Month: January 2010

Under the radar, all things are relative

Marble Brewery in Albuquerque recently installed three more fermenters (above, on the left), each holding 45 barrels (almost 1,400 gallons). Marble brews mostly ales, so running 26 batches through each fermenter over the course of a year would constitute a leisurely pace and still yield more than 3,500 barrels.

Now consider this. When Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi founded Sierra Nevada thirty years ago the business plan called for production to max out at 3,000 barrels. “We figured we could make money at that, we wouldn’t get rich but we’d get by,” said Grossman, now the company president. Sierra Nevada produced 1,500 barrels the first year (1980) and passed 3,000 in its fifth. It now brews nearly 700,000 annually.

All things are relative. Yesterday Stephen Beaumont pointed to a Wall Street Journal story about U.S. beer sales volume falling. He suggests this is a victory for boire moins, boire mieux (drink less, drink better). I’m certainly on board with the drink better part.

He writes that the WSJ “doesn’t see this because they’re used to looking only at the large, public corporation side of things.” Indeed, 3,000 barrels here, 3,000 barrels there . . . nothing to the global beer powers. But 3,000 barrels equals close to one million 12-ounce bottles. To those of us buying niche beers that’s a lot of bottles.

Before 2009 no New Mexico brewery since Prohibition (and we don’t have numbers from before) had brewed 5,000 barrels. Marble made 5,200 last year, an increase from 1,950 in 2008 (the brewery began selling beer in April that year). The increase was a ridiculous 267 percent, the actual growth 3,250 barrels.

OK, you never heard of Marble. That’s part of the point. Also Great Divide Brewing in Colorado grew a little over 3,000 barrels (34 percent) in 2009 to about 12,000 barrels. And sales at Saint Arnold Brewing in Texas increased 13 percent (production rising not quite 3,000 barrels) to nearly 26,000 barrels.

We’ll never know how much Bud Light Lime A-B InBev sold in the Albuquerque area in 2009. Maybe it was more than 3,000 barrels, but it’s still just another brand passing through. Before that it was Miller Chill. Nothing changes.

But things have changed in the cooler at the only market in the village where I live. Corrales is an anomaly, long and narrow with about 8,000 people and no stop lights. Albuquerque and Rio Rancho are hard by and that’s where most people shop. Drive two miles past Frontier Mart and there’s a full-size grocery store with cheaper milk and a fully stocked liquor store.

Still, Frontier always had a solid, if limited, wine selection and the usual “craft” beer suspects. Then this fall they squeezed soft drinks into one cooler facing, making room for many more beers. Instead of just offering Sierra Nevada Pale Ale they have Torpedo. Always something from Deschutes and Full Sail. More than Fat Tire from New Belgium. And at least four New Mexico beers.

A-B InBev still owns the floor display, including its lineup of beers brewed in Belgium, but this is real change. Change not so easily measured by numbers.

***************

Of course we’re headed back to number season, and there’s every chance figures for 2009 may not look as glossy as recent years. We know Boston Beer production was up 1.6 percent in 2009, and Samuel Adams sales seldom stray far from the rest of craft (in no small part because they account for more than one bottles sold out of every five). In 2008 the category was up six percent, Sam Adams six percent. In 2007, Sam Adams 14 percent and “craft” 12 percent. You get the idea.

 

This one’s for hops lovers

Deschutes Hop Henge Premium beerBoth the beer and the details herein.

The press release Deschutes Brewery sent out for Hop Henge Experimental IPA describes the beer as “our annual exercise in IBU escalation, combining several new hop processes and techniques to create a unique and unexpected beer.”

Notice that although Hop Henge checks in at 8.75% and includes, according to the press release, 95 bitterness units that it is labeled neither Imperial nor Double. But it is one big ass beer, and were it entered as an IPA in a competition would surely be kicked for its big-assedness.

Deschutes first brewed Hop Henge in 2006, some years calling it an Imperial IPA, and jamming a boatload of hops into a beer is hardly new. So what’s this about experimental? I asked and lickety-split the answer arrived in an email from brewmaster Larry Sidor:

“As always, hopping is an adventure with Deschutes Brewery. We kicked off this year’s Hop Henge Experimental Ale by milling 1.0 pounds of Amarillo and Centennial hops per barrel in our grain mill. Yes, you read that right, the hops went directly to the mill along with the grain! So, we ended up with a green mash. Never fear, lautering went fine with a high performance German lauter tun.

