Perfect

One of my best tipsters, BB, sent me this piece from McSweeney's.  You want 2013 distilled?  Here you go.

Roland—three cubicles over? The programmer with the cheek beards? He’s one crazy beast. Brews a nasty 70% ABV stout using water from the toilet tank. He plays Sabbath to it throughout the brewing process. He calls it Lucifer’s Bungsauce. He also brews a smoked alligator jerky-infused porter. It’s not for every palate, but for the last five years running at Company Brewfest, he’s won the Aggression category, hands down.

Last Brewfest, Logan, the new guy, offered Roland a plastic cup of Bud. Roland dumped it out on his shoes, pissed in the cup, and handed it back to Logan. The sensitivity trainers were all over him for that. 

There's way, way more of it--all just as wholesome and delicious.

The Year in Review

Note: post has been edited slightly for clarity.

Ecliptic, one of 500 new breweries in 2013.

What year is complete without a year-end review?  BuzzFeed has more or less made us all despise these things, but I've been doing year-end recaps since long before the ubiquity of click-baiting listicles, and by God, I plan to keep up the tradition.  (Completists may like to peruse the old posts from 2011, 2010a and 2010b, 2009, 2008a and 2008b, and 2007.)  So without further throat-clearing, let's get right to it.  Here were the trends and developments I thought were most interesting.


Good Trend: Lager's Triumphant Return
As recently as a few years ago, I was pretty sure no one on the West Coast was going to be able to give away lagers.  Full Sail got the ball rolling, but their line of lagers seemed more like a brewing cul-de-sac rather than a blazed new trail.  The presence of the LTD series and Sessions appeared to be the exceptions that proved the rule, not a new trend.  But by last year, signs of a lager renaissance were becoming insistent, and this year, lagers were everywhere.  Not only did lagers return--there was even a lager fest--but they were really good.  Standouts included Breakside's Float and Pilsner, the pilsners from the Commons and Upright (the latter an early trendsetter), Ninkasi's Bohemian Pils, and possibly my favorite, Hop Valley's Czech Your Head.


Bad Trend: Price Spiral
In the very competitive Portland market, the prices on standard beer has remained mostly flat for years.  We can thank Bill Night for his steady work in making those figures available.  (In 2009, a six-pack set you back $9.09 and now you have to pony up just $9.50.)  But in that four-year period, specialty releases have become a much bigger part of the brewing calculus, and prices on those beers has really spiked.  Beyond Beervana, where competition is lighter, prices have spiked even more.  You can see the effect of that at bottle shops, where fairly standard beers from other parts of the country are often ten bucks a bomber.  Specialty releases are even more expensive, and as Alan has pointed out a million times, this feels more like gouging than compensation for spendier processes like barrel aging.  (If Frank Boon will sell me a bottle of his Mariage Parfait for less than ten bucks, why should I be paying $20 for an American brett bomb?)


Good Trend: Cider Comes of Age
It's weird to talk about the emergence of a beverage that has been around longer than the country, but until 2013, cider was on no one's radar.  Mass market cider was at the end of cooler next to the alco-pops and good luck trying to find it on tap.  This year, cider finally seeped into our collective consciousness.  It's in nearly every restaurant or pub I visit, and nearly always in the form of an all-juice "craft" cider.  (I know this is different outside Portland, where if you see a cider, it's likely to be Angry Orchard.)  One of the breakthrough products was Two Towns Rhubarbarian--the first cider I heard people talking about and using as an example of what "good" cider could be.  It was such a good year for cider that it even started appearing at beer fests.


Ambiguous Trend: New Breweries
When historians look back on 2012-2013, they probably won't remember lagers or ciders so much as the explosion of new brewery openings.  This is a continuation of the trend that started last year, when more than 400 new breweries opened up (!) and continued on this year.  The numbers aren't in for 2013, but the Brewers Association thinks there might be as many as 500.  I am still unconvinced this is the sign of a catastrophic bubble, but there is at least one thing to worry about.  For the first time in a long time, production brewery openings are outpacing brewpub openings.  (The stats are slightly unclear--what would you call Ecliptic, which opened as a brewpub that bottles beer?)  There is plenty of room for craft beer growth, but supermarket shelves only have so much real estate.  Will there be a shakeout in the next five years?  With 900 breweries opening in two years, I guess we're running the experiment in real time.


Troubling Trend: Too Many Beers
The market within the craft beer segment has changed dramatically in the last five years.  Once breweries were able to build up a single brand or two build their brewery around it.  The explosion of choice has created a kind of manic ADHD scramble for the new, however, and now breweries regularly make dozens of different beers.  Breakside made a hundred, but even old stalwarts like Widmer Brothers and Deschutes made dozens.  I've mentioned feeling personally overwhelmed by the choice, but there's something more than personal preference at work here.  Selling to a promiscuous consumer base is touchy business, and godspeed to those breweries--particularly the bigger ones--who are trying to find what the public wants next.


Good Trend: Permanent Market Realignment
I don't think there's any doubt that the beer market is permanently altered.  Each year, the market for mass market lagers declines--sometimes precipitiously--and each year the craft beer segment expands.  At this point, China is the battleground for growth among the industrial giants.  Locally, their growth strategy involves getting some of that craft money.  Mass market lagers won't disappear, but they're headed for a long decline.  Meanwhile, the biggest of the little guys--Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, New Belgium--are borrowing a page from the industrial playbook and opening new breweries.  This will further push hoppy ales into the mainstream, hastening the decline of the various lights and lites.  There is an equilibrium some decades in the future, and it includes a healthy share for all-barley ales. 


Ambiguous Trend: Changing Media
I'll go out on a bit of a navel-gazer.  This will be the first year I don't do the Satori Award.  It's partly due to the fact that the changes is brewing have made it obsolete--breweries don't really think in terms of permanency anymore.  But it's also because blogs themselves are no longer particularly relevant in the discussion of beer.  When I started this blog in 2006, there was a bit of utility in offering my reviews and opinions about beers.  It's amazing to think about, but Facebook didn't launch as a national site until that September, and Twitter didn't exist.  Social media as such was limited to things like blogs, which offered a chatty alternative to newspapers.  But in the few short years since then, everything has changed.  No one really looks to blogs to help them navigate niche worlds anymore.  Opinion is so ubiquitous we are instantly tired of it.  In an environment saturated with people oversharing, a blog looks like grandpa's old-timey Facebook page.

There are a lot of opportunities for bloggers to do new and interesting stuff.  But we need to rethink the blog.  Once, we were the BuzzFeeds offering our listicles as an alternative to newspapers.  It's quite possible the reverse is happening: now newspapers don't offer in-depth reporting anymore, so it may be up to citizen bloggers to do that.  I've always tried to do long-form blogging with actual reporting (such as I am able to do it), and this blog may morph ever more in that direction.  I only posted 210 times in 2013, the lowest number since 2006.  If I can break myself of old habits, I may try to do more of the long-form stuff.  We shall see.

Whatever 2014 brings, I hope it is fresh and tasty, just like my favorite beers.  Happy new year to you all--

I Have a Minor Complaint!

 
New Feature!

Old man vents spleen

As I enter the "honored citizen" phase of my blogging career, I think it's time to start reaping some of the benefits.  New for 2014* will be the feature "I have a minor complaint!" (or perhaps I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT).  Just as my aged forebears raised a gnarled fist against neighbor children everywhere, so too shall I roar ineffectually about small matters. 

The offending door, blurrily off to
the left in the far background.

