La Cerveza Artesanal de México, Part 1

My journey into cervezas artesanales--Mexican craft beer--began at Societe Brewing in San Diego. I'd just flown in from Portland, and Hector Ferreira thought it would be a shame to miss one of San Diego's bounty when so many were at hand. This turned out to be a better metaphor than I imagined; it's impossible to imagine the breweries of Baja California emerging in the numbers or form they have without this brewing mecca right on their border. Our next stop was just south in Tijuana ("TJ" to locals) at Norte Brewing--one of the country's best--which is owned by Carlos Macklis, who splits his time between the two cities. Later on I'd meet Ivan Maldonado, a brewer at Silenus, another Tijuana brewery; he also brewed across the border at Fall Brewing. This kind of cultural and human resource exchange is typical.

If you can't call to mind a Mexican craft brewery, don't feel too bad. It's a surprisingly recent phenomenon, dating back a little more than a decade. The first significant craft brewery was Minerva, from Jalisco, launched in 2003. That somewhat overstates things, however. One of the people most able to see the scope of the market is Tero Moliis, who founded an ambitious ratings app called Maltapp. "Two years ago--well, in 2014, let's say, there were fifty or as many as 75 breweries," he told me. "Today there are over 600." Over the past year, they've been opening at a rate of more than one a day.

Tijuana and San Diego have shared a boozy relationship dating back nearly a century. They are in many respects twin cities divided by an international border, and residents wash back and forth each day like the rising and falling tide (albeit one slowed considerably by border guards on the northbound side). You might therefore reasonably ask why craft brewing started so late in Baja. The reason--as is so often the case--is because of legal barriers. Mexico is dominated by a duopoly of giants--Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma and Grupo Modelo--who until 2013 had absolute control over the market. They held powerful exclusivity contracts with retailers that kept small breweries out, which made starting a brewery dicey in the extreme.

Then in 2013 that all changed:

The two companies do so by holding exclusivity agreements with a large number of restaurants and bars throughout Mexico, limiting the access of micro - brewed and other beers not distributed by the two companies. On July 11th, 2013, the CFC announced a decision that these two companies would have to limit their exclusivity contracts to 25 percent of their points of sale in small grocery stores, restaurants, and bars, effective immediately. This number is to reduce to 20 percent by 2018.

Breweries in Mexico now sell directly to the retailer. It's an arrangement that seems to work out for them; I found no brewers who thought access to market was a problem. (I found many who were mystified by our three-tier system.) Tax law is another fight they have yet to wage--the structure means that craft breweries end up paying twice as much to the government, with concomitant price hikes to the customer. This limits their reach to upper-end bars and restaurants, but for an industry that is still less than 1% of the market, is not yet hobbling growth. (Little breweries have a trade organization similar to the Brewers Association fighting for these changes.)

Back to Norte, which is on the fifth floor of what is mostly a parking lot, but inside it looks much like anything you’d find in Portland--or San Diego. Big chalkboard over the bar, a lineup of beers that includes three hoppy ales, a small kit Macklis designed himself behind glass to the side of the bar, and a sky view of downtown. Not only do brewers in Baja have access to ingredients and equipment just across the border, but they can learn from and collaborate with San Diegans. Right on cue, I bumped into Keith Shaw, lead brewer at Modern Times, who was down for a pint. After tacos, we made another pit stop at Plaza Fiesta, the "colectivo" I mentioned, and had a couple pints in pubs that took their style cues straight from north of the border. In Baja, as one brewery told me, "it all pours down" from San Diego.

That is not true everywhere. Despite the way Americans see their neighbor to the north, Mexico is not all just border cities. The further into the country you go, the less US craft brewing has a hold. I was in the country to speak at the Ensenada Beer Fest (full disclosure: the fest paid for my travel), which poured beer from breweries from all over Mexico. IPAs are popular in Baja, but the pull of hops grows weaker with every mile you move from San Diego. The two other central hubs of beer are Guadalajara (1400 miles south) and Mexico City (1800 miles). Walking around the beer fest, I saw a lot of stouts, amber, and pale ales from breweries in those parts, but few trendy hoppy styles Americans make. (The phrase "New England IPA" was never mentioned in the five days I was there.)

I’ve harped endlessly about the way beer culture is formed—the organic communication between the brewer and drinker that somehow produces a distinctive palate and way of brewing region to region. The Mexican market is still too young to know what they want, which means the brewers are experimenting pretty broadly. Nevertheless, that formative period the United States went through that lasted from the earliest breweries until the first shakeout took two decades. Here, they've compressed birth and adolescence into just a few.

Surprisingly—or perhaps not—dark ales do seem to have emerged as the early favorite among drinkers. I’ve heard that from nearly every brewer I’ve spoken to. It’s surprising because Mexico doesn’t have the climate I associate with these heavier ales. But as Enrique Aceves-Vincent Ramirez, the brewer at Guadalajara’s Loba Brewing pointed out, for drinkers excited by craft beer, it seems like the style as far from Corona as you can go. (That was exactly what happened in the US, too.) 

The learning curve for Mexican breweries is far, far shorter than it was for Americans. Most brewers haven’t been professionally trained, but there’s so much more information and communication out there now that they’re learning very fast. English-style ales seem to be the dominant category (again, much like the US in the 1980s), but brewers are already moving on. It seems to have occurred almost simultaneously around the country that fruit and culinary ingredients, particularly native Mexican ones, offer a deep vein to mine. In the short time I’ve been here, I’ve seen fruit, spices, and in one case, squid ink, all deployed.

Albur's brown ale was a highlight at the fest.

I think the big transition will happen when brewers start to get access to locally-grown barley and hops, which they're keen to do. Significant barley crops have been grown in Mexico for centuries--and varieties bred for the climate have been introduced periodically since the 1960s. They grow six-row strains, and Hector Ferreira, who brews at Cerveceria 159, told me they're not particularly great barleys, so there's still work to do, but that's promising.

Hops are obviously a bigger challenge. At 32 degrees, Tijuana is south of the ideal hop-growing zone--and places like Mexico City, at 19 degrees, are far too far south. But a number of the brewers I spoke to are keenly interested in Neomexicanus hops, which flourish at southerly latitudes.

