You Can't Recycle Originality

Martyn Cornell, who surprised me by admitting he as an MBA, just reviewed the new book by BrewDog's James Watt. It's a fascinating dissection not just of the book, but the business of beer. Here's his final paragraph, which is a great place to start a discussion:

Will someone who buys Business for Punks, given luck, be able to turn themselves into the next BrewDog? Well, no, probably not, or not in the UK beer market, because as far as what BrewDog now represents, there is only room for one iconoclastic, rule-breaking, self-proclaimed punk brewery, Dickie and Watt spotted that gap in the market and filled it extremely successfully. We may well see firms start up that will be “the BrewDog of grocery retailers”, “the BrewDog of software manufacturers”, even “the BrewDog of estate agents”. But no sector, I suggest, can sustain more than one marketing guerrilla, and guerrilla marketing is what BrewDog does brilliantly and what its fans respond to enthusiastically.

I'd take this a step further. In the business of beer, it's very difficult to follow the blueprint of any successful brewery. They're all more or less singular achievements that are very difficult to replicate. Here in Oregon, Ninkasi Brewing pulled off the neat trick of going from start-up to powerhouse in just a few years. Founded in 2007, it was able to become one of the top-three breweries in just five years. Surely there are lessons in the Ninkasi approach? Let's look at how they did it.

First, founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge took advantage of a bizarre anomaly that existed as late as 2007 in Oregon: the city of Eugene, the state's second-largest, had very few breweries and none that had become the dominant local player. Second, they came of age just in the moment that IPAs were not only becoming ascendant in craft brewing, but going through a big change in form. All of Ninkasi's early beers were hoppy and captured the zeitgeist for the "new" IPAs (which have since gone through another iteration in evolution). Of course, the brewery also had great branding, a great sales force, and great beer--necessary but hardly sufficient elements for success. In other words, cribbing notes from Ninkasi wouldn't be much help to a brewery today.

Here are some of he biggest American breweries: Boston Beer, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Lagunitas. Could you imagine trying to replicate the elements of their success? Try building an empire on an amber lager or amber ale today, as Boston Beer and New Belgium did. Lagunitas sells a certain California ethos as much as it does beer, but imagine trying to replicate it now. Sierra Nevada might be the one model a brewery could replicate, but the benchmarks--extraordinary quality standards with landmark beers and quiet consistency over the decades, looks like a daunting task.

I get that business books always take the shape of a kind of long-winded humble-brag about how an entrepreneur did something. But by the time you get to that phase of the business, the lessons are too particular to really benefit anyone coming up. There are a ton of things you have to do just as a matter of course for any business. But the secret sauce that leads to exceptional success in the marketplace is almost always a spark of originality that captures the imagination of customers. And you can't successfully recycle originality.

When Giants Join Forces

Q: How many Elysians could AB InBev have purchased for the price of one SABMiller (minus MillerCoors)? A:

1,700

(Not everyone is amused.)

Counterfactuals

A little Saturday morning chin-scratcher for you to mull. Stan links to an article about the famous "judgment of Paris" in the wine world and wonders:

What if Fritz Maytag had not bought Anchor Brewing in 1965?

What if the committee charged in 1906 with interpreting the meaning of the Pure Food and Drug Act had decided to implement some sort of legal differentiation between all malt and adjunct beer, or enacted a proposal that lager beer be required to lager at least three months? (Both were considered and rejected.)

What if the USDA had not released the Cascade hop variety in 1972?

In comments, I suggested that there is no analogue in the beer world. It's just impossible to imagine that beer would remain the one product immune to the post-industrial return to quality and diversity that came to all the other products on the grocery shelves.

But there's a side debate here--one Stan and I have been batting back and forth for years. When we look at the landscape of American brewing now, what we see is a fully-developed American idiom: hoppy ales made with neutral yeasts and base malts, accented (if at all) with just a bit of caramel malt. Whether the name on the package is IPA, double IPA, white IPA, Session IPA (etc), that national lineage is always evident. I have argued to Stan--who has steadfastly remained unconvinced--that there is basically one source for all that. So let me put it out to you, and you can line up in the Stan, Jeff, or alternative camp as befits your reading of history:

What if Ken Grossman had never made Sierra Nevada Pale? (And as a corollary: Sierra Nevada Celebration?)

Discuss.

The End is Nigh

In order to locate a two-month period in which blog posts were as bereft here as they were in Sept and Oct this year, you have to go back to 2006. During these past two months, I've been on a national book tour while trying to complete a book manuscript. And so blogging has suffered mightily. Fortunately for all concerned, things are finally coming to a conclusion. My mid-November, it should be back to the normal level of randomness you have all come to expect.

However, tomorrow I depart for Miami to begin the final leg of the book tour. I'm arriving early so I can enjoy a bit of sunshine and Cuban food. Thereafter follow these stops, for anyone who happens to be nearby:

• November 4 at 8pm, Miami, FL
  Books and Books, Coral Gables 
• November 5 at 7pm, Tampa, FL
  Hidden Springs Ale Works  
• November 6 at 5pm, Atlanta
  Ale Yeah Craft Beer Market (you can also pre-order signed copies)  
• November 8 at 2pm, Nashville
  Yazoo Brewing special event
• November 9 at 6:30pm, Richmond, VA
  Ardent Taproom - ticketed event ($30 gets you the book and three Ardent beers) 
• November 10 at 6:30, Washington DC
  Busboys and Poets Brookland 

What else? Well, I did manage to do a bit of serious blogging while I was on the road, and you can read about that over at All About Beer in a post I promised last week after passing through Milwaukee:

The Pabst complex is so compelling because it’s so tangible. Capitalism is a violent and sometimes jarring force, and as quickly as it graces a business with the generative power to rise from the pavement, it can strike it right back down. For 15 decades, that brewery continued to grow in lunges, expanding capacity to remain lean and efficient, to gobble up more and more of the growing market. The excitement and energy we are witnessing in brewing now is no different than the one that visited the U.S. 150 years ago when German immigrants brought their brewing expertise and inspired drinkers with lager beer. But in 1996, the same calculus that fueled that empire also led to the decision to quit the place: beer could be made more cheaply elsewhere. In a pen stroke the buildings went dark.

Read the rest here.  Finally, Patrick and I have a new Beervana Podcast on the subject of cider. It coincided with the Cider Made Simple book launch last night (with very serious thanks to Nat West, Kevin Zielinski, Abram Goldman-Armstrong, and Silas Bleakley and Kristina Nance). In this week's episode, we do a survey course on cider. (At one point in the podcast, there's an inadvertent Happy Halloween from the producer. You have to listen to hear it.)