To get things started, today's complaint concerns that wind tunnel Laurelwood calls a pub.  For those unacquainted with the facility, it has a rear entrance that opens into what amounts to a chute that empties out onto the bar.  On cold winter nights, when you've settled down with, say a nice gose to watch the Blazers beat the Clippers in overtime, it's damned irritating to have people constantly blasting you with arctic air.  Laurelwood, one of the most successful brewpubs in the US, could easily install a vestibule to prevent this or, if they were going the cheapskate route, at least put up some heavy curtains to slow the gales. 

[Raises fist in air.]  Arrgghh!

__________________
*Unless, due to encroaching senescence, I forget all about it.

Premium Craft?

In the midst of this relaxing and ruminative week, I am spending most of my time away from the computer and internet.  Of all the weeks of the year, this one offers the most opportunity for corporeal human contact and I'm taking advantage.  For you digital types, here's the post of the week: Pete Dunlop on the increasing stratification of the craft beer segment:

There's nothing new about stratification in the beer industry. It dates as least as far back as the 1950s, when heavy advertising split macro brews into premium and popularly-priced brands....

Not that long ago, you could walk into your favorite bottleshop and be pressed to find more than a few $10 bottles of beer. Try that today. You'll have no trouble finding bottles priced at $10 or more. In fact, you'll find plenty of $20 bottles, largely unheard of a few years ago. This reality is supported by Brewers Association numbers, which show that craft beer dollar growth exceeded volume growth by 2 percent in 2011 and 2012. Any bets on 2013?

Also, for those of you looking for that corporeal contact, I highly recommend Roscoe's 7th Anniversary Summit, beginning at 2pm tomorrow.  Lots of special beers plus that lovely laid-back Montavilla vibe.  8105 SE Stark, Portland.

Never Talk Politics or Taxes at Christmas

Do it a day and a half before. 

This has been percolating for a long time, but it is perhaps gathering strength.  (Since Congress is frozen by trench warfare, maybe a tax cut that benefits small businesses principally clustered in blue states is just the ticket.)

At issue is a tax that the federal government assesses on a few products like beer, wine and gasoline and gets included in the price. The excise tax on beer is $7 per barrel for the first 60,000 barrels and $18 per barrel on anything above that. A barrel is a standard unit of measure in the beverage industry and contains 31 gallons of beer.

The Small Brew Act, co-sponsored by 136 House members, would reduce the levies to $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels of beer, and to $16 per barrel on 60,000 to 2 million barrels. The current $18 rate would be retained on production exceeding 2 million barrels, under the measure.

DeFazio tours the OSU Fermentation
Sciences Lab. I believe that lanky gent
to his right is the illustrious hop
researcher, Tom Shellhammer.

If you don't follow politics, this is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to small-bore regional horse-trading.  It's not really an issue that cuts along ideology: it cuts along geography.  

Making the case for the nation’s 2,700 microbreweries is the House Small Brewers Caucus, founded in 2007 by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican.

Since this would lower the tax burden for 100% of Oregon's breweries (though in different degrees), both congressmen are high on it.  Who is not high on it?  Congressmen with large breweries in their states:

The two beer giants, Belgium-based Anheuser Busch-InBev, the maker of Budweiser, Corona, Beck’s and Stella Artois, and Chicago-based MillerCoors, whose parent companies are headquartered in Denver and England, have put their political muscle behind legislation that would halve the excise tax for all brewers, regardless of size.

The BEER Act, introduced in May by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has eight co-sponsors. A House companion, filed by Iowa Republican Tom Latham, has 72 backers.

The  economics are pretty obvious.  It's more expensive to make beer in smaller amounts, so tiering the tax structure does something to remove the advantage of very large, efficient breweries.  That means the price of a sixer of Budweiser and Ninkasi creep closer together at the grocery store, which is of course great if you're Ninkasi.  The question is: should Washington be artificially leveling the playing field?  This is a purely philosophical question.  Or, if you're a congressman, a regional one.

Rediscovering Old Friends

The small business Sally works for hosted their annual holiday party on Wednesday, and one of the beers in the cooler was Anchor Porter.  First brewed 41 years ago (!), it has all the curves and contours of a classic American beer.  Look at the ingredients: two-row, caramel, chocolate, and black malts, hopped with Northern Brewer.  So much American beer is built on this chassis of two-row and caramel malt--it's like an early blueprint.  In the 1970s and early 80s there weren't a ton of hops available, and Northern Brewer was a common choice because of its versatility.  You could put it in nearly any kind of beer and coax flavors that hinted at English, German, or Belgian styles.

(There's an old and increasingly irrelevant debate about whether Anchor should be considered America's first craft brewery.  Because the brewery dates back to the 19th century and came into its modern form in the 1960s, people often consider it separately from the craft movement that began a decade later.  But if you consider where that movement began--Northern California--and how the beers were constructed, it's a little hard to ignore Fritz Maytag's San Francisco institution.  Certainly, Jack McAuliffe hadn't ignored it when he started what some people want to call the first "true" micro, New Albion.)

But I don't drink it because it's quaint and reminds me of bygone days (there's Liberty Ale for that).  I drink it because it remains one of the best porters in America. It has wonderful depth and complexity.  That caramel malt, so often overused, gives it a velvety richness and a touch of sweetness up front, but then the experience shifts as the dark malts kick in like French roast.  There's even a bit of tanginess on the edges of the tongue with the final swallow.  We often talk about how dark beers "warm" during the cold months.  It's obvious and undeniable, but it doesn't actually make a lot of sense.  At 5.6%, Anchor Porter doesn't have enough alcohol to warm, and I don't know why sweet-roast flavors evoke warmth for us any more than bready-grainy pilsner malt should.  But they do.

I chatted with people who drank wine or IPAs and thought: man, you're really missing the mood of this cold, near-solstice night.  But I didn't encourage them to drink the porter instead; I wanted to hoard them for myself.

Reinheitsgebot, UNESCO, and Beer Culture

Today, NPR did a segment on the recent news that Germans want to put Reinheitsgebot on the UNESCO world heritage list.

It would join the Argentinian tango, Iranian carpet weaving and French gastronomy, among other famous traditions, that are considered unique and worth protecting.

To give the piece a bit of zing, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson went to  Berlin for a dissenter.

One opponent of the Reinheitsgebot is Johannes Heidenpeter. He brews ales without following the purity law and sells them to patrons at an indoor market in Berlin's popular Kreuzberg neighborhood.  Heidenpeter claims that limiting his brewing to the centuries-old law restricts creativity. He says, "Why shouldn't I include coriander or berries if they improve the taste?"

The requisite copy mounted at Paulaner in Munich.

Germany is a big country, so it's not shocking that Nelson was able to find someone to take issue with Reinheitsgebot--and a young brewer who makes modern, international-style craft beer was not a bad choice.  (“I’m influenced by the American scene in a way.  The problem with the German beer industry is that they always refer to their history. We need to look sideways, not backward.”)

