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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.

'Sup beer geek! First of all, HUGE CONGRATS to my buddy Max Finnance 🏅 for accomplishing the nearly impossible and passing the Master Cicerone exam! The CCP announced two new MC's yesterday, bringing the new grand total to 24. The other badass to pass is Ryan Speyrer, head brewer at Parish Brewing in Broussard, Louisiana. I'm stoked for these two powerful advocates of great beer and the Cicerone Program! 

Beer of the Week: Last weekend I went camping near Mt. Hood. I brought a sixer of Wayfinder's Number 6 lager. It was exactly the light, crispy, lakeside crusher I was hoping it'd be. There's nothing in particular that stands out about it, it's just clean, subtly noble hop driven, and easy drinking. It's what you wish all light lagers were like. And as you'll see from my first link below, I am apparently a strange person for wanting a 4.7% ABV craft beer. What can ya do 🤷🏼‍♂️

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

TBS 6-Pack

HIGH ABV BEER DOMINATING SALES 

Craft beer is polarizing: More drinkers want high ABV or none at all by Kate Bernot for the Washington Post (no paywall Apple news link). When I bartend at Old Devil Moon, my bar in San Francisco, I can often tell customers are doing math in their heads as they check out our super dope projected and subtly animated draft board that I designed (I’m proud of it, here’s what it looks like, it’s still the best beer board I’ve ever seen to this day 6 years later, it was coded by Flook…tell them I sent you). Occasionally someone even straight up asks which beer has the most ABV for the buck. I hate that, personally, but it’s a very real thing. That trend looms large in the national market now, New Belgiums recently released Voodoo Ranger Juice Force DIPA at 9% ABV is set to become the biggest craft beer brand release of all time. Oddly, on the other end of the spectrum, Athletic Brewing and their NA beer is also crushing it. This is all coming at the expense of sales of <6% ABV beers, such as Pale Ales, where seltzers and RTD cocktails have snatched up much of the market. If I owned a brewery I’d have to roll with the trends and make beastmode beers, I just hope we aren’t on the cusp of losing great mid-range ABV options, which is frankly where most styles sit. Obviously, the haze craze is driving this trend, but eventually will lose steam.

THE JAPANESE GOV’T IS ENCOURAGING MORE DRINKING

Japan has a message for its young adults: Drink more alcohol by Rachel Pannett for the Washington Post. Well, that sure seems like it’d be pretty controversial. Apparently, Covid measures combined with a trend of lower amounts of drinking by young people has hit Japan’s sin tax collection pretty hard. They want their money and came up with a bizarre contest asking Japanese youth to create plans for reviving Japanese drinking culture! Seems like maybe those lost revues would accrue elsewhere, like in lower costs for their healthcare system, but who knows.

GOOD BEER IN 1987

The Birth of the Microbrewery by Ruth Reichl in Feb 1987! This is an amazing throwback to the very early days of what would end up being called “craft beer” but was hardly yet “microbrew” at that moment (thanks to Beth Demmon for making me aware of this link). This piece features some OG characters in the scene such as Bill Owens of Buffalo Bill’s (the guy who popularized modern pumpkin beer) and Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing (who helped launched the whole movement). Check out this quote: “Food snobs can’t yet walk into restaurants demanding a beer list, but that day is not far off.” Indeed!

ARE HOP COMPANIES TOO POWERFUL?

Who Owns Your Beer? by Douglas MacKinnon for the MacKinnon Report. This is a long and well researched piece about how the patenting of new hops is resulting in an extreme concentration of power among just a few hop companies (cartels?) in a similar fashion to how global food companies like Monsanto have come to dominate their industry. Essentially, when a hop company owns a must-have hop, like the uberpopular Citra, they can exercise serious power over growers and beer makers and can manipulate market prices in their favor. MacKinnon points out that when breweries literally name their most popular beers “Simcoe IPA” or “Citra IPA” they’re putting their futures in the hands of these companies. MacKinnon dug into Federal records to show who owns hop IP and which companies it has been assigned to. There isn’t much independent investigative journalism like this happening anywhere, so thumbs up to MacKinnon for doing the hard work. 

GREAT ART FEATURING UNSUNG HOP WORKERS IN YAKIMA, WA 

Christie Tirado is an woodblock print artist from Yakima area who created a beautiful series on hops and the immigrants who work the Yakima hop fields. It’s very much worth checking out Tirado’s art. If you happen to live in Aurora, CO check out this event featuring her work at Dry Dock Brewing on 9/9. Thanks to Stan Hieronymus for bringing this to my attention. 

NEVER FORGET THE JOY OF THAT FIRST BEER WITH OLD FRIENDS POST-LOCKDOWN 

b-roll no. 604 by Claire Bullen for Good Beer Hunting. This is a super short and sweet reflection on the joy of coming out of lockdown to travel and rejoin old friends over a good beer for the first time in months (or years). Even though this happened for all of us in the not too distant past, it’s a really beautiful memory to hold on to and Claire Bullen makes it feel poetic. “…after months of lockdown, leaving the confines of home felt like stepping into pure technicolor.” That's not a feeling I ever want to forget, so the reminder is appreciated. 

Have a lovely weekend, y'all!

Chris