You can also listen to it on iTunes.

Wonderful Cider Event on Thursday

If you have even a passing interest in this cider phenomenon that has been on a slow boil for the past few years, I strongly encourage you to come down to Reverend Nat's this Thursday for what is going to be a spectacular evening. The headline event is the book launch for Cider Made Simple, but in fact, it's going to be a full-immersion cider experience, tickling your brain as well as your senses.

I'll begin by talking about the book and giving an overview of cider's terrain, including European archetypes as well as modern American expressions. I will be aided in this endeavor by four of the best cider-makers in America who will be in-house with their ciders as examples of this terrain:

• Kevin Zielinski of EZ Orchards, who will have a traditional French-style cidre for us to try.
• Abram Goldman-Armstrong of Cider Riot!, who will have an English-style cider.
• Silas Bleakley of Rack and Cloth, who will be bringing an example of what I call a "modernist" American-style cider in Cider Made Simple.
• And of course, the host, Nat West, who will have more than one example of what I call "experimental" ciders in the book.

During the program, these four gents will describe their ciders and discuss American cider-making. It should be an incredibly enlightening evening, and having this kind of expertise on hand, along with this range of ciders, is extremely rare. Whether or not you want to buy a copy of the book, do yourself a favor and come on by for some great cider and cider discussion.

Scenes of Mergers Past

I'm about to be booted from my Chicago hotel room, so I don't have time to explore this theme in detail, but I wanted to put a bookmark on something. Yesterday I spent a couple hours walking around (and photographing--more on that later, too) the derelict Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee. I keep hearing about how it's been redeveloped or under redevelopment, but basically the giant buildings--blocks and blocks of them--are gutted and idle, like a quickly-abandoned Soviet city. And it was quickly abandoned, 20 years ago, when the owners shifted production to a different facility, turning Pabst into a contract brew.

Each time I speak on my book tour, someone asks the same question: what's going to happen with the future of beer, with consolidation and so on? Wandering around that complex is a nice meditation on at least one potential future--and a likely one, at least for many of these quickly-growing young breweries. Capitalism is a violent and sometimes jarring force, and as quickly as it graces a business with the generative force to rise from the pavement, it can strike it right back down. The excitement and energy we are witnessing in brewing now is no different than the one that visited the US 150 years ago, and thinking it is a permanent, stable state is belied by the lessons of history. Anyway more on that soon. Meanwhile a couple of pictures to tide you over.

Beer Bible in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago

Next week I have the great pleasure to visit three great beer cities on the book tour, and if you're in or near any of them, consider checking them out. They all look to be special events.

Monday, October 19 at 7pm
Sugar Maple Bar, Milwaukee


I am especially excited to be returning to the Badger State, where from 1992-1995 I spent three glorious years studying Buddhism and drinking beer. Wisconsin is something like Oregon in that locals drink so much of the beer that a lot of breweries don't distribute very far outside the state (notably New Glarus). The Sugar Maple has an amazing taplist, and I'm psyched to slurp down some local specialties. I believe I'll be doing my standard talk and answering questions before signing books. Look for me in my motion-W hat, Packer fans.

Tuesday, October 20 at 6:30pm
Goose Island Taproom, Chicago

This is going to be a cool event. Goose's Brett Porter will be on hand as I do the usual talk and Q&A, and I hope we can coax him into a bit of Q&A about Goose Island and his activities as well. I've known Brett since the 1990s when he was at Portland Brewing, and this will be a homecoming of sorts, too. Note that the event is in the new taproom, which adds allure and sparkle.

Wednesday, October 21 at 7pm
Urban Chestnut (Grove Brewery and Bierhall location)

This is another one of those events I've been looking forward to since the tour was scheduled. At this very special stop, I'll be doing a tag-team conversation with Stan Hieronymus. Stan was a source of support and guidance as I was writing the book, and we have developed a friendship over the past five years. When we get talkin' beer, it's generally a geeky, fun time. You can't miss this one--I can definitely promise, because Stan, at least, is awesome.

Do We Call the Brewery "Widmer Brother" Now?

Just starting to see reports that Kurt Widmer plans to retire at the end of the year. The most shocking part of this news is that he's 63 years old. That must mean I'm ... 47! Good lord--time is a cruel taskmaster.

I'm sure we'll hear more in due course, but I see no reason to do anything but offer Kurt and Widmer Brothers the best on the news. Few people have meant more to Oregon beer than Kurt and Rob, and I don't think anyone begrudges them some time to go relax and enjoy. I'll leave you with a rare photo of Kurt pulling a pint last year after the Gasthaus reno. He was actually pouring my pint. Thanks, Kurt!

Bleary-eyed

Blogging has been spotty at best around these parts, and I'm afraid that's likely to continue. I just finished up a ten-day leg on my Beer Bible book tour, and I'm home for six before setting off again. (If you want incredibly fragmentary, context-free micro-reports of my observations, you can always follow along on Twitter. How's that for a sales pitch?) The one piece I almost posted here last week instead went to All About Beer. So if you want to see what I discovered in lower Manhattan, that's the best I got.

More ... sometime.

On Beer Pricing

Michael Kiser has a provocative post at Good Beer Hunting. It's a long piece and he makes a number of points, but the thrust is basically this:

I’m arguing for a greater tolerance among consumers and retailers toward the costs associated with certain beers, or the revenue opportunities they legitimately represent for those breweries in a wider spectrum of considerations. Otherwise, this industry you’re claiming you have passion for and want to see grow is being held back by your own narrow idea of “what beer costs."

I think there's some basic economic misunderstandings along the way--which (plug alert!)--you can learn about in our latest Beervana Podcast. But that's not my major concern. For me, the problem is that Micheal's looking at the consumers, not the breweries.

Somehow these guys stay in business.

Pricing is an interesting issue, and customers would do well to understand that some beers necessarily cost more than others to make. But here's where Michael and I part ways: the beer industry should not depend on the kindness of customers to keep them afloat. They are not charities we need to support with our dollars. And indeed, to do so perverts the market and keeps weaker (and less scrupulous) players in the game.

I'd point people to Oregon as a great rebuttal to his thesis. Here breweries must compete on both price and quality. Our supply is insane. Breweries that overcharge or make mediocre products don't sell a lot of beer. (Rogue is basically the only brewery that overcharges, and their Oregon sales have been in decline for years.) We have natural ceilings on what breweries can charge for standard and specialty beers, both in pubs and on the grocery shelves. Specialty beers can't fetch more than about $15 (in a very few rare cases slightly more) without getting stuck on shelves--and breweries in other states where super-premium pricing in the norm avoid Oregon. Why would we pay $30 for a wild ale from Allagash when we have Block 15, De Garde, Solera, Logsdon, and Cascade here at home?

