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my occasional rants and raves about what is going on in the industry.
Though I don’t like the aggressive tone of the article name, the STORY within from Splinter News is something that needs to be looked at and then dealt with.
Does there need to be an industry wide standard? Is there a safety net (literally) that could be created by pooling resources? And can something be done without jeopardizing the jobs (whatever their worth) that have been created?
Lots of thought points to measure.
I am a bit nerdy in liking the economic side of #independent beer so when I saw this infographic regarding Pliny the Younger’s 2018 release, I had to dig in.
What caught my eye was that 40 states were represented and 17 countries. That is amazing in a day and age when hazy IPA can releases rule the day. I would have thought that the bloom is off the rose but the stats say otherwise.
It seems that states are having to take the environmental lead in this day and age and that continues as the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative with seven Oregon breweries will begin testing a reusable beer bottle program.
The Oregon Bottle Bill is already a strong program but this adds another layer that other states will need to catch-up with. New, stronger bottles are being made of (you, guessed it) old recycled bottles.
American Craft Beer Week starts tomorrow!
I tell fans of #independent beer to make a point of visiting one brewery and one quality beer bar during the week. You can hit up the website HERE, to find specific events in your area.
New hops have a long lead time and we usually encounter them in number form first before they get their “trade” name.
Here are some hops that are coming to a beer near you either sooner (but more likely, later)….
Sabro f/k/a HBC 438 tropical
Gaia spicy
Boomerang spicy and citrusy
Others coming are Country and Jazz (Czech), Godiva (from England), Strata (from Oregon) and Zappa (from Washington).
Thanks to Appellation Beer and their hop updates!
The World Beer Cup returned and SoCal and the rest of California showed up well. Focusing in on my neck of the extended woods.
The two big, big winners were (and this will shock no one) Beachwood and their growing empire and Firestone Walker. Beachwood picked up (3) silvers and a bronze locking down the coffee categories with Pablo Escobeer and Mocha Machine. FW was really golden with wins for DBA, C-Hops Pale Ale and STiVO Kellerbier along with silver fro Krieky Bones.
MacLeod has had a good awards season so far in 2018 and that continued with Van Ice picking up silver in the light lager category. Speaking of streaks, Figueroa Mountain also scored a brace of awards for their dunkel and Oatmeal stout.
Notable in Orange County was both Green Cheek and Noble Ale Works winning in the IPA and Imperial IPA categories respectively and newcomer Brewery Rex getting the bronze for their Raspberry Rickey in the Berliner Weisse group.
Congratulations to the winners!
This week, specfically this Tuesday, you can get your tickets to THE California beer festival….
Head HERE to get your tickets to travel the state in #independent beer without traveling from Yreka to Calexico.
In what could be filed under belated, the Brewers Association has hired Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham to be the first diversity ambassador.
Per the press release, “Jackson-Beckham, an assistant professor of communication studies at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, will work closely with the BA’s Diversity Committee, which was established during last year’s Craft Brewers Conference in Washington, D.C.”
Jackson-Beckham has written a book about this very topic: Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer which should help her as she travels the country talking to member breweries and brewers guilds. Another plus is that she is an avid homebrewer as well.
I will certainly be on the look-out for her work and I hope to be in attendance when she next speaks in Los Angeles. Hopefully this will herald a change that will be beneficial long term.
You can read more HERE.
Being a regular library user, I would welcome the chance to check out both the physical and on-line collections regarding craft beer.
The California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM) has been collecting “beer paraphernalia tracing the history of craft breweries in San Diego.”
Dubbed the Brewchive, it “is a new project from the university’s library. According to CSUSM Special Collections and History Librarian Judith Downie, the collection dates back to the late 1980s, about the time that the craft brewing scene first started to gain steam in the San Diego area. Around 30 years ago there were maybe five or six craft breweries in the county; today there are 156.”
Now that L.A. has a nice amount of breweries and a little bit of history behind it, the CalState system might want to look into expanding north and to Central Coast and Bay Area too. It will be much easier to find documents, coasters, recipes and the like
Another casualty of the phasing out of print has hit the beer world. The Celebrator Beer News is now moving online only. The paper nudged over the 30-year line but that was the end of the run.
A combination of advertising deficits and the shift to reading from tablets and phones did the brewspaper in. This development has probably pushed publisher Tom Dalldorf to do what perhaps should have been done years ago, positioning the website as the main portal and adding more timely stories while keeping brewery information more up to date. A mobile app has been floated as a possibility as well, which I am all for as well.
Back in the “olden” days. The Celebrator was my window to the beer scene of the nation. Each of the correspondents had a distinct writing style and it was fun to read the stories of beer dinners and festivals in other states and around the world. It was also a bit maddening that it was always behind a couple of months. Now that the focus is on the site, I will be certainly reading it more frequently for beer updates. And I think it will free up the correspondents to write more pro-active pieces.
As I said in a Facebook comment, I hope this is just the closing of a chapter and not the book.