Ambient Heady Topper

and the mystery of the Bro Beers

If you have not seen an Ambient Review yet: It’s more about what I’m experiencing during the time it takes to drink the beer than what the actual beer tastes like.

Setup: I had boneless chicken wings (I can’t handle eating it off-the-bone) from Lazy Dog restaurant and a Diet Pepsi – yes I am a health nut.

Drinking Start Time: 10:00 PM

I open the beer and take a sip. On this occasion I am drinking from the can as The Alchemist basically demands. This is more about laziness and not wanting to get a glass than listening to the can’s demands.

First sip is strong. I feel like we forget Heady and Pliny are doubles. Maybe it’s just me that forgets.

I forgot to roll the can. I’m a believer in can rolling to mix a hazy up, I usually forget to do it though.

10:10ish: I am helping my daughter with getting one of our cats from her room to the outside. The cats are newish and our dog wants to eat them so we have to take measures to keep them separated.

Royal Cake Eater, Elaine, reacts 

10:15ish: Take another sip of my Heady. Watching Seinfeld. It’s the one where Elaine eats Petterman’s $2,900 cake. I’d buy Elaine any cake she wants – #crush.

This is also the episode with George and the Frogger machine and Jerry dates the Sentence Finisher.

10:30ish: Some more sips of the Heady. Then things get fuzzy as I fall asleep on the floor – sometimes the floor and a pillow is more comfortable than a chair.

11:11: I wake up to another episode of Seinfeld but I am not sure which one. My beer is warm now. I power through some gulps and mostly finish it because I would feel too much shame if I completely wasted a Topper.

Thanks for coming to this Ambient Review, look for more on the blog soon!

Beer Twitter Stat/Thread Of The Week

Josh Noel @hopnotes

Here's a wow stat: For the 4-week period ending July 10, Truly hard seltzer was 62.6% of Boston Beer's sales. Twisted Tea was 21.6%. Sam Adams beer, which launched the company and was its backbone for years and years: 7.9%. WOW. Via @BeerInsights & @NielsenIQ.

👀

Josh Noel @hopnotes

@BeerInsights @NielsenIQ There are a few different takeaways. One is obviously the ascendance of hard seltzer. Another could be "beer is in trouble" ... but I think it's more than that. It's that Boston Beer specifically failed to adapt to changing beer tastes. However ...

Josh Noel @hopnotes

@BeerInsights @NielsenIQ And Boston Beer did try to keep up with changing beer tastes. It just couldn't do it. Hence the Dogfish Head sale. Though even that had limited impact. Same set of stats pin DFH (plus other Boston brands) at under 2% of the portfolio for that 4-week period.

I do agree with the take of Boston Beer Co figured out how to pivot to seltzer and other hard things well, but were too set in their ways with beer to change in time.

I still contend that the typical seltzer drinker wasn’t really a big CRAFT beer drinker to begin with so seltzer isn’t hurting craft beer as much as it appears.

But that’s just my partially fermented opinion.

The Links Of Beer

• We do not see enough stories about Latinos in beer. So here is a good one about a Latino Homebrewer Club.

• I do enjoy when underrated things are featured, here is Beervana’s list of the most underrated breweries in Portland.

• Speaking of the NW, the New York Times has a really nice article on Seattle’s growing beer scene, mainly happening in the Ballard neighborhood.

• There were a couple of bros drinking beers for a couple of seconds on national TV at one of the Suns vs Bucks games and I set out to find out what beer they were drinking.

Cheers For Being Here!

Thank you for the read. Hope you have a great week and find some good beers!

-Mikey

Peace ✌️ Beer 🍻 & Metal 🤘