Here's a good example. Josh Pfriem recently released his first batch of barrel-aged beers, and he sold cork-and-cage bottles (12 ounce), for under $10. The quality was spectacular. He priced the beer to earn a profit. And in this market, he needed to: as good as his Flanders-style beers are, he couldn't have charged much more for them. And yet Josh seems to believe he can make a profit this way, shocker of shockers. When I toured the brewery this summer, he took me to his barrel rooms (he has two), where all manner of wildlings lay ripening. Josh has spared no expense at the brewery--he even has a centrifuge, which I've never seen in a brewery that small--and is busy expanding the barrel-age program. And he can make a nice profit doing it. You could also look to Belgium, where the lambic-makers somehow manage to put together spectacular gueuzes (blends of vintage lambic, portions of which are aged three years) that they can ship to the US and sell for under $20.

No brewer in Oregon to whom I've spoken has complained about price pressures. There's no danger that Oregonians are about to see their wonderful beer go extinct. But even if there were price pressures, it's not the consumer's responsibility to subsidize (or even worry about) the brewery with inflated prices. Beer is a good, honest beverage and it is quite possible to make it well and profitably. If it weren't, there wouldn't be 3,500 breweries in the US with just a handful of annual failures. As the market tightens, the best breweries will, like Josh Pfriem, learn how to continue to brew spectacular beer and sell it at a price consumers will pay. That's how markets work. Not by charity.

Your Omnibus Friday Post

I'm getting on a plane for Philadelphia today, so let's trot through these points briskly.

Southern Oregon Shooting
As everyone in ear- or eye-shot of electronic media knows, there was another mass-shooting in Roseburg yesterday. Discussion of things like beer are highlighted by this event for their triviality, and everyone in Oregon is a bit shaken this morning. Not surprised--good Lord, no--but disturbed. Our thoughts are with everyone at Umpqua Community College.

Legalized It
In one of the more bizarre coincidences, yesterday also marked formal cannabis legalization in Oregon. Anyone 21 years or older can now walk into one of the scores of dispensaries across the state and buy up to a quarter ounce of Purple Haze. It's clear we've passed into a new era, because not only did the day pass without attracting much media attention, but dispensaries reported fairly normal (if busy) days--no lines around the block. No worries, though, beer fans, this development isn't likely to blunt* the growth of your fave beverage.

How wild is your beer?
In a rare Oregon-focused post on All About Beer, I travel to Parkdale and talk to Solera's Jason Kahler about the wildest of wild ales--those that are made through natural fermentation.

If you wanted to boil the whole of modern brewing to a single goal, it’s trying to gain as much control over the biochemistry of the brewing process—starting with keeping wild yeast out of the brewery. This approach seems fundamentally contrary to brewing wild, which requires the embrace of randomness. When I visited Cantillon back in 2011, Jean Van Roy—who is equal parts poet, philosopher, and brewer—put it this way. “It’s never the same. Never. You never know what you will discover. That’s why lambic is so fun. In French we have a sentence. We say, tout est dans tout. If I translate it: everything is in everything. In this brewery, everything is playing a role in the final product. Everything.”

This is not the approach of the modern brewer; it’s something closer to an alchemist—which Kahler acknowledged. “It’s kind of magical in my head. There’s obviously hard science behind it, but I don’t understand all that science, and I don’t think you have to understand that science.”

Beervana Podcast: An Econ-focused Look at Buyouts and Mergers
When Patrick and I conceived of the podcast, we thought it would be cool to incorporate his expertise--economics--into our analysis. Beer isn't a platonic ideal--it's a product, bought and sold on the open market. So too are breweries, which lately have been selling a lot more than some people would like. We tap Patrick's wealth of knowledge to discover whether this is anything fans of good beer should be worrying about. (Plus a fun blind-tasting of some of the, err, finer products of these large breweries that are doing all the buying.) I'll like the Soundcloud feed below, but you can also get the podcast on iTunes. 






__________________
*Sorry.

The Essence of Style

People who read this blog know well enough what a beer style is; it's the label on the bottle--"stout," "gose," "IPA"--that tells us what kind of beer we should expect to find inside. It's the thing we fight about when the Brewers Association releases its annual judging guidelines, the quality that helps us assess whether a beer has been well-brewed or not. But if you think more deeply about style, you will come to see that it is actually a fascinating story that comprises the origins and development of that style as inflected by national brewing tradition, cultural preferences, ingredients, and even things as seemingly unlikely as war, famine, and taxes. Other fermented beverages like cider and wine are reflections of place. Beer is a constructed beverage, more like food, and beer style is akin to the cuisines of the world: they reflect the people that brewed them.

If you went around to the countries famous for their brewing traditions and asked them to serve you a "dark beer," you'd get very different things in each country. In Dublin you'd get stout (natch). You might get a mild in England. In Belgium, they might serve you a very strong, dark ale. In the Czech Republic you'd get tmavé or černé, and in Germany you might receive a dunkel lager. If you told the story of any one of these beer styles, it would take you through all those elements I described above. Irish stouts, now 4% session beers, started out as strong, soured brown porters in London. How they migrated from one city to the other and became so radically transformed takes you through malting innovation, preference migration, the effect of taxes, and more.

In action.

I mention all of this, because it's the lead-in to a talk I've been giving at my book events for The Beer Bible. Karen MacNeil's precursor book The Wine Bible, was arranged around region, as befits a beverage dependent on terroir. My book was arranged around style, and in it you find several dozen fascinating stories about their slow development over the past five plus centuries. It makes sense for me to start at the place of style, which gives me the chance to tell some pretty entertaining stories. (Beer is chock full of entertaining stories.)

As you may know (sorry about all the social media promos), I'm in the middle of a national book tour, and I think you'd enjoy spending an hour and a half chatting beer if I happen to come through your town. (The Q&As have been fascinating, too.) I know I'm a wholly unreliable source on this, but I think we've been having quite a bit of fun at them. Beginning Saturday, I'm on the East Coast, so have a look and see if I'll be in your town.

