme to wipe out bad language the “nastiest, most unpleasant person in the brewing industry” by way of his introduction to a story on Humph in The Guardian which discloses this tidbit:

Smith’s eccentricity is the source of local legend and seems to know no bounds. Regulars inside Smith pubs claim he habitually dresses up as a tramp and poses as a customer to make sure his rules are being enforced. Punters in the Commercial Inn in Oldham claim Smith once sacked a bar worker for not handing him the correct change – another tale of summary sacking it has not been possible to confirm.

Quite the nut – but it is his ball so he can take it home whenever he gets in a huff, I suppose.

Finally, happy to report that the Canada Day long weekend was celebrated with Ontario made regional and local small brewery beers from Perth, Riverhead, Beyond the Pale, Great Lakes and Side Launch. Those two gents up there with their Buds? They are the 90%. It’s everywhere.

Fine. That’s enough for this week, Stan. Time to hang up the bloggers smock. Send your complaints and spelling correction suggestions to him via Twitter.

Once Upon A Time I Was Stan’s Summer Intern

It happened so fast:

I officially endorse this idea. “What I did on my summer vacation.”

What idea? Covering for Stan as he blows off July’s obligations and skips the Monday beery links stuff. And he deputized me. Me?!? The good news is I have done this before. Stan likely started out just copying my old Friday links from about a decade ago. You know, when blogging was cool. Not like now. Now, when it’s like slipping out quietly to attend the CB radio fan club meetings.*

To be fair to what he privately calls Team Stan – and in line with the terms and conditions he surprisingly sent me via email immediately after he tweeted – I might need a few hints. So little of what is written these days has any oomph that I might need guidance to a hidden gem. But, let’s be honest: anything Lars writes is fabulous and will always make the cut. Twitter outrage? Not so interesting. There. You have your marching orders. Send me links via beerblog@gmail.com.

Five Mondays. That’s all. Let’s see what we can learn.

*All foreseen 14 years ago.

Session 123: The Internet And Craft Beer

The trouble with the considering how the Internet and craft beer have interacted is that any old fool can stake a claim to knowing something, spend years rabidly building a personal brand and then – with no accreditation backing you but plenty of beer porn – hold yourself out as some sort of expert… and then expect folk to pay you and even (get this) come out to hear you speak as if in the presence of a special moment.

Me. That’s me right there. I’ve done all that. Fourteen years of it. Been quoted by The New York Times, too. All because of the Internet. In the January 2007 issue of Great Lakes Brewing News I got on the front cover with my article “Crafting the Internet: Beer On Line” which I am sure now springs immediately to your mind’s eye now that I mention it. (I used to do that sort of thing before I learned about the starvation wages of a freelancer.) It goes on for three whole pages and I take the time to generously discuss my beer blog, those of my friends as well as mentioning all the paying sponsors of the time that I could shoehorn in. What a corrupt wee jerk I was. What is it with this internet thing? Some things never change.

The interesting thing about the article is how essentially the structures of today are still the ones we use. BeerAdvocate and RateBeer are discussed as are pro writers like Lew as well as Mr. Rubin of the Toronto (Red) Star. Beers had started to be offered on line for delivery to your door. I complained that most “craft breweries” (look at me using the term that early) were behind the times, offering only an “email us” feedback loop for their customers – though I mentioned that Flossmoor in Illinois and Beaus here in Ontario had started up their own blogs.

2007. Framed. That serves as a reasonable benchmark for the question posed by this month’s hosts for The Session at Beer Simple:

This month, we’re taking on the internet and craft beer: is it a help, a hinderance, an annoyance, or all of the above? How is beer drinking/brewing different in the internet age, and how is the internet changing the way brewers and craft beer drinkers do business?

The odd thing about the question is the shortsightedness of the questions. Good beer in the sense of the micro brewing has been around for over three decades and, really, at least four if we understand the role of Peter Austin and the era of import bars. Similarly, as Boak and Bailey point out in their response to the question, alt.beer was founded around July 1991. I would add BeerAdvocate was founded just five years after that. Plus, before use.net, the beer discussions of obsessives occurred in personal ‘zines and local newsletters whether published by CAMRA branches or that guy in New York whose name I can’t recall. Yankee Brew News was founded in 1989.

So, if we think about it, is the question really about how social media (post-2007) has affected craft beer (also pretty much post-2007)? If so, isn’t it a question about how social media has affected pop culture? I would think the effect on a craft brewery would be much the same as it might be in relation to a sports team or a pop singer. But the question as posed seems to include a unspoken bias or at least a foundation in unhappiness:

Just how fast do aleholes on message boards and elsewhere turn off prospective craft beer enthusiasts?

What an odd concept. As a third party observer why would one care if “aleholes” are turning off “prospective craft beer enthusiasts”? There is a word for both classes of person – strangers. Which is the problem social media has brought into all parts of the discourse. The presumption… no, the illusion of nearness. Brewers, bloggers, other fans and storytellers are all in the double bubble of the alcohol-laced social media construct. Associating what you find there with commonality or, worse, friendship is rife with peril. Some fools actually consider creaky big craft brewers heroes. Good Lord.

