BARLEY MOWAT: A Look Inside “Brassneck Brewery”, Opening In August At Main & 6th

by Chuck Hallett | Brewery Creek will get five, count ‘em, five new breweries this year. We’ve already given you the inside scoop on 33 Acres (opening July), but as cool as Josh Michnik’s art-house brewery will no doubt be, it’s not the brewery the beererati are a-buzz about. That brewery, my friends, is none other than Brassneck. Why does it get all the geek cred? Because it’s the love child of two of Vancouver’s premier craft beer legends, that’s why.

The first of those two is none other than Conrad Gmoser, the brewer behind Steamworks Brewing Company for the past 17 years. Also involved is the legendary Nigel Springthorpe who, in his capacity as co-owner of the equally legendary Alibi Room, has done more to promote craft beer in Vancouver since 2006 than almost anyone else.

That combination of talents – knowing the culture of craft beer in Vancouver, knowing what beers to make, and knowing how to make them – has pretty much every bearded face staring in the direction of Main & 6th Ave with lips parted slightly in slobbering anticipation of the brews that are about to spill forth.

Upon opening, Brassneck will sport the ability to brew up to ten different styles of beer at the same time in a variety of batch sizes. What does that mean? That means Conrad will be free from the traditional pub-beers of Steamworks to brew an ever-changing line-up of novel beers. Don’t like what’s on offer Tuesday? Come back Friday and things will have changed. That, combined with an attractive, large tasting room nestled between the brewhouse and cellar (and of course the prerequisite growler stations), will keep both the new initiates to craft beer as well as the old school coming back week after week after week.

Look for Brassneck to open at some point this August. In the meantime, read a full interview about the brewery with Nigel Springthorpe on my blog here and keep up to date on their progress via their Instagram.

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

BARLEY MOWAT: 6 Great “Vancouver Craft Beer Week” Events That You Shouldn’t Miss

by Chuck Hallett | Alright, it’s here! Vancouer Craft Beer Week (VCBW) starts this Friday, and continues for the next eight nights. There are lots of beer fests around town every year, and understandably aspiring beer geeks can’t make it out to all of them but, folks, this is THE event of the year. Other festivals try to be as awesome, but none can match the sheer intensity of good beer that is VCBW (BC Craft Beer Month – October – just seems watered down by comparison).

VCBW combines daily ticketed and walk-up events to showcase the world of craft beer, across all of its awesome styles. Sure, many of the marquee events have long since sold out, but there are still tickets for many quality events, and every day features a walk-up event with no cover charge. Which events should command your hard earned cash? Well, hopefully you can make it to all of them, but if you can’t here are a select few that I think will be very interesting…

June 1st: Four Winds Brewing Open House (no tix required) | Swing on by and say ‘Hi’ to the Lower Mainland’s newest craft brewery. Sure, they’re out in Delta, but did I mention that they’ll be sampling beer?

June 3rd: Biercraft Belgian Showcase | Bet you didn’t know that BC produces plenty of award winning Belgian beers, eh? Try those out side-by-side with the real deal and see which you prefer.

June 4th: Beer Cocktail Competition | The beer cocktail is blasphemy to many a beer geek, but it is an emerging art form and gosh darnit if they aren’t making some tastey beverages out there.

June 6th: Brothers in Hops | Big hoppy beers, paired food, and actual brewmasters all in one place? Rockin’. Expect beards.

June 6th: Riverboat Throwdown | 10 cask ales go head to head to see who brews the best (tiny) beers. Throw gambling into that mix and you have the recipe for… well… foreclosure on your house, I guess.

June 7th/8th: Closing Beer Festival  | A two night bash featuring pretty much every awesome brewery in the province. If you’re just getting into craft beer, this is an event you won’t want to miss, as virtually every good beer brewed in the province will be pouring for samples. Tickets here for the 6th and there for the 7th.

