I Don't Always Drink Beer...

Alright, alright - I almost always drink beer.  But man cannot live on liquid bread alone, & this time of year especially finds me venturing to other pastures.  Mine is not primarily a beer family, & in visiting the houses of kin over the holidays, if I don’t bring the good beer, it usually isn’t there.  Which is perfectly alright – I’m not too insistent, & it gives me a chance to veer off my well-beaten path.  My mother’s side of the family is full of wine drinkers, my dad’s is more spirit- & cocktail-centered, & my in-laws are pretty much a grab bag of whatever.  And holidays or no, sometimes I just get burnt out on beer (I know, perish the thought), or don’t want the bloat, or whatever. 

Even when venturing out of my comfort zone, I have found that my appreciation for other kinds of drinks is enhanced if I can connect the dots back to my beloved home base. Beer offers such a broad plurality of tastes, it’s easy to find bridges to other flavor profiles that might not seem glaringly obvious.  Or, if there’s not a bridge, I can at least see across the chasm & wave to the other side.  I don’t claim to have much knowledge about these beverage families, but here are a few of my favorite beer alternatives (“Malternatives”?  Uh, maybe not.) & their beer-adjacent qualities:

Bourbon.  Duh.  Whiskey is distilled beer, & of the whiskey varieties, I find bourbon has the strongest family resemblance.  The heady, dense sweetness, with notes of vanilla, coconut, cinnamon, oak, honey – it’s no wonder that the wood-aging trend started with bourbon barrels.  Sure, oak barrels had been used to house beer for years, but as far as the recent practice of filling second-use spirit barrels intentionally to impart flavors, bourbon fits like a glove.  Drinking bourbon barrel stouts, barleywines, & Scotch ales (arguably the best partner, in my opinion), paved the way for my appreciation of this fine American liquor, a taste my dad was very happy to see me acquire. 

Islay Scotch.  Scotch puts hair on your chest.  That smoky, grainy taste combined with a stiff alcohol will show you what you’re made of.  Among the Scotch varieties, known for their signature smoky character, the Islay single malts hold a special place, the most peaty, briny, complex, & challenging among them.  I remember my first Laphroaig, thinking it resembled a glass of housefire, AFTER the hose trucks had put it out – smoky, musty, organic, salty, astringent, funky stuff that burned & made me come back for more.  It evoked like no other drink I’d had, like an abstract painting in a tumbler.  Scotch holds an obvious kinship to rauchbier, but I liken the Islays to traditional lambic or other funky, wild ales, not so much in the flavor itself (there’s no sour to be had), but for its unpredictability & straight up weirdness.

Big, dry red wines.  I’m going to sound like a total plebe because I know next-to-nothing about wine – I can’t even keep the names straight.  But if someone offers me a pour, I go for the tannic, oaky reds, the more of both the better.  The acidity, the dryness, the sharp fruit flavor – you can easily connect the dots to Flanders reds & dry kriek lambics.  As more sour beers are finding incubators in used wine barrels, more vinous genes are intersecting with the world of beer.  The first time I had Russian River’s Consecration, you could’ve convinced me it was a wine.  I also think there’s some parallel between the intense reds of California & the power of west coast hop bombs.

Port.  Okay, so there’s one style of wine I know by name.  Believe it or not, we do get a good many oenophiles at the bar, & while talking once with a wine-loving young lady, I mentioned that my wine knowledge is practically nil, with the exception of port.  “That makes sense”, she replied, “It’s the wine that’s most like beer.”  And she was right.  Sweet but deep without being cloying, with notes of leather, a little meaty, even, a tawny port can overlap plenty with a Belgian quadruple, or an English barleywine.  When beers age, natural, subtle oxidation can turn them port-like & smooth.  A great sipper for dessert.

Ginger ale.  Somewhat on the back of the craft brewing surge, there are some cool artisanal sodas being made nowadays.  When my wife got pregnant with our first, I vowed in solidarity to abstain from drinking…in her presence.  While this gave me a hell of a jones, it also presented the opportunity to check out some craft soft drinks.  I’ve always liked ginger ale (ginger’s kind of a weakness of mine), & going through the selections at some of the better grocers around opened me up even more to the variety & nuance in this classic pop.  I saw a parallel to pale ales & IPAs in their use of hops, squeezing so many different flavors out of a versatile seasoning – some were drier, or spicier, or sweeter, or sharper, or bitterer than others.  Speaking to the craft beer connection, my favorite – Thomas Kemper, honey-like with a touch of smoke – used to be owned by Pyramid Brewing.

Coffee.  People are serious about coffee.  I’m not one of them.  I’m just as happy with the cheap stuff, I use cream & sugar, & the nuances of Sumatran vs. Ethiopian vs. Kona or whatever are lost on me.  I came to appreciate the flavor through dark beer.  Cutting my teeth on Guinness (including for breakfast, on occasion), it was not a far leap to come around to dark roast & the earthy, friendly bitterness it imparts.  Coffee finds a natural home in porters & stouts, but can play a really interesting role in an amber (like Peak Organic’s), or other anomalous style (like the black coffee saison we had at last month’s Top Shelf Thursday).  I’d like to work up to just tasting it black, to really get all the subtleties, but have a ways to go.  It’s comforting. 

Surprise – this is getting long!  There are plenty of other neighboring territories of libation whose surface I’ve just barely scratched.  Mead & cider seem to play sister to beer a lot, though their forms seem much closer to wine.  Sake is fascinating, though I’ve yet to try one that didn’t taste like bile to my neophyte palate.  The idea of blending herbs & teas seems to hold vast potential (even hop tea).  And there are many more craft distillers creating all breeds of inventive liqueurs & spirits these days, & mixologists using all sorts of cool ingredients to build some far-out cocktails.  So much creativity going down, it’s hard not to peek over the fence once in a while.

Top Shelf thursday, November 2014: Horn of Plenty

If the recent weather is any indicator, fall is definitely on its way out.  The food-growing season is done, & anything that hadn’t been harvested by the beginning of last week would’ve been killed by single degree temperatures.  So time to eat, right?  Time to buckle down & start storing up fat for the winter.  That might not be such a big priority for us civilized, mobile bipeds, but try telling that to our reptile brains.  Cold air plus more dark equals “build those reserves”, gobble up calories while you can.  Thanksgiving is a great symbol of this transition from the salad days of summer to the lean, survivalist nights of winter.  It made sense for this month’s tasting to reflect that, featuring beers that used food stuffs not included in “traditional” (read: “Reinheitsgebot-compliant”) recipes. 

We started light, with a beer representative of the working season: Saison Rustica, from Virginia’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery.  This easy, dry farmhouse-style ale would hit the spot on a hot day, with a little twist from peppercorns & star anise in the finish.

The hemispheres met with Wells Banana Bread Beer, from the UK’s Wells & Young’s Ltd.  The toffee notes of an English-style dark ale blended naturally into a sweet banana flavor, a logical extrapolation that saved this from being a gimmick.

Terrapin in-sourced Pineapple Express, the result of an employee homebrew competition.  This Munich-style helles lager was given a euphoric dose of pineapple & smoked malt, creating a sweet, slightly acidic flavor that singed around the edges.  Puff-puff!

Plenty of fruit found its way into tonight’s line-up, & fruit can often mean sour & funky beers (yum!).  ShawneeCraft brought it with their Frambozenbier, a blend of two vintages of their Raspberry Blanche, one of which had been aged in oak.  It was surprising that such a light, subtle source beer created such a tart & intensely flavorful offspring, with big raspberry, big oak, & a puckering sour character.  Free Will Brewing (out of southeastern PA, like ShawneeCraft) presented Alexander, a saison with sour cherries, oak, & brettanomyces.  Sour beers tend to be divisive, & this was no exception – even among fans of sour beers – with its mildly tart body & deeply funky & downright strange aftertaste.

Evil Twin’s collaboration with Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, Joey Pepper, continued with the wild yeast.  This cousin-of-Orval, brewed with white peppercorns, brought a kind of savory twist to the earthy farmhouse notes of the bretted Belgian-style pale.

Our sour departure alit with Rodenbach’s Caractere Rouge, a Flanders red with cranberries, cherries, & raspberries.  This hit hard with the fruit, but showed some restraint with the sour, delivering a sweet beer that veered more toward strawberry than the actual berries it contained.

We stayed in Belgian-esque territory with Too Much Coffee Man from Oregon’s Gigantic Brewing.  This coffee beer took the unusual approach of using an imperial black farmhouse ale as its base, blending the coffee with the spicy phenols & roast of the dark saison – very interesting!

