Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Headlines from March 2017 on THE BEER BEAT.


Previously, I explained several reasons why this blog has gone on hiatus, and explained that my thoughts about beer will be posted alongside my utterances about everything else, over yonder at NA Confidential.

You'll find them there via the all-purpose tag, The Beer Beat. However, whenever the urge strikes -- probably monthly -- I'll collect a few of these links right here. Here is another month, with the most recent listed first. Apologies if topicality has gone out the window. I'm still groping for a working routine.

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THE BEER BEAT: An assortment of headlines for beer and dissection.


Every year is the same, and I repeat once again: SUNDAY SALES ALREADY EXIST. Each year without fail, someone writes a column like this one lamenting Indiana's undisputed legal weirdness, and it always ends with the broad claim that there is a prohibition on Sunday sales. But beer, wine and spirits are available for carry-out on Sunday from small Indiana's brewers, vintners and distillers -- and there are virtually no restrictions pertaining to on-premise consumption.

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THE BEER BEAT: I've decided to skip this year's Session Beer Day observance. See you in 2018.


As most readers know by now, (my mother) died two weeks ago, and I'm happy to have kept my vow of sobriety (if not outright abstinence). We're never to old to learn, or to feel. Session Beer Day was to be the resumption of normality, and yet to be honest, I'm not feeling it. I can see myself having a couple of beers somewhere, just not in the previously suggested format.

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SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS meets THE BEER BEAT: Boontling, a local dialect made famous by Anderson Valley Brewing Company.


Hop Ottin' was a precursor to our IPA-crazed contemporary era, and it also serves to introduce today's lingo.

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THE BEER BEAT: Bryan Roth on sexism, anonymity and speaking openly about diversity.


If the guild is supported by the majority Indiana breweries, and it is, and if these breweries agree that it's a good thing for the guild to lobby on their behalf, then the corollary is for them to accept an obligation to be socially responsible -- precisely because the Indiana legal regime stipulates that irresponsibility (serving minors, etc) is grounds for the revocation of the brewing privilege.

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THE BEER BEAT: "'Pinup versus pin her down': Indiana beers stoke controversy."


Last December, I was revisited by ghosts. It's a recurring phenomenon with me.

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THE BEER BEAT: Airline pricing for movie theater drinks, although we've little idea which ones.


If I were an editor at Business First -- well, that's unlikely, given that business-oriented publications contain far too many numbers for a humanities major like me, and anyway, it's my habit to refrain from fetishizing grubby capitalists -- I'd ask the contributing writer why some of the following beers are tagged by brand name, but the wines are identified by style.

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THE BEER BEAT: Highlights but no Lites, or a beer news roundup.


Coincidentally, as I ponder the most recent effort (fingers crossed) to bring the NABC buyout saga to a conclusion, All About Beer offers a wonderful tip about the power of realism.

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THE BEER BEAT: No beer ... but a whole lotta mezcal in the new edition of Food & Dining, including a previously unpublished feature-length essay.


The assignment began as a column-length look at Louisville KY resident Marcos Mendoza and his Mala Idea line of mezcal, then John Carlos White turned me loose to write about mezcal at length -- and at deadline, we'd see where it took me.

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THE BEER BEAT: "HopCat is the craft beer lover’s meow."


Since Food & Dining is a quarterly, I wait until the current issue is published, then backtrack three months for the reprint, so this profile of HopCat is from Winter 2016; Vol. 54 (Aug/Sept/Oct) -- and yes, HopCat is a chain pub and eatery.

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THE BEER BEAT: The revenge of analog in terms of drinking beer? I like the idea.


The single most memorable beer article I came across during the past week didn't so much as mention beer, not even once. Instead, the article in question is a brief rumination on the message to be gleaned from a new book by David Sax called The Revenge Of Analog: Real Things And Why They Matter.

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