Blog Tracker
20-05-2017, 08:36
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/05/news-nuggets-longreads-20-may-2017-hops-the-heatons-homogoneity/)
Here’s everything that grabbed our attention in the past week from South African hops (again) to Peter Pan.Last week the chat in the beerosphere was dominated by AB-InBev’s control over the supply of apparently coveted (who knew?) South African hops. This week Lucy Corne, who literally wrote the book on South African craft beer, gives a different perspective for*All About Beer: (http://allaboutbeer.com/south-african-hops/)
What every article has overlooked is that while American brewers, for now at least, can’t get their hands on South African hops, there are microbreweries that can—in South Africa. The country now boasts almost 200 microbreweries, a number that has increased from just 50 in 2013… While some brewers utilize imported ingredients, many rely heavily on SAB—and now A-B InBev—for both malt and hops. The question of ingredients was of particular concern to South African microbrewers when the takeover was in progress last year, but their fears were somewhat assuaged by a clause in the agreement stating that ‘the Merged Entity shall continue to supply hops that are currently supplied by SABMiller to Small Beer Producers on the same terms and conditions as currently offered by SABMiller or otherwise on reasonable commercial terms.’
(Disclosure: we sometimes write for All About Beer too.)
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/beershop.jpg?resize=650%2C411
Jim*at*Beers Manchester highlights what looks like a fun crawl of micropubs that happen to be near each other in*‘the heatons’ (https://beersmanchester.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/a-micro-pub-stroll-from-burnage-to-the-heatons/) (Heaton Moor and Heaton Chapel) in the suburbs of Stockport, Greater Manchester:
The message? Yes. Manchester is a truly fabulous place to go drinking. But a short train journey from Piccadilly – and a little gentle walking – can take you on a fabulous beer journey. To four special and individually superb bars and pubs… But put them together? I’m still smiling.
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/charles_wells.jpg?resize=560%2C374Marston’s Gets BiggerOn Thursday the large family brewery Charles Wells of Bedfordshire announced that it had sold its beer brands and brewing operation to Marston’s (http://www.charleswells.co.uk/news/sale-of-brewing-brands-business-by-charles-wells-ltd-to-marstons/):
The Bedford brewery site is the home of leading ale brands Bombardier, Courage, and McEwan’s and the sale also includes the UK distribution rights for Kirin Lager, Estrella Damm, Erdinger and Founders and the exclusive global license of the Young’s brand. In addition, Cockburn & Campbell, the wine merchants, will also transfer. Charlie Wells and John Bull beers will remain part of Charles Wells Ltd. Employees at the brewery in production, national sales, and brands marketing will transfer to Marston’s.
You might not care for Marston’s or Charles Wells beers but this seems to have been a genuine surprise for most industry observers and sees Marston’s go from BIG to HUGE. The list of brands it now controls — it already has Banks, Brakspear, Jennings, Thwaites and Wychwood — brings to mind the days of the Big Six in their acquisitive pomp. By our reckoning, something like a third to a half of the beers in your local supermarket premium bottled ale range could now be Marston’s owned. The same probably goes for the range of cask ales on the average high street. Astonishing.
https://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/stone_can.jpg?resize=650%2C422No More Patience with Peter Pan?We’re going to finish with a series of interconnected posts. First there’s Stan Hieronymus’s*review of a book,*Untapped: exploring the cultural dimensions of craft beer (http://appellationbeer.com/blog/a-journalist-an-entrepreneur-and-a-sociologist-walk-into-a-bar):
Hate your job? Become a brewer. This is an example of why J. Nikol Beckham writes in a new collection of essays that ‘the microbrew revolution’s success can be understood in part as the result of a mystique cultivated around a group of men who were ambitious and resourceful enough to ‘get paid to play’ and to capitalize upon the productive consumption of fans/customers who enthusiastically invested in this vision.’ The title of this fourth chapter…*is a mouthful: ‘Entrepreneurial Leisure and the Microbrew Revolution: The Neoliberal Origins of the Craft Beer Movement.’ Not surprisingly, there’s a considerable amount to define and discover en route to Beckham’s conclusion.
