It’s Saturday, no school today, so what you gonna do?
Why, read some of the following interesting items we’ve spotted around the Blogoshire and beyond, of course.
But first…
→ Some consumer intelligence: we haven’t come across any ourselves, but the word on the street is that some Tesco supermarkets are selling the incredible Courage Russian Imperial Stout for £1 a bottle. If you see it at this price, BUY IT ALL.
News and nuggets
→ A new blog by David Turner looks set to be an interesting read: in a series of data-driven posts, he intends to set out ‘how the modern brewing industry operates, if it makes profit and its future’, i.e. is the boom going to end soon and, if so, how?
→ It has already prompted this bit of plain talking from Denzil Vallance of Great Heck Brewing:
I can’t imagine too many conversations went like this: Q. “Why do you think your brewery failed?” A. “Because i am a useless tosser.” It’s in most people’s nature to blame outside factors for their own failures so hey ho.
→ On a related note, Derek Dellinger, author of the blog Bear Flavored, draws this distinction between two types of brewery fuelling the US ‘craft beer’ boom:
[It] seems discouragingly easy to spot which breweries are driven by the love of investment (by people who see it as a smart, fun venture in a hot market), and those which are driven by the love of beer (by people who are willing to take on a huge amount of risk for something they believe in).
A ‘longish read’
→ We’re not quite sure what to make of Good Beer Hunting, a very slick, magazine-style website by Michael Kiser, ‘writer, photographer and industry strategist’, but this article about Hill Farmstead Brewery is an engrossing character study, and accompanied by gorgeous photography.
And a couple of online magazines
→ The latest edition of the London Drinker is out (PDF link), one of the most readable and professional CAMRA regional publications around.
→ The first issue of Craft Beer Rising magazine (flippy-flappy skeumorphic interface) contains articles by Melissa Cole, Mark Dredge, Will Hawkes and Ben McFarland.