Deschutes' Strange New Beer - Miss Spelt Hefeweizen

In what is surely the best pitches to a blogger I've seen, Deschutes recently sent out two unmarked bottles of beer along with this brief letter:

"We invite you to fill the difficult role of 'Deschutes Brewery Beer Tester.' We know it's a lot to ask, but we'd love to get your feedback on a beer that we've been experimenting with in our Bend and Portland pubs for the last several months.

"Currently named Miss Spelt Hefeweizen, this brew has been so popular in the pub locations that we've bottled up a small sampling to get some feedback from the professionals: YOU.

"We're not going to tell you much about it: we want yoru opinion, unsullied by our explanations. Please let us know what you think about Deschutes Brewery's take on this popular style of beer. We can't wait to hear back from you."

It is always a good move to laud the genius of your reviewer's palate before you serve her your beer. We feel quite clever that way, and predisposed to like the beer. So a bow of admiration to the brewery before we get into those opinions of mine they are so keen to hear. Gassho.

Tasting Notes
Thanks to the confounding Widmer Hef, you are never sure what to expect when you crack a bottle bearing that name. In the case of Miss Spelt, we are looking east, toward Bavaria. In these wheat beers, the process of fermentation produces various compounds, notably phenols and isoamyl acetate, that characterize the style. In other words, the banana and clove for which it is famous. (For more on how open fermentation, wide fermenters, ferulic acid and other factors help create these distinctive characteristics, I commend to you Stan Hieronymus' excellent Brewing With Wheat. Again.)

As for Miss Spelt, the Google tells us what the press release won't--that at least one previous batch was made with 40% spelt. This ancient grain is closely related to wheat, but contains less gluten and is more easily tolerated by folks (like me, actually) who have slight wheat intolerance. That reference I found also puts Miss Spelt at 28 IBUs and 5.3% alcohol. No doubt this is a slightly rejiggered recipe, but it's a decent jumping-off point.

I love German hefeweizens. The combination of phenols, esters, and a crisp, tart finish make them the unbeatable summer beer. On a hot day, nothing can compete. But spelt hefs? Let's say I'm so far not convinced.

Miss Spelt produces a rich, billowy head and has great effervescence. Right down to the end of the glass, it is animated by lively bubbles. The aroma is inviting, with light clove and a strong dose of bubblegum. I lunged in for a fair gulp, but was surprised by the strange texture and disorienting flavor. It's thin and sweet, and has a strange, yogurt-like/milky note. I say yogurt because there's a slight sour turn to it. The aftertaste drags on quite a long while, creating a thin, tinny flavor that lingers on the mouth a good minute after a swallow. As I said, hefeweizens should end with a dry, crisp note, but this is watery and lingering. I didn't need to go back for another pull because I was still sampling the last one--not ideal in a summer beer.

Reading through Stan's book, you get the sense that there's a huge amount of science going on with a simple wheat beer. The presence of ferulic acid, to which I alluded earlier, is critical in producing the appropriate flavor compounds. They're here, but other compounds are too, ones absent from other hefs. I presume shifting to such a large percentage of spelt messes with the chemistry, and this yogurt and tin stuff is the consequence. Deschutes claims the beer is quite popular in their pubs, and I have no reason to think they're polishing apples there. But it's not popular with me.

Pass me a Weihenstephaner instead.
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PHOTO: JOHN FOYSTON

PoMo's "New Masters"

In the current issue of the Portland Monthly, Christian DeBenedetti has an intriguing piece wherein he identifies "the five brewers poised to redefine Oregon’s Craft Beer Movement." The chosen? Cascade's Ron Gansberg, Hopworks' Christian Ettinger, Bend Brewing's Tonya Cornett, Ninkasi's Jamie Floyd, and Widmer's Ike Manchester.

Any piece that highlights the personalities behind the beers is a good piece, but I'm a little surprised by the choices. When you think of "redefining" a market, you think of breweries that are setting new courses either in terms of the beer they make or the way they affect the market. Gansberg is an obvious choice for redefining beer choices, and Ninkasi has demonstrated how to storm the market, Hopworks and Widmer--while they make fantastic beer--seem to be charting quite familiar courses. (To my great shame, I've never visited Bend Brewing, and the beers I've tried are the few that have made it west.)

If I were to offer a list, it would look something like this (as usual, I can't keep the list to five):

• Gansberg. The troubadour of sour is definitely trying to make inroads into hop central.
• Floyd. He's shown that you can build a 20,000-barrel brewery by dominating a local market and selling in 22s of uber-hopped ale.
• Alex Ganum, Upright. So far, this wee brewery is only making an impression among the beer geeks, but it has a chance to be the new millennium's Hair of the Dog--a brewery that challenges traditional views about what beer is, garners lots of press and awards, and slowly, slowly, begins to affect local tastes.
• Nick Azner, Block 15. Nick's beers aren't out of the mainstream like Ganum's and Gansberg's, but they raise the bar on what we consider good beer. He just recently completed a trip to Belgium, and it's likely that we'll see him charge out into new territory. I'll be watching to see if he creates Belgian-inspired beers that remain within the Northwest's palate or instead joins Alex and Ron.
• Jack Harris/Chris Nemlowill, Fort George. Much like Ninkasi, Fort George is trying to build a larger small brewery outside of Portland. They are expanding and adding a canning line, and it will be interesting to see if they build a regional power on the North Coast.
• Ted Sobel, Brewer's Union. At the moment, Ted sells almost all of his very small production to the good folks in remote Oakridge. But as the pied piper for cask ale, his influence could ultimately generate enough excitement to support a niche for authentic cask ale, something Oregon really hasn't embraced.

No doubt there are other good choices--Matt Swihart at Double Mountain, Caldera's Jim Mills, Oakshire's Matt Van Wyk, Larry Sidor and/or Cam O'Connor at Deschutes all spring to mind (though the latter two fall into the Ike Manchester category). If you'd written the article, who would you have chosen?

Enter the Dragon

Inspired by the lush aroma of the Sorachi Ace hops I used to brew with yesterday, I began to consider more and more fanciful names. I'm not sure if it was my brewing compatriot or me who came up with the name "Golden Dragon" as an homage to their Asian roots, but it stuck. Last night I found and reworked an old Chinese* fireworks wrapper and came up with this label, of which I'm most proud. The original image is here. I haven't been labeling my homebrews for a few years, but this will have to be an exception. Even if the beer's a dud, the label rocks. ( You have to click the image to read the smaller text.)

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*Yes, I am aware that Sorachi Ace hop was developed in Japan, not China, but you take what you can scavenge off the internets.

Deep Research

Time to take the Sorachi Ace hop around for a spin. Think I'll do a single-hop batch today and get familiar with the strain everyone's talking about.

Microhopic Micro Fest

Shout out to Angelo and Margaret, who along with Saraveza, are hosting the Microhopic beer fest. The virtue of this event is that it features four small breweries, three of which are quite new. I will hazard to predict that no one out there has tried all of these beers, so there's sure to be something new. Details:

Microhopic Beer Fest
Saturday June 19, 2010, 5pm
Saraveza, 1004 N. Killingsworth

On hand, will be the beers and the brewers who made them. These breweries will include Big Horse Brewing of Hood River and brewer Jason Kahler; Rivergate Brewing of N. Portland and brewer Brian Frisch; Mt. Tabor Brewing of SE Portland and brewer Eric Surface; and Ambacht Brewing of Hillsboro and brewer Tom Kramer.

