Hippety-hops

Here's a wonderful tale of small-scale duplicity with some interesting details about how beer flavor is built.


https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/154f287527e38bd4

Craft Beer: Mock and in Hock

Big beer isn't going to die in its sleep. It's also unlikely to change its central mission and start making their products tastier. What we can expect is that the giants will start buying up the little guys. 

After all, they have the cash and they have the brewing knowledge to make the process cheaper and better. Beer lovers have to pay attention as their favorite breweries change hands. Will the beer change?

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Faux* and Formerly Craft Breweries and Their Owners

10 Barrel Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev 

Ballast Point Brewing — Constellation Brands

Birra Del Borgo (Italy) — Anheuser-Busch InBev

*Blue Moon Brewing — MillerCoors

Blue Point Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Boulevard Brewing-Duvel Moortgat

Breckenridge Brewery — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Camden Town Brewery (U.K.) — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Cervejaria Colorado (Brazil) — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Devils Backbone Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Dundee Brewing — North American Breweries

Elysian Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Fordham and Dominion Brewing — 40 percent owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev 

Founders Brewing — 30 percent owned by Mahou-San Miguel

Four Peaks Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev 

Golden Road Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Goose Island Beer Company — Anheuser-Busch InBev 

Kona Brewing — 32-percent owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev

Lagunitas Brewing — 50-percent owned by Heineken International

*Leinenkugel's Brewery — MillerCoors 

Magic Hat Brewing — North American Breweries

Meantime Brewing (U.K.) — SABMiller

Mendocino Brewing — United Breweries Group

Olde Saratoga Brewing — United Breweries Group

Ommegang--Duvel Moortgat

Portland Brewing Company (formerly MacTarnahan's) — North American Breweries

Pyramid Breweries — North American Breweries

Redhook Brewery — 32-percent owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev

Saint Archer Brewing — MillerCoors

*Shock Top Brewing — Anheuser-Busch InBev

Widmer Brewing — 32-percent owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev

It's a Gas: Two Views of Carbonation

The First View:

Quantum Beer

My son-in-law assures me

that there are infinite possible possibles.

and this, being hard to swallow

makes me belch and

at the moment of this tiny eructation

a world erupts and, tripping over

the digestisonic of the moment,

it stumbles and slows and thus

this world is right here right now-

gliding along, listening in

with its cosmic earphones

on the conversations we

should have had

were we as loving

in our world

as we could have been

after a good, incredulous,

semi-sempiternal belch in its.

and for this reason alone,

i beg you beerward where

each swallow leads not to capistrano

but to fomenting other worlds where we,

explosive, are expanding

out to gassy, grassy love.

(the truth of the belch is in the grain,

sparkling water ain’t the same)

and i wonder if each embarrassment,

each long carbonic vowel

is just a node where we get to meet

all the better possible rest of us.

And perhaps ‘excuse me’ is just

the right thing to say to remind us

how little time we have,

how few bubble-years there are

to get it right.

The Second View:

Water bubbles want to collapse. Their water molecules like the company of each other more than any other molecules, so they don't like to hang out in air. That's why water beads up on the counter top: the darlin' little molecules are huddling together-gregarious.

This water-loving property of water is decreased and foam is increased by hydrophobic proteins. Wheat malt is a good source and a little bit of wheat in the mash can give a noticeable increase in foam. The bitter compounds in hops enhance foam and so does acidity. Nitrogen gas enhances foam because it encourages small bubbles.

On the other hand, water gets wetter (and more fond of itself) it the presence of soap or detergent. ABV's (alcohol percentages)of the level usually found in beer inhibit foam and so does any sort of fat or grease. Oats in the mash add fat, which suppresses the head and of course any grease on the serving glass does the same. (Oh, Lipstick!)

So wash and rinse your beer glass. Taste the foam before you taste the beer. Sit down, shut up, take a breath and pay attention.

two mantras before tasting

Now I know that the term 'mantra' is over-used and misused so let's agree that mantras are phrases that, when repeated, help promote concentration. They aren't chants that dull you out, they're beacons that guide you in.

We know that we don't taste in a vacuum: we taste in a cacophony of senses, ideas and emotions. We also know that the minute you decide that you like something or not, you stop really tasting it and go off on a jag of self-congratulation about having figured this particular taste out.

Maybe it's possible that deliberately calibrating your attitude toward what you're tasting, even using a convenient mantra, could slow you down and allow you to taste more and more deeply. Let's try this:
prepare yourself for tasting with these two mantras:

• this is an unfamiliar taste and it puzzles me
• this is a familiar taste and it reassures me

Repeat them each a dozen times or so. Imagine feeling the puzzlement or the reassurance. Now taste your way through dinner or along the buffet line.

for more like this, see here.

What happened?

Speaking of Taste

Coming back to teaching about wine and beer after having  spent a sabbatical with poetry, memoir and fiction, I found myself a lot less preachy than I was. I've lost a lot of my certainty about the relationship of pleasure and tradition, less enthralled with a canon of the good, the true and the delicious.  As a former student of anthropology, I wasn't surprised that America's taste has changed. I found myself wondering how it was possible that mine had.

