Month: September 2014

A lot about beer, written in a lot of places

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 09.29.14

Last week Jeff Alworth, Boak & Bailey and Alan McLeod posted thoughts on beer writing, interesting on their own and further provoking interesting comments. Then McLeod followed that up with a must read. (Really, go read it.)

Most of the time, the links I post here are to stuff I read during the week and think you might have overlooked. This week, I tweaked that a bit and focused just on publications that are not beer-specific. That’s because these days I can walk into gas station/convenience store smack dab in the middle of Missouri and choose from dozens of fancy beers. That’s one of the reasons there’s a lot more being written about beer these days in a lot more places and in a lot of different ways.

So Long, Shaker Pint: The Rise and Fall of America’s Awful Beer Glass. This story may or may not contain anything you didn’t already know, and that is the point. This is news to CityLab readers.
[Via CityLab]

Red Brick Brewing Company Turns 21. A long read, north of 4,000 words, and excellent. On the one hand, a 21st anniversary story seems pretty obvious. On the other hand, it is Red Brick, a brewery that long ago was less interesting to write about than a slug of new ones. In fact, its beers weren’t that good. That’s changed. “What many had considered a long-dead, irrelevant brand is experiencing a renaissance amid Georgia’s greater craft beer boom.”
[Via Creative Loafing]

Pliny the Elder: A case study in scarcity marketing. From those guys you listen to on public radio.
[Via Marletplace]

Wine execs concerned about growth of craft beer, specialty spirits. It is business story written for a newspaper audience (and its online readers, of course). It talks about “millennial exploration.” Shouldn’t publications, and individuals who want to write for those publications, recognize those millennials sometimes want a different sort of writing?
[Via The Press Democrat]

Mexico’s Craft Beer Scene Is Exploding. In this case you have Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø of Evil Twin Brewery writing a column, called Nomadic Brews, each month for Munchies, which is part of Vice Media. “Every month, we’ll check in with dispatches from Jeppe’s travels around the world, as he brews in places like Mexico, Taiwan, and Brazil.” Added to remind us all it is a brave new world.
[Via Munchies]

Talking hops next Thursday in Denver

Medusa hop

CLS Farms in the Yakima Valley posted this picture of Medusa hop cones fresh off the bine earlier this week.

This is the variety featured in Smithsonian magazine in July, and the one that will be the only hop in Sierra Nevada’s Harvest Wild Hop IPA later this year. I’ll be talking about native American hops, and how they may differ from hops simply found growing in the wild, among other things next Thursday evening at the Keg Ran Out Club’s World Brewers Forum at the Denver Marriott City Center.

This event raises money for the Children’s Hospital of Denver is always fun. Eric Nichols of Beryl’s Beer Co. and Shawn O’Sullivan of 21st Amendment are up first. Shawn promises to tell war stories. I’ll stick to hops, probably rambling on about recent research related to dry hopping and about why the Cascade grown here doesn’t taste like the Cascade grown there.

A tip for those heading the Great American Beer Festival before the World Brewers Forum: swing by Crazy Mountain Brewing (K20) for their Neomexicanus Native Pale and at Abbey Brewing (I4) ask for the reserve versions of Monk’s Dubbel and Tripel ales. Those Monks’ beers are brewed with neomexicanus varieties grown on the Monastery of Christ in the Desert property near Abiquiu, New Mexico.

About that boring German beer – blame it on their yeast

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING 09.22.14

Zut alors! Great British pub may have been invented by the French. Ted Bruning spent 30 years trying to find Britain’s oldest pubs. What he learned and what he writes about in “Merrie England: The Medieval Roots of the Great British Pub” will turn some heads. After the Norman invasion of 1066, a wave of French merchants traveled to and from London to buy and sell wares from the banks of the Thames. It appears the wine bars they set up in the City of London might have been the first pubs in England. They would predate the first English-style “alehouses” by around 150 years. I’ve already ordered the book.
[Via Daily Mail, HT Martyn Cornell]

Billion dollar beer war is brewing. By the time the whole AB Inbev, SABMiller, Heineken story sorts itself out we’re all going to be exhausted. And somehow — don’t you think? — Pabst is going to end up involved. “Although no one quite knows what the next move will be, the beer industry looks to be on the verge of its biggest-ever arms race.”
[Via The Telegraph]

Meet Anne-Françoise Pypaert, the first female Trappist brewmaster. Anne-Françoise Pypaert was the only women working at Orval when she was first hired in late 1992. Now, there are eight women employed at Orval. And Pypaert is the brewmaster.
[Via Belgian Beer Specialist]

