Month: June 2014

‘Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest’

I wish I had written “Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest.”

That’s why I must tell you about it even if doing so feels terribly awkward. Awkward because it comes with a ton of disclaimers, reasons that make it hard for you to consider this an objective recommendation.

But, dang, Evan Rail has written this wonderfully compelling multi-dimensional tale.

First, the basic story.

When the ancient brewery in the Czech forest town of Kout na Šumave reopened in 2006, rumors began circulating about a mysterious brewing log — written in a long-forgotten, black-letter script — that had been discovered, hidden in the crumbling walls of the brewery.

The beer from Kout na Šumave was so good, so strangely delicious, that many who tasted it believed that it had to be made using secrets from the old brewing book.

Over the course of several years, Evan Rail made several trips out to the old brewery in Kout na Šumave, even bringing Anthony Bourdain out there to film a segment for his television show “No Reservations.” This is the story of Evan’s attempts to get to the heart of Czech beer, and to learn the secrets of the old brewery in the Bohemian Forest.

Now, some background and disclosures. In preparing to speak at Craft Writing: Beer, The Digital, and Craft Culture in Kentucky earlier this year I exchanged emails with many people who write about beer. Some of these are writers, and Rail is one of them, who I’ve trading ideas about writing and publishing (meaning getting our writing published and paid for) far longer than you can possibly care.

I ended up quoting this throw-down-the-gauntlet thought from Joe Stange:

“If we judge by books and magazines alone, beer people are simpler than wine people; they are less thoughtful but more practical. To hell with a good story — just tell me how to do it, where to find it, what I should drink. It’s boring, and in my view we as writers, editors and publishers — so far — are failing American beer drinkers. Maybe the narrative-type books don’t sell well. So what? What is this craft thing about, anyhow? If we want brewers to make what they like to drink, maybe we as writers should do a better job of writing what we want to read.”

“Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest” was already a work in progress, but you wouldn’t be able to read it were it not a story that Rail so obviously needed to tell. It’s longer than you’ll find in most magazines, 15,000-plus words, meaning usually more than a single chapter in a book.

Maybe it will lead to a printed book — perhaps when some publisher is smart enough to package a variety of things Rail has written, maybe commission a few new ones. Or it could end up in something of an anthology including work from other writers.

So back to disclosure. If you click on “show more” here you will learn this: “A new series of long-form writing on beer, ‘Beer Trails’ is dedicated to writerly narratives and essays about the world’s best-loved beverage. Forthcoming titles are planned from beer writers like Stan Hieronymus and Joe Stange.”

So I have a rooting interest in “Beer Trails” succeeding. Beyond that, Evan and I are friends, we’ve broken bread and drank beer together, we’ve been trading thoughts about writing for a half dozen years, and I owe him a considerable debt for collecting the recipe from Kout na Šumave that appeared in “For the Love of Hops” (a story, in fact, he tells in “Beer Trails”).

All of those are facts. So is the one that I continue to wish I had written “Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest.” Evan has set the bar high.

Beer localism, transparency, and evangelism

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.16.14

Ten vital commandments for localism in beer. The list itself is from 2012, so start with the preface.

[Via The Potable Curmudgeon]

Local ingredients, but not so local drinkers. Belgian brewer André Janssens grows his own barley and some of his own hops. But he ships 90 percent of his beer to America. How do you think these first two links fit together?

[Via Larsblog]

If You Want To Know What’s In Your Beer… I tweeted once on the way to the National Homebrewers Conference and once from the conference (a picture with a fictional caption some people seem to have believed), an indication that I’m not all that good a social media, and — the point here — a reminder how insular such events can be. Thus when I briefly noticed considerable fuss related to the latest blathering from the Beer Food Babe I shrugged. It’s amazing how one of Jeff Carlson’s sublime ciders can change your perspective.

But as I was catching up with my feeds on Sunday I was struck with the questions Alan McLeod raises. Transparency is good, be it brewery operators revealing what’s in the beer they sell and how they make it or or others who may have a vested interest selling, boosting, writing about, litigating for or against, whatever. Ever since Frank Prial at the New York Times let Jack McAuliffe say that he his made his beer without preservatives and other chemicals that Big Brewers employed smaller (and not so small anymore) breweries have benefited from the notion the beer they sell is more pure. In a sense, lack of transparency on the part of larger breweries makes this easier. When Anheuser-Busch — or Yuengling or Boston Beer or Lagunitas — details all the ingredients they use and all the chemicals (and things like chemicals) that are involved in the process of growing ingredients, brewing beer and so on (it is quite the list) then it is easier to ask the brewer at your local just which of those were also involved in the production of your beer.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

[Via A Good Beer Blog]

Evangelise Jolly. Adrian Tierny-Jones writes, “It’s your sacred duty to evangelise about beer, someone said to me recently, drunk of course, both of us drunk …” A sacred duty to evangelise about beer? Quite a question. Adrian has quite an answer.

[Via Called To The Bar]

If we were starting a new blog tomorrow. Each Saturday, Boak & Bailey post a variety of links, often longer reads, that may even overlap with the ones I’ve collected (thus “scooping” my Monday links). This weeks’s examples address the current state of beer blogging, at the end offering a bit of advice. Don’t skip straight to the finish — read the links along the way.

