Category: News from Other Beer Writers

Suggested websites to visit to further your beer education.

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Beer Blogger Conference – I’ve signed up!

After a two year hiatus, I am once again scheduled to appear (as myself) at the 2014 Beer Blogger Conference.

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Not the Dublin one (though that would be nice) but at the much closer to my home base of Los Angeles American version in San Diego.  I had a grand time at the 1st conference in Boulder and the 2nd in Portland and I certainly wished I could have gone to the Boston and Indianapolis ones.  On a side note, I wish Asheville would host or Chicago.

The link above give you reasons why you should attend.  A) for $95 you would be hard pressed to find a conference that has that low of an admission fee and B) It gets you out of your chair and face to face with people with familiar and new faces.  For those who don’t go out, faces are on people when you talk to them in close proximity.

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on the next L.A. Beer Bloggers…..

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Beer Bloggers, meet Ensenada Brewing Co.  Food Bloggers meet Colonia Taco Lounge.

Join us on Saturday, November 16, 2013 from 12 P.M. to 3:00 P.M. as we welcome Ensenada Brewing Co.  Cerveza Artesanal (craft beer) from Ensenada, Baja California – Mexico. Rep from this brewery will be present 3 of their beers and discuss the rise of craft beer in Mexico.

Red Agave IPA – 6.8% ABV

Smoked Piloncillo Porter – 6.0% ABV

Horchata Obscura – 6.0% ABV

What better way to combine the exquisite selection of Ensenada Brews, than pairing them with tacos? Not just any ordinary tacos, but the savory eats of renowed Angelino chef Ricardo Diaz. The mastermind behind Cooks Tortas, Guisados,  Bizarra Capital and now the newly opened Colonia Taco Lounge.  Chef Ricardo Diaz recognizes the importance of pairing his menu with artisan craft beer and employs a selection of taps that range between local beer, as well as imports at both Bizarra and Colonia.

What: LABB Summit No. 8 featuring Colonia Taco Lounge and Ensenada Brewing Co.

When: November 16, 2013 – 12PM to 3PM

Where: Colonia Taco Lounge: 1234 Valley Blvd., La Puente, CA 91739

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Session # 81

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“Women and Beer: Scary Beer Feminists or a Healthy Growing Demographic?”

Tasting Nitch has come up with a great topic for healthy debate in this month’s session:

In a nutshell, “As the saintly Mr. M. Jackson created ‘beer culture’ by focusing on the people behind brewing, let us too take one blog post to contemplate the cultural shift that gender is taking in the beer world.”

The first two words that I thought of when I read the topic, “carrots and sticks.”  It is a quaint way to start an economic or political conversation on how to change the behavior of a group of people.  But I think it is valid here as well.

Because it is obvious that women and minorities are under represented in craft brewing in both the brewing and drinking parts of the equation.  So, how do we go about shifting the balance?

Bear in mind, this is coming from a male perspective, so you may want to weigh more heavily the female voices who respond to this session.  But I think change begins with more women in the brewing community.  The world of craft beer is predicated on choice but in the case of what women want, that choice may be constrained because some styles are not brewed in enough quantity by people who can truly empathize with that under served market.

I don’t believe that men and women are drastically different in taste perceptions but I think we do pick up different aromas and flavors.  Then how do you deliver to that market? And no knock on male brewers, but they simply may not be able to bridge that particular divide with their recipes.  Whereas, someone of the other gender may be able to.

With that thesis in mind, how do we get more women brewing? I don’t think a still fairly young industry needs the “Stick”, but some “carrots” would make sense.  I think brewers guilds on the state and national level should be allied with the Pink Boots Society to create a superfund that pays a portion of the salary of female brewers hired by breweries.  To induce breweries into hiring more women, as not only brewers but as cellarpeople, QC and in scientific positions too.

Then once that happens, it us up to all of us in the craft beer fan community to at the very least sample what comes out of those taps.  If we continue to drink a duo-culture of IPA’s and Imperial Stouts, then we will narrow our options by sheer force of economics.

Then bloggers like us need to write about the beer and the brewers behind them to create some momentum going forward so that more women will see brewing as a viable career path.