Rather unceremoniously, we passed a Top Shelf Thursday milestone – our 25^th tasting!  I chose to mark this occasion by going a little “off script” & sharing a Stone Vertical Epic 11.11.11 from my cellar.  This Belgian-style amber was brewed with Anaheim peppers & cinnamon which stood out more when fresh, but after aging a few years, melded into a tasty kind of dark fruit pudding with just a hint of pepper flavor, without heat.

It would be a little ostentatious to include a “foodie” flight & not include Dogfish Head, so we invited their Scandinavian ancient ale, Kvasir, to the party.  Brewed with cranberries, lingonberries, birch syrup, honey, yarrow, & myrica gale, you could smell the juniper-like aroma from the table, complimented well by the sweet-tart berries.  Always a mouthful with Dogfish Head!

And for the second month in a row, Avery Brewing lent its muscle to the final course, this time with The Beast Grand Cru.  Avery packed a lot of sugar into this Belgian-style dark ale, with dates, raisins, turbinado, blackstrap molasses, honey, & dark candy sugar, bringing the ABV up to 16.1% & leaving plenty of residuals for a sweet, full-bodied ale. 

It was a fun & interesting exercise to pick out the food components in these beers – after all, beer itself is an agricultural product.  It’s a relatively recent development that things like spice, fruit, & other culinary substances are the exception rather than the norm.  Just another small excursion across the vast continent of beer.  Thanks to all who came out tonight – those who’ve become regulars at our little monthly get-togethers (especially Matt, who hasn’t missed one yet!), as well as those who joined us for the first time.  It was an intimate group; all were, & are, welcome.  Top Shelf Thursday takes off for the month of December – see you in 2015!

(Shelf) Life of the Party

The beer world seems to have quieted down about the “bubble” a bit.  A year ago, two maybe, everyone was in flight over how much growth the beer market could handle.  The pool hasn’t gotten less crowded, but it still appears to be accommodating everyone alright.  One reason is that many of the new producers jumping in are not taking up a whole lot of space – here in Pittsburgh, the model seems to be small, walk-in taprooms & brewpubs serving the local area.  There aren’t a whole lot more bottles from Pittsburgh brewers crowding up the shelves & getting distribution far & wide.  Much like the small, house-only wineries of which there are thousands & thousands, the new stripe of brewer is finding their niche with on-site sales & a few draft accounts, keeping things very artisanal & boutique.  Locals CoStar Brewing penned an eloquent blog entry to this point recently.  CoStar are a great example of this local nano model; incidentally (& fittingly) they’re not that far away from us at all, yet I’ve never had any of their beer.  Nothing against them – I’d love to get a taste, but they just haven’t crossed my path yet.  Maybe they’d be interesting in sending some kegs our way, but if we’re outside of their territory, that’s cool, too.  If they’re into just supplying the immediate vicinity, we’re in the next county over.  I get it, & more power.

So the supply end may be more mindful & self-regulatory than we’d realized.  How about the demand?  Craft beer fans are thirsty.  When I got into this hobby, Pittsburgh had one beer festival a year ( Sharp Edge’s Great European Beer Festival), that by definition did not include any local brewers – or any American brewers, for that matter.  This year, it’s seemed like every other weekend there’s been something beery happening somewhere.  Last week saw Beers of the Burgh – the second Pitt-centric fest this year, no less – a great idea that I’m glad has become worth doing.  The festivals are going strong, & almost always sell out in a short time.  The fans are much more numerous, & thus much more competitive.  Big Pour has sold out in minutes for years. 

So yeah, the festival atmosphere is just one sign that things are heating up.  There are also the crazy special releases, here & (moreso) abroad, that folks line up & camp out for.  The media coverage, with more stories devoted to craft beer in magazines, newsprint, television, & on-line outlets.  More folks are treating craft beer as a hobby, & the numbers on Untappd are way beyond what I would’ve anticipated a few years ago.  And then there’s Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, Pennsylvania Craft Beer Week, American Craft Beer Week, IPA Day, Stout Day, & probably some other landmark “events” I’m overlooking. 

You get the gist, right?  So maybe the growth in supply seems sustainable given the current demand, but when does the demand trail off?  I’ll make the distinction again that, while not necessarily a fad, craft beer is definitely a trend, on the rise & getting more popular.  The “bubble” may not be a drastic deflation in popularity & sales, just a slowing in the rise, eventually plateauing.  The goal of “20% by 2020” – that is, craft beer getting 20% share of the US beer market by the year 2020 – has been thrown around.  An ambitious target, for sure, but one that I’d love to see reached. 

I don’t think 20% is unrealistic (though maybe not in the next six years), but I do have a hard time believing that the current fervor is sustainable.  Right now, everyone is enjoying riding that wave, but I can see the excitement reaching a pitch & dying down.  Beer blogger & notorious contrarian/curmudgeon Andrian “Ding” Dingle has cited the numerous festivals, “beer weeks”, & other antics as indicators that America, while its passion is undeniable, doesn’t really have much of an entrenched beer culture.  There are the hardcore craft fans, & the majority of the country still drinks mass-produced & -marketed industrialized lager.  There’s little middle class.  Rather than being ingrained into everyday life (as in Ding’s home of the UK), craft beer in the US is still largely fireworks & carnivals – you don’t need a “Craft Beer Week” if the public has embraced it as a whole.  It would be just part of the culture & seen as normal, unquestioned, & not needing promotion & celebration.

I agree with Ding, to an extent.  Riding this wave is fun right now, but my hope is that we see a plateau rather than a crash.  I think there’s possibility for people to embrace good beer as a given in daily life, & maybe five years from now, maybe more, it won’t be something we have to seek out & treat as special.    We might be able to go to any restaurant with a liquor license & order from a list of twenty or forty good beers.  If the festivals are still happening (which I hope), tickets sales might last more than twenty minutes.  The local breweries will stay afloat, serving their people & making a quality product consistently enough that people see they don’t have to go nuts.  The on-line media will stop writing contrarian-for-contrarian’s-sake pieces.  The fiendish hunting will die down, & normal people will get a chance to drink everything again.   And the hardcore contingent will have to chill out a bit, not acting like crazy, entitled assholes if they don’t get their way.  The lines will get shorter.  The party’s gotta end sometime – let’s just hope everyone keeps the promises they made the next morning.  Life will go on, & the beer will still flow.  And it will be good.

To Infinity...and Beyond!

Have we hit a million different beer brands yet?  I don’t mean The House, specifically, but the world over.  Has the number of commercial beer brands with a distinct name, recipe, brewer, etc. reached seven figures?  I don’t know whose job it is to keep track of this stuff, but we must have by now, right?  When you consider all the brewers & all the beers they put out, including year-round, seasonal rotation, one-offs, pub-only, etc., we can’t have not hit one million distinct brews conceived & born.  On a whim, I just now looked up Troegs on BeerAdvocate.  They have 225 documented beers, & I’m sure there are probably a few missing.  That’s one of three thousand-ish in this country, at this moment, so yeah, a million seems very possible.

225 different beers.  Okay, so Troegs has been around a while.  Wicked Weed’s newer, let’s check them out.  186!  Four Seasons is just over a year old, let’s try them.  Ten.  Okay, that’s surmountable (though again, that’s assuming that every beer has been entered).

There are many, many choices.  Our current stock is in the range of 1300-1400 brands, but that just doesn’t have the same ring as “House of 1000 Beers”, so we round down.  If you factor in seasonals & single releases, bottle & draft, it’s likely that the number of beers passing through our establishment annually is double that estimate.  That kind of selection can lead to consumer paralysis, a paradox of choice.  There’s so much to choose from, I’ll stick with my tried-&-true.  Josh Bernstein gave voice to this dilemma in a Bon Appetit article that gained some traction earlier this year.  Can’t venture outside, too scary.  Why pick this one, or these six, & hope they’re better than the other hundreds I’m passing over?  Courage, friend!  There’s plenty of guidance to be had – just ask a buddy, or the web, or one of our friendly, knowledgeable staff.