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

BARLEY MOWAT: On How To Properly Enjoy The Bejesus Out Of High Quality Craft Beer

by Chuck Hallett | Alright, you’ve gone out and bought yourself a bottle of hard core craft beer, let’s say Powell Street Brewery’s “Beer of the Year” – award winning Old Jalopy Pale Ale. You cram that puppy in the fridge until it’s ice cold, crack it, take a pull from the bottle and…nothing. None of this “subtle grain” or “balanced hops” that everyone’s talking about. It just tastes like…beer.

What’s up? Is it you or is it the beer? Surely it can’t be you, since you’re awesome. Clearly, this craft beer craze just isn’t what it’s cut up to be. Well, I’ve got some bad news for you sunshine: it’s you. You just committed two rank rookie mistakes when it comes to drinking beer, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. It turns out that most people have no idea how to serve beer.

First off, you’re drinking it too cold. Despite what those clever mountains on the sides of crappy beer want to tell you, beer is not served ice cold. It’s not served warm either (incorrect myths about British pubs aside). It’s served anywhere from “quite cold” (40-45F for most lagers) through “cold” (45-50F for reds, porters, IPAs) all the way up to “chilled” (50-55F for imperial stouts and barley wines).

While we’re on the topic, by using the fridge-and-room-temperature approach, you’re also serving your white wines too cold (45-50F vs 35-38F) and your red wines waaay too warm (55-60F vs 72-80F).

By serving your beer straight from the fridge (35-38F) you’re killing the flavour. Colder temperatures remove much of the balance and nuanced flavours that went into making the beer in the first place. The colder the temperature, the less you can taste. Okay, then, problem solved! Let’s crack that “appropriately chilled” bottle and party on!

Whoa, cowboy! You gotta get that bad boy into a glass first. Pouring your beer into glassware accomplishes two important things: it aerates the beer, releasing volatile compounds into the air, and it allows your nose to pick up those same compounds, an act that is known in layman’s terms as “smelling”. Yes, smell is a very important factor in the enjoyment of pretty much all food and drink, yet somehow we turn a blind eye to beer in this regard.

What kind of glass you decide to pour your beer into is an advanced maneuver, just as getting it out of the bottle in the first place is the most important step. If you’re really keen, find yourself a beer tulip, but to be totally honest a mason jar is 90% as good.

Homework: grab two bottles of Hoyne Pilsner and put those puppies in the fridge. After they’re both ice cold, take one out and wait seven minutes. Open both and compare. You just made Sean Hoyne smile, which admittedly is not that hard to do.

Glassware: get a fresh growler of Powell Street Old Jalopy (be sure to congratulate David and Nicole on their recent award while you’re there–it’s a big deal). Stick in fridge. Pull out and wait 20-25 minutes. Pour some into a tulip, wine glass or mason jar. Take a pull straight from the growler and compare with the glass. Sure, the glass is less hardcore-awesome as drinking from a giant jug o’ alcohol, but you’ll find it’s much better.

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

BARLEY MOWAT: On “Cask Ales” And Why We Should Celebrate The Hell Out Of Them

by Chuck Hallett | You’ve probably heard the term “Cask Ale” before. Maybe you’ve seen it on a poster or perhaps you’ve noticed my rants on Twitter about how casks are awesome and everything else sucks (relative to casks, that is). But what are cask ales, exactly, and why should you care?

Cask Ales are beers that are served from the same tiny vessel in which the beer was conditioned (matured). Big whoop, right? What difference does it make if you’re drinking the beer from the cask or from the bottle you bought at the store? Beer is beer, no?

Well, that’s the trick. Beer isn’t always beer. In fact, in the early 1970′s, English pub-goers became so offended at the lack of cask ales in England that they created a new name for casked ales and a new movement to demand more of it: The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). Fast forward to today and we now have three branches of the same movement, all demanding Real Ale in BC.

What’s all the fuss about? The trick is the second you take beer off of the yeast or, even worse, filter the yeast out completely, it changes. Yeast contributes more than just carbonation, alcohol and awesomeness to beer — it makes up a significant portion of the flavour as well. Leave the yeast in and you have a different ale: a Real Ale.

