Guinness is Irish, and So is America

Source

Two points connected tenuously by a holiday.  The first comes from a post at The Economist (hat tip with more at the recently-enlivened Beeronomics), wherein the title says it all: "Why Guinness is Less Irish Than You Think."  The writer can only muster a couple points to justify this Monday fodder (a blogger knows filler when he sees it): 1) Arthur Guinness was, 250 years ago, pro-British and 2) the giant corporation has many connections to London.  The first one is especially lame, existing merely to give the thin post at least two points.  The second one isn't much better, and the lead-in sentence is a good example why: "The beer the company has become most famous for—porter stout—was based on a London ale, a favourite of the street porters of Covent Garden and Billingsgate markets."

In terms of beer history, that's roughly like saying American-style ales don't exist because they were based on English bitters.  It's true that Dublin's breweries embraced porter (along with every other brewing country in the 19th century--porter was the first international style).  But they changed it.  London porter was made with brown malt, a rough, smoky old product that pre-dated Daniel Wheeler's method of roasting malt black.  In London, they continued making porter the same way, but Dublin dumped the brown and substituted it with black malt, splitting the line.  Then, in the late 1920s or early 1930s, Guinness began using unmalted roasted barley in its grist, bringing the recipe to its modern standard.  One of the reasons Guinness hopped the Irish Sea was to conquer England, which it did, eradicating porters and stouts from the island, at least for a time.  The Economist gets causality backward here.  (I don't care if you love or hate Guinness, but it is the most well-known brewer of a style that is uniquely Irish.)

Now, to segue awkwardly into the related topic: the strange spectacle that is the United States turning Irish for one day.  Our good friend The Beer Nut regularly points out that whatever this cultural affectation that we have in the US is, it's not Irish.  Fair point.  I have an Irish-born friend who told me she was mystified when she arrived in America and met people who said they were Irish.  She asked where they were from and they would say something like "Chicago."  It would have been someone with a grandparent from Belfast.

I understand that from a European perspective this seems bizarre, and until I visited Europe, I was in total agreement.  Now I think its the Americans who have things right.

History is not a tangible thing.  It's the story we tell to explain ourselves.  It's why Orwell's 1984 is so profound--the entire narrative hangs on his famous sentence, "He who controls the past controls the future."  It's a lot easier to control that past when there are remnants of it sitting in your home town.  If you happen to have, say, extant Roman or Celtic artifacts in your town, it gives form to the stories.  I grew up in one of the most recently-settled parts of the US (by Europeans, anyway), and we used to treasure our hundred-year old water pumps and wagon wheels.  You work with what you have.

But part of America's history is our European heritage.  If your family has lived in Dublin for ten generations, you get to call yourself Irish.  If your family lived for ten generations in Dublin and then moved to New York, do you lose that history?  The Irishness that Americans celebrate is different than Irish Irishness, but it's no less real or authentic.  Our ancestors arrived on this continent ten or a hundred or 500 years ago (and that includes most Native Americans, who at this point have histories as fragmented as my own), but that's not when their history began. 

So I say put on your green shirt, go hoist a pint of Guinness (or better yet, a Porterhouse Plain, if you can find it), and offer a sláinte or three.

The beer the company has become most famous for—porter stout—was based on a London ale, a favourite of the street porters of Covent Garden and Billingsgate markets. - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/03/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ee/whyguinnessislessirishthanyouthink#sthash.rbljngLV.dpuf

The beer the company has become most famous for—porter stout—was based on a London ale, a favourite of the street porters of Covent Garden and Billingsgate markets. - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/03/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ee/whyguinnessislessirishthanyouthink#sthash.rbljngLV.dpuf

The beer the company has become most famous for—porter stout—was based on a London ale, a favourite of the street porters of Covent Garden and Billingsgate markets. - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/03/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ee/whyguinnessislessirishthanyouthink#sthash.rbljngLV.dpuf

Reviewing the Storied History of Porter and Stout

Do events crowd together through the motivation of some kind of unrecognized collective motivation, or do they only seem to crowd together because we're magnetized to look for them? Two imperials stouts and a Baltic porter have just been released, and just yesterday, Finnish researchers announced they want to try to recreate a porter based on those found on a 200-year-old shipwreck. Coincidence?

