Camp Fire relief: Sierra Nevada's Resilience Butte County Proud IPA

Many of you have asked if we will be brewing a fundraiser beer to support #CampFire relief efforts. The answer is a resounding “yes.”

We are proud to announce that we’ll be brewing Resilience Butte County Proud IPA and donating 100% of sales to Camp Fire relief.

In addition, we are also asking every brewery in America to brew Resilience and do the same. I’m sending a letter to brewers across the country, inviting them to join us in a collaboration brew day on Tuesday, November 27.

We are working with malt and hop suppliers to provide raw ingredient donations to all participating breweries and are asking those breweries to donate 100 percent of their sales, as well.

We know that the rebuilding process will take time, but we’re in this for the long haul. Our hope is to get Resilience IPA in taprooms all over the country to create a solid start for our community’s future.

Thank you to each and every one of you for your support. We're right here with you and we’ll get through this together.

— Ken Grossman
Sierra Nevada Brewing (Instagram)
17 November 2018.

***************

Other ways to help

As of this morning (17 November 2018), the death toll has risen to 71 in California. The Camp Fire has consumed more than 140,000 acres and destroyed more than 12,000 houses and structures.

How you can help Camp Fire victims:

• Via Mercury News (in San Jose).
• Via Charity Navigator.

Chico, California: 9 November 2018.
The fire approached (but did not damage) Sierra Nevada Brewing.

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: When it's apple time, down south in Georgia.

Literally and figuratively, it's a pick of the week today.

Billed as a better version of Honeycrisp, the CrimsonCrisp has roots in Golden Delicious, Red Rome, and Jonathan apples, among others. While Honeycrisp has a three-week picking window and is prone to falling off the tree, these deep red apples can be picked for five weeks, grow slowly with little need for pruning, and aren't prone to falling, according to the farmer. “This is more attractive, crisper, more high coloring, you can pick it over a longer time, it doesn't have a tendency to drop, it doesn’t bruise,” he says. “So everything about it is better.” And while Honeycrisp’s extreme juiciness makes it perfect for snacking, it’s not an ideal baking apple, but the CrimsonCrisp can be used for both.

— Food & Wine

On 3 November 2018, Mercier Orchards (of Blue Ridge, Georgia) brought a bushel load to the Freedom Farmers Market, in Atlanta, Georgia (at the Carter Center).

In the photo, the CrimsonCrisp apples are second from the bottom. "Rich, sweet-tart flavor; extremely crisp." was the orchard's description. I concur.

But can't something be done to excise that damnable punctuation-challenged marketers' spelling?

-----more-----

The beer blog is dead. Long live the beer blog.

Earlier this month, within one day of each other:

• Jay Brooks announced the impending demise, after 11 years, of the monthly communal beer bloggers' jam session, "The Session: Beer Blogging Friday."
  
  
• Jonathan Surratt announced the creation of ReadBeer, an aggregator of beer blogs (in non-jargon parlance: a list that updates the latest posts of beer blogs).

***************
Jay Brooks is a beer author and the amazingly prolific publisher of the beer blog, the Brookston Beer Bulletin. He posts daily about beer birthdays (historical and current), historic beer ads, beer art, and current beer-related topics. And, of course, he co-founded "The Session" (with fellow beer writer, Stan Hieronymous).

The penultimate Session, the 141st overall, he titled: "Second-To-Last Session: The Future Of Beer Blogging" and wrote:

Fast forward a decade and there are many more ways that people interact online, and blogs, I think, lost their vaunted place in the discussion. Now there’s also Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and countless other ways to communicate online. This has meant blogging, I believe, has lost its place at the top, or in the middle, or wherever it was. That’s how it feels to me, at least. I think one incident that confirmed this for me is that recently the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference changed its name to the "Beer Now Conference," a seeming acknowledgment that the landscape has changed.

Jonathan Surratt, among several beery things, is the web guru for the Cicerone Certification Program. Way back in 2005, he launched the (still viable) crowd-sourced brewery/beer store locator, the Beer Mapping Project.

A few days after ReadBeer went live, Suratt tweeted:

We just hit 988 posts in less than a week. That's from 63 different beer news/blog sources. Since we launched (last Friday), we've sent more than 4,500 clicks outgoing to these sources.

The beer blog is dead. Long live the beer blog. Or, at least, long live the beer journal, public or private, online or pen-and-paper.

-----more-----

100 years later: peace on Earth, goodwill toward mankind?

Ten million soldiers dead.

One-hundred years ago, today, at the 11th hour (Paris, France time) of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice went into effect and World War I —the "War to End All Wars"— ended. War, not.

**********************
One year later, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson commemorated the first observance of Armistice Day (which, in years to come, in the U.S. would be honored as Veterans Day).

A year ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order and to work out in peace a new and juster set of international relations. The soldiers and people of the European Allies had fought and endured for more than four years to uphold the barrier of civilization against the aggressions of armed force. We ourselves had been in the conflict something more than a year and a half.

With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns, we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought.

Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men.

To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations.

The photo, from the British Imperial War Museum depicts an American sailor, an American Red Cross Nurse, and two British soldiers, standing near the Paris Gate at Vincennes, Paris, all celebrating the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918. It may not be a beer photo, but —in memory of those who fought and died, and in the ever hope of real peace on Earth, goodwill toward mankind— it marks an occasion that is, at the very least, more than worthy of a toast with a good beer.

-----more-----

Pic(k) of the Week: Fallen allée

It was only an afterthought.

Mucked from rains the day before, the unfinished Peavine Creek trail was a side-creek of mud. I climbed from the narrow forest in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, to a neighborhood street. I turned around and saw the scene: an allée of trees and fallen aureate leaves waiting to be framed.

Druid Hills, Atlanta, Georgia, 7 November 2018.

What I snapped then was, by far, my best shot of that hike. Sometimes, I think I get a bit closer to 'getting' it — the photography thing, that is. I have my brother —a real photographer— to thank for that.

Slow down for the trees.

-----more-----