As a Chicago White Sox fan, I dig this development.
I'm kind of meh about this news, though.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
"Bland American beer" may be "here to stay," but not just because of American flavor preferences
On the positive side, this isn't another article complaining that craft beers are getting "too hoppy" or "too pastry." And it gives a nice overview of America's brewing history, albeit giving short shrift to the fact that we do now have our own styles and burgeoning tradition around beers like those darned hoppy IPAs and heavily adjuncted stouts.
And yet, craft is growing. And while some of this craft may be "bland," most of it isn't. Craft is unlikely to ever dominate the beer market for simple economic reasons -- a 30 pack of Busch will always be cheaper than a 12 pack of a good IPA. As wealth disparity continues to grow, it's simply priced too high for a lot of beer drinkers to purchase on the reg. And that's okay.
What's interesting to me is that as an economic historian, Ranjit Dighe completely ignores pricing as an obstacle to continued craft growth and instead claims it's simply a matter of (people not wanting much) taste. I reject this reality and substitute my own.
And yet, craft is growing. And while some of this craft may be "bland," most of it isn't. Craft is unlikely to ever dominate the beer market for simple economic reasons -- a 30 pack of Busch will always be cheaper than a 12 pack of a good IPA. As wealth disparity continues to grow, it's simply priced too high for a lot of beer drinkers to purchase on the reg. And that's okay.
What's interesting to me is that as an economic historian, Ranjit Dighe completely ignores pricing as an obstacle to continued craft growth and instead claims it's simply a matter of (people not wanting much) taste. I reject this reality and substitute my own.
Saturday, March 3, 2018
Floyds gets the go-ahead
While there was some speculation that this was just some pie-in-the-sky nonsense and that they might actually do something not normal like move into the 606, Three Floyds has received approval for its planned expansion. Congrats, big strokers!
Thursday, March 1, 2018
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Suds's beer week in review: February 4-February 10
This week of potential beer fun was ruined by snow! (Missed a Super Bowl party due to snow [though 30 ounces of BA stouts over lunch may've contributed to our no-go decision], cut short Thursday night due to more snow and stayed in Friday night due to still more snow)
Total beers tasted: 20 (shared a few with a bud on Thursday night)
Breweries visited: None. (I know, right? Was supposed to hit a pair on Friday.)
Tastiest thing tasted: Totally drawing a blank. Nothing all that inspiring. Maybe the Pad Thai from Sushi House? It was a different, "wet" take on the classic dish, and I swear they threw like three eggs in there on top of a crazy amount of tofu. But they didn't give us any chili paste to go with it, dammit!
Best stroke of luck: Winning the "lottery" that was the Henna batch 3 presale. Tix sold out in less than a second. For a non-BA stout. Can't wait to try it on draft and then share a bottle that night next Saturday!
That's all for now.
Total beers tasted: 20 (shared a few with a bud on Thursday night)
- Best beer: Prop '17. I'm a superfan! Just agreed to trade a bunch of bottles for another bottle, in fact. The banana finish is losing some of its banana flavor and just presenting as a nice sweetness to close out the upfront burst of cinnamon.
- Second-best beer: Pliney the Elder. I was bummed not to make it to Russian River for the Pliney the Younger release last weekend (couldn't justify dropping a grand to chase a tick), but was happy that a bud brought me some PtE back. It's still a beautifully balanced beer, though I think all the NEIPAs I drink these days made it seem like it should be named Piney the Elder. (See what I did there?)
- Third-best beer: Trademark Dispute Orange Label Coconut. The beer that was once Nooner 10 and is now Greatest Hits Coconut has held up well more than a year after release. Cycle BA stouts are totally in my wheelhouse and I can't wait to drink all five of the Greatest Hits together this weekend!
- Fourth-best beer: Double Barrel VSOD. BA Rev is good Rev. This is among the best of the Winter 2017-2018 cans. Still partial to Cafe Deth, I suspect.
- Fifth-best beer: Cryo Citra. Citra Ninja helped put Pipeworks on the map, and this brand-new remix of it takes me back to those Halycon days of exciting new beer discoveries in my own backyard.
