Friday Night Beer Blog: Craft Beer 'Degrowth' Edition

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Friday March 29, 2024 · 6:45 PM PDT

2024/03/29 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-earned break from FNBB duties. The idea for tonight’s FNBB came from the very qualitative observation, without hard numbers or evidence, that at my regular grocery store, the section dedicated to craft beers seemed to be shrinking over the past year / 18 months or so. In parallel, the amount of space taken up by mass market beers likewise looked to be increasing. It gradually dawned on me that several out-of-town craft beer brands that I’d purchased from the grocery store in the past, like Surly Brewing Company (MN) and Alaskan Brewing Company (AK – well, duh), were no longer on offer there.

It turns out that I wasn’t too far wrong on that observation. Joshua M. Bernstein had this NYT article from this past January 26, where he notes early on:

“After years of offering a steady, often weekly, succession of new products, many breweries, bars and supermarkets have pared back the number they make, serve and sell.

In part, this is a concession to economic reality: Americans are buying less beer, opting instead for spirits and canned cocktails or refraining from alcohol altogether.”

Bernstein further parses some numbers:

“As of last November, sales of beer in stores had fallen 3.1 percent by volume from a year earlier, according to the market research firm NIQ. At bars and restaurants, sales declined nearly 4.7 percent. (For craft beer alone, the drop was even sharper: 5.3 percent in store sales and 6.7 percent in bars and restaurants.)”

From very limited personal anecdata, folks are still going to places like the Schlafly Tap Room, for one, which has been doing pretty well for 30+ years, and has come through the pandemic reasonably OK, AFAICT. But on my last visit there, I didn’t notice a large number of unfamiliar flavors, but mainly tried and true listings (i.e. listings that I recognize and/or have tasted already). Or to put it more selfishly, there seemed to be maybe only 1 or 2 flavors that I’d never tried before, or didn’t recognize at the outset. The ones that seemed unfamiliar were the Passion Fruit Galaxy Wheat and Shadow Band Pils, although now that I think about it, I’m not sure if I’ve tried the Tasmanian IPA. That will be one for the next visit there, if and when that happens.

Plus, back at my regular supermarket, while the size of the out-of-state craft beer section has shrunk, the MO and IL craft beer shelves look quite well stocked. This brings home (pun semi-intended) the point that while there are ~9500 (!) US breweries, per Bernstein’s article, one doesn’t have to travel far, so to speak, to partake of craft beer. So even with craft breweries cutting back on the number of different selections, plenty of individual flavors still remain to sample, many more than I’ll ever get to try.

Admittedly, my use of the word ‘degrowth’ in the title is potentially click-baity and far from 100% accurate or appropriate, since craft breweries shrinking their number of different flavors / offerings does not necessarily translate to a reduced overall production in volumes of craft beers that each craft brewery produces. In other words, all the resources that might have gone into 25 off-beat lower seller craft beers may simply get reallocated into the 10 steady seller craft beers, and craft brewer “A”’s overall output may not decrease. The larger general point of degrowth is, of course, reduced resources consumption, which especially us industrialized First-Worlders all need to do (myself included, of course). But that’s a whole ‘nother topic, to be sure.

Perhaps in the springtime spirit, and given how warm today has been, tonight’s featured beer chez 3CM is a “Saison de Lis” from Perennial Artisan Ales here in STL, if for no other reason than the bright flowery look of its label. And the chamomile is definitely noticeable :) . BTW, in an attempt to connect to the earlier theme, it’s interesting to note from Perennial Artisan Ales’ craft beer roster how the 30 flavors shown on their site divide out:

“Always” = 8

“Sometimes” = 12

“Rarely” = 10

For semi-obligatory videos, none of the following have anything to do with craft beer. But they are modest salutes to major people in classical music who’ve left us this month. The first two videos feature, respectively, pianists Byron Janis and Maurizio Pollini:

Byron Janis (1928-2024):

YouTube Video

Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024):

YouTube Video

For something considerably more avant-garde, this video features the Hungarian composer and conductor Péter Eötvös (1944-2024), conducting his own music, where the work features a Hammond organ, besides a standard concert hall organ:

YouTube Video

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What beers are on your menu tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Inquiring minds, and all that….

Friday Night Beer Blog: SheBrew 2024 Edition

chingchongchinaman

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Friday March 08, 2024 · 6:45 PM PST

2024/03/08 · 18:45

On the side of the label: "BREWED BY WOMEN"

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your very occasional guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-earned Friday night off from FNBB duties. Connecting to Women’s History Month, and International Women’s Day: if you’re a Portlandia resident, so to speak, and are also into craft beer, then the subject in tonight’s FNBB header may already well be known to you, namely the 9th annual SheBrew craft beer festival that showcases female craft brewers in the Portland, OR region. The roster shows 54 craft breweries, only one of whose brand names sounded vaguely familiar to me in flyover country, namely Great Notion Brewing. KOIN 6 had this TV feature on this year’s SheBrew:

YouTube Video

There are charitable aspects to SheBrew, on the serious and more lighthearted sides, respectively:

“…SheBrew is not only a celebration, it is an event honoring equality and supports all womxn and the LGBTQ community with proceeds to go to the Human Rights Campaign and the Oregon Brew Crew.”

In keeping, for once, with tonight’s theme, tonight’s featured FNBB selection chez 3CM is a Clutch It Pilsner, from Third Wheel Brewing in St. Peters, MO. Clutch It is a Czech-style pilsner, and thus has the edge in its flavor and feel that American-style pilsners tend to smooth out.

Also in keeping with esquimaux’s FNBB tradition of including a music video, while this selection has nothing to do with craft beer, it is a salute to the American composer Joan Tower, who turned 85 last year. This is from her series of Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman, Number 5 in the set, selected for no other reason than that it features musicians from the St. Louis Symphony :) :

YouTube Video

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Bonus brownie points if your selection tonight is by a female craft brewer ;) .

Bookchat: Camus’ ‘The Plague’ at 75+ (or: A Tale of Two Translations)

chingchongchinaman for Readers and Book Lovers

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Wednesday January 24, 2024 · 5:00 PM PST

2024/01/24 · 17:00

Welcome to Bookchat! Here, you can talk about anything literary; books, plays, essays, and audio books. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.

During high school (by no means as part of the curriculum), decades ago, I stumbled upon the two “hit” novels of Albert Camus, L’Étranger (The Stranger, or The Outsider), originally published in 1942, and La Peste (The Plague), originally published in 1947. I read them in reverse chronological order, in English translation, of course. Equally of course, reading these novels as a teenager did not mean anything near really understanding these novels as a teenager, beyond the core plots and the most superficial of philosophical aspects. Yet even at the time, something felt really weird and off about reading them, particularly with respect to The Plague, something that I couldn’t figure out at all at the time. So I put both aside.

Fast forward to Q1 2020, and we all know what happened then. No surprise that sales of The Plague soared during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, as reported in multiple media outlets, such as in The Guardian by Kim Willsher in late March 2020 and in NHK World by Kentaro Saeki in July 2020. Interestingly, Saeki’s fourth interviewee had a unique connection to Camus’ The Plague:

“Laura Marris, an American author, poet and translator in Buffalo, has an intimate knowledge of the book. She's working on a new translation, due to be published in 2021.”

I didn’t re-read my old high school-era copy of The Plague during the pre-COVID vaccine early lockdown period, as I wanted to wait for this new translation by Marris. When the hardback edition of the Marris translation hit the bookstores, I got a copy. However, it had a big-time printing error, where something like 25-30 pages of the text accidentally got duplicated, so that a substantial part of the novel, in something like Part III and Part IV, was missing. I gave it a super-quick read, and duly returned the hardback (with an explanation to the bookstore staff – no idea if the publisher knew, figured out, or found out about this error), and had to wait months for the paperback version. Happily, the paperback did not have that duplication gaffe.

