Beer's Golden Age

[I'm out of town until September 18--hey, that's today!--and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

Have you ever noticed that art flourishes in cycles? Pick an art form, and you'll see periods and places where it wells up--movies in the late sixties and early seventies, literature during and immediately following the beats, music in Memphis in the 50s, Detroit in the 60s, New York in the 80s, and Seattle in the 90s. It isn't random.

Art, no matter the form, is always a communication. You have someone making it, and someone appreciating it. The two feed off each other. Art flourishes as the context deepens. The more the appreciators "get" what the artist is doing, the more opportunities the artist has to go on riffs and expand the context.

I bring all of this up because over the weekend, as I was working my way through a sample tray of Double Mountain Brewing's beers (they're that new Hood River brewery founded by Full Sail alums), I realized that the beer I was drinking was only possible because of all the beers that preceded it in the Oregon brewing rennaisance--and because at this moment in time, there are enough people out there drinking good beer to appreciate what the brewers are doing.

I'll do a full review on Double Mountain soon (probably between PIB and the OBF), but here's an example of what I mean. One of their current beers is a kolsch--a fairly standard offering in July. It's the kind of beer you might expect to be in that disposably-drinkable category--tasty after a hot day of windsurfing, but nothing to write home about. No. Double Mountain went all out on it--they used an appropriate yeast strain, giving it that distinctive tart/crisp quality that really defines the style. And then, for good measure, they over-hopped it (I think it was at something like 40 IBUs). Germans would run screaming to the hills with this kind of offense, but the brewers know what they're doing. They have selected a hop schedule that draws out the pre-existing qualities of the style, deepening the crispness and drawing out the dryness of the last note. The hops they chose complement the beer, making it simultaneously both more kolsch-y (though I wouldn't enter it at the GABF) and more appropriate for Oregon drinkers.

I have already talked about their IRA (aka "Ira," as in Glass), which is a Belgian-yeast-based IPA, but it makes an equal case. It doesn't taste radically different from a usual IPA, but there's something going on. The Belgian yeast seems to enclose the bitterness in a gentle pocket. The edges are soft and mature. IPA drinkers would notice that it's a little different, but they would recognize and enjoy it. The brewers at Double Mountain didn't have to add that complexity, but they knew that if they did, some people would appreciate the effort.

It's my guess that the average beer drinkers walking in don't actually have the nomenclature to describe what they're tasting or understand why it tastes that way. But still, they get that it's really good beer (it was five o'clock on a Saturday and there wasn't a free table). Fifteen years ago, there would have been no point to offer the little change-ups Double Mountain includes in their recipes. Who would know the difference? In fact, that contextual vacuity was responsible for the state of beer drinking 25 years ago, when most beer drinkers thought that the variety of beer styles could be expressed in the range at the supermarket--light, dry, or in rare cases, "dark."

Things will change. The market will shift, drinkers will go off to new beverages. Whether that happens in five years or fifty, it's a sure bet. (If it happened in Belgium--and it did--it will surely happen everywhere.) So this is the golden age for beer, the pinnacle of the craft. It's cool, but also a little sad.

Enjoy it while it's here (and hope it lasts fifty years!).

Originally posted July 9, 2007

The DSM-ing of Beer Styles

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

Every year, as American brewers get more creative with ingredients and methods of brewing, the brain trust in Denver tries to keep up with new style categories. As Stan points out, this year there are 11 more. The metastasizing of beer categories bears some resemblance to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which began with 106 disorders and now contains 297. The unique variances among individuals dictate an infinite range of possibilities, and at a certain point, the DSM will create more confusion than clarity (many people feel we've passed that point). And so it is with beer styles.

The function of categories and styles is to bring some coherence to comparison. There's just too much difference between a doppelbock and an IPA to meaningfully compare them side by side. But what happens when a brewery uses an alt yeast for its doppel and tosses in a few extra new world hops. Is it still meaningful to make a new category, or just compare it with other doppels?

Reasonable people can disagree, but I want to lodge my own personal, perhaps futile, protest right now. Looking through the current list (.pdf), I can see absolutely no justification for these kinds of distinctions:

Light American Wheat Ale or Lager with Yeast

versus

Light American Wheat Ale or Lager without Yeast

Or the inclusion of these unnecessary categories:

Fresh Hop Ale (new)
Ales which are hopped exclusively with fresh and un-dried (”wet”) hops.

