Time For A New Dialogue About US Good Beer

Interesting intervention in a rather over the top bitching session over at the Beer Advocate pointing out the disfunctionality of a large part of the discourse. In response to some wildly weirdly accusations about which breweries in the US are “over rated”, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head in response went off:

It’s pretty depressing to frequently visit this site and see the most negative threads among the most popular. This didn’t happen much ten years ago when craft beer had something like a 3 percent market share. Flash forward to today, and true indie craft beer now has a still-tiny but growing marketshare of just over 5 percent. Yet so many folks that post here still spend their time knocking down breweries that dare to grow. It’s like that old joke: “Nobody eats at that restaurant anymore, it’s too crowded.” Except the “restaurants” that people shit on here aren’t exactly juggernauts. In fact, aside from Boston Beer, none of them have anything even close to half of one percent marketshare. The more that retailers, distributors, and large industrial brewers consolidate the more fragile the current growth momentum of the craft segment becomes. The more often the Beer Advocate community becomes a soap box for outing breweries for daring to grow beyond its insider ranks the more it will be marginalized in the movement to support, promote, and protect independent American craft breweries…

It is a weird response. It could have been just “screw you, I do what I want.” It could have been about how the BAers had become jaded. Both of which are pretty much true. But no. No, we get handed that old saw about how we are all in one boat together and how Team Craft Beer has to pull all in the same direction. See, we need to support “breweries that dare to grow” because, like the flower, they are fragile. It is a call to not be a consumer. It is a call to be something between a co-conspirator and a patsy. Never mind, as Jay points out, there are a an ever expanding huge number of craft breweries in the US. It sounds like we are asked to pay, accept and put up with a craft movement well into its third or fourth decade. But then look at the response. “Sorry!!” “Didn’t mean you!!” “Were would we be without you?” “You are the wind beneath my wings.” It’s the Stockholm Syndrome, good beer version. Would someone respond in the same way if the head brewer of, say, 1900 of the 1952 craft breweries had responded? Not likely. It takes celebrity to get a response like that. Excellent.

There has to be a better way. The part of the good beer trade that pays for everything, the consumer, has to be treated better than this. And the consumer has, in turn, to learn to be more intelligent and well spoken if they are to be taken seriously. The current dialogue this thread exemplifies does not really provide as much as it could or should. Saying that “Bells, Founders, FFF, Surly, RR, DFH, Bruery, Avery, Cigar City, Mikkeller are all overrated” is just weak minded. As Calagione goes on to point out, much to his credit, each of these breweries make a range of beer some of which are to many people’s taste. And, to add to that idea, for the most part they are well priced for what they offer.

But some are not. And that is the point of “over rating” a brewery. It is not enough to slag the complaint makers, however thick. Over priced, over packaged and overly precious beers deserve being called over rated. I don’t care if you have passion, try really really hard or dare to grow. It’s up to me – and each of you – to determine if a beer is a bust or not. If it is worth your money. You want to pay for daring and the duds that that entails, feel free. Me, I like good beer at an honest price.

I Hear Some Traitors Get ‘Merican Cable TV, Too

Is there nothing as fraught as a Canadian of any political stripe claiming that we are being manipulated by the United States?

The ammunition for Ottawa’s broadside against the pipeline’s opponents is drawn in part from the work of a relatively little-known blogger from North Vancouver. In the last 15 months, independent blogger and single mother Vivian Krause has become a one-person clearinghouse on how U.S. money is helping finance Canadian environmental activism. Ms. Krause has used her “Fair Questions” blog to document the money trail behind what she calls the “U.S.-funded campaign against Canadian oil” – research that’s been used by defenders of the oil sands, including the lobby group Ethical Oil, to blunt criticism of the tarry resource.

While “ethical oil” is one of the silliest ideas going it’s obviously not as bad as the blood diamonds or blood chocolate of some other energy sources. Yet it sure isn’t so pure as to deserve the label ethical. Let’s just call it “relatively a lot better” oil. That being the case, there is a valid political debate over whether methods of extraction or delivery or price or any number of other things are as good as they might be.

There is a parallel debate going on near here in central New York about another method of extraction, hydro fracking. And there is debate. That is a good thing. But that might be only be a good thing in America. Because, according to the story, folks would “like to see the Gateway pipeline succeed, but after decisions made by Canadians alone.” That’s asbestos logic. There’s money in outsourcing so don’t ask those who have to take on the associated issues. Especially Americans. Because we are generally so dislocated from them, separated. Aren’t we. Makes sense.

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Friday Bullets For Yet Another New Year

Why do we moan about another birthday but not New Years? Consider the alternative. It’s me and the cat this week and I have been inordinately busy. The electrician has been in. The stash now has a light switch thanks to the electricians coming in on Wednesday. One wall has one coat of light sandy old paper sort of colour instead.of a grey plummy tone that looked like great auntie’s lipstick. I changed the furnace filter. I bought a toilet flap. I need to watch it. Handy is not a word associated with me.

