Noob Envy

I’m a big fan of knowledge & experience.  A little background story, a little awareness of the style, a little informational context, can help with one’s appreciation of a beer.  Those things aren’t necessary to enjoy a beer – all that’s required there are a working nose & tongue – but to get what a brewer’s going for, knowing the parameters & intention can be helpful & give you a slightly deeper connection to what’s in the glass.

 

Okay, I’ll just clear the air – I might come across as a little bit superior or condescending in this post.  But at least I’m owning it.  I drink a good bit of beer.  I also sell it, make it, listen, read, & write about it.  A lot.  A good chunk of my mental, if not physical, energy & space is devoted to beer.  So I’m taking the tone of the “seasoned vet” here, as arrogant as it may sound.  But please read on.

That arrogant tone is in service of a point, which is that knowledge & experience can sometimes be a blinder.  It creates expectation, & expectation is a double-edged sword.  Drinking thousands of beers is a reliable way to hone your tastes – you definitely figure out what you like& dislike, what belongs & what should’ve been worked out first.  But establishing expectation means that you have a pre-conception about what you’re going to taste, which can lead to disappointment.  I believe that experience is best balanced by humility & an open mind.  It’s so frustrating seeing a beer unfairly bashed by someone who’s seen it all & drank it all.  It’s hard to find a beer without some sort of strengths, & if a drinker’s “experienced” palate is callous to those strengths, no matter how subtle, often the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.  They’re missing out on the small beauty of that beer, while at the same time blaming, ironically. 

I’m not saying to set your expectations low, but to approach each drink with new & opened eyes.  Wouldn’t we all like to go back to those formative years of discovering good beer, everything it has to offer, & tasting it for the first time?  The “Wow”s were way more frequent then, weren’t they?  It would be like falling in love all over again, with all the sensations that accompany that honeymoon spark.  That’s not to say that the “Wow”s don’t still come, but they’re fewer & further between the deeper into your journey you go.  Sometimes those breakthrough moments are quantitative, & you’re getting more of a good thing than you’ve ever had; sometimes they’re qualitative, yielding a smell, flavor, or feel that you’d just never gotten before.  But often our relationship with beer evolves into a satisfying stability, one that hopefully continues to be solid & pleasurable even if there aren’t fireworks with every other sip.

That expectation can also limit your perception.  I love IPAs, but when a new one is set in front of me, I pretty much expect to get some combination of citrus, pine, floral – the usual descriptors.  Because I’ve come to expect those notes, it sometimes feels like my brain is hard-wired to only find those & maybe ignore other aspects.  What am I missing because I’m so used to finding these “typical” flavors & aromas?  A lot of the other beer geeks I end up drinking with kind of have the same problem – knowing how it’s “supposed” to taste means they evaluate it on that scale, & may be desensitized to finding something new.  One thing I like about drinking beer with greener, less jaded folks is what they can pick out of a beer.  A new hire & I had a Bell’s Two Hearted, a beer of which I’ve had dozens, after one shift, & immediately he picked out strawberry.  I loved that, because then I got it too & was able to taste the beer in a new light.  In what’s become sort of a running joke, a guest at a tasting (Hi Matt!)  picked out the smell of dill in a beer.  I never would’ve noticed it without his suggestion, but he was right & after that I couldn’t unsmell it – it was fascinating!  This happens a lot, which is the beauty of tasting with a “younger” drinker – you never know what kind of cool facet they’re sensitive to that a worn palate & a set of preconceived notions will obscure. 

I’ll confess that my palate is not that sensitive or attuned, but through repetition I’ve gotten to know different styles & tastes.  My hope is that there’s plenty out there to be discovered for me & for everyone – no-one wants to get to the end when the middle is so wonderful.  So as condescending as it might sound, I envy the more novice beer fans out there, whose journeys are just beginning.  

Ad-junk?

Bum raps aren’t always fair.  One way or the other, certain aspects of the beer world are given negative connotations they don’t really deserve.  I’ve long been an apologist for the shaker pint, that sturdy, versatile work horse so maligned by the snobs.  I don’t think the three tier system’s such a bad thing, either, as it helps to level the playing field and give more opportunity to the little guys.  I understand people’s criticism of these entities, but can also see the good they offer.

Some bum raps come from misunderstanding or guilt by association.  What does the word ‘adjunct’ conjure for you?  Not long ago, the word became affixed to a style of beer that only recently had to be distinguished & renamed, squeezed between “American” & “Lager”.  American Adjunct Lager is, I believe, meant to be a value-neutral descriptor, indicating the kind of traditional corn- or rice- infused beer your grandfather (& most of America) drinks.  But let’s face it - it’s pretty much a bowdlerism for “shitty industrial beer”. 

The word “adjunct” became taboo not because adjuncts are inherently bad, but because craft fans saw them being abused & came to assume that the sole purpose of using adjuncts was to thin the flavor & cheapen the beer.  The Brewers’ Association, up until last year, excluded from the definition of “craft brewery” any brewer whose flagship contained adjuncts.  The tent has since been expanded – “traditional” now denotes  A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation.  Traditional or innovative?  Huh?  Anyway, craft brewing now includes those “adjunct brewers” that were theretofore verboten, which essentially means that any domestically-owned brewery making under 6,000,000 barrels a years is a craft brewery. 

