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.

Howdy beer geek! I'm heading to the Pendleton Round-Up rodeo tomorrow, which should be both fun and very weird. I've got my cowboy costume at the ready and I'll avoid talking to anyone about politics, you betcha. I expect I'll consume a fair amount of Canadian whisky there, which is what Pendleton's is (I doubt the American flag waving crowd will be aware of that, but hey it's bottled in Oregon). 

Beer of the Week: Machine House's 1890 Suffolk XXXX English Mild, based on a recipe from Ron Pattinson, is fantastic! That Seattle-based brewery is such a gem, as is Mr. Pattinson.

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

TBS 6-Pack

UK BEER IS IN REAL TROUBLE

Lights Out — U.K. Beer Businesses Fear ‘Impending Doom’ as Energy, CO2 Costs Spiral by Kate Bernot for Good Beer Hunting & How much for a beer? Pub-goers on alert as pint price pushes towards ‘psychological’ £5 ceiling by Andy Norton for The Press & Journal UK. Things are looking dire for the beer industry in the UK, in particular for pubs. UK companies’ electricity bills have risen +349% and gas bills by +424% over the last year and half, largely thanks to Russian warmongering (and Europe’s poor past decision to rely on Russian energy). +10% inflation and rising prices for everything that goes into making and packaging beer has pushed other costs ever higher. 70% of UK’s pubs say they won’t make it through the winter without gov’t assistance! Meanwhile, pub-goers are balking at pint prices over about £5 (~$5.70 USD), which seems bonkers to me — in Portland it’s hard to find a pint of craft beer for that price and forget about it in San Francisco, where you can easily pay $8/pint for a hazy IPA. Presumably in that article they’re talking about Carlsberg lagers or something? Crazy stuff. I can't imagine the UK will allow the loss of their amazing pub culture. 🤞

 

RUSSIAN BREWERS ARE SUFFERING, BOO HOO 

Russian brewers tap local market for hops as foreign supplies dry up by Alexander Marrow for Reuters. Russian brewers used to buy hops from global producers, but no more. Now they have to use Russian hops and the endorsement from one Russian brewer isn’t exactly ringing, “In principle we are happy with the quality.” LOL, OK. They say it will take years for the Russian industry to get up to speed and develop new breeds to replace those they can no longer access. One brewer says the upside is there’s less competition from imported beer now, ha…well, that’s something. I doubt the consumers are feeling that way, but hey, they probably won’t be able to afford imported beer anyway with the Russian economy getting hammered. It all sucks for the average Russian who would presumably rather not be at war, but them's the breaks when you have an authoritarian leader who lives in a conspiratorial bubble...
 

GOV’T PUSHBACK ON SUGARY BEER 

Concerns over beer sugar content and claims by Claire Burnett for BrewsNews. The Australian gov’t is considering new labeling requirements showing how much sugar is in beer. High sugar content is, of course, primarily an issue for fruity, milkshake, and imperial stout sorts of beers, but could require changes to labeling for “healthy” beer marketed as having low calorie content as well. Beer labeling issues have popped up in several countries recently, as have new and much lower safe alcohol consumption level recommendations in countries such as Canada. It’s hard to imagine this stuff would be happening but for the high ABV and sugary craft beer styles that have trended in recent years — as well as the many refermenting/exploding can recalls that have been…trendy. 

LEARN BETTER BEER DESCRIPTION

Improving Your Descriptive Ability by Emma Schmitz for the BJCP. It always strikes me as odd when someone says, “I could never pass the Cert Cicerone exam, I’m not good at tasting” or the like. Folks who are good at it have worked on that skill the same as anyone has worked at the things they’re skilled at. Just because a person consumes food doesn’t mean they’ve done so thoughtfully, or tried to effectively describe that food. Describing beer is a learned skill that anyone is capable of getting good at. This article will point you in the right direction if you’re interested in learning BJCP style beer judging and flavor description.  

PSYCHADELIC EXPLORATIONS 

Altered States: seeing the psychedelic in everything with digital nomad Holly Regan by Holly Regan for Good Beer Hunting. I’ve been excited to see how popular Michael Pollen’s How To Change Your Mind (both the book and the Netflix series) has been and I’m stoked to see more people speaking publicly about their positive experiences with psychedelics, pushing back against the demonization of these compounds. Here in Portland, OR, they’ve been decriminalized and the world has continued to spin as per the usual. Hats off to Holly Regan & GBH, her Altered States series follows her adventures with some of the less-common-than-shrooms compounds including Ayahuasca, DMT, and 5-MeO-DMT. These drugs are changing and saving people’s lives. They’re only going to become more and more common as research continues, their benefits are explored, and real information about them becomes more available. The gold rush is already on, these will be billion dollar industries in a decade or two, for better or worse (the industry part, not the proliferation part which is definitely for better).
 

VAMPIRES IN POLAND 

Archaeologists unearth remains of 17th-century female “vampire” in Poland by Jennifer Ouellette for ArsTechnica. Apparently, this is a thing that was done in Poland around 400 years ago...archeologists there have excavated the graves of “Vampires,” both male and female and of all ages. This recent one was buried with a sickle blade over her neck and a padlock on one of her toes. Like, maybe we should leave her buried? 🧛🏽‍♀️

Have a lovely weekend, y'all!

Chris