Category: Blogging and the Internet

The Day Ended With The Game At Fenway With Andy


Spent the evening with Andy Crouch watching the Yankees play the Red Sox at Fenway. The only thing missing was a New York loss. Like all the best baseball games, it was a morality play on the fields and in the stands. I was looking down the first base line from our seats in the right field corner when A-Ro(i)d got absolutely pegged square in the upper back by good guy Canuck pitcher Ryan Dempster. But that was when the Sox were winning. Next time up? A-Rod hits a long lingering homer.

Oh, yes. This is a beer blog. Andy suggested we meet at Citizen Public House just by the ball park. Excellent choice. The best sort of blend of good beer and drink, interesting food and comfortable but stylish setting. He was a little delayed so I was given the time to have a few Jack D’or by Pretty Things. And I added another species to the list with a flounder dinner. Once in the park and once the surreal feelings of walking into the TV that may only be experienced by a sports fan who has not seen his team at home since he was 10 years old, we sat. And talked about a lot of things. We both work in the law but in different fields and under different constitutions.

And we talked about beer. At the park, there was the feeling that a page had been turned back. Long Trail pale ale, Harpoon IPA and Wachusett Green Monster were on offer at nine bucks for a 12 ounce pour. Solid beers but not the range you might find in other parks. We touched on an idea I raised in passing the other week on Twitter, retro-craft. I wonder whether, once this era of over hopping, over souring and, frankly, the sort of over producing that reminds me the relationship between R+B and disco… we shall have retro-craft. Well balanced beers highlighting the main components of water, malt and yeast with hops returning to their proper job of framing and cutting the cloy. Will it happen?

There was another sort of good beer future on display elsewhere in town on Sunday. We were out on a forced march for the kids through the MIT campus in Cambridge looking for a little something something when we came upon a team of volunteers shredding and slicing pumpkins at the CBC. Got to speak with brewmaster Will Meyers a couple of times as the kids enjoyed the part of the vacation known as “Dad at the Beer Related Business”. We talked gourds, Will describing how he was looking for sugar pumpkin flavour, not pie and not even so much spice. This meant ensuring the pumpkins had limited fermentables, so the beer became an expression of the fruit, not a mirror of a dish made with pumpkin. The growing season was late so the crop was brought in from an Amish farm near Augusta, Maine. One of the group, Lee Movic of Belmont’s Craft Beer Celler, in passing called the beer they were help make was a fresh pumpkin ale. I will post some photos of the scene in a bit. I am still figuring out how to post images on the new iPad.

So, what is the take away? Three scenes: one comfortable, one a bit higher end and one all about exploring possibilities.

Session 75: Brewing Business In 157 Words

It’s Session time again. Or it was Friday and now it’s Sunday 8:02 am. See, there’s things to do. Gardening, smoking pork, napping, sitting. So, it was with deep regret that I realized I needed to post something for this the three quarter-ish of a century edition of these, Les Sessions. The question this month is a bit, err, specific:

Creating a commercial brewery consists of much more than making great beer, of course. It requires meticulous planning, careful study and a whole different set of skills from brewing beer. And even then, the best plan can still be torpedoed by unexpected obstacles. Making beer is the easy part, building a successful business is hard. In this Session, I’d like to invite comments and observations from bloggers and others who have first-hand knowledge of the complexities and pitfalls of starting a commercial brewery. What were the prescient decisions that saved the day or the errors of omission or commission that caused an otherwise promising enterprise to careen tragically off the rails?

Hmmm… a tad particular, no? A wee bit off the point of the plan. Seeking business advice from beer bloggers? Let’s see. What did Stan write? Oh, cheater pants. He inverted the question and pointed out how brewing the beer is not the easy part. Good thing that is true or I would have a real issue with Stan this month. A real issue.

So, …”first-hand knowledge of the complexities and pitfalls of starting a commercial brewery.” What can I say. You could do worse than read the blog How to Start a Brewery (in 1 million easy steps) from one of Canada’s more successful craft brewers, Beau’s. Go look at the beginning, 25 May 2006 when they were about 65 employees smaller. Here’s the first batch being brewed. Here’s when the yeast died at the customs office. Read on. You will likely find there were no prescient decisions. There was panic and scramble, beer and patience. And luck. Lots of luck. And good taste and humour. Brewers who lack the skills at those sorts of things, well, don’t make it.

