Month: December 2010

The best beers of 2010 (just kidding)

I went to high school with a guy who wanted to be a sheep herder when he grew up (this was central Illinois, not Wales). He carried different varieties of wool in each pocket. He liked to pull a batch out and start telling you stories about the breed of sheep it came from. It seems like my pockets are full of bits of beer information. So here goes:

  • Think they have it figured out? Alaskan Brewing’s Smoked Porter won the gold medal (again) in the smoked beer categories in both the 2010 World Beer Cup and Great American Beer Festival. Capturing gold in the Rauchbier competition at the European Beer Star Awards definitely qualifies as a trifecta. This is the largest beer competition in Europe and judged in Germany, not far from Bamberg — the home of smoked beers.

    (As a point of order, Schlenkerla — one of two Bamberg breweries still producing its own smoked malts — does not enter these sorts of competitions.)

  • A disturbing report from Brewpublic in Portland related to the merger of the Rock Bottom and Gordon Biersch brewpub chains:

    A source associated with Rock Bottom’s brewing department, who asked to remain confidential, tells us that it now looks like things with the RB-GB merger “aren’t going the way (the most of brewers) had hoped” telling Brewpublic “We’re less than a month into this thing and the new CEO has decided to start making changes to our beer program. He wants us to standardize at least four, and possibly up to six of our beers across the entire company.”

    And:

    “We’ve never had ANY standardized beers in the history of the company.” says one Rock Bottom employee. “Most of us think (the homogenization of branding) is a terrible idea for a number of reasons, and it most likely signals the beginning of the demise of Rock Bottom to complete irrelevance in the craft brewing world – a la Gordon Biersch.”

    I wasn’t aware that Gordon Biersch is irrelevant in the craft brewing world, but this certainly merits watching.

  • Here’s how you provide context for a list (in this case the “Ten Most Interesting Wines of 2010”). I’m paraphrasing, but 1WineDude explains up front: It is NOT intended to be a “best of” or “highest rating” list; it is intended to be a list of arbitrarily-chosen wines that stood out, to him as being particularly interesting for a variety of reasons; and they are wines that he tasted in 2010.

    The thought occurred to me that if I were to write about the beers I enjoyed most in 2010 that providing a list of every beer I tasted would make it more “useful.” Let’s say I put Boulevard Brewing’s Saison Brett on the “best” list and not Orval. You might wonder, “Did Stan drink any Orval in 2010 or did he just like Saison Brett better?” But you probably wouldn’t, which is why there’ll be no “best of” post from me. Want a list? How about the list of beer books I put together last year?

  • Italy is thick with new breweries, but then in picking a dozen breweries to watch in 2011 Draft magazine also draws attention to Huntsville, Alabama, which had three open in 2010.

    Too much to keep track of? Stephen Beaumont has been busy bragging about what he found in Brazil. And we’re headed to Austin, Texas, for the holidays and it seems there are at least ten breweries recently opened, or about to open, or at least beyond the wild dreams stage.

    • The best of beer times (again)

    Given that we live in the most fantabulous time ever for beer in America, thought this might add a little perspective. Focus on the content rather than the writing style:

    Statistical data show at a glance a progress in this branch of industry within a brief period, and especially in the United States, which is almost fabulous. Greatly prostrated not more than a quarter of a century ago, this interest has now become one of the leading ones, and in every respect deserves great consideration.

    When was this written?

    Take a guess before you peek.

    It was taken from the Publishers Preface to Theory and Practice of the Preparation of Malt and the Fabrication of Beer, an English translation of a German text on brewing, somewhat modified in 1882 for American brewers.

    The thought probably didn’t occur to those involved that American beer would once again be “greatly prostrated.”

    Session #46 roundup posted

    The SessionMike Lynch of Burgers and Brews has posted the roundup for The Session #46: An Unexpected Discovery. Be sure to read beer.bobarnott.com’s account of discovering Bir & Fud in Rome — a restaurant where your drink choices are Italian craft beer and water. One more suggestion: After dinner at Bir & Fud drift across the way to Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa’.

    David Jensen of Beer 47 will host Session #47 (you can’t plan stuff like that, folks) on Jan. 7. The theme is “Cooking with Beer.”

    The wood, and ‘From the Wood’

    Ted Rice, Marble Brewery, tends to his barrels

    This is the wood. And . . .

    From the Wood

    This is From the Wood.

    Pretty nifty packaging, don’t you think?

    The current Draft magazine features “The Top 25 Beers of the Year.” You can view the list here, but you have to pick up the magazine itself to see nice all the bottles and labels (The Lost Abbey Angel’s Share Grand Cru, Saboteur, Brooklyn Sorachi Ace, Dogfish Head Bitches Brew, et al.) in their glossy glory. Although From the Wood is among the 25 beer chosen it is not pictured. You can probably figure out why.

    It was available on draft only, and there wasn’t really much of it. In that sense it stands as proxy for thousands of small-batch beers sold this past year in the United States. Some terrific, some terrible, most somewhere between.

    Ted Rice, director of brewing at Marble, took a bit of From the Wood to the Great American Beer Festival because he likes to have something out of the ordinary to serve to attendees. That meant he was required to bottle enough beer for the Professional Judge Panel (the people who decide who wins GABF medals) evaluate. He packaged a few extra bottles to have to taste when the judge sheets came back. The bottle pictured was the last of those. The beer inside was good, but I didn’t take notes. They wouldn’t have been as evocative as those in Draft, so a bit of the description that appeared there:

    “Figs and plum immerse the tongue before simultaneous waves of spicy bourbon and funky Brett wash back. Instead of battling for attention, the bourbon’s vanilla notes meld seamlessly into the flavor, achieving a stunning level of sophistication.”

