The paragraph:

Politics and business practices aside, there are also those who are baffled by the reverence in which the beer itself is held. It is, the critics say, a classic example of the boring brown bitter everyone was so fed up with about 20 years ago. Now, we happen to disagree, and consistently find cask Bass to be a subtle, interesting beer not far removed from Harvey’s Best in terms of character. But that’s all very subjective, of course.

I’d really like you to read the final paragraph as well. So, what the heck, start at the top and work your way down.

Yesterday, Jeff Alworth wrote, “One comment I hear a lot is that beer ‘isn’t fun’ anymore. I certainly have as much fun with beer as I used to, and indeed in these fallen times, sitting with a pint and a friend is about the funnest thing I do.”

I also had pints with a friend yesterday, but funnest thing, sort of, was the “cubes” for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival posted. Skip the rest of this paragraph and the next if you don’t care for this digression; I understand. One of the first things Daria and I did when we quit “real jobs” in 1992 was start “Music Festival News,” a guide to music festivals across the country. Eventually, we produced an annual guide they sold at Tower Records (RIP), and in the Jazz Fest bookstore (also RIP). That was a hoot.

The lineup for Jazz Fest, which we’ve been attending since 1990 (but not every year), arrives in pieces. First, the list of artists, followed by the weekend they will appear (that happened at the same time this year). Later, which days they will appear, and finally, what time they will be playing. Hence, the cubes. You know there will be painful conflicts. That you’ll have to choose between Rod Stewart, David Byrne, The Isley Brothers, Jon Batiste, Left Over Salmon (five of the nine closers April 26). But then there are the surprises. The Revivalists, Jason Isbell, Burning Speer, John Boutte, Sonny Landreth and Pine Leaf Boys are not closing, but they are all up against each other. Taking all of this into consideration and making a plan to maximize our music experience is part of the fun.

That’s the spirit with which I approach the Colorado Collaboration Fest. It’s a special event because talking to the brewers pouring their collaborations it is apparent how much fun they had making the beers. Also because there will be 130 beers none of the attendees has had before; these are one-offs. That they have not been perfected across multiple iterations adds to the appeal.

Take a little time to enjoy the list. Perhaps your eyes will pause each time you read the description of a beer in the weird category. Or you will be struck by some of the names: Naming Beers is HARD/Blending Beers is FUN, Buzzword, Liquid Thanksgiving-Get Basted, or Semicolon > Em Dash.

What also caught my attention is the presence of “Cold Pressed Hop Juice,” to be found in a New Image/Casey collab called Fresh Eyes and in American Ninja Keyboard Warrior from Milieu and Lady Justice.

This doesn’t sound like a breakfast drink, does it?

It is an offspring SubZero Hop Kief that Freestyle Hops in New Zealand introduced in 2022. “We worked with a hemp/cannabis/botanicals startup [New River Brewing in North Carolina] to develop a new (patent pending) ultra-cold mechanical separation process that is in many ways similar to high quality methods of making cannabis kief. It is a solventless process and not an oil extract,” managing director David Dunbar explained at the time.

Cold Pressed Hop Juice is the name for hop extracts made partially or fully from fresh green hops. “All of these are still in the R&D stage and only available to our ‘Freestyle Hops Research Collective’ members for trialing/feedback purposes. We plan to keep refining these with crop year 2026,” Dunbar reports now.

It wouldn’t work, obviously, to ship fresh hops to North Carolina for processing, and Freestyle has built a bigger, more efficient system on the farm.

The Cold Pressed Hop Juice in the hands of breweries in the US is a mixture of SubZero Hop Kief extracted from T90s and fresh hop extract. “The fresh hop extract on its own is very green and resinous, but has super cool elements to it. We think the blend gives an interesting, fresh twist while still having an overall nice, well-rounded character that is going to work in many beers and across different styles,” Dunbar reported via an email.

Walken (or walk-on) cooler at Dark City Brewing (RIP) in Asbury Park, New Jersey

The link.

The paragraph:

But can the likes of (Christopher) Walken really pass on the pub-going habit? The youngest generation of drinkers have proven their penchant for nostalgia and a keenness for the analog age in other areas of the economy. Whether they’re thrifting clothes from a decade of their choosing, buying the latest print magazines to leaf through, or patronizing a vinyl listening café, Gen Z has already put consumer dollars behind pre-digital products. While retail sales of alcohol are declining (meaning people are drinking less at home), spending at bars is still strong.

The paragraph:

However, as I am doing now, I could speculate and take liberties with the advance of time, but all I know is that this pub was now as dead as Jacob Marley and one day no one would ever know that this was a place where those who called it their local felt at home and one last laugh from Ricardo and Howey rent the air like the sound of splitting fabric.

The bonus, a post that has been bouncing around a month now, but is relevant and worth your time (it is not short). Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They Were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next?

This is a stereo viewer card, a 19th century invention. Each card held two almost identical images that, when viewed through a stereoscope, created a realistic 3D scene. When viewed through the stereoscope’s lenses, each eye sees a slightly different perspective, and the brain merges these perspectives into a cohesive scene.

In this case, the scene is from a farm near Bamberg, Germany. Those are hop bines in the background.