Oh, I cheated as much as Stan did. Damn. I’ll have to have a word with myself.

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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Vic… Let Me Tell You A Little Something About Me

Canadian Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews has found himself caught in a 1998 style flame war that would be the pride of usenet. As the Federation devolves, this is the sort of thing that entertains. Most fun is not the fact that it appears his nemesis is related to an opposition party but the surprise experienced by so many Canadians this evening that someone in the opposition has the gumption – I said it, gumption – to, you know, oppose:

An IP address connected to what is known as the Vikileaks30 Twitter account — which has been burning up the Twittersphere with claims about Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ personal life — originates within the House of Commons. In a bid to determine the origin of the account, which posted a string of tweets online offering alleged details relating to Toews’s divorce proceedings, the Ottawa Citizen undertook an investigation on Thursday. An email was sent to the writer of the Vikileaks30 Twitter account, containing a link to a website. The website was monitored by the Citizen and only the author of Vikileaks30 had the address of the website. About 15 minutes after sending the email, Vikileaks30 opened the link and visited the page, leaving behind an IP address that belongs to the House of Commons.

Sadly, the needy CBC hipster class of Canadian sees all and learns nothing, considering it “…lovable inclusiveness…a very Canadian kind of protest.” Mr. Taylor is really only upset that his gang did not think of it first.

“I Am Less Free Today Than I Was 30 Years Ago…”

That is a shocking sentence to read. Gets the brain going. Here is the nub of an excellent post over at the always excellent The Last Exile:

Globalization was suppose to make us all free and rich. Although, it has not worked out that way for most of us. I am not any richer and my wages face a constant erosion from the rising rates of taxes and the general cost of just about everything while the corporate tax rate continues to slide ever downward. I know for a fact; I am less free today than I was 30 years ago. Canadians generally do not have any babies anymore; mostly because they cannot afford to when it takes a 2 person income just to raise a small family with ordinary expectations. We never really discuss that in this country, and if the topic does manage to come up in public dialogue, somehow the dominate ethos manages to give the impression that a woman who works outside the home rather than rising her children at home does so for selfish avaricious reasons rather than the fact that taxation, housing and transportation costs now claim a much larger percentage of family income than they did 30 years ago.

Add to that list communications device fees. I pay over $250 a month for home phone, internet, cell phone and cable TV. I could cut it but with the range of ages in the house it’s not a practical solution. I am a bit shocked at electricity hikes added to natural gas bill, too. Again over $250 a month combined. If I ever created that stand alone blog dedicated to complaining about society’s broken promises called Where the Hell is my Jet Pack??, I might write about these things or think about them more.

Why don’t I? We are fortunate and a bit unconventional as fosterers and for other reasons, I suppose, but if I thought about it, I might have expected the sort of financial status we have now to have been the lifestyle in my late 30s rather than my late 40s. But maybe I don’t care. Maybe the money or other resources go to intangibles and non-investments. Like better cheese. Like tanks of gas for wandering weekend road trips. I think I am better off. But who knows. I don’t think I think about it all that much.

What Is The Etiquette of Beer Blog Photography?

Ron has explained that he has had a run in with this man above due to the use of a camera. In his post from last Sunday, he describes the salient facts:

…the boss came and told me I had to show him all the photos I’d taken and erase them, even the ones that were just of my beer. He threatened to call the police if I didn’t. Even the one of the entrance, taken from the street. He claimed that it was all private property and I couldn’t take any photos. He followed me out onto the street shouting insults at me…

I am not naming names but you can look it up. As he was clearly dealing a person of little common sense beyond the confines of his own mind, I am completely on side with Ron… except for the nagging question of a potential principle. See, I was named and even had my photo published in a paper recently in the course of my work and found the experience odd. You can look up that, too, but because I am fat I really hate photos of myself and, even at that, I was a little shocked with the realization that me being seen in any context was news. But Mr. Teutonic Tizzy Fit 2011, Ron’s new friend, wasn’t about that. He was just a pompous boor, pretending he had a right to the sight of his bar.