American-Belgo Styles Ales (new)
These beers portray the unique characters imparted by yeasts typically used in fruity and big Belgian-style ales.

Gluten-Free beer

Pumpkin Beer

Garden Beer (Garden beer? Because you have to distinguish between "pumpkin" and "garden"--someone might use zucchini!)

American Style- (pick one, they're all unnecessary: strong pale, IPA, imperial IPA, red/amber, etc.)

Here's the thing, a fresh hop ale, to take one example, is brewed in a recognizeable style--usually pale ale. It doesn't need its own category. American styles are distinguished from their British counterparts by their hop character solely. Every time we get a new hop, we have to come up with a new style? Absurd. And imperializing something (there are now 47 categories for "imperial" styles) means you've just made a strong ale, not an Imperial or Double India Pale Ale. For the love of Pete, just collapse these damn things. Gluten-free beer? Really?

I know that this creates a way for more breweries to win more medals, but that's actually a problem. I need six beers to win in the Light American Wheat Ale or Lager with (or Without) Yeast categories? No! It adds nothing to clarity and creates a huge headache for everyone involved as people try to figure out in which precise category a beer should be placed.

If I ruled the world, there'd be a lot more good beer available, but you'd know it by a lot fewer names.

[Note: post cleaned up for clarity of prose and bitterness of spleen.]

Originally posted March 6, 2008

Bud American Ale: the Triumph or Demise of Craft Beer?

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

I finally got my hands on Bud's American Ale, which seems simultaneously to be: 1) over-compensation for a company that's no longer American, 2) an acknowledgement that new products, not just new ads, are the only way to grow in the US market, and 3) a legitimate beer.

Let's start with the third point first. This is a real craft beer, not just a marketing gimmick. Bud has made a beautiful amber ale with a nice caramel malt note and a lightly citrusy hopping. They have dry-hopped it with Cascade hops (whole hops, apparently). I wouldn't call it a transcendent beer, but if you did a blind taste-test with this beer and several other craft ambers, I suspect it would finish in the middle of the pack. It is, for example, Fat Tire's superior--by quite a margin. I'm not a huge fan of ambers, but if I went to a party and this was in the fridge along with Corona, Widmer Hef, and Fat Tire, I'd be happy to grab the Bud Ale. And I'd enjoy it, too.

It's not surprising that Bud has made a good beer. I don't doubt that if Bud wished, its brewers could instantly produce a dozen excellent beers, and probably a world-class lager or six. The best, most well-trained brewers in the world work for Bud. They don't brew world-class beers because they don't wish to, not because they can't.

Three questions spring to mind: why a craft beer, why an amber, and what does it spell doom for craft breweries?

The answer to the first question seems obvious. While the macro market is flat or in decline, the micro market continues to grow and grow. The US beer market continues to grow slowly, but all the growth is in the craft segment. Bud can continue to buy up smaller breweries piecemeal to get a part of that growth, or take the plunge with their own brand and try to bring the market under the Bud name.

Okay, so why an amber? No doubt there's an easy, flip answer--the focus groups liked it best. (And actually, I bet they did. I bet Bud tried a bunch of ales and came up with this one. I would have loved loved loved to have been among the focus groups so I could see what was in the mind of the giant.) But it also makes sense. If you want to build a market for ales, you want to actually brew an ale. The craft market has proven the enduring popularity of the style, particularly as an introductory beer for new ale drinkers. It's nothing like Bud. Amber ales are especially fruity and ale-y. They exhibit a sweetness totally unlike light lagers--and which totally beguiled an early generation of Oregonians. Add a little dry-hopped Cascade citrus, and you introduce drinkers to the flavor of hops without risking turning people off with bitterness. If you want to create a market by priming the palates of for ales, this is a great way to go.

All well and good, but does it spell doom for craft breweries? If Bud makes a great (and cheaper) amber, will people quit drinking Full Sail's? I would love to hear the beer-economist reflect on this question, but my sense is that it's just the opposite: Bud can reach 100 million consumers who will never otherwise consider a craft beer. And once they've begun drinking Bud's ale, they may well enjoy Black Butte Porter or BridgePort IPA or Roots Heather. If Bud's experiment is successful, they will expand the market for craft beer--one they won't ever be able to dominate in the way they dominate the single-product macro market.

