Did every local television station get the same marching orders this past weekend? Super Bowl: Go find a beer story.

In Cleveland it was about Mickie Reinhart, who has come up with seven flavors of “hops drops,” liquid additives intended to be used in light lagers. The varieties include chocolate and coffee, as opposed to ones, say “tangerine” or “lychee fruit,” that have drinkers and brewers talking about new “flavor” hops.

Reinhart’s not trying to fool anybody that the drops will turn cheap beer into something it’s not. “These are really good for thin, watery tasting beer,” she said.

Anyway, a few Monday morning links, all from England, nothing about Super Bowl commercials.

* Will Hawkes profiles Eddie Gadds of Gadds’ brewery, who sounds like a poet describing his favorite hop, which happens to be his local hop, East Kent Golding: “When you smell them, you know there is a class about them. They’re not particularly pungent, mores the pity – they’re pretty bloody shy. It’s very difficult to find really good ones and it’s even harder to get the flavour out of them. But if you can do it, it’s great.”

* Simon Johnson has assembled his Craft Beer Manifesto in one spot, after first “releasing” it one Tweet at a time. Use only barley that’s been warmed by the breath of kindly owls. Brilliant.

* Zak Avery poses a question for the ages: “What is a brewer?”

Part of me think it’s a bit strange to use extract but the other part doesn’t mind if it’s done to be able to give the best flavour or bitterness possible – extract seems to give a cleaner type of bitterness than flowers or pellets. It’s no different to adding chilli extract instead of chopping up fresh peppers – you just get a different type of flavour which you will struggle to match with fresh ingredients.

Go comment there, if only to say you are on board with the idea or that you think it totally sucks. An answer somewhere between is of course acceptable. I’m curious to see what people think.

I must resist adding a single word, because it would lead to 3,000 before I knew where the day went.

‘Tis the season for predictions. The Future of Beer, or at least for 2012. The rise of gluten free beer, discovering gruit, more hoppy beers, fewer hoppy beers, old school beers, new fangled beers.

There are more where those came from. They can’t all be right in 2012, but they could be in the long run. Because that’s the way beer works. Consider this from Hop Culture in the United States, published in 1883. The subtitle, Practical Treatise on Hop Growing in Washington Territory, pretty much summarizes the contents. (The pastoral image at the top, showing a family comfortably picking hops, is taken from the book.) The back of the book includes a variety of statistics and contributions from elsewhere. The sources aren’t always obvious, but this was surely written by somebody in England.

Influence of fashion on the use of hops

“The brewing industry is not exempt from the influence of fashion. A careful survey of the types and descriptions of beers in vogue at different times, will show that fashion has had something to do with our trade. Without going back to the olden days, when our Saxon forefathers imbibed freely of ale and mentheglin made from barley and honey, without any admixture of flavoring herbs, we may refer to the period when the introduction of hops into this country gave quite a different character to the national beverage; instead of the sweet and mawkish ale, a true beer, flavored with aromatics essence of the hop, came into fashion.

“This took place in the sixteenth century, since when, hopped beers have been more or less in fashion. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, there was a great rage of black beers, and so great was it that our metropolitan brewers found their trade rapidly increased by the production of this article; porter was consumed in enormous quantities, and it seemed at the one time as if light-colored beers would become things of the past. We know now that fashion for porter and stout is in the decline. Large breweries, at one time engaged solely in the production of these specialties, have altogether discontinued the brewing of black beers.

“Toward the end of the last century and at the beginning of this, the taste of the public inclined to very strong ales. The old-fashioned stingoes and strong stock ales were consumed in large quantities and with thorough relish at this period, probably because the habits of life which then prevailed, caused the physiques of the people to be stronger than the present times. In those days, beer was brewed regardless of cost in many a household, and the modern private trade brewer had scarcely started into existence. Gradually the taste for lighter and cheaper beers grew, until the year 1851, when the great Exhibition marked an era in brewing, as it had done in other industries. The splendid productions of Messrs. Bass and Allsopp, then attracted much attention, and from that time the taste for high-hopped beers has gone on increasing until lately, when there has been an evident tendency to fall back again upon milder and less bitter beers.

“During the last two or three years, brewers have experienced a demand for beers of very low gravity, and containing less of flavor of the hops than was fashion on some twenty years since, and of course it is their bounded duty to comply with the dictate of fashion in this respect. We will not further refer to the threatened introduction of lager beer into this country, than to say fashion takes strange freaks, and it will be well for brewers to be prepared for all eventualities.”