With the hardback, Marris has a “Translator’s Note” afterword, which notes near the start:

“Like many people, I first encountered this novel in a classroom through Stuart Gilbert’s 1948 translation – the first English version of The Plague and the version most Americans still read.”

The 1948 Stuart Gilbert (1883-1969, for the record) translation was the version that I’d read in high school. Marris then commented:

“But as Matthew Ward points out in his translator’s note for The Stranger, Gilbert brings a certain ‘paraphrastic earnestness’ to Camus. Though the work is accurate, it often includes extra adverbs or slight explanations that bring Gilbert’s own reading experience to the page….Gilbert also translated the novel in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, and as a result, there is a certain impulse to make the plainer moments of the novel more ‘appropriately heroic’ for the postwar audience.”

One example that Marris cites in her afterword is the same one that she has used in multiple articles, including the NHK World piece, and also this September 2022 blog article for The Paris Review. This is how she puts it in the published Vintage International translation, in the afterword:

“Where Camus writes ‘they must begin again’ (il fallait recommencer), Gilbert elaborates with ‘they must set their shoulders to the wheel again’.”

In other words, in that one passage, Gilbert overdid it. I had this comment from Marris in mind when I finally undertook the ultimate nerd project for this diary that proves, once and for all, that 3CM really needs to get a life: namely, I read the Stuart Gilbert and the Laura Marris translations of The Plague in parallel, one sub-section at a time. Separately, I managed to find a copy of the original French text (shown at the very top of this diary, natch), which I certainly could not and cannot read in of itself, as my French is very rusty, decades-old high school level, but obviously as the definitive point of comparison to see how closely the two translations hew to Camus’ original text. My protocol here was, for each subsection, to:

What a difference several decades makes….

• Read the Gilbert translation first

• Read the Marris translation next

• Note distinctly different choices of word or phrase

• Compare those passages with Camus’ original text

From doing this, as a result, I finally figured out, decades later, an answer to the question of what felt weird and off about reading The Plague in high school, beyond the obvious fact that my teenage self didn’t really “get it” then. The answer can be summarized in one sentence, namely that, without realizing this back in high school:

The Stuart Gilbert translation of Albert Camus’ The Plague is a bad, bad, bad, bad translation.

Or to put it another way:

The Stuart Gilbert translation of Albert Camus’ The Plague is an overbaked, overcooked, and overdone translation laden with inaccuracies.

These are harsh statements. But this overall evaluation is not at all novel. My statement is a brusquer version of what Peter Carpenter wrote in a 2011 article in Translation Review, titled “Stuart Gilbert’s The Plague: Paraphrase or Translation?” (note how Carpenter doesn’t say something like “Stuart Gilbert’s Version of Camus’ The Plague: Paraphrase or Translation?”), where he says that:

“…despite the readability of Gilbert’s work, in the final analysis it is more a paraphrase than a translation.”

Marris’ comment on the ‘il fallait recommencer’ passage is very much in line with Carpenter’s summation. Jumping back in time a bit, in a May 2020 article from the on-line literary magazine 3AM, Marris commented on the long-standing Gilbert translation, in a very diplomatic manner:

“[Gilbert] is very accurate. It’s not that he makes translation mistakes, but he tends to over-paraphrase. He sort of brings his own experience of reading the book to his translation. Where Camus will be restrained, Gilbert will write the emotion of the scene, but that’s not in the text.”

Marris was being overly kind to Gilbert, at least at the time of that interview, because Gilbert, in fact, did make translation mistakes – a lot of them – in his translation / “over-paraphrasing” of Camus’ The Plague. Perhaps she made those public statements with the subliminal realization that future generations (assuming there are any, of course) will, in turn, judge her translation the way later generations have judged / are judging Stuart Gilbert, and may not be kind to her in the way that Carpenter was then, and I am currently, being harsh to Gilbert, who obviously can’t defend himself. But from showing various further examples, you might understand why my statements are so harsh. Mistranslations appear from the start, such as in the second paragraph:

Gilbert (p. 3, Vintage Books 1972 paperback): “a thoroughly negative space”

Marris (p. 3, Vintage International 2022 paperback): “a neutral space”

Camus (p. 13, 1974 Gallimard edition): “un lieu neutre”

Even if you don’t speak or read French, it’s obvious that “neutre” does not mean “thoroughly negative”. But it gets worse.

(EDIT: 11:34 PM: Later in Part I, there is this passage where Dr. Bernard Rieux, the central character, looks out to sea and muses on the developing situation, as the idea of plague begins to sink in:

Gilbert (p. 35): “A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres mirrored on a wine-dark, slumberous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky.”

Marris (p. 44): “You could imagine the glowing pyres by the calm, dark water, the battles with torches bursting sparks into the night and the thick, poisonous vapors rising into the attentive sky.”

Camus (pp. 52-53): “On pouvait imaginer les bûchers rougeoyants devant l’eau tranquille et sombre, les combats de torches dans la nuit crépitante d’étincellles et d’épaisses vapeurs empoisonnées montant vers le ciel attentif.”

Gilbert’s use use of “wine-dark” is an evocation of a classic epithet in Homer — except that Camus didn’t evoke Homer, and didn’t mention wine anywhere at all. Gilbert also turns Camus’ phrase with one noun (“les bûchers rougeoyants”) into a pair of phrases with a noun each (“of the red glow of the pyres”) that is not how Camus structured his phrasing there. Another subtle misstep by Gilbert is the use of “sea” rather than “water”, as “l’eau” means “water”, not “the sea”, where “la mer” would be more accurate, had that been Camus’ original.)

Another example that recurs in the context of one character, an old asthmatic patient of Dr. Rieux, relates to a mannerism of the asthmatic, which Marris notes in her afterword, but without saying overtly that Gilbert got it wrong here also:

“…the old asthmatic counts chickpeas (pois chiches) in the original, not green peas (pois).”

Gilbert uses the term “dried peas” on page 10 in the first reference to this vegetable, and again on page 61. Besides “chickpeas” being the more accurate word from Marris, the word chickpeas makes sense culturally, given the Mediterranean setting of Oran, Algeria. (Hummus, anyone?)

Upping the stakes even further on Stuart Gilbert’s mistranslations, another case is where he cut a sentence completely, in a passage about the character Joseph Grand, a civil servant who has been working obsessively on the first sentence of a would-be novel. Grand talks about his thought process behind his word choices, where I will bold the sentence that Gilbert cut in Camus’ original and in the Marris translation:

Gilbert (p. 97): “I’d like you to understand, Doctor. I grant you it’s easy enough to choose between a ‘but’ and an ‘and’. It’s a bit more difficult to decide between ‘and’ and ‘then’. But definitely the hardest thing may be to know whether one should put an ‘and’ or leave it out.”

Marris (p. 108): “Understand, Doctor, strictly speaking, it’s pretty each to choose between but and and. It’s already more difficult when it comes to and or then. The difficulty grows with then and next. But surely the most difficulty comes from knowing whether to put in an and, or to leave it out.”

Camus (p. 118): “Comprenez bien, Docteur. À la rigueur, c’est assez facile de choisir entre mais et et. C’est déja plus difficile d’opter entre et et puis. La difficulte grandit avec puis et ensuite. Mais, assurement, ce qu’il y a de plus difficile c’est de savoir s’il faut mettre et ou s’il ne faut pas.”

The passage is rather comic and, in a droll way, a tad drawn-out, which is the idea at this moment, to show how OCD Joseph Grand is about his opening sentence and his prose style. However, the obvious point here is that Gilbert cut a sentence that he had no business cutting. Note also that Gilbert uses single quotation marks around the pairs of words under discussion, but Camus does not, nor does Marris.