Ron reminded me of two other incidents as a beer blogger that have shaped my thoughts. Back in 2004, I went into a beer shop in Pennsylvania and was told, no, I could not take photos, that it was against the law. I thought that was a lie, that I was getting jerked around and, as you can see, I snuck a few interior shots out back. Sirens did not wail. In the other case, in the spring of 2005, after hitting the Blue Tusk and Clarks, I found myself late at night on a great crawl in Awful Al’s Whiskey and Cigar Bar where I was soon told to stop taking pictures and even to show I had deleted a couple in particular. The request was made by a bouncer backed waitress and, even at that particular moment, I saw the ethical point. While I love all three sets of photos from that great night out, to the waitress I was Mr. Creepy Digital Cameraman 2005. No issue at all as far as I am concerned.

Is there a thread of an ethical principle to be drawn through these examples? For me, I have every sympathy for wait staff. I’ve done it and, like laying sod for a living, stopped. That waitress, I realized immediately, had every right to feel I was out of line. I even have some sympathy for the guys in PA whose shop I may have illegally photographed – given the whacked laws down there and how it might just be true. But even if German law gives Ron’s pal the right to control the dissemination of images, I don’t care. He’s a bully.

But is that good enough? Those are my conclusions based on the moment. Is there a better way to determine whether it is right to take a photo for your beer blog?

Ontario: Two Evenings In Dark Bars In Toronto

 

Beer culture is is such a delicate and hopefully early state of development in Canada – even after all these years – that there are only a few places you hope to find an important work related training course so that when the bell rings and class gets out, well, you have something to do. I found a couple of spots the last few days that did the trick.

Feeling all very Ron, I got off the train last evening at around 9:00 pm and by one mere hour later had placed myself (after a little confusion from staff going off shift as to whether they were at work or not) at the upper room of the Queen and Beaver on Elm Street a half block away from the former site of Sam the Record Man. A sad testimony to the swath being cut through recorded music in Canada, the greatest record store in the land is but a hole in the ground now.

But I didn’t let it get me down. I have plenty of lps in the rec room to see me out. Instead, I planted myself in a wing chair and watched the second half of the MLS finals with a small group on a quiet Sunday night. At eight bucks a pint, it was not cheap but not insane either and when you can get a Denison’s weissbier as well as McAuslan oatmeal stout things are not all that bad. Service upstairs was far better than the apparent social intrusion I made on the empty first floor. The neat and tidy English soccer themed rec room feel was great after being stuck on the train for a few hours. We need a society for wing chair appreciation. A society with beer taps.

 

 

 

 

Tonight was a different matter as I walked up Yonge Street to hit the wonderful Cafe Volo. I met Troy Burtch of GCP’n’B there for supper. We got to chat with plenty of fine T.O. beer nerds as well as Ralph the owner and Michael Hancock of Denison’s Brewing. Blab-blab-blab. Chatter-chatter-chat. Bought Troy late wedding gifts in the form of a share of a bottle of Pannepot as well as another of Nostradamus. Should his good bride point out that the gift only went to one half of the happy couple, well, I can only plead that once I gave a wah-wah pedal as a wedding gift.

I had a County Durham Hop Addict which was very good as well as a Beau’s Gabba Gabba Heywhich was one wee notch gooderer and which got a solid three thumbs up from Michael. Five buck pints and the relaxed but seriously aware good beer atmosphere had the place hopping on a Monday night. Ralph was in the cellar beating on the casks at one point, the next telling us about his travels to Italy, then talking about how he was heading back to England for more training before he rolls out his own micro brewing on site. It was the place to be for good beer that night – busy when I wanted busy as much as the night before was quiet when I was whacked.

These moments are few. I don’t get out much so I am that much more tickled when they turn out to be just what I needed..

