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Here’s everything that grabbed our attention in the last week, from buttery Czech beer to South African hops.
Max*‘Pivni Filosof’ Bahnson uses a report of a visit to a Prague bar to*make some observations about trends and local tastes:
Most people describe diacetyl as buttery, to me, cheap margarine melting is a more accurate descriptor… and this beer smelled like plenty of it, and didn’t taste much better… If you follow the comments of the local beer intelligentsia, you might get the impression that diacetyl-laden beers have become a scourge, to the point that Jiří Kaňa wandered in Pivní.info whether 2016 wasn’t the year of diacetyl. And yet, that man sitting at the table in the opposite end of the room was clearly enjoying President 12°, and was probably in his fourth glass by then.
The Beer Nut has been writing up a recent trip to Belgium from which we get this post observing the arrival of multiple taps of non-Belgian beer in Brussels:
Previously, the selection on offer was almost exclusively Belgian. I don’t recall foreign beer featuring at all until the Delirium Café opened its Hoppy Loft extension a few years ago, and it was always a novelty, very much outside the mainstream. Then I guess you had Moeder Lambic Fontainas, still resolutely local but with occasional guest beers from abroad. And then BrewDog arrived with an outlet pushing its own wares alongside the Belgians. It still didn’t feel like Brussels had any real interest in imported beer until my last visit a couple of weeks ago. The most shocking feature was the Goose IPA taps, popping up like mushrooms in the most unexpected places… Something has shifted and in this case AB InBev are doing the pushing.
Very much related is a*piece from*Will Hawkes for*Beer Advocate*about the growing influence of outside cultures, and especially the London brewing scene, on young Belgian brewers:
A visit to Malt Attacks, a bottle and homebrew shop on the elegant Avenue Jean Volders in the Brussels neighborhood of Saint-Gilles, makes his point clearly. Opened by Antoine Pierson in October 2014, it sells Belgian beer (but not Trappist ale) alongside offerings from around Europe, particularly Scandinavia and the UK. One day in early February, there were two draft beers available from the growler filler (the first, Pierson says, in Belgium): Wild Beer Madness IPA and Magic Rock Magic 8 Ball Black IPA, both of them brewed in England.
(Disclosure: we’re sometimes paid to write for BA.)
Here’s something thought-provoking: US centre-right news and opinion magazine/website*Reason has a sympathetic account of the legal battle around Flying Dog’s Raging Bitch from a conservative free-speech perspective. It is built around an interview with the brewery’s boss, Jim Caruso, an avowed libertarian, available as video, or provided as raw (occasionally incorrect) transcript:
And for us, our marketing is built into this label. If you ban my ability to express my message, whether it’s a political message, citizens united, whether it’s a marketing message and idea, you’re effectively taking part of my identity away. This is unacceptable, so it went to [Alan Gura], a hero in Libertarian circles. Took our case, went to the ninth circuit, sixth circuit in Cincinnati. After several years the opinion was in our favor. And the minority opinion went so far as to say, ‘Yes, and they clearly violated your First Amendment right so go back and settle.’… We did… this was never about the money. We were awarded damages, obviously a lot went to legal fees. The rest went to form the First Amendment Society. This was never about the marketing, it was never about publicity.
The story about AB-InBev’s control of the supply of certain varieties of hops grown in South Africa blew up in the last couple of days after this Tweet:
Don't think macro brew acquisitions matters? Today we learned AB InBev is cutting-off all indie breweries from buying South African hops
— Modern Times Beer (@ModernTimesBeer)
May 10, 2017
‘Given this situation and what they’ve just done, I wouldn’t be surprised if [buying out other exclusive hops varieties] isn’t one of their targets,’ says [hop broker Greg] Crum. ‘They have the money to buy out the guys who own the patents [on certain hops varieties]. And if they buy up enough craft breweries who need these hops, they may look to control the [hops] market again.’
Meanwhile, the perpetually level-headed*Bryan Roth has broken this story down,*concluding that it’s a storm in a pint pot:
If I’m translating numbers correctly, the International Hop Growers Convention estimated the entire South African hop crop at 1.9 million pounds in 2016. It is project to drop to 1.56 million pounds in 2017. There are 1,047 acres of hops expected to be harvested in South Africa this year, or a stone’s throw away*than the acreage of only Cascade grown just in Oregon in 2016… Is it unfortunate that American brewers won’t be able to get aroma hops like Southern Passion from South Africa or alpha hops like Southern Star? Sure. But these are varieties to play with, not with which you build a portfolio of brands.
(But it’s worth noting, as a sign of how fraught things are as much as anything, that some have questioned Roth’s objectivity because he writes for*Good Beer Hunting which has/had*various connections with AB-InBev.)
Finally, this is a real highlight of the week which deserves the widest audience possible: footage of the complicated way Guinness porter used to be served recorded at the exact moment it went extinct in 1973.*This really ought to inspire some experiments.
News, Nuggets & Longreads for 13 May 2017: Butter, Brussels, Belfast originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog
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Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - News, Nuggets & Longreads for 13 May 2017: Butter, Brus
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