But wait: there’s more. A far more serious, and provocative (or perhaps provocative in reverse, for reasons that will be clear) case of Gilbert cutting a sentence comes in Part IV, in one of the most harrowing subsections, where several of the main characters witness the protracted last moments of a child infected with plague. I should warn that out of its full context, the bit of dialogue just before the Gilbert-cut sentence, spoken by the priest Father / Père Paneloux, may be disquieting to read. Here is the passage, with the Gilbert-cut sentence shown in bold in the Marris translation and Camus’ original. FYI, the first line of dialogue is from Dr. Castel, who has developed an anti-plague serum in the course of the novel, and the serum is being tried on the plague-stricken child:

Gilbert (pp. 201-202): “’There wasn’t any remission this morning, was there, Rieux?’

“Rieux shook his head, adding, however, that the child was putting up more resistance than one would have expected. Paneloux, who was slumped against the wall, said in a low voice:

“’So if he is to die, he will have suffered longer.’

“Light was increasing in the ward….”

Marris (p. 229): “’There was no morning remission, isn’t that right, Rieux?’

“Rieux said no, but that the child was already resisting for longer than normal. Paneloux, who seemed to sag a little against the wall, spoke in a quiet voice:

‘If he dies, he will have suffered for longer.’

“Rieux turned around sharply and opened his mouth to speak, but he stopped and made a visible effort to control hlmself, bringing his gaze back to the child.

“The light swelled in the room….”

Camus (pp. 234-235): “”Il n’y a pas eu de rémission matinale, n’est-ce-pas, Rieux?’

“Rieux dit que non, mais que l’enfant résistait depuis plus longtemps qu’il n’était normal. Paneloux, qui semblait un peu affiassé contre le mur, dit alors sourdement:

“’S’il doit mourir, il aura souffert plus longtemps.’

“Rieux se retourna brusquement vers lui et ouvrit la bouche pour parler, mais il se tut, fit un effort visible pour se dominer, et ramena son regard sur l’enfant.

“La lumière s’enflait dans la salle….”

It was a surprise to read this sentence in the Marris translation and then realize that it was absent from the Gilbert translation. This then leads, among other possible routes, into questions such as why Gilbert cut that sentence about Rieux’s reaction to Paneloux’s statement. I don’t have an obvious, easy answer, and I’ll leave that to other folks to ponder, e.g. on how “respectful” one felt obliged to be towards fictional priests in 1947-1948. BTW, Gilbert is guilty of another mistake with respect to the child, who is named Philippe in Camus’ original text, which Marris observes, but Gilbert names the child “Jacques”, for no good reason at all. It begs yet another variation on the question: why did Gilbert change that name?

But in one sense, the most egregious cut by Gilbert is before the novel even begins. Camus prefaces his narrative with a quote from Daniel Defoe (rendered in French, but of course), whose original English is:

“It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not.”

For the record, this epigram is from Robinson Crusoe, rather than A Journal from the Plague Year. Marris includes this epigram. Gilbert did not, certainly not in my paperback copy (and I wasn’t able to get to a hardbound early edition to double-check). Again, the question emerges: why did Stuart Gilbert cut this? In hindsight, anyone with a decent command of French could easily have seen at the time so many places where Gilbert mistranslated Camus’ text, yet he didn’t seem to catch much criticism in his lifetime for it. Gilbert was a literary bigwig who knew James Joyce, for one, so maybe he was a case of someone with too many big-name literary friends to go after at the time. (The academics really started to tear into the quality of his translations, of both The Stranger and The Plague, only after 1969, i.e. when he wasn’t around to fight back.)

My French is nowhere near good enough to judge the full accuracy of the Laura Marris translation of Camus’ The Plague, in terms of how “good” it is. And it is much too soon to judge how long-lasting her translation will endure, compared to the 73-year head start that the Stuart Gilbert translation has had. But based on the above examples and so many more, it’s quite fair to state that Laura Marris is far more accurate than Stuart Gilbert, in making the vision of Albert Camus accessible to English-language audiences. Overall, from my very amateur perspective, Marris is cleaner and leaner in her translation compared to Gilbert. Her translation also reads well overall, and generally doesn’t feel like a mechanical ultra-literal translation that feels awkward, or literal for the sake of being literal (and the sake of not being Stuart Gilbert).

I can think of only one place where Marris mistranslates literally one phrase, in Part IV on page 268, where she translates “un mètre cinquante” as “four feet”. I take “un mètre cinquante” to mean 1.5 meters, or “one meter fifty”, to be super-literal. This is a jarring error because otherwise Marris is scrupulous about using metric measurements rather than English measurements elsewhere, along with 1.5 meters actually being closer to 5 feet in length. But it was also jarring because it was pretty much the only such mistake that I could find. This and the one missing section break mentioned earlier are her only missteps that I noted. If she makes these few tiny corrections in future printings, this would make her translation pretty close to perfect, on a purely technical level. And this one error pales in comparison to the multitude of erroneous word choices from Stuart Gilbert. To give yet one more, and final, fresh example of Gilbert’s mistakes, Camus writes on page 314, towards the end of the novel, one sentence in dialogue:

“Il y a huit jours.”

A very simple sentence. Now here are the comparative translations, good and bad, respectively:

Marris: “Eight days ago.”

Gilbert: “A week ago.”

Camus was perfectly clear when he wrote “huit jours”. But again: why did Gilbert ignore Camus’ original text? The phrase “eight days” does not mean “a week”, except in the world of The Beatles.

(CORRECTION, 11:34 PM CST: However, I do need to acknowledge that per an insightful comment below by Trottel, Marris did get one other bit incorrectly (as did I). It is from the last phrase in a description of Dr. Rieux by another character, Jean Tarrou, whose description concludes, in the 3 versions:

Gilbert (p. 28): “Always bareheaded. Looks knowledgeable.”

Marris (p. 33): “Always bareheaded. With a resigned air.”

Camus (p. 41): “Toujours nu-tête. L’air renseigné.”

In this case, Gilbert translated the first phrase accurately, and Marris clearly concurred. In the second phrase, I admit that I fell for the very similar appearance of “renseigné” and “resigned”, and didn’t double-check. Gilbert’s phrasing is actually more accurate in this instance. So one for Gilbert, one against Marris here. Likewise, another of Marris’ very few mistakes that deviates from Camus’ original occurs immediately afterwards, a presentation mistake rather than a mistranslation. Namely, Gilbert observes a sub-section break that is in Camus’ original, but Marris doesn’t, and she elides this sub-section directly into the next. This is a suggested correction for the next printing, should that happen.)

Marris’ new translation has received just two published reviews, AFAICT (excluding comparatively rare, one-off literary blogs), both positive. The one “literary mainstream media” review of Marris’ translation is from Robert Zaretsky in the Los Angeles Review of Books here, from December 2021, soon after publication of the hardback version, and is a rave. The other review (not an ideal link, but whatever) is from the University of Florida (sorry)-based literary journal Delos, by the Swiss-born literary scholar Raymond Gay-Crosier, an emeritus professor in UF’s Languages, Literatures and Cultures department, in the journal’s Spring 2022 issue. In a case of delayed gratification, the “money quotes” from Professor Gay-Crosier (first part of his last name pronounced like the English name “Guy”, BTW) on the Marris translation don’t arrive until the last two paragraphs. In the following quote, Professor Gay-Crosier compares the three English translations of the novel’s final paragraph, and says of Marris’ work:

“With rare exceptions, Marris's choice of vocabulary corresponds remarkably to Camus's style, as is the case of her entire translation of the novel.”

The Zaretsky review is quoted on the back of the paperback version, but not the Gay-Crosier review. Perhaps Marris and the publisher didn’t find this Delos review in time, since the journal is somewhat obscure and not the easiest to track down (even if I, of all people, managed to find it). And Professor Gay-Crosier’s praise may be too subtle to make for a good sound-bite quote on the back of a book. But his praise for Marris’ translation is praise nonetheless:

“The performative act of translating is akin to that of a conductor reading with faithful creativity the notes of the verbal score of the text. In this subtle and demanding exercise, Laura Marris, a poet herself, clearly succeeds and justifies the publication of a third translation of La Peste. Her version offers an admirably balanced lacework of translational accuracy, style, and tone.”