Yelling at the Refs

In an email one time, a friend jokingly commented, "[Expletive deleted], what is it with you and beer?" Indeed, there are other matters to consider. To wit:

1. We was robbed.
In today's USA-Slovenia match, the US was caught by surprise in the first half and fell behind two goals to nil. The scrappy Yanks came roaring back, with two impressive goals in the second to tie it up. And then, on a free kick, they scored again! Except: the refs called a phantom foul. I'll put the video in here so you can see it for yourself, but on the many replays I saw, there was nothing to justify the call. No doubt FIFA will stand by their man. Update: Here's a very crude vid--I'll find something better soon:

2. They was robbed.
I hate the Los Angeles Lakers with the same unreasoning white-hot fire with which all true and good people burn, the same fire that crackles whenever we see Yankee pinstripes. They are a preening, self-absorbed bunch, from the "Zen master" coach (please) to the perpetually aggrieved star, Kobe Bryant.

Sometimes bad guys win, and the Lakers did last night. Unfortunately, the stink of referee interference hangs over that game, as well. Entering the fourth with a four-point lead, the Celtics were instantly hit with three consecutive ticky-tack fouls. To non-basketball fans, it's important to note that close fourth quarters feature hundreds of fouls. It's impossible to stop ten grown men from fouling each other when the game is on the line. So refs have to let a lot of it go by. And last night, they did: when the Lakers were fouling the Celts. When the Celts were fouling? Not so much:

Fans of the losing team always complain about the refs, but I do want to note a complaint from a Celtics loyalist about “how the refs inexplicably decided to call touch fouls on the Cs in the 4th qtr leading to 21 laker FTs. That’s on pace for 84 FTs for the game.”

Watching Pau Gasol begin flopping and howling even before he began his moves--and then get the call--was more than I could handle. It's why I so rarely watch professional games where the Blazers aren't playing.

3. Kobe and greatness.
Finally, there's a lot of talk about how Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest players of all time, and possibly only second to Jordan--or perhaps even better than Jordan. Let us dispense with this nonsense immediately. He is a prolific scorer, but not a great shooter. His 45.5% ranks well behind other greats like Bird (49.6%), Jordan (49.7%), LeBron (47.5%), and Magic Johnson (52.0%).

Further, while he has a decent stat line (25.3 points per game, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.7 assists), it pales compared to the others: Bird (24.3, 10, 6.3), Jordan (30.1, 6.2, 5.3), LeBron (27.8, 7.0, 7.0), and Magic (19.5, 7.2, 11.2). Yeah, he has won five championships, but as someone pointed out, Robert Horry won seven. No one's making the case Horry's number two.

Happy Friday!

FIFA's Shame, Ctd.

More details have emerged on Biergate, wherein FIFA has used the South African police and court system to enforce extremely strict bans against merchandizing. Two Dutch women have been charged with criminal violations for violating the Merchandise Marks Act. Their "crime" involved recruiting 34 blonde women in South Africa and dressing them in unmarked orange dresses--orange, of course, being the color of the Dutch team.

Yesterday two Dutch women who orchestrated the harmless 36-woman stunt at Soccer City were arrested in a raid on their hotel and dragged into a Johannesburg court where they were charged with breaches of the Merchandise Marks Act, and “Special Measures Regulations” introduced for the World Cup.

Staggeringly it seems the authorities here wanted to detain the women in jail, and only after intervention by their lawyers – and a call from the Dutch foreign minitry to South Africa’s ambassador in the Hague – were they granted bail.

Apparently the world can be divided into those who believe this is an actual violation and those who don't. Put me in Pete Brown's camp:

As the Bavaria spokesperson says, Fifa don't have a trade mark on the colour orange. This is an astonishing abuse of human rights - admittedly a trivial one in the context of South Africa's recent history, but still deeply disturbing, because it's all about protecting the commercial rights of a beer brand.

Brown calls for a boycott of A-B, which I'd happily join--except that I've been on a de facto boycott for about 20 years already.

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Photo: ACTION IMAGES

What Will Become of "Belgian Beer" if Belgium Divides?

Big things are happening in little Belgium. A country separated between the Flemish (or Dutch-speaking) North and French-speaking South, it has long been a divided nation. Now, for the first time, the separatist party has won a majority of seats in Parliament, leading to decent prospect that the already-wee country may break in half. No doubt there are many, nested issues here, but I wonder--is no one considering the beer?

Belgium may be a country divided by language--but zymurgically, it is distinctive. In the Flemish region, sour reds and browns of Flanders; in the French region, sour lambics. In the Flemish region, Trappist breweries (Westmalle, Westvleteren); in the French, Trappist breweries (Orval, Chimay). In the Flemish region, strong goldens (Huyghe, Moortgat); in the French, strong goldens (Du Bocq). No country produces more indigenous beers of greater diversity, and so certain styles are region-specific; still, it's hard not to argue that "Belgian," when applied to beer, means something.

Beyond the brasseries and brouwerijs, however, things are less coherent:

The southern region of Wallonia - poorer, with higher than average unemployment - is home to mostly French speakers, who make up about 40% of the population. The other 60% are Dutch speakers who live in the more prosperous Flemish north. To add confusion, the capital Brussels is officially a bilingual (but largely francophone) enclave in Flemish territory.

The linguistic gulf runs deep. There are no significant national political parties - they too follow the language split, so there are both francophone and Flemish versions of liberal, socialist, Christian democrat and green parties. Likewise, there are no national broadcasters, no national newspapers or magazines.

If the country breaks in half, how will we describe the beer? "Belgian" may become a politically-charged term--like "Bombay" in India--and beer fans will be caught wondering what to call their beer. Will we have to learn the location of every beer in order to know what to call it? Calling a Scot "English" instead of "British" is a grave insult; will our future be fraught with similar unwitting low country slights?

Not the most pressing concern for Belgians (or should I say Walloons and Flemish?) perhaps, but something about which beer aficionados may fret.

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.

FIFA's Shame

There's a pretty remarkable story coming out of South Africa this morning. A group of women wearing dresses provided by the Dutch beer company Bavaria were ejected from a game and now face criminal charges.

Official sponsor Budweiser is the only beer company allowed to advertise within Fifa venues and Fifa fiercely protects its lucrative marketing interests.

When the women refused to leave the stadium, they were forcibly removed by stewards and taken to a Fifa office where they claim they were interrogated for three hours and threatened with six month in prison.

There are a few interlocking issues here, and it's worth teasing them apart. One issue involves protecting sponsorship rights. This is the one thin reed on which FIFA and the South African government may hang their defense. Bud wants to protect not only the millions it spent but also the right to cash in on the publicity. Fair enough. But then we get into what appears to be pretty indefensible territory. For one, private citizens now face criminal charges, which does nothing to punish the offending beer company--if indeed it has violated any law. If the women aren't employees of the company (apparently they were recruited by Bavaria and given tickets to the game), this gets into sticky human rights territory. You can't protect a sponsorship right by punishing individuals who use clothing as speech. Imagine if a bunch of Oregonians showed up in World Cup Deschutes t-shirts. Should they face jail time?