Another product of this hyper-variety is the “ticker” mentality: the completist, the consummate collector, ever searching out something new.  Dare not drink the same beer twice – there are Untappd badges to be had!  “Hmm, I’ve had Hop Devil, Hop Stoopid, Hop Juju, Hoptimum, Hoptimus Prime, Hop Henge, Hop Nosh, Hop Head Red…  What’s that?  Hop Stalker?  Hello!”  “Yeah, the rum barrel-aged one was good, but I had the rum barrel-aged with scorpion peppers & brett down at Fat Head’s during Craft Beer Week & it was the shit.”  I get both excited & exhausted by this kind of pursuit, & have all but stopped pining for the deeper & more elusive niches brewers carve.  Although, never say never…

America’s craft renaissance is still in its adolescence, & I wonder if we’ll see a decline in breweries putting out scores of different beers & variations a year.  I kind of love that The Alchemist has achieved a pretty meteoric rise on the back of one beer.  If he wanted to, John Kimmich could probably brew & sell Heady alone into an early retirement.  The European model seems to be much more conservative in line-up; to my limited perception, most European brewers (save for the ones borne by the western craft boom like Nogne O, for instance) release between one & six beers, period.  Maybe my provincialism is showing & there are way more European brewers doing a ton of one-offs, but it seems to me that the European example locks in a few styles & brands & does them consistently well.  Imagine if every American brewer whittled down their portfolio to single digits & did that handful really well – there would still be thousands & thousands of great, domestically made beers available. 

Part of me wonders if that’s where we’re headed, would be curious to see that future, & truth be told, wouldn’t mind.  There’s just too much to keep track of right now; I could have a selection of thousand beers for life & be perfectly happy.  And then I remember – this is America.  We like choice & novelty as much as quality.  It keeps the game interesting.  I have to remind myself, too, that American craft brewing is essentially home brewing writ large.  Randy Mosher’s definition of craft beer: “If a homebrew (current or former) gets to decide what the beer tastes like, it’s craft beer”.  Home brewers always having something going – this is in the fermenter, this is in secondary, I’m working on a recipe for this.  Part of the essence of American craft brewing is the individual doing what they want & then sharing it with others, & constantly taking on some challenge, doing something new.  Sometimes they want to do it all at the same time, & it becomes a trend, like I’d mentioned in the case of “session” IPA.  But good luck trying to tell them to tone it down.  The craft brewers may come to the paring down conclusion on their own, eventually.  Or maybe not.  For now, though, there’s still a lot of exploring to do.

Top Shelf Thursday, October 2014: Trick or Treat!

Halloween’s just fun.  There’s relatively little stress (even if you have kids), participation is completely optional, & if you don’t even have to see relatives.  It’s a big party holiday, though I can’t see that it’s reached the “Amateur Night” status of, say, St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve.  It’s not a shit show.  It’s acceptably gimmicky, though in a way that elicits very few eye rolls.  And it’s open to interpretation – if you choose to dress up, you can go as anything from a corpse, to an ex-president, to Lenny Kravitz if you want. 

We designed our “Trick-or-Treat” Top Shelf Thursday to be open to interpretation.  Somewhat predictably, we were treated to beers featuring chocolate, pumpkin beers, & beers with evil-themed names.  There were also a few tricks, with beers throwing interesting curveballs.

Our first “wicked” beer of the evening came to us from Evil Twin Brewing, no stranger to Top Shelf Thursday.  Jeppe delivered a 100% brettanomyces-fermented IPA, Femme Fatale, with the Japanese fruit Kabosu, giving a dry, floral brew with a citric tartness.   Things stayed wild with Luciernaga, the Firely, from Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales – the first “pumpkin” beer of the evening, if in name alone (trick!).  This open-fermented Belgian-style pale hit some very funky notes, with a spicy twist from the additions of coriander & grains of paradise.

We made a 180 with the Double Chocolate Bock from Block House Brewing, a.k.a. Pittsburgh Brewing, a.k.a. Iron City.  DCB represented a drastic departure ideologically - an inexpensive beer from a big brewer - & sensorily, with big notes of chocolate that sharply contrasted with the dry, even sour character of the first two courses.  The next brew stayed the course: Chocolate Indulgence from Brewery Ommegang.  First brewed in 2007 for Ommegang’s tenth anniversary, this delivered a strong nose from the inclusion of Belgian chocolate, while the body packed sharper, fruity flavors from the ester-heavy Belgian yeast.

Dogfish Head transported us through time & space with Theobroma, a recipe from their Ancient Ales series & based on Aztec archeological findings from about 1100 B.C.  It brought some familiar cocoa notes from the use of South American nibs & powder, & twisted it by adding ancho chilies, honey, & a ground tree seed known as annatto.  Personally, I really appreciated the Theobroma & Chocolate Indulgence in this flight, both better than I remember from having them years ago.

What they lacked in creative naming, Boulevard Brewing made up for in flavor with their Chocolate Ale.  Boulevard collaborated with Kansas City chocolatier Christopher Elbow on a beer that balanced Dominican chocolate with malt very nicely & lightly (despite its 9.1% ABV), without tasting like dessert.

Local brew-gooders Helltown brought us the night’s second “wicked” beer (hey, their zip code is 15666!), with their 2013 Barley Wine.  This English-style barleywine delivered a notable heat that remained drinkable, smoothed out by aging on oak & maple.

The secret to making a great pumpkin ale is not being half-assed about it, which O’Fallon Brewing certainly were not.  Their Imperial Pumpkin Ale (another prosaic name, forgivably) packed a wallop at 10% ABV, with a full flavor of pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, & allspice to match.  This was one of the first pumpkin ales to wow me in a long time; let’s hope it makes a comeback next year.

One that will not return, unfortunately, is the Black Butte XXVI, the anniversary release from Deschutes Brewery.  They tweak the recipe on this imperial porter every year, this time adding cranberries, cocoa nibs, & pomegranate molasses, tart fruit that meshed interestingly with a little tannin from time spent in bourbon barrels.

And speaking of bourbon barrels, AND delivering whole-assed pumpkin beers, Avery dropped a bomb on us with their 17.22% ABV Pump[KY]n (the “KY” is for “Kentucky”, by the way, not the personal lubricant, a joke not lost on those in attendance).  This monster of a spiced pumpkin porter, aged in bourbon barrels, was the strongest beer ever served at a Top Shelf Thursday, & approached a pumpkin liqueur in its flavor & mouthfeel.

Definitely saw some mischief being played this evening.  Calling back to this post’s preamble, & the question of gimmicks: one thing that most impressed me about the night’s flight was how a good brewer can take a flavor that CAN be gimmicky (chocolate & pumpkin can raise some eyebrows for the seasoned beer drinker) & display it with depth & substance.  There are plenty of superficial-tasting chocolate & pumpkin beers around, but each beer in the flight was as far from gimmicky as you can get.  Regardless of what additives are used, good beer is good beer, a maxim well illustrated by those poured this evening.  It goes without saying by now, but thanks to those who showed up, drank, chatted, & had a good time.

Whom Can We Trust?

Last blog post saw me venting on how the “geek” part of “beer geek” can get a little out of hand.  I want to clarify that, overall, I don’t think knowledge about beer is a bad thing at all – the opposite.  It makes me happy to see that people are thinking about what’s in the bottle or glass, able to appreciate some of the context that makes a beer whole.  As good beer becomes more widely accepted, the drinking populace is elevating its habits.  Okay, you’ve stopped drinking straight from the bottle & are decanting.  Good!  How about kicking it up another notch & buying yourself a few tulips?  If you’re on it enough, you might snag a complementary Duvel glass during one of our giveaways.

Correlating with the rise in public interest in beer, there are more sources of info than ever before.  I don’t know how many times we’re going to see the same articles spun over & over: “Proper Glassware for Your Beer”, “Pairing Beer with Food”, “Know Your Styles”, & on & on.  I don’t know what constitutes plagiarism in cases like these, but it seems that everyone’s biting someone else, & I don’t see a lot of credit being given for source material.  Chances are, the writer gleaned their knowledge from another writer, & it’s doubtful that they accrued info about the grain bill, process, & color range of gueuze, for instance, from years working at Brouwerij Boon or something.  The beer education pot has many, many cooks hovering around it.  My hope is that, over time, the knowledge base will become a little more refined (it’s refreshing to see the “IPA legend” slowly being laid to bed), & folks will do their research.

Not that I blame the writers or the repeaters for getting things a little skewed.  There are troves upon troves of historical & quasi-scientific tidbits to be unearthed; it can be overwhelming.  In the post-modern age of the internet, where anyone can pretty much find any opinion or “fact” they can imagine with a quick search, one longs for some sort of monolithic authority.  Michael Jackson is a god amongst beer writers, but even he’s not immune to self-contradiction here & there (anecdotally, the origin of the tripel in Great Beers of Belgium left me a little confused).  The Christmas after it was published, I received The Oxford Companion to Beer, which carried the promise of being just the authoritative last word so many sought.  Even before it was released, however, a storm of controversy brewed over disputed historical accounts, the charged led by British beer historian & consummate blogger Martyn Cornell.  Many others voiced disagreement with contents, & the OCB wiki was born for the sole purpose of revising errors.  Garrett Oliver, the OCB’s editor, responded eloquently (but not without emotion) to the revisionists, defending himself & the aim of the OCB while giving the wiki his blessing & validation.  But this was a tremendous effort collaborated on by scores of experts, & it still met with rebuttal.