Careful readers will note his phrase “third translation of La Peste”, which implies the existence of a second translation. That second translation was by Robin Buss (1939-2006), a notable British translator of French literature whose translation of The Plague was published in 2001. From what I can tell, the Willsher article in The Guardian about the UK publisher trying to keep up with sudden 2020-quarantine demand was most probably referring to the Robin Buss translation as what Penguin UK was printing. In other words, Penguin UK quietly did their bit to put the Gilbert translation out to pasture, by printing en masse the more recent Buss translation. This was despite the fact that, according to Professor Gay-Crosier, the Buss translation didn’t really get any major reviews at the time of its publication in 2001, or not long after. As well, the Buss translation seemed pretty much confined to the UK, and didn’t make its way to the US much, if at all, so that the Gilbert translation still held sway for Americans interested in the novel. I have not read the Buss translation, for the record, but I’m willing to guess sight unseen that by default, the Buss translation has to be more accurate / less inaccurate than the Gilbert translation.

It may fairly be said that this diary is more or less / nothing or little more than an advertorial for the Laura Marris translation of Albert Camus’ The Plague. However, as the examples in the Zaretsky review, this diary, and various academic articles show, there is ample reason for this. This YT video (note the very small number of views, <700 as of this diary) from Community Bookstore Live somewhat serves the same purpose:

YouTube Video

Given the running thread of this diary, the bit where Stuart Gilbert’s translation comes into the conversation starts at about 36:00. It actually uses the same “il fallait recommencer” passage, in a “compare and contrast” moment when host Adam Dalva reads that passage from the Gilbert translation, and Marris then follows with her own version. After the “dueling passages”, Marris quietly drives home the undertone of the fallibility of Stuart Gilbert’s translation, at 38:02:

“…there are no wheels or shoulders in the original...”

Interestingly, in the above YT video, Alice Kaplan speculates that Gilbert’s work on translating James Joyce into French may have unwittingly influenced Gilbert in the reverse process of rendering Camus into English. Kaplan and Marris (the latter was a student of the former at Yale, for the record), BTW, collaborated on the 2022 book States of Plague, a series of alternating essays on the novel, its background, and its resonance for recent times. Also, as an FYI, the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of States of Plague mentions thanks to Raymond Gay-Crosier “for his correspondence” (a long-shot possible reason for not quoting his Delos article), although I doubt that this would have affected his evaluation of Marris’ translation in his article.

The sales numbers for Marris’ new translation of The Plague on A.com seem respectable, so word of mouth on it may be getting around. Ideally, the Marris translation would get the “Oprah boost”, if this were to be a selection for Oprah’s Book Club. However, I don’t see that happening, since we humans want to be over COVID and anything that reminds us of epidemics, even though viruses never “get over” humans, but rather evolve. COVID is certainly still doing its thing with humans, as the current wave illustrates. And in terms of trying to be an “influencer” to steer people interested in The Plague towards her newer and evidently better translation, this diary will probably have little, if any, impact, outside of the DK bubble. (A pseudonym like mine for its author doesn’t exactly help with credibility.) But if you have never read Camus’ The Plague and want to read it, please run as far away from the Stuart Gilbert translation as possible. This is easy, because at least for American literary audiences, only one other running destination exists: Laura Marris is your gal there.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you reading now? Anyone read The Plague during the pandemic, or otherwise recently? Anyone else read the new Laura Marris translation? (If anyone read the Robin Buss translation, that would be impressive.) Also, please also feel free to post in the comments if you are willing and able to write a Bookchat diary in the future, although the Readers & Book Lovers admins are more in the know than myself about schedule openings and all the logistics. Otherwise, the e-floor is now yours…

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

DAY	TIME EST/EDT	SERIES	EDITOR(S)
SUNDAY	4:00 PM	Let’s Talk BOOKS	Angela Marx
	6:00 PM	Young People’s Pavilion	The Book Bear
(LAST SUN OF THE MONTH)	7:30 PM	LGBTQ Literature	Chrislove
MONDAY	8:00 PM	The Language of the Night	DrLori
TUESDAY	8:00 PM	Contemporary Fiction Views	bookgirl
	10:00 PM	Nonfiction Views	DebtorsPrison
WEDNESDAY	8:00 PM	Bookchat	cfk et al.
THURSDAY	8:00 PM	Write On!	SensibleShoes
(FIRST THURS OF MONTH)	2:00 PM	Monthly Bookpost	AdmiralNaismith
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Poll

79 votes Show Results

Ever read Albert Camus' "The Plague"?

79 votes Vote Now!

Ever read Albert Camus' "The Plague"?

Yes, in the original French

13 votes

Yes (Gilbert translation)

29 votes

Yes (Buss translation)

1 vote

Yes (Marris translation)

3 votes

Yes (Gilbert & Buss translations)

1 vote

Yes (Gilbert & Marris translations)

2 votes

Yes (Buss & Marris translations)

0 votes

Yes (original French & one of the English translations; explain in comment)

7 votes

23 votes

Friday Night Beer Blog: Damp January 2024 Edition (with poll)

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 19, 2024 · 6:45 PM PST

2024/01/19 · 18:45

Note the irony of the beer glass text, given the current time of year :)

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your socially inept guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-earned Friday evening off from FNBB duty. Tonight’s subject, Damp January, is the obvious first cousin (or first derivative, if you’re mathematically inclined) to Dry January, the New Year’s resolution-ish idea of going alcohol-beverage free for January. I recall several friends who told me of their Dry January pledge in past years, so even self the loser knew about Dry January, but I’d not heard of Damp January until seeing the NYT article by Dani Blum from last week. For those who want to cut back on drinking, but don’t think that they can quite go all the way for 31 days straight, Damp January is a reasonable alternative.

One rationale behind lowering alcoholic beverage consumption is concern about cancer, as described in this January 2023 NYT article by Dana G. Smith that quotes Dr. Marissa Esser of the CDC:

‘Scientists think that the main way alcohol causes health problems is by damaging DNA. When you drink alcohol, your body metabolizes it into acetaldehyde, a chemical that is toxic to cells. Acetaldehyde both “damages your DNA and prevents your body from repairing the damage,” Dr. Esser explained. “Once your DNA is damaged, then a cell can grow out of control and create a cancer tumor.”

‘Alcohol also creates oxidative stress, another form of DNA damage that can be particularly harmful to the cells that line blood vessels. Oxidative stress can lead to stiffened arteries, resulting in higher blood pressure and coronary artery disease.’

If anyone wants to nerd out on the science of how ethanol can increase risk of cancer, two sample academic journal articles on the subject are:

(a) H.-K Na and J. Y. Lee, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Vol. 18 (No. 6), p. 1116 (2017)

(b) H. Rumgay et al., Nutrients, Vol. 13 (No. 9), p. 3173 (2021)

My own beer and wine consumption habits are pretty modest, IMVHO, namely the odd glass of wine or beer with dinner. It’s comparatively rare, like that New Mexico festival I FNBB’ed about several months back, where I’ll consume too much beer compared to how much food I’ve had. But now maybe I’m even more self-conscious than usual about drinking, and especially in relation to having enough food to go with it. But clearly, the craft beer industry doesn’t want us all to stop drinking suddenly in January, do they? ;)

This isn’t stopping me from mentioning a beer in tonight’s FNBB, of course :) . Indeed, the featured selection tonight chez 3CM is a Sven “Kolsch-style ale” from Rockwell Beer Company here in STL. Rockwell classifies Sven under “light and crisp”, which is as succinct a summary as possible. I do like my Kolsch beers, and this one certainly did the job.