Finally, Budweiser should be held to account.

Peer Swinkels, from Bavaria beer, said people “should have the right to wear what they want”. “The Dutch people are a little crazy about orange and we wear it on public holidays and events like the World Cup,” he said. "This time we put no branding on the dress. And Fifa don't have a monopoly over orange."

The now stateless multinational giant was once a proud American company, and Americans take enormous pride in the right of free expression. Someone from the Budweiser wing of AmBev needs to stand up and condemn FIFA and the South African government for trying to press forward with criminal charges. The women were taken out of the game, so Bud was protected. But threatening them with jail time for wearing skimpy beer-company-provided skirts? Un-American.

Heads Up

Those of you in Portland today take heed:

fhsteinbart Ken Grossman, the founder of @SierraNevadaCA will be here today with legendary beer writer Fred Eckhardt for an intimate Q&A at 3PM!

I will definitely be wandering down...


Update: From Chris in comments:

Ken and Fred are also appearing at the Horse Brass at 5pm for those who can't make it to Steinbart's. The post card I received mentions an "intimate celebration of beer and food", but is shy on details.

It doesn't mention anything about cover charges or tickets, so I assume it's open to everyone who can squeeze into the Brass...

American Lambics: Allagash Spontaneous and Jolly Pumpkin Lambicus Dexterius

The history of modern brewing can be described as the triumph of sanitation--keeping wild yeasts out of beer. The central achievements of the past 150 years do not involve flavor innovation but the mastery, through refrigeration, pasteurization, and the application of industrial chemicals, of yeast. The one way to ruin a good brewery was through lax standards and the introduction of infectious, unwanted yeasts. This is why the experiments at Allagash and Jolly Pumpkin are so remarkable. Not only are they not trying to keep wild yeasts out, they're actively encouraging them to wander in.

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to sample the lambic experiments* of these two breweries, and it was like witnessing a birth. This process is ancient, obscure, and onerous. To see it transplanted and revived in the US borders on miraculous.

Spontaneous fermentation is an ancient practice--yeast wasn't even discovered until the mid-1800s. By then breweries had more or less figured out that leaving inoculation to chance was unwise; they re-pitched by dumping dregs of one batch into the next. They effectively domesticated yeast without knowing it existed. Before that, they brewed a batch of wort and let it sit out. Some natural process unknown to the brewers--God perhaps, or magic--caused the liquid to ferment.

A few breweries still make beer this way, and until five years ago, they were all located in Belgium. These breweries have special facilities where they allow wort to cool, taking in the microflora from the countryside. The vessel in which the wort rests is called a "koelschip," and once the wort has spent a night there, it absorbs the final ingredients to turn it to beer. Brewers return the liquid to casks, where it sits for months or years, waiting while throngs of micro-organisms slowly turn the sugars into alcohol, acids, and other compounds (brief primer here) and create some of the most interesting beer in the world. Only a handful of traditional lambic breweries remain, and their annual production is like a rounding error for a larger brewery.

And yet Allagash and Jolly Pumpkin have taken up the old ways. Both have hewn to tradition, too: they use the appropriate amount of wheat in the grist (about a third), employ a turbid mash, use aged hops (to impart bacteria-inhibiting compounds but no bitterness), and both used a coolship. I visited Allagash in November 2008 and wrote about the brewing process here. Jolly Pumpkin's Ron Jeffries describes his process here. Given these similarities, the lambics we tried on Tuesday, including two Belgian examples, were differentiated principally by the wild, native buggies of the regions they were fermented: Maine, Michigan, and Belgium. And different they were!

The Allagash lambics are not commercially available. I begged and wheedled and managed to get brewer Jason Perkins to send me some samples. They almost certainly will be at some point--everyone was so impressed with their character and accomplishment I can't believe they won't get released. In some ways, lambics are more like wines than beer; they depend so much on factors beyond the brewer's control that vintages vary widely depending on when they were brewed. Some measure of consistency comes from blending, but what you mainly get from a lambic producer is a house character. Boon's is more lactic, Cantillon's drier. I suspect the general character we found in the Allagash beers will carry through on future vintages. The Jolly Pumpkin is commercially available, though you probably have to go to Ann Arbor to get a bottle.

The tasting notes are arranged in the order we tasted them. The tasting panel** consisted of Derek from Beer Around Town, his friend Josh Grgas, Sally, and Upright's Alex Ganum. My sense is that we generally shared similar experiences, though we related to the beers a little differently. I was very happy to have Alex on board--as a proxy brewer for Ron, Rob, or Jason, we couldn't have done a lot better. Geoff Phillips was kind enough to lend us a table at Bailey's to host the tasting, too. Here goes.

Jolly Pumpkin Lambicus Dexterius
A gueuze of lambics aged 4, 3 1/2 and 2 1/2 years. This was, by an order of magnitude, the most funky beer at the table. Bottled still, it poured out like apple juice. The nose was sharp and solventlike; imagine a bottle of nail polish. Sally, who is sensitive to oak, picked this up right away. Very dry, with a grape-skin pucker. As the beer sloshes around the mouth, it seems funky but not deadly; swallowing it, though, is like taking a hit of acetic acid from a chem lab beaker. Easily the most acidic beer I've ever tasted. We were all left a little shell-shocked afterward. My comment is that I hope the intensity can be adjusted through blending. Even for lambic freaks, this is likely a bridge too far. Sour-o-meter reading: 6.

Allagash Coolship Resurgam
A gueuze of 2-year, 18-month, and six-month lambic. A livelier beer, but not exactly effervescent. Right after we opened the bottle, I was picking up a sharp note in the sour nose that I think might have been butyric acid. With a moment of breathing, this vanished, leaving a peppery, lemony scent. It has a soft, dry palate that suggested wheat. I found it far less acidic--with the lemon, it was more on the tart side. We were all picking up a bit of hoppy bitterness on the palate, too. I know Allagash is in the process of aging their hops, but possibly they haven't been aged enough. (Though to tell you the truth, the mild hop bitterness did not clash with the beer--it was just less traditional.) My favorite gueuze is Frank Boon's, which is drier, sharper, and extremely effervescent. Allagash's is not yet as complex as that, but it is remarkable for a first draft, and makes me think it may one day ascend to that level. Given that it's a beer made with the wildest, untamed new world yeasts, I expected something a little more nasty--like the Jolly Pumpkin. Yet it was almost gentle. Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

Oud Beersel Gueuze
Typical for style, the Oud Beersel boasted champagne-like effervescence. I noticed a distinctive inner-tube aroma that could also be called skunk. A bit musty, cellarlike. The flavor, though, is much more approachable than either American example. It was the sweetest of the non-fruit lambics, but Alex was certain these were esters. We had a mini debate about whether it really was sweet or just tasted fruity. Alex brews with one of the driest yeasts available, so he should know; still, my tongue tells me what it tells me: sweet. The finish is light and refreshing. An uncomplicated gueuze--if such a thing exists. Sour-o-meter reading: 3.

