More on Mexico; A Lupulin Powder Blind Tasting

We have a new podcast for your listening pleasure. The main subject is Mexican craft beer, featuring an interview with Enrique Aceves-Vincent Ramirez of  Guadalajara’s Loba Brewing. We talk about the Mexican market, what it's like getting started there, and where things may be headed. A great primer for those of you interested in our southern neighbor.

Also on that podcast, a follow-up on my experiment with lupulin powder. (Manufacturer description: "the concentrated lupulin of whole-leaf hops containing resins and aromatic oils.") Recall that I received a package of a new product from YCH Hops--now apparently available for purchase--and used them in a batch of homebrew. Patrick and I had just brewed a pale ale when the package of Simcoe lupulin powder arrived, so I dry-hopped half the batch with that product, and half the batch with standard Simcoes.

I poured the two beers and had Patrick--who hadn't had a chance to taste them yet--taste them blind. That segment of the podcast has at least two surprises. I will of course leave it to you to listen and find out what they were. (I'm trying to get better at teasing this stuff!) It's actually a follow up to a different podcast, in which we visited Imperial Yeast. They gave us their "Dry Hop" blend to try, and it produced the sludgy look of a New England IPA all the geeks are excited about. We reflect a bit on that, too.

Give it a listen (it's available on iTunes and Google Play as well):

Understanding Hop Aromas and Flavors

We have a very special episode of the Beervana Podcast for you this week, and I want to tease it by quoting from a section of the interview. Patrick and I visited the labs and brewery of Tom Shellhammer, who is a professor of fermentation science at Oregon State University and one of the world's leading hops researchers. Before we did the interview, he took us around his labs, stopping at one point in front of stacks of small bottles containing aroma compounds found in hops. He uses these in classwork as a way of giving students a pure, condensed version of these aromas. We took a whiff of the "stone fruit" and "catty" bottles.

As we spoke about the catty scent, Tom referenced a class of compounds that have started to get more attention--thiols. These are sulfur-containing aroma compounds in hop oil that are responsible for both the deeply tropical aromas in many recent hop varieties, but also aromas some of us find objectionable (sweat, onion, garlic). Here's Tom, in a quick-and-dirty transcript from the podcast:

Thiols are a class of chemical compounds that have sulfur in them. So that sulfur part is what makes the compound a thiol. Not that all sulfur compounds are thiols, but a thiol has sulfur in it; that's the key component to that. Myrcene and linalool don't have sulfur in them. Myrcene is a hydrocarbon. [Describes the chemical structure.] Linalool is an oxygenated version of that, so it's got an oxygen component in it that does things to its functionality and its solubility. Hydrocarbons as a class tend to be more woodsy, herbal, and somewhat floral. They oxygenated versions of these things like linalool and geraniol tend to be floral and fruity. And then we move to this thiol class.

The hydrocarbons make up to 75 to 90% of the hop oil, the oxygenated fraction makes up almost the rest, and then less than 1% are these sulfur compounds. Tiny, tiny amount. But the thing about them that make them so important is the aroma-detection thresholds of these things are three to four, maybe five, orders of magnitude lower than these other compounds. With myrcene, you need about 300-500 parts per billion. Sounds like a small amount, but not quite a part per million. And the thiols, their aroma thresholds are parts per trillion. A little goes a long way with a thiol.

The thiol compounds can be stinky like onions and garlic but they can also be potent tropical fruity, citrusy, but also animal-y, stinky, sweaty/BO. 

One of the reasons some people absolutely love hops like Summit and Nelson Sauvin is because they're getting the fruit. But I am apparently hyper-sensitive to thiols, and I get the onion and sweat.

This podcast, I'm pleased to say, is filled with gems like this. (It's part one of our visit down there. Next week we go to the test brewery at OSU and join the head brewer there, Jeff Clawson. Hop talk continues as we sample beer students made in the brewery.)  Definitely give it a listen:


Finally, if this all seems irresistible to you (and how can it not??), Tom and Jeff Clawson are leading a two-day course in Portland for those of you who'd like access to some of the content he presents in his coursework, but who don't have the time or money to take a class in Corvallis.