Saturday October 3, Grey Lodge Pub, Philadelphia
4 - 5:30 pm. | Event details here

Sunday October 4, WORD Bookstore Jersey City, NJ
4 - 5:30 pm. | Event details here

Monday October 5, Sixpoint Brewery, Brooklyn
7-9 pm. | A ticketed event--buy tix here

Wednesday October 7, Sam Adams, Boston
6-8 pm. | Event details here

Thursday, October 8, Longfellow Books, Portland, ME
7 - 8:30 pm. | Event details here

Saturday, October 9, World Beer Festival, Durham, NC
Afternoon and evening events | Event details here

In Britain: Cask Ale v. Craft

Last night, I was at Boulder Beer for a book event, and I had an interesting chat with brewmaster David Zuckerman. He'd recently been to England and was startled by the amount of American-style ale he found. (Quick and dirty definition: stronger, many more hops.) Like me, he loves a 3.8% bitter, and was concerned that these beers are slowly being put out to pasture in favor of what the English call "craft beer." These are makers of what looks a lot like the standard American taplist, including non-English styles (which Americans love) like saisons, strong stouts, wild ales, and full-flavor lagers. They sell these, controversially, in bottles and kegs, like Americans do; there's even a term of art called the "craft keg" which has been the subject of heated debate.  All of this has injected a huge amount of excitement into the British beer market, and beer geeks in the cities regard old-school cask like something grandpa drank. So, if you're like David and me and enjoy grandpa's old cask bitter, is this cause for worry?

By happy coincidence, London writer Pete Brown just announced the release of the latest Cask Ale Report. The story it tells is more complex than you might imagine, but it leaves me feeling hopeful. The most important piece of context in understanding British beer is recognizing that the vast, vast majority of it is mass market lager. Ales were supplanted a generation ago in their native country, and most Brits drink the same crap the rest of us do. So instead of thinking of things in terms of craft versus cask, it's worth considering ales versus lagers. Craft and cask have a lot more in common with each other than either has in common with Stella Artois and Carlsberg. According to the report, cask accounts for just 17% of sales in pubs, and if you add keg ale into the mix, it goes up to between 25-30%.

The fascinating part of the report illustrates that the lines between craft and cask aren't actually as clean as we imagine. Pete Brown:

Cask ale and craft beer are not the same - and neither are they totally separate. There's a significant overlap between the two.

Avoiding the torture of trying to DEFINE craft beer, it's possible to look at beers on a beer by beer, style by style basis and say 'that one is definitely craft' and 'that one definitely isn't'. Among everyone obsessed with trying to define craft, it;s hard to imagine anyone arguing that, say, Magic Rock High Wire is not a craft beer, or that John Smith's Smoothflow is craft beer. So by looking at the market one brand at a time, analysts CGA Strategy have compiled (an admittedly subjective) list based on ingredients, beer styles and brewers so that craft can be measured even if it can't be defined. With me? Good. On that basis, we can show that:

• Craft beer has grown by 533% in five years and now accounts for 8% of total on-trade ale
• Cask ale is by far the biggest format of craft beer

Much as in the US, this nebulous category of "craft brewing" has been great for the beer industry. It's appealed to young people, brought a new population to beer, and helped create all those downstream positives like fests, good beer pubs, and interest among chefs and good restaurants. If you look at a company like Fuller's, you see how craft has help transform their line of beers, giving them a chance to dabble in styles the old cask fans would never have appreciated. And that in turn has helped goose sales for traditional cask breweries willing to expand their horizon.

The other thing you're seeing is cask, the dispense-system, being appropriated by craft breweries as a platform for other types of beer. Until a decade ago, "cask ale" wasn't a term that pointed only to a method of brewing and dispense, but styles. Cask meant the same five styles of beer that have been brewed for generations. Pete didn't make predictions about the future, but his report hints at evolving trends. Here in the US, we've already seen that the term "craft" is rapidly losing any meaning. If ales continue to claw back market share from mass market lagers in Britain, I suspect the distinction between craft and keg will also lose any meaning. You'll have good beer, sometimes served on keg and sometimes served on cask. And then you'll have generic mass market lagers.

Beer has been evolving since the Sumarians first made it 8,000 years ago, and it is in a moment of rapid change. Sometimes that means beloved beer styles fall by the wayside. (RIP jopenbier!) Maybe mild ale will be a casualty as British palates look for stronger, more flavor-forward ales. But I suspect there will always be a market for sessionable cask ales in English pubs.

A Difficult Post

Credit: Angelo De Ieso

As many of you have seen, a few days ago the Oregonian severed its relationship with longtime beer writer John Foyston. There are two issues here, and I'd like to focus on the second, less-examined one. But first, the background. (Full disclosure: John started covering beer for the Oregonian a couple decades ago, just a bit before I started a column at Willamette Week. I've known him all that time and consider him a friend.) Here's what the O wrote on Wednesday.

In several instances over the past month, Foyston lifted passages from press releases, industry Facebook pages or brewery websites and submitted them under his byline. We also found one example where he copied verbatim an old beer review posted by a contributor to a craft beer site. 

I'll let you click through for the full details. The real issue boils down to his decision to lift descriptions about beer from BeerAdvocate. That's a very serious journalistic breach, and the Oregonian couldn't overlook it. (Whether John deserved walking papers is another matter.) John posted on Facebook about the issue, taking full responsibility and offering apologies.

I cut-and-pasted and modified some beer descriptions in an unpublished story on 25 favorite beers. Fair enough, that's a violation of journalistic ethics and I freely admit it.... No excuse. Guilty as charged. I shouldn't have done it. 

On the surface, this has the appearance of a cut-and-dried case of plagiarism, and we know the penalty for such crimes is a death sentence. So John got the ax. I'd like to leave his culpability aside, though, and discuss the Oregonian's culpability in all this. John offered no defense for his actions, but he did offer an explanation (this is the part I ellipsed out of the above quote): "Perhaps the crime is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the deadline was moved up three weeks from the end of September to right before I was leaving on a 10-day motorbike trip after Labor Day, thus eliminating the chance to reacquaint myself with beers that I hadn't had in the last year." 

No matter what you think of Foyston's actions in this episode, it's worth pointing out what has become of the Oregonian. Like so many dailies, it was owned by a media conglomerate (Newhouse) that had no idea how to handle the internet age. At first, the paper invested heavily in expensive stories that won awards (including Pulitzers), but not readers. As subscriptions, ad, and classified revenues declined, they decided to scrap in-depth stories and dump expensive senior reporters and editors. They eliminated beats that (presumably) weren't driving ads or readership, and basically quit doing local public-policy reporting. If it's happening in City Hall, for example, the O is mute about it.