[Via Boak & Bailey’s Beer Blog]

Session #88 wrapped up; #89 announced

The SessionBoak & Bailey have posted the roundup for The Session #88: Beer Mixes, including an introduction to the concept of “delicious anarchism.”

And Bill Kostkas has given us plenty of notice to properly research the topic for The Session #89: Beer in History.

Beer is something that connects us with the past, our forefathers as well as some of our ancestors. I want this topic to be a really open-ended one.”

It certainly seems like an appropriate subject for July 4.

This might be ‘beer terroir’

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 06.09.14

Can You Taste An Old Growth Forest In This Beer? Adventures with Eric Steen of Beers Made By Walking. I’d answer the question in the headline, “Yes, if you’ve tasted it before.” I’m goofy enough that were I doing this I’d want to spend the summer tasting the same “parts” over and over, mixing and matching, learning which work together, which suit my taste.

[Via Oregon Public Radio]

Do We Owe a Debt to the Regionals? Do breweries deserve to be supported just because they managed to remain in business when others were closing? This isn’t exactly the question Boak & Bailey are asking — “real ale” is involved, CAMRA, a smaller country — but that’s the question their post had me asking myself.

[Via Boak & Bailey]

You won’t believe this one weird trick they used to fly beer to the D-Day troops in Normandy. As all dispatches from Martyn Cornell, thoroughly fascinating.

[Via Zythophile]

Bill’s UK Adventure: American Craft Beer Across the Pond. I’m not sure I believe Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing visited five towns in the UK, top to bottom, over nine hectic days (while his family grew frustrated and his lawn turns into a jungle) just so we could read about it. But he writes, “… really, I did. You’d only be reading this if a) you are interested in beer and its future, or b) you live vicariously through the internet.”

[Via Victory Brewing]

Could Rising Costs Mean the End of Craft Beer Brewers? Just to answer the question in the headline: “No.”

[Via Entrepreneur]

Friday beer: For want of a ‘narfer narf’

The SessionI have at this moment a deep and abiding thirst for something called a narfer narfer narf.

You see, the topic for today’s 88th gathering of The Session is traditional beer mixes. In making the announcement, hosts Boak & Bailey list several options from Richard Boston’s “Beer and Skittles.” The choices appear in a chapter titled “The Public House” and although the book predates Sierra Nevada Brewing by only a few years (1976 versus 1980) it describes a world that seems more like a setting for an HBO series than one you find in these parts.

Consider a few words from the chapter:

1 The quest

All the pub’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Everything about a pub is theatrical: the exits and the entrances, the dialogue, the eating and drinking, the games. … Opening time and closing time even give each session the dramatic structure of beginning, middle and end postulated by Aristotle as necessary to a well-made play.

2 The people

… then there’s the Why-my-wife-left me bore, the Send-them-back-to-Ireland/West Indies bore, the useless information bore. The drinks bore is one of the worst …

Boston discusses choices of drinks within this context. Although it might appear on the surface I could settle in at the bar at a nearby establishment with a considerable number of beer options my chances of ending up with anything similar to a granny (mixing old and mild) or blacksmith (stout and barley wine) Boston might recognize pretty much don’t exist. Even though finding stouts and barley wines is easy. Beer at AnyplaceinAmerica in 2014 has about as much to do with beer in Boston’s England in 1976 as beer and ale had to do with each other in England in 1542.

And a narfer narf, half a pint of mild and half a pint of bitter? Get serious. (A narfer narfer narf is half a pint of the mixture.)

Recognizing this reality, that I would not be writing about actually drinking narfer narfer narf, Tuesday night at Busch Stadium I decided to try a ballpark blend. Before emptying my plastic cup of Urban Chestnut Schnickelfritz, which remains about the perfect 90 degree/90% humidity ballpark beer, I mixed the remainder with an equal part of Schlafly Pale Ale. I did not wake up Tuesday morning wondering what flavors I’d find if I cut Schnickelfritz with Pale Ale. I chose these two because they are the ones I drink most often at the ballpark. They are local and they are refreshing. I like that combination. I suppose there was a little more, or at least different, fruity character in the blend. More hops, for sure, than Schnickelfritz alone, earthier. But mostly refreshing, and better so because they were brewed locally by other people who live in St. Louis.

(Understand that I grew up in central Illinois, not St. Louis, rooting for the Chicago Cubs, and therefore against the Cardinals. They now serve Goose Island Honker’s Ale and IPA at Busch, beers I really like that originated in Chicago although they are now brewed elsewhere. But at a baseball game in St. Louis I’m drinking a St. Louis-made beer. Once in a while Boulevard Wheat, which is also brewed by people who pay the same state taxes I do, but not Tuesday, even though the Cardinals were playing the Royals. I am not arguing this allegiance to local is rational, but it is real.)

Finally, an aside. I could have done my blending at the Budweiser Brew House at recently opened Ballpark Village. You can actually watch a game from a deck in the Brewhouse (sort of like the Wrigley Field rooftops). They’ve got maybe all of the A-B Inbev beers sold in the U.S. on tap somewhere within the complex. By chance, taps for Goose Island Matilda and Faust, an A-B throwback beer, are side by side. That was probably a missed blending opportunity, you think?