Our Origins of Beer Flavors and Styles workshop is an experiential sensory course that will guide you through the brewing process from raw materials to finished beer. Through hands-on instruction, participants will learn how the main raw materials used in brewing process (malt, water, hops, and yeast) impact beer flavor and aroma. Participants will work through standards and exercises with the goal of highlighting how each of these materials impacts beer flavor. Guiding tastings, focused with a historical lens, will also walk participants through on how these raw materials have impacted beer styles historically overtime. Over this two-day course, participants will evaluate 8 beer styles and over 35 beers.

Friday, March 17 - Saturday, March 18, 2017

If memory serves, a part of the class will involve those little glass vials of hop aromas. Soon you, too, will be able to distinguish thiols, hydrocarbons, and oxygenated hydrocarbons from one another. Follow this link to register.

Four Interesting Items

Any one of these could be a full, hearty entree, but I think they'll do even better as small plates. See what you think.

My Sponsor Comes to America

For the past year, I've been delighted to welcome Guinness as a sponsor on this blog--this week we learned we could welcome them back to the US as well:

Diageo today announced its intention to build a US version of Dublin’s popular Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore County, Maryland. As currently planned, the company would build a mid-sized Guinness brewery and a Guinness visitor experience with an innovation microbrewery at the company’s existing Relay, Maryland site. This new brewing capability and consumer experience, combined with a packaging and warehousing operation, would bring the company’s investment in Relay to approximately $50 million. The new brewery would be a home for new Guinness beers created for the US market, while the iconic Guinness Stouts will continue to be brewed at St. James’s Gate in Dublin, Ireland. 

This is not the first time Guinness has come to America, but the previous experiment ended after just six years. The current effort looks like a more ambitious and risky project. Diageo has been trying to figure out for years how to use the Guinness brand as an entry point into the craft market, with notably mixed success. The challenge for any giant brewery with such a strong brand presence is figuring out 1) how to expand without weakening the core product's position, while 2) convincingly appealing to customers in an entirely new segment. Most of the big breweries have concluded it can't be done, so they've followed AB InBev's strategy of just buying breweries in the craft segment. Can Diageo convince people that Guinness means both Irish stout and fullsome, tasty craft beer? Big gamble.

October Debuts
Speaking of arrivals, we have a new entry into the pretty-darn-crowded world of beer chatter.

Today, Pitchfork is proud to announce the launch of October, a digital publication focused on beer with an editorial perspective that speaks to a new generation of beer drinkers. A destination for devotees and novices alike to read about, learn about, and share their appreciation for beer and celebrate the culture around it. The site is being launched in partnership with ZX Ventures, AB InBev’s incubator and venture capital fund that focuses on increasing awareness and excitement around beer and brewing culture.

The tie to ABI caused some sniping on social media, but the project is incredibly transparent. Read a little further and you learn that October is "overseen by Pitchfork’s creative studio and in collaboration with Michael Kiser of Good Beer Hunting, Eno Sarris of BeerGraphs." So far I don't see much that distinguishes the content from any other beer magazine. Kiser even has a think-piece up about where the Budweiser brand sits in the modern beer landscape, a perfect example of the way he brings insight and value to the conversation--while at the same time leaving that question of relationships with funders wide open. Still, the one knock I have on October so far is that it doesn't really seem to have a clear raison d’être that distinguishes it from, say Draft or All About Beer. Indeed, Good Beer Hunting seems to have carved out a clearer viewpoint.

New Branding
Two Oregon breweries sent me emails announcing new branding today, and they are both market improvements. I pass them along as an example of the way breweries are responding to a tightening market. In a world of jillions of brands, you can't have stale or bad packaging around. Rogue, which updates its flagship, had the former and Cascade the latter. Here's Dead Guy:

And the new Cascade.

