Your Odds Vary at the GABF

This decision confronts every brewery when they start drawing up their list of beers to send to the GABF: which styles should we compete in? A gold medal's a gold medal's a gold medal, but the odds of winning it vary pretty dramatically. Consider these categories from the 2010 fest, their entries, and your odds of winning--assuming all the examples are super tasty:

Category 14, Gluten free beer, 13 entries, odds of winning: 7.7%
Category 47, American-Style India Pale Ale, 142 entries, odds of winning: .7%

This means a brewery is exactly eleven times more likely to win in the gluten-free category as in IPA. Put another way, you could fit eleven of the gluten free categories into one IPA. The flip side, of course, is that for the brewery to win IPA (or pale ale, 109 entries, .9% chance of winning), the bragging rights are impressive. For a year, your brewery gets to declare itself America's Best IPA--no small shakes in a country with two million different IPAs. (Interestingly, the claim to have the best gluten-free beer isn't terrible, either; that category is an important and growing one, and most of the gluten-free beers available aren't so hot.)

This year at least two of the beers from Mighty Mites (Oakshire's Little Smokey and Breakside's Grisette) are entered in the session beer category, which last year had 30 entrants (3.3% chance of gold). Not bad, not bad at all.

Entering the Post-Craft World

Yesterday I offered you reviews of four beers and asked if they were "craft" or not. Many of you instantly smelled a rat--and rightly so. That was the point. I hadn't exactly worked out the wording of this post to explain it, but no matter. Vasili Gletsos, the peripatetic brewer now manning the kettle at Laurelwood, did my work for me:

To me, the term is most useful as a historical movement to describe the revolution (resurgence?) of smaller breweries in a post-prohibition environment. We are now in a post-craft environment in which there is a wide variety of business models and ownerships in addition to a great depth of beer styles and experimentation.

In the middle part of the last century, technology and business conspired to rob the United States not only of nearly every beer style, but most of its local breweries. They were replaced by faceless behemoths that churned out beer in quantities inconceivable to the human mind. This had the virtue of dropping prices to almost nothing as efficiencies of scale and advertising budgets equal to the GDP of Paraguay doomed regional breweries. I could go on for a few more sentences here, but you know this story well already.

The corrective came in the form of a band of pirates who were interested in wrecking the machine of industrial brewing and creating space for the return of small-batch, artisanal brewing. To the extent there was a revolutionary impulse, it was that these businesses would compete on the bases of quality and flavor, not price. So began a correction that has, three decades on, radically altered the beer industry.

Unfortunately, there was a conceptual fault to this development, one located in the phrase "craft brewing." It led innocently to an idea that there was something called "craft beer." But beer is beer. It's either made with the highest quality ingredients and processes or it's not. It's either a brilliant interpretation of style or it's not. The matter of who owns the brewery is a strange abstraction.

The beers I reviewed yesterday came from Goose Island, a brewery wholly owned by Anheuser-Busch, which is itself owned by an international brewing conglomerate--one that makes those quaint American macros of the 70s look like pikers. The beers were, in order, (1) Mae (unreleased), (2) Juliet, (3) an unreleased stout, and (4) Madame Rose. As I was thinking about the review, I groaned with the expectation that someone would slag the brewery for selling out or dumbing down or whatever. (Even before the A-B purchase, certain craft nazis avid beer geeks held the brewery in great suspicion because it had the indecency to sell a huge amount of light wheat ale.) So I thought: why not head them off at the pass?

Vasili's right: we've entered a post craft world where even the meaning of craft brewery is fraying--never mind the idea of "craft beer." We're sort of stuck with the nomenclature of "craft" because it helps differentiate segments of the market--even while, admittedly, it introduces its own confusion. My recent posts about the craft brewing segment are a case in point. Still, as educated beer drinkers, we can avoid being fooled ourselves. We can admire and wish to support small, local breweries (and I do, hugely, on both counts); we can criticize breweries that make dumbed-down beer filled with cost-saving adjuncts to appeal to a mass audience. But at the end of the day, beer is beer, and we're going to have to get comfortable judging what's in the glass separately from who made it.

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Also: Alan has thoughts on the subject.

Is This Craft Beer?

Several weeks back, a brewery sent me samples of four beers. As usual, I have been slow to work my way through them and get to a review, but here we are. In a twist, though, I'm going to review them without naming the beers or the brewery. Why? Because we've lately been trying to define craft beer, and I'm wondering if you can do it without certain pieces of information concerning the ownership structure. In other words, does the craft live in the beer or the owner? (I should mention that two of these beers are experimental and have received no commercial release, so don't let that fool you.)

Note: Now that we've run the experiment, I'll include the names of the beers below for posterity. The brewery is Goose Island, now owned by In-Bev. Which doesn't really answer the question, does it?

Beer 1, Sour Peach Saison (Mae, unreleased)
This beer started life as a saison, though I found no evidence in the archaeological record. Because, to the base saison were added peaches and brettanomcyes--and those elements manhandled the beer and squashed whatever character might have come from previous yeasts. The peach flavor is light and delicate, but the beer is pretty sharply sour. The result is a beer that's less in balance than detente, with the acetic sour notes battling the sweet peachiness. Ultimately, the sour wins. Sour heads will love it, but regular beer drinkers might find it crosses the line.

Beer 2, Sour Fruit Beer (Juliet)
The second beer is an American sour, brewed to no traditional style. It is built on an idiosyncratic recipe that incorporates rye and Munich malt into what might be an otherwise familiar blond ale. The rye is useful in adding depth to the palate--and I also wonder how it stands up to the brettanomyces, which are added to the Cabernet barrels the beer is aged in. (Hypothesis: rye may offer studier snacking for the wild yeasts.) Beer 2 is finished with blackberries in the barrels. The beer is punch-colored and perfectly bright, with a head of uniform bubbles--akin to cider that form and dissipate. The aroma is a mixture of tart, wild yeasts and an earthy berry note. The flavor evolves from a straight, berry-infused lactic taste to something with a touch of acetic, and then a long, dry brett finish. It's a dusty, not funky, tart. The berries provide flavor and, as the beer warms, gentle sweetness. Balance is impressive between fruit and funk, and the brett at the perfect stage of dryness. An accomplished, tart, and lovely sour.

Beer 3, Imperial Stout Aged With, errr... (unreleased stout)
Blogger error. I took notes on this beer somewhere, but they're lost to me now. It was a barrel-aged beer that was aged with my mind wants to say vanilla bean. Or something. What I do recall is that was too much sweetness for my palate.

Beer 4, Sour Ale With Cherries (Madame Rose)
The brewery suggests by calling this a "Belgian style brown" an oud bruin, but I think this is misleading. It's a darkish sour beer, but it's not really brewed to style. That's fine, because it was an exceptional beer on its own merit. Rather than brown, it's a very deep amber/bronze with red highlights (the brewery calls it crimson, but that stretches things a bit). It has a lush cherry nose inflected by just a bit of sour, musty brettanomcyes. Made properly, sour beers pull a lot of flavor and aroma from fruit, almost like the captured, distilled essence, without becoming sweet. Beer 4 manages that perfectly. Balance is added by a milder acidity--bretty, but not aggressive--and some tannins. There's a bit of the soft maltiness remaining as well. (Suggestive that it's best not to age this beer.) The brett provides depth and dryness, but it's not a challenging beer. It is complex and approachable, with malt, fruit, and tartness balanced in an effervescent, lush beer. My favorite of the bunch.

All right, you got it figured out?

Update. I should have mentioned that I planned to reveal the brewery tomorrow--with, of course, some commentary.

Have a Pint, Save the Economy

Fascinating piece in the New York Times Economix blog on the "beer recession."