That Messy Messy Democracy That Is Beer Writing

Stan H. and E.S. Delia have both written posts in the last few hours that go to the very heart of beer blogging. Stan’s post “The end of beer writing as we know it?” and Mr. Delia’s “On Beer Writing” both explore the relationship between blogging – an amateur form of expression – with profession beer expressions like movies or beer magazines. Dalia writes:

The bigger issue is the nature of beer writing. Carroll quotes filmmaker Anat Baron’s take on beer writers versus beer bloggers, implying that the writers’ assessments were more astute or level-headed than that of the beer bloggers. I don’t get paid for this, so perhaps my opinions are less valid.

Nothing is so embarrassing as when condescension meets foolishness. It reminds of the old joke “what do you call a doctor who got ‘D’ in first year anatomy?” The answer is, of course, “doctor.” Like Dr. Johnson said of nationalism, this sort of idea about professionalism can also be the last refuge of a scoundrel. For further study on this idea, I suggest you seek out the works of Ivan Illich. You may not agree with the idea that professionalism in itself carries downsides but the perspective is nonetheless worthwhile.

Fortunately, both Mr. H and Mr. D reject such poppycock. Both suggest the far better idea that beer blogging is not in any way illegitimate and in fact can uniquely advance the discourse on beer culture in ways that profession beer sometimes can’t. Delia reminds us of the need to look to and weigh content. Hieronymus looks with hope to innovation and new beginnings. Sure, there is a lot of crap in blogging as well as failed technicalities like poor grammar. But there is also a lot of crap in magazine writing and in documentary film making as well as failures such as the business botch of misplaced trust in an illusory homogeneous craft beer community which will buy your tickets or purchase your subscriptions like unthinking autobots. What has been going on for years – and what some still don’t get – is that all this writing is a collection of disorganized personal explorations which, like this post exemplifies, feed each other and weave another part of a large tapestry with ideas. It is a better more complex and richer way.

Thirty-three years ago, Bill Gates complained about the very same thing in relation to software “hobbyists” but he as wrong, too, as history has proven.

Ron Meets Zoigl And Zoigl Meets Ron

Ron’s plate o’ meat

Ron’s Spring ’08 central European road trip with Andy has been fun to follow but today’s installment has to be the best. In it he uncovers a local brewing tradition played out in one small German region, watches people eat a lot of meat, finds a new hop-based spirit to drink and decides to spend the night. But the traditions of brewing this one beer, Zoigl, is a little weird:

Back at our hotel, Andy has a chat with the landlord. Yes, he does have Zoigl on. Hooray! Even though the official Zoigl time ended on Sunday (it’s Tuesday, if you’ve lost track). He has a little flyer with the Zoigl schedule for the year printed on it. They’re very well organised. Each of the five brewing families in Neuhaus takes it in turns to sell Zoigl Thursday to Sunday. Like I said, it’s Tuesday. Once a year (3rd of October in 2008), all five Zoigl families sell beer simultaneously. I’ll mark that date in my calendar.

It’s Zoigl-tastic! It’s so Zoigl-tastic I suspect if this beer were called Neuhausbrau or, say, zblat or something else I would not be nearly as interested. But what really amazes me is that there isn’t a TV crew following Ron around on these tours. Surely – if there is a golf channel and a world fishing network – there must be an appetite for a station that follows a group of eloquent middle aged beer hounds around rooting out the back woods beer traditions of small communities. And describing the local smoked meats that go with them. As they get snapped.

We need to put out nickels together and make this happen.

 

Snooty Facebook

Seeing as I never did anything with MySpace (or Twitter, or Orkut, or Friendster….) I wonder if the fact that Facebook works for me and my undergrad pals says something about us:

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college. By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education.

What to make of that? I don’t know why there is so much buy-in from the people I know but it is as accessible as email in many ways keeping the participation threshold down. The lack of skins or visual personalization works in its favour as well. But the communal scrapbook thing is what I think works very well. Obsessing over who is that person in a photo from 23 years ago and tagging the separate people within them creates a pattern of continuity that expresses your own time line as well as branches out to do the same for people you know. So the illusion of a community gets some backing up compared to the post and reply of blogs or the thoughts of the day. It is a different thing to claim, having an actual mutual past – as opposed to a supposed present interest.