Yeast and the New England IPA
Finally, because I'm a completist, I want to direct you to the latest Beervana Podcast, and not just out of pure self-interest. Over the past year, we have discussed on these pages and elsewhere the nature of the New England IPA. Yesterday, Patrick and I paid a visit to the Imperial Yeast labs and did a pod with the three principals there. During the course of our interview, Owen Lingley discussed this beer style (they're getting a lot of questions about it from customers) and issued a rather bold, declarative position on the style as involves yeast. You will want to listen to hear his views--and learn all about yeast, which is a subject many of us wish we knew more about.




Happy weekend, you all--

Winner-Take-All Markets

One of the pleasures of doing a podcast with an economist is that occasionally he surprises you. We have long planned to do an episode on the the value of superstar brewers--those folks who have created some of the indelible beers that sell hundreds of thousands of barrels of beer each year. We used local legend John Harris as our example, who brewed some of the first beers at the McMenamins empire, then the classic line at Deschutes, went on to elevate Full Sail, and finally founded his own brewery Ecliptic. How would we calculate his value?

That's an interesting question on its face, but Patrick introduced me to a fascinating concept through which to look at this question: winner-take-all markets. These are situations in which the money flows disproportionately to the winners. Patrick gave a couple of examples, starting with sports. You have thousands of exceptional athletes playing at the collegiate level, but only several hundred playing in the NBA. The talent difference between an excellent college player and a great is slight, but the rewards are gigantic. In music we see a similar phenomenon; artists like Adele earn tens of millions while working bands have to drag their equipment around the countryside to scrape out a living.

In beer, there's a similar phenomenon. Even within craft, the top six percent of breweries make 84% of the beer (The overall beer market is even more top-heavy.)  So the question: is beer a winner-take-all-market? The question of the brewer's value is a subsequent one, and also fascinating. I didn't have a whole lot to do with making this conversation interesting, but interesting it was. To learn the answers, of course, you have to listen to the pod (find on iTunes and Google Play as well). We also do a bit of year-end wrap-up and start-of-the-year forecasting.




Incidentally, we refer to a video clip in the podcast in which John recounts his start as a brewer. It was filmed at the celebration of his 30 years as a brewer last spring, and if you freeze frame the picture during the cheers at the end, you'll see some of the working brewers John inspired. And as a charming bonus, the young woman behind him is his daughter.

Dancing at the Margins of Ignorance

Every job has its plusses and minuses. I usually joke that everything about writing is great except the salary, but there's actually another downside that freaks me out nearly as much. A reasonable working definition could be: "writing about things you don't understand." The next story is always something intriguing, something you'd like to explore further. That generally means wandering off into some subject on which you have tenuous grasp. Knowing, of course, that the successful outcome of this little foray is an article that will go out to many people who know more than you do on the subject. (Along with, thankfully, many who know less. Blessed are the uninitiated, for they do leave angry comments.)

We have come to a phase in the realm of beer where interest is highest in the business rather than the product. Thanks to eye-popping numbers, intervention by multinational corporations, rivalries and sniping, the business of selling beer now entertains us much as the drinking of it. Well, at least where blog posts are concerned.

This is all well and good except the part where I know nothing about it. I have spent many hours doing things that make me feel incompetent: trying to translate old foreign-language texts, slogging through technical science papers, navigating the absurd address in the UK (Hook Norton's address, for example, consists of "Brewery Lane" and nothing more), attempting to understand weissbier mashing regimes, but in no area was I more unprepared than business.

I have never worked a day in a business that had more than ten employees. I've been self-employed (several times), worked at universities (lots), and done odd jobs for small businesses (a long time ago). I studied religion and developed an active allergy to corporate life. None of that was a good preparation for writing about beer, a big part of which is always a story about business. If you refuse to engage the business elements of brewing, you are basically not covering beer because nothing is free of it in those sixteen delicious ounces of IPA we regularly hoist.

