Professor Good Ales

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

I’m sure just about every one of us could do with a beercation right about now. It’s been a year like no other in recent memory. Virtual happy hours have largely replaced the comradery of the taproom, tavern, and beer garden. No Oktoberfest this year, no local brew fests either. And beer travel, a pastime that has grown in popularity with each passing year, has all but ceased.

But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. With the lightning-quick development of vaccines against Covid and their hopefully steady rollout, my optimistic bet is that we’ll be travelling again by summer or early autumn. And it just so happens to be the holiday season right now, which always lightens the mood.

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I’ve had this belief, for a long time, that it is just as possible to “know” a person from their social media posts, their work ethic, their stances on social and environmental and human rights issues, and their SENSE OF HUMOR and humility and decency, as it is to know someone we’ve met face-to-face. What we respond to, unless we’re hopelessly shallow, in those we choose to call friends, is their character, their intelligence, their humor, and their values. Maybe social media friendship is even more possible, since the first way involves a distilled version of their character, minus all the self-conscious glad-handing of most in-person interaction. In writing this, I’m testing that theory…but also saying something I really believe.

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In the comments to section of a Facebook page for my friend, Sue Kidd, former food reviewer for our local Tacoma News Tribune, she covered the closure of a Seattle brewery which opened a pub in a ritzy (well, ritzy for Tacoma, anyway) new shopping and retail center on the Commencement Bay waterfront. The center is called Point Ruston and at least aspires to be an upscale location with more in common with our neighboring Seattle than sweet ol’ blue-collar Tacoma. The brewery occupied a large retail space there which had previously been the pub for another out-of-town brewery. The new closure was significant. People noticed…and came to a Conclusion.

Hundreds of Tacomans started to call this space “cursed”.

There is nothing at all “cursed” about the location. As someone who has been actively involved in the beverage trade for 37 years, I saw what was happening with those breweries going into Point Ruston and told my wife I gave them both less than six months…and that is because of ambition exceeding their realities.

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The popular Goose Island Brewhouse in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood has permanently closed after two-and-a-half years of operation, the latest fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 10,500-square-foot brewpub announced the shuttering late Friday afternoon via its Facebook and Instagram accounts. Goose Island Beer Co. is based in Chicago, and has been owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev since 2011. The company wrote Covid-19 has had a “significant impact” on its Philadelphia business.

Goose Island Beer Co. opened its Philadelphia concept at 1002 Canal St. in spring 2018. The local brewhouse was well-trafficked by Philadelphians across the city, Fishtown residents and people attending shows at neighboring music venue Fillmore Philadelphia. The project includes indoor space as well as a large outdoor seating area.

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For the second time, the Pabst Brewing Company is leaving Milwaukee.

The brewer announced today that the Captain Pabst Pilot House, 1037 W. Juneau Ave., located in Milwaukee’s Brewery District – which occupies the original Pabst Brewery complex – will close for good in December.

The brewing system – which was making 4,000 barrels a year – located on the lower level will be moved to Pabst’s now-headquarters of San Antonio.

Pabst shuttered its brewery here in 1996 after 152 years.

The current iteration opened in spring 2017 in a former church building that was once part of the original Pabst Brewery.

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We all know the Big Deal IPAs: The Plinys, Workhorse, Jai Alai, Stone IPA and Enjoy By, Dogfish 60 and 90, etc. etc., etc.

What we do NOT do – ANY of us – is taste every IPA made in the US. Nobody does. So when anyone says, “This is The Best IPA”, they’re just indulging themselves either in homerism or hyperbole. In truth, there is NO SUCH THING AS “BEST”. There is ONLY “best of what I have sampled”.

There are over 8,000 breweries working in the US, now. Most which make an IPA at all usually make more than one. Let’s just say that each one makes three. That 24,000 IPAs. No one has even come close to trying them all. And it follows that there will be some out there that you might like better than the Plinys and Enjoy Bys and the 90s.

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A half-century ago, Peoples Brewing became Wisconsin’s first Black-owned brewery.

We are still waiting for the second one.

Craig Crosby remembers being 7 or 8 years old when his father, Henry, joined a group of Black businessmen in purchasing Peoples Brewing in Oshkosh. It was the early 1970s, and Craig was young enough that the drive to the south side of Oshkosh seemed longer than it was. The brewery appeared to hulk in the distance.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The most distinguishing feature of Jamie Adams’ new ale isn’t its hoppy bite but its compelling backstory — brewed from yeast in bottles of beer that went down on a doomed steamship and languished on the ocean floor for 131 years.

Some who lined up to sample a swig of the new Deep Ascent ale at a craft beer festival last weekend say it provided a refreshing taste of another era.

“Just the concept that they could bring a beer bottle up from the bottom of the ocean … then be able to extract the yeast from it, that kind of chemistry is fascinating,” says beer enthusiast Peter Bowe of Schenectady. “And the beer is absolutely fantastic.”

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 Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been writing on beer-related topics, and interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast, for over 30 years.

 Maybe I complain too much about changes in craft, maybe it could be classified as “whine.” But when it comes to barleywine my complaint here, if heeded, would return these delicious quaffs to just that: fine, delectable, warm your soul by the fire sippers.
 I LOVE Barleywine. I used to be the major supplier of barleywines to Big Bob’s Barleywine Bash in Pensacola Beach, before Bob passed on. I collected them all over the east coast.
 Not as much a fan these days. I will use one commercial barleywine as an example, but I don’t fault the brewer. Jeff is merely following the trend.
 Most brews I have had from Various Artists in Nashville have been decent to very good. So I was excited when Millie and I saw a bottle of Newfangled Perspective in a cooler at a local store. I also was excited because Jeff Bergman: owner, has to be having a hard time of it. His tasting room is closed, last I checked: COVID. He really doesn’t have the room, inside or out.
 We opened it Thanksgiving and… damn.
 OK, too dry for a barleywine, IMO, but that was a minor thing, really. A lot of craft beers these days seem to be dried out. It’s like everyone is taking a cue from a long ago extinct beer Rheingold Extra Dry; and even Rheingold wasn’t as dry as craft beer seems to be headed for. Rheingold was one of the first beers I had. And I have heard you can get a version of the long lost brewery’s staple. The brand name has been taken under the wing of a company in Connecticut that has many lost brands brewed again. I have seen it nowhere in my travels, so I am guessing limited distribution.
 No, the big disappointment was among the quite adequate malt sense: high gravity, thick, luscious, was a slam it out of the barleywine ball park hoppiness. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All- My Barleywine Fine Whines”