Month: January 2010

Pete Brown giving away a trip to Budvar

British beer writer of the year Pete Brown is giving away the trip to Ceske Budejovice, where Budvar is brewed, he won last month. He’s been twice and figures the trip would not give him as much value as it could someone else.

Working in conjunction with Budvar UK and The Publican, we’re launching a mini-competition to encourage new beer writing talent.

This is open to anyone who is passionate about beer, wants to write about it, but has not yet had anything published in print media. We can’t and don’t want to exclude bloggers because most people who are keen to write about beer have started doing so electronically, but we want to offer someone the chance to break into being published offline for the first time.

It’s simple. You need to write a thousand-word piece on the subject of ‘Why Beer Matters’, interpreted in whatever way you see fit. You need to send this to me at petebrown@stormlantern.co.uk by 29th January, remembering to include your real name, postal address and contact telephone number.

  • Two weeks left for breweries to enter the Brewing News National IPA Championship. Don’t know if you’ve followed this in the past — Green Flash Brewing from southern California and Laurelwood Brewing from Portland, Oregon, won the first two — but beers are seeded in a bracket, then meet head-to-head in actual tasting/judging. Here’s how it went last year.
  • Stephen Beaumont has been rolling out holiday-end-of-the-year-old-best lists for the last three weeks, so I apologize for pointing to one where he points back this direction. But skip past that to this:

    “5. Beer Is Not the New Wine: But wine might just be the new beer!”

    Think about it, he writes.     Please do.

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    World class, old & new classics, fini

    Sometimes it’s not always that easy to walk back into a conversation 10 days later, so let’s clean up a few loose ends from the posts about “world class” and “world classics” and move on to whatever this blog is supposed to be about.

  • The term “world class” is useful mostly to marketers. There is no standard. And even if you and I were to agree that Ayinger, for example, makes world class beer that doesn’t matter if you prefer to drink only top-fermented beers with a good dose of hops.
  • Michael Jackson carefully defined what he meant by “world classic” in his 1982 Pocket Guide to Beer and over six more editions and 18 years that list evolved in a, well, classic manner. He set the bar high, allowing but 32 beers classic status in 2000.
  • Jackson last put numbers on beers for his 2000 Pocket Guide, but in the spring of 2007 wrote in general about “tomorrow’s classics” for the introduction to Beer (Eyewitness Companions). He died between the time he wrote that and the book was published, so there was no opportunity for him to elaborate or provide specific examples.

    • While it is fun, even valid, to guess what beers Jackson might have anointed given time (and we’ll get to that in a moment) I think the seven lists available will remain worth consulting for quite a while.

    Consider the case of Augustiner Hell. He did not write about the beer in the 1982 guide, but in 1986 assigned it 4 stars (the top rating, marking it as a classic) and continued to do so until 2000. Then he wrote it “seems to have become markedly thinner in recent years, but still has a soft, sweet, clean maltiness” and he gave it 2 to 3 stars. Gulp.

    With that in mind, consider Jeff Alworth’s discourse about the importance time plays in earning “classic” status. He asks a fair question.

    Yet I wonder, is it possible for the gears of history to turn enough–however slowly–so that an immigrant brewery, the descendant of a venerable classic, may one day supplant the old country’s hold on the style? Is it possible for a New Jersey pilsner to take the mantle from Pilsner Urquell? (We know how that old-world standard has declined.) This is not a question for judges, of course. These designations are much more anthropological. We commend classic status by slow cultural agreement.

    A New Jersey pilsner? How about for a Czech pilsner other than PU? Those who drink the beers regularly will argue that Kout na Šumave 12 has surpassed Pilsner Urquell. Although I particularly enjoyed the ulfiltered version of PU served at the brewery museum in Pilsen, Kout na Šumave 12 was better in Prague and better still in the Czech countryside. Likewise, when we were in Germany a year ago I drank both Jever (Jackson’s 4-star German pilsner) and Schonrämer Pils on enough separate occasions to be certain I prefer the latter.

