15 February 2011

Some Controversies

Have some time to kill?  Love reading about the occasional differences of opinions between craft beer brewers and beer snobs aficionados?

Start here.  (Response by a UK brewer to a xenophobic CAMRA member.)

Then this. (Someone sneaks draft-only Pliny the Younger out of what is effectively a "wake" for Don Younger at Russian River Brewing, and puts an apparently hand-bottled bottle on eBay.)  Which leads to this update.

I can't even bring myself to look at what these topics must look like at RateBeer and/or BeerAdvocate.........   I wonder if any of these folks will be at Max's camping out Thursday night to be in line first or something...........

1 comment:

JohnM. said...

"I can't even bring myself to look at what these topics must look like at RateBeer and/or BeerAdvocate........."

Can't speak for RB, but on BA, the consensus opinion seemed to be that RR needed to get over themselves. Not that anyone condoned what (apparently) took place, but the incident was isolated, and as more than one beer geek espoused, there are douchebags in the world, and douchebags will be douchebags. In other words, this sort of thing is bound to happen, and maybe the best solution is to ignore it rather than making a federal case out of the situation.

Not sure if I quite understand your last, speculative comment Alex. I'm sure there will be a line on Friday morning at Max's, but I doubt anyone will be camping out on Thursday. Personally, I plan to get there right around 10:45, and am hoping there won't be more than 50 or 60 folks in front of me.

BTW. Have a quick story you might enjoy. As it so happens, I was in Sonoma during Younger week, and so decided to head over to the brewpub on the release day (Friday; 2/4/11). I got there at 10:35 and there were already close to 300 folks in line (opening bell there is 11:00). After sitting in line for about 20 mintues, it quickly became apparent that I was going to be waiting for some time, so I decided the hell with it and just left (I know. Sacrilege. I'm sure my BA account will shortly be suspended). Some times it's good to remember that it really is just beer, and in any event, I came back around 3:30 that afternoon and got right in (20 minute wait, which I didn't think was too bad).