Allagash Red
I assume it's the same recipe as the cherry blend (see below), but I haven't found confirmation; though the blend was definitely aged on raspberries for three months. Even in the bottle, you could see the vivid red of this beer. It was fairly effervescent, and easily the prettiest beer of the afternoon. Reminiscent of Cascade's Apricot, the aroma was saturated with fresh raspberries. Interestingly, their flavor was quite subtle. Instead, it was a drier, more tart and more refreshing version of their regular gueuze. The body was quite thin--too thin for some of the tasters. I sensed some disappointment around the table that, after the splash of color and rich aroma, the beer lacked the intense flavor of raspberries. I thought it was quite stylish, though--so flashy to see and smell, but then coy and reserved on the tongue. It was my favorite of the night. Until we cracked the cherry lambic.... Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

Allagash Cerise
A blend of 90% 2-year lambic with 10% six-month, then aged for three months with local Maine Montmorency tart cherries. Brewer Jason Perkins calls it "albino kriek," and it's easy to see why: the cherries give the beer almost no color. The nose carries a bit more cherry, but not a great deal. But then, in a mirror image of the Red, the flavor explodes with fruit. It pops with cherry--deep and peppery. The sour is softened a bit by the spiciness and pit bitterness of the fruit, but the cherry is softened by the lambic--its bright, fresh flavors smoothed and darkened. (There's a reason cherries are the go-to fruit with sour ales.) The body was a bit fuller than either of the other two Allagash beers. The table was unanimous in declaring this the afternoon's best beer. Sour-o-meter reading: 3.5.

Girardin Gueuze
We finished up the tasting with a visit back to Belgium. Like the Oud Beersel, Girardin's Gueuze was very lively, sending the cork up toward the ceiling. I was pleased to find the inner tube aroma again--an expression of Belgium's unique character. It was more lactic and more peppery than Oud Beersel, akin to a Berlinner Weisse in its sharpness and thin body. Not so much funky sourness, just a crisp, sharp, citric sourness. Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

It was a truly singular experience. I feel most indebted to Derek for sharing his Jolly Pumpkin, to Josh for sharing his Girardin, and to the folks at Allagash for sending me three precious bottles of their lambics.
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*The word "lambic" is somewhat fraught. The most exclusive definition limits its application, like a wine appellation, to the Zenne Valley in Belgium. I've also heard people call beers "lambics" if they use wild yeasts--even ones pitched from a Wyeast starter. In my mind, any brewery that is willing to subject a turbid-mashed wort to a night's fresh air and adds no other yeasts has brewed a lambic, full stop. I am prepared to risk Belgian terrorists who dispute this use.

**The tasting panel was supposed to be bigger and include more bloggers. We had several cancellations, and by the time of the tasting, we hadn't had enough time to get the word out to other bloggers. I regret that I wasn't able to share it with more of you.

The Six-Million Barrel Craft Brewery

Last week, Abby Goodnough reported that Boston Beer is attempting to redefine "craft brewery" to avoid getting hit with a tiny tax hike. The federal definition puts a cap at 2 million barrels, which Boston Beer will soon surpass. As a consequence, Jim Koch is scrambling to try to change the law:

But help may be on the way: Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, along with Senator Michael D. Crapo, Republican of Idaho, introduced a bill last month that would increase the yearly production limit for small brewers to six million barrels.

The bill would also cut the excise tax rate for small brewers to $3.50 per barrel, from $7, for the first 60,000 barrels produced, and to $16, from $18, for each additional barrel. A similar House bill has several dozen sponsors. The Brewers Association created a distinct definition for craft brewers, said Bob Pease, its chief operating officer, to differentiate small companies from big ones that were also marketing certain beers as craft.

First, the basics. For any brewery producing less than two million barrels, the taxes break out like this: $7 on the first 60,000 barrels, and then $18 a barrel thereafter. Once a brewery hits the 2 million barrel mark, all barrels are taxed at $18. But hey, you gotta draw the line somewhere. Two million barrels is a huge number. For perspective, keep in mind that all the other 1600 craft breweries combined only produce 7 million barrels to Boston Beer's two. By no definition is Boston Beer small.

And by my calculation, Boston Beer would only paying $660,000 a year more under the current rule (out of a tax burden of $36 million) when no longer classed as a craft brewery.

When they hit the 2-million-barrel mark, Boston beer would have to pay the feds $36 million. But if they only brewed 1,999,999 barrels and were still classed as a craft brewery, they'd pay $35.34 million. So it doesn't seem like a catastrophic hit. What it looks like instead is that Boston Beer is trying to use the milestone to roll back taxes in a more substantial fashion. Under the scheme Koch proposes, his tab would decline from $36 million to $31 million when brewing 2m a year. You know the old saying, a million here and a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

I would be in favor of the proposal to lower taxes on craft breweries, but I see no reason to create a law that would give Boston Beer a tax advantage until they grow to three times their present size. The idea is to encourage small craft breweries. Once you hit two million barrels, you ain't small no more. Take it on the chin, Jim, and pay Uncle Sam the full tab. You can afford it.

Is Sour the New Hoppy?

Hang around a good taproom long enough, and eventually you'll hear someone observe that "sour is the new hoppy." Indeed, in a market characterized by novelty and trends, sour is having its moment. Sour ales are getting quite a bit of press and have lately been named to quite a few "best of" lists. Breweries like Jolly Pumpkin, Allagash, Russian River, and Cascade all have been feted for their exotic sour beers.

So let's grant that sours have achieved "trend" status--does it follow that they're the new hoppy? It's hard to see how. Hoppy beers aren't a trend, they're the dominant player. As a useful snapshot, I just had a gander at the taplists for Bailey's and Belmont Station. Three of Bailey's twenty taps are sour beers, and one of Belmont's sixteen. I'd guess that's about usual--in the finer taprooms around the city, maybe ten percent of the pours are sour. Compare that to the seven taps at Belmont and six at Bailey's--over a third. And all of this is looking at taprooms, where diversity is a goal.

Sours are just a trend. A better analogy would be to say that sours are the new witbier. Or red ale. Or ESB. All of these styles had moments, but now have settled back down to proportional representation. Sours have achieved a level of appreciation that will allow them--I hope!--to maintain commercial viability, but it will be a snowy day in Bombay before we see a third of a pub's tap space regularly devoted to them.

Hoppy beers, on the other hand, are here to stay. Up and down the West Coast, but particularly in the Northwest, hops have become the dominant regional characteristic. Whenever the topic comes up, I point to Double Mountain as an illustration. When they first opened their doors three years ago, Matt Swihart and Charlie Devereux seemed keen to offer a broad range of beers. But now, with the addition of Vaporizer, they have three (!) IPAs in their regular line-up.

While this drives some people crazy, it's actually a good thing. Regions that manage to establish robust beer culture do it on the backs of a relatively narrow range of beers. In England, they don't sell a lot of saisons or bocks. In Belgium, cask milds and hefeweizens aren't common. And in Germany, you won't find a lot of taps devoted to tripels and barleywines. (There's the matter of the popularity of industrial light lagers, but that's a different post.)

The maturation of the American market will inevitably mean a self-selection of a portfolio of styles. In the Northwest, the process is well underway. Lagers don't sell well here. Belgian styles seem to have a pretty low ceiling. Ales, hoppy, strong, and/or dark--that's how locals like beer. But we also appear to have an appetite for variety, and so we are constantly on the hunt for the next new thing. Double Mountain, for instance, still sells a fanciful seasonal sour kriek. It isn't the new hoppy--Hop Lava doesn't sweat the arrival of Devil's Kriek--but there are enough of us who like novelty that we'll happily line up for a new experiment.

