Once Again, Whose Culture?

Follow-up posts are like newspaper corrections: only a tiny percent of the people who saw the original error will ever notice the correction. Nevertheless, the conversation following that post along with Stan Hieronymus' comments convince me there's another juicy bite to be had from this apple.

I erred in using Zoiglhaus as the point of reference for a more general point I wanted to make. The Zoigl tradition is unusual in that it is a vestige of traditional culture rather than a style. I don't actually have a strong opinion about whether an American brewery should use the name--but am pretty amenable to the argument that because of its special status, care should be taken.

My bigger point was really to argue that Europeans consider American culture on its own terms. If we're using an example, let's return to the other one I did mention in that post--when people born in the United States refer to themselves as "Irish" (or "Swedish" or "German" etc). This surely sounds odd to the ear of someone actually from Ireland or Sweden or Germany, and Irishman John Duffy comments:

Like with my Irish-American interlocutor above, there doesn't seem to be any ability or willingness to hear themselves from the other person's point of view; that empathy is a risk to be avoided. It's like the correct perspective for an American to have is an American perspective and that's all that matters. You could understand it if we didn't live in a world which is much smaller than it was 25 years ago, where we have instant real-time access to each other's cultures and viewpoints. The viewpoint you're defending just seems a bit manifest-destinyish to me. It's not that it's offensive, or that anyone is offended, but it does look like poor manners.

I will defend to the death John's right for this to seem like poor manners. But I do think it's a an incomplete view of what's actually happening. It's the Irish view. But an American does not have, like John, a sole national identity. To demand that we use this lens of national birth is itself a cultural position, one that fails to recognize the actual cultural context of 300 million people living in a place to which their ancestors all immigrated from somewhere else.

When an American says "I'm Irish," it has nothing to do with Ireland. It's an American telling you something about his own identity. That's how we think. Should we think otherwise? That's not really a question that any culture can adequately respond to. Should the Spanish eat dinner earlier? Should Indians have a shorter sense of time? Should Canadians hunt less?

This plays itself out in manifold ways in the United States. Almost nothing that is a part of American culture--the language, religions, art, music, government, cuisine--came from this place. Asking us to mind our manners is a way of asking us to defer to the European definition of identity. And my big point here is just to point that out. It is a European mental model. When we "appropriate" things, very often it is an expression of our identity, not a slight to other cultures. Our parents or grandparents came from a place and we claim that piece of heritage as our own. When Europeans ask us not to use fixtures of "their" culture, I think they forget that it's part of ours, too.

Sometimes that means we do awkward things that offend people and sometimes--many times--we engage in cultural theft (though this is hardly the sole province of Americans). No apologies for any of that. But if we only use the culture of the offended group to adjudicate what we do, we leave out the important element of America's own cultural context, of our ancestors, of our strange, pieced-together shared history. This is a view not often stated nor much understood in Europe, and so as an American I wanted to make it explicit.

Was it Inevitable?

Yesterday I served as the chauffeur for John Holl, editor of All About Beer, and sort of my boss. We began our day at the Cascade barrel-aging and blending facility, which is secreted away in a mostly-undisclosed location off Denny Road in Beaverton. We ended up spending way more time there than we anticipated (the voluble, affable, and wildly entertaining Ron Gansberg gave us a tour and so we lingered). For a nightcap, we dropped by Gigantic and were fortunate enough to encounter Van Havig and Ben Love.

And there I got in an intriguing conversation with Van on the question how national beer preferences emerge. Take any country that makes its own kind of beer (as opposed to making generic lagers) and you can ask the question: why this beer? Why cask ale in Britain? Why dunkel lagers in Bavaria. (Or take the even weirder example of Cologne and Dusseldorf--why a pale ale in one and a dark ale in the other?)

You can do this on down the line. Van and I got in an abstruse conversation about how IPAs developed (we had a heated debate, but by the end I couldn't tell what we were disagreeing about; I suppose that's typical for pubby conversations about beer). We both agree that an American tradition has emerged and that it is characterized by the way Americans use hops. I have harped on this enough I think you all know about it. But Van posed a question that has become my philosophical white whale, the great unanswerable riddle in beer. Was it inevitable that Americans were going to develop in this way?

Remove some important antecedents. Say Fritz Maytag had decided against buying Anchor and Ken Grossman became an aerospace engineer. Imagine that, instead of providing a market for those lovely Cascade hops that Coors didn't want, those brewers never existed and growers pulled the American-bred hops from their fields. Would we still have gotten here?