In those regular purges, longtime salaried reporters were given a choice to continue along as freelancers, making a fraction of the money they made as staff reporters, or piss off completely. John decided to stay with the paper and continued covering beer. (Look under the byline; if it says "special to the Oregonian," that means the writer is freelancing.) Then, a couple years ago, the O made changes that have turned a once-worthwhile news organ into a clickbaity mess.

Anderson told his staff The Oregonian would deliver papers to subscribers on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. On the remaining days, the paper would publish only a street edition, saving millions of dollars in printing costs. Anderson also announced layoffs; almost 100 of the paper’s 650 employees lost their jobs. The cuts fell disproportionately on the newsroom: As many as 49 reporters, editors, designers and photographers—nearly a quarter of the remaining news staff—will be gone by Sept. 27.

The paper adopted a new strategy based on all the worst trends of internet news.

But the kind of news Oregonians get will change. The Oregonian’s newsroom is already under enormous pressure to write stories that draw hits on the website—often at the expense of in-depth reporting that reveals what’s actually happening in the community....  Staffers say the newsroom has become obsessed with a program called Parse.ly, which measures real-time Web traffic, shows which stories are getting the most hits, and identifies where readers click after finishing those stories. 

In short, in order to address its own gross mismanagement, the Oregonian adopted this strategy: 1) fire expensive, experienced reporters and hire inexperienced, cheap ones; 2) demand reporters post as much content as possible, including in-progress story fragments (something something "developing the narrative" something); 3) base job evaluation on web clicks and, most importantly, 4) abandon serious (read: slow and expensive) shoe-leather reporting. They also fired editors who had oversight of story direction and who edited finished pieces.

Reporters are 100% fungible and survive one week to the next based on how well their stories seem to be moving traffic. You can imagine what kind of product this approach produces. The current version of the Oregonian is a disgrace. The online edition is an unreadable hodgepodge of unedited story fragments and repostings of clickbait from other sites. Reporters "generate content" on random stuff that happens to be going on--or something they found online. There are a few reporters doing actual journalism, but it's no surprise that when a big story breaks, it ain't the O doin' the breakin'.

This is a terrible way for John to end a much-lauded run as the central voice covering Oregon beer. He's done great work, and I have complete confidence that this episode is the outlier--which makes it all so unusual and shocking. But the guilt-pointing finger shouldn't stop at John's face: the Oregonian bears a lot of responsibility in this for creating an environment that doesn't value real news and demands writers publish early and often--no matter how crappy that "content" is. It's easy enough to can John and move along, but something's rotten at the heart of the Oregonian, and that's not going away anytime soon.

The (Too) Invisible Men: Importers

I knew when I wrote the Beer Bible that it would have errors, and I hoped none of them would be too serious. My blog posts regularly have errors; there was no way a 644-page book was going to be born unscathed. One thing I didn't anticipate was making an error in the acknowledgements--and it's a big one.

Craig Hartinger offering a toast to Samuel Smith's last spring
at the Craft Brewers Conference.

Among the most important--and least heralded--heroes in the craft beer renaissance were importers. Americans were wholly ignorant of world brewing traditions back in the 1970s and '80s, and as breweries started making new, full-flavored beers, they had to educate consumers about the beers they were trying to sell them. American craft breweries have in the past decade developed their own vernacular, but at the outset, they were reproducing European styles. The best way to teach people about those styles was pointing them to the breweries who had already mastered them. Enter the importers.

They formed that knowledge bridge that was a critical precursor for the development of craft brewing. We started hearing words like "stout" and "doppelbock" and "abbey ale" and we wondered what these beers tasted like. It wasn't that we didn't trust our local breweries, it was that we wanted to go to the source first. Like tuning forks, those first imported beers we drank allowed us to set the pitch of our palates. Even today, we refer to classic styles by referencing the European breweries that make classic examples.

When I started writing The Beer Bible, I went to importers to act as liaisons to those breweries--and also to guide and educate me about the national traditions they represented. In my acknowledgements, I mentioned some of those folks, but not one of the most important: Craig Hartinger at Merchant du Vin. Craig stopped in at the Seattle book event, and the recognition of this failure crashed in on me. I can't believe I failed to mention him.

Merchant du Vin was one of the first importers to expose Americans to the very best of European brewing. Among the breweries they import are Ayinger, Orval, Rochefort, Samuel Smith, Traquair House, and Westmalle. Craig helped me arrange tours at Ayinger, Orval, and Rochefort--and most amazingly, the extremely reclusive Samuel Smith's. Over the past five years, I've regularly turned to him for information, advice, or a connection to one of his breweries, and he has always replied (usually within the hour) with good cheer and great information. Writing the Beer Bible was an exercise in asking for help, and there were a handful of people who made the book what it is. Without their help, it would have been a substantially diminished product. Craig Hartinger is one of those folks.

Importers don't get the appreciation they deserve, and I hate that I have compounded this oversight by neglecting to mention Craig and Merchant du Vin. So until the second edition comes out, let me say it here: thanks, Craig.

Postscript. The success of local brewing has not been great for importers. Why bother with an English IPA when you can get 213 of them right here at home? Or even a doppelbock or abbey tripel? The reason, of course, is because they taste different. The United States has developed its own palate, and now when we make versions of these beers, they're further and further distant from their inspirations. It's a wonderful surprise to revisit some of these grand old beers. So do yourself a favor and go pick up an Ayinger Celebrator, Orval, Rochefort 10, Samuel Smith's India Ale, and Traquair House Ale. You will thank yourself.

Of Fresh Hops and Buyouts

I'm trying out the phrase "guerrilla podcasters" to describe Patrick's and my crude production values on the latest pod. We recorded live at Breakside's Milwaukie brewery--a production facility that was in full roar. We were there because Ben and Co. had on a couple fresh hop IPAs for us to sample as we discussed fresh hop beers for the podcast. This is one of those things that may seem old hat to Pacific Northwesterners, but is in fact almost entirely unknown outside our little hoppy bubble. I think the content is very good, even if the audio is a bit rough. Ben Edmunds stopped by to discuss his very unusual fresh-hop technique using nitrogen. Good stuff.




Next I alert you to my latest in All About Beer.

But beer companies? They are organs of commerce, however wonderful the brewers and publicans they employ may be. We feel good about beer, so we place that good feeling on the institution of private businesses. And in many cases, that feeling is well-placed. Breweries are collections of humans, after all. When they make good beer and create a wonderful space to enjoy it, they rightly earn our loyalty. But they’re also businesses, and sometimes their owners decide to sell to different owners—and then we have to make new judgments all over again.