That, and Alan McLeod’s comment on the same piece about Peter Pan syndrome (expanded upon here (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/05/17/peter-pan-as-craft-beers-archetype/)) made us think of a piece from a day earlier by*Jeff Alworth: ‘Remember When Stone Was Cool?’ (https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2017/5/15/remember-when-stone-was-cool)*He says:
Now every brewery claims to be edgy and different. To be against big beer is required as an article of authenticity. The notion that breweries must be different and unique has been internalized. Every brewery press release emphasizes how ‘innovative’*they are (a claim now so distant from actual beer one hardly knows what it means). And just as it happened in rock and roll, once everyone’s a punk, no one is*— which brings us back to Stone… Stone emerged as a revolutionary force. The problem is, once you’ve deposed the king, what comes next?
When we read all of these pieces together, we heard the sound of a dustbin-lid-sized penny dropping: something*has changed, underdogs aren’t anymore, and the reason we’re rather bored of reading brewery profile pieces (and so rarely include them here) is that they’re so often the same stories about the same kind of people going through the same journey.
On a lighter note, but dancing around the same point, there’s this from Pilot — a brewery which also happens to toss out rather sharp commentary — which says an awful lot with great economy:
Doing a Kickstarter for our dystopian sci-fi. pic.twitter.com/k7bZbJRUbm (https://t.co/k7bZbJRUbm)
— Pilot (@pilotbeeruk) May 16, 2017 (https://twitter.com/pilotbeeruk/status/864377667130466304)
This post was scheduled late on Thursday. If anything broke on Friday we probably missed it. Sorry.
News, Nuggets & Longreads 20 May 2017: Hops, The Heatons, Homogoneity (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/05/news-nuggets-longreads-20-may-2017-hops-the-heatons-homogoneity/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/05/news-nuggets-longreads-20-may-2017-hops-the-heatons-homogoneity/)
Here’s everything that grabbed our attention in the past week from South African hops (again) to Peter Pan.Last week the chat in the beerosphere was dominated by AB-InBev’s control over the supply of apparently coveted (who knew?) South African hops. This week Lucy Corne, who literally wrote the book on South African craft beer, gives a different perspective for*All About Beer: (http://allaboutbeer.com/south-african-hops/)
What every article has overlooked is that while American brewers, for now at least, can’t get their hands on South African hops, there are microbreweries that can—in South Africa. The country now boasts almost 200 microbreweries, a number that has increased from just 50 in 2013… While some brewers utilize imported ingredients, many rely heavily on SAB—and now A-B InBev—for both malt and hops. The question of ingredients was of particular concern to South African microbrewers when the takeover was in progress last year, but their fears were somewhat assuaged by a clause in the agreement stating that ‘the Merged Entity shall continue to supply hops that are currently supplied by SABMiller to Small Beer Producers on the same terms and conditions as currently offered by SABMiller or otherwise on reasonable commercial terms.’
(Disclosure: we sometimes write for All About Beer too.)
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/beershop.jpg?resize=650%2C411
Jim*at*Beers Manchester highlights what looks like a fun crawl of micropubs that happen to be near each other in*‘the heatons’ (https://beersmanchester.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/a-micro-pub-stroll-from-burnage-to-the-heatons/) (Heaton Moor and Heaton Chapel) in the suburbs of Stockport, Greater Manchester:
The message? Yes. Manchester is a truly fabulous place to go drinking. But a short train journey from Piccadilly – and a little gentle walking – can take you on a fabulous beer journey. To four special and individually superb bars and pubs… But put them together? I’m still smiling.
https://i0.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/charles_wells.jpg?resize=560%2C374Marston’s Gets BiggerOn Thursday the large family brewery Charles Wells of Bedfordshire announced that it had sold its beer brands and brewing operation to Marston’s (http://www.charleswells.co.uk/news/sale-of-brewing-brands-business-by-charles-wells-ltd-to-marstons/):
The Bedford brewery site is the home of leading ale brands Bombardier, Courage, and McEwan’s and the sale also includes the UK distribution rights for Kirin Lager, Estrella Damm, Erdinger and Founders and the exclusive global license of the Young’s brand. In addition, Cockburn & Campbell, the wine merchants, will also transfer. Charlie Wells and John Bull beers will remain part of Charles Wells Ltd. Employees at the brewery in production, national sales, and brands marketing will transfer to Marston’s.