You can run this mental experiment with any country. What we know is that regional preferences develop, not why. We can trace the history back, we can look at extenuating circumstances (war, famine, tax law), we can consider local ingredients--but like an onion, we can keep peeling and peeling and never get to that answer. You end up with Cologne and Dusseldorf, sister cities making different beer.

It seems inconceivable that America would end up where we are if you changed up some of those early variable, but I can't seem to find the (math-like) proof that would affirm or contradict it one way or another. 

Do Portlanders Line Up at Bars? John Hodgman Speculates

Okay, hive mind, I have an interesting case for you. I was listening to the latest episode of one of my three or four favorite podcasts, Judge John Hodgman, wherein he adjudicates minor disputes (with support from bailiff Jesse Thorn).  John Hodgman is known to most as the "I'm a PC" guy, though possibly also for his deranged millionaire spots on the Daily Show.  In this recent podcast he ruminated on a topic that flatly mystified--but also intrigued--me.  It touches on one of my very favorite topics, the culture of pub-going.  (I have a whole section on it in The Beer Bible.)  Here he turns to Portland, but espies something I don't really recognize:

"There's one city that I've been to in the United States, Jesse Thorn, where people line up at bars.  They form an orderly line without being asked, and the line is sacrosanct.  Can you guess what city in the United States that I've been to where this is part of the culture of the bar."

[Jesse guesses Walla Walla.]

"You are not far off; it is a Pacific Northwestern city known as Portland, Oregon... In Portland, you'd think, 'oh, it's because people are very polite.'  But in fact, it's because people in Portland who go to bars, especially cool bars, don't actually feel comfortable dealing with one another--in my opinion.  So, they line up in order to adhere to a social code that will make outsiders feel unwelcome and will make them feel sanctimonious and self-righteous.  And, with the added benefit of, they never have to deal with the messy human interactions like, 'oh sorry, I was here first.'  Or, 'hey, do you mind if I just get this before you because I gotta go out, or do whatever.'  Do you know what I mean?  Those minor, tiny, little negotiations that humans make with each other all the time in order to get their alcohol and do other things in life.  It feels like when people line up at a bar in Portland, that's to my mind what they're avoiding.  If there are people from Portland, Oregon who disagree with me, who feel that I am unfair, write me a letter and I'll engage with you.  Maybe I broke your rule and you're rolling your eyes.  But that's how I feel."

Hodgman is principally a liquor man (he jokes that rather than a sweet tooth, he has an "alcohol molar"), so he may be talking about upscale bars in the Pearl for all I know.  But I throw it out to you, Portland bar-goers: does this make a lick of sense to you?  I don't recall ever encountering a line in a bar.  I think it's even more unlikely that his interpretation about the meaning of these (possibly apocryphal) lines is accurate.  In my experience, Portland bars are communal and unfussy.  I'd say interaction is one of the key elements of Portland bar culture.

But it's also the case that locals are sometimes blind to manifestations of their own culture--culture that smacks visitors across the face with its weirdness.  So I'm reluctant to dismiss it out of hand; maybe I'm just missing it. I'd love your feedback in comments.  We can pass along our collective opinion to him.

Finally, a couple of notes in terms of tone.  Hodgman's comic style is sardonic, which doesn't come across so well in print.  He's also not only very familiar with Portland, but seems to consider it a dwelling of his immediate tribe (he currently lives in Brooklyn).  He therefore kids Portlanders like you do a sibling.  There's been tons of Portland content on the podcast over the years, including probably the best episode ever, Rashomom, which gave birth to the quantum "Gray House Universe" theory.  There are others like this transportation dispute (of course), and inevitably, one involving a food cart.  I guess what I'm saying is, don't spend a lot of time analyzing him. (But do listen to a podcast if you're intrigued.) I'm much more interested in getting to the bottom of this lining-up question.  Do Portlanders form lines in bars?  Where have you seen it?  And, if we do line up, any theories as to what's going on?

The Soul of Beer

After yesterday's surprising news that Anheuser-Busch had acquired Bend's 10 Barrel Brewing, I wrote a post for All About Beer discussing some of the implications.  I was trying to make two main points: 1) there's no benefit for A-B in dumbing-down 10 Barrel's beer--they purchased the brewery because it makes such good beer, and 2) that this kind of thing is the way of things in mature markets, so we should expect more. 

If beer has soul, does that make Jean Van Roy God?

The reactions on Facebook to that post are worth a read--and were totally enlightening. According to a preponderance of the comments, my points weren't just wrong, they were heresy:  "Beer with no soul is not beer I care to drink" and "I say we see one more brewery who made a devil's bargain and lost the appeal of those who supported ... them."