Additionally, most beer is like milk, in that it’s better as fresh as possible. Since the beer inside a cask is still technically being brewed, having a pint from the nozzle is about as fresh as you can get. It’s akin to stalking a cow down in the field, and taking a pull straight from the udder. Mmm…that’s actually kind of creepy.

The other thing that makes casks interesting is that they give brewers the ability to screw around with their beers. Want to add some orange into your citrusy IPA to see what happens? Well, good luck convincing the brewery owners to do a major release of a recipe you came up with while pulling deep on a bong on your back deck. A 35 litre cask, though, is small enough to screw around with. If you screw up, and the cask explodes — spraying pineapple chunks all over the brewery — no one’s too pissed off at you (side note: this is totally a thing that actually happened).

That’s the true appeal of casks for me: they’re unique. The beer you’re having from a cask is different from any other beer you’ve ever had before. Maybe it’s hoppier. Maybe it has some fruit in it (or tea), or maybe it’s been brewed using completely novel ingredients because…hey, why not? Brewing beer is all about experimentation, and casks are the purest expression of the discipline.

Homework: Go drink some casks! Casks used to be a rarity in Vancouver, but now you can find a pub around town with a cask on virtually every night of the week. Additionally, there are cask festivals every now and then around town, including this very weekend (update: now sold out). On every night, the Alibi Room has three casks, and The Irish Heather has one. Cask nights abound, so go ahead and make a week of it…

Monday: St Augustine’s
Tuesday: The Railway Club
Wednesday: No takers…yet
Thursday: Yaletown Brewing Company, Sunset Grill
Friday: London Pub, Big Ridge Brewing
Saturday: Central City Brewpub
Sunday: The Whip

Since the casks change constantly, there’s often not a whole lot of warning about what beer will be on display any given day. You can watch the Vancouver chapter of CAMRA’s Twitter account (@CAMRA_YVR) for updates on casks and more general beer news, or just search for the hashtag #CaskAlert.

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

BARLEY MOWAT: A Look Inside East Van’s Highly Anticipated “33 Acres Brewing Co.”

by Chuck Hallett | As is now widely known, 2013 will see a large batch of new breweries opening in Vancouver. Among the first to put beer in my beer hole will be the highly anticipated 33 Acres.

Located in the newly resurgent Brewery Creek District (Main between 2nd and Broadway) at 15 West 8th Avenue, it’s the love-child of film student turned brewery owner Josh Michnik and Brewmaster Dave Varga (formerly of Taylor’s Crossing/Red Truck fame).

33 Acres will very much be “the brewery that Josh built” as he’s had an active hand in virtually every aspect of creating it, from renovations and building upgrades to installing the brewing kit itself. But that’s just Josh’s approach: if you want something done right, best do it yourself. “No short-cuts,” he says, “that goes for not only the beer, but the merch, brand, the furniture, the floors, the walls, everything.”

Josh’s dedication shows in the space he has created. Breweries are often efficient affairs, design driven by practicality first and human use last. This is not the case here. The brewery itself is warm and inviting; reassuringly human in its scale. Tying the whole production floor together is a massive wooden ceiling that Josh spent weeks cleaning and restoring — a chore most breweries would have avoided with a simple bucket of paint.

The goal at 33 Acres is to build something that represents the opposite of the kind of industrial scale manufacturing concern that breweries came to represent during the last century. “I saw 33 Acres as a way to build a place where the neighbourhood could stop by on the way to work, say hi, help load some grain off a truck, have a cup of coffee, and just hang out.” says Josh. “Then on the way home from work, do the same but fill up a growler or stay for a pint.”

Building a space and letting Dave Varga work his magic is a plan that I can get behind. Look for 33 Acres beer to begin showing up in local pubs and restaurants later this Spring. In the meantime, you can follow their progress on Twitter and Instagram. (some images courtesy of 33 Acres)

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

BARLEY MOWAT: On How To Comprehend Your Sister’s Weird Homebrewing Boyfriend

by Chuck Hallett | Barley. Hops. Yeast. Water. You’ve probably heard these words touted around in relation to beer in an advertisement, or maybe you’ve seen them printed on the side of a bottle. But do you really understand how they go together to make our Favourite Beverage? Do you just put them in a blender and hit “pulse”? Is it a bit more complicated than that? In a few minutes from now you’ll know the answers to these questions and more. Welcome back to beer school!

