Concept Beer

A little over a month ago, I posted a blog entry on beer ‘E.S.P.’.  Using Westvleteren XII as an example, I proposed the argument that ‘tasting the rare’ is a valid experience, & that one’s perception of a beer can be enhanced by knowing that it made a long & circuitous journey to reach its drinker’s lips.  This idea of beer E.S.P. has been a fascination of mine for a while, & it extends beyond the rareness factor.  The question pops up among beer geeks from time to time: Is beer art?  This begs the question of what makes art art.  Call me a heathen, but I tend to veer toward ‘no’ – my definition of art is that it is functionless & serves no purpose, has no objective other than its own being.  I consider beer more craft or design in that it’s a fusion of form & function – it has an objective (taste good, slake thirst), & while it can be elevated beyond simply that function into higher aesthetic realms, it’s always grounded by its raison d’etre.  Man, do I sound like a blowhard.  Also, art exists according to its own criteria & can’t be judged or scored (judging & critiquing are two different things).  There’s no equivalent to the BJCP that I know of in the world of art.

The common sense, mundane argument to beer E.S.P. is that it’s what’s in the glass that matters.  As always, my left brain agrees with that.  My right brain, however, sees an element in the beer world that speaks to beer’s artistic leanings: process.  I’m not talking about ‘mash-lauter-sparge-boil-pitch’, etc. etc.  That’s the craft of beer, no doubt, & that process is very much perceptible in the quality of the final product.  You can taste it.  I’m talking about the intangible part of the process.  It’s the concept of the beer that’s baked into the final product, that you wouldn’t even know about without some accompanying context.  It’s a window into the history of the beer’s life & the intention of the brewer. 

This first struck me a few years ago, when East End released S.W.I.L.L., an acronym for Stimagtized Wholly Indigenous Local Lager.  It was their first lager, modeled after pre-Prohibition lagers & made with local corn.  Yep, corn.  It was an adjunct lager, the kind inherently stigmatized by beer geeks.  I bet most who tasted it didn’t think much of the flavor, but the concept was part of the final package; to appreciate that package, one had to take into account that extra-sensory aspect.  Dogfish Head is another who plays on the concept fantastically.  Take Pangaea, on the surface a well-made Belgian-style golden ale.  But the concept & process are half the fun!  They take an ingredient from every continent to create it: ginger from Australia, water from Antarctica, rice from Asia, sugar from Africa, quinoa from South America, European yeast, & North American maize.  You get the beer & what it presents sensorily, but put yourself in the headspace of drinking a beer representing all seven continents & it elevates the experience.  Their Ancient Ales series effectively does the same thing – there’s the beer, & then there’s the concept & intention.  On some level, the two are separable, but why deprive yourself of what the brewer considers a vital ingredient?  Austin’s Jester King makes an imperial stout called Black Metal.  While fermenting, they blast death metal for the yeast.  Does this affect the finished beer?  Who the hell cares – it’s an awesome idea!  Cambridge Brewing Company made a beer called Om, a Belgian-style pale that they, well, get this:

While resting in French oak chardonnay barrels for one year, the barrels and their contents were vibrated using therapeutic tuning forks and Tibetan chanting bowls at a frequency of 136.10 Hz. Studies have shown that vibration affects the crystalline structure of liquids and that water has the ability to ‘memorize’ frequency information and hold sound at nearly five times the magnitude of air. From Plato to Pythagoras to Kepler scholars have experimented with ways in which we define the sound of the universe and how it is relative to our own existence.

Again, does that affect the final product.  Who the hell cares?  I want some! 

I’ll repeat the caveat that, yes, it’s the beer that matters.  Sensory perception is king, taste holds the final trump card.  But this is where I see the intersection between art & craft lying in beer, what can transcend the function & give it a life beyond what’s just in the glass.  This recreates the brewer as artist, & intention as an aesthetic on its own merit.  Maybe there’s more in the glass than meets the tongue.

Credit to artist Tom Marioni, whose set for The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art appears above.  An excellent concept, to be sure.