Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - News, Nuggets & Longreads 29 October 2016: Bud, Trond,
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Here’s everything around the beer blogs and beyond that’s grabbed our attention in the last week, from*Budweiser to hypothetical travelling salesmen.
Do you remember those happy days when there was no ambiguity and everyone just hated Budweiser the minute they tasted their first microbrewery beer? Well, Budweiser seems keen to bring that back*by borrowing the idea for its latest ad campaign from its underdog Czech rival Budweiser Budvar,*as reported by Pete Brown:
Come on, Budweiser. You’ve already stolen your name from the*town in which*Budweiser Budvar is brewed. You’ve copied their*advertising idea (albiet in a fine execution) and now even their copy, word for word. You employ some of the best and most expensive advertising agencies in the world (even if you do try to shaft them on costs.) Is this the best those agencies can do?
http://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/w...size=500%2C375A reluctant Trond with his beers. SOURCE: Knut Albert Solem.Knut Albert Solem has a story from researching his book about Norwegian beer which goes in our file on ‘The Quiet Ones’:
Trond makes it perfectly clear that he is in no way ready*to present his beers in any book project in the foreseeable future. There is no point in stretching out my visit, he makes no gesture of putting the kettle on. He is in no way comfortable about my visit. But he allows me to take a few photos for web use. And I persuade him to trade a few bottles for a copy of last year’s book.
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There’s something rather thought-provoking about this local news story: Green Duck Brewery in Stourbridge, West Midlands, had a break in last week — a depressingly common story for small breweries — but what was stolen wasn’t beer, it was their recipes.
A year or so back*Zach Fowle*gave his honest opinion of a local brewery: their beer wasn’t uniformly good, and some was downright bad. He got told off for failing to support a small business and so on. Recently, for*Draft magazine, he sat down with the brewer in question and discussed what the bad review did to him:
Obviously, when you’re talking about the human side of it, I was initially pissed off about the article. But the truth was I didn’t have anybody to be pissed off at but myself. As much as I could blame you or somebody else for publishing that story, I just knew that would be ignoring my own responsibility. I talked to a few brewers and people who carry our beers. Nothing angry; I just wanted to know what their thoughts were. And getting some honest feedback from other people who were saying our beers are hit-or-miss, kind of made me go, ‘Okay, the only person I have to be upset at is myself.’
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Superstar blogger*The Gentle Author has begun a new series at*Spitalfields Life showcasing photographs of pubs from the Heritage Assets/National Brewery Heritage Trust*collection, rescued by Robert Humphreys from a skip. The first pub*covers pubs whose names begin A-C, and the images are gorgeous, as you can see from the sample above. (There are more images from this collection in a book by Adrian Tierney-Jones of which (disclosure) we were sent a sample copy last year.)
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For*McSweeney’s Darren Hoyt lists the various ways you might talk to him about your home-brewing hobby:*‘1. Briefly. 2. Faintly. 3. Infrequently…’ (Via @lisagrimm.)
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Here’s*something we wanted to include last week but couldn’t because it went viral and the website went down: a team of international researchers has used computers to plot the most efficient route between every single pub in the UK. It’s tempting, isn’t it, to dip in a test a stretch or two? (Via @iamreddave.)
And, finally, here’s a bit of good luck:
News, Nuggets & Longreads 29 October 2016: Bud, Trond, Home-Brew Snark originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog
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