A Note From the Road

After a long day with convelescing dad, I'm back at the Boise Red Lion. Just went down to the bar for a couple bottles of beer, and of my ten or so choices, the only non-macro was Guinness (if you consider that a non-macro). Such is my opinion of regular Guinness (as opposed to Extra Stout), that I nostalgically went for Rolling Rock instead.

(To their credit, the bar did have Widmer on tap.)

Reviewing Beer: Describing

Describing food and beverages is brutal business. It makes the tasting and assessing look like child's play by comparison. Every beer drinker knows why this is. Try to describe a beer to a friend. The conversation goes something like this:

"Tried the new Hopworks strong ale?"

"No, what's it taste like?"

"It's pretty hoppy, citrusy. It's boozy. It's good."

If the friend trusts your palate, he may try the beer, but he certainly has no idea what to expect. Language often fails us when we're trying to communicate the experience of certain flavors and tastes. We have to come at it sideways, by simile, or are reduced to using bland, general terms. Everyone who has written more than a few reviews has written bad ones. Sometimes we just can't find the words. But those of us who have read Michael Jackson know it can be done. I'm not sure how other reviewers do it, but when I pull off a good review, this is how I do it.

Specificity
It's easy to fall back onto vague adjectives. Here's what I wrote about MacTarnahan's Grifter: "It has that characteristic MacTarnahan's clarity, the light fruitiness, and the gentle, unassuming hopping." This could describe half the beers on the market right now. Not so hot. Now, here's Double Mountain Kolsch: "They have overhopped it for style, but selected hops that draw out a lemongrass note, complementing the tartness." In the Grifter review, my adjectives are too general, and don't communicate anything that would help the reader imagine the experience. The Kolsch sentence is better--adjectives like "lemongrass" and "tartness" tell a fuller story.

It is a fascinating quirk of the English language that most of the adjectives we use to describe flavors and aromas are other flavors and aromas. We say a beer is "nutty" or "piney." Well, how else can you describe something that smell of pine? Although I don't often hit the mark, it is possible to do better. Rather than just say "nutty" and leave it at that, why not get a little closer with "roast almonds," say, or "hazelnuts." Wine reviews have given a bad name to this kind of specificity. So often useless and pretentious (I saw a pinot gris described as "linen"), they are mock-ready. But, going back to the tasting section, if I had the presence of mind to investigate the "nutty" malt, perhaps I saw something that would take it out of the bland and uninformative and give it a more vibrant clarity.

Evocative
In India, there's a theory of art known as rasa, which is the mood of a piece. Music is grouped by rasa--romantic, melancholy, joyful, etc. Many beer reviewers don't like to evoke a sense of the feeling of drinking a beer--perhaps they feel this is an ornamentation that intrudes rather than clarifies--but I think it's useful. Beer, like haiku, is associated with season; this is one dimension. In the toolkit of the reviewer, we find only words. The more evocative ones, that help point to the experience of drinking a beer, I find most useful. I was pretty happy with my description of Duvel, a beer that inspires me:

The instructions on the bottle say "pour unhurredly," but unless you've got a large glass, you can't pour slowly enough to stop the massive head from rushing to the rim. You pour in increments, steadily building the pure white froth up like a vanilla cone. The beer is pilsner pale (made in fact with pilsner malt) and roils with bubbles. Still, it's not at all viscous, evidence of ample added sugar that gives the Devil its juice.

Avoid Beerspeak Wherever Possible
Perhaps most controversially, I hate the language of the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) which has come to dominate beer reviews. It goes like this:

Flavor: Moderate to high hop flavor from American hop varieties, which often but not always has a citrusy quality. Malt flavors are moderate to strong, and usually show an initial malty sweetness followed by a moderate caramel flavor (and sometimes other character malts in lesser amounts). Malt and hop bitterness are usually balanced and mutually supportive. Fruity esters can be moderate to none. Caramel sweetness and hop flavor/bitterness can linger somewhat into the medium to full finish. No diacetyl.

These technical outlines may be useful in trying to determine whether a beer has been brewed to a style or not, but they violate the two earlier rules. Brewers like them because they map to methods and ingredients familiar to him. But I don't write beer reviews for brewers. For a non brewer, this language is useless. It may tell what's in a beer and how it's brewed, but not what makes it distinct from other examples or whether it's any good or not. I don't like to read reviews written in beerspeak, and I try to avoid them.

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So there you have it. If I manage to write a successful review, what appears on the page will have been the result of a careful tasting, reflective assessment, and evocative, specific descriptions. I hope readers walk away with a good sense the beer's context, style, and brewing process as well as my experience of drinking the beer--and clues to how their own experience may differ. I probably succeed half the time or less. (You be the judge.) Beer writers are a minor player in the ecosystem of brewing, but I like to think we can be useful. The world of beer unfolded for me by virtue of reading Jackson as I started drinking micros. Without his research and descriptions, I would have spent a lot longer wandering the wilderness. So, with luck, we bloggers and beer writers do contribute something.

Thanks to blogs and the ratings sites, many of you also review lots of beers. Feel free to throw in your two cents in comments.

World (Cup) of Beers: North Korea

Although the Beeronomist has most of our soccer- football-related posts taken care of, I will remind you that most of the participating countries brew their own beer. (Discussion topic: what is more ubiquitous, soccer or beer?) Even North Korea:



Goooalll! (Or maybe not.)

Reviewing Beer: Assessing

On the way to a review, the reviewer (or this one, anyway) has to not only taste a beer, but assess it. Assessing a beer is a process that involves drawing information number of external sources and synthesizing everything to try to give meaning to your review.

What Were They Shooting For?
I don't know where I read it, but someone once recounted the story that Michael Jackson used to ask breweries, "What were you shooting for with this beer?" This is important, because a commercial brewery won't necessarily be trying to brew to style. If I don't have the brewer handy to consult, I start by reading what the brewery says about it. The virtues of the internet age--something MJ didn't have. Knowing what the brewery was trying to accomplish makes it a lot easier to assess how well they did.

What Ingredients and Methods Were Used?
I generally try to taste a beer with as little information as possible. It's nice to see what you can pick up from your senses alone. But afterward, it's critical to find out how a beer was brewed and what ingredients were used. I may well pick up a lot of information in the tasting, but the details are important. Bourbon-barrel aging is usually obvious, to take one example, but it's useful to also know how much of the final product had been barrel-aged and for how long. Most breweries do something interesting to their beer, and a reviewer must have that info.

What Else is Out There?
I suppose if you were judging a beer in competition, it would be possible to ignore the larger landscape. I had the very good fortune to sample three of Allagash's spontaneously-fermented beers on Tuesday (a gueuze, kriek, and framboise). It would have been inconceivable to try to write about these beers without reference to the Belgian inspirations. Regional variation can be important--is the IPA brewed to the West Coast style, or a more general American style? Or is it an English IPA? This is useful not just for the reviewer, but for the reader. It also helps establish my bias. To use the IPA example, if I were to write dismissively about "Colorado IPAs" (which I would never, ever do), you could judge my bias accordingly.

