Category: Beer Industry

my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.

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Pop Goes the Hop

Washington’s  Yakima Chief Hops (YCH) has a new frozen innovation for breweries “called Cryo Pop™ Original Blend. Since helping to pioneer and launch their advanced product line, Cryo Hops® four years ago YCH has learned a lot, this new hop blend uses groundbreaking research to solve the common brewing problem of how to carry raw hop aroma into finished beers.”

Quite a few acronyms later, YCH describes how their lab testing got them to this new product, “The data is utilized to engineer a hop pellet that contains high concentrations of the most beer-soluble compounds, or compounds that survive the brewing process. The result is a supercharged pellet that provides brewers with a dynamic solution for juicy, fruit-forward, highly aromatic applications, showing massive tropical, stone fruit, and citrus aromas.”

Now we wait to taste IPA’s that pop.

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Act Better

Many have dived in over the past week with their take on the unsurprising stories that have come to light via Brienne Allan (@ratmagnet) about horrible treatment of women in the beer and beverage world.

I add my voice to the strident calls for this shit to stop. First stop for anyone is to check out Women of the Bevolution. It lays out what is happening with clarity and without rancor (though frankly it would be deserved).

Second, look into your behavior, men. When have you been an ass, when have you not spoken up in defense, when have you treated people poorly based strictly on gender?

Then, third, what are you going to change? The world is tentatively opening up again which means that more interactions will occur. Will you be better the next time you step into a tap room?

Lastly, encourage those with stories to tell them. One of the most frightening aspects of this sorry situation is that men are not only aggressing but then scaring women into silence. The more the stories circulate, the higher the possibility that consequences will arise.

We can do better. Treat people with kindness, it isn’t that hard.

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Active

As I have shown in the past, I am up for experimentation in beer making and beer trying. So, if I see a can of Lion’s Mane Lager from the kombucha makers Flying Embers, I would certainly taste it. But I am wary soul as well so I see the adjectives “organic” and “super” in front of the words ingredients and I see puffery.

There is every possibility that you can make a healthy lager but it has yet to really happen without sacrificing the essential beer-iness. Maybe this beer will crack that code.

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Come on Down, You are the Next Contestant on the Hop is Right!

First, I want you to hop (sorry) over to the Beervana Blog and read this POST and don’t give me any TL:DR guff.

OK, now that you are back, there are two golden nuggets in that piece. First is that a hop can have rum and caramel and banana notes. That is mind blowing. And second, is that a brewery can sponsor an up and possibly coming hop in exchange for dibs on the crop.

And the big takeaway that I want most beer fans to keep in mind is how veeerrrryyy long it takes for a seedling to be an actual crop. Hats off to the potent combo of science and farming that can do it that quickly while satisfying IPA fiends.

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To the Moon

There are not a lot of strawberry beets out there and I can’t imagine that there are many strawberry IPA’s out there that are actually IPA but come April you will have Moon Boots IPA.

This is a partnership between 21st Amendment Brewing with the Pink Boots Society.

With this spring release, the brewery will be sponsoring 4 Pink Boots scholarships:

(1) Women in Leadership Certificate scholarship with eCornell University at $3,800
(3) Level Two Cicerone Course + Exam scholarships for Pink Boots members at $400 per recipient.

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You “Can” Recycle

One side effect of buying pretty much nothing but 4-packs is that you create quite the colorful collection of snap-tight plastic can holders. Maybe you have been recycling them but another way to help the green new deal is to return them to a brewery. Boomtown recently messaged how they would take them and I have seen that Common Space has a collection box too. Call or message first for other breweries but let’s all pitch in.

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CA Craft Beer Week Kick-Off

CA Craft Beer Week started on Friday with a load of virtual speakers plus cheese! Here are my takeaways from the evening….

Philly Beer Week inspired SF Beer Week which is now (at least this year), CA Craft Beer Week

Greg Koch thought that Stone Brewing had started too late. He also boldly declared that craft beer has “won” which he is both right and wrong about and ended his portion of the night talking about how there is so much happening now in craft beer.

Next up was David Walker who spoke about craft brewers as tinkerers and how California really brought hops back into the conversation. He said we all will still be chasing the perfect beer and that we need to keep curiosity as a tool in our brewing tool box.

Next was a three-way discussion of hops from North Park Brewing, Silva Brewing and Cellarmaker. What caught my attention were a few comments about how yeast had been somewhat forgotten about in early IPA’s and now has garnered probably too much credit especially when you take into consideration that some customers order IPA’s based on the featured hop.

I also like the idea of a blind tasting that has three Hazies and three West Coast IPA’s. It is something new that the Hop Grenade bar has done that should be replicated to see which style I should favored.

The last session that I watched was the beer and cheese pairing. Learned a golden rule to have a sip of beer first, then the cheese. Also that contrast is usually best with this type of pairing but if you have a really bold beer that a striking cheese can work.

Happy Valentine’s Day and enjoy the beer week.

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Beer! A Love Story

If you have watched everything on Netflix, HBO to the Max, D+, and you need something new to watch, well you are in luck because Beer! is available to stream.

Here is the elevator pitch, “There’s no other film like BEER! A Love Story. This full-length feature documentary weaves together the stories of over 30 international protagonists across multiple countries who speak the universal language of beer, the world’s most consumed fermented beverage.”

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Malt via NAGBW

Already in 2021, I have improved on past performance by listening to another North American Guild of Beer Writers Zoom. This time about malt. Here are some two row bites of info….

  • Instead of thinking solely of a supply chain, think about the Value Chain
  • barley farming has a steep learning curve
  • only around 120 craft maltsters in the US
  • terroir of malt has not really been studied yet
  • malt has not been bred for flavor to hit attributes that a brewer has designed
  • brewers used to be their own malt suppliers
  • look out for different killing methods such as wind dried
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New from the White Labs Vault

It is common to see posts about new hop varietals on this blog. Sometimes malt gets a high five but yeast and water rarely factor in despite their massive importance which is why I though this Instagram post from White Labs was cool…

WLP631 is in town. There’s probably won’t be any beers promoting that title on a label but it is important to see yeast terroir in action. Maybe there will be a Great Lakes Tart yeast or Big City SoCal version. The fact that science can cut these up into distinct little products is great because each time we gain a little more understanding of beer.