I’ve used the OCB a ton over the few past years.  I seldom write this blog without it by my side.  There’s little doubt that I’ve cited some things incorrectly, or given out faulty info from time to time throughout posts.  Guilty.  Just one in the army of cooks throwing my pinch into the soup.  Beer is pleasure, & if you’re going to take it as seriously as I do, you have to be prepared to not take it so seriously, if that makes sense.  Know your source, & take every morsel of beer geek minutia with a grain of salt.  

The Right Way to Beer

“Come on Vern – the kids haven’t changed.  You have!”

Maybe I’ve changed.  Maybe I’m getting old.  Maybe I just don’t have the stamina for it the way I used to, or I’m realizing that life’s too short.  Lately I’m learning that my patience for beer geekdom is wearing thin.  Yep, this is going to be a rant post – the fun kind.  The kind where I vent about something that makes me shake my head & want to sit people down, bring their face in close, & say “Relax.” 

Most of these types of post end with just that message:  “Relax.  It’s beer.  It’s supposed to be enjoyed.  So enjoy.”  Sure, I express some of my stress in the process – but hopefully in service of the greater sanity of the beer drinking public (at least the sliver of a percentage that read this blog).  Beer is to be taken seriously, & we take it very seriously.  But not at the price of pleasure.  Past blog posts have aired grievances on obsessive beer-hunting, “proper” glassware, food pairings, overwrought descriptors, interminably recycled apocrypha – all with the underlying moral that, hey, it’s beer.  It’s a luxury designed to make life a little better, & if you’re getting all twisted about it, you’re doing it wrong.

When I say “my patience for beer geekdom is wearing thin”, I’m not talking about “geeking out”, the kind of open-minded enthusiasm & fun that makes my job worthwhile.  I’m talking about anal retentive “how to”-ism, the kind espoused by those attempting (I’m sure in good faith) to “elevate” & “educate” people about beer.  There exists the mentality that there is a “proper” way to do…pretty much anything with beer.  How to store it.  How to pour it.  How to smell it.  How to taste it.  What glassware to use for what style.  What temperature is optimal for what style.  How much head to leave in a glass.  Whether beer should be cellared upright or on its side.  What beer should be served with what food.  Whether you should evaluate appearance or aroma first.  Why you should always wash glassware by hand.  What implements you should use to wash glassware by hand.   Whether you should smell with long inhales or short sniffs.  What you should do to optimally taste the beer once it’s IN YOUR MOUTH.  Seriously, I’ve heard or read at least half-a-dozen different maneuvers to do with your tongue & cheeks to “properly” taste a beer, some of which I don’t even understand from an anatomical perspective. With some of these “rules” everyone seems to be in agreement, others you have sharply divided camps – for instance, do you prefer your Berliner weiss with or without syrup? 

We subscribe to a certain percentage of these rules (as any self-respecting bar should).  But all the minutia & “experience optimization” gets to be a bit much.  I understand that the purpose is to help people enhance their appreciation & put beer on a pedestal, presenting it at its best.  At a certain point, though, it starts to feel like a psychological bat used to beat people into feeling like their missing out or doing things “the wrong way”.  You might think that stout’s good, but nowhere near as good as it is with five years on it.  You might like that double IPA, but if it’s not in a tulip you lose a lot of the volatile aromatics.  The sweet spot for that barleywine is really at 58.  Jesus.  Here I was, silly old uninformed me, thinking I was really getting into this.  Thanks for proving me wrong, sucks to be me.

Now I’m not arguing for the abuse of beer, & think it should be treated with respect (& no, I don’t consider a lemon wedge on the glass ‘abuse’).  Everyone needs to decide how much stock to put into all these “guidelines” & at what point it becomes overblown puffery, or just too much of a pain in the ass to keep up with.  Set your own standards.  Personally, I almost always use a glass, usually a shaker, with exceptions for pilsners, Belgians, & barleywines.  I hate being served a chilled glass, but will drink it & ask politely for a room temperature glass next time.  If you drink straight from the can, go for it.  If you only drink Kolsch from a Stange, more power.  Prefer your IPAs aged?  Okay then.  What matters is that you like what you’re drinking, that you’re enjoying your beer.  It’s not rocket surgery – beer is meant to bring pleasure, & if you’re there you’re there.  If it tastes good, you’re doing it right.

A Little Knowledge Goes...

ISOHUMOLONES AID IN HEAD RETENTION!  THE SRM RANGE FOR A VIENNA LAGER IS 10-16!  YOU CAN USE THE SALT TEST TO TELL IF A GLASS IS BEER CLEAN!

Okay, now that’s out of my system.  Sorry about that.

Beer has a reputation as the “everyman’s” drink.  It’s one of the things I love about it: the opportunity to drink a well-crafted, artisan brew without any air of pretense.  Sure, there are beers commanding lofty prices, but there are also world class examples to be found right at your finger tips for a few bucks, too.  It’s always been a pretty populist beverage – I think our bar, where teachers, truckers, & doctors sidle up convivially together, has always embodied the socially egalitarian nature of the pint (or tulip).  It’s a beautiful thing.

I’ve noticed an interesting correlation with that populist nature.  As more articles are written, more links of info shared, more interest paid to craft beer as niche hobby – basically, as beer becomes more of a “thing” – there are more people contributing more content about beer to all the places people contribute content.  There’s a ton on the internet, naturally, but TV & print are seeing more space devoted to this new-fangled delight.  In sync with that, we now have a widespread distribution of people who consider themselves budding beer experts, given the amount of “insider” knowledge easily available to them.  The elevation of the everyman’s drink has turned every-other-man into a fountain of regurgitated trivia & dubiously useful rules (a subject I’ve kvetched about elsewhere).  Not only are the how-to-ers making beer feel a little more like school, but there are more now than ever, one-upping anyone in earshot.

Not saying that education’s a bad thing, & a boost in the general knowledge level around our beloved brew aids it in gaining the respect it deserves.  I can’t help but feel it becomes a power play sometimes, though.  With knowledge comes power, & power can always be abused.  A quick glance through the forums on BeerAdvocate (a sample population skewed to the fringe, I realize) yields plenty of talk around “dumb servers/bartenders/store employees” who just aren’t as enlightened as the literati who spend a ton of time surfing beer sites.  Frosted glass?  Be gone with ye!  The waitress didn’t know the difference between east coast & west coast IPA?  Heavens!  A little humility goes a long way, too, & I’ve come to notice that the more someone understands about a subject – ANY subject – the less opinionated & obnoxious they tend to be about it.  The more we know, the more we realize we don’t know, which provides some insurance against being a dick.

For the reasons cited above, it can be both a blessing & a curse that beer seems to attract so many passionate people.  The blessing part is obvious – I feel that the craft culture overall has really benefitted from the enthusiasm & support given by its fan.  That passion has the potential to eat itself.  I have some mixed feelings about the Cicerone program, a fairly new organization that aims to certify professionals in the beer business – mainly bar & restaurant staff – on how to optimally store, serve, & pair beer.  I think the program itself is great, & much needed if beer hopes to put itself on the same footing as wine in the gastronomical world.  Again, if beer is to be given the respect it deserves, those dealing with it need to know how to best treat it.  We at The House currently have no Cicerone-recognized staff, but that could always change in the future. 

As great as the program is, I see the potential for it to be abused as a trophy for some armchair Bamforth.  I GUARANTEE there’s a percentage of Cicerone-certified individuals who got it for the bragging rights, to prove something to someone.  As I’ve said before, beer geeks love to outdo one another, & there have got to be some out there who have a Beer Server certification hanging on their wall.  While I see the Cicerone program as something valuable for the field as a whole, I really don’t see the point in anyone outside of the service industry pursuing it for any reason besides ego gratification.  Keep it to the professionals, I say.

Same goes for the number of craft beer courses that have emerged on college campuses across America.  Several colleges (San Diego University, Paul Smith’s College in upstate NY) now offer academic tracks in the business of craft beer.  As craft beer is a growing field, this makes sense – IF you’re planning on entering the brewing or hospitality industry.  Someone planning on making a living in beer would do well to know the business side of it.  As with the Cicerone program, though, I can’t help but wonder how flooded the classes might be by barstool experts-in-training. 

So what point am I trying to make, other than once again whining about the pool getting more crowded?  I’ll go back to the double-edged sword metaphor.  It’s cool seeing so many people in love with something as cool as beer.  There’s a lot to learn, & plenty of places to find out more (some reliable, others less so – more on that later).  All that passion needs to tapered by humility & respect, though, or else it’s like someone peed in the pool & everyone has to get out until it’s cleaned again.  So be cool, my babies.  