Sometimes you know too much.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the story.  I don't see a single error.  And yet, I'm aware of some relevant details I wished she'd added.  Like:

• It's really a Bavarian law.  Brewing traditions differed broadly in the North and South where the peoples resided in different countries.  In Northern Germany, the brewers made really bizarre beers with no fealty whatsoever to Reinheitsgebot.  They stuffed their ales with tons of non-compliant bonus ingredients.  Brewing to rigid standards was a weird thing the lager-makers in Bavaria cared about.  It didn't become a German law until the Bavarians insisted on keeping it during unification in 1871.  Since this is a discussion about cultural artifacts, it's not actually that surprising that a Berlin ale-brewer now feels the law isn't such a hot idea.  That's a cultural artifact itself.
• It has huge currency among Bavarian brewers.  It's their north star.  I probably walked into a brewery in Bavaria that didn't have Reinheitsgebot mounted somewhere prominently, but I don't recall it.  Brewing traditions emerge by mutual acclaim, and nowhere in the world is there an agreement as universal as Reinheitsgebot.  (I saw it mounted in most of the northern German breweries, too.)  The UNESCO designation is designed to honor culture and tradition and there's nothing in the beer world more deserving than Reinheitsgebot.
• It has profoundly affected the way beer is brewed.  Brewing to Reinheitsgebot in the modern era is a pain in the ass.  German brewers can't easily fiddle with mash pH, carbonation levels, clarity, and a host of other issues the way brewers elsewhere do.  Take carbonation.  It's not mentioned in the law, so no force carbonating with CO2 from an outside source.  Unless, of course, you harvest the CO2 produced during fermentation--that's part of the beer and so kosher.  You can't unnaturally acidify a mash, so you have to either use a weird process to make your own acid or use acidulated malt.  The list goes on and on.  It is in one sense silly and unnecessary, but in another it's exactly the kind of thing that happens in every country.  British brewers wouldn't dream of using beet sugar--but Belgians do.  Even Germans are abandoning decoction--but Czech brewers must use it if their beer is to be called "Czech beer."  National traditions don't always make sense, but they create the conditions for distinctive beer.  
• You can brew beer without using Reinheitsgebot.  You just can't call it beer.  And, as Heidenpeters Brauerei illustrates, people do.

I don't actually have a dog in the fight--whether UNESCO calls it a world heritage practice or not, is pretty (sorry) small beer.  But the idea that it is not one of the most important, durable, and influential traditions around?  That just ain't so. It is, and will remain so, whether or not UNESCO gets involved.

Well, That's Settled: The Best IPAs

A few weeks back, Thrillist's Dan Gentile contacted me to help him assemble a best-IPAs list.  It's out now with the hopeful title "The Definitive Top Ten IPAs."  My guess is that "definitive" is going to be a hard sell--but this is actually an interesting list.  Gentile asked us all to submit our own top tens and then he assigned point values to each of our beers (ten for number 1, nine for number two and so on).  There were nine of us, meaning we each had 55 points to distribute, and any one beer might have scored as highly as 90 points.  There was a mathematical elegance to the results.  We collectively came up with 45 beers (out of a possible 90) and the winner also scored 45 of the possible ninety.

Click to enlarge.

If you selected any nine beer geeks at random, you would come up with a different list.  Or nine different brewers or nine different cicerones or nine different writers.  There are seven million IPAs out there, and we have very particular individual tastes.  Leave the list aside, though, and look more closely at the results--therein lie the lessons.  Four of the nine of us fingered Russian River Blind Pig as the best beer.  Bear Republic's Racer 5, meanwhile, didn't make anyone's top three list, but picked up enough points to come in sixth.  We may have differed over our favorite IPA, but when it came to filling out the ballot, Racer 5 was a gimme.

Eight of the top ten beers were brewed in California.  That's staggering dominance of the category, and I think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the state of things nationwide.  When I was making up my own list (see the end of this post), I didn't include anything west of Hood River.  On Facebook, some folks lobbied to have Bell's there.  But while Bell's is a classic beer and a fine IPA, I could easily find twenty other IPAs I like more.  Ten years ago we might have debated about who makes the best IPAs, but that argument was long ago settled.  Everyone looks to the west now (including Europeans).  If you look at the bottom of the list, there are also some surprises.  Stone IPA got but two points--either a ninth place showing from one voter or two tenth-place votes.  And New Belgium Ranger was dead last with a single point.

Notes on My List
I knew when I turned in my list that numbers two and three were long-shots to make the final list.  Double Mountain Vaporizer had a chance, but it was slim.  Lambrate Gaina had no chance at all--and probably no one who reads that article will ever have even heard of it.  Which is, of course, why I threw it on the list.  There are great IPAs made outside the US--but more than being great, they're different.

Lambrate is this wonderful little brewpub in Milan.  Founded by friends who have a buoyant attitude about brewing, they make Italian beers that reflect their personalities.  Italy does not do intense.  Hoppy beers are subtle and layered; sour beers are tart and toothsome, not lacerating.  In the case of Gaina, the hops were so fruity I literally asked what kind of fruit they had used to make it.  The flavors fell somewhere between apricot and strawberry.  No fruit--all hops.  Later I found another hop fan in Bruno Carilli when I visited Toccalmatto in Fidenza, Parma.  He also coaxed amazing flavors from his beers--but more perfumy and exotic, with lemon-mint and bergamot. 

Oh, and I would have included any IPA from genre had I put this list together--and my original number 1 was Russian River Pliny the Elder, the best hoppy beer in the world.  So I subbed in Blind Pig as a nod to Pliny's brewer.  (Plus, Blind Pig is excellent.)

Here's my list.
1. Russian River Pliny the Elder Blind Pig (California)
2. Lambrate Gaina (Italy)
3.  Double Mountain Vaporizer (Oregon)
4. Bear Republic Racer 5 (California)
5.  Van Eecke Poperings Hommelbier (Belgium)
6.  Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (England)
7.  Gigantic IPA (Oregon)
8. Green Flash Le Freak (California)
9.  Toccalmatto Re Hop (Italy)
10.  Deschutes Chainbreaker (Oregon)

American Trappist Ale

Now available:

Beer probably isn’t the first thing to come to mind when you think of the word “monastery” – but since receiving official recognition on Dec. 10, Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass., will become the first American brewery to be manned exclusively by Trappist monks.

The beer, labeled “The Spencer Trappist Ale,” is to be brewed exclusively within the walls of the monastery. Founded in 1950 by members of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappists, Saint Joseph’s Abbey has roots that reach far back to monks who fled France during its revolution at the end of 18th century.

This makes nine Trappist monasteries altogether, scattered now across four countries and two continents.  In addition to St. Joseph's/Spencer, there are the Belgian Trappists (Achel, Chimay,  Orval, Rochefort, Westvleteren, Westmalle) and one each in the Netherlands (La Trappe) and Austria (Stift Engelszell).  It looks like they're going for just one beer, characterized by the monks this way: “Inspired by traditional refectory ales brewed by monks for the monks’ table. Spencer is a full-bodied, golden-hued Trappist ale with fruity accents, a dry finish and light hop bitterness.”  I assume that means Belgian-like, but it's hard to say.  (The Austrian and Dutch monasteries make Belgian-style beers.)

Be interesting to see what it tastes like.

Update.  In case you're not a comment-reader, note that two breweries were approved by the Trappists on the same day.  The other is the second Dutch abbey, Zundert.   That makes an even ten.  Huzzah!

Kill Me Now: Latest Update on the Beer Bible

Just spoke to my editor at Workman and learned that they're now thinking a Spring 2015 release for the Beer Bible.  For those of you scoring at home, that's two years after I turned in the (admittedly elephantine) manuscript.  But I know no one's scoring at home since you've all long forgotten about it. 

Okay, who's in the mood for a nice cider?

The Century Mark: Breakside's Unsettling Milestone

The folks at Guinness no longer record alcohol-related feats (an irony, given that the man who founded  them, Hugh Beaver--real name--was a brewer), but I wonder if Breakside might not qualify for "Most Industrious Brewery."  In the course of one calendar year, the busy little brewery managed to produce one hundred different kinds of beer.  That's not a hundred batches--a hundred beers.  (The mad scientists continued to prepare Breakside's regular line all the while.)  Sometime this weekend, I believe, the centurion will be identified and released.

