Month: February 2010

Session #36: Start with the host

The SessionIt’s Saturday morning and I’m sitting down to write my contribution to The Session #36: Cask-Conditioned Ale. I’m running behind because I just spent the last hour or so reading all the contributions host Tom Cizauskas solicited. Really wonderful and worth your time.

I particularly like Steve Hamburg’s recollections from the early, then later, days of the Chicago Real Ale Festival. He’s not kidding when he writes about how lively (explosive is a proper synonym in this case) some of the casks were. I recall standing with him and Roger Deschner, who also did much of the cellar work, and another member of the Chicago Beer Society in 1997 and listening to Roger explain why there was a large dark circle on the ceiling.

This third CBS member was rambling on about how “big” cask ale was about to become and Steve was politely explaining it was a niche within a niche. It still is, but the Real Ale Festival grew larger and quicker than any sane person would expect and likewise the number of places you’ll find something that at least vaguely resembles cask ale.

Of course, as Hamburg writes, there’s still work to be done.

Unfortunately, too many American beer drinkers have only been exposed to a more false representation of real ale, where the “show” takes precedence over the beauty and elegance of the beer in the glass.

After reading that I went looking for a quote from Graham Tock collected in 1996 or so. I found it in a story written in 1997. Although much of it is dated I think it represents the state of “American real ale” at the time and decided to put article in in The Library.

A week before the first Real Ale Festival I helped All About Beer magazine organize a seminar in a Denver hotel on the Saturday morning of the Great American Beer Festival. Mark Dorber, who would take charge of the cellar the next week in Chicago, and Roger Protz spoke about real ale. We had a few versions of “American real ale” but the stars of the show were to be casks from Fuller’s and Young’s in London.

When I arrived in Denver on Wednesday the cask of Fuller’s was already at the hotel. Following Dorber’s instructions a hotel janitor cut blocks of wood and put it in stillage. Dorber tapped and spiled the cask and set it to conditioning. We propped open the back doors to the room where the seminar would be held and turned it into a proper cellar.

By Friday the Fuller’s was tasting pretty good but the Young’s was still nowhere to be seen. It arrived Saturday morning, an hour before we were to start. Dorber shook his head. No point in even trying. So I rolled the cask to the elevator, took it up three flights, and rolled it to our room. The next day I rolled it back to the elevator, took it to the garage, rolled it to our van and drove it 950 miles to Peoria, Illinois. Two days later I loaded it in the trunk of our Saturn, listening it occasionally bang around during the 150-mile trip to the Goose Island brewpub in Chicago.

Remember the beer had already traveled from London to Denver and been waylayed by customs. It hadn’t exactly been coddled before Dorber took charge of it in Chicago.

Three days later it was pouring and tasting brilliant.

I realized then somebody should market a bumper sticker that says, “Have you kissed your cellarman today?”

*****

Later today: Cask ale in Albuquerque in 2010.

 

 

‘Brewing with Wheat’ shipping soon

Pardon this brief advertisement. The printer will ship Brewing with Wheat next week, meaning it goes to the distributors and then to stores. It could be in your hands by the end of the month.

The “public service” announcement here is that you can pre-order it for 20 percent off from Brewers Publications, entering the code that is provided at the Beer Enthusiast Store.

I’ll be posting more about the book at Brewing with Wheat, but here’s the excerpt from the foreword by Yvan De Baets that appears on the back cover. Totally relevant to the notion where matters when it comes to beer.

“Tracking those old beers—German, Belgian, whatever—makes one realize that the key to the old styles, probably even more than the recipes themselves, was to be found in the local microflora of each brewery. (Jean-Baptiste) Vrancken reports eighteenth and nineteenth century trials, in which brewmasters were sent from a brewery to another similar one, with all their equipment, raw material, and techniques. Sometimes the grains were even crushed in the first brewery to mimic the process perfectly. They never succeeded in making the same beer in the next village!”

And rather than include another giant image to show you the back cover here are the endorsements:

“In Brewing with Wheat Stan Hieronymus has given homebrewers, craft brewers, and beer enthusiast alike a wheat-fuelled flux-capacitor that will transport them from region to region around the world. This page-by-page journey will satisfy the readers thirst for the knowledge, history, and science needed for producing and enjoying the wide spectrum of wheat beers.”
   – Sam Calagione, founder Dogfish Head Crafty Brewery

“Stan Hieronymus has filled a giant, gaping hole in the beer literature with this book. And once again, he has done it with crisp, engaging prose, loaded with rock solid information, much of it directly from those who brew these delicious, but technically challenging beers every day.”
   – Randy Mosher, author of Radical Brewing and Tasting Beer

We will now return to regular programming.

Added Feb. 17 (just because Alan asked – see below): The book weighs 11.8 ounces.

Lessons learned from a ‘pisshead anecdote’

Not long after Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing returned from a trip to Germany in 1997 during which he was able to buy a beautiful copper clad brewing system because consolidation squeezed some breweries out of business he made an interesting observation.

He suggested that perhaps the United States was simply ahead of the curve in the middle of the twentieth century (in 1950 the top ten breweries accounted for 38% of production and by 1980 for 93%, with seven of those ten breweries soon to disappear). As America underwent a brewing revival other countries felt the pain of consolidation that had already swept through the U.S.

I thought of what he said this morning when I read this:

. . . the brewery’s owner told how today’s big brands took advantage of the situation to to expand in such a brutal way. They had a huge advantage, they were able to guarantee consistent quality. Many of the regional breweries weren’t in a position to do that. During the previous four decades hardly any investment had been made on their equipment and technologies. So people got used to drinking the brands that to this day enjoy an enormous popularity without realising the gradual drop in their quality.

