62. Bye Hot Girl Summer, Hello Pumpkin-Beer Girl Fall
Marking a new beer season and getting excited about diversity initiatives; plus tarot to channel your inner Beeryonce.
This is a good week to chat about a few different things going on in beer world, isn’t it? For no particular reason other than I say it is and I’m the one writing this thing. [Shrug emoji.]
So Long Sweet Summer
It’s September and even though it’s not literally fall, it’s also obviously fall, you know? Once September starts, not only does Green Day’s annual nap, but so too does a sort of legitimacy for fall beers. In the last days of August, everyone’s all “seasonal creep” this and “seasonal creep” that, bemoaning pumpkin beers tiptoeing onto store shelves. Well, it’s September now, so you can’t complain anymore, ha! It’s kind of, mostly, basically fall beer time. And personally, I feel there’s so much to look forward to in fall beer time that I don’t think it’s possible to have too many weeks to enjoy it. I mean, look—and first of all, the big caveat to this is of course that not everyone drinks seasonally, and stouts can be good in summer, etc., etc.—all summer long, the big thing to look forward to and embrace is the perfect lager, right? The crispest, cleanest, most refreshing lager. But, I’d argue that that’s something many of us want all year long, so while it’s an easy-drinking solution to hot weather, it’s not exactly seasonal. Meanwhile, fall has beers that are fleeting, and their brief stay arguably makes them all the more special, delicious, worth savoring. Like how death makes us appreciate life, or something.
For instance, it’s wet hop IPA season right now as we speak! Has anyone had a good one yet this year? I haven’t found one yet and now that I’m thinking about it, I’m sad!
And it’s just about Oktoberfest time, and I’m already seeing—and partaking in—märzens and festbiers and other adjacent options (German, fall-flavor-y) like altbiers and different smoked-beer varieties. Shout out to Barewolf Brewing in Amesbury, Massachusetts, where I enjoyed a great altbier and a great—Polish, of course, but all in this general beer family—grodziskie.
It feels like there are more Oktoberfest events than ever this year, too. That could be just me, or it could be breweries making those understandable grabs at taproom traffic that are so needed now and have been missed to varying degrees for the last two years. I’m having a hard time thinking of a brewery I’ve been to or looked up online for some purpose or another in the past few weeks that didn’t have a listing for its Oktoberfest event up.
I’m missing, oh, 25 or so that I would have loved to get to on the weekend of September 17-18 because I’ll be watching my friend get married in Vegas (not a bad trade-off!). But I’m hoping to catch Oktoberfest at Counter Weight Brewing in Connecticut on Sunday, September 25, as their award-winning Fest Bier is one of my all-time favorite beers.
Here in New York, the New York City Brewers Guild is doing Oktoberfest NYC-style with its beloved annual event, Blocktoberfest, on Saturday, October 1. I also just saw that the Grand Delancey is doing their Oktoberfest on the same day, complete with lots of traditional German styles and oompah music. I’m currently trying to figure out how to do both without…dying.
The more we get into September, the more we can drink pumpkin beers with abandon, and when I say “we” I mean pumpkin beer enthusiasts, of course, a group I consider myself part of without shame.
A Game-Changing Grant
Have you heard yet about Beer Kulture x Brave Noise x Women of the Bevolution’s Creator Launchpad Grant? It cannot be overstated how exciting and important this grant is. I mean, apologies for my lack of eloquence here, but holy shit! This grant will make a huge impact, and does the damned thing—meaning, it is an example of the kind of work, commitment, dedication, and resource allocation the craft beer industry needs and that we hear a lot of promises about—but Beer Kulture, Brave Noise, and Women of the Bevolution are spearheaded by people who always walk the walk and put their time, money, determination, care, and talent where their mouths are.
Case in point: this grant is for $15,000, awarded to a grantee chosen from applicants who are “women and non-binary entrepreneurs, brewers, home-brewers or digital creators who Identify as Black, African American, Hispanic, Native North American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, or other Person of Color, who dream of launching a commercial product in-market but need the necessary funding and guidance to make it a reality.” The grantee’s craft beverage will also be made and released at Chicago’s Pilot Project Brewing (and the grant even includes $2,000 for travel to Chicago). The grantee will also receive three months of financial consulting from Genevieve Haughey of Northwestern Mutual, three months of marketing and PR consulting from [friend of the newsletter!] Women of the Bevolution founder Ash Eliot, and a copy of Beer Kulture’s book, This Ain’t the Beer That You’re Used To.
You can find the application here if you’re looking to apply or know someone who should. Stay tuned to this newsletter, too, as I look forward to covering the next steps of this inspiring initiative.