You might not care for Marston’s or Charles Wells beers but this seems to have been a genuine surprise for most industry observers and sees Marston’s go from BIG to HUGE. The list of brands it now controls — it already has Banks, Brakspear, Jennings, Thwaites and Wychwood — brings to mind the days of the Big Six in their acquisitive pomp. By our reckoning, something like a third to a half of the beers in your local supermarket premium bottled ale range could now be Marston’s owned. The same probably goes for the range of cask ales on the average high street. Astonishing.
https://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/stone_can.jpg?resize=650%2C422No More Patience with Peter Pan?We’re going to finish with a series of interconnected posts. First there’s Stan Hieronymus’s*review of a book,*Untapped: exploring the cultural dimensions of craft beer (http://appellationbeer.com/blog/a-journalist-an-entrepreneur-and-a-sociologist-walk-into-a-bar):
Hate your job? Become a brewer. This is an example of why J. Nikol Beckham writes in a new collection of essays that ‘the microbrew revolution’s success can be understood in part as the result of a mystique cultivated around a group of men who were ambitious and resourceful enough to ‘get paid to play’ and to capitalize upon the productive consumption of fans/customers who enthusiastically invested in this vision.’ The title of this fourth chapter…*is a mouthful: ‘Entrepreneurial Leisure and the Microbrew Revolution: The Neoliberal Origins of the Craft Beer Movement.’ Not surprisingly, there’s a considerable amount to define and discover en route to Beckham’s conclusion.
That, and Alan McLeod’s comment on the same piece about Peter Pan syndrome (expanded upon here (http://abetterbeerblog427.com/2017/05/17/peter-pan-as-craft-beers-archetype/)) made us think of a piece from a day earlier by*Jeff Alworth: ‘Remember When Stone Was Cool?’ (https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2017/5/15/remember-when-stone-was-cool)*He says:
Now every brewery claims to be edgy and different. To be against big beer is required as an article of authenticity. The notion that breweries must be different and unique has been internalized. Every brewery press release emphasizes how ‘innovative’*they are (a claim now so distant from actual beer one hardly knows what it means). And just as it happened in rock and roll, once everyone’s a punk, no one is*— which brings us back to Stone… Stone emerged as a revolutionary force. The problem is, once you’ve deposed the king, what comes next?
When we read all of these pieces together, we heard the sound of a dustbin-lid-sized penny dropping: something*has changed, underdogs aren’t anymore, and the reason we’re rather bored of reading brewery profile pieces (and so rarely include them here) is that they’re so often the same stories about the same kind of people going through the same journey.
On a lighter note, but dancing around the same point, there’s this from Pilot — a brewery which also happens to toss out rather sharp commentary — which says an awful lot with great economy:
Doing a Kickstarter for our dystopian sci-fi. pic.twitter.com/k7bZbJRUbm (https://t.co/k7bZbJRUbm)
— Pilot (@pilotbeeruk) May 16, 2017 (https://twitter.com/pilotbeeruk/status/864377667130466304)
This post was scheduled late on Thursday. If anything broke on Friday we probably missed it. Sorry.
News, Nuggets & Longreads 20 May 2017: Hops, The Heatons, Homogoneity (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/05/news-nuggets-longreads-20-may-2017-hops-the-heatons-homogoneity/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)
More... (http://boakandbailey.com/2017/05/news-nuggets-longreads-20-may-2017-hops-the-heatons-homogoneity/)