MOAR PUMPKINZ!!

“Nobody goes there any more.  It’s too crowded.”

That’s become one of my favorite sayings.  Years before I learned that Yogi Berra said it, I read it in Lew Bryson’s Pennsylvania Breweries, referring to Rock Bottom.  It deftly jabs at the “over it” mindset, when people voice disdain for something based solely on its popularity.  Too many people are into something, it’s lost its special little niche.  This used to be my little secret, now every everyman walking in the door wants a piece.  I get that mentality – being “in-the-know” can make something esoteric feel a little more like a treasure.  It takes a little more effort, more willingness to dig & explore to uncover something really worthwhile, rather than having the least common denominator shoved down our throats.

That attitude can also get a little tedious past a certain age.  That band you heard first blew up, & now people both fifteen years younger AND older than you are into them.  Sure, it might suck having to share them with twenty times more people now, but they’re good, right?  And if things really work like they’re supposed to in a capitalist meritocracy, quality should equate to popularity, right?  It’s only right & natural that more people should be into something good.  So at the right time of our lives, we should all shed the idea that popular is bad.

Where was I going with this?  Oh yeah – I never noticed the pumpkin beer-bashing so much as this year, & I don’t buy it.  I had a brief exchange with another bottleshop’s twitter account, who said markets without a particular hyper-popular pumpkin ale (not gonna say the name) are better off, which made no sense to me, at least from a business standpoint.  He went on to say that he can’t stand the stuff, that if he wants pumpkin pie he’d prefer it on a plate, that beer should taste like beer, etc.  The standard talking points.  That’s fine, whatever, but I feel like I’ve heard it more this year than in recent memory, from more people, & it has a ring of “doth-protest-too-much” about it.  I get the vibe that people are pushing back against the early releases & overwhelming demand, & maybe being a little conspicuous in their nose-turning. 

Sure, pumpkin beer’s ubiquitous this time of year – just read on the Brewers’ Associations’ website today that sales of pumpkin beer rival those of IPA in the fall.  Pumpkin-flavored EVERYTHING is happening this time of year.  Candles.  Ice cream.  Apparently people lose their heads over Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latter.  They might make deodorant from cinnamon & nutmeg now, who knows?  Know why?  ‘Cause it frickin’ tastes good!  Those flavors are delicious & nostalgic.  It makes people feel cozy & gives them some reassurance when the days start getting shorter, cooler, & we all shore up for our inadequate excuse for hibernation.  Each sip is a shot fired in the battle against Seasonal Affect Disorder. 

So yeah, I think the hatin’ on pumpkin beers is a little disingenuous.  People love them because they’re good; it’s fine to let your guard down & just admit that you like what tastes good that a lot of other people like, too.  It’s gonna be okay.  It’s gonna be okay.

Top Shelf Thursday, September 2014: Lagers

Ah, lager.  So underappreciated.  So taken for granted.  In a world of extreme this & full-flavored that & in-your-face the other, which still largely characterizes the craft beer culture, lager is often overlooked.  Without doing any real research, off the top of my head, I’d say craft ales outnumber craft lagers on our shelves about ten to one.  Just a guess.  Not that lager hasn’t always had a place in craft beer – heck, Penn Brewing spent the first twenty-plus years of life brewing almost exclusively lagers -but it’s fallen by the wayside.  BeerAdvocate ran a story a year-ish ago about lager-centric craft breweries, & it kind of struck me as odd.  You mean it’s that much of a rarity to find small-batch lagers, enough to warrant a feature?

Along with other movements of focus – session, souring, farmhouse brewers – lagers are kind of back on the trending margin among America’s small beermakers.  The first barrel was tapped at Oktoberfest in Munich this past weekend, & it seemed like an opportune time to showcase some of the breadth & depth of the lager world for this month’s Top Shelf Thursday.

Lagers are nothing if not drinkable, & things launched with the small, dark, & very drinkable Extra Schwarze from Germany’s Innstadt Brauerei.  This Schwarzbier had a character that was both roasty & surprisingly fruity, & packed a lot of flavor into a 5% ABV package.

A less well-known style that’s gained some traction lately is the Kellerbier, a slightly hoppy lager that’s unfiltered like Hefeweizen, giving the yeast a chance to play a more prominent role than most lagers allow.  Ungespundent-hefetrub, from Mahrs Brau, complimented its light hop bite with an organic, even slightly funky & sulfury character from the yeast, familiar but just a little novel.

I love what smoked malt can bring to a beer, & the incorporation of smoke in lager often fits so much better than in ale (in my opinion).  Oregon’s Heater Allen Brewing, an all-lager craft brewery, brought the smoke to their Dunkel, creating Rauch Dunkel, with a meaty, bacon taste overlaying the toasty base beer.

We dove into another Kellerbier with Monchshof Kellerbrau from Kulmbacher Brauerei.  This one showed the hops a bit less, with more cleanly fruity notes coming from the yeast (in a cool swingtop bottle – love that “pop”!).  And we revisited the Dunkel (this time smoke-free) with Polar Vortex from Two Brothers Brewing.  Possibly the cleanest so far, this carried lightly biscuity flavors with an interesting finish & aftertaste, like brown sugar but drying quickly.

 We hit on a classic with Brauerei Aying’s Celebrator Doppelbock, already known & loved by many in attendance.  On the lighter side for a Doppelbock at only 6.7% ABV, Celebrator yielded rich caramel, dark bread crust, & a little date while being remarkably smooth & easy-drinking.  And the little goat charms made for popular souvenirs.

While the tasting had an air of tradition about it to this point, we got propelled into the now with Founders Dissenter, described as an Imperial India Pale Lager.  Just pouring the beer, I got a whiff of the strong tropical fruit aromas from assertive hopping with American varieties, supported & amplified by the dank character of the lager.  The best of both worlds.

And again, leave it to the Amerikaner to take the old world & twist it, as Boulder Beer did with Dragonhosen.  This Oktoberfest was amped up to an imperial 9% ABV, giving the familiar toasted malt profile a shot in the arm with a warming alcohol & sweet aftertaste.

Old & new world met with a collaboration from Deschutes Brewing (Oregon, 1988) & Distelhauser (Germany, 1811): their Doppel Dinkel Bock.  A weizenbock with spelt substituted for the wheat (& technically not a lager – derp!), Doppel Dinkel delivered everything the style should & more – one guest described it as bananas Foster French toast.  Excellent.

We couldn’t bear to go too long without a pop-in from one of the Bjergso twins, this time in the form of Mikkeller’s Frelser Tripelbock Holy Ale [sic].  This big (11%), chocolatey, pruney lager was christened with the Danish word for “savior”, in an homage to the original Doppelbock, Salvator from Paulaner.

Can’t forget the bonus round!  House Hall-of-Famer Ed was generous enough to share some bottles of Mass Rising, a double IPL from Jack’s Abby Brewing in Massachusetts.  The hop-heads in attendance unanimously agreed it was a home run.  Thanks, Ed!

Dark, light, malty, hoppy, yeasty, clean, strong, mild, & everywhere in between, this tasting showed that lager can cover a lot of territory.  Here’s hoping we see lots more quality lagers being brewed by skilled crafters young & old.  As always, a hearty thanks to those who came, ate, drank, & socialized with open minds & senses.  Catch you at next month’s Top Shelf Thursday!

Note: All umlauts omitted due to laziness.  Sorry, Deutschophiles!

Weyerbacher? 'Cause They're Awesome, That's Why!

It’s hard not to have a soft spot for number three.  One is great, always reliably quality, having won hearts & minds across the board.  Two offers a good complement to one, arguably just as great, but a little scrappier, a little edgier, always vying for that top position with something to prove.  The Beatles & the Stones.  Coke & Pepsi.  Chocolate & vanilla.  Even  Bud & Miller.  So it goes with Pennsylvania’s craft breweries: Victory’s well-recognized, having gotten in early & offered a well-made line-up over the past 18 years; as of 2013, they were the 28^th largest craft brewer in the US.  Out of Harrisburg came Tröegs, a little newer (1997), not quite as big, but also yielding a consistently high-quality product with a few cult favorites.  You can see these two neck-&-neck to be at the head of PA’s craft brewing culture.

Then there’s number three.  I’m not sure that Weyerbacher’s volume would necessarily make them the third largest PA craft brewer, but I always think of them as the dark horse in the triumvirate.  Weyerbacher predates Victory by just a year & has always been a little different.  They’re that “Oh yeah!” brewery for me, not always at the front of my mind, but when I remember them I get excited.  It’s kind of like “What do we want to order in tonight?  There’s pizza, there’s Chinese.  Hmm, what else?  Ooh, how about Thai?  Hell yeah, I love Thai!”  Know what I mean?  Number three doesn’t have as much at stake as one & two, which gives it a little more freedom to just be itself.  People love the Beatles & Stones, but the Who has a niche all its own.