This came into sharp focus when I interviewed Nicole Fry recently for the Beervana Podcast. Nicole is a managing partner for First Beverage Group, a a company that invests in and advises beverage companies, and which has been involved in several of the recent major brewery acquisitions. She's one of the people at the center of the business side of things, and she probably knows more about how beer is made and sold in America than just about anyone. I hope I did an adequate job.

Fortunately, Patrick was on hand to shore up my knowledge--and yours. In addition to my discussion with Nicole, we talked about what reaching the 5,000-brewery threshold means and why certain beers are so damn scarce in some markets. In other words, another in our regular podcasts on the economics of beer. Give it a listen:





I'll probably give it another listen, too, because this is a subject I really need to get a handle on! As always, it's available on iTunes as well  as Soundcloud.

The Mysteries of Lambic

The Beervana Podcast rides again. (Sorry for the long delay. Life...)

In our most recent episode, Patrick and I discuss one of the crown jewels in the beer world. We cover turbid mashes, long boils, wild inculcations, and the strange and wondrous samba our friends the microbes dance inside the oaken foeders. We turn to Frank Boon and Cantillon's Jean Van Roy for insight. Give it a listen.

Also, as we get back to a regular schedule on the new All About Beer On-air platform, we're really hoping to develop a conversation with listeners. Get chatty with us, folks. Comment on what we've said, offer corrections or critiques, give us recommendations on beers, breweries, or future podcast, ask questions. Doing a podcast can feel a bit solipsistic, and the best antidote is hive mind. Email here with our thanks in advance:

In addition to SoundCloud, you can find the Beervana podcast on iTunes and Stitcher — or you can subscribe below to ensure you never miss an episode. We’ll send you links to the podcasts as soon as they’re published.

Recreating a Stock Pale Ale in Chicago

We have another Very Special Episode™ for you on the latest edition of the Beervana Podcast. And actually, I'm not just horsing around. This week we hear the story of how brewing historian Ron Pattinson worked with Mike Siegel at Goose Island to recreate a 19th century stock pale ale. (To get fully meta, here's a blog post from Ron referring to the podcast you see beneath these lines.)

Stock pales are one of the more fascinating discoveries in the Pattinson trove--one I've been interested in for years now. It was a pleasure to speak to Mike and Ron about the process, and pick up a few fascinating tidbits about brewing on the side. I know there's a fair number of you who read both Ron's and my blog, so this should be right up your alley. 




You can find the episode on all the usual channels, and a plea here from Patrick and I: send us your comments/questions/criticisms. We have yet to fully launch the mailbag feature and get that conversation going we'd so love to have. So please holler: the_beerax(at)yahoo.com. Also, please consider rating us on iTunes, which will help boost our standing in the charts and get the pod out to more beer-lovin' folks.

Podcast Update/New Podcast

You may have noticed that there hasn't been a new Beervana Podcast for awhile. (Surely you were waiting on the edge of your seat!) This has to do with our transition to All About Beer On-Air. We've finally worked out some of the kinks, and we've got one podcast in the can, and one available today. The good news is that we've tried to really step up our game. I'm prouder of today's podcast than any we've done. It is a nuanced discussion about the experiences of women working in the beer industry. We were joined by Sarah Pederson (owner of Saraveza), writer Lucy Burningham, brewer Natalie Baldwin (Burnside Brewing), Pink Boots Society Executive Director Emily Engdahl, and homebrewer, professional brewer, and now professional distiller Lee Hedgmon (they're in that order in the picture below).


I'm proud of it partly because we managed to pull off the technical feat of recording in Saraveza's Bad Habit Room, partly because Patrick and I mostly stayed quiet for once, but mostly because the conversation was one of the most interesting, insightful, and revealing discussions you're going to hear on this topic.