This is absolutely fascinating to me because it illustrates the degree to which people relate to beer not as a widget produced by a business, but something of a higher calling.  Let's do a thought experiment, and keep in mind the notion of souls and devils as we do it.  A group of DIY-ers start a small business that makes an innovative, creative, and well-made product.  Because they're a start-up, sales are small and the principals are earning enough to keep going, but they're not getting rich.  A large company comes along and offers to buy the business and infuse it with money.  They will keep the principals on to continue making their product and selling it to a now much-larger audience.  Think about how people would respond if that business were:

• A Portland shoe company acquired by Nike;
• A Chicago comic-book publisher acquired by Marvel;
• A San Francisco software company acquired by Apple.  

It's hard to see how the outrage would be the same, yet shoe fans and comic book fans and tech fans are all passionate.

I'm not trying to make any bigger point here.  Even though I no longer hold the view, I'm not entirely sure the idea of a beer with soul is wrong.  We all live in the bubble of our own experience.  I've spoken to brewers like Jim Bicklein at Anheuser-Busch, and his excitement and commitment to the beer he brews is no different than Jean Van Roy's (Cantillon) or Dan Carey's (New Glarus) or Matthias Trum's (Schlenkerla).  My bubble has been formed by interacting with all of them.  

But there are other bubbles out there, where people have different relationships to this thing we all love. One of the reasons we're in a golden age of beer is because people do feel this level of passion.  Those who were outraged by  A-B's purchase of 10 Barrel will help keep small, independent breweries in business, and I can certainly sign up for that.  If they had felt this passionate about beer 50 years ago in Belgium, dozens of old, quirky breweries wouldn't have gone out of business and would still be around making traditional, sometimes world-class beer.  Passion is good.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure beer does have soul.  I just subscribe to a slightly different religion: I think all beer has soul.  Well, maybe not Natty Light. 

We'll Soon Be Getting Back to the Spotty Content You Prize

I see that I last posted on Wednesday, and a lame filler post at that.  Well, guess what?  More filler!  An article making the rounds today comes from the Chicago Tribune, recounting the grim beer scene in Germany.  I've been reading these articles for years, and to be fair, they reflect the mood of breweries in the grand old bierland. 

Yet for many German brewers, the good times are over.  A slump in consumption of more than a third in the last 25 years has hit Germany, Europe's biggest beer producer, triggering intense competition and price discounting.  With young Germans turning to spirits and non-alcoholic fruit drinks, beer sales fell 2 percent last year alone.  Traditional family breweries, also under pressure from double-digit rises in energy, glass and malt costs, are struggling, some dying.

"We're in an extremely tough market," Weihenstephan boss Josef Schraedler told Reuters. "You can't grow here unless you lower prices or .. develop a cult brand and charge a premium."

I'd like to add a Very Big Caveat here for all to consider: compared to what?  In the United States, where beer geeks have declared undiluted cultural victory over the vanquished mass market lagers, something like 90% of the beer is still mass market lagers.  In the US, beer consumption continues to dwindle, too, and wine and liquor consumption are on the rise.  Belgium, where local breweries are even more morose than Germans, has one of the most robust ale markets in the world--far stronger than anything in the UK or US.  (If I weren't doing a filler post here, I'd check on Ireland.)  At my last check, ales had about 11% of the market in Britain, but 30% in Belgium. 

So yes, things used to be better in these countries, and if you were watching production slip every year, you'd be anxious and morose, too.  But German and Belgium (and the Czech Republic) are the world's greatest beer success stories, where local styles have managed to weather the onslaught of mass market light lagers.  And things change.  The trend is down now, but that doesn't mean it always will be.  The craft renaissance may well come to those countries, and it may have unpredictable and yet still wonderful effects.

Just sayin.

Alternate View: The Downsides of Returnable Bottles

Alan Taylor, a talented, German-trained Oregon brewer now in the process of founding his own joint, had a fascinating comment I wanted to highlight.  It came in response to my post about Double Mountain's new bottling line and their effort use returnable bottles.  I said:

In Belgium, they all used returnable bottles.  Everyone.  Remarkably, they get over 90% return rates, and the bottles survive many, many refillings.  (Look at your next bottle of Orval and see if it isn't worn at the wide spot.)...  When I asked them about returnable bottles, Belgians were never convinced it was enormously more green than our system--using a bottle once, grinding it up, melting it back into a bottle, and sending it back out--but I have a hard time seeing how.

