The Awkwardness of Middle-Aged Breweries

As a gentleman now past any reasonable definition of "young," I am sensitive to ageist derision. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that once you've been around awhile, you do get stuck in your ways. You can start to look a bit fusty. And so it is with breweries. The ultimate reward for building a successful brand that stretches out across some or all of our broad country isn't public admiration for your portfolio of stable, popular brands. No, it's yawns. In the craft beer biz, the question is always, "what have you done lately?"

This became a topic of discussion on Facebook and Twitter earlier in the week following my post about Sam Adams. To the thesis "the flagship brand needs to be refreshed," I don't think I heard a single voice say, "no way--it's a perfectly current classic!"  And this is just the problem. The successful old-school breweries (let's say pre-1990) all became successful because they built up a popular brand. Sam Adams had Boston Lager, Sierra Nevada had Pale, Widmer had Hefeweizen, and so on. It's very hard to keep a beer exciting for 30+ years. The best breweries can do is try to transition these older brands into a "classic" slot and hope to keep the brand of the brewery alive and vital.

One of the reasons I declared Boston Beer doomed was because as a brewery it does not seem vital. The brewery does have a barrel program, but it's pretty anemic. They still roll out the Utopias from time to time, but it's been a long time since beer geeks swooned over anything but its price. The recent nitro line was curious at best--a fifty-year-old package dispense system is not exactly the cutting edge. Meanwhile, one of the main trends in craft beer right now is lagers, a concept Boston Beer should absolutely own, but they seem to be missing the boat.

Contrast that with Sierra Nevada, which is one of the most active and interesting breweries in the country right now. Their core lineup is as always anchored by Pale Ale, but they've added a great pilsner (not missing the current trends), a gose, and two IPAs, Hop Hunter and Torpedo, which use innovative new techniques to produce vivid hop flavor. (Sam Adams' Rebel series of IPAs seem, by contrast, pro forma at best). They have managed to serve both their tradition--they exalt in it, in fact--as well as trying to remain current with the styles and techniques that are driving new sales.

And that's without mentioning the incredibly successful Beer Camp project, which makes this venerable grandfather of craft beer look anything but stodgy. It not only integrates them into this vital world of brewing they've honestly sort of outgrown, but allows them to both be a leader and a participant in building the notion of "craft" (which, admittedly, is a lot more spin than reality these days).

It's a difficult trick to pull off. Most of the middle-aged breweries have had their share of failures and miscues. You don't want to end up looking like the dad who's dropping middle-school slang into conversation, but you also don't want to just slowly go to seed. And so far, we really only knows what this looks like for breweries in the middle-thirties. Imagine what they'll look like when they're truly middle aged (like me).

As a final, related thought, it seems like that in one of these decades pretty soon we're going to see the failure of some large craft breweries. Maybe they won't outright vanish, but like regional breweries following Prohibition through the 1970s, they might get absorbed into a giant corporate entity, become mere SKUs in a company's bottom line, and eventually mostly fade out. When I came of drinking age in Oregon, we had brands like Lucky Lager and Heidelberg that soon vanished. Could Bell's or Rogue go the way they did? Eventually, some will.

Anyway, this rumination has been brought to you by Metamucil and old farts everywhere....

The Abbey Ales of Sierra Nevada and New Clairvaux

Here's a fascinating development, via Beer News:

In 2011, Sierra Nevada and the Trappist-Cistercian Abbey of New Clairvaux are working to bring this centuries-old tradition to America with Ovila—the nation’s only authentic Trappist-style Abbey Ale.

A dubbel, saison, and quadrupel are slated to be released seasonally, with proceeds going to the California abbey. These won't, apparently, be authentic Trappist ales. Sierra Nevada will actually brew them--resulting in "abbey" ales. Before you dismiss it as a gimmick, though, check out the project these beers will fund:

Proceeds from this project will benefit the monks of the Abbey of New Clairvaux in their efforts to rebuild an architectural marvel—a 12th century, early-gothic Cistercian chapter house—on their grounds in Vina, California a few miles north of Sierra Nevada’s home in Chico. The medieval chapterhouse—Santa Maria de Ovila—was begun in 1190, near the village of Trillo, Spain.

Cistercian monks lived, prayed, and worked there for nearly 800 years. In 1931, California newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst purchased the abbey and shipped it to Northern California. Hearst’s plans were never realized, and the stones fell into disrepair. In 1994, the Trappist-Cistercian monks of the Abbey of New Clairvaux, gained possession of the ruins, and began the painstaking stone-by-stone reconstruction of the historic abbey.