- Madagascar '18, I am not really feeling you. Have you changed or is it me? Were you always so thin, was your finish always so milky? Did a bud really favorably compare you to Vanilla Rye just three years ago? SMGDH
- King Sue. Way too much cat pee in the December batch!
- Fresh IIPA V10 (Fresh by 02.27.18). I've had a dozen or so of the beers in Hubbard's Cave's "Fresh by" series, and this is the second time I've opened an oxidized bottle that looks like a coma patient's urine and tastes almost as bad. Up your game, Hubbard's Cave!
Breweries visited: None. (I know, right? Was supposed to hit a pair on Friday.)
Beer read of the week: This. Though the final three rounds were sort of silly, the first four are something I want to do with my beer buds some time soon-ish.
Other beer read of the week: This here. Dammit people, grow up!
Best stroke of luck: Winning the "lottery" that was the Henna batch 3 presale. Tix sold out in less than a second. For a non-BA stout. Can't wait to try it on draft and then share a bottle that night next Saturday!
That's all for now.
Saturday, February 3, 2018
Suds's beer week in review: January 28-February 3
Total beers tasted: 22 (shared a number of bottles with some buds on Wednesday night) (also got silly Friday night with five different 12-ounce cans of Marz NEIPAs I had in the fridge that needed to be drank sooner or later)
Best stroke of luck: Winning the TG Assassin lottery. It's literally the first beer event lottery I've won since an Upland Sour release lottery like four years ago. The release is also going to be a fascinating experience, I think.
Other future-forward beer stuff: I bought two tickets for KBS Week, so I'll be getting a double allocation during a single-day up-and-back in early March. I have already pledged a number of bottles to friends and will likely trade a bunch of it if it's as meh as last year's batch was. I failed to get a ticket for Spiteful's upcoming event (they sold out in a minute and I literally forgot about it until five minutes into the sale), so let's not even talk about that right now.
- Best beer: Central Waters XX. Great creamy mouthfeel, fantastically fudgy chocolate and barrel notes. IMO it may well be the best anniversary stout they've done since 16.
- Second-best beer: Smooth Whopperator from Mikerphone. Ridiculously thick malted chocolate milk stout. Loved my little pour; hated not being able to stay for more but I do not enjoy traffic and I would've been in the thick of it if I had.
- Third-best beer: Mango Smoothie Resist from The Brewing Projekt. This may have been the best milkshake-style IPA I've ever had. Not that I've had many, since I don't trade for East Coast stuff and the local ones I've had have been rather meh.
- Notes on Half Acre: I was there Tuesday, when they were rolling out the new food menu. I'd somehow never eaten at the OG Lincoln Avenue spot (true fact: if HA had been around ca. 2000-2002, it would've been barely a block from my apartment). I opted for the brisket burrito, which came with chimichurri potatoes. Both the main dish and the side were delicious; likely the second best thing I ate all week.
- Notes on Mikerphone: It's always great to hit Mikerphone and tick their latest brews. I was there the week before but just to grab bottles because the tap room line was really long for the Vanillanoize release. The bar on this Thursday was full up so I was forced to sit with strangers and interact with them and stuff. ;) Also had an employee tease about something cool that is coming up but I can't for the life of me guess what it is but I already plan to be there on the day he mentioned.
- Notes on Energy City: I've heard good things about Energy City's beers. They release once a month AFAIK, and it looks like they do bombers of NEIPAs, stouts, porters, etc. Today was a release day so I headed over there after we got out early from some volunteer work we try to do one Saturday morning a month over at the Northern Illinois Food Bank. After about 10 minutes of waiting I was barely inside the door, but the vibe seemed pretty cool. Basically on their release days the brewer talks about the beers and hands out samples to people who are waiting to buy bottles. Once I found out that the NEIPA had kicked I decided not to leave my wife waiting in the car any longer and we had to meet friends for lunch, so I bailed. But I hope to actually buy from them some time in the future and chat with the brewer!
Best stroke of luck: Winning the TG Assassin lottery. It's literally the first beer event lottery I've won since an Upland Sour release lottery like four years ago. The release is also going to be a fascinating experience, I think.