Obviously, if you’re imbibing tonight, then by definition, you’re not participating in Dry January :) . Damp January, however, may be another matter. Is anyone doing Damp January this month? My guess is that the regulars here aren’t, but different strokes for different folks. What are you sipping tonight? Or is anyone brewing their own? Inquiring minds, and all that….

P.S. esquimaux likes to include beer-related music videos in FNBB, which is a feature that self-the-loser has regularly not done (bad, bad 3CM). In a modest attempt to honor this feature, I include the following video, even though it has nothing to do with beer. However, it is a salute to the late great Peter Schickele, creator of P.D.Q. Bach, who left us this week at age 88. Margalit Fox has a great tribute article in the NYT here. And as for P.D.Q. Bach’s music, well, here’s a sample:

YouTube Video

Poll

38 votes Show Results

Your January?

38 votes Vote Now!

Your January?

Dry January

2 votes

Damp January

11 votes

neither (normal January)

25 votes

Friday Night Beer Blog: Late 2023 Finds Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 05, 2024 · 6:45 PM PST

2024/01/05 · 18:45

no image description available — No, not at all 'citrus'-y, but still fine on its own :)

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy first Friday of 2024, and once (or not) again, even though it’s been an age, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your semi-friendly guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-deserved Friday evening off from FNBB duties. Usually at year’s end, newspapers feature “Top 10” lists of various sorts, about ‘best new restaurants’, ‘best movies of the year’ and such. Or, if you’re Riverfront Times freelance writer Tony Rehagen, you provide a list with a slightly oddball number of top selections, namely 8 notable craft beers for 2023 rather than 10 (although 8 is the number of good luck in Chinese culture, but 3CM the loser digresses as usual).

Since he is a loser, 3CM is not providing any such “top 10” / “top 8” / “top whatever” craft beers for 2023 list, of course, since he didn’t have the bandwidth to keep such a tally”. To compound 3CM’s loserness big-time, this FNBB is appearing at the start of 2024, rather than the end of 2023. All that aside, instead of any sort of “top (whatever #)” list, I’m going for the next best / slightly less lame option, namely blathering about nice recent discoveries. As it happens, these fall into the same general category of craft beers with a citrus twist:

Sorry the pic is so big (3CM the loser is obviously poor at re-sizing)

* On the local side, 4Hands Brewery has their hazy winter IPA “Earmuffs”

* From my last (on multiple levels) trip to NYC, I had a Talea “Sun Up” Hazy IPA.

In both cases, luck played the main role in finding each beer, in that I didn’t actively seek either one out. For the 4Hands “Earmuffs”, I sampled it at the local supermarket, among other flavors from 4Hands. For the Talea “Sun Up”, it was one of two local craft beers on draft at the restaurant, and it happened to sound the more off-the-wall of them. Each was a new beer for me, and fortunately, I greatly enjoyed both.

In a bit of irony, tonight’s featured FNBB beer chez 3CM is neither of these, or even a citrus-flavored beer. Instead, it’s a basic lager, a Louisville Lager, a simple, straightforward, clean lager that hits the spot with dinner. Although, on second thought, there is a bit of a meta-connection with the above two brews, namely that the Louisville Lager was another beer that I didn’t actively search out, or find in the supermarket. This was a gift from a neighbor who was visiting Louisville, and for whom I was house-sitting. The neighbor knows that I’m somewhat into craft beer, and offered to buy a Louisville-based beer as a house-sitting gift. Granted that chance is inescapable when trying out new beers, relying on luck isn’t always the best general strategy, of course, which applies to life in general, even if things went well in all 3 of these instances.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Any special new discoveries for this year? Inquiring minds, and all that, to close out 2023….

Friday Night Beer Blog: Self-Service Reboot Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 27, 2023 · 6:45 PM PDT

2023/10/27 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again (even though it’s been an age, not that anyone noticed), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for tonight, with esquimaux taking another well-earned evening off from FNBB. The starting point for tonight’s FNBB is Tapped Social House, just outside the STL city limits, in Maplewood, as self the loser checked out the place for the first time recently, with colleagues from work, for happy hour. The idea behind Tapped Social House is that:

* You get a wristband with some sort of sensor that you tap (get it?) to a touch screen connected to various kegs of beer, in this case, about 40 different varieties.

* You can add as much or as little beer to your glass as you wish, and the exact amount that you fill is noted on the wristband in terms of ounces, with varying costs per different beer. You then pay at the end of the night for the total amount of beer that you’ve obtained over the course of the evening.

Being a loser, it took me six years to find the place, as the original version of the establishment, known then simply as Tapped, opened in 2017, as noted by George Mahe in St. Louis Magazine back in June 2017. An earlier St. Louis Magazine write-up, by Sarah Kloepple in April 2017, elaborated more on the concept, by the original owners, Lindsay Reel and her husband Ryan Reel:

“A few years ago, Lindsay visited the Wine Institute of New Orleans, where a self-pour setup was available for wines. The pair realized nothing like this was available in St. Louis.”

However, the original version lasted just shy of 5 years, per this May 2022 article in Sauce Magazine by Iain Shaw. Presumably the pandemic hurt business, to state the blindingly obvious inference. But fast forward just about another year, to two articles:

* Iain Shaw, Sauce Magazine, March 3, 2023

* Abby Wuellner, St. Louis Magazine, April 13, 2023

The new owner, Reggie Trankle, did tweak a few of the non-beer taps to feature cocktails, besides wines in the remaining taps, along with the selection of 40 beers. Another change to the business model from the previous owners is as follows:

“Tapped Social House won’t feature the Charity of the Week model that its predecessor followed, where all tips were donated to a different charity each week. Under the new restaurant’s business model, tips will supplement employee wages, but Trankle said he is keen to work with charities to help them host events or raise funds in other ways.”

It only occurred to me later, indulging my slightly cynical side, that having the self-service taps obviated the need for bartenders, and thus required smaller staff, and thus reduced expenses. The explanation from the 2017 article by Kloepple gave this reasoning from Ryan Reel:

"It's all about developing that social atmosphere. We wanted to cut down on the floor staff because of all the movement going on in the restaurant. We wanted to leave more space for the actual customers."

That there certainly was, much space, as our party had arrived at a bit of a slow time, on a weekday. Things did pick up later. And, to think about it again, the computer maintenance to keep the taps active and working is its own expense. No free lunch (or beer), after all.

Of course, everyone here is asking by now, if not earlier: “OK, loser 3CM, where’s the good stuff? Where’s the beer info?” Well, a link to Tapped’s current, or at least reasonably current, offerings is here. Going by my general philosophy of trying out different beers that I haven’t had before (or at least don’t remember having), I sampled about 26 of the 40 selections. I avoided the obvious mass-market names on the list, as well as one subset for nominally political reasons (even though those beers might well be good in of themselves, their owner aside). Using ~2 ounces per sample as a close-enough estimate, that’s 52 ounces, or a bit over 3 full beers. As Trankle noted in the April 2023 article by Wuellner:

“You can sample many beers affordably, and you’re not stuck trying pints that you may not like."

So even if Missouri is well behind the country in too many things, not to mention self the loser’s general slowness in finding this place, better late than never, to check this place out.

Tonight didn’t feature a return to Tapped for more, or to see if anything has changed since the last visit. Instead, tonight’s featured beer chez 3CM is a Divided Sky Rye IPA, from 4Hands Brewing Company, another STL-based craft beer outfit. This is a very fine, hearty IPA that goes well with dinner, where I didn’t notice any overt “rye”-like feel (i.e. rye bread), simply a really good, solid dinner beer.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What brew or other beverage are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Any tales from elsewhere of comparable establishments like Tapped Social House? Inquiring minds, etc..