Cool.

Ken Grossman on the Second Anniversary Beer

Note: Post has been updated; I've added another video.

Yesterday, Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman made a couple of stops in Portland, and I caught him when he appeared at Steinbart's. Fred Eckhardt was supposed to appear jointly, but he arrived late and, in gracious humble form, sat at the back of the crowd. (Angelo caught the later appearance at the Horse Brass and filmed it.) I cut together some video of his comments about the beer he, Charlie Papazian, and Fred jointly conceived for the second of the Sierra Nevada 30-year anniversary beers.

I apologize for the quality--it was filmed in the warehouse, and Ken was standing about a foot underneath a fluorescent light. The bay door was open, and you can hear cars driving along rainy roads in the background. Still, I think you'll find it interesting.

I shot about 45 minutes of tape, and Ken spoke on some pretty fascinating topics. Do you guys have any interest in further footage? I thought I'd put up one more where he talks about the next anniversary beer--but I also have footage of him talking engagingly about technical aspects of brewing, like: how to leach iron from kegs before using them; how quickly beer degrades in the bottle and which seals are most effective; how the SN torpedo works; history of Sierra Nevada; discussion of issues around distribution; and more random stuff.

Finally, I want to highlight an extremely cool thing the brewery is doing this year: Beer Camp. Twenty lucky participants will go down to the brewery, spend two days crafting and brewing a beer which will then be released in their home regions once it's ready. Someone from Portland absolutely needs to be in that group of 20. So go and enter.

Update: Here's the video about the third anniversary beer Sierra Nevada brewed with New Albion founder Jack McAuliffe. Call this the "Old Toe-sucker" clip.

Different Branding, Different Video

Just as a contrast to the New Belgium video I posted a couple days ago, here's one from Sierra Nevada (featuring our own Fred Eckhardt). Compare and contrast:



(I like this one better.)

Sierra Nevada's Cool Project

Via Beer News, a most interesting story about how Sierra Nevada plans to celebrate its 30th year. The brewery plans to continue to release a series of collaboration beers. (Life and Limb was apparently not a part of the series--but maybe the inspiration.) The first official edition looks promising--a stout brewed with Fritz Maytag, the true pioneer of craft brewing:

Frtiz agreed to guest brew this very special ale with us in honor of our 30th anniversary. As a nod to the dark ales and stouts that seduced both Fritz and Ken in the early years, we bring you this pioneering stout, a rich and roasted ale, perfect for aging, and worthy of your finest snifter.”

That's cool, but this is cooler:

March of 2010 will see the first of four beers in a series of collaborative projects with America’s craft-brewing pioneers: Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing; Jack McAuliffe, founder of New Albion Brewery; and authors, homebrewers, and beer advocates Fred Eckhardt and Charlie Papazian. Together, this group is credited as ‘the men who launched a thousand breweries,’ and without them, our current day craft-beer-renaissance might never have happened....

“I feel honored to sit at the table with these guys,” said Grossman. “Without the help that these guys gave me in the early days, I never would have gotten started. Each of them has shaped craft beer in some meaningful way, and without them, who knows what American beer would be today?”

Anyone know what Fred has planned? (Or have the cojones to guess?)

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Reviews: Widmer W '10 and SN/DH Life and Limb

After finding myself in the doldrums of the holidays, it's good to finds some new beers awaiting me on the other side. I had a chance to try two much-anticipated releases in the past week--Widmer's GABF gold-medal winning black IPA W '10 and Life and Limb, a collaborative beer from Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head. Let's start with the home-town team.

Widmer W '10
The "W" series has turned out to be one of the bigger successes in Widmer's history--at least from a beer perspective. From it they have gotten two standards, Drifter and Brrr, and with this year's offering, a gold medal. And, if the whole black IPA has any legs at all, another beer for the regular rotation.

Let us stipulate here at the top: I don't like black IPAs. I find the combo psychically disconcerting, as if discovering that Rush Limbaugh suddenly became a PETA-loving vegan. The mixture of black malts and clean, crisp hopping confuse me, never mind the syntactical dischord of a "black pale." And so, while I'm about to rave about this beer, my opinion of the style hasn't changed. I will not drink a lot of this beer in the future, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate and admire it.