Beyond this, brewers are already embracing localness in their beers. Paco Talamante, at Canneria Cerveceria in Ensenada, made a wonderful saison with the hard, salty water that bubbles up from the rocky soil. Like Astoria, Oregon, Ensenada used to be a huge canning port, and like Astoria, the canneries all closed. Like Fort George, Talamante wanted to bring canning back to his home town, and he wants his beer to reflect the place as well. It's a sentiment I heard many times during my visit. In this way, Mexicans are way ahead of Americans, who didn't start talking like this for decades after craft beer got started.

There's more to say, but his post is running long so I'll leave it here for now. We'll pick up in future posts with some of the best breweries I found and a few thoughts on the mood and excitement of the Mexican beer scene (which was a balm to this beer fan increasingly tired of the cynicism and anxiety of ours). Until then--

The Ensenada Beer Fest

En Mexico

I send my dispatch today from under the sunny(ish) skies of Ensenada, Mexico. There's an annual craft beer festival down here that has grown to become one of the more important dates on the annual calendar. Over a hundred breweries will be pouring beer on Saturday and as a lead-up there is a series of talks and lectures from I think largely academic types (I met a researcher last night). I got one of the golden tickets to speak, along with the very famous but elusive John Palmer, whose guide to homebrewing remains stubbornly atop the best seller lists in beer, despite my efforts.

The phrase "craft beer" is probably useful here--at least for awhile. The two large beer conglomerates have even more control over the Mexican market than the bigs ever had in the US, and small breweries are fighting an uphill battle. They seem to have adopted the US model of brewing (down to styles), and at the moment seem like a discrete category separate from the Coronas and Tecates and Pacificos.

Things are still quite new, though, and from what I can gather they're getting organized to make the laws more favorable. I jumped at the chance to come because I am remarkably ignorant our our neighbor's beer. I'll be here through Sunday, attempting to absorb as much as I can about the breweries, beer culture, beer styles (but yes, IPAs do seem to be prominent), and business in Mexico. I'll try to bird-dog the trends and see if I can find any nascent Mexican expressions that might be steering the development of distinctive, native beer styles. And I'll definitely try to sit down with at least one Mexican brewer for the podcast.

Updates as I have time, and a full report in due course.

Carlos Macklis (R) of Norte Brewing in Tijuana,
with his head brewer.

A Drive Down the Coast

The view from The Horn in Depoe Bay

The Oregon Coast is slowly filling out its compliment of breweries. In the near future, it should be possible to drive Highway 101 from Astoria all the way to Brookings and get a beer from a brewery in every town along the way. I have driven a chunk of that coast this winter (by far the best time to visit the Oregon Coast) and visited three new or newish breweries. Below are my findings.

Public Coast Brewing, Cannon Beach
Twenty-six miles south of Astoria, you come into Cannon Beach, and one of the first structures you pass is Public Coast, a brewery named for Oregon's law that prohibits private ownership of beaches. It's in a building once occupied by the Lumberyard restaurant, and it follows that place's general vibe and approach, which is to say, upscale mainstream. It's a beautiful space, keyed by the presence of the fermenters and bright tanks that seem to peer in from the brewery. Their height lends an air of grandeur to things.

Public Coast is owned by Ryan Snyder, whose background is in resorts. That's the feel you get here. There's a ton of wood, and the pub goes from cozy and shadowy on one side to bright and sunny on the other, spilling out into a large patio scattered with tables. It is nevertheless a bit faceless, and TVs flicker with sports. The menu is similar, featuring basically burgers and fish and chips. They are muy expensive--I got the most stripped-down cheeseburger with fries and it set me back $15; they can range up to $18 sans fries. They're also fairly average. (The five dollar onion rings are well below average--avoid.) It's not bad food, but nothing to make a special trip for.

The beer, made by erstwhile chef and homebrewer Will Leroux, is more promising. He's got a traditional slate of hoppy beers, but dabbles with experimental projects like a peach wit (perhaps his best beer) and a sour blackberry stout. I presume it's kettle-soured, and it's tart; fruity notes help soften the electric current, and soft roastiness helps offset it. I ordered a pint and quite enjoyed it. For my hoppy selection, I chose a Simcoe-hopped pale ale that had a fair amount of diacetyl, but never mind. These are above-average beers, and a good reason to stop in.

Depoe Bay or ocean view; your choice.

The Horn Public House, Depoe Bay

A horn, spouting.

A hundred and twenty miles south of Astoria you come to Depoe Bay, a rocky crescent that captures the sea in a roiling cauldron of energy. As it has smashed into the lava rock over the millennia, the sea water has carved out channels and tunnels. Sometimes a wave enters one and sends surf skyward through vents in the rock--"spouting horns" in the local vernacular. Since 1951, one of the most popular hangouts in Depoe Bay had been a restaurant called The Spouting Horn. When long-time proprietor Betty Taunton decided to retire in 2014, no one was prepared to take it over, and it closed. In homage, the new brewpub in town, located in the same building, calls itself The Horn.

The Importance of Self-Distribution Laws

My sojourn to South Dakota has not given me too many insights into the nature of the national beer scene. The state is in a nascent phase of building a market for local beer; to date there are only 14 craft breweries, and most of them are tiny (one that I know of, Gandy Dancer, is so small and provisional one could debate whether it actually exists). Collectively, the entire output of South Dakota's breweries in 2015 was smaller than Double Mountain's. Locals are coming around to beer and there's palpable excitement, but palates are at the porter-and-stout stage* and typical barroom tap ranges include a lot of the old American industrial brands. South Dakota is a farming state, though, and there's already a fair amount of interest/excitement about the prospect of a local hop industry, and breweries are talking about making beer with all state-grown ingredients. That could be one of those local tie-ins that really helps power local growth.

Source

But one massive barrier to breweries is the lack of a self-distribution law. Living in Oregon, I forget how fundamental these are to the incubation of viable small breweries. This may seem like boring arcana for most people, so let me break it down as a way of illustrating how a new Oregon brewery has a big leg up over their counterpart in South Dakota.