I hope that the ratios of men to women in this industry get closer so that more and different beer can hit the market.  Without that first step of getting more women mashing in, the last two (easier and more fun) steps will just be so much spinning of wheels because if the female brewed beer can’t be found, then people will become frustrated and stop looking for it.

Or you could just follow this depressing link.

 

 

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Beer Blog Shout Out!

Though I eschew the Friend Friday thing on Twitter, I do occasionally send a shout out to a fellow beer blogger who I think more people should read.  The BSP Bump (Don’t sue me Colbert).

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So, if you would like to add some French flair to your blogroll, check out the Tasting Nitch website to get a view on beer that is refreshing and fun.

And it has thought bubbles in the photos which I think is cool.

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Session # 80

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From Derek Harrison’s Beer Blog, It’s Not Just the Alcohol Talking, we get another hot topic in the beer world. Will the bubble deflate or is their a bubble at all. The bubble not being housing or internet stocks but our beloved craft beer. From checking out Harrison’s blog and reading his post for Session # 79, it should be a well moderated debate and not just provocative for the pleasure some take in “keepin’ it real.”

Here is the assignment:

Session #80 – Is Craft Beer a Bubble?

It’s a good time to be in the craft beer industry. The big brewers are watching their market share get chipped away by the purveyors of well-made lagers and ales. Craft breweries are popping up like weeds.

This growth begs the question: is craft beer a bubble? Many in the industry are starting to wonder when, and more importantly how, the growth is going to stop. Is craft beer going to reach equilibrium and stabilize, or is the bubble just going to keep growing until it bursts?

You hear the tone and see the head shake and you know you are in the presence of a fatalist. We have all run into the guy who says that we have too many breweries. It is unsustainable for the customer base. So on, ad infinitum.  Why would someone be negative when we are living in a golden age of great beer?

Me, I see the pint glass as more than half full though. I am not so naive as to expect double digit growth forever, in fact, I expect a shakeout or two in the next few years but nothing on the scale of the microbrewery implosion that we have already bounced back from remarkably.

I base my non bursting bubble assumption on the fact that there are states in America still playing catch up to craft beer and many countries around the world yet to enter the game too.

The southern states are just now easing laws on brewing. Texas is a big and only partially tapped market. Same with my current city, Los Angeles. We are just now getting a head of steam going in the new brewery department. There is room to grow.  It may not be in markets like Portland or Denver but even those cities are creating more beer each year.

Spain, Greece and the Scandanavian countries could easily enter the game as well. Not to mention China and its current wine buying binge that could translate into beer too. Just think if it became cool in China to buy up Black Tuesday from The Bruery.  It might end of up $100 a bottle.

Another aspect that craft beer has going for it is that the customer base is strong, vocal and entrenched. Poor quality beer will not be bought out of pity, so some places will have to change or go bye-bye. Just like in any niche market And it means, also, that current craft consumers ain’t gonna buy Bud-Miller-Coors ever again.  So even if the momentum completely shudders to a stop everywhere and at once, we will be in a 10% to 15% craft market depending on which stats you want to believe.

And some pundits may mark a certain percentage as the end of the line or the bottlecap ceiling but that says they can tell you that the market will top off at point A is only making a guess.  Whose to say that the market isn’t 25% or 30%?  I see the Big Brewers losing market share and I don’t see them making craft beer so I see potential in the 85% of America that doesn’t buy it yet.  I was just at a bar in North Hollywood that has a good set of regular non-rotating handles.  They do occasional special nights but nothing fancy to make a beer snobs heart pitter patter.  But two of the bartenders admitted that they drank crap before and that they can’t now.  These little leaks of customers will continue as far as I can see.

In the end my slightly educated guess is that craft beer will keep growing.

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Session # 78

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This month we have a writing “test” from BeerBarBand….

What better way to test our writing skills and remind ourselves of why we do this than to post your elevator pitch for beer.

“Elevator pitch” is a term used by marketers, sales people, film/tv makers and the like. It’s the delivery of a short but powerful summary that will sell their idea or concept to the listener in one swift hit.

