Tag Archives: Beer

Beer, brewing, brewpubs, homebrewing

Beer and Brewing in South Bend and Elsewhere

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Ok…

Been living in South Bend since August, talked to a number of people about beer and brewing. Sent long messages to some of them. Hopefully, didn’t scare them off too badly… 😉

Thing is, there’s a lot of resources for/about beer and brewing. Here’s
just a few to get people started. And once you get started, well, anything can happen.

Local/Regional

Relevant for North Central Indiana and some other parts of the MidWest

  • Legends of Notre Dame

    • Beer pub on Notre Dame Campus. The site has their beer menu…

  • Mishawaka Brewing Co.

    • Michiana’s only brewpub, at this point. They have some limited brewing supplies.

  • Quality Wine and Ale Supply [Added: 24/03/08. Thanks, Andy C!]

    • A homebrew supply shop in Elkhart, which might be the closest “LHBSS” to Mishawaka/South Bend. Looks like they have an extensive selection and decent prices.

  • Zeke’s
    Beer pub in Dowagiac, MI.
  • Indiana Beer

    • A site about beer events in Indiana.

  • Great Lakes Brewing News

    • A beer newspaper which is distributed for free at Legends and MBC. Jim Herter, business manager for Notre Dame’s food services, writes for the Indiana section.

  • Chicago Beer Society

    • Group of beer lovers and homebrewers. They do cool events like “Thirst Fursday” the first Thursday of each month.

  • Grape and Granary

    • A mail order brewing supply shop which has a good selection and ships to Northcentral Indiana pretty fast. There are other homebrew supply shops, including online, but this is the one that my friends in town have been using.

  • Theta Ridge Coffee

    • Importer of green coffee beans. As other beer lovers seem to enjoy fresh coffee, I thought I’d mention this one.

In my humble opinion, the best liquor store for beer in South Bend is City Wide Liquors’ downtown location:

109 E. Jefferson Blvd.
(Across from Keybank, down the street from Century Center)
South Bend, IN 46601
574-287-8652

General Beer Sites

Lots of information about homebrewing

  • Palmer’s How to Brew

    • A homebrewing book available online for free.

  • Papazian’s Complete Joy of Homebrewing

    • A good, inexpensive brew book for beginners and intermediate brewers.

  • HomeBrew Digest

    • A mailing-list for homebrewers and a “library” of brewing information.
    Some of the library’s stuff is a bit old but the mailing-list is a cool place to contact brewers.

  • Beertown

    • A site for different brewing associations, including the American Homebrewer Association

  • Real Beer

    • A general site about beer with a lot of information about brewing.

  • Bodensatz

    • A site with lots of info about homebrewing.

Miscellaneous Beer Sites

  • Beer Judge Certification Program

    • The most useful thing, IMHO, are “style guidelines” that are used for homebrew competitions. I hope people won’t get too stuck on the details as some of it is very arbitrary. But it’s a good way to get information about some styles, like “Irish Red Ale” or “Dunkelweizen”…

  • Rate Beer

    • A site where one can rate beers they try and/or read people’s comments about beers. Some of these comments are a bit strange and those people tend to like specific types of beer, but it’s sometimes a good way to choose a beer you want to try. Hops are liked by raters and so are strong full-bodied beers but the best-rated beer is in fact a Belgian Trappist…

  • Michael Jackson the Beer Hunter

    • The best-known beer writer, not the youngest member of the Jackson 5.

  • Beer Advocate

    • I mostly use it to look for beer pubs across the US and in other places, especially when I travel. Many places have lists of brew- and beerpubs and may even do pubcrawls for beer geeks…

  • PubCrawler

    • Another site listing beer pubs in the US and elsewhere. Actually, I was confusing PubCrawler with BeerAdvocate. They accomplish similar goals…

  • All About Beer

    • A brewing magazine.

  • Siebel Institute

    • A very serious institute where you can get a degree in brewing technology. Education you can actually use!

Alcohol, Beer, cultural identity, moral enterpreneurs, nationalism, United States

Beer and "Ethnicity"

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[Ugh! I lost a first version of this post because of Blogger maintenance… Now I know why people complain…]

The very first comment on my young blog is an extensive excerpt from Bob Skilnik's book on beer history. Thanks!
The relationship between beer and "ethnicity" is really a fascinating issue. Some say that the movement leading to the federal prohibition was related to anti-German sentiment. Others associate it more closely with the growth in the political influence of some woman groups. The events were probably a combination of both and other causes. Similarly, the MADD lobby group probably had a large part to play in rising the drinking age to 21.

All of these seem to relate to what Ruth C. Engs calls Clean Living Movements. Engs also has interesting articles available on health, alcohol, and social issues. For instance, binge drinking is a major problem on some US campuses and seems to be linked to a negative attitude toward alcohol.

One concept that I'd like to explore a bit more is that of "moral entrepreneurs" who seem to be at the center of those movements and are trying to get ahead politically. The first exposure I got to the concept was in Mezz Mezzrow's Really the Blues. In that book (on Jazz musicians in the US between the two World Wars), moral entrepreneurs are associated to the change in legal status for cannabis in 1937. A Wikipedia article on cannabis associates the criminalisation of the herb to both DuPont's interest in plastic and to anti-Mexican sentiment (with the word "marihuana" resonating with that sentiment). No idea how accurate this explanation really is (it's always safer to take things with a grain of salt) but the associate with xenophobia is illuminating.