In the next day or two, I'll have a look at the beers, but first, let's peruse the history of this style--certainly one of the three or four most important beers ever brewed.

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History of the Style
The exact date of porter's birth and the nature of the infant are lost to history. There's quite a bit of evidence that the "three-threads" theory is a case of bad history repeated for 200 years. Rather, like most styles, it appears likely that there was no birth, no infant, no single moment of inception. Like most inventions, it was an evolutionary process--a common brown beer that came to be called porter as it was refined and improved.

In the early part of the 18th century (until 1740, according to Cornell), it bore a very strong resemblance to gratzer. Made entirely of smoky brown malt, it was heavily hopped and not exactly tasty, according to early reports. In order to reach palatability, that smoke needed to dissipate, and so starting around 1740, brewers began to age it in wooden vats--at least months and often as long as two years. This iteration bore strong resemblance to oud bruin, for, predictably, those vats inoculated it with wild yeasts and bacteria. At a certain point, brewers realized that the inefficient brown malt (which was cheap) wasn't the value they imagined. To achieve the dark color, they developed "patent" malt--charred black--which they used to stain a grist of mostly pale malts. This was effectively the beer we'd recognize, but it took 100 years to develop.

Blending was another important feature of porter consumption. Especially as the recipe evolved, consumers began to appreciate a little liveliness in their beer. Publicans would therefore mix aged, still beer with young, effervescent beer, producing a pour that had elements of both. In Amber, Black and Gold, Cornell writes:

"In the pub, the casks containing this highly conditioned beer were known as 'high,' while casks containing maturer, less lively beer were known as 'low.' Publicans would fill glasses three-quarters full from the 'low cask' and then top them up with foaming beer from the 'high cask.' The 'high' and 'low' casks system was in use for Irish stout and porter until at least the 1960s."

Success of the Style
Pilsners and their more insipid descendants have conquered the world more spectacularly than any style in history. Yet light lagers weren't the first--porter was. (Or porter and stout--but let's leave aside the distinction for this post.) Prior to the industrial revolution, beer was necessarily a local product. It just wasn't possible to produce it for wide distribution. But porter arrived just as industry was beginning. Within a hundred years, breweries would be producing massive amounts of the stuff and storing it in vats so large (20 feet high) they sometimes burst, sending floods down the streets of London.

It was first sent to Ireland, where it was wildly successful (so much so that for long decades, Ireland was the only real producer of black ales to be found in the US). The trade continued to spread, making it to the New World, Russia, the Baltic states and Scandinavia. It was so popular Germans imitated it, and brewers across the globe started brewing it. Later it spread to Africa and the Caribbean. Extant examples of porter and stout still exist from Russia, Poland, and Australia. Despite the waxing and waning of other styles, the arrival of new immigrants, and the crushing success of light lagers, black ales have continued to be an international commodity. A remarkable success by any standard.

Imperial stouts and Baltic porters are the quintessential dark ale exports--and among the most popular styles among beer geeks. Of course, modern American imperial stouts and Baltic porters look quite different from the original beers shipped to the Tsars. Tomorrow I'll reflect a bit more on this change when I review Widmer's W '11 KGB Stout, Full Sail's Black Gold, and Lompoc's Batch 69 Baltic Porter.

The Death of BridgePort Stout

I learned last night that BridgePort plans to discontinue its venerable Black Strap Stout. In one way, I'm surprised it survived this long. When the brewery first released the beer something like a decade an a half ago, it tasted more like stout-tinged molasses. Trying to drink a whole bottle was a rugged test of will. Even when brewers dialed back the recipe, the molasses still contributed a distinctive note--and not one of my favorites. With so many stouts available, BridgePort's always got lost in the crowd--this odd duck at the end of BridgePort's line. Black Strap Stout was never a big seller, but it must have had a loyal audience to survive this long.