Our next episode is also a special one. Ron Pattinson has been working on a project with Mike Siegel at Goose Island to recreate a stock pale ale. I interviewed them last week, and Patrick and I listen to that interview and learn a ton about recreating historic recipes, the history of hops and barrel-aging, and taste a bottle of this totally unexpected beer. (You hear people say beers are unlike anything they've tasted pretty often, but in this case it's really true.)  So look for that one.

Also note that this podcast will still be available in all your regular locations--Soundcloud, iTunes, and Google Play. In our first AAB pod, it was originally located on a feed hosted by AAB, but we've since decided to put it in both places. As a final note, please consider subscribing and if you're an iTunes subscriber, rating the Beervana Podcast. We're hoping to build the listenership, and ratings help boost us. Thanks and enjoy--

Beervana Podcast Updates and Upgrades

Although it's podcast 27 for Patrick and me, today we debut at our new home on All About Beer. (I heard some chatter about it being called All About Beer On-Air, which I love, though perhaps that moniker didn't stick.) What this means, for the literally tens of you who subscribed to our old feeds on iTunes/Google Play/Soundcloud is that you need to resubscribe at one of the new locations: on  SoundCloud,  iTunes, or Stitcher.

We're pretty pleased with today's podcast, because it represents our effort to bring more voices into conversation. For this episode, we spoke with Alan Taylor about Zoiglhaus Brewing, the culmination of five years' effort. We wanted to hear from Alan what it takes to found a brewery in the second decade of the new millennium. Alan explored many possible sites before landing on this one; what did he consider in terms of neighborhood demographics, location, and so on? How did he settle on a format and theme, and what considerations went into that? We asked about details like working with the city, designing, buying, and installing equipment, and creating the kind of pubby feng shui that will bring the community in to drink beer.

And of course, we talked about beer. Alan trained in Berlin and made Berliner weisse one of his specialties. We drank the version he makes each year for summer, one that is a year in the making, and learn why brettanomyces is an absolutely essential ingredient to getting the "typical" Berliner weisse flavor profile. (Brewers Association, please take note.)



Please listen, subscribe, and support us in this new endeavor. Thanks!

All About Beer On-Air

In a few hours, I'm going to peddle over to Zoiglhaus Brewing in the lovely Lents neighborhood of outer Southeast Portland. Patrick and I will settle down with brewer and co-founder Alan Taylor to talk about his long road to establishing that brewery. We'll be looking for universal lessons that come from when you go through this entire process. Things like:

• Figuring out what kind of brewery to open and whether it will be successful.  
• Deciding on a type of brewery and budget, and finding funding.
• Finding a location.(Lents!)
• Working with the city, complying with regulations.  
• Designing, buying, and installing equipment, designing and outfitting the pub.

Why am I telling you all this? Because when this podcast goes live, it will be under the auspices of a new venture we've joined: All About Beer On-Air. It's a portfolio of podcasts the magazine by the same name is hosting. The format will stay the same, except that we'll be throwing in some ads along the way (or speaking them ourselves, or something--that part isn't quite clear yet). We're using this upgrade as a way of trying to upgrade our own content, so expect more stuff like the interview with Alan. As always, there will be both beer geekery and economic analysis on offer. (I do intend to have Alan mention Berliner weisse and the importance of Brettanomyces. As a Berlin-trained brewer with a special interest in the style, he is one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet.)

One other podcast is already live, and it's pretty fascinating. Editor John Holl did an interview with Boston Beer founder Jim Koch, and what makes it compelling is how combative and uncomfortable Koch seems throughout. I have done hundreds of brewer interviews in my life, and I know that 95% of them lead to a meeting of the mind between brewer and interviewer. We don't play gotcha journalism; we just want to know how you make your beer. But Koch never seems comfortable, and he challenges John on nearly every question. He's prickly, contrarian, and offers very different opinions than you normally encounter. It makes for great listening.

As for the Beervana Podcast mentioned above, I'll let you know when it goes live and where you can find it.