Alan sees how.  Here's his comment:

First off, Matt is a great guy, makes great beers, and I trust his call on his system. I can’t wait to see the bottling line.

My comment is a bit long, but some readers might be interested to know why most craft brewers aren't working with used bottles. For some perspective: I worked in a smaller Bavarian brewery in 1998 (20,000 bbl/year sold in a radius of about 20 miles) where they did clean their bottles in a massive bottle washer, which sucked down tons of energy and used lots of water and chemicals. The brewery had to store new glass in addition to the used glass due to lost or broken bottles, so they dedicated a lot of space to holding the bottles on site.

When I was there, the Germans were using the NRW bottle almost exclusively. That helped things a bit. The consumer would buy a reusable plastic case holding twenty 0.5 L bottles, schlepp that home, drink the beer, then schlepp the empty case back. If the retailer returned the cases properly, the brewer would have 20 of his own bottles in his own plastic case (I never worked with a female brewer there, so forgive the use of the masculine pronoun). With one bottle type, you could live with having a retailer send you the wrong case, but you still had to pay shipping to return it to the other brewery. Mark H pointed out the problem with branded glass. That was taking hold in Germany in 1998 and has become even more prevalent, which makes it harder for them as well. So I totally understand the lack of enthusiasm from Jeff’s Belgian brewing friends.

Turning to our craft brewers, we are lacking the infrastructure of selling bottles in a reusable case, using a single bottle type (22s are the closest for this, where almost all of the them are the same bottle type) for 12 oz bottles, having space in the retailer’s storage area to hold all of the cases and bottles returning each day (Germany doesn’t have 50 to 100 brands in their equivalent of an Albertson’s, Safeway, or Fred Meyer, let alone the number of offerings from a Belmont Station), holding the distributors accountable for picking up the retailer’s empties, storing them in their warehouses, then returning them to the brewery.

And…we brewers aren’t sitting on tons of real estate where we can store smelly, nasty bottles and cases, nor can most of us afford a bottle washer (either for capital investment, labor, or energy/water/chemical inputs). For a production brewery of Deschutes/Full Sail/Widmer's size, you are looking at a multi-million dollar investment for the machinery alone. Think of your local, very small brewer who has a mobile bottler come in once a month or so. She probably only has enough space for the bottles that are there that day (I have worked with women brewers here in the States!) and is happy to see the pallets leave as soon as possible.

The Absolute, Very Last Post on IPAs (Probably)

Okay, one more comment that touches on a topic I've been considering for at least a decade.  It comes from Alan:

Additionally, isn't it most likely that your region is heavily taken by IPAs because it is near the major hops growing region? It may be one of the few examples of a local ingredient influencing a regional palate and maybe even culture. 

I suspect there's something to this.  I want there to be something to this.  And yet, how's that old saw go?--correlation is not causation. Historically, that is, before humans developed the tech to ship ingredients cheaply around the world, the relationship between ingredients and tastes was a mutually-enforcing cycle.  People brewed with what they had access to, and that seems to have inclined them to like what they had brewed.  So they liked beer made with local ingredients.  The pattern is so strong that Alan's thesis has the aroma of truth.

If it is true, the connection must come from brewers, not consumers--many of whom are totally ignorant about where hops come from.  (It's changing, but I'm regularly startled when I'm chatting with someone local who doesn't realize where the hops are grown.)  Of course, brewers do know.  And it is the hard-hearted Northwestern brewer who did not take joy and pride in using Cascade, Willamette, Chinook, and Mt. Hood hops, or promoting beers made with these hops, or brewing beer that took extra advantage of them.

(Random sidebar.  I first started brewing in Wisconsin in the early 90s.  It was a bit bereft there at the time beer-wise, and I wanted me some tasty NW-style ales.  At the homebrew shop on State Street in Madison, the local shop owner helped us--it was the beeronomist--assemble our ingredients.  His standard first-recipe kit utilized Willamettes, which he rendered WILL a mets.  We said, no, it's pronounced wuh LAMB its; we know, we're from Oregon.  [There was a town just south of Madison called Oregon, pronounced bizarrely, but I'll avoid further sidebars to the sidebar.]  To our pleasure, he was really impressed to know we came from the craft brewing motherland.  Oregonians love validation.)

Even in the early days, when the craft bedrock was heavily built on amber ales and hefeweizen, hoppy ales were a substantial vein--one I mined early and often.  The super-hopped ale subculture was already rolling by the late 1980s from San Francisco to Seattle even when there was no commercial impetus.  It took the market more than a decade to catch up to what the brewers were doing.