The difficulty in making a black pale is trying to find harmony amid clashing elements--hops and black malts. Trickery can overcome the paradox--you can darken an IPA so that it looks visually black but contains none (or few) of the flavor notes of dark malts. But to make the two work together is the real trick, and one Widmer pulled off. The bridge comes by using hops that approximate pine tar. They're bright and clean, but they hold hands nicely with the cocoa-bitter dark malts. (I'd love to tell you which malts were used, but Widmer's website is currently doing a hinky timeout thing.) This allows both elements of the beer to express their true natures while managing to occupy the same glass. (More reviews at Ezra's new joint.) If you're at all interested in this style, buy a sixer. But if you're like me, also feel free to let the phenomenon build without your participation. I feel compelled to offer this beer at least an A- on the ratings scale, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it become the standard, at least locally.

It bears mentioning that the Widmers have dealt a blow the cause to popularize the "Cascadian Dark Ale" style. Instead of calling this beer by that name on the label, they have gone with "Black IPA." Whether this beer actually qualifies as a Cascadian Dark Ale is another matter (sometimes the distintion is lost on me), but if Widmer ends up with a big hit, Black IPA may blot out the sun as far as nomenclature goes, leaving Cascadian Dark Ale as a cool coulda-been.

Life and Limb
This is one of those beers that looks fantastic on paper. Sam Calagione tapped some maple syrup from the home farm in Massachusetts and Sierra Nevada contributed their own barley to make a 10% old ale fermented with yeast from both breweries and bottle-conditioned with birch syrup. Definitely a high-concept beer from two of the most-beloved craft breweries in the country.

I started homebrewing back in 1993, when my palate was young and crude. Within a few batches, I was regularly making beer that met my own low standards. In the intervening decades, my palate has refined a lot more quickly than my homebrewing skills. A particular segment of my ouvre involves big beers that are like streotyped football players--strong, coarse, dumb, but affable and polite. Old ales, imperial stouts, strong ales--they tend to turn out pleasant, drinkable, but amateurish. When I cracked Life and Limb, I encountered a beer very much like my own homebrew. I therefore enjoyed it, but as with my homebrew, I'm not fooled--it's not a fully successful experiment.

Life and Limb is a very sweet, sticky beer. I would call it an old ale, though it's a bit on the strong side for that style. Sweet stickiness is okay for an old ale, as are the additions of syrup. The problem is that the flavors overwhelm each other and result in a muddled, indistinct palate. Caramel and maple notes are here, but it's just too sweet and despite the 10% strength, nothing balances them. They crash together with the treacly malt in the mouth leaving you with just a general sense of sweetness. It's hard to get through even a half bottle and you feel like you need a pint of water afterward.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that in a year's time this beer has improved markedly--but if so, I wonder why it was released so green. Not a catastrophe, but at $10 a bottle, definitely nothing you have to feel about missing. I'd give it a C+ on the ratings scale.

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis

Few breweries have had such a clear brand identity, unruffled by the passing waves of trend, as Sierra Nevada. It is the quintessential American ale brewery, offering a cohesive family of beers that started out near London and ended up in the fresh hop fields of the American west. So solid and consistent is the brand that the release earlier this year of an IPA--never mind that it was perfectly consonant with the Sierra Nevada Tao--was a big surprise. Sierra Nevada releasing a new year-round ale? Amazing!

If that registered a 4.9 on the Richter scale, consider their newest beer the Big One, a 9+ San Francisco-razing shocker: Kellerweis, an authentic Bavarian hefeweizen (and also slated to be a year-round beer). This really is a major departure. Not only is the beer distinct in style, but it's a pretty big change in terms of brewing. Before we get into the tasting notes, have a look at the beer's bio, provided by SN:

Several years ago, the brewers began working with a unique Bavarian hefeweizen yeast strain unknown in this country.... For years the brewers weren’t satisfied with the beer; something was missing. In a flash of inspiration, an epic trip was arranged. The brewers took a whirlwind tour through the legendary Bavarian wheat breweries to see what they were doing. It was there they realized the advantages of making wheat beer using the traditional system of open fermentation.

Sierra Nevada had been making a portion of their beer using the difficult and labor-intensive technique of open fermentation for years.... After seeing the technique in use in Germany, the inspiration to make Kellerweis in the open system took hold.

In the six-pack I picked up last week, the brewery included a bookmark with some info about the beer, including a remarkable photo of a brewer scraping off a billowing pillow of meringue from an open tank. The visual drove home the huge departure this beer represents for a brewery with no history of German brewing. This ain't no pale ale.