Europeans are saving money by drinking at home rather than in pubs, which is costing jobs in the hospitality industry and depressing tax revenue, according to the study by Ernst & Young, which was paid for by the Brewers of Europe, an industry group.

The shift to home consumption has a disproportionate effect on unemployment, because 73 percent of jobs associated with the European beer industry are outside breweries. They are found instead in bars, hotels and restaurants.

The magnification means that an 8% decline in pub sales works out to a 12% decline in beer industry employment. The figures were worse in Greece, where a five-liter decline in consumption led to a 15% crash in beer industry employment. The lesson is, as always, the same: drink your beer.

Evolving GABF

Note: Post has been updated.

In about a week, the 30th edition of the Great American Beer Festival kicks off in Denver--and the first that I'll be attending. We've come a long way in three decades. Those early GABFs were all about promoting American craft beer--or maybe more pointedly, the idea of American beer. In 1982 only a vanishingly small number of people even knew about the phenomenon, so it made sense to showcase American craft breweries.

Pretty early on, though, organizers wanted to turn the fest into the premier event for beer judging. They invited international judges and awarded gold medals to "world-class beer[s] that accurately exemplifies the specified style, displaying the proper balance of taste, aroma and appearance." The GABF was interested in more than promoting American beer--it wanted to encourage breweries to make beers as good as any brewed in the world.

So here's a question I have: if the GABF is judging world-class beers, where are the beers of the world? I understand the "A" in the acronym, and it makes sense that the principal goal of the GABF will be celebrating American beer. But I also wonder if it shouldn't be a bit more inclusive. How do these world-class American beers fare when actually judged in blind panels with world beers? Are we better at some styles than others relative to examples in Europe and beyond?

No rush. Thirty years isn't that long in the scope of things. American brewing is evolving, though, and I expect the GABF will have to, as well.


Update. I should have made mention of the World Beer Cup in this post--as some commenters have and as Barbara Fusco did in an email to me this afternoon:

The most recent World Beer Cup (in 2010) was, at the time, the world’s largest-ever commercial beer competition. (The 2010 and 2011 GABFs subsequently eclipsed that record.) In 2010, 642 breweries from 44 countries and 47 U.S. states vied for awards with 3,330 beers entered in 90 beer style categories at the World Beer Cup. The 2010 World Beer Cup presented awards to brewers from 19 countries ranging from Australia and Italy to Iceland and Japan, along with the United States. Awards were determined by an elite international panel of judges hailing from 26 different countries.

Charlie Papazian started the WBC in 1996 to essentially accomplish what I was talking about in this post--but in a slightly back-handed way. Among American beer competitions, the GABF is by some margin the most respected and celebrated. Adding a separate competition is fine (though the WBC is dominated by American breweries, which won all but 64 of the 270 medals awarded), but all eyes are on the GABF. I'd like to see international competition there eventually.

Where Do the Imports Come From?

If you're a beer geek, you pine for beers from places like Belgium and Italy. Of course, you like a nice German or Czech lager or the occasional British bitter, too. But do your preferences mirror import sales? They do not. I was glancing through the annual Beer Institute numbers and was surprised to see which countries and regions were the main players in the market--and which weren't.

To contextualize it a bit, 13% of American sales are imported, for a total of roughly 27 million barrels (2.5 times the amount of craft beer). If you think about it a minute, it will occur to you that the biggest importer is Mexico (50.4%). Canada, at 10%, is number three. Care to guess who's number two? Well, you don't have to--your eye has already glanced at the list below. A bit of discussion follows the numbers.

By Country
50.4% - Mexico
20.6% - Netherlands
9.9% - Canada
4.5% - Germany
4.1% - Belgium
3.1% - Ireland
3.0% - UK
0.8% - Jamaica
0.7% - Italy
0.4% - Poland
0.4% - Czech Republic (1k fewer than Poland)
2.1% - All others

By Continent/Region
60.3% - North America
2.2% - Caribbean, Central America, & South America
37.1% - Europe
0.7% - Asia
0.001% - Africa

The Netherlands commands a 21% share of imports? That's a lot of Heineken. Conversely, the Diageo borg (Guinness, Smithwick's, Harp) sells relatively little. Give me the two countries and the two numbers and I would have reversed them (preference bias). Belgium looks fantastic until you consider Stella Artois--so don't think this number is based on Cantillon Iris. Britain, no matter what you consider, looks terrible. How is it we get and drink so little good British ale here? A travesty. Finally, are you as shocked as I am that Poland, with no serious national brand (apologies to Zywiec, Boss, and Okocim), outsells the Czech Republic, with Pilsner Urquell?

Worth noting: Mexico, buoyed no doubt by Grupo Modelo (Corona, Pacifico, and Modelo), only had about a quarter of the much smaller import market 15 years ago. In 1994, Mexican breweries sold only 1.6 million barrels; in 2010 they sold 13.6 million. That's where the real action is.

The Feng Shui of Pubs

On Saturday afternoon, Sally and I strolled through the early evening of a false Autumn toward Belmont Street. If I ever am forced to live anywhere else, I'll remember days like that one--cloudy and spitting rain all day, but so half-heartedly that the total rainfall measured just a tenth of an inch. It's the kind of weather that makes me want to go to a pub--not just any random pub, but a nice one that feels warm and inviting. A place with the appropriate Feng Shui.

We ended up at Circa 33, a place that has quickly zipped to the top my list for places with perfect ambiance. It's built like a cave, with the windows on Belmont standing in as the mouth. At the far back is a spectacular bar glittering with bottles. The light comes from overhead, but the main part of the pub stays in the shadows. It therefore has the perfect mixture of light and shadows. The menu is excellent and surprisingly cheap and there are a dozen rotating taps of local and international interest on tap. Perfect.

When I first started my pub-going life in the late 1980s, America was just emerging from a very dark period in which the tavern was not a particularly homey place to visit. Our Puritan streak relented enough to end Prohibition, but taverns were still no place for decent folk, so they were free of amenities like windows, decent food, or decent beer, children, and women. (Yes, that is an exaggeration.) Examples included the stalwarts I visited not irregularly along Milwaukie Avenue (Bear Paw, Yukon), in St Johns (Blue Bird, Wishing Well), and many points in between. For the cocktail set, there were definitely upscale redoubts that did have good food, windows, and women--but of course, no good beer. Your choices for good beer and great vibe were limited to, say, the Horse Brass.

It is a delight to live in a period where pubs are now as varied and individual as the people who create them. Think of Apex, Bailey's, the Widmer Gasthaus, a McMenamins pub, Grain and Gristle, Victory Bar: all different, all sporting specific visions of feng shui that will appeal to different people in different degrees.

Americans don't really do their beer drinking in pubs anymore--just 10% of all beer sales are draft, a number that hasn't changed appreciably in 30 years. I'm not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg--but it's no surprise that by 1981 no one felt inspired to head down to the corner tavern. But maybe the change in pubs will change the culture toward drinking in pubs, too. In 2004, just 9% of beer sales were on draft, and now we're up to 9.6%. Britain is chagrined to learn that draft sales have fallen to 50% there--a catastrophe I could really learn to live with. With pubs like Circa 33, maybe we can shoot for double digits.

Sales of Craft Exceed Domestic Premium in the Pac NW

Last week, I began what will be a short series of posts on a presentation Dan Wandel made for SymphonyIRI that looked at sales figures and trends for craft beer sold at supermarkets (post 1, post 2). Today I'm going to highlight the last slide Dan showed us. It's a graph of two segments of the beer market, domestic premium and craft beer. It was a complex chart going back 2 1/2 years and split between Oregon and Washington. I've reproduced a detail of the slide showing the past year's sales in Oregon. Washington's looks roughly the same.


In April 2010, craft beer briefly outsold domestic premiums, then fell behind again. But in October, craft passed domestic premium again and hasn't looked back. It's worth adding a bit more context to fully understand these numbers. Keep in mind that Symphony/IRI only tracks supermarkets, not specialty retailers like Whole Foods and New Seasons--where craft beer massively outsells domestic premium. It also doesn't capture draft sales. In other words, the company tracks sales in the place most favorable to the domestic premiums like Bud and Coors.

The other thing to acknowledge is that the NW is way out in front of everyone. The point in preparing the slides is to illustrate craft beer's potential nationally based on their actual numbers here. We tend to think that craft beer will never supplant national light lagers, but these figures show they can.

One final point. In his presentation, Wandel sometimes included A-B's Shock Top and Coors' Blue Moon in the craft segment and sometimes he didn't. But no matter what segment you put them in, it's worth noting that they sell more than any single craft brand. (At the blogger's conference, I asked Blue Moon's Lisa Zimmer how many barrels that brand sold, and I think she said 1.7 million. That's about 10% the size of the entire craft market.)

Some people get freaked by the idea that the macros are co-opting craft beer, and to a certain extent, so am I. The silver lining, though, is that craft is now the tail that's wagging the dog. Macros see charts like the one in this post, and they see the writing on the wall: Americans are increasingly rejecting light lagers. People have been looking at SymphonyIRI's numbers on macros and seeing staggering five-year declines in domestic sales: Budweiser -30%, Miller Genuine Draft -51%, Old Milwaukee -52%, Michelob -72%. The trends are unmistakable: light lagers, though still the dominant player in beer, will continue an inexorable decline in the years ahead, replaced by more flavorful ales. Just look at what's happening in the Northwest.

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CHART: SYMPHONY/IRI

Medium-Shallow Thoughts on Sierra Nevada, Plus Even Shallower Thoughts on Other Matters

I don't like to pick on commenters, for I get most of my pleasure in writing this blog by chatting with people in comments. But something Shawn said stuck in my craw:

Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams really aren't 'craft beer', though. By the legal definition they are, but not by any honest, realistic definition. Of course the 'most popular' are going to be the most widely distributed.

The definition of "craft" beer is one of no little controversy, but can we agree that there's no definition that eliminates Sierra Nevada, makers of some of the finest beer on this or any other planet? Everything about Sierra Nevada bespeaks quality, from their processes to ingredients to recipes to quality control.

Okay, I guess there's one way to critique the brewery: size. Ken Grossman does not stand over a three-barrel mash tun with a wooden canoe paddle. His beer is brewed in industrial-sized tanks with the help of lots of technology. Some people feel that you can't craft a hundred-barrel batch of beer (or whatever Sierra Nevada's is); somehow, the volume prohibits it. The Brewers Association made a similar connection when it declared that craft breweries had to be small and independent, until the independent breweries grew--and now you don't have to be small anymore.

The problem with this of course, is that it means that every small brewery is a craft brewery, no matter if they turn out delicious beer or pond water. (And everyone who loves good beer has had the pond-water experience at some little brewery or another.) Brewery size and beer quality are not correlated. Good beer is good beer, no matter which system it's brewed on or who owns it.

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I commend you to this hilarious, exquisite post from Alan, wherein he writes, among other things:

On the nose, there are notes of petroleum jelly and brown crayon. In my mouth, it is not the beer of yesteryear but a reasonably moderately soft slightly rummy middle with acrid burnt toast finishing beer. Bitter like a bit of white grapefruit set alight by a bit of damp cocoa pod coaxed into flame by a bit of gasoline. There it is - that tang of the plastic and cat sick on the carpet taste that I recall but, to be fair, it is very neatly tucked into a corner. Hardly notice it at all.

You'll have to click through to discover which beer he's writing about.

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More beer-and-Obama news.

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A titanic rant against Budweiser. (A huge amount of wrongness contained therein, but the misinformation and bias sort of adds to the fun.)

Deep Thoughts: Novelty Fatigue

Bill went to the Beermongers' second anniversary bash, rich with rare specialty beers, and was surprised at how low the attendance was. He posed an open question (with probes, like any good researcher should) about why that would be. With 24 hours of consideration under my belt, I have a hypothesis: we're suffering from novelty fatigue.

Used to be (like, five years ago) that specialty, one-off beers were rare birds. Most breweries hadn't started a barrel-aging program, and seasonal releases were good for variety, but they weren't particularly exotic beers. When a brewery did release something strange and special, beer geeks flocked to check it out. Beer fests accelerated the phenomenon by giving breweries an opportunity to highlight rarities and special beers. Breweries started developing barrel programs.

Fast forward to 2011. There has been an event like the one at Beermongers nearly every weekend of the spring and summer (sometimes more than one), and breweries are the font of dozens of one-off beers every month. The thing is, mostly these appeal to beer geeks. And, while there are lots of beer geeks, there aren't an infinite supply. We can only drink so many new beers. I know from my own habits that this is a process of selection. Devonshire White Ale, yes. Double gin-barrel aged wit, no. This fest, yes; that one, no. It's not that I'm not interested in all these beers and fests, it's that I can't enjoy them all. So I skip some--and in truth, most.

One other observation. While I do like one-off beers, I actually like beers that stay around even more. I like to get to know a beer over time, and I still mix up new beers with old standbys in my rotation. When I try new beers, there's something satisfying in knowing that it won't be the last time I get to drink it. One-offs have their place, but ephemera begs to be considered dispensable, and I succumb to that impulse.

Best-Selling American Craft Beers

Last week, I began what will be a short series of posts on a presentation Dan Wandel made for SymphonyIRI that looked at sales figures and trends for craft beer sold at supermarkets. In that post we looked at the best-selling styles; today we look at best-selling brands.

As with last week, I've reworked the data a bit to take out some of the best-selling SKUs tracked by SymphonyIRI: Sam Adams Seasonal (No. 3), Sam Adams Variety Pack (No. 5), Sierra Nevada Seasonal (No. 9) and New Belgium Seasonal (No. 12). (In the case of seasonals, several beers share the same SKU and are sold at different times of the year; variety packs, obviously, include more than one beer.) The remaining eleven account for 28.5% of all the beer tracked by SymphonyIRI--a sizable piece of the pie given that the company tracks 253 IPAs alone. In fact, the top four account for nearly 20% of all sales.

Here are the top ten, and the percentages indicate the total proportion of the entire craft segment that beer controls. The eleventh beer is Magic Hat's Number 9, at 1%.


When I looked at this list, my eye was attracted to Sierra Nevada's Torpedo--and then I realized something about this list. Only Torpedo is a recent brand. In fact, the next newest beer is Sam Adams Light, released a decade ago.

Sierra Nevada Pale (1980)
Sam Adams Boston Lager (1984)
New Belgium Fat Tire (1991)
Shiner Bock (1913)
Widmer Hefeweizen (1985)
Sierra Nevada Torpedo (2009, bottle)
Sam Adams Light (2001)
Redhook IPA (1995)
Kona Longboard Lager (1998)
Deschutes Mirror Pond (1992ish)

Clearly, it helps to have a jump on things. To see just how consistent these beers have been, have a look at Stan Hieronymus' report from four years back. And yet, despite this consistency, it's not like there's no movement. Not all these beers are headed in the same direction or at the same rate. (And no, I have no idea if these reflect year-to-year variation or are indicative of larger trends or volatility.)

Sierra Nevada Pale_______0.9%
Sam Adams Boston Lager___0.0%
New Belgium Fat Tire____-4.5%
Shiner Bock_____++++++__11.1%
Widmer Hefeweizen_______-9.5%
Sierra Nevada Torpedo___59.2%
Sam Adams Light________-15.1%
Redhook IPA______________4.5%
Kona Longboard Lager____45.5%
Deschutes Mirror Pond____3.5%

In some ways, it's easy to overthink these stats, though. Deschutes is the fifth largest craft brewery, but only cracks the list at number ten. What does this tell us? That Deschutes' production includes a pretty diverse line of beers that sell well. Is that good or bad? Probably neither, but interesting. By contrast, New Belgium has a huge tent pole beer in Fat Tire.

More to come.

Sage and the Nomenclature of "Spiced Beer"

Over the weekend, I finally got around to drinking some of the Deschutes-Boulevard White IPA.* It's a bit different from the version that was pouring when I tried it several weeks ago, and also different from the different version available in the Portland brewpub. But it is very closely related and shares the key ingredient they both featured: white sage.

Not all spices work well in beer; I would venture to say most don't. Herbs seem to do better (a subtle distinction but hang with me). Whenever a brewer adds an ingredient banned by Reinheitsgebot, she has to decide how much that flavor will compete with or complement the innate flavors in the beer. Spices are intensely-flavored and few have much in common with beer. I love cardamom, for example, but have never liked it in beer. Too sweet, too prominent. Cinnamon in small doses is quite nice--it's a bit woody and tannic and can accent other flavors. Maybe coriander's success demonstrates the point; over the centuries, all other spices have been abandoned.

Herbs, on the other hand, are more gentle, more subtle, and more like hops (itself an herb). Sage is a great example. In these white IPAs, it is a perfect bridge between a stiffer dose of hops and the sometimes aggressive notes of coriander. It's a perfect marriage, and I despair to think that these experiments may never be repeated. I could drink sage beer all day long.

Relatedly, as more an more breweries toss in the odd herb or spice to accent a beer--and many times, we're talking about very subtle accenting--we must contend with a very unwieldly and inelegant style designation: "spiced beer." Or less elegant: "herb or spiced beer." I would really love to come up with something less clunky and misleading ("spiced ale" calls to mind mulled wassail, not a lemongrass IPA). Anyone think of a better name? Something with a bit more poetry and accuracy? Anyone?

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*Alan McLeod posted an interesting rumination on the importance of history in beer appreciation, noting in comments "I want the direct immersive experience when I am tasting. I still think beer history is an excellent thing. But it takes away, for me, from the appreciation of the beer if I overlap one with the other." This beer is a good example of why I always want to know more, and why appreciation for me begins with a beer's story. The collaboration between the two breweries began just after Deschutes finished Hop in the Dark, their black IPA.** Larry Sidor and Steven Pauwels wondered, "what would a white IPA look like?" Then they wondered what contributions breweries from their regions of the country might make to fuse regional particularlities into the beer and they came up with Conflux #2/Collaboration #2. To me, the story made all the difference in understanding how you'd get to a beer like this.

**Not only are my footnotes threatening to gobble the post, but I've footnoted a footnote; perhaps the first such instance on a blog. Thank you very much. In any case, I acknowledge the manifold problems with the phrase "black IPA," but I used it in the previous footnote because it obviously leads into the story of white IPA in way CDA*** just wouldn't do.

***Kidding!

Beermongers' Second Anniversary

For those of you in or near Portland this weekend, you might consider a trip down to Beermongers, where there will be way more good beer than you can drink.

Second Anniversary Celebration
Sunday, September 11, 12-8PM
SE Division and 12th Avenuehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
$15 Admission = Souvenir Festival Glass + 7 tasting tickets
Additional Tickets $1 each
21+OVER
CASH ONLY!

Food Provided by: Curbside Grill and Nourishment

I'll add the extensive taplist in comments--Saturday's is now available. But as a teaser, it includes things like: Eel River 2008 Porter, Bend Scarlet Imp Red, Breakside Oude Noire, De Dolle Dulle Teve, and Burnside Bacon Stout. And those constitutes just 1/7th of the full list. For tomorrow. If you're looking to get your geek on, that's the place to be.

America's Best-Selling Craft Beer Styles

A couple of weeks back, Dan Wandel made a presentation about the craft beer sales tracked by his company, SymphonyIRI. They track scan data from supermarkets, big box retailers, and convenience stores across the country. The company doesn't track sales of every store--specialty retailers like Whole Foods and New Seasons, nor mom and pop stores. Nor does it track sales of draft beer, which constitutes a far larger proportion of the craft market than macro (mainly because of brewpubs). What SymphonyIRI does track are sales of packaged beer in the biggest part of the market, and so these numbers are useful in seeing where the larger trends are, separate from all the beer geek noise people like me tend to focus on.

I got to sit in on the presentation (a high-tech phone and Powerpoint presentation via conference call) and found it absolutely fascinating. There's a huge amount of the info that is too fine-grained to interest most folks, but a few data points really jumped off the page. I'll share these with you over the next few days (I just got a copy of the Powerpoint slides).

The first thing I want to look at is style preferences. Depending on how you slice them up, there are probably 30-40 different major styles of beer brewed commercially in the US. But the top three styles account for all craft sales, and the top five for two-thirds. America has a huge amount of variety in the market, but in terms of overall sales, we're really a five-style country.

I'm going to present the numbers a little differently than Dave did, so for those of you who've seen these figures, don't be alarmed. The first and fourth best-selling "styles" are actually seasonals (all the breweries seasonals throughout the year collapsed into one category) and variety 12-packs. Since they're not actually styles, I've pulled them out of the list and recalculated the percentages of the remaining eight styles. Here they are:


There are a couple of interesting addendums to the list. Beer geeks would probably expect to see IPAs leading the way, but this is actually the first time in SymphonyIRI's tracking that IPAs have edged out pales--a leader for years (maybe decades). This is significant because it is so far behind when this phenomenon reached the beer geek world. IPAs have been the most popular style for maybe a decade among the avid fans. This tells me that big trends within the avid base are worth watching as potential future features of national beer culture. As a related note, Wandel added this: in 2010, 177 IPAs were available in supermarkets. Now there are 253, a spike of 43% in one year. Wow.

More to come--

BrewDog's Ghost Deer--Too Strong to be True?

Somehow I missed the latest gonzo marketing blitz from the lads at BrewDog. (That may be a downside of always keeping the volume at 11.) In July, they announced another super-strong beer called Ghost Deer that came with all the unusual bells and whistles we associate with BrewDog:

Ghost Deer is a 28% fermented beer, the strongest ever fermented beer.... After fermentation it is aged for 6 months in some amazing whisky, bourbon, rum and sherry barrels. There is only one Ghost Deer head and this beer will only ever be available on draft, served in a stemmed glass, direct from the mouth of the deer himself.

That business about the deer is of course literal--it pours from the mouth of a taxidermied deer head. The release was accompanied by one of the brewery's famous videos, which tells the tale of the ghost deer and manages to advance the brand brilliantly.

All well and good. But here's the thing: 28%?? Can this be? If BrewDog has managed to ferment a beer to that level, it would be a towering achievement. They report using three yeast strains to get there, but I've never heard of any yeast that comes close to tolerating that level of alcohol (White Labs and Wyeast strains top out at 18%). Beer has complex sugars that yeasts have a hard time digesting at final gravity, so even if you found a yeast strain that could go that high, I don't see how it could munch through the maltotriose to get down to that level. It seems to me that if BrewDog managed to create a beer of 28% strength entirely from fermentation, it would represent a radical advancement--one far more impressive than taxidermied deer heads.

Any sciencey types out there willing to shed some light on this? Is BrewDog polishing the apple here, or is it really possible to tease 28% alcohol out of the hardest-working fungi in the beer world?

Any Theories?

Give it to Redhook--they're definitely willing to try unorthodox marketing techniques. Take for example the package I got yesterday. The brewery is entering expanding their line in the lucrative 22-ounce bottle market, and so they sent me a Pilsner, ESB, and IPA. That makes sense, but then what to make of this waist-high distressed-steel sign they also tucked in with no explanation. (Click to enlarge; those are the 22s in the picture, to give you a sense of the scale.)


Let's make a game of it. Aside from the obvious--but not quite persuasive--explanation that they sent it to me to get a blog post out of it (there's gotta be far cheaper ways to get press), why did they send it?

I will say this; it's pretty cool. I wouldn't have minded distressing it myself over the course of the next thirty years, but that's a small quibble. As brewery swag goes, it is the largest and most interesting piece I've ever received.

Black Market for Beer, or Good Old-Fashioned Arbitrage?

Note: post has been updated below.

I would very much like the Beeronomist to comment on this Washington Post article, but in the meantime, I'll do it myself. You are well aware of the issue: reselling "buzz" beer on the internet at an extravagant mark-up. Some breweries, apparently, are apoplectic:

Last month, for example, San Diego’s Stone Brewing Co., whose rare Vertical Epic beers are sometimes listed on eBay for more than $1,000 per bottle, began selling the first beer in its new Quingenti Millilitre series via a lottery system, and Stone has announced that people who try to resell it will be banned from future drawings. “We have involuntarily been a part of the eBay aftermarket for many years,” says Greg Koch, Stone’s co-founder and chief executive. “This is the first time we’ve come out, laid it on the table and said very point-blank, ‘Please, do not resell.’”

Daniel Fromson, who wrote the article, diligently follows the breweries' pique and ventures into the weeds of law and interstate commerce. The conclusion is a kind of moralistic/legalistic scolding of customers who are, in his words, "exploiting" the breweries.

Hogwash. In economics, there's this concept called "arbitrage," which is exemplified precisely in the act of buying underpriced specialty beer from the brewery and reselling it for fantastic sums online. (Here's Patrick using an example from the Portland Timbers.) Usually, people exploit loopholes for arbitrage opportunities. NPR recently reported that people were using a government incentive of free delivery to sell unwanted silver dollars; people were buying them in massive quantities with credit cards to get frequent-flier miles and then just spending the dollars or taking them to banks.

But here's what I don't get: why don't breweries just charge more for their beer? No one's exploiting a loophole; they're buying beer at prices way below their market value and reselling them instantly at their market value. Prices always find a point of equilibrium between supply and demand, and if breweries are going to leave all that money sitting on the table, people are going to capitalize on the chance to snatch it up.

There's a secondary thing I don't get. The article mentions a bunch of the classic beer geek celestials, like Russian River, Lost Abbey, and Cantillon. These breweries attained their status principally by offering beer so good it could command these prices. There's a clear halo effect when you are regarded as producing ambrosia that's very good for business. The whole purpose in creating rare specialty beers--from a business perspective--is to create buzz and bring attention to your product. It creates fanatics who will go online and buy your beer at $400 a pop--which in turn gets you more attention as the Washington Post writes about your beer.

If breweries were honestly losing money on the resales, that would be one thing, but they're not. They sell a product at a price they believe is reasonable and they make a tidy profit doing it. At any point, they could charge more for their beer if they wanted to do it and remove the incentive for people to resell online. For very good business reasons, they choose not to. For one, they keep their customers happy and engaged. For two, they continue to be among the very few breweries in the world that can command those prices on a bottle of beer--a pretty great marketing trick.


Update: Patrick picked up the baton and expanded on this in a more professional manner. It's a fine and careful consideration, and you should read it all, but of course, I'll poach a choice cut for my own purposes.

The fact that these market have arisen suggests that there was a missing market problem: buyers and sellers who would like to transact but for whom there is no forum for such transactions. The most common reason for such transactions is some sort of regulatory constraint. Black markets in command and control economies like the former Soviet Union are a perfect example: shoes are on sale in Moscow, but there is little demand, so buyers buy them and sell them illegally in Siberia and so forth.

You'll have to follow the link to see where he takes it.

Has the Pacific Northwest Lost Its Hop Monopoly?

Since I was out not laboring on Labor Day, I missed a potential story hook: the rise of hop farming outside the Pacific Northwest. Colorado, Wisconsin, and New York and New England--and probably elsewhere that I missed, too. These are small concerns and the industry--such as it is--is in the fragile incipient stages. Hop acreage in these states is miniscule by comparison to the Pacific Northwest. (Oregon has 4,600 acres under cultivation and Washington a booming 24,300; Colorado has 75 and Wisconsin and the Northeast similarly measure their acreages in the tens, not thousands.)

Still, these are real numbers. An acre of hop fields produces over 2,000 pounds of hops, so that wee Colorado planting is going to produce around 150,000 pounds of hops. That's not going to go far at Budweiser, but these growers aren't working with In-Bev, they're working with craft brewers:

Hamm said the association is a "loose group" of mostly part-time hop growers who are working toward establishing their own full-fledged operations to supply the state's craft brewers.

Those brewers, like Odell Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, would like to buy as much Colorado-grown hops as possible to support the fledgling industry.

Joe Mohrfeld, Odell's head brewer, said the brewing company has worked with Colorado State University's specialty crops department to obtain hops for its "Hand Picked Pale Ale" and other special seasonal beers.

I'd like to highlight three aspects of this development that strike me as very promising:

1. Localizing of beer. I have long longed for the return of more traditional modes of brewing, in which local ingredients went into local beer. Until rail, refrigeration, and industrialization (that is, for 98% of brewing history), beer was necessarily local. The beer tasted of the land in which it was produced. Because each agricultural region is unique, different strains will grow better in different places, and the beers will naturally adopt a local flavor.
   
2. Terroir. At some point Stan Hieronymus will complete his book on hops, and I'm hoping my understanding of terroir takes a quantum leap. What I do know is that the hops that grow well in Yakima aren't the same hops that grow well in the Willamette Valley, nor do identical strains produce identical-tasting hops when grown in these two regions. What do Wisconsin Cascades taste like? What about New York Willamettes (a bizarre thing to write). Will we see Sauk Goldings?
   
3. Local businesses. One doesn't want to overstate the wholesomeness of craft brewing on the jobs market. Given the choice, most people would probably rather clean kegs for Budweiser than a seven-barrel craft brewery: the salary and benefits will inevitably be better. But what craft brewing has done is fragment what had become an amazingly clean, streamlined process of producing beer. This gives thousands of entrepreneurs new ways to enter the market. Thanks to craft brewing, we have new distributors, new alehouses, new events coordinators to run all those fests, and now, new hop-growers. (Which includes, lest I fail to mention in, the burgeoning group of organic hop-growers.)
   

I'm not sure other regions of the country will ever constitute much of a commercial threat to the hop growers in Yakima and the Willamette Valley. (So the answer to my title is no.) But they can have a substantial impact on the way beer tastes and on the kinds of beers that are in the market. And in that we can happily rejoice.

Your Best Ambers and Reds

I haven't solicited you for your favorites lately, but a long holiday weekend seems like an ideal opportunity to get some opinions flying. The purpose behind these open threads is to find examples in a style I may not know about for possible inclusion in a book I'm working on. (Those of you outside the Northwest become precious resources.) I want to use beers that enjoy at least a regional distribution, mostly bottled examples, and those which are enduring standards and likely to still be sold by the time the book comes out (probably 2013).

American ambers and reds are often collapsed into a single style. Personally, I think this is a mistake. Fifteen years ago, reds were vanishingly rare and ambers were quite popular. The ambers of those days are the ones we still have around--mid-alcohol riffs on strong bitter with a balance point headed toward the malty, but with all that American hop goodness you expect from an American ale. Reds of the day were similar--except maybe they tilted more toward Munich instead of caramel malt. If you look at the top reds now, you see that they've strayed pretty far from the original mark. Now most are more similar to IPAs and double IPAs, though with a different malt base. Reds are less complex, with just a bit of candy sweetness to balance the assault of hops. (At the blogger conference, two of the beers that really impressed me were reds--Cigar City's cedary Tocobaga and Hopworks Imperial Red.)

Of course, you're invited to dispute this thesis, too. I'd be interested to hear your views, especially as they are backed up by examples--examples I can track down and maybe use for the book. The past editions of these open threads have been really valuable--for each style you've directed me to at least a couple beers that will go in the book. So consider this my advance thanks.

I'll be out of town and away from computers through Labor Day, so see you Tuesday--

Friday Flick: Firestone Walker's Burton Union System

Until three hundred years ago, brewing was a pretty small-bore enterprise. Much of it happened at the home level, and very little was what we could now call "commercial." The breweries of Burton upon Trent changed that when the region became the engine of English brewing in the 18th century. As they grew, brewers developed a process called the "union system" of brewing that involved a complex matrix of fermenting casks of ale. After a day of fermentation in a large vat, the beer was pumped into a series of connected casks, each fitted with a swan-neck rod that deposited expelled yeast into a capturing trough. The yeast and beer separated in the trough and the beer was returned to the casks. By 1890, every brewery in Burton used the system.

This was one point of innovation in a long line of automation, and by the 21st century the Burton union system was nearly extinct--only Marston's still uses it. Ah, but then things got a little brighter: Firestone Walker took up the art. It's a fascinating development, and this film captures it beautifully. Have a look:

From the Oregonian: Sad and Sadder

I was saddened to see that Paul Pintarich died yesterday. He was a longtime Oregonian journalist and editor, but perhaps his most enduring legacy will be History by the Glass, his 1996 history of Portland's old taverns (which was revised and re-issued in 2007). Our friend John Foyston had a connection to Paul (they worked together for a time, and Pintarich's fascination with old bars is in the heart of Foyston's wheelhouse), and he has a short piece at his blog you might like to see.

The second piece is a trivial matter, but a maddening one. Have a look at this photo:


See there where it says "Governor of Beervana"? That refers to the John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado. Now, I'm never surprised to see misappropriations of the word "Beervana" in the popular national press. A lot of people don't realize that we seized the term for our own purposes in about 1995. But the paper this was taken from is the Oregonian. Absolutely shameful and unforgivable.

(As for the article, it is the usual hack work of a once-great writer. As a perfect example of Will's fall, he begins the piece with a misquote from Franklin. Later he claims America was "founded on beer." Again, wrong. Beer, that famous antiscorbutic from the 17th century, did indeed ride in the belly of the Mayflower. But the colonists couldn't make proper beer here and imported tons from the old country. North America was, by a wide margin, a far bigger market than either India (tiny) or the Baltics.

I wouldn't expect Will to know that arcana, but if he's going to flop out the "founded on beer" quote, we should expect him to have done a little research. For its first 200+ years, America was a rum and whiskey country. Daniel Okrent, for instance, in his fantastic account of Prohibition, Last Call, notes that by the time of the American revolution, there were 100 distilleries for every brewery in the country.

Hey look, three paragraphs and we're still in a parenthetical digression.)

The real crime lies with the Oregonian slug-writer, though--whom we must assume has arrived so recently in Oregon that s/he doesn't know where Beervana is.


Update: Bill Night weighs in, insightfully and amusingly. Must read. For more O craziness, have a look at the spat Patrick gets in with editor Peter Bhatia. It does not reflect well on the O.

Preparing the Mutt

A few shots from last night as Lucky Lab's "the Mutt" came together. Two things these photos don't show: (1) Oregon Governor Kitzhaber stopped by (randomly)--Bill Night apparently larned him up on the nature of fresh hops; and (2) there were a bunch of dogs running around (naturally), and one was wreathed in hops.

Anyway, enjoy.

In Which Steve Duin Praises JV Northwest

Steve Duin is a longtime political columnist for the Oregonian, and for some reason he went off script today to write about JV Northwest, a metal fabricator that made the switch from saw-blade manufacturers to brewery builders. The thrust of the story is one of those 'local company does good in a bad economy' pieces, but it's generally just a nice recap of one of the country's premier manufacturers of brewing equipment.

Microbrews continue to surge. As Jones said, "Once you're hooked on microbrew beers, no matter how bad the economy gets, you're not going back to Coors Light."

And JVNW continues to develop enough proprietary designs that Jones is sometimes forced to turn business away. When annual sales hit $25 million five years ago, the pace at the plant was a bit too intense, so JVNW scaled back to the $18 million range.

In this whirlpool of industrial noise, the whispers that Oregon is bad for business never break the surface.

Worth a look.

Devonshire White Ale; a Taste of the Past

Sometime nearly 500 years ago, a man named Andrew Boorde visited Cornwall and wrote about the local beer he found there: "Their ale ... looking white and thick, as if pigs has wrestled in it."* Sounds tempting, yes? What if I add that the beer was made with eggs, salt, and some flour thrown in after the mash? Irresistible. Ben Edmunds thought so; last week he served some--the first time in decades?--at Breakside.

Ben didn't make it exactly as the old accounts describe. (Thank god.) There are certain modernities professional brewers must observe. The flour and eggs, though, those he tossed in. The original Cornish ale was made in the manner of sourdough, with a pinch of the last batch kept in reserve for pitching into the next (it was known, poetically, as "the ripening"). It produced sour beer that needed to be drunk speedily lest it become an unhealthy science experiment. Ben achieved the tang with a bit of sour wort added into conditioning.

The resulting beer? Surprisingly tasty. It was thick, cloudy, and white--not foul enough to suggest the involvement of pigs, but certainly rustic-looking, like river water frothed by rapids. The pint I got came with a small skiff of beautiful foam, not wholly dissimilar to clotted--or Devonshire--cream. It didn't stick around long, though, and underneath was that whitish liquid. Amazingly, it was quite palatable. It was mildly tart and very thick, sort of like liquid sourdough bread. It was enjoyable enough that I had a second pint. And, should Ben ever get around to making another batch, I'd happily have a third and fourth pint to boot.

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*In the English of the day, it was actually rendered thus: "Their ale ... lokinge whyte and thycke, as pygges had wrastled in it.” More, much more, on the style here.

Things That Make Beervana Beervana: #9, Lucky Lab The Mutt

There are a number of elements that give Beervana it's particular flavor, and a somewhat unemphasized one is the sense of community and collaboration. This happens at the brewery level, where brewers share information and tips about recipes and methods (when I was at Breakside a while back, Ben was looking over notes he'd received from Ben Dobler and Alex Ganum on their goses--just one example). But it also connects beer drinkers directly with breweries through collaborative projects and events. In Portland, the line between brewer and drinker is murky.

The Lucky Lab's annual "The Mutt" fresh-hop ale is the quintessential metaphor for this sense of community and collaboration. The brewery picks their own hops and solicits donations from gardeners around the Rose City. Beginning at five, volunteers wade into the pile of bines and began shucking. When they're done, the baskets go into a beer called "The Mutt"--for the hoppy parentage of the beer is always a vast, mutable tapestry of hop strains.

If you have extra hops, drop them off any time tomorrow (last year they had 170 lbs of hops and this year they're shooting for 200). And if you want to help harvest--the zymurgical equivalent of a community barn-raising--be there at 5:30 pm to start plucking. It's happening at the patio of the Hawthorne Lab (915 SE Hawthorne), and I can absolutely guarantee a good time.

Hop Harvest for "The Mutt"
August 30, 5:30 pm
Lucky Labrador Brewpub, 915 SE Hawthorne
Bring your bines!

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PHOTO: BEN FLERCHINGER BY ANGELO DE IESO

America the Best, Ctd.

On Thursday, I wrote a post arguing that the US has the world's best beer ("hands down"). It was a post in which I tried to bring together two threads: the lighthearted case made by Chris Bertram against the US, and the arrival of Breakside's Devon White Ale--perhaps the first time that style has been brewed in over a hundred years (or, of course, perhaps not). In the process, I offended people like the estimable Canadian Stephen Beaumont and Czech-residing Argentine Pivní Filosof--which was not the goal.

I have argued many times against bests on this blog. They're great talking points, but the only way to arrive at them is to either rely wholly on subjectivity or to define terms narrowly. When Chris made his case against the US, he used idiosyncratic definitions--many favorable to the beer-drinking habits of his home country (though, flouting chauvinism, he gives Belgium the nod for overall best beer). To arrive at "best beer country," you have to define your terms. Cases can be made for countries depending on which definitions you emphasize. Britain or Ireland (pub culture), diversity of extant indigenous styles (Belgium), continuity of tradition (Germany), centrality in culture (Czech Republic). I wondered on what basis Canada would stake their claim on Beaumont's blog, but I'm still coming up blank.

America has a right to stake a claim, and one based on more than naive chauvinism. Since 90% of the beer sold here is sold in cans and bottles, it's not based on pub culture. Since our tradition is fractured and mostly recent, it certainly can't be based on continuity. Since we have only a couple indigenous styles (if you're being generous), it's not on native diversity, and since we only drink half as much beer as Czechs--and by some accounts are on target to be come a wine-majority country--we can't claim centrality to culture. And on those dimensions we look up at a not just a few countries who do it better.

But the US does have one thing going for it, a cute little baby I'd prefer not go out with the bathwater. The US, as an immigrant country, cares little about tradition. Because of Prohibition and the consolidation of the 50s-70s, the country lost all memory of beer styles and started over from scratch in 1980. We effectively had no brewing tradition at all then. So when craft brewers came along, they didn't have any tradition to protect. They were happy to steal profligately from Europe--and did. In my Thursday post, I wrote:

Breweries in the United States not only produce every commercial beer style produced everywhere else, but for every commercial beer style produced, a domestic US brewery makes at least a credible example. This includes not just standard British, German, and Belgian styles, but rare specialties like lambics (Allagash). Can any other country make this claim of producing credible examples of all the world's styles? No.

We have breweries like Geary's that have a traditional Yorkshire system, use traditional Yorkshire yeast and ingredients. We have breweries like Victory doing decoction mashing. Rogue has embarked on growing their own barley and floor malting it. Allagash uses a turbid mash and cool ship to produce spontaneously-fermented beer. Sierra Nevada is working with a monastery for the Ovila line. These breweries produce beer that is "credible"--that is, it's as well-made as the European standards. (Let's not get into "best.")

American culture is absorptive and mutable. So far, that defines the expression of American brewing. It means that when a brewery reads about an 18th century style, he's likely to try to make it. It means that somewhere in the country, someone's trying to brew something that's being brewed somewhere else. I readily accept that this may not be purely praiseworthy. But it is distinctive, much in the way beer cultures across the world are distinctive.

My point in overstating the case against Chris was to point out that while America may be very far from being able to claim "best," it doesn't mean the breweries here should be dismissed out of hand. All beer culture--particularly distinctive beer culture--is praiseworthy. And America finally has something distinctive.

The Making of a Mighty Mite

This is a guest post from Oakshire brewer Matt Van Wyk, who graciously agreed to tell the story behind Lil Smokey, his contribution to the Mighty Mites fest. Although I like to think you can tell a brewer's personality by his beers, this post gives you an even better sense of Matt's. If you've found a little insouciance in his beer, now you can see why. Thanks, Matt, for taking the time--


A few months ago, Jeff asked me if I could design a beer for his upcoming session ale fest, Mighty Mite. Of course, I am always honored when people think enough of the beers we make to personally request it. Last winter, on a visit to Eugene with Beeronomics' Patrick Emerson, Jeff got a chance to sample Well-Mannered Gnome, our small beer made from the second runnings of Very Ill Tempered Gnome; I know that Jeff is not one to chase down the latest Quadruple IPA just to be the first to experience it and share it with the world. So I shouldn't have been surprised that they were such a big fan of this little 3% hoppy mild ale. But what I didn't know is that I would be asked to make a beer for one of the events at the first ever Portland Beer Week.

So, I began the arduous task of writing a recipe. But first, the style. It often goes like this: Drink, think. drink, think. Don't you get your best thinking done when you are drinking? Luckily, I get to call that R&D. I figured I would just make a pale ale type beer. Something I knew people would like, even if the alcohol was lower than normal. I started scratching out a recipe. Malt? Easy. Hop?. Don't forget balance. Not to much, not to little. It's pretty difficult to make an exceptional sub 4% abv beer. Usually, there is a lack of body and mouthfeel to help with balance. Flaws could stick out more. Good thing we don't make flaws! You know, maybe I should consult my malt inventory. I don't need much for this beer. And if there is any partial bags that need to be used up, perhaps I can incorporate that? Once I started looking in the malt room I had a change of directions. 5 lbs. of cherrywood smoked malt in that bag, 13 lbs. of smoked malt in that bag. Hey! a full 55 lbs. of unopened smoked malt. Maybe. There's some chocolate malt, some caramel malts. Smoked Porter! Petite smoked porter that is! I decided I'd make a dark beer in the hottest of Oregon months. Perfect.

On brew day, as I was milling the malt, I started tasting the specialty malt. This is something I always do when I am using new or unusual ingredients. I knew the cherrywood smoked malt was old, but only had 5 lbs. Use it up, it smells nice. The other opened bag had less smokey aroma, and sadly, the unopened bag had the least amount of smoke impact. Hmmm... is there enough to call it a smoked porter? I raced to our secondary storage area to see if we had any more smoked malt in house. Nope, I came up empty. Well, I just hoped the lighter body, alcohol, and roast flavors would let the smoke shine through. Brew away, nervously.

At Oakshire, beers like this are part of our single batch series. We make them for draft only and in small (22-24 kegs) batches. Often these beers are never seen again. We have made nearly 30 unique beers in this program so far this year. When then come out, we make unique tap handle stickers (Bryan Taylor of Treeman Design) for each of the single batch beers. I had decided on Lil' Smokey as the name of this beer so had Bryan, our graphics designer, start on the sticker, all the while hoping it was actually smokey. The beer finished fermenting at 3.2%. Hmmm... I'm not sure if this will do it. Of course, I am a huge fan of rauch beers. My threshold might be a little higher than others. Let's get some other feedback. I took an uncarbonated sample to the sales team and to my team of brewers. Is it smokey, I asked? Enough to keep the name? The consensus was that it was mildly smokey, balanced with the rest of the elements. The vote was to keep the name and the already designed logo. (As a side note, round one on the graphic was a factory with smoke, and as I thought that was a little more NW Indiana feeling rather than NW United States, we changed to a campfire).

The result of all this will be served Saturday in Portland at the first Mighty Mite fest. It is a lighter bodied porter of 3.2% with hints of chocolate, roast, and a faint smokey aroma and flavor. It is super easy drinking, even in the 90 degree weather we have been experiencing. So much so that the beer is totally sold out in both Eugene and Portland warehouses, so check with your favorite publican to see if they snatched a keg. If not, what better reason to get over the the festival and try a little sample of this little guy. Cheers!
~Matt Van Wyk

Events of Note

I feel like we're at the end of a marathon here--mile 24, the end is near, but there's still some runnin' left to do. (I'm part of the problem, I know.) But before you can rest, you must finish the race. There are scads of events around Portland Beer Week, and I've been lame in promoting them--fortunately, the Number One Beer Blogger in America has been on the case. Here are two more to be apprised of:

1. Hop Madness
Homebrewers tend to fly under the radar, and yet approximately 97% of Portland's beer geeks are also homebrewers. I therefore commend you to Hop Madness, the "largest gathering of home brewers and home brewing clubs in the Pacific Northwest." It's more like Homebrew-a-palooza:

• Hop harvest brewing: Fresh hops and water provided, bring your own brewing equipment.
• Hop tour: A tour of the active hop harvest (2pm on Sat)
• Best Damn Hoppy Beer Contest: Bring your hoppiest damn beer and enter it into the contest.
• Overnight camping
• Hop Olympics: Organize a team of your fellow club members to compete for homebrewer bragging rights.

It's September 3-4, 2011 from noon to noon at the Rogue Farms Micro Hopyard in Independence, Oregon--and it's dirt cheap. If I weren't going to be out of town, I'd be there myself. Here's their website with all the deets.


2. Brewvana Bend Tour
For those (like me) who have been woefully bad about getting over to Bend, here's a great opportunity. Brewvana Tours are embarking on their first overnighter. You leave Saturday morning, Sept 10, land in Bend for a tour at Deschutes. Lunch is at 10 Barrel, and the evening is yours to roam (Bend Brewing, Silver Moon, Cascade Lakes, etc.). Brewvana puts you up at the Phoenix Inn Suites and in the morning, you're off to Boneyard. The tour price includes transportation, overnight accommodations, beer samples at 2 different breweries, lunch on Saturday afternoon, and breakfast Sunday morning. The cost is just $165 for a four-person room, $195 for a two-person.


3. Occidental Debuts
St. Johns' only brewery has actually had beer available for awhile, but they've never been to Southeast Portland. They will tonight at 5-8pm at Beermongers (12th and SE Division). On hand are owners and brewers Dan and Ben Engler and a lineup of their all-German beers: Cloudy Summer Kolsch, Hefeweizen, Altbier and Dunkel.

Mighty Mites Taplist

As promised, I wanted to post a list of the beers and breweries that will be at Mighty Mites on Saturday (noon at Coaltion, 28th and Ankeny, bring an old mug or glass from another fest). I'm told there may also be a Cascade entry, but I haven't gotten the details on that yet. [Correction: description arrived, and I've updated it below.] This is pretty close to final.

As you can see, we have a couple of cheater sessions that are a nip over 5%. But we also have nine beers under 4%. Poor Ted Sobel will be confused to find that his beer isn't the smallest of the fest (though it will be the only cask pour). We got sours and smoked ales and saisons and lagers and wheats, a fully-organic ale, and two traditional small beers. It should be a very good time. Come out and join us, will you?

The Knoll, Beetje
A simple American pale ale made with 2-row pale and a host of specialty malts to help develop malt character that’s backed up by a healthy dose of hopping. This clean and refreshing ale is well suited for afternoon with friends.
3.8% ABV | 37 IBU | OG 1.040

Berliner Weisse, Block 15
This ale is light, refreshing, and deliciously sour. The main focus of this beer is thirst quenching acidity from lactobacillus, low alcohol, low hops, with a crisp wheat note and a touch of Brettanomyces. With a PH of 3.2 the beer is cleanly sour, crisp, and refreshing.
3.2% ABV

Farmhouse Grisette, Breakside
A farmhouse-style biere de table--a beer that might traditionally have been consumed by Belgian children. It is made with two types of wheat, a saison yeast, and German hops; it gains additional complexity from the use of sour wort. Our lightest beer ever is equally easy drinking and layered.
3.8% ABV | 12 IBU | OG 1.037

Little Sir John, Brewers Union Local 180 (cask)
An Ordinary (or Session) Bitter. Cask-conditioned in the true British tradition and served "Northern-Style" through a beer engine and sparkler. Bittered and flavored with a mix of English and West Coast aromatic hops: Willamette, Citra, Summit, East Kent Goldings and Simcoe. Designed for the three imperial pints per hour crowd. No sipping allowed.
3.4% ABV

Gratzer, Burnside Brewing
In the Gratzer, 600 pounds of white wheat is hand smoked over a blend of Apple and Mesquite wood, achieving a light toasted, nutty flavor with a finish that carries just a hint of smoke.
5.4% ABV | 9 IBU | OG

Spruced up Blond, Cascade
This one-off from the brewers is a spiced blond with spruce tips.Light crisp notes of grain and spice greet you in the nose. Refreshing hints of spruce combine with Vienna and Pilsner malts on the palate, while hints of spice and soft resin from the spruce tips linger in the finish. Servus!
5.01% ABV | 21 IBU

Wheat the People, Coalition
Wheat the people is an American Style wheat beer designed to satisfy a thirsty palate on a hot summer day. A ase of American 2 row and white wheat instill this beer with a crisp and refreshing taste while still maintaining the traditional body wheat beer is known for. Single hopped with a light touch of Northern Brewer, wheat the people is the ultimate easy drinking craft beer.
4.4% ABV | 13 IBU

Wu Cream Ale, Coalition
The Wu Cream ale is a light, malt forward beer with low bitterness. We added flaked barley to give the beer a soft mouthfeel to complement the sweetness of Munich and honey malt.
4.8% ABV | 29 IBU

Dapper Dan, Double Mountain
Dapper Dan is a true session ale in the British tradition, robust in flavor yet quite low in alcohol. Four different roasted malts add complexity, while our Kolsch yeast delivers its classic roundness and a restrained fruitiness. Brewed with Gambrinus Organic Pilsner and Dark Munich malt, imported brown, crystal and roasted malts, Warrior and Sterling hops.
3.5% ABV | 31 IBU

Working Girl Porter, Fort George
Our Panamax Porter is reborn with this new coffee porter named The Working Girl—brewed with the addition of over 5 lbs. of Working Girl coffee beans. The beans were put into both the mash tun and the kettle to create a light coffee aroma and coffee aftertaste in this diverse porter. With additional hints of chocolate and rye malt, this porter is well balanced and fantastic at any point in the day.
4.6% ABV

Little Dogs, Hair of the Dog
One of the oldest traditions in brewing is known as “small beer.” These are made when the grains from a high-gravity beer are reused, pulling out the remaining sugars in the mash. Hair of the Dog makes small beers from both Adam and Fred. Little Dog Fred is made with organic pilsner and rye malts; Little Dog Adam of organic pilsner, chocolate, black, and crystal malts.
3.2% ABV

Voodoo Mild, New Old Lompoc
This take on a traditional British Mild features pale, brown, chocolate and peat smoked malts and toasted barley flakes, UK challenger and US Willamette hops along with Nottingham English Ale yeast. Medium bodied with notes of chocolate and a hint of peat with a subdued hop bitterness.
3.4% ABV | 12 IBU | OG 1.036

“Oxymoronic” Organic IPA, Natian
This experimental beer is a fully organic beer. It uses 100% organic Palisade hops (most organic beers use conventional hops)—a new, unusual hop variety noted for its fruity character. The hopping rates are consistent with an IPA, but the beer is brewed at session strength. A little IPA? Isn’t that an oxymoron?

Helles Belles, Ninkasi
Helles Belles is a crisp German lager with a lightly toasted clean malt flavor and body balanced by the addition of Spalt and Hallertau hops. These impart flavors and aromas that are grassy and subtly earthy in nature. This style is Bavaria’s national beer and defines drinkability to the people of Munich.
5.1% ABV | 22 IBU | OG 1.051

Lil' Smokey, Oakshire
This session porter has been made with a touch of smoked malt. Light bodied with hints of smoke, roast, and chocolate, Lil’ Smokey is just right for the dark beer lover in summertime.
3.2% ABV

Pure Wit, Upright
Upright’s take on a Belgian-style wit using coriander and a special bitter orange peel for aromatics along with a good portion of oats and both raw and malted wheat. Creamy, tart, and refreshing.
4.5% ABV