BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: "Craft is being assimilated by the mainstream, but not entirely on the mainstream’s own terms."

Three pieces to an ongoing puzzle, though still too early to glimpse the larger picture.

All shook up: When craft beer goes mainstream, by Pete Brown (Imbibe)

With craft brewers selling out to multi-nationals and global giants acting like craft brewers, it’s a confusing time in the world of beer. Pete Brown takes a look at how we got here and where we might go next

When looking at the beer market, it might be tempting to see craft beer as a discreet little niche, a bubble that operates differently and separately from the mainstream. But if you’re invested in the beer market, such thinking is dangerously wrong. Craft and mainstream are converging, and stories that look quite separate from each other are starting to intertwine. Let us explain …

Pardon a massive snip, straight to the conclusion.

... In one sense, craft is simply the latest stage in the ongoing, permanent state of evolution in beer, of consumer education and rising expectations. But crucially, unlike any other innovation in recent history, this one happened without the permission of the biggest brewers in the world, and those corporations were powerless to prevent it.

Craft is being assimilated by the mainstream, but not entirely on the mainstream’s own terms. After trying to belittle it, they have been forced to accommodate and accept it, and they’ve had to recognise the seismic difference that craft has made to what drinkers expect from any beer.

Two additional links provide informative reading about the booze and beer scenes. First, the great Lew Bryson. Feeling all shook up? Sometimes it's better stirred, not shaken.

PODCAST EP 118 – STIRRING THINGS UP – WRITER LEW BRYSON, at the Full Pint

We are joined by veteran beer and whiskey writer Lew Bryson. We share stories, laughs and hot takes on covering booze.

Items of discussion include:

– Why Danny loves Lew.
– Our admiration of tech writer John C. Dvorak.
– Lew’s approach to writing about beer and whiskey.
– Dealing with Pennsylvania liquor laws.
– Comparing to the late 2010’s craft beer boom to the 90’s.
– Well made alcohol is well made alcohol.
– Gut reactions to new styles.

And to close this session, a look at how craft pioneer Anchor Brewing is doing under a(nother) new owner.

The unanchoring of Anchor Brewing, by Esther Mobley (SF Chronicle)

Our original craft brewery has changed radically since Fritz Maytag sold it in 2010. So who is it today?

A lot has changed at Anchor Brewing Co. in the last few years, but one thing hasn’t: how it makes steam beer.

On the second floor of the Potrero Hill brewery, built as a coffee roastery in the 1930s, workers still hand-crank the valve on the copper mash cooker, half a century old and shaped like an onion dome. In an adjacent room, steam beer, Anchor’s signature product, still undergoes fermentation in big, open-top steel bins. Almost all the time, the only temperature control is that chilly San Francisco Bay breeze, on which the original Anchor brewers wisely capitalized in 1896. The process is practically anachronistic.

Anachronism has always been part of Anchor Brewing’s appeal. It was the brewery oblivious to the beer zeitgeist, known for old-fashioned styles like barleywine, porter and, quaintest of all, steam. Steam is balanced, clean, refreshing; it’s timeless, and it’s never been cool. When craft beer exploded in the nineties and early aughts with its insatiably hoppy IPAs, Anchor stayed true to its old ways. It felt like home.

Which is why, to those who grew up on the local institution, these can feel like bewildering times. Anchor was Fritz Maytag’s, it was San Francisco’s. Now, as of 2017, California’s oldest brewery is owned by Japanese beer corporation Sapporo. Anchor was always touted as the nation’s first craft brewery. Now the Brewers Association says it can’t be called “craft” at all. In lieu of having a brew pub, Anchor always just offered a free tour, with beer samples. Now it charges for tours, and it has a trendy taproom, Public Taps, complete with a Skee-Ball machine and limited-edition beers like Boys ‘N’ Blood, a fruited kettle sour.

Suddenly it looks as if Anchor has jumped on every possible bandwagon, making beer styles you could never imagine Maytag endorsing. Meyer lemon lager? Blackberry IPA? Brut IPA? In the 45 years that Maytag owned Anchor, the brewery released just 10 beer styles. In the nine years since he sold it, it’s put 30 new styles into distribution — and that’s not counting the 60-plus beers that have shown up on the taproom menu since launching a pilot brewery in 2017.

Has Anchor lost touch with its own identity?

By modernizing, does it risk alienating the people who love it most?

And, in an era when this city worries about these things, what part of San Francisco’s identity hangs in the balance?