    That was true even before Schonrämer Pils won gold in the European Beer Star Awards. In fact, you know what? I don’t give a diddly about that award. Drinking Kout na Šumave and Schonrämer Pils I wasn’t thinking “How does this compare to ****?” or “Is this the best whatever in the world?” I was thinking, “This is a friggin’ great beer.”

    So I see the sense in Ron Pattinson’s post that how you characterize a brewery isn’t nearly as important as the beer in your glass. But there’s also value in establishing a standard and holding the standard bearer accountable. “Four stars? Sorry, two-and-a-half stars in this guide.” That’s why we end up with a discussion about whether Pilsner Urquell is the same beer today as it was when it was lagered for three months in open, wooden fermenters. Per Ron’s comment (below) that should have read fermented in open wooden vats, then lagered for three months in closed wooden barrels.

    Now to the matter of which of today’s beers that might be tomorrow’s classics. Feel free to talk among yourselves. I can offer a few hints because I contributed to Beer (Eyewitness Companions). As “editor in chief” Michael did not micro-manage the content. He provided me with pretty simple marching orders for the U.S. section: write about the “revolution” (his word) and mention both new beers such as Goose Island’s Matilda, Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme and Russian River Pliny the Elder as well pioneering beers like Anchor Liberty Ale and Sierra Nevada Bigfoot.

    He already rated the last two as classics.

    Draw your own conclusions.

     

    Monday musing: So long to a great blog

    Questions to consider on a Monday morning: Is there life after beer blogging? What trend did Rock Art Brewery set?

  • Jeff Bell authored The Last Post at Stonch’s Beer Blog yesterday. As you can see from the comments that follow he will be missed. Keeping up with UK beer blogs consumes more of my time each day, and I blame Jeff.
  • Not sure that 293 votes constitutes a mandate from a “Beer Nation” but a poll at USABeerTrends indicates that Rock Art Brewery was the No. 1 craft beer trendsetter in 2009. Ska Brewing in Colorado finished second.
  • Best beer related gift ever? A quilt made from beer T-shirts.
  • What country was this man returning to? “Yep. Back home again, in brain-dead beer land.”

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    The Session #35: A favorite moment

    The SessionThis is my contribution to The Session, hosted this month by the Beer Chicks. They gave us many options, since “New Beer’s Resolutions” includes an invitation to “share with us your greats and mistakes of 2009.” I’m keeping my mistakes to myself. I fear enough will be apparent when Brewing with Wheat hits store shelves in February.

    Every year my favorite moments — beer and otherwise — revolve around sharing. Jon Abernathy hauling out a bottle of the first vintage of The Abyss. Knocking back ounces of Southampton Cuvee Des Fleurs with Sean Paxton at the Great American Beer Festival. Maureen Arthur weaving a tale of courtship, New Glarus Belgian Red in hand . . .

    And then there are similar experiences in breweries. I wouldn’t be able to write books such as Brew Like a Monk or Brewing with Wheat were it not for the generosity of brewers. And because they share information with each other the overall quality of what’s in your glass continues to improve.

    So here’s a moment from March 31, as recounted in Brewing with Wheat:

    “Steven Pauwels grabbed the computer mouse and, click, opened a folder showing the recipes for Boulevard Brewing. He clicked again and the spreadsheet on the large computer screen in front of us revealed the recipe for Unfiltered Wheat Beer in detail, as well as the process. Click again, and the screen displayed a brew house schematic for a batch of Single Wide IPA in progress. Next, he opened a spreadsheet with a recipe for ZÔN, Boulevard’s seasonal wit. ‘Copy whatever you want,’ he said.

    “The conversation turned to mashing schedules and a presentation Hans-Peter Drexler had made at the 2008 Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego, revealing ‘the secrets’ about how Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn makes its iconic Schneider Weisse Original. ‘Hans-Peter is so open, he could be American,’ Pauwels said.

    “Here was a Belgian who moved to Kansas City in 1999, talking about a German and himself and sharing every detail of how Boulevard brews its beers. Pardon me for smiling.”