    This beer wasn’t just a happy accident. Rice put a strong dark beer brewed with a yeast strain that hails from Belgium in bourbon barrels he’d used twice previously, so the bourbon character was muted. He added Brettanomyces, but not with the intention of creating a “yeast gone wild beer.”

    Curiously, or perhaps not, the beer did not advance past the first round at GABF, where judges evaluate a dozen beers and pass three on to the next level. Rice entered it into Category 12, Experimental Beers, because he decided the presence of Brett excluded it from the wood- and barrel-aged category, but that it didn’t qualify as “sour” (the alternative barrel choice).

    One judge thought it should have been entered in the barrel-aged category, another in the sour barrel category. The third wrote, “. . . very drinkable for as much as it has going on.”

    In the photo at the top Rice is taking samples of beer aged in “fresh” bourbon barrels, the contents of which will be blended into Marble Reserve (if they are ever ready, sigh). Then the barrels will be used again. Eventually, perhaps on third use, Rice might see about replicating “From the Wood.”

    Beers that spend time in wood are a small percentage of a percentage point of Marble’s business, and Marble (which will brew a little over 8,000 barrels this year) is a brewery that few people outside the immediate area have even heard of. That makes it like most of the breweries (including brewpubs, obviously) in the nation. A GABF medal or a mention in a national magazine doesn’t have the financial implications that it does for nationally, or internationally, distributed brands like Dogfish Head and Duvel (also on the list).

    But it validates the beers for customers (“I knew that was a good beer”) and makes brewers smile. So I asked Rice a totally unfair question: Which would you prefer, having a beer, specifically this one, win a GABF medal or be named one of the 25 beers of the year by a magazine on newsstands across the country?

    He thought about it over night before emailing his answer:

    “Having won several GABF medals, I know it’s a thrill. After reading the review of FTW in Draft magazine, it gave me chills and a certain glow, much in the same way a GABF medal does. What’s special about the Draft Top 25 is the colorful review for all beer lovers to see, that a judge’s tasting notes or gold medal could not convey. For this beer, which did not neatly fit in a style guideline, I’ll take the Draft Top 25. From the Wood was selected amongst the beers and breweries of the world, not just one style or country. That’s pretty special.”

    Book review: Dethroning the King

    Dethroning the KingSeveral years ago, Saint Arnold Brewing owner Brock Wagner compared the business of multi-national breweries with his own, today much bigger but still tiny by most measures.

    “We’re trying to add 10 customers at a time. The big brewers are trying to add a million,” he said. “We’re in different businesses. We both make something called beer, but they don’t really taste much alike. The big brewers are of a completely different mindset. A-B has more in common with Coca-Cola than they do with us. That’s not to say their beer is bad. It’s just different from what we make.”

    Wagner worked as an investment banker before founding Saint Arnold. The skills he learned no doubt serve his business well, but any story about his brewery starts with beer. In contrast, beer is not at the center of Dethroning the King: The Hostile Takeover of Anheuser-Busch, an American Icon. The book details the takeover of one brewing giant (A-B) by another brewing giant (InBev). Lots of hostile fire, some flirtations, plenty of intrigue, all of it happening at a stunningly fast pace.

    Beer itself is barely at the periphery through much of the book. It’s most prominent when author Julie MacIntosh turns her attention to the Busch family, notably the uneasy relationship between August III and August IV. Almost every review of this book has pointed out with some surprise that the family controlled so little A-B stock by 2008. Few add that although the Busch family did not have it in their power to block the takeover it came together during a rocky economic time in 2008 and could easily have fallen apart. Had August III not pushed for the deal, and her sources certainly indicate he did so with a capital P, the financing window could have closed before InBev had everything in place.

    Again, Dethroning the King is about the deal. How it happened, and pretty much why it happened. It’s not about the relationship between the city of St. Louis, its corporate and spiritual home, and the company. Recently, stories in The Washington Post and Bloomberg have examined how the takeover opened the door for smaller brewers in St. Louis. MacIntosh barely touches on such matters.

    Not to make fun of her, but an example from the early pages indicates how little of St. Louis — more time spent in boardrooms than barrooms, plus the various locations (notably an airport hangar) where meetings were held — she got to know. Writing about the “Wassup?” advertising campaign she describes August IV giving the spots a final test run on “a well-known hill in St. Louis where a pack of Italian restaurants was concentrated.” This, of course, is not a hill but The Hill, one of America’s more famous Italian neighborhoods.

    OK, it’s not fair to judge a book by what’s not in it. However even though A-B became a global company, and even though it operates a dozen breweries all over the United States we always understood that if Budweiser was the king the throne had to be in St. Louis. What does the change mean there? On the national scale, why all the attention to the fact that a foreign operation officially owns what was already an international company?

    Those questions, as well as others of global impact, will be more easily answered after additional time has passed. This book, full of financial details, was ready to be written. It’s likely one historians will consult for years.

    For instance, MacIntosh points repeatedly to how the company spent lavishly for travel and various amenities on the corporate side. Such “fat” that could be easily eliminated made A-B vulnerable, because InBev (and previously Ambev) has been famous for rewarding stockholders by ruthlessly improving the bottom line.

    Although she doesn’t explain that the company spent just as freely when it came to acquiring the best ingredients that too was part of the Busch philosophy. Since the deal closed the new company has divested itself of many contracts with hop growers from the south of Germany to the American northwest (honorably it should be pointed out). Wouldn’t you think this has implications for A-B InBev beers? As significantly it may affect what hops are generally available, plus their quality, for all brewers. More for history to sort out.

    *****

    Order Dethroning the King from BeerBooks.com (and support an independent bookstore).