In Oregon, breweries are allowed to self-distribute 7,500 barrels of beer from each brewing facility they operate. (Of the 200+ breweries in the state, fewer than twenty will bump up against that limit.) That means that they can sell directly to retailers rather than using a distributor--which offers two big advantages. In the typical arrangement, a brewery sells a keg to a distributor for a wholesale price, and the distributor adds a mark-up when he sells it to the retailer. In self-distribution, the producer is able to sell the keg at the wholesaler's price directly to a retailer.

Second, a self-distributing brewery can sell their products directly to retailers rather than have to depend on a proxy (the distributor) who will necessarily have less commitment to one of their many brands than the brewery. Further, self-distribution allows breweries to develop relationships with retailers, who become valuable outposts for the product, even when a brewery is very new.

Compare that to Wooden Legs brewing, where I sat and talked with assistant general manager Angela Yahne over beers last night. South Dakota has no self-distribution laws. Wooden Legs has signed up with a distributor, but they're basically a nano and can barely keep up with production for the brewpub. In order to grow, they're going to need a new system, which means capital. Trying to push volume so they can send beer out into the market is tough, though, because they're selling kegs wholesale.

Even worse, Wooden Legs is stuck with their distributor,thanks to beer franchise laws, which make these relationships like a marriage--but harder to break. Angela gave me no reason to think Wooden Legs' distributor is anything but a great partner, but if they weren't, the brewery would be out of luck. Stories of sour relationships are legion:

For example, I once tried to terminate a contract with an underperforming distributor in New York for not only selling my products outside of his territory, but selling out-of-date beer. I thought it would be straightforward, since my contract said I could leave “with or without cause.”

But the distributor took us to court, saying the state’s franchise law, which sets a high standard for showing cause, trumped whatever my contract said. Two State Supreme Court rulings upheld my position, but, fearing a further appeal, I settled out of court. I was freed from the contract, but the legal fees and settlement cost Brooklyn Brewery more than $300,000.

I'm just guessing here--but Wooden Legs probably doesn't have a quarter million laying around for legal fees. 

The way good beer expands is by availability. Self-distribution laws, directly and indirectly facilitate this. States without them struggle to build the kind of rich tapestry Oregon has (which, counter-intuitively, has been great for distributors because many breweries ultimately do choose to go with one). We even have data on the matter:

"The contrast is stark. States with self-distribution have 1.41 craft breweries per 100,000 21+ adults. States without self-distribution have 0.77.... The same pattern emerges when we look at production. With the exception of one outlier state, the states with no ability to self-distribute are clustered at the bottom of per-capita production by craft breweries (average = 1.05 gallons produced per 21+ adult) whereas states with the ability to self-distribute average higher levels of production (average = 2.51 gallons produced per 21+ adult). Once again this difference is statistically significant with a p < 0.05 (two-tailed test).

This is in no way to demean distributors. There are a number of reasons they're a valuable asset for a brewery. In fact, having both well-regulated distributors and self-distribution laws give breweries the broadest freedom to implement their business plan. But for states without them, the downsides multiply. 

Angela told me that an incipient collection of the state's breweries met a few months back, and it may one day form into a guild. Here's hoping it does, and that they move quickly to pushing for a self-distribution law. That, way more than local hop fields, will jump-start the brewing scene here.

__________________
*This is in no way to denigrate porters and stouts, which are among my favorite styles. It's just that I've noticed that they seem to be popular styles for people getting into beer in the US, and are then sadly left behind. Since I've been in South Dakota, I've encountered probably a dozen people who tell me they're just getting into good beer, an their faves so far are porters and stouts. The South Dakota beer geeks, meanwhile, are into the same thing beer geeks everywhere are--which is to say not porters and stouts.

South Dakota

One of the many statues in Sioux Falls, SD

I am currently sitting in a slightly dated hotel room on the edge of Brookings, South Dakota. The South Dakota Festival of Books is the event, and I'm doing my bit to act as a beery interloper on all the high-minded literary salons that will be soon taking place. I was paired with a Pulitzer-prize winning Washington Post author at an event last night in Sioux Falls, but he was snared in the net of chaos that is O'Hare, and didn't make it to town in time for the event, sadly. But it gives you a sense of the kind of show this is going to be.

In any case, slow blogging through the weekend. I'll try to get out and drink beer, but no promises on timely updates. The event last night was hosted by WoodGrain Brewing, and later on I went to Monks, the first (and apparently still pre-eminent) beer bar. Sioux Falls is, as you would expect, not on the bleeding edge of the beer scene, and yet it supports a pub with this taplist:

A third stop, at a burger-and-beer joint, yielded similar results. Impressive beers including ones like La Folie. I had a Fernson IPA (local) that was a bit heavy on the diacetyl and thick and caramelly. Better was the IPA at WoodGrain, though that too was caramelly. Based on the prevalence of Denver-based breweries available here, brewers may be looking to the Rockies for their IPA inspiration. The best beers were a rye saison from WoodGrain and a double IPA from a local (Gandy Dancer?) made with South Dakota-grown Nugget and Centennials. The hops were soft and herbal and reminded me a bit of Oregon-grown varieties (Yakima's are brighter and more sparkly).

Okay, off to scare up some lunch--

Why Are We Magnetized By Beers of the Past?

On Monday, archaeologists revealed evidence of a 5,000-year-old Chinese brewery. It got picked up quite broadly and for good reason--it's pretty cool. (Follow the link if you missed it.) What was odd was that I had just returned from a junket to Copenhagen, where the Carlsberg brewery was unveiling their own project involving old beer--recreating an 1883 beer they found in their extensive cellars. Over the past couple decades, breweries and archaeologists have made a cottage industry of recreating lost beers, and we are always, without fail, magnetized by it. Serious question: why?

One of the actual
bottles.

The Carlsberg experiment was a case-in-point. Conceptually, it was very cool. The brewery found these old bottles and realized they dated to a period of bottle-conditioning. (I got to take a trip down to one small part of the cellars and came across a different box of dust-encrusted old cage-and-cork bottles of very distant vintage. They're apparently laying all over the place.) Even after 133 years, they managed to rouse the yeast enough to get it to propagate, and they decided to make a beer from it.