Practically from the get-go, Dan Weirback & company haven’t been afraid to go big.  Not sure that I’d call it their flagship, but the beer that put them on the map was their 12% barleywine, Blithering Idiot.  Distributors sold out of this big boy two weeks after its initial release.  I imagine people were drawn to the name, the label art (the jester has since become Weyerbacher’s mascot), the “bang-for-your-buck” factor, & the fact that it’s a damn good barleywine.  Forging your way with a strong beer like that is no mean feat, but it didn’t take long for other high gravity brews to roll out: Raspberry Imperial Stout & its successor, Old Heathen; Tripel, which became Merry Monks; Imperial Pumpkin Ale, one of the first big pumpkin beers in my recollection, trumping the strength of Dogfish Head’s Punkin.  The list goes on.  They used to offer a variety case of their big beers.  Their Double Simcoe IPA introduced me by name to what’s become my favorite hop.  Their anniversary series, starting with Decadence (as in “decade”), has been perpetually sought-after, further experiments in high-gravity brewing – they just released Nineteen, a wheatwine with mango.  And what goes better with big, bold beers than bourbon barrels?  By taking some of their core & aging in wood they rolled out Insanity, Heresy, Prophecy, & Blasphemy.  And don’t forget Riserva…

It’s not all about big booze, though - Weyerbacher makes a solid witbier in White Sun (nee Blanche), Autumnest, Winter Ale, & continuing selection of “more-than-one-in-a-row” brews.  They’ve always seemed very hometown & handmade in the best possible way.  In the near past they underwent a design change, slicking up their label art & logo.  This was a good move as they’ve gained more ground, & craft beer has become more competitive.  They need to look as professional as they are, no doubt, though part of me always had a soft spot, too, for the old logo, which appeared taken straight from Microsoft Office circa 1995.  It was kind of cheesy & dated, sure, but it spoke to a very DIY aesthetic, & I always wondered if the brewery wasn’t sort of stubbornly, sentimentally attached to it.

As my PA Dutch friends would say, “Machts nicht.” – onward & upward.  Weyerbacher is still kickin’ it, & showing it to be a driving force on the forefront of Pennsylvania’s craft scene.  The House is thrilled to be hosting our first beer & food pairing in years, with four courses created by our own beloved Chef Brian, complemented by the excellent beers of Weyerbacher.  Featured will be the afore-mentioned Insanity (Blithering Idiot aged in bourbon barrels), Nineteen, & Imperial Pumpkin, as well as Jester’s Tree a double IPA made in collaboration with Spain’s Naparbier with Apollo, El Dorado, & an experimental hop.  This should be a really fun event, & give us a chance to flex some culinary muscles while highlighting some quality brews from a landmark brewery.  Hope to see you there, & remember: three is where it’s at!

CONTROVERSIES: IPA Edition

This post could’ve just as easily been titled “Even More Rambling Thoughts on IPA”, but I decided to go with the momentum of the past month’s motif & highlight a few of the debates swirling around the craft beer ether.  Plus, I have a love/hate relationship with listicles: a few actually offer some substance, & the ones that are complete fluff at least give me the chance to scroll through & tick which ones apply to me.  You’re probably rolling your eyes over me devoting another post to IPA, but it really does captivate me right now – the beer AND the phenomenon.  And it’s got its own little list of debates going, which, again, may or may not be of any real consequence to the reader.  Just a little food for thought.

Wet-hopping.  I’ll admit that fall is my favorite season for seasonal beers.  I love pumpkin beers, Oktoberfests, & I get excited for the fresh-hopped harvest brews that come out after hop-harvesting season.  Hops fresher=beer better, right?  The dialogue is moving more toward “Eh…”.  Sure, the good stuff is bright, the volatile oils are fresh, but you get a lot more plant matter in there too than you do with dried hops.  All that extra green can impart grassy or even vegetal notes.  The same oils are present if the hops are kilned & used shortly thereafter (as is done in standard, “non-wet” practice), but without that chlorophyll component.  So wet-hopped can mean the good plus some of the not-so-good, while using kilned hops is just the good.  “Good” & “bad” are subjective, here – if you like the grassy elements, then wet-hopping is right up your alley, it’s just a qualitative difference that some hopheads don’t necessarily dig.   Homebrewing icon & Heretic Brewing founder Jamil Zainasheff was once asked on a podcast “How do you wet-hop without imparting the grassy flavors?”  His reply: “You don’t.”  (Thanks to Stellmacher Brewing for recently putting me in mind of this point, too)

IBUs.  The entry on “International Bitter Units” in The Oxford Companion to Beer (contributed by Matt Brynildson & Val Peacock) comes with a few caveats: “Regardless of how IBU values are derived, however, they do not provide information about the quality of the bitterness…For all its recent use in the public sphere, where it sometimes even appears in craft beer advertising, the IBU is a laboratory construct that was never meant to leave the laboratory…other hop components, roast character, carbonation, water chemistry, & residual sugar, may exert such influence as to make the IBU an entirely unreliable indicator of actual perceived bitterness.”  IBU has become the beer world’s equivalent to kilos in the weight room – a point of bragging & one-upsmanship - without much real practical use for the consumer.  It’s something everyone talks about without really understanding it, so take those stats with a grain of salt. 

The IBU threshold.  The IBU arms race came out, & brewers scrambled to have the highest figure.  A little later, the “threshold” was introduced, & it was said that human’s perception of bitterness plateaus at 100 IBUs, so it didn’t matter how crazy it was over that watermark.  A year or so it seemed to drop to 80.  Then in the past six months or so, I think I’ve heard 50 quoted a few times.  This would  equalize most hop-forward beers; I have a hard time swallowing that.  Along with reinforcing the argument above about just leaving something you don’t understand alone, the shifting threshold bugs me because it smacks of beer geeks trying to out-geek one another by showing off whatever anecdotal “knowledge” floats downstream.  “Really, we can’t perceive bitterness above 50, so…”.  Says who, & if so, so what?  That’s a whole other ball of wax for me, though.

The IPA blob.  “IPA” has become to beer marketing what “-core” was to music genres.  If something’s heavy or aggressive, slap “-core” at the end & you’ve got a new genre: emocore, slowcore, skacore, mathcore.  How about “Krishnacore”?  Same with IPA.  Any hoppy hybrid gets called an IPA: black IPA, white IPA, red IPA, session IPA, Belgian IPA, harvest IPA.  On the one hand, it’s a clear signal to the consumer that “This is a hoppy beer”.  On the other hand, after a while it loses its meaning, or is exploitable by  those wanting to ride the wave & everything becomes an IPA.  Writing in BeerAdvocate magazine, Andy Crouch asked the question “So what kind of IPA are you drinking?”.    Used to be “hoppy lager” was an adequate description, too, before “IPL” came along.

Brewers are sadists (& hopheads masochists).  This may not be so much a controversy as a cliché, & I love to bitch about clichés.  The uninitiated, & even the initiated, taste the piney, citrus pith bitterness of an IPA or double IPA & imagine that the brewers wants to rip their taste buds off.  I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve heard someone surmise that a brewer “just wants to shove as many hops in there as possible & rip your head off with bitterness”.  I don’t think that does justice to the skill & intentionality inherent in making a beer with a really assertive hop presence, without making it undrinkable (that’s a relative term, I know).  I’ve come to love aggressively hoppy beers, & it has nothing to do with wanting to inflict pain on myself.  In that big character is a subtle balancing act between challenging & gratifying, a really exquisite dance that the best IPAs have down.  Fans of spicy food like the heat it because it heightens ALL the flavors; it makes the palate stand up & notice.  It’s not just heat for heat’s sake, or bitter for bitter’s sake.  Appreciating a very bitter beer takes some acclimation, but can be so rewarding when you’re in the zone.  So don’t discredit the brewers by assume that they’re just ham-handedly squeezing hops in at all costs.

Alrighty, a few more nuggets for thought, a few more grievances shed.  One thing I feel bears repeating: I think it’s a feather in the cap of craft brewers that a style as inherently controversial & polarizing as IPA has gained such a high place in the zeitgeist.  Beer is fun, challenge is fun, so let’s all have a drink. 

Thanks to the website DC Beer for this article; it fueled a lot of the thought that went into this post.  If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend you do so.

