Author: Stephen Body

Let’s be real, for a moment…

Mexican lagers, in general, are crap beers. I hear people, fresh back from their trip to Cabo or Puerto Vallarta or Cozumel or one of the less-famous Mexican resort towns, seriously comparing the relative virtues of Modelo vs. Corona vs. Indio vs. Victoria vs. Pacifico and it just…makes me tired. I remember similar conversations I sat through, patiently, years ago in Greensboro, before there were Indie breweries, when friends of mine were debating Bud and Bud Light, Miller vs. Coors, Pabst and Keystone. I rarely said anything but I can vividly remember thinking, “This is like comparing Tap Waters of Many Places”, because whatever differences actually were present in those beers were usually the result of the person’s memories that attach to them, rather than anything significant in the bottle.

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I’m just gonna put this here and you can call it whatever species of hyperbole you want but I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t ready to own it…

Larry Sidor may just be the best brewer in the United States.  And I suspect he could probably whup Europe’s ass, too, if he wanted.

I hear the muttering already: “Well, this Fool person is obviously an idiot! Better than Vinnie Cilurzo? Tomme Arthur? Sam Calagione? Wayne Wambles? Anthony Bourdain!?!”

(Oh, sorry…that last one isn’t a brewer, although, with all the declarative popping off about beer that he’s been doing for the past two years, you can understand how I’d get confused.)

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The ugly news broke, just this morning, of the impending sale of Asheville, North Carolina’s, Wicked Weed Brewing….to a company which doesn’t give two shits about WW’s beer, P&L sheet or anything else about it… except its LOCATION…

OKAY…here’s a little primer, as we get all set to watch another fine American brewery lose its “Indie Beer” status for good…

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Just a little less than two years ago, I posted a thing called “Murderer’s Row”, a list of breweries that was intended to let visitors to the Pacific Northwest find some truly great breweries to work into their itineraries. Happily, this did exactly what I hoped: it got a TON of people from the rest of America interested in NW breweries and those people asked questions…Boy, did they ask questions.

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Okay, I’m calling BS on this asinine list.

I’m not even going to link to the post which spawned this (alleged) listlet. I don’t want to give them any more free clicks, since the list is obviously blatant bait for that species of scaly, slimy little internet reptile. But you go ahead and google the name shown in the next paragraph and you’ll find it. Not that anyone needs to see it. This is called “Top 10 American Stouts Brewed in the USA” – not “in 2016” or “This Year” but BEST, period…which is bullshit. Oh, it says in the copy underneath that the results come from 2016 and from their three sources but that is the very definition of click-bait: write a provocative headline that will get people to come to your site and then – back-peddle furiously, so you can’t be accused of click-baiting.

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This may be the shortest post in the history of The Pour Fool…because there is just absolutely nothing (well, okay, one tiny thing) I have to say that in any way contradicts the two previous posts I’ve done on the amazing DrinkTanks thermal growler. It remains the ONLY thermal growler out of the six others I’ve been asked to review that does everything it’s supposed to and even a bit more. And in this disposable age, when people routinely toss TVs and computers and even cars onto the scrap heap in far less than two years, what other product can make that claim?

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It’s been awhile. Blame Vienna. It’s not the first time I’ve done so over the course of the past eighteen months. Rather than sit here and tell you about all the cool stuff I’ve got in the works, I thought I’d dash off a quick post about my recent visit to Salzburg en route to the mountains around Zell am See. I’ll save Salzburg’s rich history for another day and head straight for the Wirtshäuser (taverns) and beer gardens.

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It’s been awhile. Blame Vienna. It’s not the first time I’ve done so over the course of the past eighteen months. Rather than sit here and tell you about all the cool stuff I’ve got in the works, I thought I’d dash off a quick post about my recent visit to Salzburg en route to the mountains around Zell am See. I’ll save Salzburg’s rich history for another day and head straight for the Wirtshäuser (taverns) and beer gardens.

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I’ll probably take some static about this…and I deserve to…

From this day forth, what we now call “craft brewing” and “craft beer” will no longer be referred to by that label, here. For a couple of years, now, I’ve been regularly harangued by people who claimed that “craft” is dead, as though that sort of thing happens summarily and closes the subject. It does neither. Millions of people call it “craft brewing” and will go on doing that. And I don’t care if random groups of trendies or even old farts like me decide “craft” is passé. I’m not calling it that anymore and it was not because somebody(s) argued me off it.

In fact, I was spooked off it…in the most direct possible way.
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Since I started The Pour Fool, back in late 2008, Best of The Northwest has been arguably the most popular feature of every calendar year. People love lists and I’m not even going to try to be modest: when I do a list, I work, like a freakin’ Trojan, to make sure it’s complete and fair and intelligent. Not everybody will agree with what’s in it, of course, but I have never once looked back and thought, “Damn, son, ya really half-assed it that time.”

BUT…over the past five years or so, I’ve argued the point that lists are inherently irrelevant; that crowd-sourced lists are suspect because the acumen of each rater is unknowable. That panels of experts are subject to peer pressure and personal prejudices and the insidious group-think that’s rife in almost every enclosed culture. That, worst of all, MOST lists labeled “Best Of” are, in fact, compiled by just whomever was around that day, whether they have any more qualifications than, “Uh, yeah, I visit breweries, occasionally.”

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