"What if the dinosaurs come back while we're all asleep?"

The Kernel Centennial Columbus IPA,

The Pig and Butcher, Islington

A nearby pub was closed, but about to be open. Posters slapped across its windows heralded the arrival of Daily Fish and Something About Meat Being Butchered On The Premises. It also said Something About Beer. 20 kinds, right? Impressive. Although it sounds like they’ll have had more kinds of fish after a month or so. Maybe it won’t always be the same 20 kinds of beer. Hold on.

the problem with reading too many beer blogs

(a continued thought from a comment on my last post)

nineteen eighty five

Beer blogger Alan McLeod posted yesterday calling out the press for heralding all-too-loudly the 27th consecutive year of global beer growth. He is right to do so, and ends with some piquing industry-level questions around the beer you love being "the child of the beer you hate". Nice. However, there was one bit that irked me:

Crafty Bud

graphed beer - via huffpo

There has been much in the press lately of the success of craft brewing. But what does this tell us about the future of beer in general?

For the US, craft beer sales are rising while overall beer market is weak, to say the least. For here in the UK, several articles have documented the characters behind beer's recent renaissance. These include not just local articles, but high profile pieces in both the New York Times and Washington Post.

There has been mention before - as discussed in an earlier post of mine about larger UK brewers and their forays into "craft territory" -  that big companies are taking note. But lets look at Really Big Beer for a second (e.g. Not Fullers). Surely, they can't ignore what's happening to their market?

Five Italian Beers Of Note

Blog has been quiet. Have been snooping around central Italy, trying beers. Here is my record:

Birra Moretti

Let’s get this one out of the way.  This beer is everywhere in Italy. You cannot ignore it. From the obscured osteria behind a hilltop church, to the Florentine cathedral-front sandwich sellers, this beer is as common as the roadside Madonna.

Big Brewers: Crafty or Menacing?

The ever-on-the-money Boak and Bailey posted today about an opportunity for craft brewers as the bigger breweries come marching onto their territory.

There is definitely something to it. As larger breweries latch on to some of the more popular aspects of craft beer (relentless dry-hopping, for example), craft brewers themselves could be focusing their efforts on less scalable yet equally interesting techniques. The B&B post mentions experimenting with different yeast strains or less widely known styles such as saison. Stone, Victory and Dogfish Head work together in the States to get this idea right. They collaborate on just such a beer. They made a video about it, in which they state explicitly that their recipe cannot be scaled up for the larger breweries.

But all this made me think.

wassssuuuupppp