Old brewing logs are great about some things and bad about others. Recipes from the era made it easy to replicate the water, and they went to a seed bank for old varieties of barley, which they had floor-malted at a distillery. (Later, to give the malt the proper 1880s color, they kilned it a bit more.) Hops were more of a mystery. They had some evidence of the provenance--Hallertau--but nothing about the variety or alphas. They decided to use Hallertauer Hallertau and guessed at the bitterness. It took a couple years to get everything in place, and the brewery went into high drive to celebrate its release. You can see a video they put together here, along with a cameo by Martyn Cornell. And of course, they flew me and dozens of members of the media in from all over the world to try the beer.

They finished it off in a wooden barrel for a week--though strangely, an unpitched wooden barrel, which would not have been typical of the day. We were given a tour of some of the technical facilities in Copenhagen (the main brewery is no longer located there) and then joined the brewery for the big unveiling.

The night before, Pete Brown made an obvious point that I think eluded the brewery. They'd set up sort of a no-win situation. Either the beer was going to be sublime, which was the ostensible expectation, or it would be a dud. If it were a dud--well, that's obviously not good. But if it were sublime, it would cast an odd shadow over the brewery's 21st century beers. Carlsberg, which is run by a foundation that diverts some profits into technical research, has a heavy R&D bent. The project itself, whatever the beer tasted like, was going to be interesting as a science experiment. I'm sure they learned a great deal. (Not the least of which was that 133-year-old yeast is still viable.)

But on the big day, we tried the beer and .... Well, care to guess? Here's a picture:

And here's the ceremony:




Guesses? Guesses? It was ... all right. And now we come back to the the question from the top of the post. The beer had an antiquated quality. It was brownish and heavy, quite sweet and undercarbonated. Pale lagers were in the midst of taking over the world, and they were replacing old brown beers. And they were replacing old brown beers, presumably, because they weren't as tasty. We always romanticize the past, thinking that industrial precision and agricultural manipulation have surely brought us to a benighted state. And that's not entirely without merit--heirloom apples taste a lot better than giant supermarket fruit.

But I think it's wrong with beer. I've had the opportunity to sample a few recreations, and they always taste weird and un-modern. Attenuation was terrible, so they're usually heavy and sweet. I don't think recreations tend to capture the microbiological capriciousness of old beers, either. Technology has given us the tools to make the beer we want now, and much more ably and precisely than at any time in the past. The idea of time-traveling through our tastebuds is alluring, but it's foolsgold. I'm convinced the past didn't taste very good.

Danish Hay Beer--and Lots of IPAs

Four weeks ago I received an email about visiting Copenhagen to try a beer made with 133-year-old yeast at Carlsberg brewery (and on their dime). Two weeks ago I actually had travel plans, and a week ago I got on a plane for Denmark. All of which is to say I didn't have a huge amount of time to prepare for the trip. (One of my first surprises was learning Denmark's not on the euro.) My knowledge of Danish beer extended as far as Carlsberg and Mikkeller, and in the two weeks of preparation, I developed the tiniest of inklings that there was something called "New Nordic" out there. Could it apply to beer?

The phrase comes from new Nordic cuisine, pioneered by Noma restaurant's René Redzepi and Claus Meyer. You may have heard the name Noma before--it was regularly voted the best restaurant in the world (though I think they've slipped to third or so recently, the poor bastards). New Nordic cuisine involves a hyper-local, seasonal approach, and the Noma chefs were famous for foraging their ingredients. (As with any movement more than a few minutes old, it has also been declared passe.)

The "hay" beer--and the sole example of New Nordic
brewing I discovered in Denmark.

And indeed, the notion has been extended to beer. Elements of New Nordic beer seem to revolve around the presence of local ingredients, the absence of hops, and something to do with local yeast. It's an odd way to invent a tradition--coming up with the concept first, and then hoping something tasty and commercially successful might emerge from it. This is not typically how beer styles are born, and put me down as a doubter that it will work in Denmark, either. I managed to get to a couple of good beer bars and two Mikkeller outposts, and in the 120+ taps I saw, only one could be called New Nordic. It was a beer made my inoculation with hay (possibly the one Martyn described in the link at the top of this paragraph). It was funky, tart, hazy, headless, and flat--a nice beer, but strange.

Beer and cuisine are in many ways similar--they are constructed by people. They reflect culture, history, and place. When talking about this similarity, I often point out how France and Germany have extremely similar climates and agricultural products--but wildly different cuisines. Much like German and French (or better still, Belgian) beers differ wildly. But they are dissimilar in other ways. Beer is a lubricant as much as a consumable. We drink it in part for the flavor, but at least as much for the effect. Beers that are weird, strongly-flavored, and demanding only rarely become pub faves, and even more rarely in the modern era. We like beers that we can enjoy but which don't interrupt the conversation. Hay beer seems at best a longshot to displace Carlsberg. Or, it turns out, the other beers that seem to be rising in popularity.

As a category I would say they had a distinctly ... American quality. At none of the places I visited (Fermentorum, Taphouse, Warpigs, or Mikkeller) did I find a taplist that would have looked even slightly unusual to the American eye. IPAs were very popular, as were various tart ales and saisons. Even when the beer style in question was nominally European--a gose, for example, it was invariably prepared in the American fashion, with limes and mint or something un-German. In fact, you'd be much more likely to find a straight up weizen or helles in Portland than the four pubs I visited.

My own sense of cognitive dissonance started at Warpigs, the joint project of Mikkeller and Three Floyds. It is self-consciously modeled after an American craft brewery. They brought in Kyle Wolak from Indiana to run the brewery. They installed a Texas barbecuer. And they brew lots and lots of very modern, super juicy IPAs (plus a few familiar favorites like Zombie Dust and Alpha King). When we got the tour, our guide Jacob Alsing told us that they "wanted to bring an American brewery to Denmark."

Fermentoren

I was prepared to chalk that up as a one-off, but going to the 61-handle Taphouse had the effect of confirming rather than dispelling the sense.  Even asking for a "characteristically Danish" beer left the bartender scratching his head. He pointed to local breweries, but couldn't find another beer that had a Danish streak. Finally, at Fermentoren on my last full day (beer list here), I had a nice kettle-soured tart made with vanilla and just accepted that the mood of the moment is American. Maybe this is not surprising. Danish craft brewing isn't much older than a decade, and if you were to time travel back to 1990, you wouldn't find too many beers in America that seemed American. We did have beers like Sierra Nevada Pale, though, and these suggested a future in which our vivid IPAs would be so impressive they would be brewed by Americans in Copenhagen.