Brewing is both an ancient art and a modern science, and boy is it ever a lot more technical that just putting some barley in a bucket and hoping for the best. There are millenia of history behind making beer. Seemingly most of that time was devoted to inventing new slang for the process: malt, wort, mash, pitch, and many other terms have muscled their way into the process’ parlance, making communication in beer speak a chore for the uninitiated. If you ever find yourself in a discussion with one of the (often bearded) beererati, his occasional incomprehensibility is perfectly normal. It’s kinda like how I feel with art. Or music. Or the weather. (Pretty much anything but beer, really.)

Luckily, the basic concepts behind brewing beer are not that hard to grasp. The following list of terms won’t teach you how to actually make beer, but it will – at the very least – familiarize you with the core concepts in beer-making, allowing you hereafter to nod knowingly the next time your sister’s weird homebrewing boyfriend corners you at a party. Read ‘em up and don’t forget your delicious homework!

Malting. First, barley is not just reaped with a giant scythe then fermented, as cool as that would be. Before the magic can happen, barley must be malted, or allowed to germinate. Germination tricks the barley into thinking it’s been planted and it’s go-time for growing. The result is that the barley seeds generate the enzymes required to convert starch into sugar to support that growth, but this is just a tease: before any real growth occurs the germination is rather rudely halted with dry heat.

Milling. Next, all that malted barley (or malt for short) is ground up in a mill in a process rather creatively called Milling. The result here is a pile of ground up grain called grist. I’m not really sure what else you’d expect.

Mashing. The grist is added to a bunch of hot water in a process called “mashing in.” The hot water is called “Liquor” but, disappointingly, this is just a label. Mashing occurs in a “mash tun” which is vaguely Gallic for “big pot in which one make beer.” The reason the water is hot is that the heat activates the enzymes in the malt to complete the starch-to-sugar conversion. There are several different enzymes and several different ideal temperatures involved, but you get the drift. The result is a grain/water/sugar slurry called mash that can be filtered to create “wort,” the immediate precursor to beer.

Boil. Because we’re all slobs, and also because wort is effectively just a giant barrel of perfect bacteria food that, if left around, would grow enough nasty shit to kill everyone in a three mile radius, the next step is to sanitize things. The easiest way to sanitize a liquid is to boil the ever loving fuck out of it, so we proceed to do just that.

Hopping. During the boil hops are added at different points to balance out all that sugar with bitterness, flavours and awesomeness. Very generally, the earlier the hops are added, the more flavour they provide, while later means more aroma. Hops, being natural preservatives, have the additional benefit of scrubbing unwanted proteins out of the wort.

Chill. Next we bring the steril wort down to a safe temperature for yeast. This is done quickly through a heat exchanger for a few reasons, but a major consideration is that it just takes freaking forever for 15,000 litres of wort to cool down by itself and we don’t have all day, dammit.

Pitch. Once cool, a bucket of yeast is dumped, or “pitched,” into the mixture. Most people don’t suspect it, but yeast contributes most of the flavour to any given beer. Change the yeast, change the beer. With the yeast added, the wort slowly begins turning into beer (wort + booze = beer), and an angel gets its wings. From here the wort is left to ferment for a period of time, which depends on what kind of beer is being made.

Conditioning. Eventually most of the yeast is done, and it settles to the bottom of the fermenter. This inactive yeast is removed, and the beer is left to settle for a while (days or weeks). This lets flavours in the beer blend and mellow, and gives time for undesireable by-products of brewing to off-gas. If you’re drinking a flavoured beer, like a pumpkin ale, odds are the pumpkin was added during this stage.

Bottling/Kegging. Pretty much what you’d expect. The beer might be additionally filtered prior to bottling or kegging to increase clarity, but frankly that’s a horrible thing to do to beer. Sure, it looks good, but it steals much of the yeast’s flavour from the body of the beer, and I’ll take body over looks any day. Yes, this whole article was written specifically to support that joke.

