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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.

Howdy beer geek! I survived the rodeo last weekend and had a great time hitting wineries in Walla Walla, Washington, an actual name for an actual place. That pic below is a surreptitious shot of my friend's immediate reaction upon seeing a calf get roped and yanked off its feet. Rodeos are a bit rough on young cows, it turns out. I leave for Denver on Sunday to judge the Great American Beer Festival, which I'm quite excited for. I'll only be in Denver for the first session of GABF, but if anyone is in town for the 2 weeks leading up to it, let's hang out! 

As for the Beer Scholar Online Course for the CC exam, I'm literally days away from being done. Judging GABF will keep me busy for a bit next week, but it's smelling a lot like...victory! 

Beer of the Week: I popped a bottle of Private Press Brewing Cosmic Echoes batch 1 to share with friends last night and it was amazing. It tastes like a cinnamon bun covered with honey and raisins being chased by a shot of sherry. 

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

TBS 6-Pack

ALEWIVES IN THE COLONIAL USA

Women’s Work — What the Story of a 17th-Century Brewster Can Teach Us About 21st-Century Brewery Ownership by by Kate Bernot and Brian Alberts for Good Beer Hunting. There are many myths in beer perpetuated by lazy "journalists" who are really just copy-paste bloggers. Thank god there are a few good journos and pubs that hire them to do actual research. Mary Lisle wasn’t the first woman in the US to brew commercially. In this piece, Bernot and Alberts explore barriers to female brewery ownership through the ages. One interesting fact they uncover is that in the 1600s, “around half of Massachusetts homes engaged in domestic brewing.” Women did this work as a household duty and means of support, essentially similar to how alewives in England operated in earlier times. 

A CHEF TALKS AUTHENTICITY IN CUISINE  

Discovering Truth in Food: Redefining Authenticity in Cuisine by Chef Carlo Lamagna at TEDxWrigleyville. This is a great 15-minute TEDx talk about authenticity in food. Lamagna is a Portland OR based chef who is Philippine-born and Detroit-raised, so he’s learned all sorts of cooking styles and techniques. This is a really interesting talk about how cuisines evolve and blur in ways that makes it impossible to really pick apart true “traditions” and “authenticity.” Lamagna talks about how he approaches these issues in his modern Filipino restaurant, Magna Kusina.  

KEY BEER RESOURCES 

These are a few of my picks for the most important resources (other than my guides and courses of course, ha!) for learning about beer and prepping for the CBS and Certified Cicerone exams. 

• Everyone should have a BJCP app on their phone — here are my picks for iOS (the only app with the 2021 update) and for Android. 
• The BA’s free Draught Beer Quality Manual is key for learning about proper service and managing a draft system — every tap room should have a printed or purchased copy on hand. 
• The Oxford Companion to Beer is still an amazing resource and it’s available free online. If you want the book, here’s the link. It's great on-the-toilet-flip-to-a-random-page reading.
• If you only ever read one book about beer, make it Tasting Beer. It's the bible for general Certified Cicerone level knowledge. 
• For learning brewing techniques and ingredients, look to How to Brew. 
• For learning food & beer pairing, I still think The Brewmaster's Table is the best even though it’s from 2005. I'd love to see a new edition for that one, Mr. Oliver.

DO YA LIKE DAGS?

Peak Cuteness, and Other Revelations from the Science of Puppies by Rivka Galchen for the New Yorker. “Do ya like dags?” This piece is about a new book on how people and dogs grow up together. Did you know that puppies reach peak cuteness at 8 weeks, according to one study? 

CATS ALWAYS LAND ON THEIR FEET 

Cats Give the Laws of Physics a Biiiiig Stretch by Katherine J. Wu for The Atlantic. Here’s one for the cat peeps. Cats can, apparently, potentially fall from infinite heights and survive. That didn’t work out for Marvin, a cat I had back in the day that leapt from the 11th floor window of my Manhattan apartment, but apparently she had a fair chance of ending up with just a broken leg. I still wonder about the reactions of those who happened to be walking by on the sidewalk when that tragedy occurred. I figured my other cat, lovingly named B1tch and a much less pleasant fella, had pushed her. In any case, cats are pretty amazing.

HILDEGARD OF THE HOP 

The Oxford Companion to Beer definition of Hildegard von Bingen. I was surprised to learn recently that the 12th century German abbess known in the beer world for being the first to write about using hops in beer is known more widely for her musical compositions. They’re not really my jam, but here are a few of Hildegard’s hottest cuts: Voices of Angels; Canticles Of Ecstasy; & Symphonia Armonie Celestium Revelationum. My bet is that if a top EDM producer put some beats to these haunting vocals, Hildegard could top the charts once again.  

Have a lovely weekend, y'all!

Chris