Which, come to think of it, may argue for the hay beer after all. Let's check back in twenty years and see if the New Nordic has become old hat--and hay beers are the wave of the present.

Greetings From Copenhagen

A photographic tour of my trip junket* thus far.

Arrival.

At War Pigs, a joint venture of Mikkeller
and Three Floyds.

 (More after the jump.)

To Copenhagen

This afternoon I will hop on a flight to Copenhagen. My first stop is Chicago, where Stan Hieronymus joins me to get on an SAS flight to Europe. We and a number of other writers have been invited by the Carlsberg brewery for the following event, paid for entirely by Carlsberg:

Recently, scientists at Carlsberg Laboratory made an extraordinary discovery in the old cellars of Carlsberg in Copenhagen, Denmark. They discovered a very old Carlsberg bottle that surprisingly still contained living yeast cells. They grew and analysed the cells, and, as it turns out, the bottle was one of the very first beers brewed with original pure yeast dating back to 1883.

Presently, the scientists and brewers at Carlsberg Research Laboratory are re-brewing the world’s first quality lager in the most authentic manner by using the exact same ingredients, recipe and brewing techniques as used more than one hundred years ago. On May 18, 2016, the special brew will be ready, and for the first time in more than a hundred years, men and women will be able to taste beer, that not only is the forefather to most lager beers today, but also represents a ground-breaking beer discovery. 

The beer is brewed to celebrate Carlsberg Research Laboratory’s 140-year anniversary. Carlsberg Research Laboratory is home to some of the most extraordinary discoveries of the past century, ranging from Professor Dr. Emil Hansen’s method for purifying yeast to the discovery of the pH scale, the structure of proteins and the synthesis of enzymes that enable low temperature clothes laundering.

I saw a list of invitees, which numbered 17, but I don't know how many of them will actually be in attendance. I've finagled an extra day at the brewery so I can do some further interviews and tours in hopes of putting together an article for All About Beer. We touch down on Tuesday and it's wheels up on Friday, so I will see very little of Copenhagen nor get to delve into the local beer scene. But not none of it. I'm told Stan has hatched a plan to visit War Pigs when we land, and I'll tag along.

Dunno how much blogging I'll do from Denmark, but I have scheduled a couple posts. Until next time--

Under Gray Irish Skies

(Dublin, Tuesday 22 March 2016) No country has left a larger psychic imprint on the United States than Ireland. It's one of those few countries to which people clamor to establish a genetic link (and maybe not just white people), and therefore one to which nearly everyone does claim some connection, real or imagined. That cultural bridge makes us somewhat more aware of what's happening here, magnifying Ireland's influence on our imagination. And yet, even without involving our own vanity, it's hard to imagine such a little country having accomplished so much.

Dublin on the Liffey

It produced two of the 20th century's greatest writers (Joyce and Beckett), who stand in a crowded hall with other literary giants. It has not only an indigenous musical form, but some of the biggest pop stars of the past 50 years (and Van Morrison's musical legacy, like Joyce's literary one, is immense). Then there are druids, celtic knots, and a gorgeous, elvish language to add an otherworldly allure. Oh, and since this is a beer blog, I should at least nod in the direction of the hometown brewery here, which some people have heard of. (And they've got some pretty decent whiskey, too.)

All of which is to say that visiting Ireland's capital is therefore a disorienting experience. Because what we--or I, anyway--somewhat fail to appreciate is just how small this country is. The entire island is the size of South Carolina, and it has barely more people than Oregon. (If you include the population of all Irish people, which includes UK citizens, it's similar to Washington state. Dublin's population of 527,000/1.2 million compares quite closely to Portland's 619,000/1.8 m. Those of us who live in Portland have a hard time calling it a city, but it feels far more urban than Dublin, which is low-slung in the typical European fashion (few buildings top four stories). The lanes and roads are small and winding, and the buildings are old; it reminds me, in fact, of Portland, Maine's old town.

Being here reminds me that this is no center of European life. It feels like a place on the fringes, far enough out of the way to have stayed small and developed those wonderful quirks and idiosyncrasies that we all relate to. Later this week, I'm going to be spending time at the Guinness brewery (full disclosure: they paid for the trip), and one of the key pieces of context in understanding the brewery will be this remoteness--perhaps not just the brewery, but the brewery's place in the fabric of local life as well.

Today I'm off to immerse myself in the city as much as one can in a day's time. I hope to meet up for beers with a local informant tonight, so that will be enlightening as well. More to come--

Three Countries in 22 Photos

What follows is not a proper photo essay because my journey through England, France, and the Basque Country took me to some eddies and side-tours not strictly focused on cider. But maybe that's a feature of this post and not a bug. I'll put most of them below the fold so they don't run forever down the page.   They proceed in chronological order and although I took about the same number of photos of each place on my good camera these, on my phone's, seem to be unevenly distributed.  Sorry, Normandie!  Also, I tried not to repeat photos I used in earlier posts about Herefordshire, wild fermentation, Normandy, Txotx season, or perry. 

The Grain Barge in Bristol had the best tap cider I found, but Ashton
Press, which I liked, is owned by Butcombe Brewery.

Sometimes the hedgerows seemed menacing.

Perry

From time to time, you hear someone refer to "pear cider."  Given that many American ciders are now made with other fruit, I suppose you could say that a cider made with some portion of pear juice is a pear cider. But the stuff made wholly from pear juice: that's perry (or, in France, poire).  

It's a pretty rare beast in the US, either available only as an import or something made from eating pears.  But in England, many of the traditional cider makers also make perry. Indeed, the one late pressing I happened to witness was of pears at Hecks in Somerset. (The aroma of pressed pears is sweet and lush. If you could bottle the scent, you'd quickly get rich.)