I love that Bud has made a serious beer. It looks to me like a trojan horse that millions of Americans may unwittingly invite into their refrigerators. And once dry-hopped ales get in there, they may never leave.

Update. Maureen Ogle points out an obvious analogy (one I nevertheless missed) to the scenario above: the Starbucks phenomenon.

Originally posted October 27, 2008

The Secret Shame of Beervana: Cheater Pints

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites--and this one was the post that launched a movement.]

When I did my review of Amnesia, there transpired an interaction I did not mention. As most readers know--whether they know they know or not--the traditional "pint" glass used in pubs across the state (and US) do not hold 16 ounces of beer. If you pour a bottle out into one of these glasses and manage the traditional head, you know what happens--it goes right to the top. You could squeeze an ounce or two more in there if you skipped the head, but you'd have to bend the laws of physics to fit in a pint. These glasses were originally designed to shake mixed drinks in, which is why they're dense and stackable, and also why they're known as "shaker pints."

I mentioned this to the table of friends when we are at the Amnesia, and they were shocked. So shocked, in fact, that they didn't believe me. So much did one of my friends disbelieve me that she brought the waiter over to set me straight. I stuck to my guns, and so he went to fetch a measuring bowl. Sure enough, 13 ounces and change. All were mollified, mystified, and mortified. The waiter apologized and said he couldn't believe they were shorting folks.

But let us not pile on Amnesia--shaker pints are the standard in Portland. The crime of the cheater pint was once revealed by Willamette Week writer William Abernathy, who used to cruise around to pubs and pour out glasses into a Pyrex measuring bowl. He managed to shame a number of pubs into going to real pints, and inspiring others to go for 20-ounce imperial pints.

But alas, cheater pints have taken over. There's a current thread discussing the matter on the Brew Crew's listserv, and I'm surprised by how many folks were unaware of this practice. With prices edging up toward five bucks, maybe it's time to re-start the shaming. Or at least offering a list of "honest pints" so informed consumers know where to go. But who would do the research?

Originally posted February 15, 2007

Time for a Bonsai Beer Movement

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

The joy of drinking beer is in the epiphanies it sparks. In my case, the insights are often directed back on the source itself, and so it was last night as I shared a bottle of Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen with Sally. We have entered the era of imperial. No style is immune. Imperial IPAs and stouts, of course. But now there are imperial reds, porters, pilsners, wits, and hefeweizens. Never mind the "doubles" and "strongs." The age of supersized beer is upon us.

I love strong beers. When Sam Adams released its Triple Bock back in 1994, I shelled out for a bottle. I exaulted when Hair of the Dog released Fred. I laid away gallons of Jackfrost Doppelbock. Sasquatch Strong still remains one of the best beers I've ever tasted, and I drank it whenever it was available.

But the madness has to stop. I bought the Pyramid Imperial Hef with reluctance but dim hope. Maybe the word "hefeweizen" was an evocation--the beer, I hoped, might be something like a wheat wine. Alas, this really is just a steroidal hef. Hefeweizens are quintessentially light beers; the characteristics that distinguish them are products of smallness--light body, gentle wheaty palate, and the fragile, spicy character from yeast and phenols that make the style unique.

As an antidote, we need some kind of small beer movement. Bonsai beers, miniaturist efforts that focus entirely on producing flavor with a minimum of ingredients. I know that in a vacuum, breweries probably aren't going to invest a lot of time into beers that will get overlooked--especially when they can bloat a beer and get a fair amount of attention. That's why it needs to be a movement--consumers would become more conditioned to appreciate the small beers.

A festival of beers under 4%? A contest? A joint brew-off? Something needs to be done or we're going to have to endure imperial lambics, double milds, and strong sessions. Stop the madness before it's too late!

Originally posted September 21, 2007

I apparently forgot this post, because later I wrote "Super Small Beers" ...

A British beer blogger has a post up about an English brown ale that weighs in at 2.8% alcohol:

If you're American, you'd probably laugh it out of town. I doubt they send much - if any - across the Atlantic. Instead, the beer cowers in brown, half litre bottles on the shelves of Tesco stores in Britain. It coyly suggests on its label that it be used for cooking. There's even a recipe for beef stew on the back. It's as if the little chap doesn't want you to drink him.