Other future-forward beer stuff: I bought two tickets for KBS Week, so I'll be getting a double allocation during a single-day up-and-back in early March. I have already pledged a number of bottles to friends and will likely trade a bunch of it if it's as meh as last year's batch was. I failed to get a ticket for Spiteful's upcoming event (they sold out in a minute and I literally forgot about it until five minutes into the sale), so let's not even talk about that right now.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Central Waters Brewing Company turns 20!
For a middle-of-nowhere place, Central Waters Brewing Company in Amherst, Wisconsin, is pretty fantastic. As with a lot of Wisconsin breweries most of their offerings are pretty standard -- "Nothing too extreme; we emulate the Minnesotans that way yah" -- but solid. Their space itself is really nice, with a decent-sized tap room that draws a very loyal local crowd as well as a fair share of travelers. They also draw some of their heating and electrical power from their solar array, which is a big plus by me.
In 2014 I attended their sixteenth anniversary party, and have attempted to do so every year since. It's a ticketed event, and in just the past five years tickets have gone from lasting online for hours to literally seconds -- in fact, I missed last year's party because my phone was too slow over a restaurant's wifi for me to score. The party sees the release of their annual beer, a thick, viscous imperial stout that sees plenty of time in bourbon barrels. (Oftentimes they're actually a blend of BA stouts, but we won't go down that rabbit hole. For an overview of these and their other rare beers, click here.)
They also tap a bunch of CW beers rare and familiar, allow bottle shares, offer food vendors and CW merch (except for tacker signs, due to their sharp edges -- someday I'll get up there to buy one!), and generally make with the merry. The party wraps in the early evening, and at that point all of the pleasures of the greater Stevens Point area are available to you. (The first time I attended with my wife we had some awesome tapas. She kind of hates beer events so now I typically try to find a bottle share after, typically at whatever cut-rate hotel I'm staying at.)
This year's party took place on January 27. A trio of my best drinking buds were attending but I drove solo in order to undertake some side quests (a bud's butcher shop in East Troy, a few stops at different bottle shops, food of my choice) and enjoy some time on the open road with my podcasts (Norm MacDonald and Marc Maron, mainly) and music. I took a leisurely pace that got me into the Amherst area about five and a half hours after leaving the house and opted to check in at my hotel and hit a few bottle shops first in hopes that the line would dissipate before I arrived at Central Waters.
The party began at 3, and I was parked and in line around 4. As you can see below, my "no line" strategy worked brilliantly!
The line actually moved really well, and 15 minutes later I was inside and ready to enter another line. Except when the bar is something like 60 feet wide (obstensibly divided into three different types of pours), the "line" is more of a filthy scrum of people forming a quarter-circle slowly pushing forward for service from perhaps 20 harried volunteers. My buds were near the back of this scrum and some kind souls were all "go ahead, we're never going to get beers anyway so go be with your friends," and sure as shootin' we were in a line. Twenty minutes of that and we'd moved maybe five feet forward, but got word that the part of the serving area that was marked "boring AF year-round pours" was actually serving everything, so off we went and maybe five minutes and three clumsy drunk spills (this would become a theme; glad I wore a polyester coat) later I had a pour of the rum barrel aged coconut porter and the bourbon barrel aged vanilla stout. (The former is scheduled for bottling this year; the latter was a one-off treat.)
Unfortunately, the two beers I finally had 45 minutes into my time at the fest were decidedly "meh." Hopefully there's time to improve the coconut porter before it's bottled, because the consensus in-person and on Untappd is that it's fakey, tasting of white rum (you know, the stuff that isn't actually barrel aged) and artificial coconut. The vanilla stout was better but not great; I'm pretty sure the base for this beer is the basic Brewer's Reserve BA Stout that CW makes, and while that was a personal favorite around 2010 when I started getting heavily into beer I have since come to prefer stouts with more body than this offers. The flavor was pretty good, though.
