What do you wanna ask another BA?

@chipawayboy , how'd that muling flophouse work out for ya?

 

Ah, I can never remember. Is it 87 pounds or 78 pounds, and did I accurately subtract the tare weight of the "borrowed" milk crates? Did it include doubles/traders?

I slowed down on the opener collecting sometime in the 1990s (above is a mid-80s pic), so before I converted many of my other collections into Excel files, plus the hobby's method of classifying individual openers from the same brewer of a similar design is kinda clunky.

 

At some point (even pre-internet) I realized I was more interested in collecting the information more than the "stuff". So, a Xerox of an article done at 5¢/page at the library was just as good as a copy of the actual Fortune, Business Week or Modern Brewery Age issue with a brewing industry/brewery article in it.

When the internet came along, I soon found that articles and webpages could easily disappear (unlike those bound volumes or microfilms in a library), so I started saving them as Word files or jpegs or pdfs.

Sadly, many industry publications have disappeared or have gone behind paywalls. I understand that publications have to make money but, in most cases, the ability to read the articles for free at a good university or city library is often no longer an option. And prices for the industry pubs are crazy. In the 1980s, I got "hard copy" monthly issues of Brewers Digest for $20/year ($56 in 2024 dollars). A sub for the 24 newsletters/year Beer Marketer's Insights today is $920. Makes the price inflation of beer look damn attractive.

 

Wait, what's social media?

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@cavedave What is the date for your next beer? and do you have one in mind at the moment?

 

RIGHT BACK ATCHA @Beersnake - when ARE we going to run and drink? Sorry you hit this injury speedbump before Black Canyon. But one of these days. What's next for you? *hiccup*

 

This month's beer will be this first week at some point, and I'm considering cracking a Captain Lawrence Cuvee de Castleton from, I think, 2011 (too lazy to check haha).

Now you asked I really am in the mood, maybe today!

 

Well the flophouse never materialized (shocking I’m sure for those that were never in on the joke…). I do still love my 3-4 treks every year to Waterbury/Stowe and the Northeast Kingdom. There’s a rather remarkable consistency to the VT beer experience since that thread was posted in 2014 — BlackBack, ProPig and the Res are still pouring an amazing line up of beers in Waterbury - the 3 Penny has survived another round of floods in Montpelier - the Alchemist and HF have changed little - happy with their place in the craft world and not looking for continuous growth. Parker Pie and it’s weird set up in and amongst a dairy farm north of HF is untouched and still the only place I know of where you can get a handmade pizza, pint of Edward, and grab a block of Bayley Hazen Blue for the road. Going to Greensboro Bend is still a therapeutic experience for me - that spot on the Hill always makes me forget about everything for a couple of hours. The whole FOMO phenomenon that fueled the original Flophouse vision is a distant memory. Heady’s 20th anniversary brew has been hyped recently and I was able to casually/randomly walk into the BlackBack a few weeks ago and snag a pint (it’s really good btw). Hill Farmstead’s latest Damon RIS release has been available now for over a month (it’s not good - unfortunately). Of course Heady can be had around the country now - and HF Edward is on tap down the street from my MA home. Occasionally a new brewery opens in the sweet spot north of WRJ and south of the VT/Canadian border and draws attention - Freak Folk being one of the latest - but subsequent visits are typically uneventful affairs - no lines/no missing out (really good beer btw). Hoping this all continues for the next 10 years. I guess the final frontier for me now is to address the long arduous car ride that is still required for me to get to the VT beer promised land and get that experience I still jones for — and for that I’m considering taking the advise from one of my favorite replies to the 2014 thread - “Buy a fucking helicopter and just fly in on delivery day. Problem solved.”

 

Back in the day (1990’s – early 200’s) a craft beer bar in Philly (Sugar Moms) used to have an annual Barleywine event the day before Easter. The event was called Split thy Skull.

Sugar Moms had an interesting look to it. It was in the basement of a building and sort felt like you were in a dungeon:



Unfortunately (for me) it had poor ventilation and this was the timeframe when smoking was permitted in bars.