These things happen. Beers come and go. (And who knows--maybe the stout will enjoy a revival.) In any case, go grab a pint if you want to have a final taste before it passes this world.

Doc Alworth's Healthful Olde-Time Nutritional Stout Tonic and Flu Virus Remedy

A hundred years ago, milk stouts were regarded as nutritional. This was no doubt the function of a clever ad campaign by Mackeson, but it worked. Much like Americans now dose themselves with echinacea, in pre-war England they prescribed a glass of stout. I have attempted to revive the practice under the theory that if I'm going to get a placebo effect, it might as well come from stout.

In my basement is a slightly failed homebrew that strikes me, in my addled delirium, as something like a perfect health tonic. It's a stout of reasonable heft (export stout strength) with a couple ounces of Dagoba chocolate and one and a half chipotles. The failure came with the chipotles, which contributed WAY more fire than they were intended.* My goal was to extract almost no fire but a bit of the smoke. I wanted a stout with a flavor complexity drinkers would be hard pressed to identify; I ended up, more or less, unintentionally making Roots Habanero Stout.

But I may be onto something. Stouts, as we've established, are healthful. Chilis are loaded with Vitamins, B, C and carotene. They reduce pain, fight cancer, and lower cholesterol and insulin levels. And very recent findings show that theobromine in chocolate is more effective than codeine at relieving coughs (also tastier--but less fun). I believe two bottles of this beer might be more effective than a mug of echinecea or a slug of NyQuil.

I will test the hypothesis and complete this post on the morrow with my findings.

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The morrow.
One program note: I couldn't drink two beers, and the one hit me, as Sally sometimes says, like a mallet to the head. Today I awoke with a cheese grater lodged in my throat. The trajectory is downward, as precipitously as the economy's. Would the descent have been sharper still had I skipped the stout? Surely. This is damn little consolation.

Back to bed.

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*This is odd, because I was extremely conservative in my use. I purchased both the little black/red chipotles (morita), which are sweeter but less smoky, and the larger, spicier, smokier brown ones (tipico) I tested them out by steeping in water to determine quality and then decided to try one of each. I cut them in half, removed the seeds, and used only half the brown pepper. I prepped them by scorching in a skillet until the oils were roused, and then soaking in hot (not boiling) water for a half hour. Only then did I add them to the carboy just one day before bottling. Ah, the best laid plans.

Stouts Are Back

One of my favorite styles of beer is the humble stout, a style that seems to blink in an out of popularity. In the mid-80s, it was a cult beer, but attained prominence with the release of Obsidian. It was for some years the "extreme beer" on the scene, only to be supplanted in the new millennium by more glamorous extreme beers sporting the adjective "imperial." (Stouts, the ugly girl at the dance, kicking their toes in the corner, said, "but we were imperials first.")

But like women's shoulder pads and Duran Duran, what was out inevitably comes back in. I was at Belmont Station last night and basked in the selection of the venerable old black beer, ultimately selecting Ommegang's Chocolate Indulgence 10th Annivesary Ale ($13). I will confess that part of the lure of the stout is its narcotic effect. Some beers bring a gentle, cheery fizz to the back of my brain (in quantities of two); other, stronger beers a liquor-like slap across the cheek. Stouts confer a feeling like the sleepiness that comes after you've been out working in cold weather and have come in to a cozy, warm room. Ommegang's Indulgence, made with Belgian chocolate, scored high marks on this measure. A storm blowing in, and Sally and I settled into the fourth season of The Wire and goblets of chocolate stout.

(You could do better than Indulgence. The flavors are not quite as rich or articulated as I would like; the chocolate, hard to detect at cool temperatures, is a little bossy once the beer warms up. It would be a fine $5 beer, but thirteen? That raises the stakes pretty high.)