And there you go! You now know more about brewing than I did a decade ago, and perhaps even just enough to horrifibly burn yourself in your kitchen. Congratulations! Homework after the jump… Read more

BARLEY MOWAT: On Lagers And Ales And Drinking To All Their Delicious Differences

by Chuck Hallett | The trick with having a bountiful crop of new breweries sprouting up everywhere you look is that you have to have a fairly solid appreciation of beer in order to really get all you can out of them. No matter how many times I reassure you that there’s no shame in being a Lager Lad, eventually you’ll wind up at a party and someone will ask your opinions on, say, Cascadian versus American IPAs. And then you’ll hate me for letting you go uninformed for so long before crying in the corner for a little bit. So, in order to prevent that from ever happening I will be undertaking a crash course on beer here on Scout. This won’t be an advanced, multi-week rant of beer snobbery, but rather a gentle easing into the smooth, hoppy waters that is beer geekery, all in bite-sized chunks. There will be homework, and yes, you can drink your homework. Let’s get started with the basics…

Beer 101: Lager & Ale | If you ask a random non-beer person on the street what the two main styles of beer are, you’ll get a variety of answers: Light & Dark, Macro & Micro, or even Molson & Labatts. The correct answer, though, is Lager and Ale. All beer is definitively one or the other, and both lagers and ales are beers. This last fact is not as widely understood as you might imagine hope, as I have on several occasions heard the question “Is ale considered beer?”

The difference between the two is largely technical. The yeast used to brew lager is usually Saccharomyces pastorianus (pronounced “screw it, it’s the yeast for lager”) vs Saccharomyces cerevisiae for ale (you can learn more about yeast on my own blog here). Feel like a geek yet? We’re just getting started! The term lager itself comes from the practise of cold storing the beer while it matured, originally in European caves, which was called “Lagering.” Lager is, in fact, German for “storage.” However, you can just as validly “lager” an ale, although this is fairly rare (in a fit of creativity, the result was named a “Lagered Ale”).

Each category is further subdivided into styles, of which there are around 80-100 depending on whom you ask, with more being added all the time. Some examples of each are Lager: Pale Lager, Pilsner, and Bock. For Ale: Stout, India Pale Ale, Belgian and Pale Ale.

People will often tell you that lagers are always light in colour and flavour while ales are the opposite. While these generalizations are often true, they don’t hold for all cases. Take, for example, a nice Ice Bock versus a Blonde Ale. The Ice Bock is black as night and boasts massive coffee flavours and high alcohol to boot, while the Blonde Ale is pretty much what you’d expect: light, refreshing, and puts white-out on computer screens (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

The origins of the “Lagers are light and devoid of flavour or colour” is likely because the type of lager most people are familiar with is the American-Style Pale Lager, more commonly known by its commercial name: “Macro Swill.” Brewed in vats of mind-numbing size to be as inoffensive as possible, these beers are often simply labelled “Beer” because any other term might distract from the branding. General rule: if a beer won’t say what style it is, it’s likely a macro lager (note that there are varieties of Pale Lager that have actual flavour, these are usually takes on the Germanic originals rather than the awful American spin).

But that’s enough fancy book learnin’ for today. It’s time for you to get started on to the drinking portion of this course! You’ll find all your liquid homework after the jump… Read more

BARLEY MOWAT: On The Especially Rapid And Very Welcome Rise Of Growler Culture

Growlers lined up at the filling station inside Vancouver's brand new Powell Street Craft Brewery (1830 Powell St.)

by Chuck Hallett | In case you haven’t heard, craft beer in BC is going through something of a renaissance. If you aren’t already aware, last year saw the addition of five new breweries to this fair province – Townsite (Powell River), Parallel 49 (Vancouver), Powell Street (Vancouver), Bridge Brewing (North Vancouver), Firehall (Oliver) -  and 2013 will see the addition of seven more. Many of these new breweries will be local to Vancouver, and (almost) all of them will be filling growlers out of the gate.