Source: The Rian Group

It's a harmless enough milestone.  Many of those beers were like the spray of distant stars in the forest sky--too many to count or consider, and always secondary to the familiar figures of Orion and the Bears.  I sampled a few of them, but I was drawn back to the brewery throughout the warm months for the pilsner and Dortmund lager that glowed so brightly all summer long.  Broad experimentation didn't come at the expense of my faves.

But I am for other reasons unsettled by this development.

Let's rewind the tape.  Back in the dark days before craft brewing, there was effectively one style of beer available in the US.  Beer drinkers therefore distinguished themselves by selecting one brand and sticking with it for years--or a lifetime.  As there were Ford and GM men, there were Bud and High Life men.  Craft brewing came as a corrective to this sorry state, offering--joy!--some variety.  Breweries in the 1980s and 1990s had a flagship, a regular line, and perhaps a seasonal or three.  Any brewery that made ten different beers in a year would be considered flighty and unfocused.  Half that was more like it.

Breweries in the aughts discovered the delights (and lucre) of specialty beers, and enjoyed buzz and press when they managed to attract beer geek attention with an Abyss, Dark Lord, Heady Topper or Hopslam.  Which of course begat more specialty beers.  And then flagships and regular lines began to sag.  I was gobstruck this year to see the Widmer Brothers replace Drifter with Alchemy--pale for pale--just four years after Drifter's release.  Drifter was one of the best-selling new beers nationally in 2009 (and that includes the big breweries), but it wasn't enough to keep the attention of novelty-seeking beer fans.  I was so struck by it that I met with Rob Widmer to discuss the changes in the brewing biz.  "Young drinkers now are so promiscuous,” he told me.  "Whatever it is and however good it is, no matter what product it is, once they’ve had it, the shelf life is incredibly limited.  All their lives it’s been ‘that was great: what’s new, what’s next?’”

As good as Float (the Dortmund) was--easily on the short list of my faves of the year--the best beer I had at Breakside in 2013 was a tmavé, a Czech-style dark lager.  It actually began life as an Irish stout, but through some happy accident or another ended up getting lagered.  It was a dead ringer for some of the tmavés I had in the Czech Republic last year.  (When I visited Budvar, brewer Adam Broz agreed that his tmavé had a malt bill that looked a great deal like an Irish stout.)  Of course, that beer was one of those little, distant stars, already long extinct by the time you see it.  There wasn't much of that lager left, and the brewers had no intention of making it again.  Pity the drinker who fell in love with one of the more obscure of the 100.

This is the dilemma for the modern beer drinker.  Choice is again the problem--though now we have too much of it.  We have neither the stomach space nor time to be sampling from the dozens of beers made by dozens of breweries ever year.  And to that limited stomach space, we now have to decide to commit old reliables or role the dice on a new frolic that may be a gem or a dud.  (Praise be to breweries that offer linear pricing and half pints.)  God forbid you should fall in love with a beer--in the current churn, who knows how long before it gets dumped for something new.

I realize we have much more serious problems to consider with things like global warming, congressional gridlock, and twerking scandals.  Still, this seems like at the least a minor issue to consider.  And what are blogs for except considering minor issues?

Your thoughts?  Is the beer bounty unalloyed good or does it throw a long, dark shadow across your beer drinking sessions?


Update: Weirdly related headline of the day: Boulder Beer ends distribution of Planet Porter, the oldest craft brew in Colorado (the U.S.?)

Photos of the Year

Each year since 1978, Alan McLeod has hosted a beer photo contest for the holidays.  The past two years I had scads of European brewery photos and cashed in for the win in 2011 with a Cantillon/koelschip pic.  Totally unfair.  I would have disqualified myself.  Fortunately, Alan did not, and I will go on my merry way for the next few decades as a happy loser.  (Unless I snag the "worst photo" some lucky year.)  You should totally enter the contest.

This year, Alan's only letting us send five pics.  Five!  Impossible.  I pulled out the bone saw and tore into the patient, but even unimaginable gore could not take me down to five.  So here are the three I couldn't exclude but also couldn't exclude.  My other entries will appear at some point in the next month over at The Good Beer Blog.  I wouldn't call them better, just more likely to appeal to the judge (purely speculatively).

Mt. Angel Abbey, which is adding a brewery, with hop
fields in the background.

Willamette Valley hop fields.

Jim Bicklein, the master brewer at Anheuser-Busch's
St. Louis brewery.  Gorgeous facility.

Aesthetics of Flavor

A day chilled by arctic air and a dusting of snow (in Portland, anyway) seems the ideal moment to settle in with a cup of hot, black coffee and begin stroking our chins.  Today's philosophical discussion: the aesthetics of flavor.  (See here for a discussion of the concept of aesthetics.)  In my effort to learn about the nuances of cider, I've been looking as deeply as possible into the various compounds that might appear, giving the different national traditions their characteristic flavors and aromas.  These may include those present in the apple or made during fermentation.  ("Cidery aroma" was fairly recently isolated as "the dioxane resulting from condensation of acetaldehyde with octane-1,3,-diol.  The diol itself is a relatively unusual alcohol that is known to be present in apples and pears in a glycosidically bound form..."  As one example.) 

But all of this takes us back to a more elemental question: what should cider--or anything--taste like?  It turns out this is a question philosophers have been considering.  Naturally, they've turned their focus on wine, the most haughty and overrated of all the fermented beverages, but it will do in a pinch.  It turns out that for some philosophers, even wine is too lowly a subject for proper discourse.  Roger Scruton, for example, makes this argument:

"Philosophers have tended to regard gustatory pleasures as purely sensory, without the intellectual intimations that are the hallmark of aesthetic interest.  Sensory pleasure is available whatever your state of education; aesthetic pleasure depends upon knowledge, comparison, and culture.  The senses of taste and smell, it is argued, provide purely sensory pleasure, since they are intellectually inert.  Unlike the senses of sight and hearing, they do not represent a world independent of themselves, and therefore provide nothing, other than themselves, to contemplate....  It was important for Aquinas, who distinguished the cognitive sense of light and hearing from the non-cognitive senses of taste and smell, arguing that only the first could provide the perception of beauty."

If you're a Buddhist, this may seem a bizarre distinction.   To Buddhist philosophers, all senses are inert--it's only the nearly-simultaneous action of the mind that makes them appear to have "cognitive senses."  But let's stick with the western canon.  Recently, another philosopher, Cain Todd (yes, those names are in the correct order), mounted a spirited defense of the aesthetics of wine. I will not quote lengthy passages from his paper.  Instead, very briefly, what Todd argues is that contra Scruton, wine appreciation very much does depend on knowledge, comparison, and culture--"strong normative standards of evaluation and interpretation."

In other words, we appreciate wine--or beer, or cider--because we have a collective set of standards against which to judge it.  This is why, in art, a painting by Mark Rothko (a Lincoln High grad) can be judged aesthetically in the same manner a Warhol, Hopper, or Kandinsky can: we have standards and norms against which to judge them.

 This is obviously the case with beer, wine, and cider.  As with art, the norms evolve and change.  An artist producing an abstract piece like Rothko's in Italy in 1600 would not probably have found an appreciative audience--much as pop art in the mode of Lichtenstein or Warhol is now considered derivative, if it's considered art at all.  But there are norms, clearly, and we debate them all the time.

In this framework, you could easily argue that beer has the most sophisticated aesthetic framework of any beverage.  Context is critically important.  In a cask bitter, a sour note is considered an off-flavor, but it's central to a lambic.  Nearly every flavor or aroma compound that is appropriate in one style is considered a fault in some other.  This is where I'd add a plank to the argument.  When considering flavor, these norms don't emerge randomly: they take into account the consideration of harmony and balance.  A cask bitter finds harmony and balance among the qualities of bready malts, zippy hopping, and round low-carbonation.  Gueuzes, on the other hand, are effervescent, tart, and hop-free.  One can blend the styles easily enough, but that also risks disturbing the aesthetic balance.