♦ Paying a consultant to edit wikipedia to remove bad things people say is a bad business strategy.

♦ These new stats lead me to ask… what if Mr. Harper is not the economic wizz he admits he is?

♦ “…she’s upright…”

♦ What did you learn from Iowa? Can you even name the states that border Iowa?

♦ My in-laws are looking much better all of a sudden.

There. Caught up with the week. Tonight I strike a greater blow against plummy lipsticked walls. Viva! Viva!!!

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Beer Cocktails: A Glass Of Port And One Of Stout

I have had my doubts about beer cocktails ever since I heard the term. I don’t trust that the attempt to create a new niche – and then, of course, the jostling to become guru of that niche – bodes well for actual experience being foisted upon us all. Plus, I am of an age that does not find me in bars watching however much I like them. I have to rely on my own wits. Any that usually keeps me from experimenting too much.

Yet, there is something about port and stout that I like. The “ye olde” nature of it perhaps? I have certainly had a love of ports as well as Spanish sherries, Hungarian tokays and other “sticky” wines that actually predates my love of good beer. These are the drinks of childhood holidays, ex-pats comforting themselves with rich tastes of trade and empire. I came across the concept five years ago and have been tinkering with blends since at least 2008 and, while I approve, I have not found myself converted.

Until today. I realized my problem might be the requirement of blending in the glass. Sure, you might say, that is what a “cocktail” is but, if we are honest, is not the shot and chaser a cocktail, too? And, frankly, is it not even more guru-tastic to use more than one piece of glassware to create the effect? Hands up everyone who agrees. There. It is settled.

Today, I poured a glass of Feist Colheita 1998 port and a pint of Grand River’s Russian Gun Imperial Stout. Both share a rich dryness when tasted in succession that I think would blend well in the same glass. But they also have so many complimentary tastes when tasted separately which are drowned when put together. The lingering dry cocoa licorice of the strong stout is washed by the heady tannin berry of the port. Both have a hint of chalkiness, too. Each are fine drinks in their own right. Together, a partnership.

So, first big news of 2012? It’s OK to use two glasses. Good old double fisting is now surely guru approved. Second big news? If you have a stash it’s now time to get the cabinet, too. Your own little gin palace tucked in a corner of the dining room.

My Most Interesting Discovered Drinky Thing Of 2011

mapof_ferryland

This has been a year that I have thought about history a bit more than others. Canadian history for the most part. We make great mistakes in considering our own time on this land. We dismiss the First Nations. We pretend that Canada began when the current constitution was signed in 1867. But Canada has been populated for thousands of years and Europeans have been nibbling at the edges for the best part of a millennium. Vikings lived in northern Newfoundland back then. In 1674, the Hudson’s Bay Company was importing malt and hops into the Arctic. But this year I came across another couple of fact that I found most interesting in this report. It’s in the bibliography:

ROSS, L. (1980) – 16th-Century Spanish Basque Coopering Technology: A Report of the Staved Containers Found in 1978-1979 on the Wreck of the Whaling Galleon San Juan, Sunk in Red Bay, Labrador, 1565. Manuscript Report Series.Ottawa. 408.

See that? 1565. And the other thing? Staved containers. I have found West Country seasonal fishermen recorded as importing malt as part of their seasonal businesses packing salt cod for the Iberian market in the 1630s. How far before that did the practice occur? Peter E. Pope in his book Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century explains that there was a regular practice of travel each spring from Elizabethan England to what is now eastern Canada for this fishing trade. It is inconceivable that these men in the 1500s did not ship malt, too. That they did not pack drinks in casks for the voyage here and back, too.

But where are the records? Where are the records for Albany ale for that matter like Taylor’s brewing books? Or early Ontario beer? That’s the thing. The records. In overseeing the OCB wiki, it has already become a little bit of a jostle over which record is the one to be trusted. Yet there is the tantalizing possibility that in the later half of the 1500s on cool spring days on the Newfoundland shore, men made beer for themselves many decades before the first beer was thought made in this country. There is a phrase for those whose families went on in places like Ferryland to shift to year round residence: masterless men. Don’t you think they might have made themselves a little beer?

You Fest Of Linky Goodness For Nameless Week

So what do you call the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve? I don’t think of them as the holidays. They are the weeks before the 24th when you spend and spend and spend and spend and spend as if you were in some sort of Bacchanalian cult… oh, well there is that. These days are the days of foreboding. Not of the New Year. But of the New Year’s Eve party. The dark night. Evening of the lost… of the damned. Speaking of the lost and the damned, how unholy a thing it would be to be a journalist this week. Nothing happens, like this:

♦ Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaares! Yet it’s is the Glob’s #1 sports story Thursday evening under the heading “The Game Changer.”

