It’s Saturday morning and time to highlight a few interesting items we’ve spotted around the Blogoshire, and beyond.
→ Emma at Crema’s Beer Odyssey took a deep breath and explained why it is a bad idea for bloggers (and especially brewers who blog) to glibly wade into the issue of gender. The now-deleted posts by Dave Bailey which triggered this brouhaha were more David Brent-style clumsiness than mean-spirited, but they did leave us banging our heads on the table.
→ Alan at a Good Beer Blog has posted some ‘new beer resolutions’, including ‘explore crafty’ — that is, self-consciously ‘craft’ beer made by big brewers. That, in turn, elicited some interesting statements of intent from readers: drink more lager, more Belgian beer, more session bitters. Is it John Wesley Harding, White Album, Beggars Banquet back-to-acoustic-basics time?
→ Jeff Alworth at Beervana attempted to ask two distinct questions about Goose Island: (a) are their beers any good; and (b) have they ‘dumbed down’ since the takeover by AB InBev in 2011? His conclusion seems to be that, for his part, he’d like them a little more if they were ‘dumber’, but that beer geeks are letting prejudice interfere with the facts if they think GI has been neutered.
→ Last Saturday, we Tweeted a link to Fiz, a new game for iOS and Android tablets and phones which challenges you to manage a brewery. Some people, it turned out, were already addicted. Others have spent the last week, with us, boring everyone else sick by cursing the name of evil nemesis Gary Blau. We wrote a review but decided against posting it (we’re not games writers, it turns out), but you can read what Steve at Beers I’ve Known thought.
→ Inspiring home brew recipe of the week: Andy Parker’s Beetroot Sorachi Ace Saison, which sounds like more of a Satanic Majesty’s Request of a beer than a Beggar’s Banquet. If you’re going to brew crazy beer, make it really crazy, right?
→ We learned from Tasting Nitch that Science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson likes ‘craft beer’ but is angry that a lot of it is ‘over-hopped’.
→ A ‘long read’: Hot Rum Cow have a piece on Belgian Lambic beer, and Frank Boon in particular, by Liz Longden. We’ve only skimmed it, but it’s this week’s pick for saving to Pocket.
→ And on the subject of ‘long reads’, we’re writing one for 1 March. JOIN US!
2 replies on “News, Nuggets and Longreads 11/01/2014”
I think I wasn’t super clear about my actual points. They are (succinctly): Goose Island’s beers have definitely not been dumbed down to appeal to a larger audience, and they are good, if you love American-style wild ales.
The confusion is that I personally have a mixed relationship with American wild ales and my preferences diverge from the average geek’s.
Jeff — sorry if our paraphrasing misrepresents you. Think your meaning was clear, and it was certainly an interesting post.