In the world of beer, this is pretty intuitive stuff.  It's much more interesting when we consider cider which, in America, is going through a period of testing and change.  There is so little traditional tannic-rich cider fruit in the US that people are experimenting broadly with different techniques and ingredients.  Some of these will come to be normative: hopped cider has a very good chance of becoming at least a regional style.  Some will vanish.  And when that happens, the norms will have shifted again. 

But aesthetics of flavor?  Obviously.

Notes and Updates on the Holiday Ale Festival

Day one of the frosty Holiday Ale Festival is in the books.  Day two, less than an hour from opening, looks frostier still.  (It's 29 degrees as I write this.)  That makes for a lovely time under the tents, but don't depend on those heaters getting the temperature up to 68.  They strain to keep it pleasant, but there are pockets where it never really warms up.  (When the outside temperature is the normal 45, the inside can sometimes get steamy.)

A few other notes

The $5 designated-driver wristband.

The food situation is not great--and if you're a vegetarian, it's pretty terrible.  I'd advise you to eat beforehand and just snack while you're there.  There is water, but you have to go to the Northeast corner of the main tent, near the exit, to find it.  These are huge beers, and you really, really need to stay fed and hydrated.  A four-ounce pour of a 10% beer (common here) is the same a shot of whiskey. If you drink your first batch of 10 tickets, you may well find yourself in trouble, so beware.  To add insult to injury, the Fest is for some reason charging designated drivers five bucks just to get in.  For those good eggs willing to tag along to give your drunk self a ride home, this is a harsh penalty indeed.  Non-drivers should maybe pool their dollars and pick up the tab.  (Note to Fest: knock that off in the future.  You want designated drivers, especially when your beers are so boozy.)

The beer
The main event, of course, is the beer, and as usual they're pretty amazing.  Bière de noëls devide people, so it's harder than usual to make recommendations.  How do you feel about spice?  What about smoke?  Where's your sweetness threshold?  Depending on how you answer these questions, your mileage will vary.  I have always had a rocky relationship with spice, and so tried nearly no beers that used them.  On the other hand, I love smoked malt, so I was out sniffing for the smell of char.  Over the course of six hours, I had a full pour or neighborly snort of just 15 of the beers, so my sample size is also limited.  However, all those caveats noted, here were the ones I liked:

• Alameda Long Beard's Baltic Porter.  One of those smoky beers, and one of two or three that vied for my fave.  Baltic Porters are simultaneously smooth and intense (they're usually lagered), and a vivid, almost sour roast note is typical.  Alameda puts a spin on that with the smoke, and it really works.  Deep, resonant beer.  So many winter beers are meant to be drunk by the snifter, but I could have easily tucked into a pint of this.
• Cascade Cherry Diesel.  A very well-made cherry stout, meaning tons of roast battling tons of cherry.  The two tango in the way cherries and chocolate are famous for doing, and the effect is similarly decadent.
• Elysian Doom.  I confess I was attracted partly by the name, forgetting that I was getting an IPA (maybe the only one at the fest?).  It's exceptional.  A head like mousse and incredibly rich, super tasty hopping that blasted through my tired palate.  It was my nightcap and I'd like to try it again fresh.
• Ninkasi Single.  By contrast, I kicked the fest off with this beer.  A little titan--a mighty mite?--with a substrate of esters that harmonized nicely with spicy/herbal hops (Saaz?).  Also one of the best beers I tried.
• Old Town Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum.  Also late in the day, so my faculties were diminished.  It seemed to have a wonderful harmony between the rum barrels and burnished maltiness of the old ale.  
• Pints Hibernator.  A lovely weizenbock that functions as a perfect palate-refresher.  Lots of phenolics and spice that help enliven a tongue battered by alcohol and sweetness.

I also enjoyed BridgePort Honey Porter, Deschutes Yule Goat (though it was pretty brett-y), Fort George Hogfather, Golden Valley Santa's Smokin' Bock, and Hopworks Kronan the Barbarian.  Just four misses: Base Camp White Squall (balance was a touch off), Laht Neppur St. Dorothy's Peach Cordial Ale (too sweet), Mazama Mazamanator (too strong and too fruity for a doppelbock), and Viking Winter Squash Porter (a braggot that was actually really good except the spicing threw me off--I'd love a version without spice).

I saw a bunch of people there I wish I'd spoken to more (like Suds Sister, Matt Van Wyk, Ritch Marvin, Pete Dunlop, Sanjay Reddy and several others).  What is it with fests that make it hard to talk to everyone you'd like?  Here's hoping I get another bite at the apple; I'm planning for a Saturday foray too.  See you there?

A User's Guide to the Holiday Ale Fest

Holiday Ale Fest, Dec 4-8

Pioneer Courthouse Square

Wed-Sat, 11a to 10p, Sun 11a to 5p

Initial tasting package (required): $30, includes mug + 10 tix

Additional tix $1 apiece

No minors, no pets

____________________

I want you to just luxuriate for a moment in some names you'll find this Wednesday at the Holiday Ale Fest:

• The Scut Farkas Affair
• Oud Freakcake
• Hogfather
• Yule Goat
• Gargantua
• Doom
• Hibernator
• The Twerking Elf

The point is, brewers love love love winter.  They make and sell most of their beer in the summer, but it is the dark wet months, when yule logs crackle, when they get to turn their ids loose.  I just did a scan through the list of "standard" pours at this year's Holiday Ale Fest (those you'll find on the main floor at all times), and not a single one is a regularly-brewed offering.  Not one!  If you pine for a Wassail or even Abyss, this is not the fest for you.  If, on the other hand, you want to see what happens when a brewery ages an oud bruin in Maker's Mark barrels with cranberries, figs, dates and raisins, you're in luck.  This is the first rule of the Holiday Ale Fest: bring your good cheer and have fun.

Source

HAF is one of the best events of the year--and arguably the first "modern" beer fest.  It's a curated affair where beers have been specially brewed in service of a theme.  In this case, that theme is impressionistic, which adds to the fun.  A brewery might think nothing says noel like a German weizenbock while another thinks it means an abbey single.  Many, of course, believe it means a barrel-aged beer made with odd ingredients like marshmallows, panty hose (seriously, I think), and turnip honey (Oakshire, Slanted Rock, and Viking Braggot).

Many of those oddballs are going to be lumps of coal, but along the way these experiments will yield the occasional gem.  This leads us to rule number two: sample broadly and share information.  There's no reason more than one member of your party has to endure a train wreck--or should be hoarding the good stuff.

Since the beers are all one-offs no one has tasted, it's impossible to assess them by description alone.  However, there are a few ways to approach them if you want to divide them by category.  Or rely on me to do it for you. 

The Small Beers
Mostly you'll find grandes cervezas (more than half the pours are 8% or higher and 18% are in the double digits), but a few little guys may help lengthen your session.

• Deschutes Yule Goat (5.4%, a brett-aged brown ale); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin (5.5%, hoppy oatmeal stout); 
• Fish Gingerbread Ale (5%); 
• Ninkasi Single (5%); 
• Oskar Blues Black Mamba (5.6% dunkelweizen); and
• Rock Bottom You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid (4.8% helles). 

Straight-up Beers 
This is a surprisingly small group, less than 25% of the whole, and one to which I will direct special attention.  They are those beers brewed to relatively normal styles with no oddball ingredients (and there's a lot of overlap with the group above).

