Tag: news nuggets

Ah, the first Saturday of the year — so full of promise, a blank slate upon which— [SPILLS COFFEE OVER DESK] Oh, bollocks. 2015 can get bent. Now here’s some poxy links.

→ Michael Kiser’s piece on what 2015 might hold at Good Beer Hunting (the slickest beer site around) is well considered and thought-provoking. For example, why is Gose suddenly ‘a thing’‘, and why now?

Because internet… Ideas for new beers are coming from all directions as consumers are able to share their niche finds more readily over Twitter, Untappd, and forums. Brewers uses these tools too, some on a daily basis. The result is a sort of shared un-conscience among beer drinkers and brewers as to what the next cool beer might be.

→ Yesterday 95th beer blogging session prompted some interesting responses but this from Maureen Ogle, noted historian of American beer and other industries, is a corker:

The modern beer industry in the U.S. promotes a party line that runs more-or-less like this: … We’re friends, not competitors. We love fine beer. We care more about beer than profit. We’ll never sell out.… In my opinion, based on research that I conducted for Ambitious Brew, we can trace the origins of that party line to a single person: Charlie Papazian.

→ Anthropologist Krystal D’Acosta, writing for Scientific American, considers the history of ‘food porn’ and what it means in the age of social media. (Via BoingBoing.) A lot of what she says also applies to beer, and especially ‘craft beer’:

It’s okay to be a foodophile. It’s okay to indulge in exotic ingredients. It’s okay to showcase your culinary attempts. All of these things send the message that you understand what eating well means, just as you understand what an indulgence is when you share that fried Oreo you snagged at a local fair. We share food porn to affirm that understanding. We are showing off.

→ The Wall Street Journal covers the row between Belgian brewers and contract/gypsy outfits who merely design beers, leaving others to ‘‘get their hands dirty’. (Via @TheGuestAle.)

→ Saved to Pocket this week: Martyn ‘Zythophile’ Cornell edges every closer to the truth about the origins of Fuggles hops, thanks to the increasing availability of digitised historic newspapers and family records.

→ There are now a hundred Micropubs in the UK with more on the way. This is a phenomenon our Brew Britannia supplement in the summer will need to cover.

→ Via @PhippsNBC here’s that alternative definition of IPA we’ve all been looking for:

https://twitter.com/trappy666/status/550747387854352385

Here are some things to read if you find time between your Black Friday hangover and your Panic Saturday, er, panicking.

→ Campaigns and drives and themed days/weeks/months tend to leave us cold, especially when they’re commercially driven, but Try January is actually a pretty clever, positive response to the health lobby’s long-running Dry January: ‘The Try January campaign aims to challenge people to simply try something new at their local. To step out of their comfort zone and, rather than ordering their ‘usual’ to go for something that they haven’t tried before.’

→ Ron Pattinson and Kristen England are really motoring through the 1938 Starkey, Knight & Ford brewing log and this week provided a home brewing recipe for a 1938 SK&F ‘Family Ale’.

→ Breandán Kearney at Belgian Smaak interviewed Michaël Hulet of Belgium’s Slow Beer Club to find out more about their offbeat, family-friendly beer festival, Festibière:

There was a big room for children with lots of toys, games and colouring books. The Kids Zone was supervised by local scouts and they even did some Halloween DIY. There was also a quiet place for breast-feeding women and young parents with babies. Next year we will have even more activities for children. On Sunday there was a demo and competition of the ‘mijole’ game, a classic wooden game played in Belgian ‘estaminets’ or small cafés decades ago. It was funny to see adults playing like children!

Here are some links to enjoy with your breakfast, or perhaps when you’re sat in a pub this afternoon surrounded by shopping bags, shaking and pale, vowing never to leave your Christmas shopping this late again.

→ Joe Stange’s survey of Bamberg’s breweries and pubs for All About Beer is an evocative piece of travel writing and a useful practical guide for first-time visitors. One to save for future reference.

→ In case you missed it, the Wetherspoon chain and Heineken are having a falling out, ostensibly over supply to a pub in growing JDW’s Irish estate. (Commentary from Tandleman here.)