Oregon Brewers Fest Recommendations, Observations

Patrick and I used the Oregon Brewers Fest as an occasion to consider the kinds of beers people are making these days in the latest podcast, and also to offer a few beers that caught our fancy. Here's the Soundcloud version, but the Beervana Podcast is also available on iTunes and Google Play.



As promised, here are our personal choices:

Patrick

• Anchor Mango Wheat
• Bent Paddle Venture Pilsner
• Breakside Pomegranate Gose
• Culmination Deutschland Down Under
• Ex Novo All of the Things
• Fort George Dirty Snowball
• Iwate Kura Japanese Herb Ale Sancho
• Ninkasi Grapefruit Sour
• pFriem Mango Sour
• Pints Lemon Curd ESB

Jeff 

• Buoy Dragon-Fruit Berliner Weisse
• Burnside Cedar IPA
• Gigantic Le Petit Bâtard Abeille
• Jinga Koji Red Ale
• No-Li Big Juicy
• Oersoep Schnappi (A Dutch-speaker tells me the pn is "oar soup.")
• August Schell Hefeweizen
• Shiga Kogen Isseki Sancho
• Van Mollen Luikse Vechter

And for the daredevils, we encourage you to give Zoiglhaus' Birra Pazza al Pesto a whirl.

Also, my extended list included these: 54-40 Ultra Pilsner, Bayern Citra Maibbock, Deschutes Sagefright, Drake's Foraging Raccoon, Pelican Chongie Saaz, Three Creeks Berry Porter, and Upright Wit. Hey, that's only a quarter of them!

The Complete Beer Travelers' Guide to Portland

It's summertime, which means people are starting to flow into the river city. For this week's podcast, Patrick and I give you the lowdown on the best breweries, bars, and restaurants to satisfy your beer tooth. We even give you a guide to Portland's brewing history and offer a couple of good day trips to round out your adventure. Have a listen. (It's also available on iTunes and Google Play.)

The Four Best Beers in the WORLD

Clickbaity? You betcha! Nevertheless, you won't hate yourself for listening the the latest Beervana Podcast, which also celebrates our first full year as podcasters. In addition to Soundcloud, it's available on iTunes and Google Play. Enjoy--

Multimedia Friday

Last night, John Harris addressed a packed house at Ecliptic to comment on his 30 years as an Oregon brewer. I mentioned briefly why those 30 years are going to be hard to beat (he is, to use a metaphor from a different field, a first-ballot hall of famer), but I wanted to relay something Sally told John and I yesterday. She was talking to her business partner and mentioned John's anniversary. "Wow," he told her. "He taught me how to drink good beer." When Devan came to Oregon, he like so many found Deschutes Mirror Pond and was ushered into beer. There are tens of thousands like him.

Here's John speaking last night. If you don't know John, this is a pretty perfect introduction to his personality. (I'm pretty sure the young woman to his left is his daughter.)


And, to close out impromptu Pilsner week with a trip to the Czech Republic on this week's podcast. Patrick and I survey Czech beer and what makes it tick. As I have said a number of times, and which I repeated on the podcast, I think the Czech Republic is my favorite beer country, and it's partly because the beer there is far more varied and interesting than Americans know. With clips from Budvar's  Adam Brož, we walk through the reasons it's so fantastic. Give it a listen on Soundcloud our iTunes (we've submitted it to Google Play, so look for it on android, too.)



Have a good weekend--

Of Tart IPAs and Podcasts

For this Friday, before I follow the course of the mighty Columbia to the sea, I leave you with some tasty morsels for the weekend. First up: a brand new pod! On this week's episode, Patrick and I walk through a beer tasting to illustrate just how much you can learn about the ingredients and process from your senses alone. It is of course also available via iTunes.


 As a side comment, I'll add that I think the most valuable lesson people can learn about beer is distinguishing among the flavors contributed by malt, hops, and yeast. Old-timers sometimes forget how mystifying these flavors are to the uninitiated.