Friday Night Beer Blog: Land of Enchantment Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday September 22, 2023 · 6:45 PM PDT

2023/09/22 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again, though it’s been quite a while), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your friendly-ish guest FNBB blogger tonight, with esquimaux taking a well-deserved Friday evening off from FNBB duties. This is actually my first, and thus correspondingly weak, attempt at a travelogue FNBB, which other folks here do much better than me. As the title implies, the travel location of focus here is New Mexico, where self the loser took a short vacation this summer. Since 3CM is also a linky goodness dweeb, some light-hearted background reading is available c/o the NM Dark Side Brew Crew blog, this “mostly complete timeline” of beer brewing history in NM. The early history emphasis is obviously on more mass market beers, to 1939, with craft beers showing up after 1988 (curious, that near 50-year break in beer production in NM).

Bosque Brewing (Bernalillo, NM) sample table

Fittingly, the place to start is Albuquerque, a common port of entry for out-of-state folk by means of their construction and transportation symbol of global heating, namely the Albuquerque Sunport (their name for their airport). Perhaps also fittingly, the one Albuquerque craft beer establishment that I visited is not all that far from the Albuquerque Sunport, namely The 377 Brewery. The selection in the picture above is 377 Brewery’s Red Horse Lager.

Beer Creek Brewing (Santa Fe, NM) sample booth [no beer in the orange container; have no fear ;) ]

With visits to two museums in Albuquerque accomplished, the main destination of the vacation was the state capital, for summer culture vulture stuff. But the itinerary had room for a beer and food festival at this location, where 9 craft beer establishments and 1 hard cider business were the featured libation-meisters.

Needless to say (so 3CM the loser will, of course, say it), self’s goal was to sample as many of the beverages as possible, without a full pour, in order to remain somewhat mentally lucid for opera in the evening. However, I tipped each establishment for the samples, of course. So, INPO:

Little Toad Creek Brewery & Distillery (Silver City, NM) booth

Bosque Brewing (Bernalillo, NM) had two flavors in cans (no makeshift tap).

Beer Creek Brewing (Santa Fe, NM) had 5 flavors to sample, 4 of them on their standard on-line offerings, and what appeared to be a one-off with a bespoke name evidently for the occasion (no prizes for guessing which one):

* Abiquiu Amber
* Get to Da Hoppa (IPA)
* “Las Golondrinas” Golden Ale
* Lone Butte Lager
* Picture Rock Porter

Little Toad Creek Brewery & Distillery (Silver City, NM) had 3 offerings:

* Grumpy Old Troll IPA
* Lucky Toad Lager
* Pendejo Porter

Leaf & Hive (Santa Fe, NM) had three “honeybrews” to sample:

* Hibiscus
* House “OG”
* Lavender Lemongrass

The selections from Leaf & Hive were definitely not ones for the Rheinheitsgebot, as Leaf & Hive uses honey in its brews, again to state the obvious. But perhaps because I have a bit of a sweet tooth, the Hibiscus was probably my favorite of all the selections here and at the other stations.

Speaking of the other stations:

Marble Brewery (Albuquerque, NM) had 5 selections for sampling:

* Cerveza
* Desert Fog (hazy IPA)
* Helles
* IPA
* Pink Lemonade Lager

Of course, I sampled their flavors in their suggested order as you see listed in the pic, rather than in alphabetical order 😉 . Same deal with Beer Creek Brewery above.

2-for-1: New Mexico Hard Cider, Second Street Brewery adjacent stations

The one outlier among the establishments here was obviously New Mexico Hard Cider (Santa Fe, NM), with these 4 hard ciders on offer for sampling:

* Apricot
* Blood Orange
* Blueberry
* Semi-Sweet

Since the picture with the New Mexico Hard Cider station shows two establishments for the price of one, the selections from Second Street Brewery (Santa Fe, NM) should appear next:

Rio Bravo Brewing (Albuquerque, NM) station. Didn’t bother spinning the prize wheel :)

* Czech Pilsner
* House IPA
* Kölsch (the umlaut is mine, not theirs)
* 2920 IPA (the number refers to the establishment’s address)

Second Street Brewery was less of a new experience for me, as I’ve been to their Rufina Street location. By contrast, the selections from Rio Bravo Brewing (Albuquerque, NM) were new to me:

* Double Stuffed (“Oreo pastry stout” – well, that’s what Rio Bravo Brewing describes it as)
* Freak Juice (hazy New England IPA)
* Honey Ginger (blonde ale)

Steel Bender Brewyard (Los Ranchos, NM) had three selections to sample:

* Hefe Lifting Hefeweizen
* Raspberry Dynamite Kettle Sour (did manage to get to one sour, for you FNBB sour aficionados — you know who you are :) )
* Skull Bucket IPA

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery (Santa Fe, NM) station

Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery (Santa Fe, NM) had these flavors to sample:

* La Magia Negra (dark lager)
* Radio Flyer Red
* Sunrise Lager

So in terms of geographic distribution throughout the state:

Albuquerque = 2

Bernalillo = 1

Los Ranchos = 1

Santa Fe = 5

Silver City = 1

I pretty much managed to sample each of these,, from each of the establishmens. If one is going to trash one’s liver and general insides, and shorten one’s life span ever so slightly, there are much worse beverage-based means of doing so. I did eat very heartily before arriving at the festival, and had food there later on, when it became quite clear that I needed more food 😊 .

Sorry about the shading (indoor photography was never my forte)

The rules of this beer and food festival forbade bringing libation from these establishments off site. So to bring a suitable souvenir home, I had to look elsewhere, which certainly wasn’t difficult. Perhaps suitably in keeping with the Leaf & Hive selections, the souvenir, and the featured selection chez 3CM for tonight’s edition, is the “Horned Honey" Pale Ale from Lizard Tail Brewing, based in Albuquerque. A nice touch about the production of this brew is LTB’s own use of honey, to help out a fellow local business, per their blurb:

“Think honey and a little orange marmalade on a fresh baked biscuit. A portion of the proceeds go to Ferraris for Bee Farmers, because holy %$#@!, good honey is pricey, and we use a boatload in this one.”

This actually is a really nice pale ale, and the “taste of honey” adds a nice finishing touch.

I probably should put in a good word about the host location for this beer & food festival, from the venue’s history page:

“El Rancho de Las Golondrinas (The Ranch of the Swallows) a historic rancho and now a living history museum, was strategically located on the Camino Real, the Royal Road that extended from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The ranch provided goods for trade and was a place where the caravans that plied the road would stop on their journey coming from or going to Santa Fe. It was a paraje or an official rest stop for travelers on the Camino Real.”

Well worth a visit if you’re in the Santa Fe area. With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you sipping tonight? Anyone brewing their own? I don’t expect anyone here to have any selections from New Mexico, unless by chance, you do have them on hand. Or perhaps someone from NM will stop by FNBB tonight :) .

Friday Night Beer Blog: 2023 Canadian Brewing Awards Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday June 30, 2023 · 6:45 PM PDT

2023/06/30 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again (though it’s been a while), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your semi-friendly virtual neighborhood guest FNBB blogger, with esquimaux taking a well-earned Friday evening off from FNBB duties. Since tomorrow is Canada Day (eh), 3CM the loser is recycling the subject of the annual Canadian Brewing Awards, for 2023 (well, duh). You can access the link at this link. First, though, the ‘Best in Show’ and ‘Brewery of the Year’ hono(u)rs go to:

Best of Show: Dwarf Sour Cherry, Blindman Brewing (Alberta)

Brewery of the Year: Muddy York Brewing Company (Toronto, Ontario)

Sours fans here (you know who you are) should be quite pleased with the ‘Best of Show’ selection from our Canadian friends this year. Getting on to the list of Gold / Silver / Bronze winners, plus Honorable Mentions, in all 59 (!) categories:

Ever hear of any of these Canadian breweries?

14 votes Vote Now!