Here’s the scenario:

You walk into an elevator and hit the button for your destination level. Already in the elevator is someone holding a beer…and it’s a beer that annoys you because, in your view, it represents all that is bad with the current state of beer.

You can’t help but say something, so you confront your lift passenger with the reason why their beer choice is bad.

30 seconds is all you have to sell your pitch for better beer, before the lift reaches the destination floor. There’s no time, space or words to waste. You must capture and persuade the person’s attention as quickly as possible. When that person walks out of the elevator, you want them to be convinced that you have the right angle on how to make a better beer world.

Here’s the rules:

  1. In less than 250 words or 30 seconds of multimedia content, write/record/create your elevator pitch for beer in which you argue you case, hoping to covert the listener to your beer cause.

So here goes……

Tell me about your thought process when you purchased the beer that is in your hand.  When you were staring at the shelves of beer choices, what was it about that particular beer that called to you? I ask because if you deliberately chose that beer, I want to know why. I will understand if faced with the dizzying array of craft available you are overwhelmed or if you are “slumming”.  But I want to know, if you know, about all the choices you have. 

Because you do have choice, you could drink a different beer every day for a year and still have some new beers to try in the next (and the next after).  And choice is good, it means that there are no excuses to NOT have a craft beer. 

You CANNOT say that you don’t like craft beer.  You CAN say that you have not found one you like but that means that you are wasting time with that one in your hand. You CANNOT say that you can’t find good beer.  It has invaded every town and city.  You just wanted to grab the closest or cheapest. 

Would you eat the same meal, night after night? Even the most lazy among us don’t do that. But it is what you are doing by buying that one beer over and over.

Once this elevator door opens, I want you to do some homework and find a better beer.  Craft beer is waiting for you.

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Session # 77

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Justin’s Brew Review is the host for the July edition of The Session and he turns the focus to the India Pale Ale….

“For quite some time now, I’ve been wondering what makes the India Pale Ale (IPA) style of beer so popular. Don’t get me wrong–I thoroughly enjoy it and gladly participate in #IPADay. I’m just wondering, why all the hype? What is it about an IPA that makes craft beer enthusiasts (CBE) go wild? Is it because CBEs want to differentiate craft beer from crap beer? I don’t care if a watered-down pilsener is labeled as “triple-hops brewed”; it wouldn’t satisfy someone looking for an IPA.”

At a recent craft beer event that paired brewers with coffee roasters, I had the honor of pouring for Eagle Rock Brewery. Their special coffee tap was called Panama Pale Ale, a Panamanian coffee infused Rye IPA. Call it PPA for short.

By my standards it was not too bitter. More coffee and rye than hops and quite tasty with a lovely coffee bean aroma. And it was one of the more popular beers if the people I was pouring for were to be believed.

So, even at a coffee-centric beer event, an IPA took center stage.

I can see why amber beers were popular once upon a time when it was still called micro-brews.  They appealed to a bigger percentage of our small craft beer population.  They are usually not over the top in terms of ABV or IBU.  They showcase malt and thus have a little more sweetness (and we know Americans like their sweets).  They are certainly closer, taste-wise to the lagers that most people know than an IPA ever will be.

It is amazing how fast that the India Pale Ale has grabbed the spotlight in the world of craft beer despite what I would consider pretty major hindrances to that happening:

1.       Bitterness is considered by the palate as a bad sign.
2.       And even if that is not an impediment, some IPA’s still destroy seasoned hopheads palates
3.       Hops (especially popular varieties) can be hard to come by and expensive.
4.       The market for IPA’s is now extra crowded.
5.       May require extra equipment to dry hop.
6.       Really need to be drunk fresh.
7.       Sometimes confusing names like Black IPA or White IPA
8.       Sometimes confusing IBU levels.  A DIPA from one brewery may be a regular IPA to another.

Then add to the mix all the history behind how the IPA “style” became what it is today plus account for all the tiny to large regional American differences, and the rise of the IPA is even more amazing.

And I have no idea why it took off so much except for some half-baked theories:

1. I have heard from many brewery folk that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was a formative beer in their appreciation of craft beer. Maybe that is a root cause for the love of IPA’s.