It appears that the beer in question, Mann's, is a throwback. In the comments to the post, a guy named Paul notes "When we had our beer shop we used to sell a reasonable amount of Mann's brown. I don't ever remember a customer for it being under 60." That, and the suggestion that it's more fit for stew than mug, hint at its status there.

Nevertheless, there is a long and loving history of small beers, going back to the time when they were consumed in greater quantity and at what we might now consider off hours. In our mania for extremes, we extend not even scorn for these kinds of beers now--most craft beer drinkers probably believe that beer under 4% alcohol was made to serve scorn-deserving niches (light beer, non-alcoholic beer).

Well, as a sometimes brewer and all-around beer appreciator, I will go on record as a fan of the little beers. They're the quadruple salchow of brewing--very hard to pull off, so much so that few even bother. But when done properly, they reveal flavors concealed at higher octane. Here in Beervana, we so eschew anything with the macro taint that even our session ales are 5.5%. But in the world of extremes--which make Beervana's heart sing--super small beers are something to consider.

A general call to Oregon brewers: what about trying to knock off our socks with one hand tied behind your back? Something around three percent, style of your choice. Betcha can't.

Originally posted June 30, 2008


And finally, earlier this year, I had this brainstorm in a post called "Fest Thinkin"...

While I'm on the subject of fests, here's a random thought that floated through my brain after last week's experience with Full Sail's cask Amber. Since we have such a grievous paucity of beer festivals in Oregon (293 at last count), I'd love to see one more--the small beer fest. No beer above, what 5%, 4.5%? Maybe have a people's choice for beers below 5% and below 4%. Invite breweries to brew up special beer for the occasion and challenge them to come up with riveting flavors. Call it the Extreme Small Beer Fest or something. Small: it's the new frontier for extreme.

Now, how do you put on a fest?


Originally posted March 24, 2009

Chemistry of the Wet Hop

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

In my earlier post, I discussed hops generally. But what about wet hops and dry hops? To my palate, they're radically different. Last year, as I was systematically working my way through fresh-hop beers, I discovered that they perform so differently that it's clear brewers are still figuring it out, too. (That's one of the main reasons I'm trying to exhaustively document what I've tried--so that I can get a handle one which fresh hops seem to taste the best.) So the question I'd like answered is this: what happens to the chemical compounds when a hop is dried? Of to put it in the reverse, when a hop is wet, what are the volatile compounds we're tasting that are normally absent or just minor notes in dry hops?

Okay, it remains elusive. I'm no chemist, just a simple blogger. But there is some science to suggest that when an herb dries, its chemistry changes. In the paper quoted below, scientists looked at various compounds present in freshly-harvested herbs and the same herbs after they had been dried.

The herbs of lemon balm, oregano, and peppermint were analysed immediately after harvest and after drying to determine their antioxidant activity and content of total phenolics, l-ascorbic acid, and carotenoids. The strongest inhibition of linoleic acid (LA) peroxidation was found for fresh and dried oregano. For peppermint and lemon balm it was significantly lower and decreased after drying. The ability to scavenge the free radical DPPH (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) was very high in almost all tested samples, exceeding 90%. The three species tested had a very high content of total phenolics and drying of oregano and peppermint resulted in their considerable increase. The highest content of ascorbic acid was determined in fresh peppermint and lemon balm and carotenoid content was at a similar level in all the species tested. Drying caused great losses of these compounds.

You can follow the link for the technical discussion. But to highlight just how radically things change, just 6-15% of the vitamin C is present in dry forms of these herbs. The hop cone contains oils, acids, co-humulone, and other components. If one of those is ten times as robust in wet hops as dry, it would begin to explain why the beers taste so different.

Quick, someone take a hop into the lab and get on this.

Originally posted September 30, 2008

The Brave New Frontier of Fresh Hops

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

In the past couple months, I've been talking about the emergence of indigenous styles or elements in Northwest beer. In a great oversight, one ingredient I didn't mention were wet hops--the use of which have proliferated rather astonishingly in the past couple years. As the touring fresh hop festival demonstrates, this isn't a niche practice anymore. What's more significant is that this isn't a gimmacky practice to capitalize on local produce; in my fairly broad tasting of these beers this year, I've found that they produce completely original flavors, some of which are extraordinary, and some of which are ... gross.