Did it Work?
Once I have gathered together this information, I think back to the tasting and ask whether the whole thing came together or not. Every time a brewery makes a new beer, their goal is the same: excellence. No one brews a beer thinking, "You know, I think that just may be adequate." But only a few new releases ever actually achieve greatness. I look back at the goal, the ingredients and methods, and other similar beers and make a judgment about how well the beer succeeded. In my mind, I hope that after I've shown all my work, a brewery will admit, happily or grudgingly, that I've made a reasonable assessment.

Did I like It?
My own opinion about the beer is easily the least important assessment, but I think readers deserve to know. For what it's worth, only about half the time is my own opinion about a beer consistent with my assessment of it. Like anyone, I have my preferences.

Tomorrow: Describing the beer.

Reviewing Beer: Tasting

Last week I tossed off a little post called "Woe is the Reviewer" that highlighted the difficulties in reviewing beer. In tossing it off, I missed an opportunity to go a bit deeper, though. Reviewing a beer is a unique exercise--different than tasting it on one's own or judging it for a competition. A review is a communication that depends on a series of assumptions. When you review a beer, you are taking into account more than just the elements of style. You're trying to figure out where the beer fits in the context of the market--how does it compare to other beers; what does it add to the public conversation; what will people used to drinking other similar beers think? Many reviewers opt for the homebrew-judge model, or a purely descriptive one, but when I read reviews, I like a little more context. So that's how I do reviews.

To come up with a review I think will be useful and informative, I go through three stages, and I'll take these in turn over the next three days: tasting the beer, assessing the beer, and finally describing it. Let's start with the tasting.

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Look at the Beer
Your eyes can tell you a lot. If you pour a beer from a bottle, you can see its viscosity as it comes out, its level of carbonation, and whether or not yeast dribbles out at the end. These are useful clues. A thick, gloppy beer is one with lots of residual sugars. Carbonation levels may be a clue to style or brewing method. Does a head come easily or do I have to pour quickly to rouse one? The yeast indicates bottle-conditioning, which doesn't say a lot about the beer, but is better at preserving it. (If I don't see any, I look in the bottom of the bottle to see if there's any residue).

It's a bit more difficult if you get a draft pour, but you may see some clues in the head. Nitro heads produce bubbles so small the head is like cream (think Guinness). Cask heads are often quite flat, and you may even see just a skiff of largish bubbles. A flat cask pour may mean we're past the expiration date--or just that it's not really fizzy. Some cask pours use a "sparkler" which gives a nitro-like head, which can be confusing.

Of course, there are obvious facts about how a beer looks. Color will give you clues about the malts. Some beers are brewed to be pretty, and it's nice to pause a moment and appreciate. But there's a lot more information than color. Clarity is a big one. Haze could come from hops, proteins, or yeast (and the nature of the haze could be a clue to which). If a beer is especially clear, that's also telling, too. In some cases, breweries filter out any large molecules, leaving their beer very bright but often with less flavor-imparting floaties.

I keep looking as I'm drinking the beer. I swirl and watch the head structure. Does it stick around or vanish? I look to see how light refracts though the glass as the level goes down. I see if it remains effervescent--does it hold a bead? My eyes may lie to me, but that doesn't mean I don't use them. I can put meaning to my observations later.

Feel the Beer
One thing I hate is overly cold beer--and mostly draft beer is overly cold. To combat this, I try to warm my pint up with my hands. I usually am able to get it toasty by the time I reach the bottom of the glass--60 degrees or higher. This isn't ideal for many styles, but looking, sniffing, and tasting as a beer warms can tell me a lot about what's in it. Even over-warm, I'm getting interesting data.

Smell the Beer
For me, the most important part of the process is smelling. Human taste is dictated largely by what we take in through our nose. Plug your nostrils or sample beer with a bad head cold, and you can't really taste it. I've found that if I stop to really sniff and snort the aroma of a beer (provided it isn't too cold), it will help guide me to flavors when I taste it. Very often, the clues I pick up in the nose tell me what to look for in the flavor. In particular, I run through an inventory and try to assess each of these dimensions:

• Hops. Hops contribute all kinds of aromatics, and later, when I taste the beer, the aroma will tell me something about when they were added. I'm getting fairly adept at identifying hops, so I sniff to see what kind they seem to be. To the extent possible, I try to differentiate the various compounds--the citrus, pine, spice, flower, and so on.
  
• Malt. Malts and grain offer more subtle smells than hops, but they are generally evident. Again, sniffing to see if I can find nuts or toast or tobacco or coffee can be useful later on.
  
• Alcohol. Alcohol isn't an aroma so much as a chemical property--it vents off a beer with a sharp, umm, alcoholic quality. (This is an example of the difficulty of description, which we'll discuss in more detail in part three.)
  
• Yeast. Are you about to taste a Belgian dubbel, a NW amber, or an Oktoberfest? Sometimes your nose can tell you what your eyes can't. When a yeast is lagered cold, it produces low amounts of chemical compounds. But the warmer the fermentation temperature, the more esters, phenols, and "character" yeasts produce. In Bavarian weizens, a chemical called isoamyl acetate makes a banana flavor--a dead giveaway. Phenols are peppery or clovey. And esters can be fruity or spicy. Of course, soured beer has lots of different characteristics, and a "barnyard" aroma suggests one kind while a vinegar aroma suggests another.
  
• Off-aromas. Mostly these should be absent in commercial beer, and identifying them is hard if you don't brew. Guides are suggestive, but I didn't understand them until I'd screwed up a batch of my own.
  
• Adjuncts. Not all adjuncts can be smelled, and some can only be smelled. But if you think you're getting a blackberry note, take heed--it could be blackberry.
  

Again, I continue to smell the beer as I drink it, particularly if it starts out cold. Alternating between smelling and tasting as a beer warms can continue to inform you. (And the truth is, I often can't really get a sense of a beer's character if I don't have a full pint and sample it slowly as it warms.)

Taste the Beer
Finally we come to the tasting. And with me, it is honestly a "finally"--I may spend a couple minutes or more inspecting and sniffing. Because of that, tasting is in some ways the easiest part. If you swish a beer around aggressively in your mouth, it gives you a better sense of mouthfeel and causes vapors to go up your nose. I do that and usually follow the first sip up quickly with another one to give the flavors a chance to build.

With any luck, I've picked up some of the signals that guide me along my tasting. This can also be a moment of surprise; sometimes scents or sights mislead. Maybe the lush hop aroma disguises a low-bitterness beer. Or maybe a very bitter beer failed to exhibit much nose. Some qualities, like those given by yeast, are more perceptible on the tongue than nose. Essentially, though, I'm going through the same process, tasting for identifiable qualities.

After all of that, I begin to have confidence in what I've tasted. It's a slow process, but something about having hundreds (thousands?) of people reading what I observed makes me strive for accuracy. Of course, even with that, I sometimes miss things. But this process seems to work pretty well.

Tomorrow: Assessing.

Expanding the Definition of Beervana

BridgePort has two new videos out (they're called TV spots, but about where they're airing, and when, I can't say) that are very close to each other. Here's the second one--see if you notice anything interesting.



I'm actually pretty cool with an expanded definition of "Beervana." I know it properly refers to just the city of Portland. I'm also cool with that. But if you look at regional culture, the Pacific Northwest constitutes a single zone. Portland and Seattle have far more in common than they have in contrast.