But despite being tied to a stigmatized indigenous beer style, adjuncts are not the enemy of good beer.  They don’t exist solely for the purpose of cheapening beer (though have been misused to this effect).  The definition of an “adjunct” in brewing is any source of fermentable sugar other than malt.  This includes corn and rice, yes, but also unmalted oats, rye, wheat, barley, syrups, honey, etc.  Oatmeal stouts are “adjunct beers”, yet you don’t see them scorned as “English adjunct stouts”.  Lambics contain unmalted wheat, yet you don’t see “Belgian adjunct sour ale” being thrown around.  Many, many beloved Belgian ales use candi sugar, yet you’d never see someone disparage Westy 12 as a “Trappist adjunct ale”.  Many, many great beers rely on adjuncts to enhance their character, not detract from it, yet we still have this Reinheitsgebot-fueled puritanism that disregards the full breadth of brewing ingredients.

To be clear, not every ingredient added to a beer outside of water, yeast, malt, & hops is an adjunct – they have to have some level of fermentable carbs.  Coffee, spices, orange peel, even lactose, for instance, are not fermentable & thus aren’t considered adjuncts.  There’s some gray area with fruit, chocolate, and other additives with sugar, depending on how much they actually contribute to the fermentables in the beer.  So adjuncts are neither just corn and rice, nor are they everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. 

That said, even the classic “adjunct lagers” were not intended to be cheap, thin, and watery – adjuncts were actually employed to improve the beer, as domestic 6-row malt didn’t have what it took on its own to make a decent pilsner.  Rice was actually more expensive than barley in the day, and was what it took in the 19^th century to emulate Czech pilsners with ingredients in the states.  What’s transpired since with these progenitors is a different story, but it’s not the adjunct’s fault.  Maybe the verbiage will change, but I think it’s wise to think twice before throwing a cornerstone of brewing technique & history under the bus.    

Thanks to The Oxford Companion to Beer, John Palmer's How to Brew, & Maureen Ogle's Brewing Ambition for some helpful info.

Gimme Indie Bock

Mixing beer & politics can yield a dangerous cocktail.  I recommend downing this combo while holding your nose.  My wager is that those who read this blog are a thoughtful lot, & prone to contemplation about the bigger picture of beer, beyond what’s in the glass.  We want to know more about the process, the ingredients – I imagine more than a few of us have made beer ourselves.  We want to know about the history of the style we’re drinking, or if this particular brew has a funny or interesting story.  We want to know who makes it, where, how far it travels to reach our hands.  Ultimately, we want to know if it’s good, if it’s something we’re going to enjoy. And depending on your attitude, some or all of these factors may add up to the sum total of your appreciation – it might fill you with a certain pride or sense of fraternity to know that this tasty Hefeweizen was made just down the river, as opposed to across the country or the ocean. 

Independence Day is very near, & I’ve found myself considering the word “independent” a lot lately.  The U.S. celebrates its sovereignty as a nation, & for many the word equates to freedom, though there’s constant debate & evolution about what “freedom” entails.  Independence, to me, is self-sufficiency, freedom from relying on others, freedom to define yourself, ourselves.  “Independent” is one of the three criteria that the Brewers’ Association uses to define craft brewers – to fall under the BA’s definition of craft, a brewery cannot have more than 25% ownership or financial control by an alcoholic beverage company that is not itself also a craft brewer.  The other two criteria, “small” & “traditional”, have morphed a little bit in the past few years – “small” changed from two million barrels/year or fewer to six million or fewer (with Boston Beer as the main beneficiary); beers made with corn, rice, & other adjuncts are now considered “traditional” (with Yuengling as the main beneficiary).  But the standards for independence remain the same.  Makes sense, considering that the BA serves as a trade group for many, many companies with minimal ability to represent themselves.  It’s a big tent.

Patron saint Randy Mosher’s definition of “craft beer” is a little simpler: if a home brewer, past or present, decides what the beer will taste like, it’s craft beer.  This, I think, gets at the spirit of independent brewing that we’re talking about, without putting the fine point on it that, understandably, the BA feels they need.  It’s kind of like indie rock (of which I’m also a big fan) – there’s no defining aesthetic, but the principle is in the creator getting to make what they want to make, without undue pressure from investors or bean counters.  Breweries have more on the line as far as making a profit & being self-sustaining, but you get what I’m saying.  They make what they want to make, with the faith that the public will recognize it as a quality product & get on board.  And for many, the indie-ness of it is part of the pleasure.

That said, here’s my PSA about knowing where your beer comes from & who’s signing the checks.  I’m not going to draw lines & say that internationally-owned beer corporations are bad & domestically-owned beer companies are inherently good.  Though the owners may be overseas, most of the big boys still produce beer in the states, employing thousands of Americans who are busting their busts day to day.  I’d also be lying if I said that I find nothing questionable or unethical going on in the world of craft.  But as an independent beer lover, you have the power to do your own research & draw your own conclusions as to what you want to drink & who you want to support.  No matter how you spend your 4^th & whose beer passes your lips, please enjoy safely, responsibly, & independently.  Cheers!