What’s this, you say? You’ve never heard of a growler? Well, my friend, I’m about to change your beer-loving world for the better. A growler is, quite simply, the best way to bring home fresh and locally produced table beer. A growler is environmentally friendly. A growler is affordable. A growler is…well…to be honest it’s a big bottle that you take to the brewery and get filled with draught beer.

Other cities such as Portland, San Diego and Seattle have long had a large number of breweries filling growlers. Heck, even Victoria has a strong growler culture (eg. Phillips, Driftwood, Hoyne). But for whatever reason, Vancouver did not partake until recently.

Sure a few local brewpubs would (and still do) fill growlers, but no one was doing it industrially until Parallel 49 Brewing opened in East Van earlier this year. They installed a professional growler-filling station and began selling 2 litres of draft beer for $10. They have since added two more stations due to demand.

Dieter Friesen filling up at the Parallel 49 Brewing Company's tasting and growler bar (1950 Triumph St.)

Growlers aren’t just cheap. They also give you a chance to take home beers that the brewery perhaps doesn’t bottle, and sometimes even rare one-offs. What’s more, with many of the smaller breweries, that person behind the counter filling your bottle probably also brewed the beer, and they’d love to tell you all about it.

In terms of quality, our award-winning local craft breweries are turning out some of the best beer in the country, and the difference between getting it fresh on site (or after the several weeks it takes to clear the LDB’s red tape) will impress you. Odds are, there is some seriously good beer being made a few minutes from your doorstep, so why settle for something brewed last summer in Europe?

Today, only Parallel 49, Powell Street Brewing, Steamwork’s and Yaletown Brewing Company do growler fills in Vancouver (Bridge Brewing and Central City offer up fills in North Vancouver and Surrey respectively). In the coming months, however, things are going to get very interesting.

The location of The Brassneck Brewery, currently under construction off East 6th Ave at 2148 Main Street

Opening this year in the old Brewery Creek district around 6th and Main are no less than four new breweries: Main Street Brewing, Red Truck, Brassneck and 33 Acres. All will fill growlers. And slightly further afield are Doan’s Craft Brewing Company, Four Winds, and Dogwood Brewing. All are slated to open their doors this year and would likewise love to send you home with two litres of The Good Stuff.

Every brewery that fills growlers also sells new, branded ones, but everyone will fill anyone else’s growlers. 2 litre growlers typically cost $10-15 to buy and $10 to fill, while smaller 1 litre growlers are around half as much, perhaps a bit more than half (note that not all breweries sell or will fill a one litre growler).

Once you have your precious beer, if it was filled in a proper station, it should keep refrigerated for as much as three weeks before you open it. Once open, you should drink it within two days for maximum freshness. And when you’ve drunk your last, just wash it out and take it back to the brewery (or a different one) for more. It’s a general rule that breweries do not wash your growlers for you, and most will refuse to fill a dirty one out of fear that it will taint the new beer.

So give a growler a try. You’ll find yourself stopping off at your local craft brewery for a litre of beer to go with dinner more and more, and wondering how you ever did without.

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Chuck Hallett lives and works in downtown Vancouver. His passionate obsession with craft beer borders on insanity. When not attempting to single-handedly financially support the local brewing industry through personal consumption, he spouts off on his award-winning beer-themed blog: BarleyMowat.com. If you’re in a good beer bar reading this, odds are he’s sitting next to you. Be polite and say hi.

DINER: PR Meltdown For Steamworks After Owner Gets Possessive Of “Cascadia” Beer

by Andrew Morrison | Steamworks owner Eli Gershkowitz isn’t making many friends in the local craft beer scene at the moment thanks to a seemingly ill-considered move to try and enforce his 1999 trademark on the word “Cascadia” (in relation to beer) by apparently sending bullying cease and desist letters to breweries making Cascadian-style brews. That’s some awful derpitude right there, and the internets don’t approve. The social media backlash against Gershkowitz and Steamworks has been quick and ferocious. Read about the whole sordid affair over at my new favourite blog, Barley Mowat.

UPDATE: Steamwork’s rushed (and unconvincing) response here. Meh. Barley Mowat’s follow up.