Anyway, cheers to stouts. There's still some time to lay in a few before the snows fly tonight.

Redhook Double Black

One can chart the change in craft brewing by harkening back to 1995, the year that Redhook introduced Double Black Stout, a joint venture with Starbucks resulting in an oily, aggressive, muscular beer. We were only a decade into craft brewing then, and big beers were rare, particularly so in the bottle. By the time Redhook discontinued Double Black in 2000, the big beer movement was well underway, making the decision all the more inexplicable.

Redhook has always mystified me a little bit. Unlike the breweries to the South, which seem to thrive on creativity and the churn of new products, Redhook has steadfastly stuck with a line of beers that has never been bold or distinctive. Their beers are of traditional styles, always brewed about 10% less aggressively (or 10% more blandly, take your pick) than the average for style. In short, they're not beers for the beer geek. Perhaps this is what happens when you go public (Nasdaq: HOOK) . The return of Double Black appears to signal a shift in that strategy; it's the first of the newly-minted "Limited Release" series (one can guess that the line will include big and/or experimental brews, akin to the similar 22-ounce series at Full Sail, Deschutes, and BridgePort). That's the good news. The bad news? Double Black is about 10% more bland than I had hoped for for a burly coffee-infused imperial stout.

Tasting Notes
To be sure, Double Black is a nice beer. I was surprised to see how bright it was pouring out--translucent at about a quarter of an inch, tinged with red. It was less viscous than I expected from an imperial, but sometimes coffee thins out body, so I held off judgment. The head frothed up like a nice skiff of latte foam, and I was somewhat reassured.

What I recall from the previous incarnation was intense, dry bitterness. The coffee was so strong it muscled the beer aside. I loved it, but I've been a coffee addict since I was 16. In terms of pure craft, it was out of balance. Not so with the current Starbucks-less incarnation. The coffee is a more minor note, pulling out the roasty notes of the malt. Unfortunately, the beer itself isn't bold. It's just 7%, and the body is thin. If you're going to undersize a beer, you better make sure it has some depth on the tongue. Some coffees have a delightful residual sweetness, mimicking fruit flavors. This beer has an almost strawberry note, and it's a perfect midpoint between malt and coffee (I'm not sure which element created it--maybe both?).

My final assessment is colored by expectations. The beer's a tasty little number, a sporty V-6 that is sprightly to the touch. Trouble is, I expected a muscle-bound V-8, with a deep roar and rumbling torque. I really wanted to be wowed by a tour-de-force. To switch metaphors, I came looking for the Dark Knight and I got Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It's a good beer, and a hopeful sign of things to come from Redhook. But is it too much to ask for the brewery to really get crazy?

Rating: B

Roots Winter Beers

I poked my head into Roots last night, where they were having a special on five--count 'em five--huge winter beers: Festivus, Imperial Stout, Epic Ale, a tripel, and a Wee Heavy. I decided to skip the entire flight (I needed to work today), but did check in on this year's Epic as well as the Imperial Stout. Quickie reax:

Epic Ale
To really reach its potential, this beer should probably never be served greener than a year old--which for a brewery is financially unviable. (You can, of course, by an $85 jeraboam, but at 3.3 liters, it presents its own problems.) Anyway, here are my notes: looks like viscous Coca Cola in its little serving goblet. Lacks much aroma--just a thick, barleywine malt faintness. It is rich with dark fruit and candied orange flavor, followed up by a sharp hop bitterness that keeps the beer from cloying. In a year, probably amazing; from the tap, an interesting, very intense ride.
Rating: Good.

Imperial Stout (nitro)
Exquisite. Ultra creamy and misleadingly delicate. A friend described it as an Irish type stout, and I thought he was just being dim. But it's true--the density and alcohol are lost in a froth of chocolatey creaminess. It does finish dry, and is more akin to a dry Irish than sweet stout, but bears no resemblance to an imperial. Never mind, it's amazing.
Rating: Good.