Next we go All About Beer, where I discuss a beer that really needs a new name. It's a further evolution on fruity IPAs, but uses a dash of kettle-soured acidity to add structure:

Let’s go back to the juiciness of ripe fruit. What makes it taste like it does is not just the sweetness and distinctive flavor, but acids. Even in fruit we don’t think of as tart, the fresh, “alive” qualities come from a foundation of acidity that firms up the flavors and sweetness. A few breweries have discovered that adding just a touch of acid to a standard IPA has the effect breweries were going for when they started adding fruit—it makes them seem somehow more fruity.

But don't call them "sour" or "tart" IPAs, which is totally misleading. And, based on the scores of comments on AAB's facebook page reacting to the link, viscerally offensive. (But would it kill people to actually click through and read an article rather that just responding mindless to the links that flash before their eyes? Apparently.)  Go have a look.

And finally, I leave you with this photo, which I just liked.

Mughal Cistern Beer (Mugal Talaab Sharaab)

Today, Patrick and I are delighted to introduce what will probably be an unknown beer to the world--Mughal cistern beer (Mugal Talaab Sharaab), forgotten potable from the court of the Mughal rulers of India. It’s one of those oddities that might have stayed buried, if not for a revival that’s taking place again in India. It's a very special April 1st pod we hope you enjoy.



Make sure you listen to the end!

A Brand New Pod!

Today Patrick and I are going to brew a couple batches of beer.* Yesterday we podcasted. You may listen to our disquisition, erudite as always**, on barrel-aged beers. You will hear Cantillon's Jean Van Roy talk about the flavor of old wood, and Samuel Smith's Steve Barrett talk about how to cure a brand-new oak cask. Among, of course, many other fascinating revelations***.  Enjoy!



_______________
* Pilsner and IPA. We do a pilsner every year, relying on primitive lagering tech--Oregon's mild winters. We're getting a little late in the season for that, so we're probably going to end up with a fruitier-than-usual lager. Hey, it's homebrew.
**You mileage may vary.
*** Ibid.

It's Hard Out There For a Publisher

This is a slightly random aside, but I wanted to draw your attention to a great post about the state of the internet over at Talking Points Memo. For those of you who don't read political blogs for fun, TPM may have escaped your notice. It's a left-of-center site that grew out of a personal blog by Josh Marshall. (As an aside to the aside, the site was my introduction to blogging. I'd never heard the word "blog" until Paul Krugman called attention to some of the work Marshall had been doing on the coded racist words of then Majority Leader Trent Lott. Within a month, I had started my first blog.) Like all news/opinion sites, it has struggled in the age of social media.

What's changed in the last 4 to 5 years is the inroads social media sites have made into the paid advertising space. Much as Craigslist virtually destroyed the classified ads business that local newspapers owned, a site like Facebook can deliver ads more efficiently and cheaply than most traditional advertisers. 

The great liberation brought about by the internet made it possible for someone like me to put my voice in front of (potentially) the whole world--a phenomenon new in the world. But if you envision the structure of media as a funnel, where the voices of the public are the wide end, and the media gatekeepers act as the narrow end, what happened with the internet--and especially, with social media--was the elimination of that narrowing. Now all people can connect with all people, which means the writer in this equation isn't very important anymore. Josh' perspective is that of he publisher, but since we can all now be publishers as well as writers, it may be a distinction without a difference. Writers and publishers are still casting around now to figure out how to make a living. Many of us develop nervous tics because it seems like our societal value is approaching zero. Though from a purely academic perspective, the changes are fascinating.

Which I suppose is about as good a place to segue to links as any. Today at All About Beer I discuss a significant epiphany I had in Miami, Florida on the subject of beer. True story.

