Stone & Wood Blog – If you’ve read our feature story on the pride of Byron Shire brewing you know we’re big fans. Stone & Wood’s annual Northern Rivers Large Grants Program, which the brewery’s non-profit Ingrained Foundation manages, is a great example of how Stone & Wood consistently gives back to and supports its community. Awarded a share of $100K in funding, this year’s six recipients are the Rainforest 4 Foundation, Mullum District Neighbourhood Centre, Tweed Landcare, Support for New Mums, Zero Emissions Byron, and Autism Camp Australia. Kudos all around.
Good Beer Hunting – In an effort to help better diversify the craft beer industry, Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver recently launched the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling, which hopes to fund professional development for people of color. Writer Kate Bernot reports on the project’s goals and challenges, the latter of which include, somewhat ironically (and unfortunately), breaking out of the craft beer bubble.
Beer Crunchers – I don’t have any numbers to back this up, but anecdotally the pale ale doesn’t feel like it’s dying in Asia Pacific at anywhere near the rate that it is in the United States. However, the sales figures and analysis Doug Veliky pulls together here support in stark terms his thesis: the pale ale is dead (in the US), long live the IPA.
Kyodo News – Koji is a type of grain that has been injected with Aspergillus oryzae, an organic mold the Japanese commonly use as an ingredient in miso, soy sauce, sake, shōchū, and other foods and alcoholic beverages. It’s no surprise, then, that the first person believed to brew beer with koji is someone who previously worked at a soy sauce firm and miso warehouse. Oryzae Brewing, based in Wakayama Prefecture, is squarely on the radar for our next visit to Japan.
Pellicle – I met Speciation Artisan Ales founder Mitch Ermatinger three years ago when I took my dad to Grand Rapids, MI, to check out as many breweries and brewpubs we could pack into an overnight trip. Speciation was only a few months old at the time, but already dropping incredible wild- and mixed-fermentation ales. Speciation now exports to more than 20 US states and five countries, but following a diagnosis for coeliac disease Ermatinger can no longer drink beer. That spurred a more dedicated investment in Native Species, Speciation’s sister natural winery.
SEA Brew Blog – I’m just as tired of thinking, talking, cursing, and fuming about COVID-19 as you are, but I’d be remiss not to include at least one reference to the C-word given the fuckery it continues to wreck upon humanity. Here Dave Byrn, managing director of Crafted Beverage Consulting, lays out the 10 shutdown commandments for Southeast Asian craft breweries, from getting quality priorities straight to exhaustive cleaning. Many restrictions have eased since Byrn published this in mid-May, but everything here still applies.
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“Six Pack” is our escapism series of beer- and travel-related stories that are on our radar and also belong on yours. Read (or write) something great? Drop us a line at brian at beertravelist dot com.