It is unclear why this would be the case, but the various oils, resins, and acids behave differently when the hop is wet. The alpha acids don't seem to produce the same level of bitterness, and other properties emerge that are as intense as traditional alpha bitterness. One brewery last year--they asked to keep this on the QT--brewed a batch they thought would be intensely bitter, but it came in at something like 30 BUs. The beer was never released. Yet it doesn't seem to be uniform--in some strains, the alpha acids seem to convert better. In my sampling of fresh hop ales this year (reviews to come--or at least begin--later today) I tried beers that were grassy, cabbagy, and in one notable case, weedy. In all cases, fresh hops offer an herbal, organic flavor that isn't totally familiar to the tongue of hopheads like me.

In the next few years, I suspect brewers will learn to work with fresh hops, figure out which work best, and they may start to mix them with dried hops to select the best elements of both. I hope you have a chance to get to a brewery or a hop festival to taste some of these. They are far from universally successful, reminding me of an earlier era in craft brewing. But the experiments are something tasters and brewers can all learn from, and the failures are as important in this regard as the successes.

And as an inducement, here's a teaser: one of the beers I tried was absolutely transcendent. Maybe it's not the only one. Hunting is half the fun!

Originally published October 14, 2007

The Emerging "Fresh Hop" Style

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

My tour of the fresh hop beers continued this weekend (reviews to come), and in this tour I am beginning to recognize a through-line in terms of style. Obviously, the key ingredient is freshly-harvested hop, applied liberally. Beyond that, the base beer could be just about anything. Last year I tried three or four lagers, some beers that were very light-bodied, others that were burly and dense.

But this year, most breweries have begun to settle in on a template: a pale-hued ale ranging from about 5.5% to 7% in alcohol. Sometimes they tend more toward a pale ale, others to an ESB, and others to an IPA, but the range isn't that large. For the stronger beers, the bitterness is ramped up; in the milder ones, the brewer tends toward flavor and aroma. To be sure, there are still a few outliers, like Hopworks' Oktoberfest. Some other breweries still seem to be in experimentation mode: Lompoc's got a bock, a red, and the usual pale slated. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that a brewery hits a home run on some unexpected style (Belgians in particular seem little-explored), but so far, breweries seem to be narrowing in on this range.

It makes sense. Dark malts conceal hop flavor, and so the subtle notes that characterize fresh hops would be lost. But lagers are so clean they reveal flavors that maybe brewers might like to bury. As Rogue and Double Mountain demonstrate, throwing a lot of hops in the beer also conceal the subtlety of fresh hopping; the bitterness comes out and the beers lose the very unique note they're trying to highlight. So for now, they've settled on a fairly neutral substrate.

We'll see if this changes in coming years.

Originally posted October 14, 2008

Toward Indigenous Styles

[I'm out of town until September 18 and away from computers of all sorts. On the assumption that you won't have read every post from the past 3 years, I'm reposting a few favorites. See you soon.]

I tend to relate to beer styles almost as primordial, as if they sprang fully-formed into their present state. Of course, this is nonsense--beer styles start somewhere and they evolve. Yeast's "house character" arises from subtle changes and mutations over the decades. Even the idea that they are now fully-formed and fixed is a mistake; surely the character of beers will evolve as local environments (less farmland, but perhaps less coal smoke in the air, too) and customs change. The globe warms and barley and hops may change. Who knows?

For the first time since before Prohibition, there's a chance for indigenous styles of beer to start developing in America. The post-WWII beers of America were lighter versions of the beer brewed in Germany--witness the Weinhards and Schlitzes and Busches and Coorses. Only recently have American brewers, freed of their old-world traditions, started to experiment with styles, and although they are among the most innovative brewers in the world, the evolution so far has been one of degree.

When you look around at the classic beer styles, they're almost all intimately connected with the region or even town from which they came. English pale ales were initially strongly associated with the water of Burton-upon-Trent. Bubbling up through sandstone, Burton's water contains gypsum and calcium sulfate ("Burton salts"); these minerals draw out the resins from hops and dry the beer. Scottish ales, known for their creamy malty character, come from a country rich in barley but hop poor. In Germany, smoked beers are obscure except in Bamburg; the same is true of the saisons of Wallonia. It's not quite true that every style was born solely because of the conditions in which it was first brewed, but almost.