• Base Camp White Squall (barley wine); 
• Coalition Shenanigans (barley wine); 
• Dick's Code 1081 (winter warmer); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin, 
• Fort George Hogfather (I think; it's a Baltic Porter); 
• Hop Valley The Wolfe (English barley wine); 
• Mazama Doppelbock; 
• Migration Big Sipper (Belgian dark); 
• Ninkasi Single; 
• Oskar Blues Black Mamba, 
• Pints Hibernator, and 
• Rock Bottom You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid .

Barrel-aged Beers 
Breweries now cast their nets wider than just bourbon distilleries--this year they used brandy, rum, and wine barrels as well.

• 2 Towns Naughty and Nice Cider (bourbon); 
• Bear Republic Santa's Lost Wallet (brandy); 
• BridgePort Oak Aged Honey Porter; 
• Cascade Cherry Diesel (Heaven Hill bourbon); 
• Crux Oud Freakcake (Maker's Mark bourbon); 
• Deschutes Yule Goat (bourbon); 
• Eel River Gargantua (bourbon); 
• Gilgamesh BAHS (bourbon); 
• Hopworks Kronan the Bourbarian (bourbon); 
• Lagunitas High West Whiskey Barrel Stout; 
• Lompoc Revelry Red Ale (whiskey and wine); 
• McMenamins Mele Kalikimaka Coconut Stout (Hogshead Whiskey); 
• New Belgium Cascara Quad; 
• Old Town Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum (rum); 
• Rogue Big Ass Rye (new oak); and 
• Vertigo Polar Blast (whiskey).

Sour Beers
Wild ale fans will be disappointed to find only four beers to scratch their itch.  That's it.  However, watch for the special-release beers--there may be a tart or three in that group.

• Crux Oud Freakcake; 
• Deschutes Yule Goat; 
• Lompoc Revelry Red, and 
• Stickmen Twerking Elf. 

Black Beers
Give me a cold, drizzly night and you better give me a warming dark ale.  This is the fest for dark beer fans.

• Alameda Long Beard (Baltic porter); 
• Bear Republic Santa's Lost Wallet (stoutish); 
• BridgePort Honey Porter; 
• Cascade Cherry Diesel (imperial stout); 
• Columbia River Hawaiian Christmas (coconut porter); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin (stout); 
• Fort George Hogfather (imperial porter); 
• Hopworks Kronan (imperial porter); 
• Lagunitas (coffee stout); 
• McMenamins (coconut stout); 
• Natian McGuinness (imperial milk stout); 
• Slanted Rock Panty Hose Porter (Baltic porter); 
• Speakeasy Erotic Cake (chocolate milk stout); 
• Stone Spiced Unicorn Milk (chai stout); and 
• Vertigo Polar Blast (imperial vanilla porter).

The Really Crazy Stuff
You want weird?  HAF's got weird.  This brings us to the third rule of the Holiday Ale Fest: make sure you don't burn out on bizarre experiments.  But you should nevertheless try a few.

• Burnside It Makes Reindeer Fly (weirdness factor: a rye ale made with carrots and raisins);
• Crux Old Freakcake (weirdness factor: oud bruin made with orange and lemon zest as well as cranberries, figs, dates and raisins);
• Gigantic The Scut Farkas Affair (weirdness factor: gummi bears);
• Natian McGuinness (weirdness factor: milk coffee stout aged on Kahlua-soaked oak) (also note, to avoid confusion, that the founder/brewer is Ian Guinness);
• Oakshire Swiss Mrs. Alpine Alt (weirdness factor: an alt mashed with toasted marshmallows and brewed with cocoa nibs and lactose);
• Viking Braggot Winter Squash Porter (weirdness factor: a braggot--mead and ale--made with turnip honey and winter squash)

All of those are taken only from the "standard" group.  Each day they're also pouring specialty beers (mostly vintage stock) which add a whole 'nother level of specialness.  You can see the list and schedule here.

I'll be at the Fest on Wednesday and promise to have a quick and dirty reactions post up before the beers pour on Thursday.  See you there--

Cider Saturday: Finnegan Cider

On the crisp Friday I visited Josh Johnson's orchard in Sherwood, I didn't realize it was his day off.  Finnegan is a cider currently made from apples from the Skurdahl orchard just down the road, but in a glade protected by deer fencing, Johnson has planted 2,000 of his own trees.  On the other four days of the week, he holds down his day job as a neurologist.  He has Fridays off (sort of--during my visit he was still taking calls), and those are his orcharding days.  As we talked cider, he was freeing his wee saplings from graft tape.  One tree at a time, down a long row.  I scanned orchard-to-be: lots and lots of rows.  I expect he returns home tired each night.

If you're an American and you want to make cider, you have two options: buy the juice from an orchard or plant your own.  The former has much to recommend it, particularly the part about not waiting a half a decade before your trees have begun to bear.  But for the patient, the latter approach offers, aside from long days, more control and a reliable source of fruit.  Josh is a quiet, reflective guy who seems to have the temperament to wait.  I wondered if there was any connection to being a doctor that made for a good grower and he thought there might be.  Other doctors, he noted, make wine.  Being a doctor does lend to caring, he noted and then likened his trees to his children.  “I worry about them, I think about them all the time, I want to be gentle with them and help them grow up and be successful adults.” 

The idea is that the whole orchard will go to a single blend for his cider.  The Skurdahl's have one of the few orchards with cider apples in Oregon, and Josh likes the depth of flavor that comes from a blend of apples.  “If you make it from one variety or two, it’s just not going to be as interesting as if you make it from a bunch of different varieties.”  He's planted a broad range of familiar varieties: Kingston Black, Dabinett, Roxbury Russet, Foxwhelp, Michelin, Golden Russet, Yarlington Mill, Ashmead’s Kernel.  The idea that each year, as the seasons and conditions conspire to produce different apples and different configurations of the blend (Michelin yield weak one years, strong the next), his cider will have the annual variability of wine.

As we talked, wine kept coming up.  Josh actually began making wine first, adding cider later--now about twelve years ago--and it seems to remain his main template.  He likes the way tannins and acidity blend with apple sweetness--like wine.  He likes how cider complements food--like wine (though he ventures "I think it's better than wine").  And he even hopes cider will follow the trajectory of wine, where people went from drinking uninteresting, mass-market stuff to appreciating sophisticated wines with depth and complexity.

Finnegan comes in three types, but they differ only by sweetness.  Dry is fermented out to a final gravity just a notch below water (0.999), Semi-Dry to 1.005, and Semi-Sweet to 1.010.  “I just made cider that I liked to drink ... cider that has some residual sweetness, good carbonation, and is relatively clear and no artificial carbonation.”  That's what you find in a bottle of Finnegan.  I love dry ciders, so my fave of the bunch is the Dry, which has a wonderful structure and lots of tannins.

Amazingly, Josh would love to make the cidery (named after his wife, Colleen Finnegan) his full-time job.  I was so startled by this fact I asked him what it was about cider that engaged him so much.  I'm not sure I ever got a good answer; leaving neurology to pursue cider-making is ... uncommon.  But he did tell me a story about one of his first encounters with apples. “It was in California, in this place in the Sierras and they were pressing apples. I remember having this strong sensory experience—just the smell of those apples being pressed, and the fall, and being in the mountains.”  When he started making cider again, he kept “coming back to that, the smell and flavor of apples.”  Could that be enough?  I'll have to ask the next time I visit.  After an hour, I had to let him get back to his trees.

How Green is Your Beer?

For black Friday, we go green.  Via John Foyston comes the news that breweries can now track their environmental impact via a program designed by the Institute for Environmental Research and Education in Washington state.  Not only that, but they can list the details on their labels:

The eco-labels, produced through the Earthsure Brewers software, show "life cycle assessments" also known as Type III Environmental Production Declarations....