Yeast and German Brewing. An interesting premise — that a lack of variety of yeast strains has resulted in a lack of variety of German beer. “In my opinion, the common use of a well-understood single lager yeast strain for bottom-fermenting styles for the last century has resulted in generations of brewers in Germany who see yeast more as a tool for fermentation, rather than a key ingredient in their recipe. Only when the variety of yeasts is understood will German brewers be willing to experiment.”
[Via Brew Berlin]

Old guys: Don’t like the wine list? Eat somewhere else! Since I’m quite often the old guy in the group I try to think twice, or even a third time, before I comment on the new. After you read the gazillion comments following this post, dig into The Empire Strikes Back: Laube Takes on IPOB and you’ll find even more comments. These wine types sure get worked up.
[Via Palate Press and Steve Heimoff]

The Industry Series: Gavin Sacks, Flavour Chemist. Wine at the top, but there’s beer (and hops) later on.
[Via A Tempest in a Tankard]

Beer made by walking: Indigenous?

Scratch Brewing, Ava, Illinois

The Great American Beer Festival has an “Indigenous/Regional Beers” category.1 I should have mentioned that last week when I asked for reader help in understanding what makes a beer indigenous.

I figured that out Saturday when a) Alan McLeod added a rather long comment (long enough to turn into a post of his own), and b) we hung out at Scratch Brewing after a pleasant bit of bike riding in the not-too-hilly roads around Ava, Illinois.

Foraged ingredients ready to go into Scratch Brewing beerLast year at the Great American Beer Festival founder/brewers Marika Josephson, Aaron Kleidon and Ryan Tockstein decided if they were going to return this year they would do it the “Scratch way.” They are and they are. Scratch will be pouring five beers made with foraged ingredients and without hops. They call these gruits, which could lead to a whole other discussion that is best considered another time. The point, related to last week’s question, is that they are using indigenous ingredients.

One of the beers, called 105 is made with 105 (of course) plants and funghi from the surrounding area. To brew the beer they split the ingredients into three piles, one for bittering, one for flavoring and one for aroma, mostly flowers and leaves. (Hickory leaves add bitterness and tannins. “I had to cut down a hickoy tree that day,” Kleidon said.) The beer was fermented with Perennial Ales house yeast (technically one of their house strains, I guess), itself sourced from a Belgian saison brewery. I’ll keep the tasting note short: nicely balanced, well integrated, good. And spicy.

They’ll also be serving it at the Beer Made By Walking Festival on Oct. 3 at Wynkoop Brewing (so Friday afternoon, before the GABF evening session). It appears that tickets are still avaiable. Eric Steen, who teaches art at Portland State University and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, started BMBW in Colorado Springs in 2011 (just as we were moving from New Mexico and before I could head north on I-25 to get a closer look). It’s an intriguing concept. Invites brewers to go on nature hikes and make new beers that are inspired by plants from the trail.

More than 20 of the beers at the festival were made specifically for this event from Colorado breweries that have collaborated with BMBW. They’ve also added a “foraged and indigenous” component to our festival this year. These are beers from brewers not part of the original Beers Made By Walking program that use foraged, wild, and indigenous ingredients to create “place-based beers.” The five breweries participating are Scratch, Fullsteam, Fonta Flora, Ladyface, and Wicked Weed.

The afternoon should provide a good opportunity to consider what constitutes an indigenous beer.

*****

1 Here are the GABF guidelines: Indigenous/Regional Beers are any range of color. Clear, hazy or cloudy appearance is acceptable depending on style. Malt sweetness will vary dramatically depending on overall balance desired. Hop bitterness is very low to very high, and may be used for highlighting desired characters. This beer style commemorates combinations of ingredients and techniques adopted by or unique to a brewery’s particular region and differentiated from ingredients and techniques commonly used by brewers throughout the world. For the purpose of defining this style, uniqueness of ingredients, regional heritage, technical brewing skill, balance of character, background story defines the intent of this category. The use of hops, yeast, water, malt, or any raw grain regardless of origin does not by itself qualify beers as an Indigenous/Regional Beer. Body is variable with style. “Indigenous/Regional Beers” that are not represented elsewhere in these guidelines by a defined style could possibly be entered in such categories as Experimental, Herb & Spice, Field Beer, etc. but by choice a brewer may categorize (and enter) their beer as Indigenous/Regional Beer. Beers that represent established historical traditions should be entered in “Historical Beers” or other categories and should not be entered in Indigenous/Regional Beer category.

To allow for accurate judging the brewer must provide additional information about the entry including primarily the unique ingredients used and/
or processing which contribute to the unique qualities of the style, and information describing the beer style being emulated. This information will
help provide a basis for comparison between highly diverse entries. The information must not reveal the identity of the entering brewery. Entries not
accompanied by this information will be at a disadvantage during judging.