Tasting Notes
Two words are inevitably used to describe Bavarian weisse beers: banana and clove. And they are indeed notes one typically finds, but I think they mislead. Rather, what defines this style is the combination of fresh wheat and balancing acidity. The banana and clove are flavor notes emerging from the fermentation of the beer--thanks mainly to the wheat--which produces more phenols (the source of these notes). Absent the lovely wheat and effervescent, tart character, the phenols would be regarded as off-flavors. In a good weisse, they're an expression of the style.

(Widmer's version, incidentally, is not brewed to style despite the name. Although it looks the part, Widmer Hef is brewed with an alt yeast strain and lacks all these markers I've mentioned. Like many early takes on traditional styles--one could include Sierra Nevada's version of a pale ale--it deviated substantially from the inspiration.)

Kellerweis is an effort to stay mostly true to the style. It hits all the hallmarks--a cloudy yellow orange (the haze is yeast), frothy, and sporting an expected clovey aroma. Successive deep sniffs reveal the wheat. Yet it is also distinct. The nose isn't that clovey; the more you smell and taste, the more you notice an insistent lemon note. The flavor, likewise, tends toward the dry and sophisticated more than the funky and clovey. It tastes highly attenuated to me; if not for the fullness of the wheat, perhaps it would have been overly so. It is appropriately tart, but here is where it heads toward dry rather than sharp. Finally, there's a distinct almond note riding along, and once you notice it, you find it in the nose.

I give the beer generally high marks, though I find it slightly more austere than I might like. The traditional versions are so approachable they are sometimes called "breakfast beers." You wouldn't want a glass of Sierra Nevada's with your Wheaties, though--it's more suited for a hot afternoon. Well-made, tasty, and distinct. As with all Sierra Nevada beers, there's a lot of skill and effort in this beer.
Statistics
Malts: Two-row pale, wheat, Munich
Hops: Perle or Sterling
IBUs: ABV: 4.8%
OG: 12.8 Plato
Yeast: Bavarian hefeweizen strain
Available: Year round
Rating: B

Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA, an Exhaustive Exegesis

Here's a thought experiment. Not an experiment so much as mental time travel. Or something. Anyway, imagine the year is 1981. You sport a wicked fu manchu and despise this "new wave" music and all that Kim Carnes stands for. But not all change is bad. Some hippies from out in California have introduced a bunch of beer that is strong and strange and you can't get enough of it. You've tried their Pale, Porter, Stout, and Wheat, and you can't wait for the next thing they release. In the meantime, maybe you'll go check out this new Betamax thing so you can record Bob Marley on this new MTV thing. When they're not showing that "Bette Davis Eyes" crap.

Okay, they have released a number of beers in the intervening years, but none in their regular, year-round lineup. Twenty-eight years. There were like ten craft breweries in '81, and probably none of them still brew their original beers. That's some amazing consistency. (The brewery is also rightly credited with having introduced and then popularlized "West Coast" style hopping.)

You can imagine, then, that Torpedo was greeted with a little anticipation. To add to it--if that's possible--Torpedo is an IPA, perhaps the most-popular and most overexposed craft style in the country. So how do you achieve originality when, in the intervening three decades since you last went out on the line with a regular beer, 1500 American breweries have made just about every style on the planet? It's quite a condundrum: brew something distinctive, worthy of your status as the country's most-popular brewery, but also something your broad fan base will recognize and appreciate. Familiar, but not too much so.

Sierra Nevada accomplished the trick by using a new, very rare hop called Citra but keeping all the other settings on normal. It's a distinctive hop and, according to the brewery, it is so rare there are only about three acres under cultivation:

I think I mentioned earlier, that there are only about 3 acres of this hop anywhere in the world. There just isn't that much of it to go around. I was in our hop freezer this afternoon, and we have a solid 250 lb bale. I think that's it. Total. End of story.

So, for the moment, anyway, SN has cornered the market on this hop, and will own the characteristic flavor it imparts. What is Citra's lineage? In a small article in the Hop Science Newsletter (.pdf) they're described this way:

The variety Citra, with a alpha acid content between 10-12% and an oil content of 2-3 % originated from a cross between the female European noble aroma variety Hallertauer Mittelfrueh and a male that was derived from the variety known as U.S. Tettnanger. Citra is 50% Hallertauer mittelfrueh, 25% U.S. Tettnanger and the remaining 25% is East Kent Golding, Bavarian, Brewers Gold and other unknown hops. Citra has a special flavor and aroma that it imparts to beer. Depending on the brewing process and the hopping rate, the flavors and aromas of beers hopped with Citra might range from grapefruit to lime, melon, gooseberry, and lychee fruit.