Lew Bryson did a nice writeup of Split thy Skull:

“Back in the day...way back in the day, like in the 1990s, one of the premiere beer events in Philadelphia was Split Thy Skull, a barleywine/strong beer event at Sugar Mom's in Old City, originally put on by Philly's pioneer beer promoter, Jim Anderson. For whatever reason, it was always held on the day before Easter, and -- thank you! -- in the afternoon. We'd crowd in the basement bar, eat sandwiches and red beet eggs, and scarf down glasses of beers that started at 7% and headed north from there. That's where I had my first Yards Old Bart, various iterations of Dock Street's barleywine, draft Kulmbacher G'frorns, and Rogue Old Crustacean. That's also where I first met Nodding Head founder Curt Decker, when both of us were "pretty well banged up," as Tom Peters puts it.”

http://lewbryson.blogspot.com/2016/03/split-thy-skull-xxi-in-philly-tomorrow.html

I attended this event a few times but this was the sort of event where I could only hang for 1-2 hour both due to the strength of the beers served but the smoky environment as well.

Did any of youz guys attend Split thy Skull?

Cheers!

P.S. Later today I will be meeting some buddies at Capone’s for the Pliny the Younger event.

@DIM @jmdrpi @thebeers @Braunmeister_1943 @tobelerone @rotsaruch @TomFoley

 

This is going on five years of one beer a month, and at first I tried to drink the beers I thought would age most poorly. At a certain point what I had all seemed about equal in how they'd age, so I really stopped planning and just went with mood. What moves me, the way you put it so well, is a great way to think of it. My cellar is also where I keep all my canned goods, so I pass by the beer quite often, and I did catch notice last month that I still had a couple of these favorite Capt. Lawrence beers, and thought it might be nice to open one soon since it has been quite a while since last one. I also noticed I had a Grassroots/HF Brother Soigne' I forgot I still had, and who knows, I may change my mind and have that instead. Definitely in the mood for a beer now you got me talking, so gonna for sure crack something today.

And I just finished a long chapter in book two of the trilogy I'm writing that was the absolute hardest thing to write of my whole life (a tough talk show host interviews/interrogates four people for almost an hour real time, uggh) so also kind of want to celebrate getting that out of the way after working on it for over a week.

Wow that was more than anyone wanted to read haha. Thanks for asking! Cheers!

 

I love it when some whippersnapper refers to the 1990's as "way back in the day." Now excuse me whilst I go hitch up my carriage for a trip to the apothecary. My lumbago is acting up and I'm out of tonic at the moment.

 

Yeah, those damn kids!

 

@beergoot -- where's that video guide for pouring beer with improbable head?

 

Loved Sugar Moms early on. As it became more popular the weekends were a no go. If I remember correctly there was a wait at the top of the stairs to get in only when someone left. Also I would not pay the fee $ they asked to get in on the weekend. I would go Thursday night and get the spicy fries and some sandwich and they put the Simpsons on the screen. This was when Thursday was the new episode night. Remember how heavy the bar stools were? I loved to sit in the old bumper cars and play pinball. It was a dark place but your photo makes it look a bit crazy. Do you have a photo of the bar area? I had many beers here and can’t tell you the name of one. Was never at split thy skull, I thought that was a Khyber event?

Would love to join you for a glass of Younger but I will be at work in a few hours. Hope to catch this beer at Union Jacks again this year.

Enjoy

 

I've always wanted to ask @Dethark if he's dinking those beers at room temperature? I thought that's how they do it in England.

 

No beer is served at room temperature over here, well not on purpose.

Cask is usually served around 12c. All keg beer is a lot colder. Hope that helps.

 

Ah, not really. I started out concentrating on the post-Repeal brewing industry in the US, then expanded back to 19th century and over to Europe, mostly in relationship to the influence of UK, German and other brewers and beers on the US industry.

But I kinda lost interest around 2000-2010 in being a student of the US industry, when the total number of breweries exceeded the old 1870s peak. When the answer to "What's your favorite brewery?" became "They have the best onion rings and they do/don't allow kids/pets. Oh, and the wife loves the goat yoga classes. And then there are their cool heavy-metal influenced labels!"

What happened to "beer" being part of the answer?

At heart, I've always been a curmudgeon but the current scene sure isn't how I would have hoped it'd turn out back around 1980. (Plus, it was so much easier to be a student of the industry, when the brewery total was around 100 or even 1000. But 10k?) I mean, a baseball expert doesn't follow the sandlot game down the street. Someone who follows the oil industry doesn't pay attention to every gas station in the country.