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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.

Heya beer geeks. Here we are, two weeks into 2023...how's dry January going for you? I blew it at 12:01AM on Jan 1st and several times since there, so I guess I'll just have to try some other year. 

I went to an amateur standup night at a bar near my house recently, it was super fun. It started at 5PM on a Friday night and the small crowd was almost all folks who had shown up to do 5 minutes. They all knew each other. It was really cool, you could tell the folks on stage didn't feel loads of pressure, they were just hanging with their people. It felt almost like I crashed their party. Every time I go to comedy I wonder why I don't do it more often. 

I'm off to Florida for a week and it'll be my birthday in a few days, so I may not get you a 6 pack next Friday. I'll have pics of palm trees and manatees for you in the next episode though!
 
Beer of the Week: F*&k it, I'm going rum this week. I've been making lots of hot toddies with Doctor Bird Jamaican Rum from Two James recently. Doctor Bird has big over-ripe tropical fruit aromas from a hot mixed fermentation. The resulting funky flavors are referred to as "hogo" in the rum world. In the beer world we'd call it esterification and it would taste "solventy," like nail polish remover. I don't know the science behind why it's great in rum and bad in beer, all I know is you need to try some in a cocktail. A widely available funky Jamaican rum I highly recommend is Smith & Cross. If you think: a) "rum is sweet;" or b) Captain Morgans/Meyers/Cruzan/Bacardi/etc is rum ... then it's time for you to get on the rum train and try the real stuff. It's GOOOOD.

SIPPING IN STYLE is a new podcast series about EVERY SINGLE BEER STYLE ON THE CERTIFIED CICERONE SYLLABUS!

This is a complimentary podcast series to my recently released Online Course for the Certified Cicerone Exam. Me & Advanced Cicerone Scott Fielder are your hosts. There are ~80 styles on the syllabus, so we're just getting started. Listen now!

SIPPING IN STYLE EP 1: LAMBIC, GUEUZE, & FRUIT LAMBIC

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

TBS 6-Pack

NEW FAT TIRE!
Running Flat — New Belgium's Iconic Fat Tire Gets Full Makeover After Sales Tumble by Kate Bernot for Good Beer Hunting. They changed it ALL up, it's not even amber anymore! And whoa, check out the new can art! Fat Tire was one of my first faves back when. Personally, I like the new  look and I'll definitely try the new recipe as soon as I see it on a shelf. 

CHEF/OWNER OF WORLD'S TOP RESTAURANT IS OVER IT 
Noma Is Closing, Saying Fine Dining Is ‘Unsustainable’ by Sam Stone for Bon Appétit. Chef René Redzepi is shutting down his 3 Michelin star Copenhagen spot. I recently shut down down my place, Old Devil Moon for a lot of the same reasons he cites here -- the money sucks, the workload is ridiculous, and the businesses just are not sustainable if staff make enough to live. The restaurant biz is sh1t whether you're a small bar like ODM or whether you're a world class beast. Something has to give. Not sure what else to say.  
   

DRY JAN, IS IT WORTH IT
Does Dry January Really Make People Healthier? by Amanda Hoover for WIRED. The answer is mostly no. That's in part because it's very self selecting who actually does it and whether they stick with it (it's mostly people who already don't drink much). 🤷‍♂️
 

PALE BEER HAS BEEN AROUND FOR LIKE 13,000 YEARS 
Pale ale: it’s much, much, MUCH older than you think by Martyn Cornell. Evidence suggests the Natufians were making pale beers with wild barley 13,000 years ago in the Palestine area...that's like 10,000 years before the Sumerians started writing stuff down. It makes sense that the first beers would be pale as the first malt would've simply been dried in the sun. Malt kilning methods took thousands more years to work out. Drying malt outdoors to get a special pale and non-smokey beer was done in much more recent times, but it was risky, right, if it rained a precious food source was ruined. Super interesting article. Hat tip to my Sipping in Style co-host Advanced Cicerone Scott Fielder for sending this link along. 
 

DAN SAVAGE ON RELATIONSHIPS
The Ezra Klein Show -- Dan Savage on Polyamory, Chosen Family and Better Sex, a free New York Times podcast (that's an Apple link, but listen on whatever platform you use). Gonna go out on a limb and toss this out there. It's a great podcast episode featuring two smart thoughtful people talking about how and why our understanding of relationship styles have evolved over the past few decades. 
 

Have a lovely weekend, y'all!

Chris