Like apples, perry pears (they're always called "perry pears," never just pears) are grown because they contain the sugars, acids, and especially tannins that make a good perry.  Because of their rarity at home, I have rarely even had them. That was rectified in my swing through England, because the cideries all had more than one available.  They're more rare in Normandy, but still roaming about. In fact that Calvados you love may well contain a small amount of pear. 

Perries are the red-headed step-children in the cider world--neglected and misunderstood, an afterthought. But some cider makers are devoted to them and produce beverages as elegant and complex as cider. Indeed, Tom Oliver recently won best in show for a perry at a national contest where they were outnumbered by ciders three to one.  

Oliver's perries are elegant and finely-wrought little creatures, characteristic as much for their pillowy softness as their flavor. I noticed it on our first pour, of the Draft Perry. The word that sprang into mind was "meringue"--both for the bright flavors and mousse-like texture. Red Pear Cocktail perry had a poached pear flavor and light delicacy.  (Both completely concealed their alcohol spines.)  By contrast the bottle-conditioned medium had tons of tannin, a bit of herb in the nose, and a touch of blue cheese. It reminded me more of Mike Johnson's perries at Ross-on-Wye; those have a sturdier farmhouse quality, with burnished tannins (they seem softer in pears than apples), more alcohol warmth, and a hint of wild yeast. Those who love smacking tannins found in English ciders would approve of them. 

Norman poire is to perry what Norman cidre is to English scrumpy--a lighter, sweeter, bubblier tipple. Pears naturally tend toward sweetness, not only in sugar content but pear flavor. In Normandy, where the philosophy is sweet and effervescent, they can seem almost evanescent in the mouth. I was surprised to find, however, that in a side-by-side pairing with different courses, the poire consistently matched and usually exceeded its counterpart, a cider. 

There's an adage among orchardists: "pears for your heirs."  Perry pear trees take a long time to begin producing (15 years), and even then they are harder to harvest. Cider makers say perry is harder to make, too; the flavors are more subtle and fermentation is for some reason more finicky. This may account for the reason there are fewer perries on the market--and I despair that perry pears will ever grow in our neck of the woods. (Though, positive note: in Rngland perry is now so popular that they're putting in acres of new fruit.)  But they are worth trying to track down.  They are not just a curiosity, but a wonderful beverage in their own right. 

Txotx Season in the Basque Country

Each fall, Basque cider makers start filling enormous wooden vessels full of fresh apple juice. As in England and France, traditional cider making is all-natural: the apples are ground and pressed, and nature takes its course. The difference, of course, is that the cider that begins pouring out of these vessels in January is sharp and acidic.

One of the reasons I delayed my cider tour until the year's bitterest month was to enjoy the start of Basque cider season, which began a couple weeks ago. It's called txotx (the tx combo, common in the language, is pronounced "ch," so txotx is something like choach), but the season includes far more than just fresh cider.  Txotx is a ritual. 

The heart of cider country is Gipuzkoa, the bastion of Basque culture and language. (The Basques are spread across seven states in two countries in the lush hillsides of far Northeast Spain and the French Pays Basque that includes Biarritz.)  Donostia is the population center--the Spanish name, San Sbastian, is often defaced on street signs--but the capital of cider is ten minutes south in Astigarraga. It's a town of 5,000, but the hills are covered with apple trees, supplying perhaps a dozen or more local cideries (it depends on where you draw the line).  In the small area of Gipuzkoa, there are over fifty. 

The first place we visited was Sarasola, where I got an initial taste of txotx. But that was lunchtime. We got the full experience last night at Isastegi, a few miles further south. During the months of txotx season, all the cideries open their doors and serve a massive four or five course meal. You eat right in the barrel room, and periodically someone will holler out "txotx!"--the call to the barrels, or kupelas in Basque. Although anyone can sample from the kupelas at any time, txotx is real a community celebration and the best way to do it is together. One by one people hold out their glasses as a small font of cider arcs out. Basques believe the best way to drink cider is by "breaking" it; that is, allowing gravity to send it crashing into the side of the glass, momentarily aerating it. You only collect two fingers in your glass. The aromas rise, and you drink it while there's still a froth on the surface.  Any left over you dump down the drain. (This apparent apostasy is actually good sense; "txotx" will ring out all night and the prudent pace themselves.)

The menu for txotx season has been fixed since the 1960s. Before that, when this region was almost completely rural, the locals would bring their own food. Now, they come only with an appetite. The first course is an omelette made with cod and rustic bread. Traditionally, there weren't even chairs--people stood around tables.  But at some places, like Isastegi, they still don't use plates. It's family style--you just grab a crust of bread and your fork and dive in. The next course is cod, either prepared in a famous sauce called pil-pil or served with green pepper and garlic. The main course is a huge hunk of beefsteak barbecued bloody rare.  Finally, dessert is cheese and walnuts with an apple or quince paste. In some cases, it seems like the feast begins with a sausage course--because, presumably, the other four might otherwise leave you feeling peckish. 

Cider is meant to accompany food. In every restaurant we visited, it was always available, and about 60% of the time people chose it over local Rioja wine. Basque cuisine is hearty and salty. To my palate, it's the salt that harmonizes with the sharp Basque cider. Salt somewha neutralizes the acidity, and more subtle fruit and tannin notes emerge. Not everyone agrees it's the salt, though--at Isastegi they believe it's the "protein" (umami?) that draws out cider's flavors. 

Whatever it is, the Basque food definetly serves cider well. I would go <i>almost</i> so far as saying you need to salty food to fully appreciate Basque cider. Probably not, but I would certainly encourage the pairing just in case. 

If you do find yourself in what the Basques call Euskadi (Basque Country) between mid-January and Easter, txotx is a must-see event. Sarasola sees 20,000 people come through their doors for it, and more-remote Isastegi 6,000. Attendees are mostly locals (many of whom go back and back), and it feels like you're witnessing a very particular bit of Basque culture. It's not really a tourist event, though tourists are welcomed with broad smiles. Don't expect to hear anything but the rat-a-tat fire of Basque (certainly no English), but it hardly matters. The menu is set and there's really only one word that matters. You'll hear it with increasing frequency throughout the night. 