So join me back in the Abbey Brewing pub. Most beer culture in the world right now has its roots in European brewing. Abbey reflected that—with a healthy dose of American sprinkled in. As I mentioned, Miami is loaded with culturally-specific businesses, so there’s nothing out of the ordinary about a European-American pub making up part of the tapestry. And yet, in that moment, I realized how much American beer culture—especially craft beer culture—carries with it this European valence.

We also have the latest Beervana Podcast up and ready to caress your ears in our dulcet tones. In this latest episode, we discuss wintry beers, touching on topics like wassail, Lamb's wool, glühkriek, bière de Noël, and of course, price elasticities. We have also slightly tweaked the format to include news and beer recommendations (an extension of the "Beer Sherpa" feature birthed here on this blog) as well as a a "mailbag" feature, in which we are attempting to draw you into the discussion. We welcome questions, comments, criticisms, witticisms--anything that inspires you. Email us at the_beerax @ yahoo.com.

The End is Nigh

In order to locate a two-month period in which blog posts were as bereft here as they were in Sept and Oct this year, you have to go back to 2006. During these past two months, I've been on a national book tour while trying to complete a book manuscript. And so blogging has suffered mightily. Fortunately for all concerned, things are finally coming to a conclusion. My mid-November, it should be back to the normal level of randomness you have all come to expect.

However, tomorrow I depart for Miami to begin the final leg of the book tour. I'm arriving early so I can enjoy a bit of sunshine and Cuban food. Thereafter follow these stops, for anyone who happens to be nearby:

• November 4 at 8pm, Miami, FL
  Books and Books, Coral Gables 
• November 5 at 7pm, Tampa, FL
  Hidden Springs Ale Works  
• November 6 at 5pm, Atlanta
  Ale Yeah Craft Beer Market (you can also pre-order signed copies)  
• November 8 at 2pm, Nashville
  Yazoo Brewing special event
• November 9 at 6:30pm, Richmond, VA
  Ardent Taproom - ticketed event ($30 gets you the book and three Ardent beers) 
• November 10 at 6:30, Washington DC
  Busboys and Poets Brookland 

What else? Well, I did manage to do a bit of serious blogging while I was on the road, and you can read about that over at All About Beer in a post I promised last week after passing through Milwaukee:

The Pabst complex is so compelling because it’s so tangible. Capitalism is a violent and sometimes jarring force, and as quickly as it graces a business with the generative power to rise from the pavement, it can strike it right back down. For 15 decades, that brewery continued to grow in lunges, expanding capacity to remain lean and efficient, to gobble up more and more of the growing market. The excitement and energy we are witnessing in brewing now is no different than the one that visited the U.S. 150 years ago when German immigrants brought their brewing expertise and inspired drinkers with lager beer. But in 1996, the same calculus that fueled that empire also led to the decision to quit the place: beer could be made more cheaply elsewhere. In a pen stroke the buildings went dark.

Read the rest here.  Finally, Patrick and I have a new Beervana Podcast on the subject of cider. It coincided with the Cider Made Simple book launch last night (with very serious thanks to Nat West, Kevin Zielinski, Abram Goldman-Armstrong, and Silas Bleakley and Kristina Nance). In this week's episode, we do a survey course on cider. (At one point in the podcast, there's an inadvertent Happy Halloween from the producer. You have to listen to hear it.)



You can also listen to it on iTunes.

The Extraordinary Tart Ales of Flanders

The latest podcast is up. Inspired by the recent release of pFriem's Flanders-Style Red ale, Patrick and I decided to look at the style more closely. We start out with a bit of history and then look at the way these beers are made, turning to Rudi Ghequire, brew master at Rodenbach, for descriptions of the slow process he uses to mature the beer. We also listen to Josh Pfriem describe the process he uses to make a new-world version. As usual, we taste the beers ourselves and then discuss some of the economic issues. In this case, the difficulty of competing in a marketplace with a beer that takes 18 months to make when other beer can be made in a month.

You can listen to in inline below or sidle on over to iTunes.