TRY THE FREE 6 PACK NEWSLETTER HERE

What’s up, beer geek! This is The Beer Scholar 6-Pack weekly newsletter, a short clean email featuring 6 bulleted links with brief descriptions for each.

Sup, beer geek! I recently got a delivery from my friend Kasper in Norway, who is a partner at Bygland Bryggeri. He sent me a bunch of delicious beer as well as ~8 kveik yeast samples in little baggies. In other news, my apartment was broken into last week. The thief snatched all but one of those kveik samples (one fell on the floor and they must've missed that in their hurry). I was sad but I LOL'd when I realized they were missing because the d1psh1t thief obviously thought they were drugs. I hope the m0therf$cker tried to smoke it. 

As always, here are 6 dope links for your Friday 6 Pack. Enjoy.

TBS 6-Pack

PLEASE TREAT ME LIKE A GODD@MN ADULT

In Germany, Open-Container Beers Are a Cherished Custom and Way of Life by Evan Rail for VinePair. In Texas, an 18 year old can openly walk around with an assault rifle in plain view (seriously), but Cthulhu forbid you have an open beer on you. 

THE BEER BIZ IS BRUTAL 

The Beer Market is Rough — Even for Monks by Jeff Alworth for Beervana. St. Joseph’s Abbey, the only Trappist brewery in the US, is shutting down. I’ll miss their Quad. Unlike other online commentators, Alworth considers core business decisions they made. He contrasts their business strategy with that of Oregon’s Mt. Angel Abbey Benedictine brewery, which seems to be doing OK. 

CO2 RECAPTURE TECH COMING TO SMALL BREWERIES

Indoor Farms and Small Scale Plants Put CO2 Recovery in Reach [For Craft Breweries] by Clare Burnett for BrewsNews. Smaller affordable CO2 recapture units are hitting the market. Breweries in Sydney (what’s up, y’all, I miss you!) have been installing them. They save energy, cut down on global warming, and provide a constant source of CO2 for carbonating, flushing packaging, or even feeding hydroponic farms. Very cool, bring it on. 

IT’S SPRUCE TIP GATHERING SEASON

Spruce-Tip Beer Tastes Like New-World Hops but Has Ancient, Global Heritageby Evan Rail (I love Evan’s work) for VinePair. This is the time to go out and snag some tender young pale green Spruce tips for your pro or home brew! I just saw a bunch in Portland, OR in my neighbor's yard. They freeze well, so you don't need to use them right away. This has been a public service announcement. 

“VIBE SHIFTS” IN BEER

Anatomy of a Vibe Shift by Sean Monahan for 8Ball. I’ve always been interested in how cultural trends come about thanks to how William Gibson writes about them in his novels. This little chart inspired me to think about the beer game and how I’d love to link up with some smartypants beer people to map previous shifts and consider possibilities for where the industry is going. We were all just indoors for years, but culture keeps on moving. If I could ID the epicenter of an upcoming shift, I’d be there. Got any thoughts on that? 

FYI PLASTIC CANNOT BE RECYCLED

Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work by Judith Enck and Jan Dell for The Atlantic. For decades we were shipping “recyclables” to places like China and India, where they were mostly just put in landfills. The evidence has now piled up that the plastics industry always knew plastic recycling wasn’t realistic, they helped create public recycling programs essentially as a marketing campaign for using more plastic and making people feel OK about consumption. 

Have a lovely weekend, y'all!

Chris