All beer is, as a result, properly understood as local and personal. The ecology is small and getting smaller with the return to more naturally scaled micro and happy tap rooms – and the slow collapse of big craft dreams much to its own surprise.

Should we be surprised? Has the internet lied? Or have we all lied to the internet?

Beer Politics, Policy And Civics

As I had modestly mentioned a couple of times over the last few weeks ago, the election of Mr. Trump to the Presidency could lead to a couple sorts of beer nationalism in support of his muddled form of neo-protectionism: an anti-import reactionism and pro-American jingoism. With the report that he will try to convince a free trading Congress to pass a 20% import tax on Mexican-made goods as a way to pay for his useless wall, my first suggestion now seems to be at least be a possibility. It’s a policy. A bit of a weird one* but one that might, however unlikely the chances, become law. Political victory leading to imposition of policy that shifts the civic reality.

On Monday, Brian Roth published a post entitled “Do You Want Politics in Your Beer?” in which he uses his Tweets’n’Graphs methodology to discuss what he described as “a brewery’s political activism” and then posing, a bit cautiously, whether it is good when breweries share their beliefs in this way. This morning, Michael Kiser posted on a rather similar topic in his “Critical Drinking — The Beer Politic.” While it jumbles the function of his site as a consulto-blog and certain hero breweries in their reaction to Trump, he answers Bryan’s question (without acknowledging the prior post) much more enthusiastically and very much in the affirmative – but still like Roth all a bit too brand focused .

Trouble is, fretting about appearances isn’t really about beer and politics, is it? Almost four years ago Craig posted an excellent survey of the connection between brewing and actual politics over the centuries of New York’s history. In his post “Albany Ale: The Politics of Beer” he describes how seven Albany brewers from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries engaged with political office and partisanship. Even the great John Taylor got involved:

The 19th century would see the election of not one, but two, brewing mayors of Albany. The first was John Taylor in 1848. Taylor owned what was at the time the largest brewery not only in Albany, but in the country, Taylor & Sons. Upon completion of his tenure as mayor, Taylor served on the board of water commissioners, starting in 1850. He and his compatriots were responsible for overseeing the first municipal water system in the city.

You can read the rest but, as you do, think about whether what Roth and Kiser were driving at: the taking of public positions and its effect on reputation. For my money, while they can wrap it in phrases like “the brewery’s decision to focus on its own measure of authenticity” or “[t]his is why so many of us fought for and supported the rise of local breweries” they still both seem to conflate (i) the brewery as a business with a brand and (ii) the brewery owner as a citizen with a full life beyond the beer and also (iii) the taking of actively advancing a position in favour of either the business or as a citizen through political engagement. These are different things. Forget worrying about what a small segment of your customers think about your brand’s reputation. Any citizen who is also a business owner who doesn’t engage with the implications of being governed is ignoring one of the greatest dangers to that business’s success. And courting disaster.

Isn’t the reaction of customers to brand secondary where a local craft brewery finds its local municipality, for example, spending taxes to attract big craft competition to town or, for another, supporting fracking and putting the community’s water table at risk? Of course it is. Why wouldn’t the sensible brewery owner protest, pound on the Mayor’s office door or even run for an upcoming council election if their business, their interests were being placed at risk? They all should. That’s about getting beyond the, yes, quite important move from complaisance to complaint that I see Roth and Kiser discussing. That move can and, I would argue, should justify – if not demand – not stalling but then moving on to actual politics.

It doesn’t mean you have to go all 1920s Dan O’Connell take over the Albany County Democratic Committee, rig elections and leverage the Hedrick Brewery to be the town’s boss. But would it kill you to write or call those who represent you in the political realm? Would it hurt too much to maybe pass on that next bit of indulgent “beer travel” and the tripping haze of new fun bar after new fun bar and, instead, travel to sit in a committee room where a policy you hate and want stopped is being discussed, waiting your turn soberly to put your ideas on the record for the five minutes they give you at the microphone?

Getting political is about waking up, being adult. Doesn’t really matter where your interests or political preferences lay. You think the big craft carpetbagger brewery that received the regional branch plant tax break wasn’t engaged in politics behind the backs of the local brewers? I bet the local craft community wishes it had laid the earlier groundwork that might have seen them receive the funding for expansion instead. Which would have required them being actively political.

*Given it will mean that Americans and not Mexicans will still pay for the wall as additional markup on their import of Mexican goods. His own party’s leaders are already mocking it.