(Incidentally, I also had two mouthfuls of Festivus, which struck me as being a little out of balance and underwhelming. This isn't a reliable review, but you might try the tripel or Scottish first. After the stout, natch.)

The Abyss - Deschutes

When I saw John Foyston's article about Deschute's new "brewmaster's reserve" beer, I instantly went out and bought it. Deschutes almost never brews bad beer, and this one hit my stylistic sweet spot:

The Abyss is the second of the Deschutes Brewery's Reserve Series launched last year with oak-aged Mirror Mirror, which was based on a double Mirror Pond Ale. The Abyss is an imperial stout -- 11 percent alcohol -- aged in French oak and bourbon casks.

Well, I cracked a bottle last night, and I am sorry to report that it's a little green. "Little" as in Kansas has a little corn.

It may be that in a year the flavors will ultimately coalesce, but for now, it's an overly strong, harsh beer. Unlike the Storm King I reviewed last week, The Abyss is unpleasantly bitter and aggressive. Dark malts are alternately burnt and tannic, overwhelming the creamy body and subtler notes of bourbon and oak. Imagine unsweetened chocolate.

I will stow my bottles in the basement and let them age at least five years. It's not a sure bet, but my guess is that these flavors will change and produce an exceptional beer. If you are/were lucky enough to score a bottle, cellar it and check back in 2011.

Statistics
All the brewery tells us is the alcohol percentage and the method of aging. Everything else is up to your palate.

Available: Bottles: Belmont Station, Liquid Solutions, selected New Seasons. On tap: Concordia Ale House, Horse Brass, Oaks Bottom, the Mash Tun.

Rating
Average

All Hail the King

Among the macho style of beers--doppelbocks, stong ales, barleywines--perhaps the greatest (mucho macho?) is the imperial stout. This is partly due to its strength and profile (huge, oily, black), but also its history: as early as the late 1700s, British brewers were shipping it throughout the Baltic region and as far as Tsarist Russia, from whence came the name, Russian Imperial Stout.

Original gravities range from 1.075 and go up past 11, with alcohol from 9% and up. When you brew an imperial stout, you throw about everything you can think of in it, including more hops than even extreme hopheads think is a good idea--to balance the malt, you need electric amounts of alpha acids. For me, the most characteristic quality in a good imperial is the narcotic effect it gives, a warmth that radiates right into the hypothalmus. It induces a sense of wellbeing and an insensitivity to chill winds.

Based on my informal glances in pubs across Portland, Beervanians drink a lot of stout, and this is supported by my (highly scientific) sample of friends and acquantances--a few of whom only drink dark ales. So I was both interested and not particularly hopeful when I picked up a bottle of Victory Brewing's Storm King. Fantastic name, but what could a Pennsylvania brewery hope to offer a dark-hearted Webfoot?

Tasting Notes
The information about Storm King is scant (malt: "2-row barley," hops: "American"), but there seems to be something special in the beer. It pours out like motor oil and from its viscous surface rises the aroma of peat. It's a smoky, earthy smell, and I wondered if the brewery somehow managed to peat-smoke some malt.

I was shocked to discover that the lovely aroma actually understated the complexity of Storm King. It's the kind of beer you could swirl around in your mouth for five minutes just to suss out the different elements. Its central characteristic is a deep bitterness, at times like coffee or very dark chocolate, but other times like a nice scotch. That's the impression I finally took away from this beer, too--it had the kind of satisfying intensity of a peaty Islay malt. It was one of the most extraordinary beers I've had recently. I have generally considered Rasputin to be the standard of imperial stouts, but I'm afraid we have a new contender.

I'd love to see an Oregon brewer consider this Pennsylvania gauntlet and see if it can be matched.

Statistics
Hops: "American whole flower"
Malts: Two-row pale and ... ?
Alcohol by Volume: 9.1%
Original Gravity: Unknown
Bitterness Units: Unkown.
Available: Belmont Station.

Rating
A classic