♦ Tribe? Remember when the tribes of reel-to-reel rumbled against thos of the 8 track? That’s what this will be like in 25 years.

♦ zzzzzzz…

♦ Even God is getting bored with this person in the news. Sweet touch with the allegation that Ron Paul is corrupt. God’s response: “…of all the things I made Ron Paul to be, you think I needed to throw in corrupt?”

♦ And then there are the Jays. At least the Sox are making trades that I might understand one day.

OK. That’ll do. That’s what you can say about 2011. That’ll do for now.

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The Good News And Bad News For Harper At Christmas

Odd but interesting column by Wente this week in The Glob, the Old and Stale, the Blobby Male… I’ll be here all week, try the liver:

To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who.

Sure he is liked. He is also increasingly irrelevant. The retraction of the Feds from the exercise of their own powers combined with confirmation that they cannot dabble in provincial powers has left Mr. Harper as the king of very little. Sure, he has added back the “Royal” to the separate wings of the armed forces but, as a recent chat with a committed military officer reminded me, pretty much only as a matter of branding even if welcome. Nothing has changed in the continued sensible and increased integration of our military as a single fighting force. And, sure, he likes to pay attention to the Arctic more than places where a lot of people live but as that is the only mandated geographic area of Federal administration one would assume he might. And, sure, he like to talk about a balanced budget and spending prudently but one day he might try to pull it off as his Liberal predecessors did.

Mr. Harper believes in a weak limited national government, which is his right, but that means he himself is made weaker, less relevant to the national discourse. For now, we are paying more attention to ourselves as Canadians expressed through our provincial and municipal policies and operations. And why not? We have many layers of meaning, we Canadians. When Harper is replaced the focus will change. What an utterly boring legacy he has mapped out for himself.

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A Merry Christmas Eve Strikes Good Beer Blog HQ

I love when Christmas Eve is Saturday. It creates a whole gentle extra day of laying around, wrapping gifts, watching the Jets and Giants, sipping beer, eating cheese, sampling squares, nibbling on cold beef, consuming tidbits and generally chewing and not shifting. I have chatted on IM with the newly crowned cham-peen of the sub-continent. Stan has sent merry wishes and had same returned. Ron has told me what he was tippling and I wondered back whether we were going to have a drinkalongathon. If you have not already, read Martyn on the meaning of beef at this time of year.

It is a happy day. I adjudicated a difference of opinion on The Oxford Companion to Beer wiki. And it’s St. Bernardus Christmas Ale in the mid-afternoon today. They should make a Christmas Eve Ale, too. Imagine the marketing possibilities. Tomorrow, I just bet the kids get me beer books. I win that bet because I have already bought them and, later tonight, will wrap them with a tag that says from them to me.

Happy Christmas Eve. Let tomorrow take care of tomorrow.

So… Where Was I? Oh, Yes! Beer And Me

When I began blogging almost nine years ago I remember being asked what blogging was. I replied I was writing a magazine about me. And I suppose that is what I have been doing. Here there have been 2,516 posts and over there another 5,377. Most astoundingly to me are the 38,973 collective comments – beyond the filtered spam – that have been left by folks like you. I suppose I have read them all. I don’t recall.

The end of the annual Christmas beery photo contest serves as something of a conclusion of the bloggy season in a way. It’s good to reflect. To slow down for Yule and also think about the beer and blog connection. In one real sense, I have put my dedication to the fluid on display. Perhaps even my weakness to its call. I am not one to blindly boost good beer, after all, so much as to admit its grip – or, perhaps, only its deep abiding attraction. I don’t really care about my right to good beer, the role of those slagged as neo-prohibitionists or even matters of snobby status. I don’t think I have really discovered any truths. I don’t want a job. I really just like the beer and like the regular discipline of writing about it.

So, away we go with the seasons. As we again turn slowly into the light of the sun as winter solstice passes with this longest night of the year, I will have beer and keep writing about it. I will enjoy it and I will think about it. I hope you do, too.

It’s The Bestest Christmas Present Ever!!!

I love when a dictator dies. Sadly, as with today’s death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, sometimes it isn’t when surrounded by your subjects who are filling your body with bullets. But, nonetheless, ding dong the witch is dead. The British keep an oddly stiff upper lip:

Speaking today the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said: “The people of N Korea are in official mourning after the death of Kim Jong Il. We understand this is a difficult time for them. “This could be a turning point for North Korea. We hope that their new leadership will recognise that engagement with the international community offers the best prospect of improving the lives of ordinary North Korean people.”

Difficult time? Difficult time??? The man who is nuts is dead. He fed his people juche and grass and ignorance and gulags. We only have hints of how bad it is. Now he is in Hell. Good.

At least there is hope. It’s not like Canada’s secret mission in 2006 was going to be a real breakthrough. Maybe these people can now get a chance to enjoy their lives.

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