I've been given a break from this project I'm working on, so I wanted to use it to catch up with this section, which this time spans two months, lucky you!
For reasons I'm not aware of and can't be arsed with finding out, at some point in history someone decided that one day in August was going to be "IPA Day". I like drinking a good IPA as much as the next beer geek and I don't need any special date for that, but if this "holiday" motivates authors like Martyn Cornell to publish some good stuff on the topic, then I'm all for it. And a pretty good post it is, one that tries for the upteenth time tries to kill some of the myths of this style's history.
A few days later, and related to it, another great beer historian, Ron Pattison, speaks about the style, but from another perspective, bringing to the table what he calls "IPA inflation", or how some of those "this or that IPA" that seem to be such a hit among brewers are actually other styles. Where I disagree with Ron is in the closing statement, that IPA is going to eventually fade away just like Mild once did. It's true that the style is hugely popular among "craft beer" drinkers, but those people are only a niche market, a nice that is growing, so there are still a lot of people who still haven't drunk their first IPA.
From Colombia, Manza shares his remarkable experience with a can of Carslberg Special Brew that had been aged for 13 years!. I won't add anything else, go and Google translate it.
Tandleman, on the other hand, tells us that there's nothing wrong with drinking alone, something that, I believe, most of us agree with, but it never hurts to explain it once more to all those people who don't seem to get it. And yes, sitting at a hospoda early in the afternoon, when there is just a few people, with a good beer and a good read as sole company is one of those life's great little pleasures.
I don't know about you, but what I usually prefer to drink at a hosopoda, be it alone or with friends is what some EBU-ABV craftophiles might call "boring beer", but that could actually better be described the way Boak & Bailey brilliantly do it.
I have harshly, and deservedly, critisised the way the Spanish speaking press deals with the topic of "beer". Sometimes, it is really irritating, not so much for the disrespect they show to our favourite beverage, but for the complete lack of professionalism of the people who publish that crap. But I like being fair and the Spanish daily El País published one of the best articles I've read about beer in Spanish. It resists the temptation of plugs, it doesn't get trapped into technicalities, it "just" speaks about a new phenomenon in the market avoiding demagoguery and chauvinism. On the other hand, I still believe that "revolution" is too big a word for craft beer.
Now in September. Not much to speak of here, really, but I didn't have enough time to pay too much attention.
Once again, Martyn Cornell, posts a very well researched post about Ales that used to be brewed with the purpose of being barrel aged for decades, a tradition that has been lost and, unfortunately, doesn't seem anyone is going to revive anytime soon.
Back the the Spanish "Craft Beer" phenomenon. The folks at Lúpulo a Mansalva offer a slightly different view of it. It's interesting sometimes to see things from the other side of the counter, and LaM is an on-line beer retailer that wants to give priority to local products, which, according to what they tell us in their blog, isn't always that easy, not so much because of quality issues, but because of some not very sensible policies of some brewers.
The prize for the bollocks of these two months goes to Expats.cz, or actually, to some Suchi Rudra, who was allowed to publish an article that could have hardly been any sillier, lazier, more chauvinist and populist and less well researched. I have read better stuff in traveler's blogs. As a lover of Czech beer, I was quite ashamed and fortunately, my mate Velký Al spared me the bother of writing a response to it.
Na Zdraví!
Choose your preferred Prague hotels and get free transport.
For reasons I'm not aware of and can't be arsed with finding out, at some point in history someone decided that one day in August was going to be "IPA Day". I like drinking a good IPA as much as the next beer geek and I don't need any special date for that, but if this "holiday" motivates authors like Martyn Cornell to publish some good stuff on the topic, then I'm all for it. And a pretty good post it is, one that tries for the upteenth time tries to kill some of the myths of this style's history.
A few days later, and related to it, another great beer historian, Ron Pattison, speaks about the style, but from another perspective, bringing to the table what he calls "IPA inflation", or how some of those "this or that IPA" that seem to be such a hit among brewers are actually other styles. Where I disagree with Ron is in the closing statement, that IPA is going to eventually fade away just like Mild once did. It's true that the style is hugely popular among "craft beer" drinkers, but those people are only a niche market, a nice that is growing, so there are still a lot of people who still haven't drunk their first IPA.
From Colombia, Manza shares his remarkable experience with a can of Carslberg Special Brew that had been aged for 13 years!. I won't add anything else, go and Google translate it.
Tandleman, on the other hand, tells us that there's nothing wrong with drinking alone, something that, I believe, most of us agree with, but it never hurts to explain it once more to all those people who don't seem to get it. And yes, sitting at a hospoda early in the afternoon, when there is just a few people, with a good beer and a good read as sole company is one of those life's great little pleasures.
I don't know about you, but what I usually prefer to drink at a hosopoda, be it alone or with friends is what some EBU-ABV craftophiles might call "boring beer", but that could actually better be described the way Boak & Bailey brilliantly do it.
I have harshly, and deservedly, critisised the way the Spanish speaking press deals with the topic of "beer". Sometimes, it is really irritating, not so much for the disrespect they show to our favourite beverage, but for the complete lack of professionalism of the people who publish that crap. But I like being fair and the Spanish daily El País published one of the best articles I've read about beer in Spanish. It resists the temptation of plugs, it doesn't get trapped into technicalities, it "just" speaks about a new phenomenon in the market avoiding demagoguery and chauvinism. On the other hand, I still believe that "revolution" is too big a word for craft beer.
Now in September. Not much to speak of here, really, but I didn't have enough time to pay too much attention.
Once again, Martyn Cornell, posts a very well researched post about Ales that used to be brewed with the purpose of being barrel aged for decades, a tradition that has been lost and, unfortunately, doesn't seem anyone is going to revive anytime soon.
Back the the Spanish "Craft Beer" phenomenon. The folks at Lúpulo a Mansalva offer a slightly different view of it. It's interesting sometimes to see things from the other side of the counter, and LaM is an on-line beer retailer that wants to give priority to local products, which, according to what they tell us in their blog, isn't always that easy, not so much because of quality issues, but because of some not very sensible policies of some brewers.
The prize for the bollocks of these two months goes to Expats.cz, or actually, to some Suchi Rudra, who was allowed to publish an article that could have hardly been any sillier, lazier, more chauvinist and populist and less well researched. I have read better stuff in traveler's blogs. As a lover of Czech beer, I was quite ashamed and fortunately, my mate Velký Al spared me the bother of writing a response to it.
Na Zdraví!
Choose your preferred Prague hotels and get free transport.
"one that tries for the upteenth time tries to kill some of the myths of this style's history."
ReplyDeletelink is broken :-/
Thanks for letting me know. It's been corrected...
ReplyDelete