Top Shelf Thursday, August 2014: IPAs

This Top Shelf Thursday was a long time coming.  Since the second or third of these tastings, I’d gotten requests to center one around IPAs.  It made sense to throw a tasting with a focus on a single style of beer, & we’ve done those before (barleywines last February, for instance).  I’d always balked, though – there aren’t a lot of expensive IPAs, & few are too dear to hesitate at just buying yourself.  So I’d put it off.

Over the past couple years, my taste for really hop-forward beers has grown, to that point that little else really satisfies me.  Never thought I’d call myself a hophead, but a peek in my fridge speaks for itself.  My interest in the style, its history & context, has grown, too – I can think of at least three blog entries I’ve devoted just to the India Pale Ale & its legacy, maybe more.  Plus, we’d gotten in some really enticing IPAs & double IPAs in the past month or so.  So I thought, what the hell?  It’s summer, these babies are still fresh, & we even had IPA Day earlier this month.  Let’s get bitter!

Not surprisingly, California was well-represented this evening, starting with a one-two punch from some breweries who know their way around an IPA.  Mother Earth Brewing’s BooKoo relied wholly on Mosaic hops to deliver a crisp, clean ale with a very defined bitterness & brisk tropical fruit character.  In contrast, Aroma Coma from Drake’s Brewing was maltier, cakier, with a more complex hop bill that complemented the rye malt base & ended with a nice flavor of grilled pineapple. 

Things got more novel with Tangerine Dreamsicle, a collaboration between standbys from the east & west coast, respectively: Terrapin & Green Flash.  The use of honey malt, lactose, & tangerine peel, meant to emulate an orange creamsicle, gave the beer a sweet citrus liqueur spike & a smooth, creamy finish.  Well played!

The fourth course was shrouded in mystery.  I found very little info on Chicago’s Begyle Brewing (their minimalist website states that they’re a “Community Supported Brewery”, which I took as likening them to a CSA(?)), & even less on their Hophazardly IPA.  It was an assertive, dry example, full of citrus pith with just enough sweetness to keep it from getting unwieldy.

Against the Grain, out of Lexington, found a winner of a name with Citra Ass Down! (as have about six other breweries, we discovered).  Anchored by some bigger C hops, this double IPA was built to show off the Citra, coming through with a strong lemon-lime character balanced by malt that was just a little rough around the edges.

Another wild card of the night was Firestone Walker’s black rye IPA, Wookey Jack.  Many had tasted this GABF gold medal winner before, but none were disappointed at having another cracker at it (some even saying it was an improvement on their memory).

There’s a myth that imported hoppy beers are all stale, which was completely blown out of the water by Epic Brewing, from the other side of the globe in sunny New Zealand!  Their Hop Zombie was bright & bold, with a dank, resinous character balanced perfectly by a notable alcohol presence.

We moved into possibly the night’s most malt-heavy brew with Alpha Dog’s Laughing Dog Imperial IPA out of Idaho.  The sweeter, nutty, minty brew provided a nice pitstop from hella-hops-land.  And things got a little weird with another wild card – emphasis on the “wild”.  Ov-ral, from Danish gypsy brewers Mikkeller & To Øl, is a mutation of their Overall imperial IPA, with the twist of brettanomyces (the name is also a perversion of a certain cult Trappist with brett).

And we wrapped up on a very satisfying note with The Big DIPA from Baltimore’s Heavy Seas.  At a fairly reasonable 75 IBUs, this was not a punishing beer to begin with, & was made more pleasant by aging on white oak, giving it a substantial coconut character.

So we finally did it!  Gotta say, I think one of the possible pitfalls of doing an all-IPA line-up could be the “all taste the same” effect.  Whether guests love IPAs or are still learning to love them, I definitely didn’t hear any “samey” comments, & one of the most interesting aspects of the line-up was tasting the diversity & distinctions in a family with so much to offer.  Also gotta say, this may have been the most personally enjoyable flight for me yet – all the beers were really good (some excellent), & even some of those I expected to be weak were surprisingly tasty.  As always, the crowd was great, friendly, & game for trying something new & different.  Thanks to all who came out, & if you didn’t make it to this month’s, hope to see you next time!

Craft Beer CONTROVERSIES, Part 2

A continuation of last week’s blog, just spotlighting a few more dubious “issues” floating in the beer world ether.

Drinking “local”.  The beer’s brewed a half-mile away.  But the malt’s from Austria, the hops from New Zealand, the yeast from a lab in San Diego.  Brewers (& writers, & drinkers) are upping the ante when it comes to what’s considered “local beer”, highlighting ingredients sourced from their own geographical backyard.  Another example of a buzz word outgrowing itself, & no doubt leaving some in the cold.  Not that buying from local business is a bad thing by any means, but just how “local” is the beer?  One thing that’s hard to dispute: the closer to the source, the fresher the beer (just depends on your definition of “source”).

Making sours.  Okay, I’m not sure that many outside of myself & roughly two people I talked with consider this a “controversy”, but there’s more than one way to sour a beer, that I’ll refer to as “hot-side” & “cold-side”.  “Hot-side” involves introducing the souring elements in the mash or the kettle.  “Cold-side” involves fermenting with bugs & wild yeast once the wort has cooled.  “Hot-side” is contained, as the invasive bugs are boiled off before they get a chance to infect the rest of the brewhouse.  “Cold-side” is risky, as there is potential for a comprehensive contamination of the entire works.  “Hot-side”, in my opinion, yields a less interesting, less complex beer.  “Cold-side” allows for greater depth of flavor, as the microflora have more time to develop & intensify.  To me, “hot-side” souring seems a safe but superficial way for brewers to get in on the sour game without making much of a commitment.  As always, I sincerely welcome those with more know-how to tell me where I’m wrong.  I also believe that adding straight lactic acid is straight-up cheating, but again, I’m no pro at this stuff.

The bubble.  Having not been there myself, I get the vibe that the most recent Craft Brewers’ Conference was less about “Look at us go!” & more about “Holy crap, where’s this all gonna go?”.  As mentioned before, there are over 3,000 craft brewers in the country right now, with many, many more slated to come along in the near future.  The question that’s been on many lips lately is about when the trend (& make no mistake, it’s a trend in the word’s true sense) is going to peak & start turning downward, & who’ll be left when the dust settles.  The old-timers are telling the newbies to get their acts together.  I’m sure there were some tense moments at the last CBC, with plenty of shifting eyes & an atmosphere of some anxiety.  “Yeah, he’s not gonna make it.  Better him than me…”

What to do about trademarks.  With more brewers come more beer, & with more beer comes more branding.  The more crowded the pool, the more elbows thrown & toes stepped on.  Disputes have arisen around graphics, beer names, brewery names – really, the marketing stuff that has nothing to do with the actual product.  You can’t trademark a recipe, but that gauche hop pun is someone’s intellectual property.  Everyone looks to the gold standard, of Russian River’s & Avery’s Collaboration Not Litigation as the brotherly way of settling a potential conflict, but with the frequency that brewers are infringing on each other’s turf, collaboration after collaboration isn’t really practical.  Most seem to agree that a friendly phone call is the most diplomatic way to settle things, then there’s the letter, then the serious letter, then the REALLY serious letter.  I think it’s also coming to be understood & accepted that protecting one’s own is a necessity, & doing so doesn’t automatically make you the bad guy.  Try telling that to the fans, though.

Whether craft beer is one big happy family.  Like I mentioned in the introduction to this two-parter, a lot of us would prefer to carry the notion that brewers are chums who help one another out, appreciate their fellow artisan’s product, & are basically above the cutthroat competition that defines most of our free-ish market economy.  Sam Calagione’s famous for saying that the craft beer industry is “99% asshole-free”.  The observation’s been made many times that in no other industry will you see businesses that are essentially competitors collaborating on an end-product at all, let alone with the frequency that you see craft brewers teaming up.  That’s a pretty amazing thing.  But it’s naïve to forget that these entities are always competitors, & happen to have the luxury (as well as the good-naturedness, frankly) to transcend that in the service of fun & art.  On the more cynical end, some suspect the fraternal air of collaboration (looking at Tony Magee again) & wonder how much of it is opportunity to capitalize on another’s share.  Like I said before: the bigger the bubble, the more crowded the pool, the greater the chance for in-fighting & back-biting.  It’s still a business, after all, & brewers gotta get paid.  Luckily, for the time being, the majority of craft culture seems to be about teaming up, helping out, & general friendship.

The great thing about all this is that it only has to matter as much as you, the beer drinker, wants it to matter.  As with any sort of extra-sensory context or political info, it doesn’t have to seep into the beer – we can go on drinking our suds & enjoying what’s in the glass, regardless of what “turmoil” might be swirling around it.  All these are things to think about, but to the extent that they color & enrich our perception of the product.  If it helps your enjoyment of the brew to know a little about the scene that birthed it – including a little drama – by all means, pay attention.  If not, don’t worry about it.  