In Normandy

If you're familiar with American cider-making, the English tradition is pretty straightforward. Nearly all American cider makers pitch yeast, but otherwise, the contours are familiar. French cider making takes you another step (or three) into the unknown. 

French ciders are comparatively weak, ranging from less than three percent (doux, sweet) to about five (brut, dry).  They are all sweet by comparison, though on the stronger end the tannins offer plenty of balance. And they're effervescent, with a pop of the cork reminiscent of champagne. 

They achieve this by the strange technique of keeving ("defecation" in French, so I'll stick with the English). I have been trying to wrap my brain around descriptions I've read, so was glad to have Guillaume Drouin walk me through his process. Everything proceeds as normal through the pressing stage. Drouin has several dozen varieties of apples, all of them unfamiliar to my ear (especially as it rolled mellifluously from his tongue), but mainly bittersweets  They are collected at three times from late September through December and pressed: then begins the interesting stuff. 

After grinding the apples into a pulp, they are macerated--or left to sit for a period of time. This is said to soften the tannins as the pulp oxidizes. (You'll forgive me if I get some of the science wrong here--I haven't had a chance to review the tape and am working from memory.  I believe something happens enzymatically to the pectins as well.) Not everyone agrees that it works, but Guillaume, who trained as a winemaker before returning to Normandy, has tried it both ways and is convinced maceration works. 

Once the juice is pressed, he chills it to 46F / 8C and sends it to the fermenter. Then the magic happens. The pectins (I think) rise, forming a "brown hat" that steadily compresses.  The cider maker tests the chapeau by climbing to the top of the fermenter and poking it with a stick, testing the resistance. When it's ready, They rack the clarified cider from the bottom of the fermenter until the hat descends fully. 

Thereafter, Guillaume works to stress the cider, keeping it cold and racking it over and over again, forcing the yeast to repopulate. If the temperature rises above 52F / 11C, he will chill it again. Eventually, the yeast essentially gives up, coming to a gravity of the maker's choosing. The cider starts with a gravity of 1052-1056 (it depends on the sugar content of the apples) and will finish as high as 1025. A "dry" cider is 1012-1015. (In England, dry ciders range from 0.098 to 1005). 

As with Belgian beer, the cider goes through a refermentation in the bottle. Guillaume expressed exactly the same sentiments as the Belgians: without this stage, the flavors won't develop and mature. 

I spent an afternoon with Cyril Zangs, who doesn't use keeving to make his cider. Like other French cider makers, he does naturally condition his ciders. He also practices the peculiarly French technique of "disgorgement" used to make champagne--though this seems to be unusual for cider. 

In disgorgement, the cider is fermented on its side, so the yeast collects lengthwise. Then the bottles are placed in racks, arse-end up at about a 45 degree angle. Gravity slowly pulls the yeast to the neck. Over the course of weeks, the bottles are regularly rotated a quarter turn or so to encourage the yeast down the bottle. They have to go slowly so the powdery yeast is helped down by the heavier yeast and doesn't drift off in solution. At the end of the process, there's a little plug of yeast in the neck. 

This is when the cider make disgorges it--opening the cap so the plug is blown out. They do this in winter, when the cider is sluggish and cold, so there's not a huge loss of carbonation. They take one of the bottles to top off the others, cork and cage and they're done.  M. Zangs claimed not to make typical French cider--and he doesn't. His ciders are drier and finished like champagne.  On the other hand, the way he makes cider seems uniquely French. 

I encourage you to go buy a bottle of whatever French cider you can find. They share some similarities no matter how different they are. The apples are of a place. I can't exactly describe them, but you'll begin to recognize their character. The nose usually contains a bit of refined wildness, a waft of fromage. The body is mousse-like but delicate with bubbles. Altogether different from Engliah cider, but somehow familiar. 

Photos: Drouin fermenters; old Drouin press; Zangs cidery. 

Naturally Fermented

Cider is not like beer. In so many ways. I was a bit cavalier when I dove into cider making, reasoning that knowledge of one fermented beverage gives you a leg up on another. Consider me chastened. 

One of the most interesting discoveries in my cider-is-not-like-beer files is fermentation--obstensibly the one element that should be similar. The first thing to know is that, while cider is made up of easily digestible simple sugars, it lacks nutrients that beer has in abundance. That turns out to be a good thing, because it means cider makers can inhibit yeast, drawing out fermentation times. That in turn means cider that has retained subtle fermentation flavors and aromas. Fermentation can take weeks or months given the right circumstances. 

One of those circumstances is cold.  Yesterday afternoon I was standing in a gorgeous old warehouse for Cyril Zangs' cider. Here in Normandy so many of the old half-timbered buildings survived the 17th and 18th centuries that you can find them empty and available to rent--to, say, house your fermentation vessels. The weather in here (and the cider country in England for that matter) is very much like Portland's: near freezing at night, highs around 40-45 F.  That means cider ferments throughout the winter at these temperatures. Traditional cider makers prefer to use ambient temperatures to chill fermentation--so far I haven't encountered anyone yet with chilled tanks (though they all expressed a wish to get them sometime).

And here's what's amazing to the beer guy: the yeasts stay active.  Part of it is the volume; even at winter temperatures, a vat of cider will probably stay above 40 degrees. And if the temperatures do drop low enough, the yeast just go dormant. Fermentation begins again once the cold snap ends.  The cold is perhaps the biggest aid to a cider maker--it inhibits the really nasty characters and allows the cider to develop to its full potential. 

I have so far visited five traditional cideries and whether Norman or English, they have the same attitude--the less they interfere, the better the cider is for it. I wonder if American cider makers could trust the process enough to just press the fruit and wait?  An uninsulated barn or warehouse anywhere in Oregon or Washington would do.  But not-doing can sometimes be harder than doing. 

In Herefordshire

The first stop on my cider odyssey is Herefordshire (English pn: HAIR-eh ford sheer) which, for those of you who don't have your Engliah counties memorized, is the the west, snuggled up next to Wales. Among cider nerds, Somerset is often invoked as the mystical center of English cider-making, but Herefordshire probably has more claim. This is the home of the famous cider pioneer, Bulmers, which is now generally spat out as an insult. It wasn't always the case, though, that the world's first industrial cider-maker was associated with lowbrow stuff. And it's not incidental that the Bulmers got their start in Herefordshire: this is where the apples are.