What has arisen in the Northwest, and to a lesser extent in American brewing, is a love of hops, particularly those that are native to the US. It's almost impossible to walk into a brewpub in Oregon and find a beer that doesn't use the sweetly citrusy, aromatic Cascade hops. They are ubiquitous throughout the country, but they are native to the Northwest--associated in my mind with our pales almost as strongly as Saaz are to Czech pilsners and Kent Goldings to London ESBs. Of indigenous character, we have already developed. Styles are another matter.

But where will it go from here? In 100 years, will we still be brewing styles with distinct lineages back to the UK and (to a lesser degree) Belgium? Or will the rest of the world brew "Oregon-style" beers?

As a not-quite-avid homebrewer, I started to think what I could brew that would be distinctly native. An idea arose--that in a later post--but as I pondered what makes things native, I came up with a few variables:

• Ingredients. A Belgian wit is distinct mainly for the use of coriander and Curacao (bitter) orange peel. Until they figured out how to roast malt without burning it, all beers were dark; in the late 19th century in Plzen, brewers cracked this nut and invented the world's most popular style. When brewers added lactose, they created cream ales and milk stouts.
  
• Method. Some breweries have funky ways of brewing, and these help define style. The slate squares employed in Yorkshire breweries; the spontaneous fermentation of the Lembeek Valley; the funk contributed by casks at St. James Gate (Guinness) and Roeselare (Rodenbach); or the lagers fermented warm to create "steam beers"--America's only truly native style.
• Yeast. Many of the world's classic beers emerged from the decades- or centuries-old strains of yeast. In many (most?) cases, yeast strains are connected to locations where they originated and consequently are one of the chief elements that define styles.
  
• New Variations. Sometimes styles emerge by remixing the ingredients, methods, or yeasts to produce a beer recognizably different.
  
• "Localness." What has guided many brewers through time wasn't necessarily a desire to be innovative, but restraints of locality. They used what they had. In the age before industrialization, hops, grains, adjuncts, and water all had to be local. The character of the beer has historically been a reflection of the place it was brewed. The physical imperative is gone in the age of globalization, yet artisanal beers are still predominantly local products.
  

In the Northwest, things have begun to show signs of evolution toward native brewing. One example that springs to mind are the Big Reds that have appeared in the last few years. Put these in the "variations" category. They are bitter but not overly strong, sharing qualities of IPAs, ESBs, and the Northwest fascination with vivid hopping. Three popular standards are now readily available throughout Portland: Laurelwood Free Range Red, Roots Red and Ninkasi Believer.

But while these beers have a lot in common with each other, they can't easily be shoehorned into other styles. They're a little stronger than a pale ale, but lighter than an IPA. The lighter body creates a platform for the hops, which though robust, aren't overwhelming. Brewers in Oregon have discovered that the sweet spot for hop lovers is a beer where the flavor, aroma, and bitterness are all aspects of hops; these large reds seem to have been designed to highlight hops at all turns. A native style? Getting there.

Peering Into the Future
The Northwest offers a wonderfully rich natural environment. I can see a number of possible ingredients that could become a part of the brewing tradition--fruit, wood casks from local trees, native botanicals. Breweries have made some forays, notably with fruit, but not in especially novel ways. What makes the krieks of Belgium sing is that they are not syrupy; the fruit is an essence, not a treacly additive. Wood is a big investment that doesn't pay off for years, so experiments have been limited to bourbon barrels (distinctly not Northwestern). Botanicals? Craig Nicholls has experimented with desert sage and juniper branches (from his back yard). Siletz makes a slightly strange spruce ale that is a version or two from perfected.

Yeasts may be the next frontier. Some breweries have developed a "house" character--Widmer and Hair of the Dog, for example. Other breweries will nurture character more actively--coaxing it by mixing strains and so on (Double Mountain seems a likely candidate). Belgian, English, and German beers are all recognizable by their yeasts; perhaps an Oregon yeast is in our future.

Finally, I also wonder if breweries may look to experiment with ingredients that have quasi-hop qualities, or those which draw out hop notes. No one can seem to get enough of the humulus lupulin, so experiments are surely in our future. In any case, it is impossible to imagine native styles developing that didn't play strongly to the zestiness of our local hops. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that zing.

_________

Of course beer styles aren't fixed. They metastasize and change, and from the mutations emerge styles. We live in a very fortunate moment when we're seeing the process happen in real time. I'll try to keep my eye on this development and see if I can suss out any trends. It will be a joy to watch.

Originally posted August 23, 2007