Ever hear of any of these Canadian breweries?

Yes

8 votes

6 votes

Friday Night Beer Blog: Lager Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday April 07, 2023 · 6:45 PM PDT

2023/04/07 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once again (even though it’s been an age, not that anyone noticed), ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for tonight, with esquimaux taking another well-earned night off from FNBB. The starting point for this edition is this Riverfront Times article from last Friday by Tony Rehagen, focused on lagers, with the start of MLB season:

“It’s baseball season, and for beer drinkers, that means a Pavlovian thirst for lagers. The connection dates back at least to the 1880s, and more than a century of aggressive marketing has conditioned us to crave suds at the crack of a bat.”

Rehagen then comments on how beer selections have expanded at Busch Stadium (perhaps more than a bit ironically named, in this particular local instance) in recent years, at least according to Rehagen (self the loser hasn’t been to a ball game in years), beyond the usual mass-market suspects:

“But in recent years, you may have noticed a gradual uptick in gameday options beyond the boring old Bud. Even in Busch Stadium (named after the family once MLB nixed Budweiser Stadium; Busch beer, an allegedly Bavarian-style lager came later), fans can easily find a 4Hands City Wide Pils, a Schlafly White Lager kellerbier or Urban Chestnut’s Musial-commemorating #6 Classic American Lager along the concourse.”

Self the loser is pretty certain of having sampled 2 of the 3 mentioned STL-regional lagers just mentioned (first and last of them). I think that I have tried the Schlafly item, but it’s been a while, so memory is hazy (perhaps like some beers). All that aside, Rehagen notes what looks to be a trend:

“That’s because independent breweries in St. Louis, like those across the country, are finally trying their hands at brewing lagers.”

Rehagen then cites Florian Kupient, of Urban Chestnut Brewing Company here in STL:

‘…according to Nielsen [IQ], between 2019 and 2020 alone, the sale of maltier and more sessionable craft lagers in the U.S. rose by nearly 10 percent. And the style’s upswing is showing no signs of slowing.

“It feels like there is trend toward lagers, definitely,” says Florian Kuplent, brewmaster and co-owner of Urban Chestnut Brewing Company.

If anyone can sense tremors in the lager landscape, it’s Kuplent.”

You can watch the pre-pandemic promo video of Kupient talking up UCBC, in German (!):

YouTube Video

However, in what may be a stereotypical case of flyover country lagging behind the coasts, a March 2015 NYT article by Eric Asimov, i.e. from almost exactly 8 years ago, opined, after discussion with a fellow NYT food writer and two NYC hospitality industry folks:

‘To the endlessly creative American craft brewer, plain old lager may not seem particularly exciting. Decades ago, with so many great styles of beer left moribund by industrial brewers, craft brewers had compelling reasons to concentrate elsewhere. But little by little, American craft brewers have now taken up the challenge.

With many good examples available, the beer panel recently convened to taste 20 American lagers. Florence Fabricant and I were joined by Chase Rabenn, bar and hospitality manager for Colicchio & Sons in Chelsea, and Matthew Pene, beer director for Eleven Madison Park.

We all agreed signs pointed toward a lager renaissance. “It’s just a cool time for lagers,” Chase said.’

Note, again, that the NYT evaluation is from 2015, while the RFT evaluation is from 2023. We are just a little bit behind the times in MO (no kidding, at least in other aspects).

Both articles note in parallel the general challenges behind brewing lagers as reasons why lagers have historically taken a back seat in craft beer-land:

NYT: “Aside from an initial distaste for diving into the style that epitomized industrial brewing, many early craft brewers had other reasons for avoiding lagers, one of the two major forms of beer, along with ales. Minimalist lagers, in general, are more difficult to produce than fruity, complex ales. They are subtle, demanding more precision and more specialized equipment. Ales, by contrast, tend to be more forgiving of errors.”

RFT: ‘The reason UCBC’s lagers were so immediately successful might be the same reason so many of Kuplent’s contemporaries opted not to go there for years: Because brewing a consistent, quality lager takes precision and expertise. Unlike ales, which come from yeast that ferments at the top of the brew at warmer temperatures, lagers are bottom fermenters that require colder climes. “If you ferment at lower temperatures, which lagers do, there’s a lot less room for error,” Kuplent says. “You really have to have your process under control to produce a beer that’s good. That’s probably why some smaller breweries just starting out don’t tend to make them.”

‘The fact that lagers are more focused on core ingredients, especially the malt, with fewer adjuncts and added flavors also means that there are fewer places to hide any flaws in the translucent golden brew.’

Kupient brought his own past experience at Anheuser-Busch to Urban Chestnut, which fed into their early production of craft lagers:

“...Urban Chestnut was able to hit the brew floor running with now-STL-standards like Zwickel, an unfiltered German lager that is naturally cloudy and 100 percent malt-forward; Stammtisch, a traditional pilsner with a slightly bitter finish; and Urban Underdog, an American-style light lager that doesn’t skimp on flavor. Today, these three lagers constitute about 75 percent of UCBC’s total sales.”

Kupient also noted how customer demand drove craft lager production at UCBC’s outset:

“We make more lagers than we make ales, and that was pretty much true from the start. Not necessarily by design but because consumers demanded it.”

So in a way, UCBC gave STL beer customers “what they wanted”, if clearly at a different plane of flavor(s) than Budweiser. It’s easy, of course, to mock Budweiser as the epitome of mass market taste, as Rehagen does twice in the article (second example to follow momentarily). Yet, on one level, there’s something admirable on a mass production level about Budweiser, as this quote from Rehagen summarizes it regarding A-B and Budweiser:

“….which many craft brewers begrudgingly admit puts out an incredibly dependable product especially for such a massive scale.”

But going on to Rehagen’s second dis of Bud in the article, he speculates as to why craft brewers have been shifting more attention to lagers, with respect to UCBC’s early and continuing success with their craft lagers:

“The early and growing popularity of these beers might also have contributed locally to another reason why Kuplent thinks craft lagers are finally having their day nationally: Beer drinkers have awoken to the fact that watery Budweiser isn’t the end all be all of the style.

‘”When craft beer first emerged, the best way to differentiate yourself was to make something that wasn’t already on the market,” he says. “Over time, the consumer got educated and tried different things and learned that lagers can actually have some interesting flavors and aromas.”’

Perhaps more than a bit ironically (or loserly), tonight’s featured FNBB selection chez 3CM isn’t one of these STL-based craft lagers, although it is a lager, at the least. As the picture reveals, the featured beer is a Yuengling Traditional Lager. This is certainly far from a craft beer selection. Given how popular and widespread Yuengling is, especially on the East Coast, commentary on this beer from me is especially pointless. The larger point is how it got to be the choice, given the geographical dissonance between Yuengling (PA) and self the loser (MO). I’ll leave it at that and for anyone who cares to guess :) .

With that, for this Good Friday evening, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own. Admittedly, it might seem a bit odd to ask the usual FNBB questions on Good Friday, on Easter weekend….

Friday Night Beer Blog: 2/3/23 Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday February 03, 2023 · 6:45 PM PST

2023/02/03 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for tonight, with esquimaux taking another well-earned evening off from FNBB. Given the cute numerological aspect of today’s date, self the loser wondered if any craft beer existed with “23” embedded in the brand name. Lo and behold, two such brands showed up via an interwebz search, one stateside, the other quite a distance away.

The domestic brand is Victor-23 Craft Brewery in Vancouver, WA (beer roster here). The name refers to the D.B. Cooper plane hijacking in November 1971, during which, after he got the parachutes and cash that he demanded:

“The plane soon departed and the pilot was directed to fly south on the Victor-23 airway.”

Self admits to a bit of unease at reading one phrase in Victor-23’s summary description,

“Our brewery celebrates this unsolved crime and invites you to ponder the case over a cold pint of Skyjacker IPA, Flight 305 Amber, Jet Fuel Imperial IPA, or Imitator.”

