Draft magazine’s On the Beer Blogger Beat: Stan Hieronymus.
I think my answers are the the shortest so far. The brevity should surprise those who drink beer with me.
Anyway, in case you are wondering, that’s Brother Antoine from Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy in Rochefort on the right of the photo I provided.
And it’s a good thing Noah asked me for my input before Draft made “Who’s your favorite beer blogger?” it’s question of the week.
You do have to live within the Greater London area to apply for this position, but what better reason to move?
London’s historic Old Spitalfields Market has announced it’s looking for a candidate to resurrect the ancient role of Ale Taster. Entries are due by May 23. From the website:
In medieval times, ordinary citizens were appointed to oversee and inspect various aspects of everyday life, effectively doing the work of our modern Inspectors of Weights and Measures. Not surprisingly, one of the most popular offices to be held was that of the Ale Taster also known as Ale Conner. His duties involved visiting stalls and inns on market days and during the town’s fairs to ensure that the ales, beers and other produce on sale were of good quality.
“Ale Tasters would have been a familiar sight in London.” explains Malcolm Ball, chief executive of Wellington Market Company, the company responsible for Old Spitalfields Market.
He added that he felt that the ancient office would still hold its value even centuries on. “Although the attraction of such a role may seem obvious at first, the 21st Century version would incorporate many more responsibilities than the original. Our ceremonial Ale Taster would become an ambassador for the promotion of drink and food in the area. Modern tastes have evolved and become so much more sophisticated in recent times and people demand ever greater levels of quality and variety.”
The site also explains: “The candidates will really have their knowledge tested by a number of different rounds. Blind-tasting will be the order of the day and contestants will be pitted against one another in a bid to claim the ceremonial role. The final round will consist of a one minute pitch to the panel of judges to demonstrate presentation skills.”
I’m already thinking a cage match pitting the English Ale Taster and the Wynkoop Beerdrinker of the Year might be in order.
Mario Rubio has recapped The Session #39: Collaboration, and Erik Myers has issued marching orders for #40 on June 4: Session Beer.
There are a thousand ways to approach this.
What is your definition of a session beer? Is it, as Dr. Lewis suggested at the Craft Brewers Conference this year, “a pint of British wallop” or is your idea of a session beer a crisp Eastern European lager, a light smoky porter, a dry witbier, or even a dry Flemish sour?
Is it merely enough for a beer to be low alcohol to be considered a session beer, or is there some other ineffable quality that a beer must hold in order to merit the term? And if so, what is that quality? Is it “drinkability”? Or something else?
What about the place of session beer in the craft beer industry? Does session beer risk being washed away in the deluge of extreme beers, special releases, and country-wide collaborations? Or is it the future of the industry, the inevitable palate-saving backlash against a shelf full of Imperial Imperials?
What are some of your favorite session beers? When and where do you drink them? If you’d like, drink one and review it.
For additional preparation visit Lew Bryson’s Session Beer Project.
Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning.
“I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told Luke Nicholas after tasting the beer for the first time since they brewed it in February. He liked what was in his glass, but his experience with brown malt — a key ingredient in the recipe and one Nicholas had not used before — told him it wasn’t time to bottle the beer. Nicholas reassured him that what he was tasting had been bottled weeks before so he could bring some to Chicago. The rest was still maturing.
That’s what’s called collaboration.
The theme for the 39th gathering of the Session today is collaboration — Mario Rubio is this month’s host and will have the recap — and I expect various bloggers to come at it from many directions. Let’s just hope we don’t hear the story of Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale too many times.
I’ll try to keep it simple. Nicholas is founder and chief bottle washer at Epic Brewing in New Zealand. Ryan, also a native of New Zealand, is brewery manager at the Thornbridge Brewery in England. They met last year when Nicholas was in England and ended up brewing a collaboration that melded, although that might not be the right word, Epic IPA and Thornbridge Halycon.
Since Ryan would be in New Zealand in February for his brother’s wedding they decided to brew another beer, in this case a stout, a style Nicholas had never made. This was also his first experience with brown malt and two English hop varieties, Target and Bambling Cross.
“I woke up excited to go to the brewery,” Ryan said. “(The process) energizes you. A mass of information goes back and forth.”
The resulting beer is plenty stout, 6.8% abv with 54 bittering units, and even at a young age in early April full of textured flavors, smooth but complex. Half the batch has been packaged and hit the market last week. Half is aging in American oak barrels that previously held Epic Armageddon IPA and likely will be released at the end of August.
Both Nicholas and Ryan judged in the World Beer Cup in Chicago in April, and they spent plenty of time together during the following days at the Craft Brewers Conference. Information flowed freely, but not necessarily the way it would formulating a recipe or standing over a mash tun in the brewery. Nicholas calls what happens during brewing collaborations a cross pollination of ideas, and it breeds better brewing.
Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer. They also make for good stories in print and cyberspace for those who haven’t already heard them a thousand times. When they start to seem old remember the stories may be repetitive, the experiences are not.
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The photo above was taken at CBC. Luke (on the left) is mugging for one camera, Kelly for another, and that object between them is an unlabeled bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout they are about to open. Clearly a historic moment. You might find pictures documenting the brew day more informative. Details about the beer itself are here.
We interrupt the silence here for two quick links.
In fact I’d collected a bunch of stories during the last several days that I put the much of the beer world at arm’s length (in other words, I could still reach for a pint). I planned a “beer linkorama” today. There’s the madness in San Diego to comment on, Slate’s take on the Miller Lite ad campaign, several interesting blind tastings, more on corks, etc. But you’ve probably already seen those things.
Instead I suggest you start with Pete Brown’s “CAMRA’s noxious culture of entitlement.”
Read the comments, give it some thought.
Before you dismiss such boorish behavior as specific to a few bearded oafs in the UK consider the question it provokes from Alan McLeod: “Where Else Hides The Culture of Entitlement?”
This isn’t just about beer and I don’t think it is a generational thing, but I suspect you can easily add to Alan’s list of five.