There's another dimension to the local connection thesis.  IPA's ascent to full dominance in the Pac NW didn't really start until the mid aughts.   That coincided with the rise of fresh hopped ales, which put a spotlight not only on the hops, but their point of origin, just an hour away from most Oregon breweries.  Indeed, Oregon has had an advantage even over Washington on this score--not only are the hops closer to most breweries, but the farms are smaller and were quicker to work with local brewers.  That relationship is unique in the world of brewing.  It's not a definitive argument, but it's another piece of circumstantial evidence.

Still, we have only smoke and no fire, correlation and no obvious case for causation.  (There is evidence to the contrary, too.  For one thing, Northwesterners seem to love strong flavors.  That San Francisco to Seattle corridor also happens to be where good coffee started.  Further, it seems likely that other regions will also quickly develop the Northwest's appetite for IPAs even where no hops are grown locally.)  So Alan, I think what you say is true, but I can't quite build an airtight case.

How Does the United States Stack Up?

In the niche-y world of craft brewing, American boosters love to proclaim our place in the world of good beer. (I am not immune.) True, only 5% of the American market is composed of good beer, but never mind--we have Pliny the Elder and Black Dark Lord, so step back. Well, having just been to Britain, France, and Belgium, I'm now in a slightly better position to evaluate America's place. The results are fascinating. (I have yet to hit Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, and Ireland, so bear with this provisional assessment.)

The sad reality is that ales aren't doing so hot. The "ale" countries of Belgium and Britain now produce and drink way more boring, international lager than their traditional styles. In Britain, lagers have a stunning 86% share (according to Fullers' John Keeling). Belgium's a little better at 30%, but they've been stuck at that figure for decades, a period that has seen a precipitous drop in beer consumption (according to Rodenbach's Rudi Ghequire). Britain has roughly 800 breweries (according to Adrian Tierney-Jones' latest article in All About Beer--a great piece, by the way), Belgium has about 125, and the US has 1700--or to adjust for population, per-capita densities of one brewery for 77,500 in the UK, 87,200 in Belgium, and 176,500 in the US.

But the stats don't really tell the story. Each country has its own potpourri of pluses and minuses, qualities that make it surpassingly beery, but others that make it suspect--and this includes the United States. Here's how I'd break it down--of course with the acknowledgement that a month in Europe doesn't make me an expert.

Britain
By far the most impressive thing about the UK are the number of pubs. What I loved was the knowledge that if I set out walking, I would come to a pub in no time at all--big city or tiny village, it made no difference. In those pubs one always finds at least a good pint, if not a variety of great ones. You have to contrast that with the US, where vast stretches of the country have few pubs, and the ones you find serve two or three varieties of industrial lager. As a population, the British are far more knowledgeable about their beer than Americans and it forms a much more substantial part of British culture. Where Britain falls down is variety--and this is a function of that same strong culture of drinking. You'll find bitters and lagers in a put and rarely anything else. Worse, there's an embrace of a depressing trend toward "extra cold" beer. Often pubs will have two versions of the same tipple, one frozen to the point of tastelessness.

There's a lot of excitement in the market, though, and craft breweries are starting to have a real impact on the market. To a person, every brewer I spoke to said this was the best moment in their careers for beer. There's a lot of excitement for flavor and experimentation, and anyone who reads the English bloggers will recognize names like Marble, Thornbridge, and Kernel as leading-edge experimenters. Interestingly, though, the styles of beer these new breweries make are heavily influenced by American craft breweries.

Belgium
Even more than Britain, in Belgium, beer is a major source of local pride. In the tourist districts of the big cities, you'll find chocolate, lace, waffles, and beer. These are the markers of national identity. It seems taken as a given by locals that Belgian beer is the best. People are even more knowledgeable about beer in Belgium than Britain (though perhaps not as knowledgeable as they think themselves to be). Everywhere you go, you'll find a selection of decent beer, even if you pop into a corner pizza joint. Things are dire if you only have a half dozen beers to choose from.

The downside to this is a complacency. Unlike British brewers, Belgian brewers are depressed. Sales for good beer continue to decline as an absolute figure; worse, for small breweries, they're declining faster because the Stellas and In-Bevs are seizing an ever bigger portion of the market with macro-ales. (And this is where the knowledge thing backfires a bit, too; macro breweries play on consumers' sense of history with made-up heritage and antiquity. Tons of marketing dollars help them swamp the little breweries.) The result of all of this is that while there's still amazing beer in Belgium, it's not a healthy market and some of the beers that we revere most are in jeopardy.