The Citras are only used in dry-hopping (the other hops are Magnum and Crystal). The "Torpedo" of the name is apparently a particular device the brewery uses to boost the extractione from the small amount of hops to which they have access:

Traditional dry hopping is really wasteful, in regards to the amount of hops used. With traditional dry-hopping, hops are literally stuffed into bags and placed inside of the fermentors. The hops at the center of the bags don't get as much contact time with the wort and there's really no way to measure how much of the aroma is imparted on the beer from batch to batch.

With the torpedo device, there is a known quantity of hops used in the thing, and it can be used with a big volume of beer. Requiring less hops by volume, with a BIG difference in imparted flavors.

So there you go. In other regards, the beer is a pretty standard IPA: 17.8 P and 7.2% alcohol, 70 IBUs, Carapils and crystal malt. The brewery's really hanging their hat on the Citras.

Tasting Notes
Much as you'd expect, it looks like a straightforward IPA--a bright amber and a frothy oatmeal head. The aroma is piney and resinous; these are the familiar notes. On the label, SN describes the other, unfamiliar ones as "herbal." Perhaps this is a euphemism. I get a more classic catty quality (funny how "catty" has fallen out of favor as an adjective, isn't it?)--thinking of the fu manchu, though, maybe this is "herbal" in the cannibis sense. Stanky, sticky. It tastes more or less like this, too. The two dominant qualities are pine and catty resin, but there's citrus, too, and maybe a touch of peach.

It's a bold, characterful beer, and I like that it's getting mixed reviews. Beers that take chances don't please everyone. But those who are pleased will love the beer--and for them, there won't be any competition.

[Update. Here's even more about the torpedo hop extractor:

"The name Torpedo stems from an invention that Ken Grossman and the brewers came up with several years ago. The Hop Torpedo is a cylindrical stainless steel vessel that was developed to harness the essential oils and resins in hops, without extracting bitterness. The device essentially works like an espresso machine. A stainless filter basket is packed full of whole cone hops loaded into the vessel and sealed against pressure. The device is then placed in the fermentation cellars where beer from the cylindroconical fermenters is pushed down from the tanks, through the pressurized column of hops and back into the fermenting tank. The flow of beer out of the tanks, into the Torpedo and back into the fermenter can be controlled to extract different levels of flavor, aroma and bitterness. Essentially, it is a new way of dry-hopping that extracts all of the oily resin without the residual bitterness of the traditional method."]

And Two More Reviews

A couple more very brief reviews whilst I'm in the reviewin' mood...

Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
As much as it pains me to admit it, the beer that was first to characterize the West Coast style of American brewing was Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale (not, regrettably, something from Oregon). To emphasize this august history, Sierra Nevada offers a robust version for the 27th anniversary of the brewery's founding. This beer (misnamed an IPA on the website) is like Extra Special Pale--everything you love in pale is here but more so! Good stuff.
Rating: A-

Calapooia 'Pooya Porter
I keep trying to make a swing of mid-Willamette Valley Breweries that I haven't been to, but in the meantime, I did have a pint of the 'Pooya (which seems vaguely obscene). There wasn't anything transcendent about it, but with a creamy body, notes of chocolate, and a touch of nuttiness, it was a fine pint. Need to try more to get a sense of the brewery, but this is a good start.
Rating: B

Sierra Nevada IPA

I was in the store the other day, and saw a sixer of Sierra Nevada IPA, a beer listed on the brewery's webpage as a "specialty draft." Apparently a seasonal, but I know nothing more about it. However, it was mighty tasty, so here's a quickie review (more on the style here, if you wish a backgrounder).

Tasting Notes
Sierra Nevada has gone for an English IPA, distinct from the Northwest version by virtue of hops. You notice it first in the nose (the appearance, golden orange, looks like Inversion)--nothing citrusy about this beer. It has an aroma I finally settled on as cedar, reminiscent of strongly-hopped London ales I've had.

The flavor is also woody, with an intense, resinous hopping. I am particularly (pleasantly) sensitive to Goldings, and these really pop. The beer is sharply effervescent and has a hard-water crispness. The aftertaste leaves your mouth coated and lips smacking. It reminded me quite a bit of Fuller's ESB, though I don't know if they would taste alike side by side.

Given that there are a million IPAs on the West Coast, it's a nice change-up to find an English style. I really enjoyed this one.

Stats
Malts: "English malts"
Hops: Boil - Magnum; finishing and dry-hop - Golding
Alcohol by volume: 6.9%
Original Gravity: N/A
Bitterness Units: N/A

Rating
Excellent.

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PHOTO: SF Fred