Now, about that video. The visuals are cool and the music is tolerable (though not ideal). The voice-over? Not good. One has the sense that BridgePort's trying to hard--way too hard. Too bad they didn't just trust the images. They tell the whole story on their own. A longer and better version--with two seconds of pretty racy material--is here.

Damn Rain

I just checked, and Portland, Oregon has received 7 inches of rain since May 15, and three inches in the past week. If that doesn't drive you to drink, what will? No wonder this is Beervana--what else to do but sit in a pub and watch the sheets of water hammer down?

Don't Call Them Beers

A number of folks were linking to an interesting article about the current arms race to make the strongest eisbock. As recently as 2007, Boston Beer's Utopias had the record for alcohol strength at 27%, but beginning last year, two breweries struggled to best each other, pushing the record all the way up to 43%. The principal competitors are Scotland's BrewDog and Germany's Schorschbräu. Apparently the ultimate goal is 50%--well above the typical alcohol percentage of a bottle of liquor.

The article, which does a nice job charting the history of strong beer, is intriguing--but the arms race less so. The road to a 43% beer involves a kind of distillation, not brewing. In brewing, alcohol is produced by yeast; it's actually yeast's excrement, a chemical byproduct of the conversion of sugars. At high enough levels, alcohol becomes toxic to yeast, so there's a natural ceiling for the amount of alcohol you can get through normal fermentation.

The process of making eisbock--which is what all these super-strong beers are--involves dropping a beer to a temperature below the freezing point of water but above the freezing point of alcohol. What results is a half-frozen cask. Remove the ice and you've taken just water, leaving more concentrated liquor behind. (Normal distillation involves heating liquid to separate compounds--but this violence would damage beer in a way freezing can't.) In order to get beer as strong as liquor, you have to refreeze a batch over and over again. Here's Georg Tscheuschner, the record-holding brewer at Schorschbräu:

“To create the 43% beer, I had to filter around 15 times”, said Tscheuschner. “I actually lost count, but I think it was 15 times. You end up with only 50 litres from the 800-1000 liters that you started with. You need to do a lot more filtering to get a beer from 32% to 43% alcohol because whereas in the first filtering (of the ice), you might add say 5 or six percent ABV, but towards the end of the filtering process, it's maybe even less than 1% additional ABV for each filter. Towards the end it becomes very difficult.”

I don't have any problem with eisbocks, but their increasing popularity means we're hearing more and more about 80-proof "beers." These aren't beers. Scotch begins with an unhopped beer and goes through distillation; we call it whisky. When beer is subjected to freeze distillation and is transformed into a liquor of 43% alcohol, it's not beer anymore. Too bad the term "malt liquor" has already been used. Beer liquor? I don't know; just don't call them beers.

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GRAPHIC: GIZMAG

Friday News Roundup

Note: post has been corrected.

Lots of tidbits of news lately, and I've packaged them up in today's digestible roundup. Here we go.

Washington Beer Tax
In order to help patch a gaping budgetary hole, the Evergreen State legislature hiked excise taxes on big breweries. Both Washington Beer Blog and Seattle Beer News report. This a significant development because Oregon will inevitably take up a beer tax next year, and Washington's effort will probably serve as a model. Thumbnail recap: it raises taxes to by $15 to $23.58 a barrel for any brewery selling 60k barrels a year in Washington and on all beers of over 10% abv. For small breweries and their sub-10% beers, no change.

Produce Row Reboot
Not every event warrants a mention, but new owners of Produce Row have earned one. This is one of the most important pubs in Portland history, a critical building block in establishing the pub culture that would evolve into Beervana. I haven't been there in years, which is probably typical. Next Friday is the kick-off, and if you don't make it for that, try, as I will, to stop in for a beer in the near future. There will be a bit of synergy soon as Hair of the Dog opens nearby. The old Fruit District is getting some life.

Foursquare
Brady has a post up about how BridgePort used the social networking site Foursquare to promote a pub crawl by the Hop Czar (who has apparently taken corporeal form as some kind of Burger King-like mascot). Foursquare? Yet another social networking site that seems almost wholly devoted to getting people to note their every move so ... actually, I have no idea. It seems horrible and appalling. But Brady makes the case that breweries may well find use for it, and I think he has a point. (I hope not, though--I'm getting social media-ed out.) But anyway, consider yourselves apprised of the phenomenon.

Beer Blogger's Conference
The first annual beer bloggers conference has been set for November 5th in Denver (of course). If you are now are will be a blogger, details here.

Weekend Best Bets
It's been a long time since I've mentioned eye-grabbing beers going into the weekend, but here's a few. At Bailey's Terminal Gravity's Cascadian Dark Ale (collect the whole set!), Eric's Peach Ale, a Lips of Faith series from New Belgium at Belmont Station, Molten Lava by Double Mountain, which I hope is still on tap at the Horse Brass. As always, taps change, so drinker beware.

I leave you with random photos snapped on a stroll yesterday during the brief window between the incessant, maddening rain.

Migration, We Have a Problem

Migration Brewing is a relatively short walk from my house. (Short walks now being defined by the literal stone's throw distance separating myself and soon-to-open Coalition.) As such, it was a very welcome arrival. When they opened, they hadn't gotten their own beers up and running, so I waited until they had a pale on tap. It was ... not good. No worries; it had been brewed at Lompoc, and I figured, let them get their own system going before making hasty judgments.

The good news abounded. The food was tasty, the space is fantastic, and the other taps were occupied by an extremely well-selected (if small) group of beers. If the dismal weather ever ceases, they're going to have wonderful seating--lots of picnic tables out front, and a garage door on one wall that will turn the inside out. All of that still stands.

But last night I went and had another pint and it was ... worse. They're currently pouring two beers, that pale and the one I tried, promisingly called Little Bitter. Rather than go in whole hog, Sally and I tentatively ordered the bitter and an Upright Four (which distressingly makes rarer and rarer appearances as other Upright beers supplant it). Good call. The Little Bitter was literally undrinkable. From a good six inches away, my nose picked up the diacetyl, but the really appalling thing was the strange, lacerating bitterness. I want to say it was a tannic bitterness, but that's not quite right. More like some kind of weed extraction. Looking at the website now, the stats suggest it would be painfully, undrinkably bitter (75 IBUs in a 4.5% beer), but this was beyond hop bitterness.

I note no other bloggers have actually commented on the beer, which I take to be the silence of kindness. I'm not interested in marking Migration with a scarlet letter, either, so consider this an intervention. Migration, I have confidence you can brew good beer, but you need to get on the stick. In Beervana, bad beer is a death sentence, and I want you around the neighborhood for a good, long time.

This CDA Thing Appears to Have Legs

For weeks now I've opened my fridge and looked at the bottle of Deschutes Hop in the Dark, a beer they proudly tout as Cascadian Dark Ale (CDA). For weeks, I've said, "maybe later." Last night, I said, "oh, all right."

My relationship with the style is not wildly positive (see here and here), which is a shame for someone as baldly parochial as I. And it's not for lack of trying--I do want to like the CDAs. The clash of flavors, roast and hop bite, have heretofore been too much to overcome, however, so I regard them with the reviewer's eye, never enjoying them with the drinker's tongue.