It's also where a number of the most-respected small-production cider makers work their craft. I have spent the last two days with two of them: Mike Johnson of Ross-on-Wye ciders (where, word to the wise, a B&B is located, just steps from the cider cellar, where Mike will pour you a taste or fourteen), and Tom Oliver of Oliver's Cider and Perry. 
As with any craft, cider makers each have a philosophy. I wondered, before arriving: do they tend to clump together philosophically, like the alt brewers of Dusseldorf and lambic brewers of Brussels?  My sample size is too small to count as definitive, but it was interesting to find real philosophical similarities between the two men. 

Both make their ciders naturally, which is to say without adding yeast, and left to ferment naturally in ambient outside temperatures. (That means the apples that come to press in September star fermenting warmer than those that linger til December.)  Both eschew technical fussiness--when I asked questions like "what's the pH?" Tom gave me a wide range with a shrug and both said they don't really care.  The cider takes care of itself, they believe. Both also make and are committed to perry (fermented pear juice). And perhaps most tellingly, both use the word "soft" a lot. 

English cider comes largely from bittersweet apples. The bitterness comes from tannins, which can be quite aggressive. (Their individual flavors are as varied as hops--some woody, others spicy, others tea-like and so on.)  Neither man likes them to have a harsh edge, and throughout the process they do things to sand them down to a smooth, supple bitterness.  Tannins are more pronounced in young fruit, so they wait until it's very ripe--they fear green apples more than rot--and sometimes let the apples sit awhile. Very slow natural fermentation (six weeks to six months) helps preserve flavors; chemical reactions are slow and the subtle aromatics aren't blown out by roiling carbonation from the kind of vigorous fermentation you see in beer. Then the ciders rest, and this seems to be the most important part. Depending on the variety, they may condition up to two years. Tom also encourages malolactic fermentation, which further softens things. 

The effect is most obvious in the dry still ciders they make. They are bone dry--gravities as low as 0.998. You'd imagine the lack of sugar and those tannins would create a very sharp, intense cider, but that's not the case. So much of the subtle flavor and aroma compounds remain that the palate is fooled into thinking some of the fruit notes are sweet. The bitterness becomes integrated with those flavors and is often so "soft" you don't realize how many tannins there are until that lip-smacking astringency alerts you after your swallow.

The other thing that really struck me--and this is partly because I'm a beer guy--is how much Mike and Tom follow their cider's lead. In brewing, you want as much control over the process as you can get. In Hereford, they let circumstances guide them.  The apple harvest is unpredictable and they work with the fruit they have. Since they ferment naturally, they work with the ambient temperatures around them. They take gravity readings, but they also just watch to monitor fermentation. And the cider is ready when it's ready. They taste as they go along, waiting for all those variable to line up to give them soft, complex ciders.
____________________ 

Photos (from top): (1) Tom Oliver's barrels, in what was formerly a building devoted to processing hops; (2) the cider cellar at Ross-on-Wye; (3) when the ghostly hands deflate, the cider has stopped fermenting. 

The Ground They Touched

I retired a pair of shoes today, reluctantly.  They were Merrells, a brand to which I had not been previously acquainted.  They presented themselves to me on the discount rack and with their easy crossover appeal--good for the road, good for the trail, good enough for the public--I bought them two years ago.  Aside from the fact that they lasted through two years of very hard walking, I felt a moment of nostalgia when I thought about where they'd been.  They were brand-new when I took them around London 18 months ago, and in them I moseyed up to the bar for my first pint of cask bitter.  I hadn't actually realized they were waterproof, but the November weather gave me a quick lesson.  Maybe you've heard of The George in London?  I met Pete Brown there when he was still writing Shakespeare's Local.  Here I am expressing my American displeasure at the institution of the monarchy.

The shoes took me up the wall that encircles York--parts of which were built by the Romans.  They took me further north to Edinburgh, a heavy city gray with stone and cloud.  (They took me into a pub there where I had the worst curry of my life.  Patrick, a subject of the Queen, looked at me in amazement and asked what the hell I was doing.  I told him: the empire.  He said: yes, but Edinburgh.  He was correct.)  They took me next to Belgium, to the streets of Brussels, which are painted--to those with the eye to notice--with brettanomyces bruxellensis.  Later I stood next to fields of Brussels sprouts, smiling.  Up the bell tower I went in Bruges, and along the sides of those sublime canals.

A year later, they took me to Rhineland and south to Bavaria.  I spent three days rambling up and down the hills of Bamberg, stopping in at intervals to whatever cathedral or brewery happened to be handy.  I'm not sure which the town has more of.  On to Munich, the sun around which the beer world orbits, where they took me over the Isar and in and out of beer halls the size of stadiums. 

They took me to the land of pilsner next, where I hiked on and off bumpy trains and around old villages.  On a cold night after the season's first snow, I hiked up the hill in the center of Prague.  (Later, Max taught me a great deal about brewing and beer-drinking in the Czech Republic; principally, that quantity is a virtue not to be ignored.)

They took me to Italy, a country I felt had to be over-rated.   That was until on my first morning, as the clouds cleared, I looked out my window and saw the Alps.  A country that has both good beer and cheese and ready access to coffee is my kind of country, and I even had rare facility with the music of the language. 

They also took me up and around a number of beautiful rocky coasts and mist-draped forests in my own piece of heaven here in Oregon.  To a riverbank in Maine.  Up and down the aisles of the Great American Beer Fest.  (Fests, they saw a few.)  They even took me down some interesting streets in places like St Louis.

I don't expect to ever experience another two years like the last two.  Getting to write about beer sent me to some of the most interesting spots on the planet.  I shared a lot of the beer-specific parts of my journeys, though these weren't always the most interesting or memorable parts of those trips.  Shoes aren't really the kind of things you can get too emotional about, but in a very literal way they were the objects that connected me to these places.  Perhaps a particle of dirt from Piozzo still clings to them.  I have all my pictures to remind me of these places, but the further I get from them, the less they have real substance.  In a literal way, these old shoes were the objects that connected me to those places.  So I stop now and bid them godspeed.  They were good shoes.