France
Obviously, France can't stack up to the major beer countries, but it's worth noting that there's a lot of excitement there. People will be surprised to learn France has more breweries than Belgium, and new ones are opening up all the time. The market is similar to what it was like in the US in about 1988--breweries are experimenting, trying to find their place in the brewing world. In two decades time, the country will actually be a real player in brewing, and it's a pleasure to watch.

America
Which brings us to the US. The country's greatest strength is diversity--we brew anything. Since there's no national tradition of brewing here, there's no consumer expectation, and that frees breweries to do whatever they want. When I mentioned this in an earlier post, some non-Americans took exception. Sorry, guys, it's true. This is America's great virtue in the brewing scene--absolutely amazing varieties of styles.

American recreations may not be identical to the styles brewed in other countries, but that's totally predictable. That's the story of style development. And that very experimentation is what has inspired breweries in other countries. I managed to tour craft breweries in all three countries I visited, and it's really hard to underestimate the influence of Americans on these folks. Of course, the craft brewing movements in other countries will evolve in ways unique to those countries, deviating from the American model much as our beer deviated from the Belgian and British beers that inspired it. Round and round the cycle goes.

The US is so big that the geographic majority of the country has been barely touched by good beer. This is different from Belgium and Britain, which have good beer in every corner and cranny of their countries. To talk about American wild ales is absurd in North Dakota or Mississippi. When people criticize the US as lacking a true beer culture, this is what they point to, and they're right. On the other hand, there are pockets--the NW, New England, Colorado, the Bay Area and San Diego, Pennsylvania--where beer culture is every bit as developed as the UK and Belgium. I think people in those countries may not be aware of how far things have gotten in certain pockets here.

It makes the US slightly hard to characterize and categorize. It is simultaneously one of the best good beer countries and one of the countries most bereft of good beer. But I now feel more confident in saying that in those good beer pockets you'll find more good beer and more varieties of good beer, than nearly anywhere else. Whether they're stable and whether they will spread is impossible to say, but they are impressive even by world standards.

International Extreme: Supplanting Local Styles?

I'd like to direct your attention to an interesting article in the Washington Post. Daniel Fromson writes about the newest crop of Belgian breweries--which have garnered raves from the US:

Along with the less prominent but perhaps equally innovative Picobrouwerij Alvinne, Struise has become famous among American beer fanatics for unusual brews that fuse Belgian conventions with influences from abroad. “We stick to tradition, but we give a crazy twist to it,” Grootaert, 46, told me. As Alvinne’s Glenn Castelein, 38, put it, “We could do just regular beers and try to sell it in the neighborhood, but that’s kind of dull. So we thought, ‘Okay, let’s take a risk.’”

The article presents a snapshot of a new kind of brewery, one Fromson notes is pan-European: companies helmed by young people who make extreme beers whose sales depend on American beer geeks, the internet, and more than a little self-promotion. (He mentions BrewDog and Mikkeller, though Struise is the article's poster brewery--and one that doesn't come off looking too great.)

I've noticed the trend, too. The internet has been a huge boon to tiny breweries who can now reach out to drinkers a continent away for almost no cost. Exotica, strength, and hops are their calling card, and as Fromson notes, sites like BeerAdvocate and RateBeer generate massive excitement (blogs and Twitter help, too). Call me a stodgy old man, but there's something unsettling about this trend.

For one, the beers these breweries produce are fairly similar and are inspired by the gigantism that we see in the US. Hop bombs, huge stouts, and strong ales are central. A related trend, in which American have been an accelerant, are wild ales, especially strong ones. (You can't say Americans started the trend; yet there is something American in the ways wild yeasts and bacteria have been bent to the service of extreme beers.) If you glance at the beer lists of several of these breweries--take BrewDog, Struise, Mikkeller, Nøgne Ø --you see a predominance of these styles. They are, not coincidentally, exactly the styles that score the highest on beer ratings sites.

What we're seeing is the emergence of an international style of brewing abetted by instant communications and relatively cheap exports. These breweries aren't of a place, they're of every place. Brewers can learn instantly whether a style, ingredient, or technique is popular and instantly replicate it. All of this is fine in one way, but it is a very different model from the slow, evolutionary model of style development that has resulted in offbeat curiosities like saison or mild ale or Bavarian weizens. Those styles evolved because of local conditions and circumstances, almost because they didn't have the information of other places or the resources to replicate beer styles from them.