I ran into several groups of buds on my way over to the separate area where the anniversary stout, CW XX, was being poured so I got to try a few random pours from their bottle shares. I also got spilled on a few more times; a densely packed warehouse full of drunken people leads to that kind of thing. Also, every bottle sharer ended up taking the space of two people, as there were many circles of folks surrounding their bags full of bottles. So yeah...crowded with clumsy drunks, CW was.
As always, the anniversary stout did not disappoint. I don't have extensive tasting notes, as it was served pretty cold and I didn't nurse it for the half hour it would've taken to bring it to a nice 50 degrees or so to really open it up. (I'm planning to crack a bottle tonight with a few folk, and may post more about it after.)
So after maybe an hour and a half, my small crew opted to buy our bottles and head over to nearby O'so, which has the distinction of being one of the few breweries that scaled up and entered the Chicago market only to pull out a few years later. (Maybe they'll be back? It looks like they have a big expansion planned as part of a move from Plover to Stevens Point.)
The bottle line moved quickly (they've improved this tremendously since the fiasco that was CW16), and off I went to my car. Unfortunately, my assumption that the sunny mid-40s daytime temps meant it would be an easy walk through the dark fields to my car proved unfounded, as I took a big-time spill flat on my back on some unexpected ice. My night ended with a trip to a drive-through, mass quantities of ibuprofen and fitful, pained sleep (at one point it took me five tries to lie down in bed due to severe pain in the back of my left ribcage, but fortunately nothing is broken) rather than O'so, pizza and a hotel bottle share. And none of my bottles broke, so I have that going for me.
Social media was full of all manner of opinions as to the success of the party, with 60 percent of the commentariat saying too many people were overserved (there were reports of copious amounts of vomit and someone pulling a line out of a brewing vessel, among other travesties) and 40 percent being all "eh, it's beer, what do you expect?" One exec from CW posted that bottle sharing probably won't be allowed next year, which makes some sense -- it's CW's party, so shouldn't their beer be the focus?
In any case, I had fun at CW XX despite the sloppy folk and my own clumsiness. The scuttlebutt says that they really want to make a big deal out of next year's 21st anniversary party, as people born the year Central Waters was opened will finally be of age and able to attend. Hopefully, I'll be there!
In 2014 I attended their sixteenth anniversary party, and have attempted to do so every year since. It's a ticketed event, and in just the past five years tickets have gone from lasting online for hours to literally seconds -- in fact, I missed last year's party because my phone was too slow over a restaurant's wifi for me to score. The party sees the release of their annual beer, a thick, viscous imperial stout that sees plenty of time in bourbon barrels. (Oftentimes they're actually a blend of BA stouts, but we won't go down that rabbit hole. For an overview of these and their other rare beers, click here.)
They also tap a bunch of CW beers rare and familiar, allow bottle shares, offer food vendors and CW merch (except for tacker signs, due to their sharp edges -- someday I'll get up there to buy one!), and generally make with the merry. The party wraps in the early evening, and at that point all of the pleasures of the greater Stevens Point area are available to you. (The first time I attended with my wife we had some awesome tapas. She kind of hates beer events so now I typically try to find a bottle share after, typically at whatever cut-rate hotel I'm staying at.)
This year's party took place on January 27. A trio of my best drinking buds were attending but I drove solo in order to undertake some side quests (a bud's butcher shop in East Troy, a few stops at different bottle shops, food of my choice) and enjoy some time on the open road with my podcasts (Norm MacDonald and Marc Maron, mainly) and music. I took a leisurely pace that got me into the Amherst area about five and a half hours after leaving the house and opted to check in at my hotel and hit a few bottle shops first in hopes that the line would dissipate before I arrived at Central Waters.
The party began at 3, and I was parked and in line around 4. As you can see below, my "no line" strategy worked brilliantly!
Hot damn, a line! As a Chicagoan I fucking love lines!