Today, regional and micro breweries are slowly gaining more market share . . .

The country in question?

 

 

 

The Czech Republic.

Thoughtful commentary about beer culture that could be applied in how many different countries? From Pivní Filosof-Beer Philosopher — go read it.

 

 

Wine provocateur takes aim at beer

Robin Goldstein, already adept at raising a ruckus in the wine world, has turned his attention to beer.

The Amazon.com description of The Beer Trials, due in April, promises: “With brutally honest ratings and reviews of the 250 most popular beers in the world – both in bottle and on draft – The Beer Trials will challenge some of our most basic assumptions about beer.

“Do you think draft beers and bottled beers of the same brand taste similar? Do more expensive beers taste better? Are imports better than domestic beers? Each beer gets a full-page review, with a down-to-earth description and a photograph of the bottle for easy identification in the store.”

So who is this guy?

Well, for one thing he pulled off a hoax that embarrassed the Wine Spectator. Then he co-authored The Wine Trials, which compares everyday wines to more expensive equivalents in blind tastings and finds wine consumers like inexpensive wines better. Plenty was written about the first edition of the book — here’s a nicely balanced take.

The 2010 edition is out and Joe Roberts at 1 Wine Dude interviews Goldstein and gives it a glowing review.

I found the first 50 pages (which describe the approach and science behind the book, and hint at its future implications on the wine industry) to be some of the most profound reading on wine appreciation that I have ever come across. The Wine Trials doesn’t just poke at wine’s sacred cows – it skewers them, grills them, and serves them up with an inexpensive Spanish red (Lan Rioja Crianza in this case, which took the Wine of the Year honors in the 2010 Wine Trials).

Goldstein provides little information about The Beer Trials beyond the Amazon description, only that it “will take a different approach than The Wine Trials, but one that I hope will be equally useful to readers.”

He did reply to my email and promised more details as the publication dates nears. I’ll keep you posted.

 

 

Mr. Rock prefers that beer be the star

Jean-Marie Rock began brewing beer professionally in 1972. For the last 25 years he’s been in charge of the Orval Trappist monastery brewery. He understands brewing cred. Celebrity? Another matter.

He’s been to Kansas City twice recently. Posing for pictures, signing empty beer bottles, he found out quickly he wasn’t in Belgium any more.

“The biggest change is the contact brewers have here with the customers,” said Steven Pauwels, a native of Belgium who became brewmaster at Boulevard Brewing in 1999. When Rock agreed to collaborate with Pauwels to brew a beer he probably didn’t realize that 160 people would show up at a Lawrence, Kansas, hotel to celebrate the release of Smokestack Collaboration No. 1.

“The American people are so kind,” Rock said. “You cannot refuse to answer their questions.”

Rock, who is 61, oversees the production of a single beer, Orval. (The brewery also makes Petit for the monks at the monastery to drink and to sell at the brewery’s inn — that is simply a watered down version of the mother beer.) The ongoing production of special, or seasonal, beers is something that makes New American beers (I’m using that term instead of “craft” to see if it sticks) different. Likewise the notion brewers might be celebrities.

Rock, who visited Kansas City first to brew the beer and then again two weeks ago for the debut, left no doubt he found brewing something different just plain fun. When Pauwels suggested the possibility of the collaboration last year Rock knew immediately that he wanted to brew a strong pilsner using a hopping technique from 30 years ago.

Rock first worked for the Palm Breweries, then for Lamot in Mechelen, brewing lagers. At 8 percent alcohol by volume Collaboration No. 1 is about one percent stronger than the beer Rock was thinking of. Although it is labeled an “Imperial Pilsner” is does not resemble beers such as Samuel Adams Imperial Pilsner.

Hopped with excessive quantities of German Hallertau Mittlefrüher (as it is spelled where it is grown) Boston Beer brewed an 8.8 percent abv beer that had 110 International Bitterness Units (IBU).

Collaboration No. 1 is hopped entirely with Czech Saaz and brimming with hop flavor, although with 30 bitterness units it appears almost pedestrian compared to 110 IBU.

Where does the flavor and aroma come from? First wort hopping, a practice no longer used in Belgium. “No, no, no, no, no, no,” Rock said. “It doesn’t exist any more.”

A quick primer for those who aren’t homebrewers, commercial brewers or among those who spend too much time with either. Brewers boil hops a an hour or more to extract bitterness. In the process flavor and aroma are lost. That’s why brewers make flavor and aroma additions later in the boil.

In this beer two-thirds of the hops were added before the beginning of the boil (or “first wort”), but their flavor ended up in the beer. German also brewers used the method at the beginning of the last century (you can read much more here, including results of tests conducted in 1995.)

“It seems like a contradiction. You’d think you’d get more bitterness and less flavor,” Pauwels said. “It’s more subtle, almost crisper. Sometimes with late hopping it can get vegetative.”

These days many American brewers are experimenting with first wort, and even mash, hopping (recall at the steps Deschutes took in making Hop Henge). Additionally dry hopping (adding hops after fermentation is complete, sometimes shortly before packaging) to produce even more aroma is commonplace.

“You can try all the things you want,” Rock said. “A lot of brewers they are doing all they can dream. The dream is not always the reality.”

Rock is happy with Collaboration No. 1 (“Not just because it is our beer”). “It has a taste you don’t get when you use late hopping,” he said. “You get an old taste. That is my opinion.”

You know, old like the good old days. When a brewer could go to the store to buy a loaf of bread and didn’t have to stop to sign autographs.

(Photo courtesy of Boulevard Brewing.)