#ISO: Hopportunity
I somehow missed the first go of this, but Duclaw Brewing Co. is back with a second annual release of Hopportunity Awaits, and it’s more genuine feel-good content—honestly not used to this many pure, unadulterated good vibes in beer, let’s keep this going! This is a collaborative effort with Dr. J Jackson-Beckham and Craft x EDU, the impactful and hard-working organization dedicated to bolstering DEI and justice in craft beer via education and professional development, where Dr. J is executive director.
Hopportunity Awaits is a hazy IPA brewed and released with the intention of raising awareness around diversity, access, visibility, and representation in craft beer. People need to see folks like them in this industry and be meaningfully welcomed in, and we also need to be highlighting the myriad of ways people can enter and engage with this industry. It’s an industry open to all, even if you don’t want to brew or run a taproom—there’s something for everyone and the industry only gets more and more enriched by different people with different perspectives and different backgrounds making different contributions.
Partial proceeds from the Hopportunity Awaits IPA will go to Craft x EDU, helping to create an educational grant. This grant will award scholarships and help up-and-coming individuals harness their talent and find education and work opportunities.
To illustrate the kind of diversity this campaign is striving to help foster, Hopportunity Awaits has 10 different can labels, each featuring a different member of the beer industry with a story ready to motivate. Brewery owners, packaging operators, journalists, advocates—and hello, another friend of the newsletter Hannah Kiem is featured for her path in the industry and “Brews with Broads,” her podcast actively highlighting the many different routes in beer through interviews with women and non-binary individuals in the industry. How meta, how cool, how thrilling! Love to see it. Check out the rest of the folks featured here. Now all we have to do is find these cans and collect ‘em all!
Beer Tarot!
This week, I pulled The Chariot.
This card speaks to control, willpower, determination, and success. The Chariot is your SoulCycle instructor: “You see that challenge ahead, that uphill climb? That is nothing for you, because you are a bad bitch! And you make Mondays your bitch! This day is yours, this life is yours, this world is yours, CLIMB, CLIMB, CLIMB, FASTER, FASTER, FASTER, YOU ARE BEYONCE!” (I took one spin class in like 2015 and it traumatized me, in case that wasn’t clear.)
In many ways, tarot can be broken down between cards that help you find your path and cards that encourage you to keep moving down that path. The Chariot is, tbh, an aggressive form of the latter. It’s got football energy, telling you that whatever decision you’ve been thinking about, whatever stage of life or endeavor you’ve been planning, you know what’s right for you and it’s time to make it happen—obstacles be damned. The Chariot warns you, matter-of-factly, that things will try to block your path, and you’ve got to have the resolve and the confidence in yourself and your goal to smash those hurdles down and keep on moving. Onward and upward, no looking back. You owe it to yourself to not let haters or bumps in the road throw you off course.
Whaddya know, Urban Artifact has a beer called Chariot. It’s a tart ale with cherries and vanilla—sounds delightful. If you want to embody The Chariot energy, you will drink Chariot, crush the can with a guttural scream, and email your stupid ex to tell them they were always holding you back anyway. I am just kidding, do not do that. Or do, if you need to! Idk, whatever your path is, it’s between you and The Chariot. And the Chariot beer, maybe. Just get on with it!
This Week’s Boozy Media Rec
Train rides back and forth for travel over the long weekend meant more time for more podcasts, and speaking of traveling: one of my favorite listens was the first “Beer Travelers” episode of the All About Beer Podcast. Hosted by Andy Crouch, this series dives into a particular city’s beer scene, guided by people who know it well, making for not just a fun podcast, but a good glimpse at current beer trends in general, and a great travel guide for your own future trip. The first episode is on Chicago with Chalonda and Nik White—not only are both of them super knowledgeable and fun to listen to, but this whole episode just boosted my growing desire to move to Chicago.
Ex-BEER-ience of the Week
As I mentioned on Twitter this weekend, if you’re going to be in New England, Matt Osgood’s stories for Good Beer Hunting are a great way to plan your brewery visits. It’s hard to read one and not instantly dream about getting to the place at the center of the story. As we were in Massachusetts for LDW, we spent Sunday in Amesbury in order to experience Brewery Silvaticus for ourselves. (Here’s Matt’s feature on them.) What a beautiful little brewery—honestly, on the kind of good-weather day we happened to have, it’s the kind of setting that easily feels idyllic. And lagers, a whole menu of lagers! I know, way to bury the lead. I had a lovely kellerbier and a black lager to end all black lagers.
Until next week, here’s Darby at another Amesbury visit, Barewolf Brewing.