The line actually moved really well, and 15 minutes later I was inside and ready to enter another line. Except when the bar is something like 60 feet wide (obstensibly divided into three different types of pours), the "line" is more of a filthy scrum of people forming a quarter-circle slowly pushing forward for service from perhaps 20 harried volunteers. My buds were near the back of this scrum and some kind souls were all "go ahead, we're never going to get beers anyway so go be with your friends," and sure as shootin' we were in a line. Twenty minutes of that and we'd moved maybe five feet forward, but got word that the part of the serving area that was marked "boring AF year-round pours" was actually serving everything, so off we went and maybe five minutes and three clumsy drunk spills (this would become a theme; glad I wore a polyester coat) later I had a pour of the rum barrel aged coconut porter and the bourbon barrel aged vanilla stout. (The former is scheduled for bottling this year; the latter was a one-off treat.)
Unfortunately, the two beers I finally had 45 minutes into my time at the fest were decidedly "meh." Hopefully there's time to improve the coconut porter before it's bottled, because the consensus in-person and on Untappd is that it's fakey, tasting of white rum (you know, the stuff that isn't actually barrel aged) and artificial coconut. The vanilla stout was better but not great; I'm pretty sure the base for this beer is the basic Brewer's Reserve BA Stout that CW makes, and while that was a personal favorite around 2010 when I started getting heavily into beer I have since come to prefer stouts with more body than this offers. The flavor was pretty good, though.
I ran into several groups of buds on my way over to the separate area where the anniversary stout, CW XX, was being poured so I got to try a few random pours from their bottle shares. I also got spilled on a few more times; a densely packed warehouse full of drunken people leads to that kind of thing. Also, every bottle sharer ended up taking the space of two people, as there were many circles of folks surrounding their bags full of bottles. So yeah...crowded with clumsy drunks, CW was.
A CW XX crowd shot I stole from Facebook
As always, the anniversary stout did not disappoint. I don't have extensive tasting notes, as it was served pretty cold and I didn't nurse it for the half hour it would've taken to bring it to a nice 50 degrees or so to really open it up. (I'm planning to crack a bottle tonight with a few folk, and may post more about it after.)
So after maybe an hour and a half, my small crew opted to buy our bottles and head over to nearby O'so, which has the distinction of being one of the few breweries that scaled up and entered the Chicago market only to pull out a few years later. (Maybe they'll be back? It looks like they have a big expansion planned as part of a move from Plover to Stevens Point.)
The bottle line moved quickly (they've improved this tremendously since the fiasco that was CW16), and off I went to my car. Unfortunately, my assumption that the sunny mid-40s daytime temps meant it would be an easy walk through the dark fields to my car proved unfounded, as I took a big-time spill flat on my back on some unexpected ice. My night ended with a trip to a drive-through, mass quantities of ibuprofen and fitful, pained sleep (at one point it took me five tries to lie down in bed due to severe pain in the back of my left ribcage, but fortunately nothing is broken) rather than O'so, pizza and a hotel bottle share. And none of my bottles broke, so I have that going for me.
Social media was full of all manner of opinions as to the success of the party, with 60 percent of the commentariat saying too many people were overserved (there were reports of copious amounts of vomit and someone pulling a line out of a brewing vessel, among other travesties) and 40 percent being all "eh, it's beer, what do you expect?" One exec from CW posted that bottle sharing probably won't be allowed next year, which makes some sense -- it's CW's party, so shouldn't their beer be the focus?
In any case, I had fun at CW XX despite the sloppy folk and my own clumsiness. The scuttlebutt says that they really want to make a big deal out of next year's 21st anniversary party, as people born the year Central Waters was opened will finally be of age and able to attend. Hopefully, I'll be there!
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Ha ha gross sexist shit in 2018 (Cosmic Brewery sucks)
Bit of a hot take as I was pressed for time this morning....
Hey Cosmic Brewery, I hope to visit California in the next few years and visit a bunch of breweries. But yours won't be one of them, you juvenile twits! (If the reviews of your beers are accurate you'll be out of the brewing game by then anyway. Maybe you can survive as a strip club?)
Care to guess how Cosmic is responding to those who criticized this Facebook post? That's right, by blocking them! Because lessons are hard. Because if boys can't be boys then they won't remain sexist classless assholes for life.
Sexism in the craft beer industry is a bigly tremendous huge deal and something I'll undoubtedly be posting about here in the future. Because it's not just about photos like this. It's about the pack mentality that sets in against women when a crowd is strongly majority male; a very good friend had her rear end grabbed repeatedly in the stinky sweaty crowd at FoBAB in 2015.