2. IPA’s are the IBU opposite of the BMC industrial water lagers and doing the opposite of what the big 3 did is not to be underestimated as a reason.

3. America has developed a taste for different coffee’s (some quite bitter) so an appreciation of bitter IPA’s may be a side effect of that revolution.

My hope is that the brewers and drinkers don’t just lock onto mega hop bombs and search out XPA’s and dry hopped pilsners and pale ales that are actually hopped like a pale ale. Because a world with only arrogant palate wrecking bastards is only slightly better than a world with watery lagers.

Thankfully, barrel aged beers seem to be balancing out the craft beer scales amongst beer geeks, so I am not overly worried of an IPA take-over but I do wish there were more cask ales and Czech style pilsners out there and if I get a second wish, I certainly hope to see more non-IPA best sellers.  I will always see Fat Tire as the New Belgium flagship.  No matter how good Ranger is.

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Session # 76

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Here is the June topic from Beer is your Friend:

“I want you to write me a blog post on the subject of compulsion as it relates to beer. The idea for this Session topic partially arose from the Beer Audit session Adam at Pints and Pubs hosted a few months ago. In my effort and those of a few other bloggers, idea of buying more beer than we need was touched on. Writing about buying heaps of beer got me thinking about just what it is that compels me to keep buying beer.

Like most beer fans, I tend to buy way more beer than I can drink. I can have a fridge full, plus a few boxes of bottles, plus homebrew and still I’ll walk into a shop and buy some more. Or order some more online. Or do both in the space of a few days.

Why do we do stuff like this? Obviously we’re not just buying stuff to drink because, if we were, wouldn’t we just wait until we were running low and then stock up? What so many of us do is stock up, even though we’re already stocked up. Perhaps we’re expecting the zombie apocalypse to happen soon and don’t want to go through that sober.

Is buying heaps of beer something you worry about? Do you look at your Aladdin’s Cave of beer and feel even a smidge of guilt about how much it all cost you? Or do you just rub your hands together, cackle with glee and say ‘‘it’s mine! All mine!’’.

What lengths do you go to to hide this compulsion? For instance, do you try and sneak beer into the house so your other half doesn’t see it? (Not saying that I’ve done this. Oh, okay, I have done this).

Before my wife and I moved to our current abode, I could not seriously collect beer. Our old and strangely green ‘fridge was too small and constantly needed to be de-iced. And due to the omnipresent heat in Los Angeles and a lack of a cool, dark cellaring area, all I could “hoard” was five to six bottles at any one time.

But did that hinder my buying? Not a bit. There was still plenty of sticker shock when the credit card bill came once a month. I would buy a bomber – drink a bomber. Or in accounting terminology, first in – first out.

But despite the lack of storage and with no rich uncle or aunt, I still kept shopping and buying a tenth of what I wanted in my cart. So you can imagine that once I had a bigger ‘fridge with a dedicated beer spot and a small plot of land in the garage for a cellar, that the acquisition pace would accelerate.

And it did. Partially due to the fact that L.A. started to provide more beer shoppes for me to frequent. But until this topic cropped up, I hadn’t really thought of the why behind the drive to purchase.
I could go with the Everest-ian excuse of “Because, it’s there.” But practically any book, movie and/or piece of Trailblazer basketball memorabilia is available at the drop of a hat thanks to the non-stop shop that is the interwebs. And it is not that I have lost all control and buy stuff by the case. I hunt and peck and price compare where I can and get single bottles (or cans) instead of full sixers. If your bottle is over $15, then I think long and hard before it goes into my shopping cart.

I am also not “hoarding” in the classic sense. Yes, there are untouchable bottles in my cellar but that is primarily because I only have one bottle of a rare item. If a beer geek came over and demanded to open one, I probably would with some hesitation.
So what psychological desire is compelling me to always check the beer aisle at Whole Foods or Trader Joes. And what I keep coming back to is that I really enjoy the thrill of finding that new beer or that beer that I have heard about but not tasted or to see a beer that is newly distributed in SoCal. There is a hit of excitement each time I smile and pick up a craft beer.

And the only thing more potent than that initial rush is when the cap is pried off or the cork popped and that first aroma drifts upward.