I have to confess: Hop in the Dark isn't quite as far outside my wheelhouse as I expected. According to the website, it took Larry Sidor and Cam O'Connor 22 batches to perfect the recipe. (That's one of the reasons I think breweries need to get the yeast for Cheers to Belgian Beers as soon as possible--but let's not get off into the weeds.) One stroke of brilliance is oats, which gives the beer an impressive creaminess. You'd think this would further confuse matters for an already schizophrenic style, but it actually helps bridge the gap between coffee bitterness of the darker malts and hop bite. Like a friend who tries to smooth things over between adversaries.

Deschutes also decided to just go for it with the hops; they're a nuclear 75 BUs, and taste every inch of it. Generally CDAs try to find the balance point (which is like finding a balance between orange juice and toothpaste), but not Hop in the Dark. It's a hop bomb. One other thing I've finally tumbled to: somehow the combination of lots of hops and noticeable roasty malt creates the impression of pine. And not mildly. I have previously believed this to be a function of hops, but with Cascade, Citra, and Centennial, the pine clearly comes from elsewhere. My guess is that two compounds--one from malt, one from hop--conspire to fool the tongue. (Sally detects it only if I prod.)

I can't really judge these things on the "good" to "bad" scale, but I can say I would drink another pint if offered one. For me, that's saying something. No doubt the brewery will hasten to add that to their promotional materials.

Sucks to Be Macro (English Edition)

A rather nice piece by MSNBC about the growth of micros across the pond. There, the attendant form is cask. (Sigh.) But for the macros, it's even worse. Have a look:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sucks to Be Macro

"I've never seen so much red ink on a spreadsheet in all my years in this business. It's really disconcerting."
~Harry Schuhmacher, publisher of Beer Business Daily

This is a stat no one in the macro trade can regard without a measure of palsy: only four of the top 30 tin can beers saw sales rise in the most recent month. The big three, Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite all tanked.

Industry shipments are down 4%, according to the Beer Institute. Several factors play into the trend, key among them the recession. MillerCoors Chief Marketing Officer Andy England said that unemployment remains particularly pronounced among the 21- to 35-year-old men who are the primary targets of beer companies, and also among Hispanics, another key segment. In many cases, they're opting for cheaper brews, or saving their consumption for a special occasion by splurging on craft-style beers. As a result, the "premium" lights are being squeezed by moves in both directions.

A few facts about which I was unaware:

• Bud Light accounts fro 40% of A-B shipments, and was down 5.3% for the year;
• Coors Light and Miller Lite account for half of MillerCoors' business, and while Coors Light is just flatlining, Miller Lite is down 7.5%;
• Bud Light Golden Wheat is a bust.

Of course, the bigs aren't taking this lying down. No sir, they've got big plans. Take, for instance, Miller's counter-offensive:




How can Oregon's brewers possibly compete with that level of brewing innovation?

Book Review: Brewing With Wheat

Brewing With Wheat
Stan Hieronymus
Brewers Publications, $17.95

The books in Brewers Publications' back list form a rich trove of information for those who choose to dig in. BP has hit on a successful formula that combines history, style exploration, and brewing tips on a given topic--pretty dense stuff that won't appeal to everyone. But for those to whom they are aimed--pure manna. The latest is Stan Hieronymus's Brewing With Wheat, and for beer geeks of a certain temperament--like me--it should be considered a must-read.

It's not a brewing manual, a point Stan is quick to note at the start--but in some ways, it's more valuable because of the historical information. Stan digs deeply into the background of wheat brewing (which was once more common than it is now) and this provides a wonderful context for his discussion of styles later on. I was fascinated to read about grain rivalries and how this affected brewing. (The wheat-eaters claimed highest status; rye-eaters looked down on oat-eaters.) Taxes, bans, consumer preference--all these played a role in the waxing and waning of wheat's popularity among brewers.

The table set, Stan begins loading it with full glasses--Belgian wits, goses, weizens, deceased styles and emerging ones (the Widmers get a section). These are fascinating and so full of info that I can't imagine most readers not finding buckets of new info. Like:

• The various forms of witbier that existed before WWI (they looked markedly different from the beer Pierre Celis revived in the sixties).
• How the shape of a fermenter--and whether it has a lid--affects the production of isoamyl acetate and 4-vinyl guaiacol in hefeweizen.
• What 4-vinyl guaiacol is.
• How to give gose the thing that makes it swing.

Stan traveled around quite a bit doing research (poor bastard), and the information is parted out through interesting anecdotes from brewing characters he found in a Brussels apartment, a Bavarian village he identifies as Petting/Schonram (where the Weihenstephan-educated brewer is from Wyoming), Portland, Maine, and someplace called Pacific City, Oregon--among quite a few others.

I was inspired enough by the book that when I brewed a spring pale ale, I used 33% wheat. It was designed to be just a regular pale, but to employ the wheat to draw a fresh softness. I had that pound of Nugget hops from Steinbarts ($14), which I used liberally throughout, including in the carboy. It worked--the wheat made it light and soft and more spring-like. As I looked around my basement afterward, I realized that almost every recent batch of beer I brewed also used wheat: lambic, farmhouse grisette, and an old ale. Apparently, I like to tuck a bit of wheat into my recipes. Reading about the grain made it likely the trend will continue.

Great book. Those of you who will be interested know who you are--go buy it.
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Full disclosure: although I've never met Stan, I admire his blog and I regularly trade emails with him; BP also sent me a copy of the book for review.

Woe is the Reviewer

Pete Brown has a nice post about the difficulty in reviewing beers:

[D]escribing the flavour of a beer ... requires two separate skills: identifying flavours on your palate, and translating those flavours into text that conveys a sensory experience reasonably accurately in a way that will be meaningful to your reader.

Man, ain't that the truth. Although the range of beer flavors is pretty broad, the range for any specific element is not. Pale malts, for example, don't give you kumquat notes--you're limited to bread, cracker, biscuit and the like. And that's if you're even perceiving the cracker in the first place:

We're all born with a certain number of flavour receptors in our mouths, and that number varies widely from person to person. And like most people who prefer a hop bomb or Imperial stout over a perfectly balanced session beer, the simple truth is I'm a poor taster - I have fewer taste buds than average. That's why I also prefer hot curries and strong cheeses. At the other end of the scale, 'super tasters' have loads of taste buds, and can find the hop bomb I love almost physically painful.

I'd add that the nose is critical. I'm not a supertaster, but perhaps owing to being blind as a bat, I've got a pretty good sniffer. If you can suss out the aromas in beer, you're a long way to the flavors.

Fortunately, the beer review generator is a great time-saver. You do realize that's how I write my reviews, right?

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Coalition Brewing

I guess I have to share Coalition Brewing with other bloggers. Both Angelo and Ezra have full-scale interviews with Elan, Kiley, and Deschutes-poached brewer Bruce MacPhee. And both even have videos. They detail the beer, the philosophy, and the menu, so you should want for nothing. Grand opening is June 23.

My two bits are these: they've been brewing regularly over the past week, sending plumes of lovely aroma out into the neighborhood. Coalition is located between my house and the intersection of Burnside and 28th, a regular target destination for my strolls (there's a grocery store, Chinese restaurant, and pizza thereabouts). It's going to be three weeks before they throw open the doors, but I'm already relating to Coalition as a working brewery. Nothing is so fine as the smell of brewing beer--it's going to be great to have them bubbling away, just blocks from my house.