Craft Beer CONTROVERSIES!

Beer is all about making friends & feeling good, right?  In a perfect world, my lamb, yes, that would be the case.  But we live in a world of competing interests & opinions, & the beer world frequently finds itself at loggerheads with…itself.  As much as we’d like to imagine that the craft beer world is one big happy Valhalla, there are a lot of people under that tent right now, & occasionally someone from one table gets POed at someone from another table & lobs a hop bomb.  Fortunately, the average consumer can go about their beer-drinking unscathed & most likely even unaware of some of these little squabbles, but it never hurts to lift the teapot’s lid & take a peek at the tempest brewing inside.  A few of the controversies bubbling among the beer world:

Seasonal creep.  The stakes are raised higher each year, especially with the fall seasonals rolling out.  Five years ago, nobody expected that we’d see pumpkin beers in mid-July, yet here we are.  The fans are sharply divided between “Too soon!” & “Gimme!”.  We happily cater to both crowds.  Don’t like it?  You’re welcome to drink something else.  Weyerbacher & Southern Tier are notorious for early unveilings, & no doubt some of the breweries who show more restraint probably feel a little peeved.  Sixpoint pointed out that fresh pumpkins aren’t even harvested until later in the season, but the public doesn’t seem to mind.  This one’s hit close to home for us lately, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Contract brewing.  What’s a brewer without a brewery to do?  Outsource.  Contract brewing allows brewing companies to use an existing brewery with excess capacity to make their product.  Some established breweries see this is cutting corners or not a true investment.  Heavy Seas founder Hugh Sisson told BeerAdvocate magazine that “you’re not legit until you’ve got skin in the game”; NYC’s Singlecut posted a flyer that went viral, reading “Contract brewing will be the death of craft beer”.  Dissenters note that contract brewing was the birth of craft beer, in a lot of ways - trailblazers Boston Beer Co., Brooklyn Brewing Co., & Pete’s Brewing Co. were a few (among many) to cut their teeth on someone else’s system.  There’s still plenty being done today, with the “gypsy brewer” faction finding a comfortable niche here.  However, there’s some risk in allowing another to brew your liquid gold, & a beer can’t turn out better than the system & care it’s made with.

The definition of “session beer”.  “Session” is a buzz word these days.  Everyone knows what it’s supposed to mean, but there hasn’t been a way to define it that people can agree to use consistently.  Is the cap 4%, as the English have traditionally set?  4.5%, as has been somewhat arbitrarily set by Lew Bryson & the recent session “movement” in the states?  5% & 5.5% are values not unheard of.  Should there be a limit, & if so, how can it really be enforced other than popular awareness?  Personally, I find myself sympathizing more with the English standard – the term exists because of the English tradition, so why shouldn’t we also abide by that tradition?  But regardless, people seem to agree that more low impact, high flavor beers are a good thing (just don’t call it “light”…).

The definition of “craft beer”.  I’ve already written about this, let’s see, here, here, here, & here (sorry, too lazy to link - scour the archives).  Part of the controversy revolves around who the definition includes (whom some feel it shouldn’t), excludes (whom some feel it shouldn’t), & maybe most problematically, the fact that most couldn’t care less about “The” definition in the first place.  Ask 20 beer drinkers to define craft beer & you’ll get 20 different answers.  The fact that the target keeps moving doesn’t help – since writing the entries I listed above, the umbrella has widened to welcome Yuengling & Straub.  And, like “session beer”, the definition is pretty impotent as long as it’s unenforceable – bars, distributors, & brewing companies can market as “craft” whatever they want. 

Cans.  Canning beer is the best thing since fermenting beer, right?  So many benefits – light weight, easily recyclable, infinitely recyclable, protects from oxidation, protects from UV rays.  No-brainer, right?  Not for everybody.  Of the 3,000 plus breweries in the US right now, just over 400 can their beers.  Sure, that 3,000 includes brewpubs & small operations that don’t package anyway (outside of kegging).  But there exists some opposition to the can as the future to beer.  Tony Magee of Lagunitas has voiced his resistance, citing that bauxite mining for aluminum is a pretty unsavory processor (though a year later he seemed more flexible).  Some other big craft brewers have been conspicuously reticent about cans, & I can’t help but feel like there’s some underlying dissent afoot.

Welp, as is my wont, I’m finding myself getting a little longer in the wind than intended.  Let’s let this stew until next week.

The Pale Paradigm

A recurrent theme through a lot of these blog posts goes something like this: I hate seeing good beer taken for granted. 

It’s not hard to connect the dots between the birth of American craft beer & the countercultural revolution of the sixties.  The original craft brewery – Anchor Brewing Company – was bought & transformed by Fritz Maytag in San Francisco, 1965.  By all accounts, Fritz did not fit the stereotype of asixties revolutionary; he was a pretty clean-cut, college-educated young man from a capitalist lineage.  But no doubt some of the stirrings of northern California in the sixties crept into his consciousness, & may have caught Maytag during a drifting stage of his young adulthood.  Other notable upstarts of craft beer’s second wave, over a decade later, were Jack McAuliffe (a long-haired engineer) & Ken Grossman (a bearded engineer) - again, not exactly hippies, but maybe modern pioneers.  Sixties California was also the birthplace of the organic movement, with the idea that going off the grid & homesteading was utopian in its own way.  The revolution starts with what you grow & eat, & better living unfolds from there, was the mentality.  This DIY push helped birth a greater interest in homebrewing, which really paved the way for the craft beer industry.  [Disclaimer: I didn’t experience the sixties firsthand & have never been to California, but this is what I gather with the benefit of historical perspective.]

And so a handful of homegrown geniuses applied this ethos to brewing, bucking the mainstream & doing something different on their terms.  Part of my understanding of the cultural revolution was that a big catalyst for the shift in consciousness & lifestyle came from the deliberate swapping of alcohol for cannabis as an agent for euphoria (Paul Bowles writes about this excellently).  No doubt, there were plenty of other factors & motivations, but the use of pot (& then LSD) signaled a shift in thought, a new paradigm upon which this culture could build itself.  I see a parallel in the big/little beer dichotomy.  The establishment was awash in lager (& pretty homogenous, at that).  Those who had been abroad had tasted the diversity of beer in the old country & wanted to expand the culture back home in the states.  The revolution in beer built itself on a new paradigm: pale ale.  Pale ale, in itself, was not new, but the west coast upstarts presented it through the new lens of American hops, in particular the Cascade hop, bred at Oregon State University in 1971.  Cascade itself was revolutionary, bolder in flavor & aroma than anything around at the time.  Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, mind-blowing for the time in its foregrounding of Cascade, set the stage for pretty much every hoppy beer that’s come down the pike since.  Not coincidentally, the Grateful Dead really found it to their liking.  As pot was to the hippies, pale ale was to the new generation of brewers, built on an affinity for pot’s cousin, hops.  People still play off the “dankness” of uber-hoppy beers, & there are plenty of IPAs with head-inspired names & artwork. 

Anyway, where was I going with this?  Oh yeah – pale ale is the keystone of craft beer.  It’s entrenched in the American scene & has fathered a huge family through its child prodigy, IPA.  On a personal level, I’ve really reconnected with American pale ale lately.  As much as I love the stuff all the other beer geeks are into, I also gravitate toward the overlooked, the “mundane”.  APA is often taken for granted – it’s not crazy or over-the-top.  It’s seldom infused with wacky ingredients.  It tends to be presented simply & honestly, wherein lies its charm.  It’s kind of a calling card for a brewer, a level playing field – okay, you can do a soufflé, now give me the best grilled cheese you can make.  Not overly complicated, but done well, solid, balanced.  I’ve found myself cooking more than I used to; I like to drink a beer when I cook, & nothing goes better with cooking than a flavorful, bright pale.  As relatively restrained as they are (at least compared to today’s extremes), I don’t think I’ve found two alike – each have their subtle variations (this one’s a little more nutty, this one’s more bready, another more citric…).  It’s like a brewer’s handshake. 

So yeah, my show of respect for the often over-shadowed, underappreciated American pale ale, both on a macro & a micro level.  It’s a drink with a significant history, & something worth revisiting when you get the chance.  Craft beer as we know it wouldn’t be what it is without it.  And if anyone who was an actual participant in the sixties & seventies wants to offer some more insight or enlightenment, please do so.

Hats off, once again, to Tom Acitelli’s The Audacity of Hops, as well as The Oxford Companion to Beer (edited by Garrett Oliver) for providing some of the factual info above.