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

The Spring 2019 issue (Vol. 63) of Food & Dining Magazine will hit the streets in March. My beer column is returning with a brief overview of Pints&union, emphasizing our revolutionary beer program.

My stand is clear, and the time for a “back to basics” movement is now. I believe there exists a silent majority among American beer drinkers who find the kaleidoscopic tilt-whirl of short attention spans – this frenetic hamster wheel approach to beer appreciation – utterly bewildering.

If you're thinking this isn't revolutionary at all, I beg to differ. The core definition of revolution is "involving or causing a complete or dramatic change." There's an inescapable relativity to this. If beer choices constantly rotate, then it's revolutionary to rotate them less often -- or not at all.

Ah, but BUSINESS -- consumers demand kaleidoscopic hamster wheels, therefore businesses are compelled to provide them or go bust.

Not entirely, and in fact I've never really believed this is true. If I had, would there have been a Rich O's Public House in 1990 offering unknown beers when consumers were demanding a dozen more tasteless frozen light lager "choices"?

Besides, if every bar in town is showing the Stupor Bore, then I want my joint to do something different as a haven for the minority preferring anything but football. Businesses are compelled to find markets, not pander to any particular model.

This is as good a segue as any into a nationwide campaign to restore a dollop or three of equilibrium to the reign of short beer attention spans.

Why #FlagshipFebruary?

What sometimes gets lost amid the constant stream of special releases are the beers that paved the way for today’s remarkable global beer market, or in other words, the flagship beers that got us here.

When the current keg of Monnik Mild George depletes, there'll be two kegs of Anchor Steam to pour in connivance with #FlagshipFebruary, although I can't say exactly when this will begin.

San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. is widely acknowledged to be the first modern-day craft brewery in the United States. It is less appreciated that the company’s flagship beer, Anchor Steam Beer, is the first American craft beer in modern times. Because of its status as the last survivor of the steam beer style, which was once widespread in the American West, the beer appears to be a missing link between historic and craft beers. However, the circumstances of its reinvention in 1971 show it to be something far more important.

Finally, at Good Beer Hunting the forever well-informed and provocative Bryan Roth turns the very notion of "flagship" inside out. It's very interesting reading, which makes me more determined than ever to create, nurture and sustain an alternative beachhead.

We’ve Created a Monster — What Does it Mean to Talk Flagship Fatigue?

... Advocates spent the last 40 years decrying the problems of mass market Lager and clamoring for more options and experiences via “small and independent” craft brewers. They can hardly complain when those wishes come to fruition, and when 85% of 21-and-over Americans live within 10 miles of a brewery. This is the future liberal, promiscuous drinkers want, old-guard flagships be damned.

I've been one of these advocates, who now finds his innate contrarianism to be as infinitely mutable as the beer marketplace itself. I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far, and I will continue to work on improving the beer experience at Pints&union.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Catch up on your reading with these links. First, pour a damn beer.

That's more like it.

Immersed with patriotism on the 4th of July, or maybe hungover, I decided to make my minimal contribution to the historical record of the Second Civil War.

Exhausted, we bivouacked by a street pockmarked by sharrows, across from a corporate multi-tap. A squad was sent to reconnoiter. They were shaken and ashen-faced upon return: "Rows and rows of IPAs, hazy and mango and coffee-infused -- what are we to do?" The major's gaze hardened. "Drink 'em," he replied. "Drink 'em all, and let God sort it out." #secondcivilwarletters

That was fun.

For Independence Day, my six-pack purchase was occasioned by Jeff Alworth's thoughts at Beervana. Supposedly my choice was a blonde American lager, contract-brewed in Latrobe PA by a multinational-owned Irish brewer -- but how can it be called "lager" if using Guinness's world-famous ale yeast?

Alworth mentions the incongruity only in passing -- and yes, draft Guinness still makes the trip to America by Dublin.

Guinness's American Strategy

Last month I traveled to Baltimore to learn more about the new Guinness brewery project unfolding there. Guinness is a sponsor of this blog, and I wanted to be one of the first to delve deeply into the thinking behind the project, its scope, and its goals. Guinness was happy to make this possible, and paid for me to visit. Today I look at the new national strategy that accompanies the Baltimore brewery project.

Guinness Blonde American Lager has been around a while, but I haven't tried it until now. The confusing part to me is how a beer labeled as a "lager" can boast of using Guinness yeast.

Conceding that I'm the same guy who recently tasted corn in Yuengling's new pilsner, which is billed as all-malt, there seems to be slight fruitiness to the Guinness Blonde Lager, as well as a nip of something different in the finish. The same nip comes through in a pint of Guinness Stout, although I always thought it had to do with the roasted malt.

