Quick Craft Beer Business Interlude

A few quick timely notes between design posts:

• Read Slate's great article on the decline of Germany's beer culture. I think it's probably a bit overdone, but worth reading.
• You may remember the great Andy Crouch writing a less-than-great post lambasting bloggers. Well, this time his writing is much more considered (if not much more charitable), and I agree with a lot of what he said. I left a REALLY long comment, so you can see my thoughts there if you want. As usual, other required reading for those who care about beer blogging is found by the equally great Alan McLeod and Jeff Alworth.
• Scientific American has some findings on our sense of smell. If we don't all smell the same things, then the whole issue of how we taste beer (or anything) is very interesting and, at some level, truly subjective.
• Jay has a great piece by French Illustrator Michael Marcinkowski in his Beer in Art series (right).
• Jay also had a piece on intellectual property in praise of Abita's decision to back off protecting the term "pub crawl" in Louisiana.
• Courtesy of Thank Heaven for Beer comes this story about some PA brewers running into the beer-and-religion issue.
• The Grain Bill interviews Dean Browell on social media.
• Jay Zeis' annual tournament of beer is up and open to suggestions.
• Inc.com has the story of the Pastorius' ups and downs at Penn Brewery. A cautionary tale for so many brewing entrepreneurs.
• Lastly: You know by now that I have deep man-love in my heart for Dave and the Vatican Assassin Warlocks at Ska. Particularly, I love their strange high jinks with video and a sort of twisted craft beer performance art. So they're at it again, this time parodying the nixed Discovery show Brew Masters: