News You Can Use

Today, for reasons described in the first bullet point below, you get a newsy/newsish roundup.  They are nevertheless items of real, if perhaps small, interest, so read on.


To Europe

On Friday I decamp to Europe.  I will be there exactly two weeks, traveling through Herefordshire and Somerset, Normandy, and the Basque country to learn about cider.  I will blog on the road, in that loose and scattered way one does when confined to spotty wi-fi and an iPhone.  What you'll miss in elegant turn of phrase and deep insight--hallmarks of this blog*--you'll get in immediacy and foreigness.  Anyway, that's the plan.  I've done my best to locate cider talk on the weekends to avoid losing my beer-centered (and titanic*) readership, but this is going to be two straight weeks of cider. Give it a look anyway and see if it's interesting.  Expect the first post from Bristol over the weekend.


About that Craft Beer Bubble
Okay, this is a red flag.  From a press release by the Brewers Association today:

At the end of December, the Brewers Association counted 2,722 brewing facilities in the US, an increase of almost 400 from the end of 2012....   It is interesting to note that 2013 marks the first year since 1987 that microbreweries outnumbered brewpubs in the country.

The number of breweries is interesting but essentially meaningless.   The United States could easily accommodate thousands of brewpubs scattered across the nation's cities.  It cannot accommodate too many thousands of microbreweries, though, because there are a finite number of grocery shelves and tap handles in the world.  Microbreweries, according to the Brewers Association definition, make less than 15,000 barrels but sell at least three-quarters of their beer off-site.  Those 1,376 microbreweries might only be able to produce 2 million barrels of beer--1% of the market--but they run into a bottleneck when they send them off-site.  A stat to watch.


Peter Austin is Dead
A small item from across the Atlantic caught my attention:

THE founder of Ringwood brewery Peter Austin – widely credited with saving the microbrewery movement in the UK as well as introducing it to America and popularising it worldwide – has died aged 92. 

In the US, we tend to think of ourselves as sole inventors of craft brewing, but Austin's name should be put next to Fritz Maytag's and Jack McAullife in the official history of the brewing renaissance. 

Mr Austin set up the famed brewery in 1978, aged 57. He came from a brewing family; his great-uncle was a brewer in Christchurch and his father worked for Pontifex, which was the leading brewing engineering firm in the country....

In 1982 Mr Austin hired Alan Pugsley to train to brew and work with him on brewery start-ups.  They installed more than 120 breweries in 17 countries, including Siberia, China, Nigeria and South Africa. The equipment for the Siberian brewery was lost in the Russian railway system for two years before finally turning up in Dudinka. 

Roger Protz also has a lovely remembrance.  


A New Era of Beer Writing Dawns
Okay, it actually dawned when Evan Rail published Why Beer Matters as a Kindle Single.  It matures a bit more with the release of a new Kindle book by good friends-of-the-blog Alan McLeod and Max Bahnson (aka Pivni Filosof).  I haven't read it (see item one of this blog post), but I've scanned it and what you will find in between its digital covers is not typical.  Beer book writing is being driven ever further in the Sunset Magazine direction favored by publishers (soothing words about an indescribably delicious world depicted in deep-focus color photography), so weird oddball books have zero chance of being published.  The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer is a weird oddball of a book--a rant placed inside a fiction.  It may not be getting universal acclaim, but credit Alan and Max with following their bliss.  If you want more writers to do that, consider spending the four bucks on their book.  It will encourage others. 

______________________
*False.

When Naming Goes Awry

An interesting email in the inbox this morning.

I was at Beermongers about a month ago and saw that Hop Valley had a beer on tap called "Mouth Raper IPA."  I had always known that beer as "MR IPA" or "Mr. IPA," but apparently the real name is--according to the bartenders there at Beermongers--Mouth Raper.  That's what it says on the keg and that's what it says on the bill of lading (according to said bartenders).  

I sent Hop Valley a tweet asking them to verify the name, but received no response.  In hindsight, I think my tweet was more accusatory instead of inquisitive, but the fact is they never responded.  

@HopValley seriously?  Mouth Raper IPA?  Inappropriate, insensitive, stupid.  I expect better from local breweries.  Don't be douche-bros.
— oregone (@oregone) December 21, 2013

So my question is as follows:  Am I right in thinking this is totally inappropriate and insensitive?  Are Oregon craft brewers past the point the where they have to be crass or tasteless when naming their beers?  

Taking a quick cruise around the internet, I found enough evidence to confirm that this is the real name of  the beer.  I think it's pretty clear that the brewery gets how controversial it is, which is why it was so hard to track down in the first place.  To answer Oregone's question--yes, it is totally inappropriate and insensitive.  Undeniably.*  Given that this is a brewery with a beer called Double D Blonde, they probably need to pay special attention to the way they think about and depict women.  (And here's a handy rule of thumb: if you would be uncomfortable explaining the name of a beer to your seven-year-old daughter, maybe it's not a good name.)

On the other hand, I think it's worth acknowledging that we don't want to got too far down Outrage road.  Although Mouth Raper is an incredibly boneheaded name, you can see how they got there.  Trying to communicate the sense of hop intensity, they used a term without thinkinh about how wildly offensive it would be to many people.  In some cases, breweries use provocative names to drum up press, and sometimes they use them because they don't realize how provocative they'll be.  Back-of-the-envelope math puts the number of US beers somewhere in the 30,000 to 50,000 range.  Some of those are going to have ill-conceived names.

What should you do when you inadvertently learn you've used a racist, sexist, or religiously offensive name for your beer?  Dump the name and apologize.  What should we as beer drinkers do when a brewery dumps an offensive name and apologizes?  Accept it and move on.

As to Mouth Raper: the ball's in your court, Hop Valley.

__________________
*I could devote an entire blog to the hermeneutics of offensive speech.  Indeed, I suspect there are hundreds already in existence.  Discussions about offensive speech generally lead to bad place and hurt feelings, so you'll pardon me while I skip the "why" part of the rape-is-offensive post.  Think of your mothers, sisters, and daughters when you consider the term.  If you want to think very deeply about offensive speech, start reading Ta Nahisi Coates.  This article isn't a terrible place to start.



 Update: No, not about Hop Valley.  I finally got around to reading this post and realized (again!) that it needed a light edit.  I promise to learn.  But of course, I've been promising that for years.

Cider Saturday: The Press

This is a pretty lame little video I made on Tuesday at Eola Hills Winery, where Kevin Zielinski was pressing apples.  I didn't really get any video of the apple pulp going into the press, so you see still photos.  The press is a large steel cylinder, too, which makes it not so photogenic.  But hey, it's only 75 seconds long, so have a look anyway.

They Grow Tetchy

Is the honeymoon over?  Every few days we get stories of breweries butting heads:

Last month, Tony Magee, owner of California's Lagunitas Brewing Company, sent out a series of Tweets that took exception to the release and marketing of a new brew that directly encroaches on its turf. The brew in question is Samuel Adams' Rebel IPA, a “West Coast Style” beer that’s not unlike Lagunitas’s most popular beverage. What’s more, Magee said that Koch and the Boston Beer Company was crossing the unspoken craft brew line by putting Lagunitas and other brands in the crosshairs.

“Learned that SamAdams’ Rebel IPA marketing plans incl specifically targeting our biz as well as other craft IPA. Flattering & sad, it is,” Magee wrote in one Tweet. “BB specifically told our distribs in common that they were going t TAKE r tap handles everywhere they could,” he explained in another. “That’s a directed attack … Imagine someone threatening your children…”

Today it's two Oregon breweries, and they're battling over the Apocalypse: 

The news that Apocalypse Brewing Co. has renamed itself “Opposition Brewing Company” is making the rounds now that it has become official. The change stems from a lengthy trademark dispute with fellow Oregon brewery, 10 Barrel Brewing Company, which has a beer named “Apocalypse.”

There follows a long and aggrieved statement by Opposition about the dastardly behavior of 10 Barrel.  "Indeed, at least in the short run," they write, "David does not always defeat Goliath and your small local brewery could stand up no longer to a corporate giant."

I bring this up as a kind of echo to my earlier post about Goose Island.   What we're seeing is the maturation of the craft beer segment of the market, one that has a peculiar and particular self-image.  For decades now, craft breweries have been largely collaborative and craft brewing has seemed like a wonderful little collectivist world--everyone helping one another.  It wasn't faked, either--outside the job, brewers hang out together, take vacations together, and do genuinely like each other.  The market has been in a long, durable period of growth, and breweries didn't experience competition as one of their significant challenges.  It was more like a footrace, where companies had their own personal records they were trying to beat.  But that is a kind of peculiar thing in the business world--ultimately, breweries are not collaborators, they're competitors.

I don't know that we're exiting the collaborative phase yet, but these skirmishes are only the beginning.  The craft breweries with national ambitions are going to begin to encounter the same issues Miller, Coors, and Anheuser-Busch have faced for decades.  National markets are difficult to attain, and even more difficult to maintain.  It's pretty clear Stone, Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, and New Belgium aren't all going to be able to sell IPAs in every market--where they'll be competing against local IPAs, too.  There will be winners and losers. 

The battle over names is likely to be a really big deal, too.  That's one of the problems when you have 2500 breweries and each of them is making twenty beers.  It is literally a rule of trademark law that breweries must protect their marks or lose them, so lawsuits (or cease-and-desist letters) over common names like Apocalypse are going to be the norm.  It does create strange situations where the language of craft brewing--the little guy taking on the giant--gets recast so that even relatively little guys like 10 Barrel play the role of overlord.  Probably not good PR for anyone.

Can craft brewing retain its collaborative bonhomie in a market that gets tighter and more crowded?  Probably the better question is, how long can it retain its collaborative bonhomie? 

The Goose Island Challenge

One of the most interesting recent developments in beer was AB InBev's 2011 acquisition of Goose Island.  Until then, multinational beer companies had been trying to penetrate the craft segment with stealth labels like Shock Top and Blue Moon.  These beers were mainstreamed to appeal to the fat center of the American palate, and have long been drummed out of the "craft beer" fraternity for their middlebrow flavors and disreputable, hidden parentage.  For any number of reasons--the beer itself, the subterfuge, the stain of ownership--these beers could be distinguished from "real" craft beer.  (Full disclosure: I think Blue Moon is a respectable witbier and while it is certainly doesn't have the most character, I've had many worse examples by "craft breweries.")

When Bud bought Goose, though, it turned the arguments sideways.  Not only was Goose Island one of the more respected Midwestern craft breweries, but AB InBev invested heavily to allow the brewery to, for example, build the largest barrel-aging program in the US.  It appeared that, contra expectations, Goose Island was not going to build its reputation on a national campaign for 312 Wheat, but by competing head-to-head with the most lauded of the beer geek breweries.  The Shock Top arguments wouldn't work against Goose Island, so the only thing left was wondering whether St. Louis would be exerting subtle efforts to dumb down the beers (a charge I have heard many times since 2011).

A couple months ago, Goose Island sent me four of their barrel-aged beers (Halia, Juliet, Gillian, and Lolita), and it was with this critique in mind that I sipped them.  They run a similar continuum, all brett-aged in wine barrels with fruit additions, brewed in a range from 7.5% to 9.5%.  The brewery packages them in heavy, capped champagne bottles.  It's an extension of the Belgian line that began with Sofie and now runs to ten beers.  Most of them are barrel aged with wild yeast.  So: 1) are they good, and 2) are they dumbed-down?

Let's take the second question first.  It's not inconceivable that a large brewery would try to tempt the beer geek with a boozy specialty beer--Blue Moon has already done it.  They have a Vintage Ale Collection that is a pretty close analogue to the Goose Island range--Belgiany, strong, aimed at the upscale market.  The beer geeks give it a "meh," and not because it's Blue Moon.  These are beers aimed squarely at the Blue Moon drinker--not the Consecration market.  Beers like Proximity are gentle, made with nothing wild, and light-bodied--easy-drinking big beers. 

Goose Island's beers are nothing of the sort.  They are big and aggressive.  Of the four, three had enough brettanomyces to wake the dead.  The fourth, Lolita, was plenty tart, but had quite a bit of bright raspberry flavor and residual sweetness.  They are perfectly typical of what I don't like about American wild ales (except Lolita, which I enjoyed).  Wild ales have followed hoppy ales into the realm of punishing.  Rather than use wild yeasts to accentuate fruity flavors and add a bit of tartness, breweries like to amp up the acid and dryness to lacerating levels.  Part of this is the way wild yeasts behave in oxygen-porous wine barrels, but part of it is the American preference for volumes that go to eleven.  In a fist fight, Juliet could beat the hell out of most challengers.  The beer geeks agree, awarding these high scores on BeerAdvocate: Halia, Lolita, and Gillian 92/100 and Juliet 94.

The first question is a lot harder.  There was a moment when I was sitting in Drie Fonteinen in 2011 sipping an Oude Geuze (the one at right, in fact) when I had an epiphany.  I had been in Brussels for 24 hours and I'd sampled gueuzes (objectively the finest style on earth) from four breweries.  It wasn't that they were new to me, but the force of having them all in such a such a short period: I realized that while they had very strong flavors--each different--they were harmonious.  There was nothing searing about them.  The brett in these beers was balanced by the complex esters and acids developed over years of barrel aging.  Harmony and balance, far more than intensity, is what I value.

But that's not what the American beer geek values.  Intensity is a marker of authenticity in the US.  Intensity is a sensory marker for the ("off-center") irreverence only small, independent breweries can muster.  What fascinates and delights me is that Goose Island has decided to take this marker as a north star.  An arm of Anheuser-Busch Inbev is seeking to out-irreverent the little guys, at least in the glass.  In business, and especially in the self-congratulatory Silicon Valley, "disruptive technologies" are those which are designed to topple the market dominance of an established, outdated tech.  One story some craft brewers tell is that they are insouciantly  "disrupting" the old norms of the beer world.  Their maverick ways--you know, like selling hoppy IPAs--will radically change the beer world forever. 

But the truth is that the most disruptive brewery in America right now is Goose Island. 

Note: post edited lightly for clarity.  I don't know why I don't do that before I hit "post."

Cider Saturday: Farnum Hill Ciders

Always be wary of single-origin histories.  When someone tells your, for example, that one dude invented porter in London in 1722, exercise skepticism.  History usually involves many players and many precursor events.  You are now well-armed to dispute what I'm about to tell you: Stephen Wood and Louisa Spencer are largely responsible for reviving American interest in traditional cider.  No cider-maker is an island, and I'm surely giving short shrift to some important figures, but as single-origin histories go, this one is tighter than most.

The story begins in the apple orchards near Lebanon, New Hampshire, where Steve Wood started working as an adolescent in 1965.  He went off to college and bounced around a bit before coming back in the late 1970s to take over the orchards.  This was not a particularly great time to be an apple-grower, though, because apples were starting to become an international commodity.  Family farmers could not produce technicolor, wax-dipped giants as cheaply as apple conglomerates from Washington State and elsewhere, so they began to wonder about other ways of staying solvent.  (I heard a pretty similar story from Kevin Zielinski at EZ Orchards.)

In the early 1980s Steve and Louisa were driving across Herefordshire and started passing through orchards which Steve later learned were devoted to cider-making.  This led them to very slowly, over the course of a decade, to begin to try growing cider apples ("several hundred" varieties in grafting trials beginning in the early 80s) and eventually to become cider-makers.  One thing that characterizes Steve is a mordant sense of humor about the absurdity of an orchardist trying to figure out how to make cider.  “We pushed out a lot of very productive orchards and planted a bunch of inedible apples,” he told me--more than once--usually with a mystified head-shake. 

I visited a couple days before Halloween on a perfectly clear, autumnal day--and, it turned out, the last day of the harvest.  Western New Hampshire looks like what Americans think of as classic apple country, a vision from Thoreau or Hawthorne.  When you round the bend, you see an 18th century clapboard farmhouse and below it an orchard of beautifully gnarled old apple trees.  You don't immediately see the cidery, or recognize it, but it's right there in front of you: the barn.  It's another antique that Wood slightly modified to accommodate tanks and barrels.  In terms of cider feng shui, you really can't top a barn so old the beams still bear the marks of independence-era saws.

The history of American cider is one of early flourishing and a quick and decisive collapse.  Early immigrants, deprived of land that could produce decent barley, were desperate for something to take beer's place.  Apple trees were growing by the early 17th century, and New England, Virginia, and especially the area around Newark, NJ (!) were big into cider.  But within a few decades after independence, it was mostly dead.  (Why?  That's a different post.)  Historians often use the election of 1840 to illustrate how central cider was to American life--that was the year Harrison and Tyler ran on a platform of restoration, with log cabins and cider as symbols.  But it actually illustrates just how far cider had fallen from view.  In old engravings from the day, you see the famous cabins along with barrels of "hard" cider.  Why modify it with the "hard?"  Because sweet, unfermented cider had already displaced the fermented stuff.  Writing in 1869, JS Buell put it this way: “Most people are familiar with the juice of apple under the name cider, while an exceedingly limited number know anything about the wine which may be obtained from the apple.”  By the time Wood began thinking about making cider, it had been obsolete in the US for 150 years.

Reviving interest in cider meant reviving the tradition of American cider-making.  And here is where two of Steve Wood's decisions would be so influential in the future of American cider.  The first decision concerned apples.  I've looked back through the old sources, and it doesn't look like US cider-makers ever really prized the tannic apples that characterize French and English cider.  But Steve did, and they are a big part of what he grows--Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Kingston Black among others.  As we see new growers planting fruit for cider, those are the varieties people are going for.  That is in part because Steve is happy to send scion wood from his orchard out to anyone who wants to grow it.

“We’ve always given away bud wood. For years it was a couple hundred buds to guys who have fifty trees. A couple years ago we gave out a couple thousand buds and last year I think we gave away maybe 5,000 buds, and this year we gave away 50,000 buds.”

The second decision was in the way he approached the cider-making.  Instead of following one of the European traditions, he consulted vintners instead.  The idea was to use a process that got everything but the fruit out of the way.  (This also reminded me of Kevin Zielinski, another orchardist-turned-cider maker whose focus was squarely on the apple.)  One of the phrases he mentioned again and again was "expression of fruit."  His stripped-down method involves very cold, slow fermentation with a neutral yeast and months and months of maturation.  At first, he tried English methods, but when his ciders produced flavors he'd never encountered before, it occurred to him to get the process out of the way and let the fruit speak.  “Why are we trying to make an imitative cider? This is the USA, godammit—let’s just make something delicious.”

Farnum Hill is by far the most famous American cidery (Google American cider and behold all the  stories written by the national media), and yet it has suffered the fate of the pioneer.  Steve and Louisa have spent two decades spreading the cider gospel, trying to convince people to give their dry, bitter, and tart ciders a try.  You can say they have succeeded: cider hasn't been this big in America since 1825, and the notion of good cider, as complex and sophisticated as good wine, is seeping into the public consciousness.  But Farnum Hill is still a small cidery that struggles to earn money.  Other cideries have taken what they've learned from Farnum Hill's example and are turning the lessons into serious dollars.

It doesn't seem to bother Steve and Louisa too much, though.  Steve is pushing sixty and he harbors no ambitions to become the next Percy Bulmer.

Instead, I think he sees Farnum Hill as a potential bridge from the confused and confusing present, where most people don't know what a good cider is or should be, to a future state when people know and appreciate good ciders the way Oregonians know and appreciate good Pinot Noir.  Right before I left, I asked Steve to define "good" cider from his perspective.  He tends to speak in italics and reel off long, looping mid-sentence digressions.  After a detailed description of the flavors he likes to find in a good cider, he started to summarize what he'd said more and more succinctly.  Finally he said, "Tannin, fruit, acid, and some kind of balance."  He nodded as if to say, 'yep, that's it.'

If, in a generation, this is what Americans expect of their cider, I think Steve will feel like Farnum Hill has done its job.

Perfect

One of my best tipsters, BB, sent me this piece from McSweeney's.  You want 2013 distilled?  Here you go.

Roland—three cubicles over? The programmer with the cheek beards? He’s one crazy beast. Brews a nasty 70% ABV stout using water from the toilet tank. He plays Sabbath to it throughout the brewing process. He calls it Lucifer’s Bungsauce. He also brews a smoked alligator jerky-infused porter. It’s not for every palate, but for the last five years running at Company Brewfest, he’s won the Aggression category, hands down.

Last Brewfest, Logan, the new guy, offered Roland a plastic cup of Bud. Roland dumped it out on his shoes, pissed in the cup, and handed it back to Logan. The sensitivity trainers were all over him for that. 

There's way, way more of it--all just as wholesome and delicious.

The Year in Review

Note: post has been edited slightly for clarity.

Ecliptic, one of 500 new breweries in 2013.

What year is complete without a year-end review?  BuzzFeed has more or less made us all despise these things, but I've been doing year-end recaps since long before the ubiquity of click-baiting listicles, and by God, I plan to keep up the tradition.  (Completists may like to peruse the old posts from 2011, 2010a and 2010b, 2009, 2008a and 2008b, and 2007.)  So without further throat-clearing, let's get right to it.  Here were the trends and developments I thought were most interesting.


Good Trend: Lager's Triumphant Return
As recently as a few years ago, I was pretty sure no one on the West Coast was going to be able to give away lagers.  Full Sail got the ball rolling, but their line of lagers seemed more like a brewing cul-de-sac rather than a blazed new trail.  The presence of the LTD series and Sessions appeared to be the exceptions that proved the rule, not a new trend.  But by last year, signs of a lager renaissance were becoming insistent, and this year, lagers were everywhere.  Not only did lagers return--there was even a lager fest--but they were really good.  Standouts included Breakside's Float and Pilsner, the pilsners from the Commons and Upright (the latter an early trendsetter), Ninkasi's Bohemian Pils, and possibly my favorite, Hop Valley's Czech Your Head.


Bad Trend: Price Spiral
In the very competitive Portland market, the prices on standard beer has remained mostly flat for years.  We can thank Bill Night for his steady work in making those figures available.  (In 2009, a six-pack set you back $9.09 and now you have to pony up just $9.50.)  But in that four-year period, specialty releases have become a much bigger part of the brewing calculus, and prices on those beers has really spiked.  Beyond Beervana, where competition is lighter, prices have spiked even more.  You can see the effect of that at bottle shops, where fairly standard beers from other parts of the country are often ten bucks a bomber.  Specialty releases are even more expensive, and as Alan has pointed out a million times, this feels more like gouging than compensation for spendier processes like barrel aging.  (If Frank Boon will sell me a bottle of his Mariage Parfait for less than ten bucks, why should I be paying $20 for an American brett bomb?)


Good Trend: Cider Comes of Age
It's weird to talk about the emergence of a beverage that has been around longer than the country, but until 2013, cider was on no one's radar.  Mass market cider was at the end of cooler next to the alco-pops and good luck trying to find it on tap.  This year, cider finally seeped into our collective consciousness.  It's in nearly every restaurant or pub I visit, and nearly always in the form of an all-juice "craft" cider.  (I know this is different outside Portland, where if you see a cider, it's likely to be Angry Orchard.)  One of the breakthrough products was Two Towns Rhubarbarian--the first cider I heard people talking about and using as an example of what "good" cider could be.  It was such a good year for cider that it even started appearing at beer fests.


Ambiguous Trend: New Breweries
When historians look back on 2012-2013, they probably won't remember lagers or ciders so much as the explosion of new brewery openings.  This is a continuation of the trend that started last year, when more than 400 new breweries opened up (!) and continued on this year.  The numbers aren't in for 2013, but the Brewers Association thinks there might be as many as 500.  I am still unconvinced this is the sign of a catastrophic bubble, but there is at least one thing to worry about.  For the first time in a long time, production brewery openings are outpacing brewpub openings.  (The stats are slightly unclear--what would you call Ecliptic, which opened as a brewpub that bottles beer?)  There is plenty of room for craft beer growth, but supermarket shelves only have so much real estate.  Will there be a shakeout in the next five years?  With 900 breweries opening in two years, I guess we're running the experiment in real time.


Troubling Trend: Too Many Beers
The market within the craft beer segment has changed dramatically in the last five years.  Once breweries were able to build up a single brand or two build their brewery around it.  The explosion of choice has created a kind of manic ADHD scramble for the new, however, and now breweries regularly make dozens of different beers.  Breakside made a hundred, but even old stalwarts like Widmer Brothers and Deschutes made dozens.  I've mentioned feeling personally overwhelmed by the choice, but there's something more than personal preference at work here.  Selling to a promiscuous consumer base is touchy business, and godspeed to those breweries--particularly the bigger ones--who are trying to find what the public wants next.


Good Trend: Permanent Market Realignment
I don't think there's any doubt that the beer market is permanently altered.  Each year, the market for mass market lagers declines--sometimes precipitiously--and each year the craft beer segment expands.  At this point, China is the battleground for growth among the industrial giants.  Locally, their growth strategy involves getting some of that craft money.  Mass market lagers won't disappear, but they're headed for a long decline.  Meanwhile, the biggest of the little guys--Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, New Belgium--are borrowing a page from the industrial playbook and opening new breweries.  This will further push hoppy ales into the mainstream, hastening the decline of the various lights and lites.  There is an equilibrium some decades in the future, and it includes a healthy share for all-barley ales. 


Ambiguous Trend: Changing Media
I'll go out on a bit of a navel-gazer.  This will be the first year I don't do the Satori Award.  It's partly due to the fact that the changes is brewing have made it obsolete--breweries don't really think in terms of permanency anymore.  But it's also because blogs themselves are no longer particularly relevant in the discussion of beer.  When I started this blog in 2006, there was a bit of utility in offering my reviews and opinions about beers.  It's amazing to think about, but Facebook didn't launch as a national site until that September, and Twitter didn't exist.  Social media as such was limited to things like blogs, which offered a chatty alternative to newspapers.  But in the few short years since then, everything has changed.  No one really looks to blogs to help them navigate niche worlds anymore.  Opinion is so ubiquitous we are instantly tired of it.  In an environment saturated with people oversharing, a blog looks like grandpa's old-timey Facebook page.

There are a lot of opportunities for bloggers to do new and interesting stuff.  But we need to rethink the blog.  Once, we were the BuzzFeeds offering our listicles as an alternative to newspapers.  It's quite possible the reverse is happening: now newspapers don't offer in-depth reporting anymore, so it may be up to citizen bloggers to do that.  I've always tried to do long-form blogging with actual reporting (such as I am able to do it), and this blog may morph ever more in that direction.  I only posted 210 times in 2013, the lowest number since 2006.  If I can break myself of old habits, I may try to do more of the long-form stuff.  We shall see.

Whatever 2014 brings, I hope it is fresh and tasty, just like my favorite beers.  Happy new year to you all--

I Have a Minor Complaint!

 
New Feature!

Old man vents spleen

As I enter the "honored citizen" phase of my blogging career, I think it's time to start reaping some of the benefits.  New for 2014* will be the feature "I have a minor complaint!" (or perhaps I HAVE A MINOR COMPLAINT).  Just as my aged forebears raised a gnarled fist against neighbor children everywhere, so too shall I roar ineffectually about small matters. 

The offending door, blurrily off to
the left in the far background.

To get things started, today's complaint concerns that wind tunnel Laurelwood calls a pub.  For those unacquainted with the facility, it has a rear entrance that opens into what amounts to a chute that empties out onto the bar.  On cold winter nights, when you've settled down with, say a nice gose to watch the Blazers beat the Clippers in overtime, it's damned irritating to have people constantly blasting you with arctic air.  Laurelwood, one of the most successful brewpubs in the US, could easily install a vestibule to prevent this or, if they were going the cheapskate route, at least put up some heavy curtains to slow the gales. 

[Raises fist in air.]  Arrgghh!

__________________
*Unless, due to encroaching senescence, I forget all about it.

Premium Craft?

In the midst of this relaxing and ruminative week, I am spending most of my time away from the computer and internet.  Of all the weeks of the year, this one offers the most opportunity for corporeal human contact and I'm taking advantage.  For you digital types, here's the post of the week: Pete Dunlop on the increasing stratification of the craft beer segment:

There's nothing new about stratification in the beer industry. It dates as least as far back as the 1950s, when heavy advertising split macro brews into premium and popularly-priced brands....

Not that long ago, you could walk into your favorite bottleshop and be pressed to find more than a few $10 bottles of beer. Try that today. You'll have no trouble finding bottles priced at $10 or more. In fact, you'll find plenty of $20 bottles, largely unheard of a few years ago. This reality is supported by Brewers Association numbers, which show that craft beer dollar growth exceeded volume growth by 2 percent in 2011 and 2012. Any bets on 2013?

Also, for those of you looking for that corporeal contact, I highly recommend Roscoe's 7th Anniversary Summit, beginning at 2pm tomorrow.  Lots of special beers plus that lovely laid-back Montavilla vibe.  8105 SE Stark, Portland.

Never Talk Politics or Taxes at Christmas

Do it a day and a half before. 

This has been percolating for a long time, but it is perhaps gathering strength.  (Since Congress is frozen by trench warfare, maybe a tax cut that benefits small businesses principally clustered in blue states is just the ticket.)

At issue is a tax that the federal government assesses on a few products like beer, wine and gasoline and gets included in the price. The excise tax on beer is $7 per barrel for the first 60,000 barrels and $18 per barrel on anything above that. A barrel is a standard unit of measure in the beverage industry and contains 31 gallons of beer.

The Small Brew Act, co-sponsored by 136 House members, would reduce the levies to $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels of beer, and to $16 per barrel on 60,000 to 2 million barrels. The current $18 rate would be retained on production exceeding 2 million barrels, under the measure.

DeFazio tours the OSU Fermentation
Sciences Lab. I believe that lanky gent
to his right is the illustrious hop
researcher, Tom Shellhammer.

If you don't follow politics, this is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to small-bore regional horse-trading.  It's not really an issue that cuts along ideology: it cuts along geography.  

Making the case for the nation’s 2,700 microbreweries is the House Small Brewers Caucus, founded in 2007 by Oregon Reps. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat, and Greg Walden, a Republican.

Since this would lower the tax burden for 100% of Oregon's breweries (though in different degrees), both congressmen are high on it.  Who is not high on it?  Congressmen with large breweries in their states:

The two beer giants, Belgium-based Anheuser Busch-InBev, the maker of Budweiser, Corona, Beck’s and Stella Artois, and Chicago-based MillerCoors, whose parent companies are headquartered in Denver and England, have put their political muscle behind legislation that would halve the excise tax for all brewers, regardless of size.

The BEER Act, introduced in May by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., has eight co-sponsors. A House companion, filed by Iowa Republican Tom Latham, has 72 backers.

The  economics are pretty obvious.  It's more expensive to make beer in smaller amounts, so tiering the tax structure does something to remove the advantage of very large, efficient breweries.  That means the price of a sixer of Budweiser and Ninkasi creep closer together at the grocery store, which is of course great if you're Ninkasi.  The question is: should Washington be artificially leveling the playing field?  This is a purely philosophical question.  Or, if you're a congressman, a regional one.

Rediscovering Old Friends

The small business Sally works for hosted their annual holiday party on Wednesday, and one of the beers in the cooler was Anchor Porter.  First brewed 41 years ago (!), it has all the curves and contours of a classic American beer.  Look at the ingredients: two-row, caramel, chocolate, and black malts, hopped with Northern Brewer.  So much American beer is built on this chassis of two-row and caramel malt--it's like an early blueprint.  In the 1970s and early 80s there weren't a ton of hops available, and Northern Brewer was a common choice because of its versatility.  You could put it in nearly any kind of beer and coax flavors that hinted at English, German, or Belgian styles.

(There's an old and increasingly irrelevant debate about whether Anchor should be considered America's first craft brewery.  Because the brewery dates back to the 19th century and came into its modern form in the 1960s, people often consider it separately from the craft movement that began a decade later.  But if you consider where that movement began--Northern California--and how the beers were constructed, it's a little hard to ignore Fritz Maytag's San Francisco institution.  Certainly, Jack McAuliffe hadn't ignored it when he started what some people want to call the first "true" micro, New Albion.)

But I don't drink it because it's quaint and reminds me of bygone days (there's Liberty Ale for that).  I drink it because it remains one of the best porters in America. It has wonderful depth and complexity.  That caramel malt, so often overused, gives it a velvety richness and a touch of sweetness up front, but then the experience shifts as the dark malts kick in like French roast.  There's even a bit of tanginess on the edges of the tongue with the final swallow.  We often talk about how dark beers "warm" during the cold months.  It's obvious and undeniable, but it doesn't actually make a lot of sense.  At 5.6%, Anchor Porter doesn't have enough alcohol to warm, and I don't know why sweet-roast flavors evoke warmth for us any more than bready-grainy pilsner malt should.  But they do.

I chatted with people who drank wine or IPAs and thought: man, you're really missing the mood of this cold, near-solstice night.  But I didn't encourage them to drink the porter instead; I wanted to hoard them for myself.

Reinheitsgebot, UNESCO, and Beer Culture

Today, NPR did a segment on the recent news that Germans want to put Reinheitsgebot on the UNESCO world heritage list.

It would join the Argentinian tango, Iranian carpet weaving and French gastronomy, among other famous traditions, that are considered unique and worth protecting.

To give the piece a bit of zing, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson went to  Berlin for a dissenter.

One opponent of the Reinheitsgebot is Johannes Heidenpeter. He brews ales without following the purity law and sells them to patrons at an indoor market in Berlin's popular Kreuzberg neighborhood.  Heidenpeter claims that limiting his brewing to the centuries-old law restricts creativity. He says, "Why shouldn't I include coriander or berries if they improve the taste?"

The requisite copy mounted at Paulaner in Munich.

Germany is a big country, so it's not shocking that Nelson was able to find someone to take issue with Reinheitsgebot--and a young brewer who makes modern, international-style craft beer was not a bad choice.  (“I’m influenced by the American scene in a way.  The problem with the German beer industry is that they always refer to their history. We need to look sideways, not backward.”)

Sometimes you know too much.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with the story.  I don't see a single error.  And yet, I'm aware of some relevant details I wished she'd added.  Like:

• It's really a Bavarian law.  Brewing traditions differed broadly in the North and South where the peoples resided in different countries.  In Northern Germany, the brewers made really bizarre beers with no fealty whatsoever to Reinheitsgebot.  They stuffed their ales with tons of non-compliant bonus ingredients.  Brewing to rigid standards was a weird thing the lager-makers in Bavaria cared about.  It didn't become a German law until the Bavarians insisted on keeping it during unification in 1871.  Since this is a discussion about cultural artifacts, it's not actually that surprising that a Berlin ale-brewer now feels the law isn't such a hot idea.  That's a cultural artifact itself.
• It has huge currency among Bavarian brewers.  It's their north star.  I probably walked into a brewery in Bavaria that didn't have Reinheitsgebot mounted somewhere prominently, but I don't recall it.  Brewing traditions emerge by mutual acclaim, and nowhere in the world is there an agreement as universal as Reinheitsgebot.  (I saw it mounted in most of the northern German breweries, too.)  The UNESCO designation is designed to honor culture and tradition and there's nothing in the beer world more deserving than Reinheitsgebot.
• It has profoundly affected the way beer is brewed.  Brewing to Reinheitsgebot in the modern era is a pain in the ass.  German brewers can't easily fiddle with mash pH, carbonation levels, clarity, and a host of other issues the way brewers elsewhere do.  Take carbonation.  It's not mentioned in the law, so no force carbonating with CO2 from an outside source.  Unless, of course, you harvest the CO2 produced during fermentation--that's part of the beer and so kosher.  You can't unnaturally acidify a mash, so you have to either use a weird process to make your own acid or use acidulated malt.  The list goes on and on.  It is in one sense silly and unnecessary, but in another it's exactly the kind of thing that happens in every country.  British brewers wouldn't dream of using beet sugar--but Belgians do.  Even Germans are abandoning decoction--but Czech brewers must use it if their beer is to be called "Czech beer."  National traditions don't always make sense, but they create the conditions for distinctive beer.  
• You can brew beer without using Reinheitsgebot.  You just can't call it beer.  And, as Heidenpeters Brauerei illustrates, people do.

I don't actually have a dog in the fight--whether UNESCO calls it a world heritage practice or not, is pretty (sorry) small beer.  But the idea that it is not one of the most important, durable, and influential traditions around?  That just ain't so. It is, and will remain so, whether or not UNESCO gets involved.

Well, That's Settled: The Best IPAs

A few weeks back, Thrillist's Dan Gentile contacted me to help him assemble a best-IPAs list.  It's out now with the hopeful title "The Definitive Top Ten IPAs."  My guess is that "definitive" is going to be a hard sell--but this is actually an interesting list.  Gentile asked us all to submit our own top tens and then he assigned point values to each of our beers (ten for number 1, nine for number two and so on).  There were nine of us, meaning we each had 55 points to distribute, and any one beer might have scored as highly as 90 points.  There was a mathematical elegance to the results.  We collectively came up with 45 beers (out of a possible 90) and the winner also scored 45 of the possible ninety.

Click to enlarge.

If you selected any nine beer geeks at random, you would come up with a different list.  Or nine different brewers or nine different cicerones or nine different writers.  There are seven million IPAs out there, and we have very particular individual tastes.  Leave the list aside, though, and look more closely at the results--therein lie the lessons.  Four of the nine of us fingered Russian River Blind Pig as the best beer.  Bear Republic's Racer 5, meanwhile, didn't make anyone's top three list, but picked up enough points to come in sixth.  We may have differed over our favorite IPA, but when it came to filling out the ballot, Racer 5 was a gimme.

Eight of the top ten beers were brewed in California.  That's staggering dominance of the category, and I think it's a pretty accurate reflection of the state of things nationwide.  When I was making up my own list (see the end of this post), I didn't include anything west of Hood River.  On Facebook, some folks lobbied to have Bell's there.  But while Bell's is a classic beer and a fine IPA, I could easily find twenty other IPAs I like more.  Ten years ago we might have debated about who makes the best IPAs, but that argument was long ago settled.  Everyone looks to the west now (including Europeans).  If you look at the bottom of the list, there are also some surprises.  Stone IPA got but two points--either a ninth place showing from one voter or two tenth-place votes.  And New Belgium Ranger was dead last with a single point.

Notes on My List
I knew when I turned in my list that numbers two and three were long-shots to make the final list.  Double Mountain Vaporizer had a chance, but it was slim.  Lambrate Gaina had no chance at all--and probably no one who reads that article will ever have even heard of it.  Which is, of course, why I threw it on the list.  There are great IPAs made outside the US--but more than being great, they're different.

Lambrate is this wonderful little brewpub in Milan.  Founded by friends who have a buoyant attitude about brewing, they make Italian beers that reflect their personalities.  Italy does not do intense.  Hoppy beers are subtle and layered; sour beers are tart and toothsome, not lacerating.  In the case of Gaina, the hops were so fruity I literally asked what kind of fruit they had used to make it.  The flavors fell somewhere between apricot and strawberry.  No fruit--all hops.  Later I found another hop fan in Bruno Carilli when I visited Toccalmatto in Fidenza, Parma.  He also coaxed amazing flavors from his beers--but more perfumy and exotic, with lemon-mint and bergamot. 

Oh, and I would have included any IPA from genre had I put this list together--and my original number 1 was Russian River Pliny the Elder, the best hoppy beer in the world.  So I subbed in Blind Pig as a nod to Pliny's brewer.  (Plus, Blind Pig is excellent.)

Here's my list.
1. Russian River Pliny the Elder Blind Pig (California)
2. Lambrate Gaina (Italy)
3.  Double Mountain Vaporizer (Oregon)
4. Bear Republic Racer 5 (California)
5.  Van Eecke Poperings Hommelbier (Belgium)
6.  Thornbridge Jaipur IPA (England)
7.  Gigantic IPA (Oregon)
8. Green Flash Le Freak (California)
9.  Toccalmatto Re Hop (Italy)
10.  Deschutes Chainbreaker (Oregon)

American Trappist Ale

Now available:

Beer probably isn’t the first thing to come to mind when you think of the word “monastery” – but since receiving official recognition on Dec. 10, Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Mass., will become the first American brewery to be manned exclusively by Trappist monks.

The beer, labeled “The Spencer Trappist Ale,” is to be brewed exclusively within the walls of the monastery. Founded in 1950 by members of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, commonly known as Trappists, Saint Joseph’s Abbey has roots that reach far back to monks who fled France during its revolution at the end of 18th century.

This makes nine Trappist monasteries altogether, scattered now across four countries and two continents.  In addition to St. Joseph's/Spencer, there are the Belgian Trappists (Achel, Chimay,  Orval, Rochefort, Westvleteren, Westmalle) and one each in the Netherlands (La Trappe) and Austria (Stift Engelszell).  It looks like they're going for just one beer, characterized by the monks this way: “Inspired by traditional refectory ales brewed by monks for the monks’ table. Spencer is a full-bodied, golden-hued Trappist ale with fruity accents, a dry finish and light hop bitterness.”  I assume that means Belgian-like, but it's hard to say.  (The Austrian and Dutch monasteries make Belgian-style beers.)

Be interesting to see what it tastes like.

Update.  In case you're not a comment-reader, note that two breweries were approved by the Trappists on the same day.  The other is the second Dutch abbey, Zundert.   That makes an even ten.  Huzzah!

Kill Me Now: Latest Update on the Beer Bible

Just spoke to my editor at Workman and learned that they're now thinking a Spring 2015 release for the Beer Bible.  For those of you scoring at home, that's two years after I turned in the (admittedly elephantine) manuscript.  But I know no one's scoring at home since you've all long forgotten about it. 

Okay, who's in the mood for a nice cider?

The Century Mark: Breakside's Unsettling Milestone

The folks at Guinness no longer record alcohol-related feats (an irony, given that the man who founded  them, Hugh Beaver--real name--was a brewer), but I wonder if Breakside might not qualify for "Most Industrious Brewery."  In the course of one calendar year, the busy little brewery managed to produce one hundred different kinds of beer.  That's not a hundred batches--a hundred beers.  (The mad scientists continued to prepare Breakside's regular line all the while.)  Sometime this weekend, I believe, the centurion will be identified and released.

Source: The Rian Group

It's a harmless enough milestone.  Many of those beers were like the spray of distant stars in the forest sky--too many to count or consider, and always secondary to the familiar figures of Orion and the Bears.  I sampled a few of them, but I was drawn back to the brewery throughout the warm months for the pilsner and Dortmund lager that glowed so brightly all summer long.  Broad experimentation didn't come at the expense of my faves.

But I am for other reasons unsettled by this development.

Let's rewind the tape.  Back in the dark days before craft brewing, there was effectively one style of beer available in the US.  Beer drinkers therefore distinguished themselves by selecting one brand and sticking with it for years--or a lifetime.  As there were Ford and GM men, there were Bud and High Life men.  Craft brewing came as a corrective to this sorry state, offering--joy!--some variety.  Breweries in the 1980s and 1990s had a flagship, a regular line, and perhaps a seasonal or three.  Any brewery that made ten different beers in a year would be considered flighty and unfocused.  Half that was more like it.

Breweries in the aughts discovered the delights (and lucre) of specialty beers, and enjoyed buzz and press when they managed to attract beer geek attention with an Abyss, Dark Lord, Heady Topper or Hopslam.  Which of course begat more specialty beers.  And then flagships and regular lines began to sag.  I was gobstruck this year to see the Widmer Brothers replace Drifter with Alchemy--pale for pale--just four years after Drifter's release.  Drifter was one of the best-selling new beers nationally in 2009 (and that includes the big breweries), but it wasn't enough to keep the attention of novelty-seeking beer fans.  I was so struck by it that I met with Rob Widmer to discuss the changes in the brewing biz.  "Young drinkers now are so promiscuous,” he told me.  "Whatever it is and however good it is, no matter what product it is, once they’ve had it, the shelf life is incredibly limited.  All their lives it’s been ‘that was great: what’s new, what’s next?’”

As good as Float (the Dortmund) was--easily on the short list of my faves of the year--the best beer I had at Breakside in 2013 was a tmavé, a Czech-style dark lager.  It actually began life as an Irish stout, but through some happy accident or another ended up getting lagered.  It was a dead ringer for some of the tmavés I had in the Czech Republic last year.  (When I visited Budvar, brewer Adam Broz agreed that his tmavé had a malt bill that looked a great deal like an Irish stout.)  Of course, that beer was one of those little, distant stars, already long extinct by the time you see it.  There wasn't much of that lager left, and the brewers had no intention of making it again.  Pity the drinker who fell in love with one of the more obscure of the 100.

This is the dilemma for the modern beer drinker.  Choice is again the problem--though now we have too much of it.  We have neither the stomach space nor time to be sampling from the dozens of beers made by dozens of breweries ever year.  And to that limited stomach space, we now have to decide to commit old reliables or role the dice on a new frolic that may be a gem or a dud.  (Praise be to breweries that offer linear pricing and half pints.)  God forbid you should fall in love with a beer--in the current churn, who knows how long before it gets dumped for something new.

I realize we have much more serious problems to consider with things like global warming, congressional gridlock, and twerking scandals.  Still, this seems like at the least a minor issue to consider.  And what are blogs for except considering minor issues?

Your thoughts?  Is the beer bounty unalloyed good or does it throw a long, dark shadow across your beer drinking sessions?


Update: Weirdly related headline of the day: Boulder Beer ends distribution of Planet Porter, the oldest craft brew in Colorado (the U.S.?)

Photos of the Year

Each year since 1978, Alan McLeod has hosted a beer photo contest for the holidays.  The past two years I had scads of European brewery photos and cashed in for the win in 2011 with a Cantillon/koelschip pic.  Totally unfair.  I would have disqualified myself.  Fortunately, Alan did not, and I will go on my merry way for the next few decades as a happy loser.  (Unless I snag the "worst photo" some lucky year.)  You should totally enter the contest.

This year, Alan's only letting us send five pics.  Five!  Impossible.  I pulled out the bone saw and tore into the patient, but even unimaginable gore could not take me down to five.  So here are the three I couldn't exclude but also couldn't exclude.  My other entries will appear at some point in the next month over at The Good Beer Blog.  I wouldn't call them better, just more likely to appeal to the judge (purely speculatively).

Mt. Angel Abbey, which is adding a brewery, with hop
fields in the background.

Willamette Valley hop fields.

Jim Bicklein, the master brewer at Anheuser-Busch's
St. Louis brewery.  Gorgeous facility.

Aesthetics of Flavor

A day chilled by arctic air and a dusting of snow (in Portland, anyway) seems the ideal moment to settle in with a cup of hot, black coffee and begin stroking our chins.  Today's philosophical discussion: the aesthetics of flavor.  (See here for a discussion of the concept of aesthetics.)  In my effort to learn about the nuances of cider, I've been looking as deeply as possible into the various compounds that might appear, giving the different national traditions their characteristic flavors and aromas.  These may include those present in the apple or made during fermentation.  ("Cidery aroma" was fairly recently isolated as "the dioxane resulting from condensation of acetaldehyde with octane-1,3,-diol.  The diol itself is a relatively unusual alcohol that is known to be present in apples and pears in a glycosidically bound form..."  As one example.) 

But all of this takes us back to a more elemental question: what should cider--or anything--taste like?  It turns out this is a question philosophers have been considering.  Naturally, they've turned their focus on wine, the most haughty and overrated of all the fermented beverages, but it will do in a pinch.  It turns out that for some philosophers, even wine is too lowly a subject for proper discourse.  Roger Scruton, for example, makes this argument:

"Philosophers have tended to regard gustatory pleasures as purely sensory, without the intellectual intimations that are the hallmark of aesthetic interest.  Sensory pleasure is available whatever your state of education; aesthetic pleasure depends upon knowledge, comparison, and culture.  The senses of taste and smell, it is argued, provide purely sensory pleasure, since they are intellectually inert.  Unlike the senses of sight and hearing, they do not represent a world independent of themselves, and therefore provide nothing, other than themselves, to contemplate....  It was important for Aquinas, who distinguished the cognitive sense of light and hearing from the non-cognitive senses of taste and smell, arguing that only the first could provide the perception of beauty."

If you're a Buddhist, this may seem a bizarre distinction.   To Buddhist philosophers, all senses are inert--it's only the nearly-simultaneous action of the mind that makes them appear to have "cognitive senses."  But let's stick with the western canon.  Recently, another philosopher, Cain Todd (yes, those names are in the correct order), mounted a spirited defense of the aesthetics of wine. I will not quote lengthy passages from his paper.  Instead, very briefly, what Todd argues is that contra Scruton, wine appreciation very much does depend on knowledge, comparison, and culture--"strong normative standards of evaluation and interpretation."

In other words, we appreciate wine--or beer, or cider--because we have a collective set of standards against which to judge it.  This is why, in art, a painting by Mark Rothko (a Lincoln High grad) can be judged aesthetically in the same manner a Warhol, Hopper, or Kandinsky can: we have standards and norms against which to judge them.

 This is obviously the case with beer, wine, and cider.  As with art, the norms evolve and change.  An artist producing an abstract piece like Rothko's in Italy in 1600 would not probably have found an appreciative audience--much as pop art in the mode of Lichtenstein or Warhol is now considered derivative, if it's considered art at all.  But there are norms, clearly, and we debate them all the time.

In this framework, you could easily argue that beer has the most sophisticated aesthetic framework of any beverage.  Context is critically important.  In a cask bitter, a sour note is considered an off-flavor, but it's central to a lambic.  Nearly every flavor or aroma compound that is appropriate in one style is considered a fault in some other.  This is where I'd add a plank to the argument.  When considering flavor, these norms don't emerge randomly: they take into account the consideration of harmony and balance.  A cask bitter finds harmony and balance among the qualities of bready malts, zippy hopping, and round low-carbonation.  Gueuzes, on the other hand, are effervescent, tart, and hop-free.  One can blend the styles easily enough, but that also risks disturbing the aesthetic balance.

In the world of beer, this is pretty intuitive stuff.  It's much more interesting when we consider cider which, in America, is going through a period of testing and change.  There is so little traditional tannic-rich cider fruit in the US that people are experimenting broadly with different techniques and ingredients.  Some of these will come to be normative: hopped cider has a very good chance of becoming at least a regional style.  Some will vanish.  And when that happens, the norms will have shifted again. 

But aesthetics of flavor?  Obviously.

Notes and Updates on the Holiday Ale Festival

Day one of the frosty Holiday Ale Festival is in the books.  Day two, less than an hour from opening, looks frostier still.  (It's 29 degrees as I write this.)  That makes for a lovely time under the tents, but don't depend on those heaters getting the temperature up to 68.  They strain to keep it pleasant, but there are pockets where it never really warms up.  (When the outside temperature is the normal 45, the inside can sometimes get steamy.)

A few other notes

The $5 designated-driver wristband.

The food situation is not great--and if you're a vegetarian, it's pretty terrible.  I'd advise you to eat beforehand and just snack while you're there.  There is water, but you have to go to the Northeast corner of the main tent, near the exit, to find it.  These are huge beers, and you really, really need to stay fed and hydrated.  A four-ounce pour of a 10% beer (common here) is the same a shot of whiskey. If you drink your first batch of 10 tickets, you may well find yourself in trouble, so beware.  To add insult to injury, the Fest is for some reason charging designated drivers five bucks just to get in.  For those good eggs willing to tag along to give your drunk self a ride home, this is a harsh penalty indeed.  Non-drivers should maybe pool their dollars and pick up the tab.  (Note to Fest: knock that off in the future.  You want designated drivers, especially when your beers are so boozy.)

The beer
The main event, of course, is the beer, and as usual they're pretty amazing.  Bière de noëls devide people, so it's harder than usual to make recommendations.  How do you feel about spice?  What about smoke?  Where's your sweetness threshold?  Depending on how you answer these questions, your mileage will vary.  I have always had a rocky relationship with spice, and so tried nearly no beers that used them.  On the other hand, I love smoked malt, so I was out sniffing for the smell of char.  Over the course of six hours, I had a full pour or neighborly snort of just 15 of the beers, so my sample size is also limited.  However, all those caveats noted, here were the ones I liked:

• Alameda Long Beard's Baltic Porter.  One of those smoky beers, and one of two or three that vied for my fave.  Baltic Porters are simultaneously smooth and intense (they're usually lagered), and a vivid, almost sour roast note is typical.  Alameda puts a spin on that with the smoke, and it really works.  Deep, resonant beer.  So many winter beers are meant to be drunk by the snifter, but I could have easily tucked into a pint of this.
• Cascade Cherry Diesel.  A very well-made cherry stout, meaning tons of roast battling tons of cherry.  The two tango in the way cherries and chocolate are famous for doing, and the effect is similarly decadent.
• Elysian Doom.  I confess I was attracted partly by the name, forgetting that I was getting an IPA (maybe the only one at the fest?).  It's exceptional.  A head like mousse and incredibly rich, super tasty hopping that blasted through my tired palate.  It was my nightcap and I'd like to try it again fresh.
• Ninkasi Single.  By contrast, I kicked the fest off with this beer.  A little titan--a mighty mite?--with a substrate of esters that harmonized nicely with spicy/herbal hops (Saaz?).  Also one of the best beers I tried.
• Old Town Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum.  Also late in the day, so my faculties were diminished.  It seemed to have a wonderful harmony between the rum barrels and burnished maltiness of the old ale.  
• Pints Hibernator.  A lovely weizenbock that functions as a perfect palate-refresher.  Lots of phenolics and spice that help enliven a tongue battered by alcohol and sweetness.

I also enjoyed BridgePort Honey Porter, Deschutes Yule Goat (though it was pretty brett-y), Fort George Hogfather, Golden Valley Santa's Smokin' Bock, and Hopworks Kronan the Barbarian.  Just four misses: Base Camp White Squall (balance was a touch off), Laht Neppur St. Dorothy's Peach Cordial Ale (too sweet), Mazama Mazamanator (too strong and too fruity for a doppelbock), and Viking Winter Squash Porter (a braggot that was actually really good except the spicing threw me off--I'd love a version without spice).

I saw a bunch of people there I wish I'd spoken to more (like Suds Sister, Matt Van Wyk, Ritch Marvin, Pete Dunlop, Sanjay Reddy and several others).  What is it with fests that make it hard to talk to everyone you'd like?  Here's hoping I get another bite at the apple; I'm planning for a Saturday foray too.  See you there?

A User's Guide to the Holiday Ale Fest

Holiday Ale Fest, Dec 4-8

Pioneer Courthouse Square

Wed-Sat, 11a to 10p, Sun 11a to 5p

Initial tasting package (required): $30, includes mug + 10 tix

Additional tix $1 apiece

No minors, no pets

____________________

I want you to just luxuriate for a moment in some names you'll find this Wednesday at the Holiday Ale Fest:

• The Scut Farkas Affair
• Oud Freakcake
• Hogfather
• Yule Goat
• Gargantua
• Doom
• Hibernator
• The Twerking Elf

The point is, brewers love love love winter.  They make and sell most of their beer in the summer, but it is the dark wet months, when yule logs crackle, when they get to turn their ids loose.  I just did a scan through the list of "standard" pours at this year's Holiday Ale Fest (those you'll find on the main floor at all times), and not a single one is a regularly-brewed offering.  Not one!  If you pine for a Wassail or even Abyss, this is not the fest for you.  If, on the other hand, you want to see what happens when a brewery ages an oud bruin in Maker's Mark barrels with cranberries, figs, dates and raisins, you're in luck.  This is the first rule of the Holiday Ale Fest: bring your good cheer and have fun.

Source

HAF is one of the best events of the year--and arguably the first "modern" beer fest.  It's a curated affair where beers have been specially brewed in service of a theme.  In this case, that theme is impressionistic, which adds to the fun.  A brewery might think nothing says noel like a German weizenbock while another thinks it means an abbey single.  Many, of course, believe it means a barrel-aged beer made with odd ingredients like marshmallows, panty hose (seriously, I think), and turnip honey (Oakshire, Slanted Rock, and Viking Braggot).

Many of those oddballs are going to be lumps of coal, but along the way these experiments will yield the occasional gem.  This leads us to rule number two: sample broadly and share information.  There's no reason more than one member of your party has to endure a train wreck--or should be hoarding the good stuff.

Since the beers are all one-offs no one has tasted, it's impossible to assess them by description alone.  However, there are a few ways to approach them if you want to divide them by category.  Or rely on me to do it for you. 

The Small Beers
Mostly you'll find grandes cervezas (more than half the pours are 8% or higher and 18% are in the double digits), but a few little guys may help lengthen your session.

• Deschutes Yule Goat (5.4%, a brett-aged brown ale); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin (5.5%, hoppy oatmeal stout); 
• Fish Gingerbread Ale (5%); 
• Ninkasi Single (5%); 
• Oskar Blues Black Mamba (5.6% dunkelweizen); and
• Rock Bottom You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid (4.8% helles). 

Straight-up Beers 
This is a surprisingly small group, less than 25% of the whole, and one to which I will direct special attention.  They are those beers brewed to relatively normal styles with no oddball ingredients (and there's a lot of overlap with the group above).

• Base Camp White Squall (barley wine); 
• Coalition Shenanigans (barley wine); 
• Dick's Code 1081 (winter warmer); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin, 
• Fort George Hogfather (I think; it's a Baltic Porter); 
• Hop Valley The Wolfe (English barley wine); 
• Mazama Doppelbock; 
• Migration Big Sipper (Belgian dark); 
• Ninkasi Single; 
• Oskar Blues Black Mamba, 
• Pints Hibernator, and 
• Rock Bottom You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid .

Barrel-aged Beers 
Breweries now cast their nets wider than just bourbon distilleries--this year they used brandy, rum, and wine barrels as well.

• 2 Towns Naughty and Nice Cider (bourbon); 
• Bear Republic Santa's Lost Wallet (brandy); 
• BridgePort Oak Aged Honey Porter; 
• Cascade Cherry Diesel (Heaven Hill bourbon); 
• Crux Oud Freakcake (Maker's Mark bourbon); 
• Deschutes Yule Goat (bourbon); 
• Eel River Gargantua (bourbon); 
• Gilgamesh BAHS (bourbon); 
• Hopworks Kronan the Bourbarian (bourbon); 
• Lagunitas High West Whiskey Barrel Stout; 
• Lompoc Revelry Red Ale (whiskey and wine); 
• McMenamins Mele Kalikimaka Coconut Stout (Hogshead Whiskey); 
• New Belgium Cascara Quad; 
• Old Town Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum (rum); 
• Rogue Big Ass Rye (new oak); and 
• Vertigo Polar Blast (whiskey).

Sour Beers
Wild ale fans will be disappointed to find only four beers to scratch their itch.  That's it.  However, watch for the special-release beers--there may be a tart or three in that group.

• Crux Oud Freakcake; 
• Deschutes Yule Goat; 
• Lompoc Revelry Red, and 
• Stickmen Twerking Elf. 

Black Beers
Give me a cold, drizzly night and you better give me a warming dark ale.  This is the fest for dark beer fans.

• Alameda Long Beard (Baltic porter); 
• Bear Republic Santa's Lost Wallet (stoutish); 
• BridgePort Honey Porter; 
• Cascade Cherry Diesel (imperial stout); 
• Columbia River Hawaiian Christmas (coconut porter); 
• Firestone Walker Luponic Merlin (stout); 
• Fort George Hogfather (imperial porter); 
• Hopworks Kronan (imperial porter); 
• Lagunitas (coffee stout); 
• McMenamins (coconut stout); 
• Natian McGuinness (imperial milk stout); 
• Slanted Rock Panty Hose Porter (Baltic porter); 
• Speakeasy Erotic Cake (chocolate milk stout); 
• Stone Spiced Unicorn Milk (chai stout); and 
• Vertigo Polar Blast (imperial vanilla porter).

The Really Crazy Stuff
You want weird?  HAF's got weird.  This brings us to the third rule of the Holiday Ale Fest: make sure you don't burn out on bizarre experiments.  But you should nevertheless try a few.

• Burnside It Makes Reindeer Fly (weirdness factor: a rye ale made with carrots and raisins);
• Crux Old Freakcake (weirdness factor: oud bruin made with orange and lemon zest as well as cranberries, figs, dates and raisins);
• Gigantic The Scut Farkas Affair (weirdness factor: gummi bears);
• Natian McGuinness (weirdness factor: milk coffee stout aged on Kahlua-soaked oak) (also note, to avoid confusion, that the founder/brewer is Ian Guinness);
• Oakshire Swiss Mrs. Alpine Alt (weirdness factor: an alt mashed with toasted marshmallows and brewed with cocoa nibs and lactose);
• Viking Braggot Winter Squash Porter (weirdness factor: a braggot--mead and ale--made with turnip honey and winter squash)

All of those are taken only from the "standard" group.  Each day they're also pouring specialty beers (mostly vintage stock) which add a whole 'nother level of specialness.  You can see the list and schedule here.

I'll be at the Fest on Wednesday and promise to have a quick and dirty reactions post up before the beers pour on Thursday.  See you there--