No prizes for guessing why, i.e. with respect to hijacking planes and making bomb threats, even if no people apparently were harmed in the whole incident back then.

On the much less larcenous side, the other “23” brewery of interest is located in Taipei, Taiwan, namely 23 Public Brewing Company. A 2019 Taiwan Scene article by Rick Charette summarizes its start:

“Brett Tieman and Matt Frazar are co-founders of Taipei’s 23 Brewing Company, founded in 2014. The fellow Americans have a passion for craft beer, and met through the local home-brewing community.”

One video c/o YT on 23 Public Beer:

YouTube Video

Plus, more generally, a separate full-length feature on craft beer in Taiwan:

YouTube Video

Perhaps all semi-fitting for Lunar New Year :) .

Self the loser’s featured beer tonight has nothing to do with Vancouver, WA, parachutes, or Taiwan. Instead, the selection is much closer to home, a King’s Oak Pilsner from Modern Brewing Company. This was another whimsy purchase (as pretty much all my beer buys are, so no surprise there) of a craft beer that I’d never had before. It proved one of my better whimsy purchases, as it’s a very fine, crisp pilsner indeed, with just enough tartness and bitterness to give it a good edge.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks? What are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Inquiring minds, and the usual of all that :) .

Friday Night Beer Blog: Triskaidekaphobia Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 13, 2023 · 6:45 PM PST

2023/01/13 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday, and once (or not) again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for tonight, with esquimaux taking another well-earned evening off FNBB duties. Given the date of this particular Friday (with a reasonably full moon out there), self the loser wondered if any beers titled after Friday the 13^th existed. What came up primarily from a search of teh interwebz were a very few beers inspired by the idea of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13. Several were older beers that have since been retired, such as Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Company’s “Triskaidekaphobia 13^th Anniversary Tripel Ale”, and “Triskaidekaphobia” brews from Boxing Rock Brewing. Presumably also retired, as it doesn’t show on draft at their website, was Independent Brewing Company’s “Triskaidekaphobia”.

The one hit that looks nominally still to be a current listing is from The Brewery of Broken Dreams (Hammondsport, NY), their “Triskaidekaphobia” Strong Ale, where, perhaps to state the obvious:

“It is brewed with 13 ingredients on Friday the 13th and is always released on the following Friday the 13th.”

So this wasn’t one of 3CM the loser’s better random brainwave (or maybe here, hare-brained) search ideas. So it goes. Perhaps on the more chipper side, though, I did find this post from the UK-based website “The Drinks Business” about the release today across Big Pond East of a new imperial stout titled “Dark to the Core”, a collaboration between two breweries in Sussex, Burning Sky Brewing (Firle, East Sussex) and Abyss Brewing (Lewes, Sussex), with this bit about the release date today:

‘The plan for the launch includes the beer becoming available at the Abyss taproom and a selection of excellent pubs of their choosing from Friday the 13th to kick off what the brewers have coined “the weekend of darkness”.’

Since I noticed Abyss Brewing as based in Lewes, self wondered how far the brewery is from Glyndebourne Opera House. The answer is: about 3 miles.

In keeping with self’s status as King of Losers on DK, tonight’s beer selection chez 3CM has nothing to do with triskaidekaphobia, Friday the 13^th, or anything on such subjects, or indeed Glyndebourne, opera, or the UK. Instead, the selection is from Modern Brewery, their “McFly” Rye Oatmeal Stout. This was another whimsy purchase and first-time try, and perhaps falls a bit more on the “be careful with whimsy buys” side, as it’s been so long since I’ve tasted rye bread that I didn’t think as to what the combination of rye flavor with beer would taste like. Interestingly, with a sweet dessert, this beer worked rather better than with the “main course”, so it may be a question of the appropriate pairing. In of itself, it is a good stout, but maybe I’m still not a stouts guy deep down. But it’s OK: live and learn.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Any other beer news or stories? Inquiring minds, and all that...

Friday Night Beer Blog: Indoor Hops Edition

chingchongchinaman

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 06, 2023 · 6:45 PM PST

2023/01/06 · 18:45

Greetings, beer lovers! Happy Friday (even on this date, of all dates), or maybe especially so, given the humiliation meted out to the wannabe not-quite Speaker of the House this week. Once, or perhaps not, again, ‘tis chingchongchinaman as your guest FNBB blogger for this evening, giving esquimaux another well-earned night off from blogging duties. The launch point for tonight’s FNBB was this “Where I Work” article from September 2022 in the science journal Nature, one of the dream journals where every scientist wants to get published. The write-up is sort of an infomercial, as it were, about the first beer to be made using indoor-grown hops. The beer is titled “Respect!”, but has nothing to do with Aretha Franklin, AFAICT. Instead, this beer is the product of a collaboration between a Spain-based agricultural biotechnology outfit, Ekonoke and the Spanish agricultural company Hijos de Rivera.

The Nature article centers on Ana Saez García, a co-founder of Ekonoke, who toots her own horn just a little bit (hence my “infomercial” comment) thus:

“Our collaboration’s first fruit — ‘Respect!’, a limited edition of a beer produced entirely with our hydroponically grown Humulus — came out in July. It’s the world’s first beer to be made exclusively with indoor hops.”

A July 2022 on-line press release from Hijos de Rivera tells a bit more about the two new “Respect!” brews, whereas the Nature article mentioned apparently just one release (or sounded like only one release):

‘Respect! es un doble proyecto colaborativo: con Ekonoke, pioneros en cultivo de lúpulo indoor en España y con Pan da Moa, panadería de referencia en la capital gallega. El resultado son dos “cervezas de la casa” LTR home brewed que se elaboran en Chantada y se pueden consumir en los locales que La Tita Rivera tiene en Madrid, Vigo y A Coruña.’

Google Translation (very lightly paraphrased): (‘Respect! is a double collaborative project: with Ekonoke, pioneers in indoor hop cultivation in Spain, and with Pan da Moa, a reference bakery in the Galician capital. The result is two LTR home brewed "house beers" that are made in Chantada and can be consumed in the premises that La Tita Rivera has in Madrid, Vigo and A Coruña.’)

ASG reminds doofuses (doofi?) like me about the role of hops in beer:

‘Liquid bread’, Spanish-style (y una IPA, si?)

“Hops, the flower of the plant Humulus lupulus, are what gives beer its distinctive flavour.”

She then goes on to the main selling point (or “value proposition”, to use corporate-speak) of the particular hops used to make this new beer:

“Growing them hydroponically means using a minimal amount of substrate for the roots. We also use a recirculating irrigation system that recycles most of the water we use to grow the plants.”

Obviously this plays the sustainability card. ASG mentions scale-up of the initial idea, where “This year” clearly means 2022:

“This year, we will move to a new indoor site of 1,000 square metres in Galicia, in the north of Spain, to start producing at commercial scale. We’re setting up this facility in partnership with Hijos de Rivera, the Spanish company that launched the beer Estrella Galicia more than 100 years ago.”

Given agricultural supply disruptions, it will be interesting to see how all this shakes out, as it is very early days for this idea, to be sure.

Tonight’s featured beer chez 3CM makes no such grandiose claims about sustainability, or has any sort of Spanish theme or anything else like that. Instead, this is another selection from Well Crafted Beer Company, their “Blonde Americano”, as you can see. This was another of my whimsy purchases, where I was lazy enough not to realize that coffee beans were part of the brewing recipe package. So both stimulants and depressants are present in the same beverage, so to speak :) . It actually is a fine-tasting beer, given that I hadn’t planned on coffee flavor in my beer. It just shows that 3CM the loser needs to check his whims more carefully, it would seem.

With that, time to turn it over to you folks. What are you imbibing tonight? Anyone brewing their own? Inquiring minds, etc..

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