Time for craft beer nostalgia

Is this a sign of maturity? At least a bit of what’s new these days just might be old, meaning “retro beers” don’t have a monopoly on nostalgia.

First, Bill Brand reports that New Albion Ale will be back for SF Beer Week. He’s got the details in his pdf newsletter, but check his blog for updates. Basically, Don Barkley — who worked with Jack McAuliffe at New Albion — pulled out an old ledger McAuliffe started and found a recipe.

Barkley brewed the “new” New Albion Ale at Napa Smith, the winery-brewery he recently went to work for after retiring form Mendocino Brewing.

You can see photos of a much younger Barkley in “MICROBREWERS: 1981 – 1996: A Photo History” (this link goes to a promo at YouTube). The self-published book contains hundreds of photographs of microbrewery pioneers along with commentary. It costs $64.95 (details).

What I’m really looking forward to is Jay Sheveck’s “Beer Pioneers,” a documentary he hopes to have ready in 2010. He’s been working on this for more than 10 years, and is still collecting interviews. He posted a teaser at Facebook that’s certainly worth your time. (Please read the text here as well.)

He’s even got footage of the elusive Mr. McAuliffe.

 

The Session #24 Friday – Twittering optional

The SessionDon’t forget The Session #24: A Tripel for Two on Friday. With a little prodding from Alan it would appear we are ready add a little Twitter this month.

Twittering is strictly optionally for bloggers, but this form of “micro-blogging” means beer drinkers who don’t have blog can participate.

Back to your assigment, from host David Turley:

“Beer is best when it’s shared, and a strong beer is just right for sharing. Belgian Tripels are big beers with a flavor profile that is enjoyed by both experienced and new beer fans. Be it an intimate evening, or watching a ball game on TV, a Tripel is made for sipping and sharing. For Session #24 the theme is ‘A Tripel for Two.’ What Tripel would you pick to share with that good friend, family member, or lover?”

And I’m choosing . . .

 

Monday musing: Beer as an object of art

Well I give up all my sculpturing
‘Cause my life had gone all sad
An I went to work down at the factory
It weren’t art … but it weren’t bad
So
They put me on the assembly line
Putting plastic leaves on the plastic palms
Then they shipped then off the Los Angeles
Yeah it weren’t art … but it weren’t wrong
Now some say it’s pathetic
When you give up your aesthetic
For a blue collar job in the factory
But all that exhibiting
Was just too damn inhibiting
For a beer drinking
Regular guy … like me

                    – Terry Allen, Oui

A couple of years ago I asked a few brewers attending the Craft Brewers Conference to choose one of four words to describe themselves: artist, artisan, engineer or farmer.

There’s another part to this. If you think your favorite brewer is an artist does it follow that some beers must be art? A great beer, a wonderful dish or an excellent bottle of wine may be aesthetically pleasing as art, but that’s not the same as being an object of art.

Does it seem like a stretch to call these art?

I got to thinking about Terry Allen’s lyrics because I’m writing a lot about process while working on the wheat beer book. The way I see it there is a rather wide gap between the skill need to put “plastic leaves on plastic palms” and to put consistently good beer in a glass. Just not sure how you describe that skill.

I didn’t ask Bernard Kuhn, brewmaster at Weissbräu Freilassing in southeastern Germany, if he’d call his beer art, but I’m pretty sure the answer would have been no. Kuhn brews three regular weiss beers and one winter special, no flavors of the month, following quite traditional methods (decoction, open fermentation, true bottle conditioning). But what he talks about first is quality.

“You cannot always do the same process,” he said. “You have to brew good beer out of shitty malt. That’s the skill of the brewmaster.”

Is the art in what a brewer actually does in the process or end result, in neither, in both?

Random travel note: Today we’re off to Archer City, Texas, to wander through the multiple buildings of Booked Up, the antiquarian book store operated by author Larry McMurtry. This could be dangerous.