And finally, if you're in Seattle tonight, come by the Book Larder and listen to me discuss The Beer Bible, take questions, and sign books. 

3,000 Blog Posts

Let us take a moment to acknowledge a milestone: this is my 3,000th post on Beervana. It precedes another milestone--my 10th anniversary on the blog--by about four months. I was a sprightly 38-year-old when the blog started, and now I am a beleaguered 47-year-old (I'll turn 48 two days before this blog turns 10). Over the course of those 3,000 posts, the blog has received 13,852 comments (4.6 a post--not bad) and some millions of page views. (I used to use SiteMeter, but it crapped out on me for some reason; Google's analytics only go back to May of 2010, and since that time, I've gotten 2.2 million.)

In the intervening time, social media has appeared and displaced blogging as favored platform for discussion. Print media, which originally eschewed online content, has now co-opted the space blogging once occupied in both high form (with well-reported long-reads) and low form (the word "clickbait" didn't exist when I started this blog). One therefore imagines that there are a good deal fewer blog posts in my future than there are on the archives. But, until I figure out what, if any, future this site might have, I'll keep plugging along.

Feel free to blow your noisemakers and raise your pints.

An Anchor Brewing Anniversary

Exactly a month ago, Anchor Brewing celebrated 50 years since 27-year-old Fritz Maytag purchased the almost-defunct Anchor Brewery in San Francisco, saving it and an American beer style from oblivion. I have been remiss in acknowledging the milestone, because while I don't think Anchor qualifies as the spark that ignited what we now call the craft beer revolution (it took twelve years until the next American brewery was founded), it is nevertheless an important institution on its own, unique merits.

Credit: Anchor Brewing.

Until sometimes in the 1990s, the United States was not much of a brewing country. Like so many other nations, we built it on the chassis of Bavarian lager brewing, slowly debasing it over the decades. We managed to embellish this tradition into a few minor styles, and among these San Francisco's steam beer is easily the most interesting. It is also a form of debasement, but in this case one that led to interesting, full-flavored beer. The shortcut that produced steam beer wasn't intended to weaken it in flavor or strength, but was a necessity of frontier brewing. It's a perfect example of the way styles emerge or evolve, and steam beer is an authentic American expression--if not one that fell very far from the Bavarian tree.

Anchor's greater contribution to American brewing was demonstrating that it could be done on a small scale profitably. I don't actually think Fritz Maytag's beer was what inspired other breweries, no matter how many people want to credit Liberty Ale with establishing the modern pale/IPA. Rather, like so many other San Franciscan immigrants before him, he demonstrated that making good, honest beer on a small scale was possible. It was a proof of concept.

Even though Maytag sold the brewery five years ago, his name will always be written first in the list of brewers who helped reshape American brewing. And it all started 50 years and one month ago.

To add to the celebration, I'm going to excerpt a section from the Beer Bible about steam beer. There are a ton of fascinating stories about beer, and this is just one among many--but the anniversary gives me a good excuse to trundle it out. (And of course, it means I have to plug the book here, too: go buy a copy today!) (Sorry.)

I also had a chance to tour the brewery a couple weeks ago, and those photos are sprinkled throughout. Okay, to the excerpt...

__________________

Excerpt from The Beer Bible on Steam Beer
In the second half of the 19th century, beer was really on the move. German immigrants were pouring into North America, dotting the towns of the Midwest and West with new lager, breweries. Pale lagers were streaming out of Bohemia and Austria across Europe. And in America, migrants were sweeping across the continent in search of better lives.

One of the migrants’ prime destinations was San Francisco, where they heard the waters ran with gold. In 1848, it was the small hamlet by the bay, a community of fewer than a thousand souls. But by July 1850, census workers counted almost 95,000—a seething, sweating mass of dreamers and drifters. Franconian entrepreneur Levi Strauss saw them as customers in need of a sturdy pair of pants, and many of his countrymen figured they could use a beer, too. By 1900, the breweries were in place—two dozen at their peak—making a brew the locals called “steam beer.” Taverns bulging with hard-working, thirsty men meant breweries didn’t have the time to make proper lager. They brewed a beer with lager malts, generally (though not always) in the German decoction method, but instead of fermenting cool and conditioning the beer for weeks, they pitched lager yeast at ale temperatures, let the wort finish fermenting in wide, shallow “clarifying tanks,” and packaged it immediately, without any conditioning. The entire process took less than a week.

The origin of the name “steam beer” is obscure, but there are a couple decent possibilities. Anchor Brewing, which has kept the style alive through the decades, believes the name comes rooftop cool ships that steamed as the wort cooled. Robert Wahl and Max Henius, writing in 1902 in their American Handy-book of Brewing, Malting, and Auxilary Trades, put forward this theory: “This beer is largely consumed throughout the state of California. It is called steam beer on account of its highly effervescing properties and the amount of pressure (“steam”) it has in the packages.” Whatever the name’s origin, Wahl and Henius offer a description of what it might have tasted like: “light in color, hop aroma and bitter taste not very pronounced; very lively and not necessarily brilliant.”

Steam beer’s popularity suffered mightily with the arrival of refrigeration in the 1890s, which allowed breweries to make lagers even in warm places like San Francisco. It took a further hit with the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires destroyed much of San Francisco. A bit more than a decade later, Prohibition came, finishing much of the work the fires didn’t. Following Prohibition, Anchor Brewing was the sole surviving purveyor of steam beer, and it limped along through more setbacks over the course of the next three decades until in 1965, facing bankruptcy, it planned to shut its doors.

That was when Fritz Maytag, who had a bit of his family’s washing-machine money, stepped in and bought a controlling share of Anchor Brewing. He didn’t buy it outright until 1968, and he spent the intervening years learning the brewing art from colleagues like Bill Leinenkugel and studying Jean de Clerck’s Textbook of Brewing. In 1969, he bought new equipment and, armed with his new understanding of beer, retooled the recipe for steam beer. Over the years, Anchor had succumbed to the same cost-saving shortcuts larger breweries had adopted, and Maytag scrapped them all. He went looking for inspiration in the old tradition of brewing steam beer.

Today Anchor makes steam beer in much the way breweries did decades ago. They use wide, open fermenters and a lager yeast strain. Wahl and Henius describe the process of kräusening—adding fermenting wort to finished beer to carbonate—to achieve high levels of carbonation, and Anchor does that now, too. The recipe is simple, just pale and caramel malts and Northern Brewer hops—and that’s likely how the old San Francisco brewers 
would have done it, too. Nothing fancy, just simple, easy beer.

