Beer in the new era

My local beer store is now stocking 3 Floyds beers. I decided to try the Gumballhead, which is billed as a hoppy wheat beer, but tbh I couldn't detect much of the wheat aspect, except perhaps in the lighter body. Tasted basically like an IPA to me.

i haven't revisited gumballhead since 3 floyds distro started. maybe when it gets warmer. i remember it having an oddly high abv for a wheat beer.

Gumbahallhead reminds me of an aggressively hoppy wheat beer from Lagunitas called Little Sumpin' Sumpin'. Should mention I've never had super fresh Gumballhead tho.

yeah those beers are pretty similar from what i remember

i have very strong and positive "visting friends in chicago before anyone had kids" associations with gumball head and daisy cutter to the point that I don't know and kind of don't care if they're objectively "good" or not

They're objectively better than, like, Bud or Miller or Coors or any other generic lager, so I am happy to have them everywhere. Like, if Daisy Cutter is your baseline, you're doing pretty good as far as beer goes.

Being one of the friends joygoat visited in chicago, I have to say this is accurate. I remember Gumballhead being sort of low key at first and then it was everywhere. The same thing happened with Zombie Dust, though much more slowly.

i remember getting gumballhead at least once at logan liquors with you, and i also remember walking out of the AC there into hot as shit chicago july with two six packs and feeling like a dirtbag walking by all the dressed up folks outside the spanish language 7th day adventist church on logan blvd

i'm indifferent to zombie dust becuase it was so elusive that I'd never actually had one until maybe two years ago and it was okay enough. i do love that, gumballhead, and daisy cutter are kind of weird outliers for the styles of beer they ostensibly are

Back then 3Floyds and Half Acre were hot shit, now they're some of the more established big players in the market. My beersnobbist friends have all moved on (to some extent) to Off Color and Metropolitan for their beer-stanning activities. It doesn't hurt that one of them got a job at Metro.

Building off my last post, my dude at Metro is at it again. A portion of this beer's sales goes to the Greater Chicago Food Depository:

Tomorrow Tuesday at 2p, we’re tapping a playful take on Heliostat Zwickel Lager, a 3-part blend of:

Early-pull Heliostat repitched with Champagne yeast.

Heliostat blended with Muscat juice concentrate.

The everyday Heliostat we know and love. pic.twitter.com/gWyrnzfPwg

— Metro Brewing (@MetroBrewing) March 15, 2021

The finished beer features bursting aromas of dried apricot, ripe mango, and peach skin; an effervescent yet malty sweet body; and a bone-dry finish with just the slightest touch of residual tannins. The proletariat sips this one between bites of the rich.

— Metro Brewing (@MetroBrewing) March 15, 2021

ISO

Russian River has a similar beer called Intinction and it is one of the best beers they've made in years.

So the only way to have it is to be there tomorrow afternoon and drink on site?

I think you can get growlers/crowlers?

Beer in the old era:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-used-dominate-beer-industry-until-witch-accusations-started-pouring-180977171/#.YEjLeAK6P5J.facebook

No idea why Facebook is in that link, fuck Facebook. Here's a clean link:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-used-dominate-beer-industry-until-witch-accusations-started-pouring-180977171/

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/los-angeles/crowns-and-hops-brewing-co-profile

minorities are way under represented in the beer community. This is a nice story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DK5g8hrls

Seychelles?

If you play that at 2x speed the guitar riff turns into kind of a cool fuzz-punk sound for a while.

lol tbh

https://dragonsmilk.com/dragons-share-cherry/

eww

Clearly Melania's "Be Better" campaign fell on deaf ears.

hazy-o, dogfish's head's new england ipa brewed with oat milk -- pretty good. don't taste the oat milk at all

i have no place else to share some thoughts on this so i will share them here: https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/sightlines/2021/5/18/beer-industry-allegations-legal-vulnerability

https://vinepair.com/articles/sexism-assault-beer-industry-ratmagnet/

i guess what i would say is it is absolutely not surprising to see big shots from the heady times of the early 2010s being named here. my interest is mostly specific to shaun hill who is someone i have interacted with, and it's unsurprising that some of the accusations against him are related to fests and events. like i cannot underscore enough how big a shitshow beer fests were in the 2010-2015 era i can speak to. i was at hill farmstead's festival of farmhouse ales in 2013 and the camping/afterparty for that was "fun" but also aggressive and fratty and certainly a bad environment for women. lots of very drunk awkward dudes feeling themselves with weed and coke mixed in. and the brewers and industry people were stalking the patrons, incidentally the tired hands guy who is also accused was at that FoFA in 2013 and i remember thinking he was strikingly good-looking for a brewer and seemed much less socially awkward as well but apparently he too was capable of creating a terrible work environment for his employees.

shaun hill was by his own admission drunk for several of hill farmstead's big growth years, is not the easiest guy to talk to, and his statement related to this news is horseshit. the other thing i am seeing is randos with knives out because they are unsatisfied as consumers with how he has managed his business. it's depressing to see craft beer people co-opt legitimate complaints from women because they never liked the guy in the first place.

that said i'm a big fan of personal accountability and if you want to own and operate a business that sells intoxicants you should probably tread lightly, and afaict all of these guys spent time doing the exact opposite of that. so whatever happens happens.

the last time i went to a beer fest i wound up going solo due to some weird circumstances. i also had to get myself there and back safely with no place to crash, so i was actually doing 2 oz. tasters and being really careful. i made some line friends and ran around with these kids from connecticut for a bunch of the night until they offered me coke because they were driving back from mass to CT the next morning to go to another fest or something. it was always a pretty unhealthy scene.

I'm so glad to see it all coming to light. The women I've known working in beer and the service industry in general have endured more bullshit than I can easily account for. I just have to shake my head.