Where is this taste of mine and ours? I mean that literally. Where does it hang out? On the tongue? In the nose? In memories of mother's milk and matzoh brei?

So I've been reading. Not so much to reduce my own confusion-I've been happily confused for a while now-but for the sake of being an honest idea broker to my students. Where's the pulpit from which you can preach the Good News of a revolution in beer and food? What do I tell the apprentice sommelier or Cellermaster* about what tastes good?

Here's what I've got so far: The experience of flavor comes from deeper in than we thought. It's not on the tongue or in the nose, it's in the brain. The processes the brain uses to recognize flavor turn out to be a lot like the processes it uses to recognize music or complex shapes (like faces). We're very good, us humans, at remembering music or picking a face out of a crowd or a lineup, but we're not very good at talking about it.

You can recognize your mom when you see her face on the post office wall, but you probably can't describe her to me all that well. You can pick out Ravel or the Rolling Stones after a few notes, but can you tell me how you did that?
With visual art, we have a deceptive fluency. You can probably tell me a lot about Girl with a Pearl Earring. You can describe her face, her clothes and pose. Maybe, if you're anthropologically inclined, you could talk about the relationship of servant girl to bourgeois master and the resultant slight look of apprehension on her face.

But when the image is not a simple narrative anymore, not even a complex and affecting one, you and I may find it harder to talk. What could I tell you about Matisse's Blue Nude that wasn't trivial?

And suppose representation is barely a concern. Imagine the artist is showing you how her hand works with some colored chalk and a mad case of the swirlies:

You can probably describe this fairly well, but would your description give a listener any sense of what the drawing was?

Let's take it even furnther. We may have some sense of what this next painting symbolizes, but when we try to describe it, we sound sort of silly:

When the intent is ironic, we're even more lost. What will you say about Duchamp's readymades like Fountain, which is simply a urinal mounted on the wall? How will you describe it after the joke fades and you're just looking at white, shiny curves mounted next to a little museum card?

And what if we suspect that we're being manipulated by an image in an ad or that the artist is having some fun with us? We can do a pretty good job of listing visual characteristics, but how much can we describe the truth about an image like this:

Or this:

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All of this is to say that we folks obsessed with food and drink aren't at more of a descriptive disadvantage than our friends the music and art lovers. Our perceptions are as profound and our descriptive powers just as strained. Next week, we'll talk about prying our way into this profoundly obvious and maddeningly non-verbal topic. 

In the meantime, look out for this shelf talker:

*for information on the Cellermaster Certificate, contact Dean Kelly McClay at the Academy of Culinary Arts: mcclay@atlantic.edu

Bud wants to buy Coors even if you don't

When the giants of the beer industry make a strategic move, it's got to effect all the midgets, right? Right?

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AB InBev just made its third offer to buy SABMillerCoors, this time offering $104 Billion. Financial analysts are saying that it's just a matter of time before an offer is accepted. If you're wondering what this merger will mean for the world of beer, it might be good to take a look at how InBev has handled its earlier acquisitions. Their first move was to slash operating costs. Then, according to today's New York Times, they:

....turned their attention to the supply chain, replacing higher cost inputs with lower cost ones — thinner glass bottles, cheaper ingredients — and pressing suppliers to give them twice as long to pay for goods. ....

Along with cutting costs, they raised prices for products slightly, so that the additional pennies from the sale of each can of, say, Bud Light, fall almost directly to the bottom line.

Those higher prices also help mask what some analysts now say is the flaw in the model: falling market share. Anheuser-Busch sold 107 million barrels of beer in 2008 in the United States when the Brazilian investors acquired it, but it sold just 96 million barrels last year, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights, a trade publication. In almost every year, it has lost nearly one point of market share.  (emphasis added)

 This merger isn't likely to have an immediate effect on craft breweries: we have two shrinking giants joining forces to shrink together. But these huge corporations are unlikely to die in their sleep. They certainly see where the sales growth is and they have the means to purchase that growth even if they can't emulate it organically from their own businesses. 

Absent from this article is any mention of AB InBev's purchase of other, smaller and craftier breweries. It seems likely that the new conglomerate will go shopping for smaller, faster-growing breweries. It also seems likely that they will pursue their current strategies for cutting costs. Look for more Faux Craft and Mock Premium labels. Look for jaunty labeling and tongue-in-cheek, flannel shirt marketing directed at both genders and listen for talk of taste, freshness and specific mention of ingredients.

Will the beer get better? Stay tuned.

Read the whole article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/business/anheuser-busch-inbevs-growth-playbook-starts-with-its-checkbook.html?emc=edit_th_20151011&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=21549315

Beer Evangelist on Television?

Some thoughts about Beer on television and a total loss of Dignity:

Beer Evangelist on television? Believe it brothers and sisters!