I'd drink Guinness Blonde Lager again in an emergency, but won't search it out. I'd rather drink a Sam Adams Boston Lager -- not that strange Sam '76, fermented with both lager and ale yeasts. It can't decide what it wants to be, and consequently fails to be anything decisive.

However, kudos to Wick's in New Albany for having Sam '76 on tap, thereby making it easier for me to have a taste. Higher-end beer bars wouldn't bother, and that's a shame. Speaking of yeast, America's most renowned hybrid has new clothes.

After more than a century, Anchor's flagship Steam beer will meet aluminum cans, by Alyssa Pereira (SFGATE)

A mere 122 years after Anchor brewed its first beer, its famed flagship, Steam, will be canned for the first time.

The new 19.2-ounce cans, gold and emblazoned with the large blue Anchor logo, will hit mostly local, independent mom-and-pop shops and liquor stores in California this summer. Bottles will still be the norm for most retailers, with the introduction of limited cans, priced about $2.49 each, being sold in standard convenience stores in an effort to meet new customers searching for a quick "grab-and-go" pack.

Hopefully these cans go national at some point, and this may sound like a strange thing for me to say; after all, Anchor's not local, except in the Bay Area.

It might help to know that the only professional sports team to which I hold lifelong allegiance is the Oakland A's. 47 years later, I've never seen the A's play in Oakland, and spent exactly two days in neighboring San Francisco in 1978.

Prior to the advent of cable television, to which I didn't have access until 1988, it could be hard to get West Coast night baseball scores; even then, there wasn't much in-depth coverage of Oakland, a small-market team overshadowed by the Giants.

So, for many years I've gotten e-mail updates about the A's from the San Francisco Chronicle, more recently adding food and drink newsletters -- hence the links here today.

Needless to say, AT&T Park didn't exist in 1978. My visit took place in December, and while I can say that I've been to Candlestick Park, the narrow view was through locked gates.

Did AT&T Park just become the best ballpark in America for beer? by Alyssa Pereira (SFGATE)

The Giants stadium is now selling cans from Moonraker, Temescal, Local and Altamont

The ceaseless debate about what baseball park in America is serving the best craft beers might just have a new winner: San Francisco's AT&T Park.

16-ounce beers didn't cost $15 during the Carter Administration, either. This article is the first I've heard of Albany, by the bay north of Berkeley. I'd like to go there, right now.

The story of the Albany pub where time stands still, by Emma Silvers (SFGATE)

Schmidt’s Pub doesn’t officially open until noon, but around 11:30 you’ll start to see the regulars. About a half-dozen people, mostly older folks, are the first customers at the offbeat, antiques-packed Albany tavern every day. They trickle in as soon as the door is unlocked, then stay for an hour or two amid the bookshelves and board games in the converted Craftsman. If the weather’s nice, they sit outside ...

Owner John Schmidt, who opened the pub in 1978, resists modernity.

 ... “I have a computer and a cell phone and all that, but I’ve never felt particularly comfortable or interested in it,” he says, at the prospect of a digital upgrade. Besides: “I’ve always felt a place like this doesn’t need it.”

By “a place like this,” Schmidt means a watering hole in the spirit of old English and Irish taverns, like the ones he fell for as a young man on business trips to the United Kingdom. “They’re more about the place than the beer: There’s music, people telling stories and then you have grandma knitting over there,” he says. “I just loved them.”

Shifting from California, here's a story of interest to anyone who still believes spent grain still goes to a nearby farmer's livestock. I'm thinking it still occurs, but first government began erecting barriers, then there were 7,000 breweries, many of them urbanized.

From liquid bread back to flour. Expensive, but eloquent.

From Brewery to Bakery: A Flour That Fights Waste, by Larissa Zimberoff (New York Times)

For some people, beer is the perfect end to a workday. For Bertha Jimenez, it’s the start of a new way to eliminate food waste.

Breweries throw out millions of pounds of used grain every day that could have other uses. While some is repurposed as animal feed, compostable products or heating fuel, little has been exploited for its value as food.

But Ms. Jimenez, 35, has created a small start-up, Rise Products, that converts the grain into a flour that is finding its way into sustainable bakeries and kitchens in New York and as far away as Italy.

I conclude the current compendium of instructive reading with a rejoinder to the hoarders, traders and ratings aggregators. At the same time, I don't view Coors Light as the solution, unless the carbonated urine under this banner is brewed differently for British distribution -- and this might be the case.

I recall my friend Barrie and I, traveling in Ireland in 1987.