The main thing it reminds me of is this: https://m.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2019/02/13/great-lakes-brewing-news-sexist-parody-starts-brouhaha

And when I say that I mean because of the people I saw defending this behavior, people I would have thought would be empathetic. I didn't go to too many festivals but I worked in kitchens and went to A LOT of bars, and it's fucking endemic to the whole industry. I suppose I expected that others would see it as fucked up, too, but that didn't happen with the brewing news story.

I posted about the allegations on the Weinstein thread a couple days ago, but should have crossposted here. I'm not a festival guy (music or beer, lol), so I've never experienced that end of it. I was a member of a local/large beer Facebook group in 2016-2018 and saw enough, as cad says, fratty and aggressive behavior, I eventually dropped out.

I've been to Tired Hands a couple of times and gotten beer from them when I've been at my parents. I always liked the guy from what I knew of him on social media - he ran a contest a few years ago for a brewing position for a diverse candidate and when followers on social media complained that it wasn't open to white males, he basically told them to go fuck themselves. It's a good reminder that even those supporting women/POC can be problematic in real life. There seemed to be a recurring theme of that in the stories - seemingly progressive owners being (not so) secretly complete assholes to women/POC they actually worked with.

yeah all of these guys have done a lot of good things of the years. but they were also drunk around the workplace, they were big fish in small ponds, they weren't operating and behaving like business owners, and they wound up being boorish assholes an appreciable number of times.

On a more positive note ...

I have to be up in northern Wisconsin this weekend, so of course I looked around to see if there was a local brewery. And not only was the answer (inevitably) yes, but the place has loudly, aggressively dedicated itself to liberal politics as a big fuck you to all its super-red neighbors:

https://minocquabrewingcompany.com

That is such a nice area, shame there are so many nuts around

this place is like 10 minutes from me, their beer is pretty ubiquitous in this part of mass and is usually a decent option on tap: http://wormtownbrewery.com/combatting-harassment-in-the-workplace/

kind of sucks that "owners taking a step back" means ownership still profiting from the work of everyone else with the punishment of not being able to get loaded for free in the taproom.

Xpost I spoke too soon, apparently that guy's lefty views literally got him run out of town!

Gordan @Lightfoot365 the workers on The Edmund Fitzgerald were United Steelworkers from @usw5000. @GLBC_Cleveland makes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and the brewery workers are building a union with the USW now! Please RT to support them and tell Great Lakes: respect their rights! pic.twitter.com/T5aK8h9GlR

— United Steelworkers (@steelworkers) July 12, 2021

Mikkeller Raspberry Blush. A Berliner Weisse brewed with raspberry and coffee. Get it. Way better than it sounds.

I know IPAs are no longer cool and we're all supposed to hate hop bombs, but I still love 'em (especially in the summer) and I continue to be impressed with every beer I try from Hop Butcher.

What's cool now?

I don't really follow the scene anymore and just buy great IPAs online that I used to have to hunt around for.

Most everything from Hop Butcher tastes more or less the same, and it's all delicious. Lately I've been loving everything from Revolution, new or not. Their session sour box has been the gift that keeps on giving this summer.

What's cool now?

I was being a little facetious and flip, but it seems like every few weeks there's a beer twitter thing that kicks off with "here's why IPAs are actually terrible" or IPAs being the butt of jokes.

I actually taste more variety in Hop Butcher's offerings, at least compared to Three Floyd's (I love them, but it is absolutely valid that a lot of their hoppier offerings all taste kinda the same).

IPAs are the best, and one of my favorite things about them is that after a steady run of IPAs, or DIPAs, or whatever else you might be drinking that month, if you need a palate break, a solid pilsner or lager really hits the spot. Then it's back to the hoppy stuff.

The trendy stuff I've most soured on, honestly, is barrel aged stuff, not because it's bad, but because I just have so much trouble putting it away, let alone when the weather is warm.

Yeah, I love a good DIPA, I'm a sucker for good hazy IPAs too. Yes, I've had absolutely terrible versions of both, but that doesn't stop me from trying new ones and finding lots to love.

I haven't had anything barrel aged since winter, but I did buy a Surly barrel aged Darkness when I was in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Pretty much my favorite beers now are a hazy single IPA of about 6%. I've nearly lost my ability/desire to drink any beer over 8.5%

I'd gotten so used to the high ABVs that I started considering 8 or so pretty standard. That said, I'm amazed how drinkable some of these beers are in the 8-10% range. Dangerous.

Oh, they are delicious going down. I just can't handle ABV anymore. Would rather be able to slowly drink beers all night and not die.

I'm in MA for a wedding. Going to Treehouse tomorrow I guess? What's good here these days?

fun! what's your travel radius/timeframe?

xp Pretty much everything IPA. Be prepared to wait in line ime.

cad probably has the current dope.

treehouse has moved to an all-online ordering process and it's solved a lot of the line issues. if you're buying cans i'd recommend placing an order in advance. when you get there someone will usually take your can order # before you get to the bar and they will prep it while you're enjoying beer/coffee/seltzer.

woah

Staying not quite on the Cape, just before the bridge. There's a chance of driving to Gloucester for a day trip, too.

gotcha. went to a lovely wedding in bourne a few years ago. guessing you are going to the tree house sandwich outpost in that case? charlton is a bit of a haul.

things that are not entirely off the path if you trek to gloucester:

- trillium in canton for aggressive IPAs and stouts plus pricey food in a former corporate office
- vitamin sea in weymouth for all kinds of stuff in a small commercial building with bad parking
- notch in salem for fantastic european low-ABV stuff in a serene taproom near water

I don't post often about beer anymore, but tonight I had some St. Bernardus Tokyo, and damn, it was SO good. Beautiful can too.