We're quite a long way away from a world in which every brewery only makes hop bombs, imperial stouts, and barrel-aged imperial Flemish reds, but the direction alarms me. I wonder if there will be an emergent trend that will counter the internationalization of big, extreme beers.


Update: I see Stan has a post on this, too.

The Bottle-Shop Pub: A Portland Phenomenon?

Last night, I finally made it down to Bottles at 51st and Fremont. It is exactly the kind of place I love--a cozy place with a long, wooden bar. It's the kind of neighborhood pub where people literally greet you when you walk in. They have eight well-selected, mostly local taps and a barbecue out front ("usually done by five, usually out by eight"). It's Carolina barbecue, if that means anything to you. Although this is no time to be dining out of doors, they have a beautiful little tree-shaded patio that I intend to enjoy come about July 5. My love seems to be reflected elsewhere--they're getting the very rare five stars on Yelp.

Oh, they also have a few hundred bottles of beer in coolers scattered around the pub.

Until three or four years ago, you had bottle shops and you had pubs. Then Belmont Station put in the Bier Cafe next to the bottle shop in their swank new digs, and the two started to come together. Lickety-split, now we have a bunch: Saraveza, Hop and Vine, Beermongers, Hop Haven, Bailey's and probably others I'm forgetting.

For a consumer, it's a pretty good set-up. Last night, I was meeting an out-of-towner, and it was nice to be able to peruse some of the state's finest, knowing that I had dozens of choices to offer. This goes double if you want to sample foreign beers. Even pubs like the Horse Brass can't match the selection of a bottle shop. But there's also draft beer and a nice pub environment. (You pay a slight premium for drinking the bottle in situ, but it's offset by the fact that a lot of bottles are cheaper than taps.)

So I'm wondering--is this mainly just a Portland thing? One of those deals where once the example is out there, everyone sees its genius? Folks from other cities/states--do you have these things, too? If not, I've got a new business model to suggest to you....

Kona Brewing: Pioneering Local Beer

As we all know, brewing goes back a long, long ways--perhaps to the dawn of civilization. It goes at least back at least to the Sumerians, over six thousand years ago. In all that time, up until about the mid-19th century, beer was a purely local product. Industrialization, railroads, and refrigeration made it possible for beer to travel. To the people before then, there was no style, only beer--the stuff you could make yourself. Of course, this is how styles evolved--in a small, regional context where the climate, laws, local tastes, and external factors like war dictated what was possible.

Modern American brewing is slightly odd in that we reproduce styles that emerged in other places. Had brewing started here organically, we wouldn't have had to reproduce what our ancestors brewed in Europe. I've been fascinated by the idea of indigenous American beers, wondering what they might look like and how they would differ from European lineages. Perhaps the best clues are offered by Kona Brewing, which has done more to incorporate local ingredients in their regular beers than any brewery in America. Their three seasonals include locally-grown coconut, Kona coffee, and passion fruit (lilikoi).*

Koko Brown
The newest release is Koko Brown, which has finally made it onto store shelves. It's a fairly standard brown ale--5.5%, 28 IBUs, made with six malts and four hop varieties. The base beer would be an excellent brown, but it has been enhanced by the inclusion of coconut. Kona adds coconut flesh to the mash (which may actually provide fermentables) and coconut essence during conditioning. The result is a beer that is strongly aromatic, almost perfumy, but only mildly coconutty on the palate. The nutty malt flavors blend perfectly with the soft, mildly sweet coconut to produce an amazingly drinkable beer. If it seems conceptually gimmicky, a pint dispels all fears; like Pipeline Porter, Koko is a perfect session ale, and when I've polled people, they have to a person given it very high marks. (It's also one of those beers that appeals almost equally to beer geeks and beer novices, which makes it a great sixer to take to a party.)

Wailua Wheat and Pipeline Porter
Koko Brown is just the latest incarnation of the model Kona beer. The brewery has a great knack for matching flavors that exist in beer with local ingredients. The city of Kona is located on the western side of the Big Island, very close to the famous coffee plantations that borrow the town's name. Kona is a distinctive bean, produced by the unique circumstances of that small growing region (the combination of volcanic soil, sun, and temperature make it impossible to replicate with trees grown elsewhere). Its character is different from the kind you find in most espresso shops in the US. Best at a medium blend, it has a mellow, rounded flavor--not sharp, bitter, or intense like French and Italian roasts. When the brewery made a recipe for porter to go with the Kona beans, they chose a light, mellow recipe like Black Butte Porter. The result is a bright, sunny porter that, like the Koko Brown, makes a perfect session ale.