“The next hop stop was at the Kettle. We added Millennium, Herkules (more German influence) and Northern Brewer at just at 0.99 pounds per barrel. The next wort hopping was in the hop back using Northern Brewer, Citra and Brewers Gold at 0.6 pounds per barrel.

“Drum roll please, the final wort hopping was with Cascade and Amarillo in the whirlpool at 0.8 pounds per barrel.

“Let’s see, we’re now up to 3.39 pounds per barrel just in the wort. We’re not stopping here.

“So, off to the fermenter where we added Centennial, Cascade and Amarillo at 1.32 pounds per barrel. These were hop pellets, very unDeschutes!) So next, we added 0.3 pounds per barrel of Citra in the bright beer tank. I can finally relax and get those damn pellets out of my tank and back to leaf hops! So after seven days on dry hops we called it good with a grand total of 5.01 pounds of hops added per barrel.”

Blame the power of persuasion but it seems you can smell a blend of citrus fruits — grapefruit, clementines — northwest pine trees, pineapples, and on and on through the cap. Really.

Besides they had me from the point when they milled the hops.

How will Fiji do in the World Beer Cup?

Although a few more entries may show up it seems that 183 judges at the World Beer Cup, held in Chicago in April just before the Craft Brewers Conference begins, will have more than 3,400 beers to judge over the course of two days.

Does that sound like work or like fun to you?

The 2010 WBC will be the largest commercial competition ever, eclipsing the 3,331 beer entries set at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival.

The judges come from 27 countries including the United States, with 63 percent of them from outside the U.S. Several countries not represented in 2008 will be this year: Benin, Cambodia, Fiji, Greece, Haiti, Ireland, Mongolia and Namibia.

Before you haul out the calculator, 3,500 beers for 183 judges works out to less than 20 beers each. Oh, were it that simple. Each beer is judged by by six judges in each round, and multiple times if it advances (the more popular categories require three rounds).

Now does it sound like work?

*******************

More about the judging process (from the 2006 competition in Seattle).

 

More lists, new (whatever that means) and old

National Premium beerDon Russell and Jack Curtin (twice, in fact) point out a few of the problems with “The Best 25 New Beers in America” from Maxim magazine (in pdf format).

Like that some of the beers aren’t exactly new. In fact, isn’t Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen 25 years old (new name aside)?

Jack, in a wonderful turn of the pen, calls it Truly Dumb Shit. But Don finds a reason to like it because the article labels Philadelphia its favorite beer burg. Did I mention he lives in Philadelphia? That’s the charm of lists, ending up on them. They not only provide fodder for conversation — 25 best new beers and none of them wild or barrel-aged? — but what brewery doesn’t want its beer mentioned in Maxim?

Also it never hurts to consider the view from outside the world of the beer obsessed looking in. Call it serendipity, but while moving files about my office the last couple of days (using the word “organizing” would be an overstatement) I happened across an article from 1975 called “The Great Gulp: A Consumer’s Guide to Beer” that appeared in Oui magazine.

Rock critic Robert Christgau kindly archived it at his website. Dinosaur that I am I printed it out, which meant I had to find a place to file it — some day I’ll get this digital thing down. The real serendipity is how I stumbled across the piece to begin with. Christgau labeled James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here” the best song of the aughts (I’m good with that, and you can make up your own mind by listening here), leading me to Christgau’s site, leading me to the beer story.

Christgau and Carola Dibbell, with the help of a tasting panel, provide grades for 46 American beers and 11 imports. They didn’t taste everything available in the United States at the time but made a heck of an effort, which itself makes a statement about America’s beer monoculture in 1975.

To assess the ratings presented below, we not only sampled beers blindfolded but tried to live with them as well. This technique had its debilitating consequences, but after months of unpremeditated naps, we had learned to distinguish some of our beers all of the time, and all of them some of the time. However, because beer is fragile, we may not have sampled all of them in optimal condition, and some beers, particularly the smaller and more westerly ones, were unobtainable.