Not that the US are the only place where sentiments against foreigners
are brought forth. In fact, many parts of the world deal with issues of
xenophobia, especially where the notion of a "nation-state" is still
believed to mean something. What's interesting about the situation in
the US is the fact that xenophobia seems to be so intimately linked
with political, legal, and social issues. In a "country of immigrants"
which recognizes itself as such, the situation is quite striking.

Alcohol, Beer, culture, Québec, responsible drinking

Iowa "Alcohol Culture"

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Easy access to alcohol and an alluring bar scene contribute to a high rate of drinking-related arrests, even by college-town standards

A newspaper article full of fallacies, logical flaws, non sequiturs on the association of alcohol-related problems with "easy access" to alcohol.

Of course, coming from Quebec which has comparatively loose alcohol laws and even more widespread availability of alcohol (especially for university students) to a dry university where they have more alcohol-related problems, I'm quite ready to challenge this point.
Interestingly, they use the number of alcohol-related arrests as a major proof that they have more problems. What's the name of that specific logical flaw?

From the article:

Recent studies show that people in the upper Midwest drink more than in other parts of the country and that heavy binge drinking corresponds with less-strict state laws on alcohol.

I'd really like to see those "studies," especially since it seems quite unlikely that the MidWest in general has looser state laws on alcohol than every part of the Northeast. Also, the article keeps saying that those who overindulge come from out of state so their data would in fact support the notion that Iowa has more problems because other places have stricter laws. There's a significant difference.

One would hope that, one day, the US will wake up and see that restrictive attitudes toward alcohol compound the problem. It's even a problem for us in Quebec because "college" students from the US go across the border to drink excessively. Also, influence from the US, in some places, seems to make some Quebeckers see alcohol as a way to get drunk as opposed to a part of a normal healthy adult life. Hopefully, we'll keep the focus on responsible drinking and non-judgemental help for those who abuse alcohol for one reason or the other. As the Quebec liquor board says: «La modération a bien meilleur goût» ("responsible drinking tastes better").

Beer, foodies

Beer: Riot and Diversity

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ABC7Chicago.com: Hungry Hound: Extensive beer lists
[Updated Link]

Interesting historical event (alluding to the "ethnic" part of prohibitions). The point of beer diversity does come across, though it's not emphasized so much.
Dolinsky seems to be more of a food geek than a beer geek and there are several mistakes on the website (including their misspelling Maibock and Blanche de Chambly) but it's always good to get some recognition from the food crowd.

amateurs, Beer, Blogging, brewing, brewpubs, experience, homebrewing, Learning, professionals

"Don't Quit Your Day Job" (Brewing as Hobby)

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[Oh, my! I do hope I won't get too hooked to blogging! I'm scared!!! ;->]

Thinking about brewing, as I often do. Responding to a message about a post I sent to the HomeBrew Digest about beer and beliefs.
In relation to my previous post on work and debt. And compartmentalization.

"Don't quit your day job"
I have no intention of doing such a thing. I love my "day job" (insofar as I have one). I see no reason to quit it.

[Yup, blogging in my case encourages the use of first person singular pronouns, a habit I try to kill in many contexts. But if it's supposed to be self-indulgent, let's do it the self-serving way…]

Some homebrewers I've met hate their day job and see brewing as an escape. [It might be something of the same for me (doing a bit of
self-analysis here) as I may use it to procrastinate. Although, brewing needs planning. Procrastination I mostly do with thinking about brewing. Anyhoo…]
Those homebrewers who brew to "get away from it all" are oftentimes the same guys (yeah, mostly guys in homebrewing circles, nowadays) who want to "Go Pro" and open a brewpub. Now, that's not silly and it's kind of easy to expect, but it might be ill-advised.
Going Pro means a huge investment on money. Of course, we all dream of having enough money to invest in brewing. Hey, if I win the lottery, I might go nuts with brewing gear and if I win enough, I might even give the brewpub idea more of a thought. But…
Going Pro also means transforming a cool, relaxing hobby into an obligation to perform. Sure, many small brewpub and microbrewery owners do it their own way and the lottery win should imply that you don't need to turn a profit. But still, professional brewing is bound to be more of a pressure. And many aspects of brewing aren't necessarily so much fun. And these are the ones that become very important in the Pro world. Not to mention the whole business side. Some people enjoy it but
these are few and far between.

A well-known homebrew celebrity (!) who became a brewpub owner is quoted as saying that if he were to start again, he might not go pro. Nowadays, he doesn't brew anymore. And even though his pub is often packed, he still struggles to make ends meet. Not a pleasant feeling.

Then, the ideal solution should be collaboration. One "business-type" to handle the business and one crazy brewer. Well, the crazy brewer won't be so crazy when the business guy talks about minimizing risk.
A big important notion, risk. A hobby is fun because the stakes are low. You scrap a 5-gallon batch, so be it. You lost a bit of time, a bit of money. So be it. That's life. And you learned something. You scrap a batch as a commercial brewer, uh-oh!
So that's one reason even the most adventurous brewers end up making a lot of fairly uncompromising beer. Another reason is that what pleases the brewer might attract a few beer geeks but the beer geek market is incredibly small as compared to the swill drinkers. Lots of talk about that. But brewing capacity (volume) is correlated against risk.