That foaming thing in the wall is a grant. Old-timey stuff.

The "modern" brewery.

Tracking the Fresh Hop Ales in Real Time

In years past, I have tried (and failed, in lesser or greater degrees) to keep track of the fresh hop beers that blossomed across the Pacific Northwest. Despite my failures, I always wished that someone would do this properly. It seems like a great opportunity for one of the tourist boards or the Brewers Guild to get a month of post-summer travelers to the state and really boost what has become the region's signature style.

Someone has finally done it! Meet Ryan Sharp of Bend, who has this detailed Google Doc that he is busy updating with all the beers as they come online. If you go over to column J ("release date"), you can do a sort so that it filters by date--allowing you to peruse exactly what's out there at the moment you are jonesin' for a green pint of fresh hops.

Thanks, Ryan!

A Visit to San Francisco; Last Portland Book-Signing

A few odds and ends. Let's start with this. I will be at the Powell's in Beaverton on Monday. It is the last scheduled book-signing in Portland (and Oregon), so if you have any interest in chatting with me about the book in person, this will the final chance around these parts. (My book tour continues in other parts of the country: full schedule here.)

Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing
Monday, August 31st,  7 - 9 pm
3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
Beaverton, OR 97005

For those of you who can't attend any events on my book tour but would like a signed copy, you can still order them through Powell's--but only until Monday. It looks like you can order signed copies of the softcover, hardcover, or "library bound" edition (no clue) there. 

Meanwhile, as the tour unfolds, I hope to be sitting down with brewers and beer people at select locations as I move about the country. My first installment is up at All About Beer. I had the chance to sit down with Dave McLean of Magnolia Brewing, and saw the world through his pub's window, sitting as it does one block east of the intersection of Haight and Ashbury.

McLean was at the tail end of the flower child migration (it seemed to die with Jerry Garcia), and he still embodies a part of that ideal. The pub was just coming alive as we sat down to talk, and the stereo’s first track, the Dead’s Franklin’s Tower, poured out as he described the changes he’d witnessed as two subsequent migrations had changed the city outside his doors.

“I came two years after the ’89 quake, so there was still a post-quake recession going on. It felt pretty sleepy when I got here. It was nice; the East Coast was very frenetic and people were hanging out in the parks. It was a nice time to come. Then the first dot-com boom took off just after I opened Magnolia—’98, ’99. It felt big at the time: the streets got more crowded, traffic got bad, restaurants were hard to get into. And then it crashed. 2001 was the bust, and that was the one year we didn’t have growth at this location. And then the slow climb back up to this crazy, current time which feels like an order of magnitude bigger than the first round. Everybody wants to live in the city; that’s different from the first round. There’s a lot of simmering resentment and anger because people are losing their apartments—there’s an interesting class economics dynamic that’s dominating all the news and papers and blogs.”

Read the whole thing here.

A Sour, a Porter, and an IPA Walk Into a Book Signing...

On Friday, I had the great pleasure to visit Book Passage, a fantastic independent bookstore in Corte Madera (Marin County), just north of San Francisco for a Beer Bible-related event. And thanks to their wonderful pre-planning, I learned something incredibly valuable.

Pouring Beatification.

To make it a fun and memorable event, they had arranged to have some beer on hand for tasting: Russian River Beatification and Pliny the Elder, Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Sumpin', and Anchor Porter. I decided to incorporate the beers into a little presentation about the book. As I've been going along, I've been focusing on the nature of "style," and how it comes together as a result of a tangle of interesting factors (history, national tradition, ingredients, technology, war, and law). Having four beers there meant we could go through them and I could tell the story of the style as we went. Plus, it game me an opportunity to describe beer tasting and what to look for.

We started out with the Beatification, which is Russian River's spontaneous beer roughly in the gueuze style. The crowd was composed mainly of novices and intermediate drinkers, so I saw a lot of surprised looks with the first sips. I was describing how lambics have been made, and the effect of wild yeast, and at some point I mentioned that basically everything we were tasting came from the fermentation. Again, surprised looks.

The next beer was Lagunitas, and I mainly described the American practice of brewing, focusing on the way we have developed for exhibiting hop flavors and aromas. (If you're interested in a deep dive about that, listen to our podcast on Session IPAs.) I pointed out the flavor elements, but because there's a fair amount of caramel in it, I talked mainly about older-school IPAs and the development of the American oeuvre than I did on the flavor components.

Photo by Patty Stanton.

It was when we got to Anchor Porter, and I was mentioning that basically all the flavor there came from the malt, that I realized what a great line-up Book Passage had solicited. One beer's flavor came exclusively from fermentation, and one almost exclusively from malt. The last one, Pliny, gets almost all of its flavor from hops. For people who have been drinking craft beer sporadically or who don't brew or spend times on the blogs, this was absolutely revelatory information. Flavors in beer can be so strong, and in many beers, they are a melange of several sources. Having three beers where the sources were singular really demonstrated how variable beer is--and helped the people there begin to decode its flavors.

If you have people in your life who are a little interested in beer but not especially knowledgeable, I recommend buying three bottles of yeasty, malty, and hoppy beer and walking them through these flavors. (Something like a low-hop bock might be better than a porter.) It's quick, easy, and very useful.

Odds and Ends, Plus a Great Press Release

Three things for today's shorty post before I head to San Francisco for Beer Bible events. Should you have miraculously not gotten your fill of Beer Bible stuff, let me direct you to my post at All About Beer on why I wrote the book.

I can’t answer the most important question people have about this book (“okay, it’s long, but is it any good?”)—though I hope you’ll find a copy and see for yourself. What I can do is tell you why I wrote it, and why I think we need yet another book about beer.

Patrick Emerson and I have finished the most recent Beervana Podcast, and the subject, likewise, is a ranging discussion about writing the book. Patrick joined me on the first leg of my travels (in Great Britain), so he joins the conversation as well.


Finally, I want to leave you with one of the more interesting and amusing emails I've gotten lately. It comes 10 Barrel Brewing, which as everyone knows was recently acquired by AB InBev. This is the email introducing the press release:

Since people seem pretty stoked on 10 Barrel’s new Portland pub, we’ve decided to get a little more aggressive and announce seven brand new pub openings in Oregon. Some may say that we’re growing too fast, or that 10 Barrel is losing sight of who we are, but we took the restrictor plate off to give the people what they want! Check the video (https://youtu.be/_V0xnzeNHJY) and feel free to share it before we announce on our social channels on 8/24.