Although I recommend spending time with all 4,600 words a few highlights for those reading this at work:

  • “One of our conclusions was that if you’re thirsty, there’s no such thing as an undrinkable beer – therefore our ratings, which ordinarily descend to E-minus, stopped at D-plus. Many of the best beers in the country are virtually unknown, but the size of the company is no clear indication of mediocrity.”
  • About Anchor Steam: “The beer also contains four times the usual amount of hops, the flower that gives beer its bitterness. ‘Steam’ just means carbonation. Our bohemian friends found it winy, but we found it one more instance of San Francisco’s chronic confusion of eccentricity with quality. B.”
  • About Shopwell Premium (purchased in New Jersey): “As with all house brands, the first virtue of supermarket beer is bulk-order economy. But whereas Ann Page jams and Jerseymaid yogurt also taste good, all the supermarket beers we’ve sampled are best consumed quickly, very cold and under pressure of great thirst. This one was made in a brewery in New Jersey that Shopwell refused to name and told us was in Pennsylvania, doubtless for fear of reprisals. From the taste, we figure it’s economical because it uses a lot of water and we daren’t imagine what kind of grain. It’s called ‘Premium’ because words are cheap. D Plus.”
  • About Ballantine Ale (not graded): “. . . is metropolitan New York’s only surviving contribution to the brew-master’s craft, and the Indian Pale (‘aged in wood’) is so bitter it starts conversations at parties.”
  • About Dixie: “Traditionally the white beer in New Orleans (Jax and Falstaff shared the black market), Dixie emerged from the civil rights years with a nearly four-fold increase in sales, while Falstaff’s sales went down dramatically after a liberal ad campaign up North. B Plus.”

    • As you can see, not necessarily long on beer expertise but maybe Maxim should hire Christgau for an updated story on what’s new since 1975.

    How do you learn Czech in Shiner, Texas?

    This is the press release the Spoetzl Brewery sent out to announce the release of Shiner 101, its newest beer:

    The release suggests heading here for more information, mostly a video of Spoetzl brewmaster Jimmy Mauric talking about beer in Czech. At least I think it’s beer. He could be describing his pet poodle for all I know.

    Is that really Jimmy Mauric talking? If you look closely you’ll likely conclude not, but that doesn’t matter. How closely might Shiner 101 replicate a “Czech-style” beer? I’m looking forward to finding out, but again that won’t be the point of the beer.

    You can be darn sure it will be a beer of the region. Shiner’s Czech heritage is real. From the Czech Heritage Society of Texas:

    The town was originally called New Half Moon but changed to Shiner in 1888. Czech and German immigrants were induced to settle in the area in the 1870s by Henry B. Shiner through his sale of cheap farmland. The prairie around Shiner was fertile and ideal for growing cotton. The Shiner Brethren Church was organized November 8, 1881. A cemetery is located adjacent to the Church. SS. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church was built in 1891. St. Ludmila’s Academy Catholic School was opened in 1897. The Spoetzl Brewery, which still operates today, was originally built in the early 1900s by the Shiner Brewing Association, a stock company of local men.

    Mauric grew up in Shiner, playing on the brewery grounds when he was a kid. He started working in the bottle shop when he was 17, walking a mile and a half to work. He since bought the homestead where he grew up. When the wind blows from the south he sits on his porch and smells fresh wort (usually destined to become Shiner Bock, which accounts for 87 percent of production).

    He was always good at fixing things and worked his way up at Spoetzl, becoming assistant brewmaster in 1991 and brewmaster in 2005. Spoetzel sent him to the Siebel Institute of Technology to master brewing. When he was in his 30s he attended an area junior college to learn more about computers and technology. This June he will have worked at the brewery for 32 years.

    These days Shiner advertising makes a big deal out of the fact that “Every drop of Shiner is brewed in Shiner.” Mauric certainly believes where is in ingredient in the beer.

    “You can duplicate the water chemically, but it’s like a seasoned pot: Most people have a favorite frying pan that just makes everything taste better,” he says. “I don’t think you could copy the flavor from our brewing kettles.”

    And there’s the town itself, with a population of little more than 2,000, a place you’d likely never know about were it not for beer. Gonzalez, 20 miles to the west, is five times larger. Have you ever heard of it? In that case you are probably a barbecue savant and answered, “Sure, Gonzalez Food Market.”

    “The pride in the beer has always been here,” Mauric says. “Good times. Bad times. How people related to Shiner was the beer.”