Greetings from the Central Time Zone. No links this week, and probably not next Monday as well.
Lotta Monday beer reading, starting with ‘authenticity’
There were many words spilled over beer last week, including some from Jeff Alworth related to one of my favorite topics: authenticity. He even headlines a phrase, “authenticity trap,” that I almost always have to explain during conversations with brewers.
In his post he leans to a passage in which “Holt demonstrates how iconic brands exude authenticity by encompassing political and cultural authority as resources for self-expression.” I’m pretty sure that is Douglas Holt, a marketing consultant who along with his partner Douglas Cameron, was responsible for the tagline “Follow your folly, ours is beer,” that New Belgium Brewing used for more than a decade.
In 2003, Holt and Cameron created a commercial that features a character they called The Tinkerer, who finds an old bicycle at a garage sale, carefully restores it, and then happily rides it into the Colorado countryside.
They outline their strategy for New Belgium in a chapter called “Fat Tire: Crossing the Cultural Chasm” within their book, “Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies to Build Breakthrough Brands.” As well as Fat Tire, those brands include Nike, Jack Daniels, Patagonia and others. The word authentic comes up in most chapters, but usually as a given and without a definition of what it means to be authentic. What is clear is how important whatever they label authenticity is to those focused on marketing.
Monday beer reading: Equity, ticking & mixed up Guinness
Getting right to it . . .
ESSENTIAL READ OF THE WEEK
Of course, you should not follow only one of these links, but if you do then make it Jamie Bogner’s interview with Kevin Asato, executive director of the National Black Brewers Association (which I overlooked the week before while we were traveling).
“We can identify that racism and access to capital have been a standard miss—that’s consistent, not just with beer, but with several other industries—but as I’m digging down into it, this capital-intensive brewery model is [a barrier itself]. Most of my brewers—92 percent—are contract brewers. Contract brewing is yet another barrier to ownership because essentially, you’re cooking up a recipe in someone else’s kitchen. We need to get that kitchen for our own brewers. That’s my biggest hurdle right now.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I average out at fewer than four pints a day, and cask beer generally has a lower alcohol percentage, about 3.5% to 5%. I did once try one that was 23%. It was so strong that I forgot to mark it down in my notebook.”
— Andy Morton, who has ticked more than 50,000 beers.
YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY
– Mixing it up. “Guinness, in fact, is a beer that some experts say has an unfounded reputation as a novelty cocktail ingredient, and when added to the right drink — and in the right way — can garner a lot of likes without stoking controversy.”
Monday beer reading: Hipsters, bottles, and weird beer glasses
This images was taken from a greeting card, and was captioned, “Where hipster gnomes gather; ‘Yes! More small batch beer and hancrafted sausages for all!” Perhaps this will cause you to think about hipster beer drinkers in a different way. See below.
More than 15 years ago, The New Yorker published “A Better Brew: The Rise of Extreme Beer.” Last fall, Dave Infante interviewed Burkhard Bilger, who wrote the story, for Taplines. Read the article, listen to the podcast, when you have a chance.
The New Yorker invested a good chunk of change to put this story on the page. Bilger went to Europe, to Delaware, to the Great American Beer Festival and elsewhere, across many days of work. How many stories in small beer-focused publications would have been funded with what was spent on a single story? It was and is an outlier, but toss it into the mix when you write a blog post in your mind based on:
– What Boak & Bailey wrote about “beer writing” in their most recent newsletter.
– Alan McLeod’s comments and further thoughts.*
– Evan Rail’s still fresh essay about the same subject.
– Matthew Curtis on publishing and sustainability.
3Ds of Monday beer reading: digitization, decoction & democracy
This photo was taken during a 2009 visit to Golden, Colorado. The sign has changed, but the message is the same today at Golden Liquors. The Coors brewery is located across the street from the store. Coincidentally, we now live within the Golden ZIP code, but not the town. Read more about Coors below.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Is beer really just the sum of its molecular parts, or is there an intangible aspect that can’t be emulated by a machine?
— Posed by Evan Rail early in “A High-Tech ‘Beer Printer’ From Belgium Wants to Digitize the Drinking Experience.”
Rail writes that the company has “presented a fully operational prototype, called ‘OneTap,’ that can pour five different styles of beer, as well as custom brews users can adjust to their preferences. Since then, members of the public have been able to sample lager; blonde, brown, and triple ales; and IPA made by the small countertop device at trade fairs and other events in Belgium.”
And some people within the brewing trade have been impressed.