Perhaps the most interesting is Wailua Wheat, a very simple beer that uses lilikoi (passion fruit) not as a sweetener, but a spice, like hops. Lilikoi are amazing fruits. They look like a yellow egg and have a seedy custard filling that is as intense to eat as a lime. It's so intense that lilikoi is almost always used as a flavoring in other beverages or dishes. What's fascinating is that the flavors are similar to the citrus of hops. I'm still trying to catch up on my understanding of the chemistry of hops, but I know enough to recognize one compound found in lilikoi--linalool, which researchers say gives a hop a "harmonious" citrusy aroma and flavor. (Interestingly, in the Wailua Wheat I had in Hawaii, the citrus character seemed more vivid. I don't know if this is due to the effects of climate--where mild tastes pop more--or the different systems used to brew there and on the mainland, but it's worth noting.)

The three beers are a great example of how local ingredients can--and in my view, should--be included in recipes. The industrial age is an anomaly; beer is local. Recipes should reflect local ingredients. Kudos to Kona for leading the way.

_________________
*These ingredients are not native to Hawaii, which had almost no native edible plants. They have been grown there for over a hundred years, though, and can certainly be considered "local." Coconuts, in fact, were probably brought by the first humans who visited from "nearby" islands. (They weren't that close--just closer than anything else.)

Changing American Palates

Our local paper, the Oregonian, has a weekly supplement called FOODday, which I read mainly for Katherine Cole's wine column. I was therefore surprised to see that she had tackled beer today. Her thesis? People are hopped-out; they want more subtlety.

The new search for subtlety is changing Portland's brewing industry, too. Where winemakers might overflavor their wines with toasty new-oak barrels, oak chips and oak extracts, many brewers overdo the hops.

Perfect! That's a topic close to my own heart. Strangely, she used Coalition as her example of non-hoppy brewing:

Coalition co-owner Elan Walsky and head brewer Bruce MacPhee both prefer to drink lower-alcohol, moderately hopped beers, up to about 50 IBUs.

Coalition is, of course, a triumph of hop-saturated brewing. Behold the stats: 55, 59, 54, 71, 70, 29, and 38. These are the IBUs of Coalition's various beers, all of which range between 4.8 and 6.8 percent alcohol (five are between 5.0-6.1%).

I don't mean to pick on Katherine, who's thesis is right on the mark. (In Portland, she might have spoken to Ron Gansberg, Alex Ganum, Ben Edmunds, or Jason McAdam for perspectives on low-hopped beer.) Rather, the article inadvertently highlights how palates change over time and how what we think of as degrees (of hoppiness, of strength, of quality) also change.

By any modern standard, 50 IBUs is a lot of hops. A dose that potent would adequately balance a barleywine, and in a beer of 5-6%, it's a mighty whallop. Among certain subcultures within craft brewing--and among most Oregon beer fans--that's merely enough to wake your tastebuds up. The Oregonian interviewed Elan Walsky for a video to accompany the piece, and he offers what I would call an accurate opinion of hop levels from a Portlander's perspective. "Right around 50 IBUs is probably a comfortable level of bittering units for somebody who doesn't like a really hoppy beer."

In India, the spiciness of the cuisine varies enormously. As a rule, the further south you are, the hotter the food, but there are regional anomalies. I lived in Varanasi for an academic year--a culinary misfortune. The city easily boasts the blandest food in the country, and I was there with a New York-born guy whose family was from Hyderabad, the city with the hottest food. Having been raised on his mother's fiery cooking, the Varanasi blandness was killing him. To impress upon cooks at restaurants that he meant business, he'd tell them to retrieve a chile from the kitchen. The common variety are slender and green (pusa jwala, I think) and are insanely hot. My friend would snatch the chile from the cook and calmly eat it, raw. To the bug-eyed cook, he'd instruct, 'make mine hot, Hyderabadi hot."

I'm not sure how a human gets to the point where he can eat a pusa jwala raw, but I know how you get to thinking 50 IBUs is modest: bit by bit. When BridgePort released IPA in 1996, it was regarded as an over-the-top hop bomb. That beer has 50 IBUs. Drink it for a few years and then 60 doesn't seem so much. And then 70. Pretty soon, you're wanting your beer Portland hoppy. Now those same 50 IBUs seem like a comfortable level.

Local tastes evolve for reasons that mystify me. Why would Hyderabadis go insane for their chillies while Benarsis prefer unspiced yellow dal? (Actually, there's half an answer to that, but it sends us down an unnecessary rabbit hole.) It just happens. It's a good thing, too--you know what they say about variety and life.