"The (information is) displayed in a similar manner like the nutrition label on food," said the IERE's Colleen Barta. "Links are used to help consumers understand what the impact categories mean."

The labels report footprints in the carbon, water and energy realms. In Oregon, Hopworks Urban Brewing and Fort George Brewery have adopted the labels.

The labels list a bunch of highly technical and obscure stats which meant nothing to even a greenie like me.  So I tracked back to the IERE's original definitions (pdf) and had a look.  Not only do Fort George and Hopworks plan to use the labels, they actually helped develop the criteria, which are comprehensive and deeply involved.  The include all environmental impacts (air pollution, water and chemicals use,) of the entire life-cycle of beer, from barley field back to cow field with the spent grains.  For example, "it includes transportation of chemicals and seed to the farm and application of fertilizers and pesticides, and any emissions on the farm (e.g. N2O emissions from nitrogen fertilizer)."  If a brewery uses, say, coffee in one of its beers, those ingredients are subject to the same standards.  It includes the footprint at the maltster, the footprint of packaging manufacture, delivery and transportation costs--in essence, every conceivable jot of energy used to make a pint of beer.  The list of impacts goes on for pages, and the whole IERE document is 35 pages long.

So now we get back to that label and its obscure measures.  In some cases, the term's meaning is easy enough to figure (water use), but the numbers aren't.  In other cases, like "Eutrophication," the whole thing is meaningless.  They do provide definitions for each measure.  For example:

8.4 Eutrophication is the overgrowth of biomass caused by the anthropogenic release of nutrients, particularly fixed nitrogen and phosphorus. Eutrophied water bodies show early effects in te rms of species distribution and toxic algal blo oms, and ultimately as algae decompose eutrophication causes oxygen depletion leading to fish kills. Large portions of the world’s water bodies are subject to eutrophication seasonally. Most causes of excess nutrient releases are agriculture, human and animal wastes, and combustion processes. Beer and all food products contribute to eutrophication.

8.5 Ecotoxicity represent direct effects of releases of toxic materials organisms. It is anticipated that toxic materials will be emitted during the production and application of pesticides and fertilizers and during the transportation of ingredients, packaging and beer in packaging. These shall be evaluated using the Usetox, latest version, as expressed in the TRACI model

Unfortunately, although IERE describes each dimension, it doesn't give a scale to judge whether, to use Hopworks' example, 1.2 CTUs of toxicity is good or bad. Perhaps that's on the way--it will be critical if these labels are going to communicate anything to the public. Even this step is praiseworthy, though.  Breweries have been among the best citizens in terms of monitoring their environmental impact.  Any effort to quantify that impact and make the data publicly available is impressive--it shows breweries are willing to put their performance under scrutiny.  Fort George and Hopworks get special credit for working to create the definitions.  Good on you, folks--

Overleveraged

The TV show Leverage is now streamable on Netflix.  This isn't particularly newsworthy except that in the first episode of season five the A-Team, err, team, has relocated to Portland.  And into the BridgePort Brewery.  It's surreal to see them walking through the old rope factory, "BridgePort" signs everywhere.  One of the characters has purchased it and is dabbling in the brewhouse with a recipe he found online.

It's not good television, but there you have it.

It's quite possible that if you've made it down here to paragraph three, you're wondering why this is such a lame and wandering post.  Well, me too.  I went away for the weekend and expected to come back refreshed.  Instead, I'm even less bloggy.  Dunno how long this may last, but if I find that a random comment about a television show is the best I got, I may not be posting a lot in the next few days.  What the hell--it's a holiday weekend.

Gone

I'm out of town this week, and actually have been since Sunday.  Yesterday's commentary came via the magic of scheduled posting.  I'm not only gone, but out of internet range, so enjoy a week of silence.  I'll be back on Monday--

Imports Again: Why You Should Drink 'Em

After my post last week about the delights of beer from foreign lands, I hafety considered a follow-up to explain why imports are worthwhile.  Alan has forced my hand:

So, unlike Jeff, I do not counsel you to get your daily serving of beer classics like the bran that's more and more in my diet.

First off, lets just dispense with the "classics" debate.  That word didn't appear in my post nor did the exhortation to drink beers because they had some status.  No, the point was to drink foreign beer because they taste good and more than that, because they're different from American beers.  This is a fact that escapes some Americans.  We brew all the world's beer styles here, but Americans brew in their own way.  We don't have to, but mostly we do. 

Source: Roger Protz

Take Westmalle, the example I was using earlier.  The monks make it exclusively with pilsner malt but also more than 15% sugar in the wort.  This is a pretty typical Belgian approach--simple malt bills that start with pilsner malt and usually include sugar.  Americans may use pilsner malt, but a lot will start with American two-row.  Many will layer in various specialty malts for color and subtle flavor (this is also typical).  Most will use nowhere near the amount of sugar Belgians do, if they use it at all.  Westmalle ferments cool for a Trappist monastery, but some monks let their temps get well into the 70s and Westvleteren lets it rise to the mid-80s (they use the Westmalle yeast, interestingly).  I have almost never encountered an American brewer who is comfortable letting fermentation go past the low 70s--it just goes against their grain.  Finally, Belgians almost always do a secondary fermentation in the bottle, the single most distinguishing feature of Belgian brewing.  Some Americans bottle-condition, but it's rare. 

Westmalle is a really basic beer.  Pilsner malt, sugar, uncomplicated hopping.  Yet you will find precious few Americans who make it the same way.  If what you've been drinking is stuff from the US called "tripel," it's a different beast than what the Belgians make.

We could go down the line.  Americans don't use Bohemian floor malts, very few use first-wort hopping, and almost none use decoction--three habits that are ubiquitous in the Czech Republic.  Americans don't use sugar when they're making English styles, and almost none of them risk commercial doom by brewing them at English strengths.  (I nod now toward Oakridge with respect.)  And on and on.

The fact that Americans don't make much of an effort to make perfect reproductions of foreign styles is a testament to the steady development of an American tradition.  We brew the way we brew.  When an American whips up an "English bitter," she actually makes an American-English bitter.  It probably has an English yeast strain and maybe one or two English hops, but it will be a 5% beer made with American malts and served on regular CO2 taps.  When she makes a tripel, she'll make similar decisions based on the expectations of her customers and her own preferences.  It will be hoppier, use less sugar, use different malts, and likely not be bottle-conditioned. 

And so if you want to know what a Belgian tripel tastes like, you gotta drink a Belgian tripel. 

Cider Saturday: 33 Mugs of Cider

Publishing mogul Dave Selden has recently introduced a new ratings guide in the "33" series that is near and dear to my heart: Cider.  This is not merely because I have lately turned my attention appleward, but because of two elements included in 33 Mugs of Cider that I think will do a great deal to educate drinkers.  Here, have a look:

That flavor wheel there on the right has cider-specific terms like tannic and acidic (and also "sweet," the third of the holy trinity, though sweetness is obviously not unique to cider).  If you've ever had an English or French farmhouse cider you know tannins; if you've dabbled in the lambiclike Basque ciders, you know acid.  (Boy, do you know acid.)  This will be a handy reminder to observe the structure of cider as you taste it.

The second cool feature is to the left of the wheel (you can see it if you click on the pic): the "bubble meter."  This is a clever way of illustrating another important dimension to cider.  They may be wholly still, like most wines, or as bubbly as champagne.  Since a lot of beery types are checking out ciders, this is a good reminder that not all ciders have those 2.5 volumes of beer you're used to encountering.