If that doesn't seem skittish enough, how about the final paragraph from the press release itself:

“Honestly, these pubs have been in the works for a long time,” added 10 Barrel co-founder Jeremy Cox. “We started talking about these way back in May or June, and we’re glad they finally came together.”

You think anybody's feeling a bit scorched by the blowback from said buyout?

When the New Car Gets Its First Scratch

Owning a new car is pleasurable and exciting--but it comes with an undercurrent of anxiety. You see it sitting out there on the street, and it looks like a magnet for mayhem. Anything could happen to it. You find yourself watching over it like a hen minds her eggs. Eventually, though, something does happen--a rock chips the paint, someone rams it with a shopping cart, you spill coffee over the front seat--and the bubble of anxiety bursts. The scratch allows you to move along.

After a week of extremely nice reviews (please look at Brian Yaeger's post in the Portland Mercury; this piece at the UW student newspaper is also great), I've gotten my first pan. A "sad rehashing of previous efforts." Ouch! More:

While Alworth lists Portland, Oregon as his residence his selection of beers in the "Beers to Know" listings is a bizarre collection seemingly devoid of any concern to the availability of the beer and its contribution to the brewing art. Alworth's book, in my view, is a classic example of "all form and little substance". Garrett Oliver's "Oxford Companion to Beer" is a much better reference both with respect to the history of brewing and the actual brewing process. While the book carries a 2015 copyright date, the Acknowledgements were written in May of 2013. His information on Trappist Beers is missing the last three brweries added to the group which occured in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

It's a nice, bracing critique, and not without merit. He's exactly right about the timeliness business, an issue that pains me greatly but which I had no control to change. I think he's less accurate on the "beers to know," which were selected primarily for their availability. (It's not just a collection of "ghost" beers only hardcore fans ever see. I chose among those readily available so that, no matter where you lived in the country, you'd have at least one typical example of the beer in question to try.) Whether Oxford Companion is a better source I shall defer to readers.

It gives me an opportunity to encourage/ask folks to review the book on Amazon once you've had a chance to look through it. I trust the wisdom of the masses, and hive mind always renders a judicious verdict. When there are only a couple reviews up, negative ones exercise quite a bit of sway. I hope his will not be the definitive position (though that's always possible!). So, if you're inclined give it a review.

I do welcome your feedback. Believe it or not, negative comments aren't the worst thing to a writer--silence is. So comment away!

Fred Eckhardt, 1926-2015

The news came out last night that Fred Eckhardt had passed away after 89 amazing, vivid years of life. He was a Marine and World War II veteran, swimming teacher, Buddhist, sake promoter, and of course, "the dean of American beer writers." He was, until perhaps his 84th year of life or so, a constant presence at beer events around the city--many of which may not have existed had he not been an early advocate of a beverage too humble and ordinary for others to notice.

Sometime today, John Foyston is going to post a full, worthy treatment of Fred's life. In the meantime, I just wanted to offer my voice to the chorus. Fred was so important to this city and the beer culture that has emerged here--we can't thank him enough. He lived what looked to be a wonderfully rich, fascinating life, and so we should celebrate even as we mourn. Here's a final cheers to you, Fred--

Update: Here's that John Foyston remembrance we were hoping to see.

Beer Bible Launch: You Are Cordially Invited

Beer Bible Book Launch
Tuesday, August 11, 5-7 pm (some comments at 6 pm)
Belmont Station, 4500 SE Stark

On Tuesday, August 11, the Beer Bible will officially go on sale. We will celebrate this milestone with a celebration at Belmont Station, where you can buy the book and where I will gladly sign it. I'll plan to say a few words around 6 pm, but I'll be signing books from five onward--so come early if you can and pick up a copy of the book. Belmont Station is hosting this event for free (thanks, guys!), so consider enjoying a delicious beer when you come. I suspect there will be some toasting going on sometime a bit after six.

For those of you who have been following this odyssey, you know how much the book has dominated the last four years of my life. It's been odd to have such a huge presence that is essentially known only to me. Finally, finally, I get to share this thing, and I really hope you consider buying a copy, even if you can't make it to the launch. Whether you like it or not, at least you will finally see it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts, good, bad, snarky, corrective, thoughtful--all of it will be great.

If you can't make the launch, it won't be your last opportunity. I'll be doing an event on August 31 at the Cedar Hills Powell's. In addition, next week I'll be elsewhere in the state. On Thursday, August 13, I'll be in Corvallis from 6:30-8:30 with Nick Arzner at the new Block 15 Taproom (3415 SW Deschutes Ave). Nick was a great advisor before I went to Belgium, and I will be pleased to see the new place and have a conversation about beer with Nick before another signing there. That should be a cool event.

On Saturday, August 15, I'll be visiting Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene (272 Van Buren St) from noon-1:30pm. Jamie Floyd has been a regular source of insight and information since he was at Steelhead back in the 1990s, and this feels a bit like a homecoming. Please join us for that if you're in Eugene.

In case you haven't seen my 219 posts about this book, here's a quickie backgrounder. Hope to see you next week--

The Extraordinary Tart Ales of Flanders

The latest podcast is up. Inspired by the recent release of pFriem's Flanders-Style Red ale, Patrick and I decided to look at the style more closely. We start out with a bit of history and then look at the way these beers are made, turning to Rudi Ghequire, brew master at Rodenbach, for descriptions of the slow process he uses to mature the beer. We also listen to Josh Pfriem describe the process he uses to make a new-world version. As usual, we taste the beers ourselves and then discuss some of the economic issues. In this case, the difficulty of competing in a marketplace with a beer that takes 18 months to make when other beer can be made in a month.

You can listen to in inline below or sidle on over to iTunes.

Mark Your Calendars - Upcoming Beer Bible Events

We have launch in T minus 8 days. That's when (next Tuesday), The Beer Bible goes on sale and I begin a months-long tour of some of America's finer cities. For those of you who live in Oregon, mark your calendars.

• Tuesday, August 11, Belmont Station (5-7pm)
• Thursday, August 13, Block 15 Taphouse in Corvallis (6:30-8:30pm)
• Saturday, August 15, Ninkasi Brewing in Eugene (noon-1:30pm)
• Thursday, August 19, Magnolia Brewing in San Francisco (6-9pm)
• Friday, August 20, Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA (5:30-7pm)
• Sunday, August 23, Double Mountain in Hood River (11a - 1pm)
• Monday, August 31, Powell's Cedar Hills (7pm)

If you want updates or reminders about these events--or future ones outside Oregon--I will be posting those at the book's Facebook page.

I'll have a bit more Beer Bible-related stuff in the coming days.