Brew Biz: Werts and All
The Topic: The Pour Fool was Right (In InBev’s name I curse.)
Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Salt City, 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 15 years.
Written by Ken Carman
Early morning in my Eagle Bay cabin, another beautiful Adirondack day, now cursed by my mental state. Really? InBev feels the need to have its claws sunk into a site that rates beer; for some odd reason called RateBeer?
In the last Fool column on this topic I felt Fool might be being a tad, well, foolish. InBev, unlike A/B, is a conglomerate of many distinct breweries and, unlike the Busch family, they might not feel so inclined as to ruin all those distinct brands just to bring back the mega beer crime families gory days of barely more than one style of cheap adjunct beer.
Not the slightest bit “foolish” this time.
InBev shouldn’t have any control over websites that rate beer. This is not a new topic to me, and a firm principle. When the brewer for a brewpub in Nashville wanted to become head of communications for Music City Brewers: a homebrew club, I objected in strong terms to the president. I made an enemy of the brewer, I’m sure, but I don’t care. It’s the principle: the head brewer at one brewery in town shouldn’t be given any control over whom we communicate with, or not. There were, and are, many other breweries in town. If people wanted to say something in print that did not reflect well on his brews they should be able to say that without worrying that the Communications person might stifle them. If the club wants to have meeting at another brewery instead of his there shouldn’t even be the slightest possibility that communications regarding this would be limited in any way; or the perception it had been limited. And I was writing a column for the newsletter, and one local magazine, that, in part, critiqued breweries and what was on tap, or bottle, or can. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”
RateBeer Joins the Borg Collective: AB Harpoons Another One
AB has sunk its tentacles into yet another property designed to do absolutely NOTHING but gain them cred that they cannot earn for themselves and which they will now use to weaked and erode the solidarity and spirit of the American Indie Brewing community.
I posted this comment on Joe Tucker’s own post – the founder and owner of the seminal beer rating website, RateBeer.com – so I’m not going behind his back. This is what I wrote on the partnering of RateBeer with a division of Anheuser Busch…and this was me showing every bit of the restraint that I have in me…
“Joe, let me blunt, here: There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that you’re going to be able to rationalize this out and make it palatable for MOST of your users. You have just struck a deal with the Devil and NO amount of slick explanation is going to invalidate or blunt the simple FACT that you are now beholden to the very company that is making the most concerted effort – in fact, pretty much the ONLY concerted effort – to hamstring or destroy altogether this culture that has spawned your own personal success, that of the 5000 small, independent breweries that make up the Indie/Craft community, and the happiness and enjoyment we all have lived out for the past 25 years, in watching our beer horizons open wide and carry us up and out of the century+ morass of sameness and forced homogeneity of beer.”
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HERE
Could an Upstate NY firm have built the China-made beer tanks floating past its factory
LITTLE FALLS, NY — Today a set of huge beer fermentation tanks destined for the Genesee Brewery in Rochester will float down the Erie Canal past a factory in Little Falls.
They will pass just 100 feet or so in front of a plant owned by Feldmeier Equipment, a Syracuse-based company that makes stainless tanks similar to those heading to the brewery in Rochester.
But the 12 big beer tanks on the canal weren’t made by Feldmeier, or even by an American company. They were made by a company called the Lehui Group in China and shipped 6,000 miles, ending with a 225-mile journey along the canal (they’re too big to move by truck).
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HERE
Maria Devan Reviews Three Heads Nota Pils
Beer Profile: Southern Tier Why the Helles Not
Profiled by Maria Devan
Pours clear and golden with a fast falling head of white creamy foam. Nose is light and golden with malt. By light I mean that the malt is not complex. It is golden and bready but does not offer any toasted flavor. Hops are just present on the nose but shy. Soft floral shows a bit of grass from hops. As the beer sits it will also show you some pepper and spice. No diacetyl, no fruity esters from yeast, faint dms perfect for the style. Drinks smoothly and imo better than last year. No rough edges on this one it goes down with plenty of satisfaction. Hops remain shy on the palate but they impart their cool breath to the beer. Finishes perfectly. Malty with a crisp bubble and just a little bitterness to linger. Exemplary! In fact I would say put this up against any German import.
4.5
Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”
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Profiled by Maria Devan who lives high on a hill over looking Ithaca, NY. Look! If you live in Ithaca there she is with her field glasses spying on you! Are you drinking a beer worthy of attention. Beware, she’s Ithaca’s beer police. Can’t you hear the siren on he bike as she rolls down the hill? We kid. She’s been writing for us for many years now. We’re lucky to have her.
Pub Grub: How Alehouses, Taproom Pubs, and Beer Halls are Becoming McDonalds
I like beer too much and respect too much the amount of effort, creativity, and skill that goes into making American craft beers to continue to settle for the same tired old crap as an accompaniment.
(This post originally appeared in the seattlepi.com version of The Pour Fool, back in 2014. It was requested by about a dozen readers who had read my bio and saw that I used to be a chef for about three decades…which was far longer than that little tangent should have gone on. It was also prompted by two separate requests from young entrepreneurs in Denver, about eight weeks before this appeared, who were thinking of opening one sports bar and one alehouse. I was asked, in both cases, to give them a menu that would avoid – or at least tweak severely – the usual pub grub clichés.
Today, I’m delighted to say, this universal sameness HAS changed – a bit. But, still, in maybe 85% of all American pubs, the menus read just as I have described here. The restaurants which ARE working with Indie Beer offerings and THINKING about their food are doing tremendous things, these days…which results in me, turning over $$$ more and more often. Special Mention must go to 7 Seas Brewing, right here in my own ‘hood, Tacoma, Washington, in which JamieKey Jones and her food staff have installed 3UILT, a truly exceptional pub food eatery that does almost everything right and avoids clichés as though they had fangs and a rattle. Any pub menu on which you can find a jackfruit(!) sandwich that’s actually good AND popular…well, that’s slam-damn truly Outside The Box.)
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A 160-year-old Minnesota beer is coming back to life on Friday
When Cold Spring Brewing retired Gluek Beer in 2010, after decades of the brew passing through different ownership hands and struggling to survive, the company had lost hope for the historic label.
“They told me ‘Nobody cares about Gluek Beer except you,’ †Linda Rae Holcomb said. “That really fueled me.â€
So Holcomb, whose family connection to the legendary lager dates back to prohibition, took matters into her own hands. In 2015, she obtained the trademark and copyrights for the 160-year-old beer. Then she found a German chemist to rewrite the recipe and enlisted a Denver brewing company to handle production.
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HERE
Maria Devan Reviews Dockside Vienna Lager by Wagner Valley Brewing
AB/InBev Rams 10 Barrel Down San Diego’s Throat: The Natural Acts of a Bully
YES, by God, I’m talkin’ Peer Pressure. Make 10 Barrel San Diego – I’m sorry, make that “Anheuser Busch San Diego†– the sole province of the Clueless and the Sleazy.
As a continuation of what I wrote in the aftermath of Anheuser Busch/InBev’s purchase of North Carolina brewery, Wicker Weed, about AB’s strategy of buying themselves a presence in America’s largest Indie Beer markets, it seemed like a good idea to also point out Phase Two of AB’s shoddy little master plan to either destroy Indie Beer or control it…and, make no mistake about it, that is exactly what’s going on.
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