You can pick up copies at the website.

Bonus.  As with most of these (solid-product cigars a notable exception), Dave added a bit of cider to his ink, so if you're really desperate, give it a lick.

A Weekend All-In-One Guide

I tell you what, when we fall back after Halloween, there's no longer any pretense that we have exited the light.  Into the darkness we go, but fortunately, that means into the thick of winter beer season with all its attendant releases, fests, and events.  As much for my own benefit as yours, here's an omnibus post to try to capture at least a good portion of them.

Events

Bailey's 4th Annual BelgianFest 
Saturday, November 16
2pm to Midnight
Bailey's Taproom, 213 SW Broadway

Lots and lots and lots of amazing looking beer.  It's tomorrow, so step lively. 


Mustache Bash
Thursday, November 21
6pm to 9pm
Portland Brewing, 2730 NW 31st

A niche event for those with handlebars, but I give it the shout-out to a brewery that's working to find its local groove again. 


Drinking Beer For Angelo
Sunday November 24
5pm to 9pm
Bad Habit Room (Saraveza), 5433 N. Michigan

All beer donated to support the health care costs of our good friend Angelo de Ieso.  Includes a silent auction and super-rare Cascade beer tasting. 


Holiday Ale Fest
Wednesday December 4 through Sunday December 8
Times vary
Pioneer Courthouse Square

The dark yin to sunny OBF's yang.  Big beers, big crowds, and big fun.  Put it on your calendar and pick a day to revel.

New Releases

There are so many new releases happening I can't keep up.  I'll mention a few that caught my attention here, but feel free to add to the list in comments.  I'm happy to update the post.  Deschutes brings out the eighth (!) edition of The Abyss (11%/86 IBUs), this year with vanilla bean and cherry bark.  Tomorrow night, Coalition is launching their own imperial stout Bring Out the Imp (8.5%/ 70 IBUs).  An imperial CDA called Duffy's Counterpunch (7.5%/82 IBUs) is the latest "brewer's share" from Full Sail, and its author, Stephanie Duffy, is a beautiful stand-in for Rosie the Riveter.  Block 15's wonderful Figgy Pudding is on the horizon, but brewer Nick Arzner is warning people not to cellar it.  (The wild yeasts down there in the Willy Wonka cellars may have gotten a mite too feral.)  Oakshire recently released their 7th Anniversary Ale, a soured Baltic porter aged on cherries.  All the classics are coming out as well (Brrr, Jubel, Wassail, Vinter Varmer, and more), but one of my faves is now in cans--Hopworks Abominable Ale.  Finally, Widmer has a troika of bourbon-aged Brrrs: regular (just bourbon-aged), Vanilla, and Ginger. 

Holler with additions and I'll put 'em up.

New Book: The Pocket Beer Guide by Beaumont and Webb

The Pocket Beer Guide
Stephen Beaumont and Tim Webb
Sterling Epicure, 320 pages
$15

Over the course of nearly two decades, Michael Jackson published a slim volume called, in slightly different wording, The Pocket Guide to Beer.  It was first released in 1982, which marked almost exactly the moment in history when the world's stock of breweries had reached their nadir.  To pad the guide, he dutifully reviewed all beers, from Grain Belt to Rodenbach.  (Henry Weinhard: "a clean, fairly light body.")  As new editions continued to come out--seven in all, by several different publishers--they got progressively more cheery, if harried.  By the time the last edition came out in 2000, poor MJ probably regretted he'd ever started the thing in the first place.

This year, as a stocking stuffer, you may once again select a copy of The Pocket Beer Guide.  Jackson and Running Press are gone and in their stead are Canadian writer Stephen Beaumont and British writer Tim Webb (though Webb's specialty is Belgium).  They are the team who recently brought us the World Atlas of Beer.  While the relationships are not particularly transparent, Webb and Beaumont (from the press release) "have [also] collaborated with top international contributors."  There are thirty in all, including a few familiar names like Evan Rail, Max Bahnson, Lisa Morrison, Stan Hieronymus, Joe Stange, and John Holl.  It seems both a sane and liver-preserving way to attempt to taste enough beers to recommend 3,000 from around the globe.

Except for its shape (this one is wider than Jackson's), the book follows the established format.  Breweries are summed briefly, and a selection of their beers ranked from ★ ("dependable quality but unexciting") to ★★★★ ("one of the world's great beers, a champion"), with the always slightly mystifying ★★ → ★★★ as a safe punt.  They've even adopted Jackson's incredible verbal economy in putting together each entry, condensed for brevity.  Here's a typical entry:

BRUERY, THE
Placentia, California

Brewer Patrick Rue punned on his name to create his brewery's moniker and quickly earned a devoted following for his oft-quirky ales.  Spicy-yeasty and faintly tart Saison Rue ★★☆ and peppery, pearish Mischief ★★☆ headline the core beers; while Autumn Maple ★★★, brewed with yams and complex with sweet maple, spice, and yam flavors, and lightish, quenching dryly tart Saison de Lente highlight the seasonal offerings.  

I was enjoying reading along, particularly through the Belgium section, where (presumably) Webb exercises enormous restraint issuing stars.  Remembering Stan's wonderful post on how few beers Jackson ever rewarded four stars, I nodded as I saw all the beers that got passed over for this rightly-rare laurel.  (Orval, Cantillon, Boon, De Dolle: nope nope nope nope.) There were exactly four to achieve the trick: Rodenbach Vintage, Blaugies Saison de l'Epeautre, Saison Dupont, and Rochefort 10.  You may think this is low--and I do.  In seven editions, only 19 beers got the highest mark in each one, and six were Belgians.  I'd have included Orval and a gueuze (though it would have killed me to have to select one), but hey, I think Webb erred on the right side of exuberance.

If there's a fault in the book, it's the very thing that probably made it possible.  When Jackson was writing the Pocket Guide, it was idiosyncratic in the way humans are and the ratings were always arguable--but at least they were consistent.  You lose that with multiple writers. 

Because I know the American West Coast so well, I glanced through the sections on California (presumably Jay Brooks' bailiwick) and the Pacific Northwest (Lisa Morrison?).  The brewery numbers are similar--32 California breweries were included, along with 33 from the Northwest (which includes Alaska and Hawaii).  But either California is blessed with a lot more good beer, or Jay and Lisa didn't use the same rating criteria.  In California, three-star beers seem to be the norm; sixteen earned three and a half, and four--the same number as Belgium--got a perfect mark.  Three stars were hard to come by in parts north, and across four states not a single beer was good enough to be considered "a champion."  Just seven got three and a half stars. 

This isn't a fatal flaw, though and I have few other complaints.  The book's greatest strength is its breadth, which while not absolutely complete (rustic African and South American breweries are not included, and emerging regions like India and Southeast Asia are largely skipped) does include Lithuanian farmhouse breweries and a nice description of European breweries outside the usual five.  All in all, a great effort. 

Finally, I have to give Webb (again, I'm assuming) a special award for most amusing, astute, and irreverent review of the year.  It goes to show how much information--and personality--you can pack into a hundred words.  Here's his entry on Westvleteren.

A low-production brewery in West Flanders that has been afflicted by adulation, with the scarcity of its beers being mistaken for magnificence.  The only one that uses whole hops is the skillful, light, rustic Blond ★★★☆ with its intense floral aroma and just enough grain; Extra 8 ★★★ is a licorice-edged, strong dubbel that improves grudgingly in the cellar; and Abt 12 ★★★☆ is a dark, intense barley wine that used to grow with keeping but less so now.  Special releases for a supermarket chain and US importer were unlikely to have been brewed here exclusively.

There are similar gems scattered elsewhere.