At some point during our time in Ireland, Barrie and I entered a pub and struck up a conversation with the woman working behind the bar, who turned out to be the pub's owner.

She was delighted that we were American, happily divulging that she'd put Budweiser on tap the day before, because the great American lager was only then being introduced to the Irish market in earnest.

As gently as possible, we explained that drinking Budweiser really wasn't why we had come to Ireland, but thanks anyway.

She persisted. Did we happen to know that Budweiser was brewed under license in Ireland, not imported from America? We didn't. Weren't we curious? Perhaps we'd like to buy a pint each of Budweiser and see for ourselves if it tasted the same?

After a humorous negotiation, we convinced her to give us a half-pint each, and we'd taste test the Budweiser for her. Don't worry; we tipped well.

Somewhat anticlimactically, to me Irish-brewed Budweiser tasted almost exactly like Irish-brewed Harp Lager. Fortunately, we didn't see much more of Budweiser during the trip, but I suppose it was adequate as a calibration beer.

I want to go to Ireland, now, and not drink lager -- oh no, not at all. A pint of Plain, sir. You can keep the centimes.

Not every beer has to be special : in defence of average pints, by kirstwalker (ladysinksthebooze blog)

My local sells real ale. They have two pumps, one is perpetually Doom Bar and the other alternates between a number of Golden ales and IPAs from the Robinson’s brewery. At the moment they have on Hoppy Wan Kenobi which is packed with Cascade and Sovereign hops. Regular readers will know my feelings about American floral hops ie when I am Queen they will be launched into the sun, and even the good old British Sovereign (the hop, not Liz) doesn’t rescue this beer. For me every sip was like being hit in the face with a bunch of gladioli.

And so when I visit my local my current drink of choice is a Coors Light with a shot of lime cordial in the top. And it’s fantastic. I can neck four or five pints of that with glee whilst watching football. It’s refreshing, it’s got flavour, and I don’t have to log the damn thing on untappd or worry that it’s getting near to the bottom of the barrel, or do any other kind of thinking which is liable to distract me from more important matters like who they’re putting out at centre back for Iran.

I hesitate to jump on the Anthony Bourdain train but a quotation of his was floating around twitter last week when his death was announced. The gist was that in most brew pubs he visits no-one is really drinking, they are lining up flights going from dark to light, getting out their apps or making notes in a little book about flavour profiles. His drink of choice was ‘what’s coldest’. And there are plenty of great American bars that I’ve visited where your choices are restricted to Coors, Bud, and their ‘light’ counterparts. They are great bars because they have character, and atmosphere, and you feel at home there. Would they be improved by ‘better’ beers? Yes maybe, or maybe it’s nice to have an oasis of averageness in a world where everyone is competing to be the newest, the best, the coolest. Why go out for hamburgers when you’ve got steak at home, asked Paul Newman? Because hamburgers are just fucking good sometimes aren’t they? The cheaper and the greasier the better ...

Branding mud-struck: Why did the city of New Albany steal Anchor Brewing's seal?

There's a definite resemblance. Maybe the legal department should have looked a bit closer before anchoring the city to a new "branding mechanism."

We receive comments, like this one here: Seals, branding mechanisms and a city anchored into place by sheer dullness of bureaucratic intent.

It's sadly fitting they've chosen an anchor as a graphic representation of the city. An anchor fixes a potentially moving object to a place. It gets stuck in the mud and silt and keeps things from moving. That's why it's called an anchor.

This is not a "marketing piece", a "branding image" - it's not a progressive symbol, it doesn't imply a growing and vital city. An anchor? Who designed this?

This is "marketing" just like offering seven MILLION dollars to Pillsbury AFTER they said they they were leaving - that wasn't a "plan to attract businesses to the city" either. Too little and much, much too late.

And another by e-mail.

In going through files recently, I noticed that the city's new "branding logo" has replaced the old city seal on mundane printed things such as the city sewer bill.

I'v also noticed the inclusion of the city's new "branding logo" on the new street signs.

Questions abound:

1) How can the city seal be changed without public discussion and vote by council?

2) Why wasn't someone with real graphic design experience used to create versions of the logo that could be easily seen at various distances or in various uses?

The artwork is much too "thin" and confusing when seen in reverse, at a distance on street signs.

Who designed it, why and at whose request? Was a fee paid?

Sorry, but these questions are disallowed. After all, the new un-seal, as appended to metal and stone objects all across town, is temporary. Only permanent features may be questioned.

But if you persist, try sending smoke signals to the Bored of Works.