Play it cool, boys. This ain't cool.
ETA: Annnnnnnndddddddd the post is gone from Facebook and Twitter. And it looks like they lost a sponsor, Celestron Telescopes. No sort of apology put forth as of yet. When they do get around to one, it'll probably be something like this:
Hey Cosmic Brewery, I hope to visit California in the next few years and visit a bunch of breweries. But yours won't be one of them, you juvenile twits! (If the reviews of your beers are accurate you'll be out of the brewing game by then anyway. Maybe you can survive as a strip club?)
Care to guess how Cosmic is responding to those who criticized this Facebook post? That's right, by blocking them! Because lessons are hard. Because if boys can't be boys then they won't remain sexist classless assholes for life.
Sexism in the craft beer industry is a bigly tremendous huge deal and something I'll undoubtedly be posting about here in the future. Because it's not just about photos like this. It's about the pack mentality that sets in against women when a crowd is strongly majority male; a very good friend had her rear end grabbed repeatedly in the stinky sweaty crowd at FoBAB in 2015.
Play it cool, boys. This ain't cool.
ETA: Annnnnnnndddddddd the post is gone from Facebook and Twitter. And it looks like they lost a sponsor, Celestron Telescopes. No sort of apology put forth as of yet. When they do get around to one, it'll probably be something like this:
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Vanilla doesn't have to be so vanilla
Vanilla needn't be, you know, "vanilla." (As in "plain." Though Urban Dictionary may have a more elaborate definition. It's on you if you choose to look it up.)
Neither of these two limited-run barrel-aged stouts were vanilla in any way, shape or form.
The one on the left, the 2017 Dosvidanya Vanilla Rye released at Destihl's Dosvidanya Day in Normal, Illinois, a few months ago delivered almost everything you'd hope for when you hear "Vanilla Rye." (Let's not get out over our skis; there is only one Vanilla Rye king, and Goose Island hasn't released it since 2014. It's still flippin' delicious assuming it was properly cellared and not shipped coast to coast four times last summer.) The vanilla is plentiful without verging into Mallo Cup territory and the rye gives it a touch of spiciness.
The one on the right...AWAGOO! I've only had a few BA beers from Bottle Logic, and I've had the good fortune to enjoy the 2016 release of Fundamental Observation BA Vanilla Stout twice. It's truly world class, the oak complementing the vanilla beans and a nice, thick body that gives a tremendous mouthfeel. (God I hate that term. But sometimes it's the best word available, so I use it.)
I was very happy to share these with a really good friend recently and while I'm happy to have two more bottles of the Dosvidanyas to enjoy in coming months, I'm stuck on trying to figure out what I can trade for more of that 2016 Fundamental Observation. I love the memories, but I'm always open to re-experiencing a rare and wonderful thing.
Neither of these two limited-run barrel-aged stouts were vanilla in any way, shape or form.The one on the left, the 2017 Dosvidanya Vanilla Rye released at Destihl's Dosvidanya Day in Normal, Illinois, a few months ago delivered almost everything you'd hope for when you hear "Vanilla Rye." (Let's not get out over our skis; there is only one Vanilla Rye king, and Goose Island hasn't released it since 2014. It's still flippin' delicious assuming it was properly cellared and not shipped coast to coast four times last summer.) The vanilla is plentiful without verging into Mallo Cup territory and the rye gives it a touch of spiciness.
The one on the right...AWAGOO! I've only had a few BA beers from Bottle Logic, and I've had the good fortune to enjoy the 2016 release of Fundamental Observation BA Vanilla Stout twice. It's truly world class, the oak complementing the vanilla beans and a nice, thick body that gives a tremendous mouthfeel. (God I hate that term. But sometimes it's the best word available, so I use it.)
I was very happy to share these with a really good friend recently and while I'm happy to have two more bottles of the Dosvidanyas to enjoy in coming months, I'm stuck on trying to figure out what I can trade for more of that 2016 Fundamental Observation. I love the memories, but I'm always open to re-experiencing a rare and wonderful thing.
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