Hello From The Blog’s Back End – And The Road…

It’s been busy at the system admin end of the blogging life even if not so active here out front. Since mid-October, I have happily shifted over 650 posts to the new WordPress platform and am starting to see a bit of daylight. There will be an opportunity to receive a bulk loading of posts in a few weeks but I wanted key posts well in place before that happens. To get the house in order. In doing so, I have had the experience of reliving my last 14 years or so as a public writer. It’s very instructive. There seem to be clear phases to my – and our – beer blogging, the fourth or fifth of which we are in now.

a. The first from maybe 2003 to 2006 was marked by reviews, by news items about beer taken from the news, by figuring out the lay of the land.

b. Then the beer blogging explosion of 2007 to, say, 2010 saw a lot of active discussion including plenty about the role of beer blogging. And the Xmas photo contest going full speed. Participation was riding high.

c. Next, we have the difficult period. The Oxford Companion to Beer was a problem faced in late 2011. In May 2013, we lost Simon, one of the brightest beer bloggers, the bringer of viciously accurate humour.

d. An about turn led me more deeply into history in 2013-15, building on the Albany Ale Project, as well as utter dissatisfaction with the state of things. The self appointed consulto-expert. The acceptance of the shoddy. The rise of unaffiliated certificate programs. Three books resulted. New York City history in the 1700s began to get unpacked.

e. Next and up to today, the sudden great collapse brought on by a number of things like the great buyout phenomenon, murk, short form social media, long long form amaze-balls storytelling, the deletion of old blogs and All About Beer sucking up all the beer bloggers ideas and then dulling them down for general non-boat rocking comfortable digestion without much resulting chitchat. Yet, despite this, this is now the time of the wonderful rise of the many and tiny and clever as well as, perhaps, a return to more of the substantive sort of books 2010 promised.

That image up there? It’s from the journal of the Napanee Beer Company’s Geordan Saunders. When I stopped in there yesterday while on the road for the first time to see how things were going since they opened last spring, we immediately had a “I know your face” and “And I know your face” moment. Four and a half years before he had popped into my office to ask me what I thought of his dream to be a small town brewer. Good thing I was helpful (or at least not a big wet neg) as their beers are fabulous – in particular their Blacklist, a schwarzbier. When I thought about it, at least three of those chats have now been followed by brewery openings in my area.

I don’t know if I am a great resource. Geordan was kind to think I was. I do know, however, that reviewing all these posts and ensuring my favorites are well manicured and comfortably housed has led me to realize there is a point to it all. The collection as a whole traces the arc of something. Something continuously moving forward inveigling itself into the culture. It’s reminded me to be very hopeful.

A Good Beer Blog Renewed… I Hope

OK, so I posted this on Facebook on Saturday:

A bit of news about the blog. It will be gone by the end of the year. Seems like the dedicated server I have been living off for 13 1/2 years without paying a cent is going to be unplugged as it is a fire hazard… or a security risk… or just old junk. My servers masters are the best there are. And they likely know when time is up. I think I’ll back up all the content on a nice hard drive and put it all in a drawer. Not sure I actually need a dedicated website any more – you know, emotionally. Have to decide if I bother with a new site. ‘Cause Snapchat is where it’s at. And this space. It’s free. Maybe I’ll start a knitting blog. Or get better at the banjo. Or learn Finnish. All the things I might have done.

As it turns out I have been freeloading on an aging server. Once upon a time the artist Feist‘s website sat right next to my two blogs in the file folder tree. But now the code is old, the server creaky and reality has struck. I have been mooching on a private server. So… and with utter gratitude for 13 1/2 years of a great gift… it’s now time to move on and, so, we have A Good Beer Blog v.2 on WordPress. It’ll all be OK.

Soon, I will get the export of the archives and I expect everything will repopulate tickity-boo. But there will be link rot. Of two sorts. All the internal links to other posts on the old beer blog will fail. And all the photos will need re-identification. So I need some priorities over the next wee while:

1. Christmas is cancelled. It’d be right about now that I would announce the rules for the impending Yuletide photo contest. I will now have other things to do in the allotted blog time in my life so it’s suspended for 2016-17;

2. Some classes of beer blog post are going to get more attention. The history posts over the last few years hopefully will be as good or better. That 2004 review of some tripel that I didn’t know was really a stout might look like hell.

3. I am going to bring over certain archives from my non-beer blog, genx40.com. Much of what I wrote there was about news of the day and whether I had a cold or not but some is worth keeping so it will find a home deep in the archives.

I hope this all goes well but it will take time. This place is pretty spare but it’ll be a while before I can turn to the problem of smartening it up. Any helpful household hints are most welcome. The funny ha ha URL was Craig‘s idea, by the way.

The Fourth Internet

It has been a long time since I have been interested in an idea about the internet but this article linked to by kottke

The fourth Internet is scary like Darwinism, brutal enough to remind me of high school… If the first Internet was “Getting information online,” the second was “Getting the information organized” and the third was “Getting everyone connected” the fourth is definitely “Get mine.” Which is a trap.

It sums it up neatly. The end of information. The prostitution of data space. I am not sure it has caused me to consciously draw away from writing on this blog but it may have contributed. “Getting mine” includes those paywall spaces, too. Fees are necessary, agreed, but what ever happened to micro payments? Surely PayPal could be harnessed to let me reach newspaper articles for four pennies a piece. Not that I had high hopes all these years ago. I compared blogging or Web 2.0(a) to CB radio when it was mainly a hobby. Over eleven years ago as it turns out.

Perhaps it is because I make a little money from writing now. I used to make money from blog ads and now make money from book contracts. I am regressing into old media. Because it is reliable. Should I add a question mark to that? Because it is reliable? If I titled this post “Twenty one ways the fourth internet will make you angry… and then leave you amazed!” I would fit in better these days.