Their bounded duty to comply with the dictate of fashion.

This arrived in the mail Saturday, a pleasant reminder this is the season for happy surprises.

But also that I have a book to finish.

So I’m swearing off Appellation Beer until some time in January. I might post a few comments and photos on Twitter, because there are fun events (like this and this) on the horizon. But I won’t be publishing my annual best of the year lists. You’re on your own.

The Ecocentric blog examines in some detail the role of small breweries in towns where they operate. The history gets a little iffy now and then, but ultimately Kai Olson-Sawyer makes a point that “just like with food, conscientious consumers are willing to pay a little more for better quality and for the local connection.”

The leap of faith here is that local equals better quality. It’s one thing for a brewer to say, “I can order the best quality malt in the world, the best hops, source yeast that provides whatever flavor you want and replicate water from any brewing region of the world.” Another to say, “Fresh hops from the farmer up the road are just as good as from the Czech Republic or the Yakima Valley.”

To my way of thinking the first beer qualifies as local. But not everybody would agree.

This is tricky territory. I loved my grandfather’s farm. I’m all for the idea of urban farming, for finding fresh produce (in season) within the city limits. I wish all the luck in the world to those farmers from Vermont to Southern California who are giving hops a whirl. I’ve had beers I’d buy again that were dry hopped with stuff from homebrewers yards (and donated to a brewery). But I know full well how hard it is to properly grow, pick and process quality hops. Which means most of the breweries around the world are going to buy most of their hops from some place not so close.

In all fairness, the point at Ecocentric blog was not to make localness exclusive, but there are those who would. And that’s not any better for local beer than trying to come up with arbitrary definitions for “craft” beer.

More stuff to read:

- Boak and Bailey offer The six degrees of beer appreciation. “There’s a fine line between enthusing about better beer and being a snob.”

- 1 Wine Dude (Joe Roberts) calls “this the single most important piece of wine news in years” and the implications for beer should be obvious. Australian Wine Research Institute researchers have sequenced the Brettanomyces genome.

- The New York Cork Report gives us “Your Ultimate Guide to Pairing Beer and Cheese.” Hard to argue with pairing a fresh Catapano goat cheese and Southampton Cuvee des Fleurs.

Look closely at the label for TAPX “Mein Nelson Sauvin” from Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn. Those are hops. And the hops that make TAPX something different aren’t from Germany, but from New Zealand.

In this video Schneider produced to promote the new beer, available in limited quantities in the U.S. (my local store got six of the 750ml bottles), brewmaster Han-Peter Drexler says what’s been mentioned here before. That the Reinheitsgebot needn’t limit German brewers and that change happens slowly when it comes to beer in Germany. If you haven’t clicked on the video yet, go ahead, and at least hang around to get a look at the open fermentation vessels at Schneider. In Brewing With Wheat I try to describe what it’s like to stand in the midst of those tanks.

On his left yeast climbs high in a tank full of wort on its way to being the strong wheat doppelbock called Aventinus. On his right fermentation only recently started on what will be a batch of Schneider Original. A small hole opens in the middle of the yeast blanket, briefly revealing the wort below before closing again. It is alive.

Now you can see for yourself.

As the beer’s name suggests, the hop star is Nelson Sauvin, a cultivar noteworthy because of compounds¹ that give it exotic fruit-like and white wine-like flavors; a grapefruit and rhubarb aroma akin to sauvignon blanc wine.

In the video, Drexler is already talking about next year, the next beer. His boss, Georg Schneider IV, is a sixth generation owner and properly respectful of tradition. He’s also committed to change. “The German beer market is deadly boring,” he told Sylvia Kopp in 2008, for a story that appeared in All About Beer magazine. “It is all very much the same. The tendency towards sameness is encouraged, for example, by our domestic beer tests rating beer only by its typicality and flawlessness. Creativity is only acted on in the beer mix category.”

This was about the time his brewery did the collaboration with Brooklyn Brewery called Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse. Most of that first batch was shipped to the United States, with only 200 cases reserved for Germany. When we were in Kelheim that fall there was no Hopfen-Weisse to be found. Now when you visit the brewery restaurant you can order the beer. Small change, but a change.

“If you brew a beer that not everybody likes, you have the wonderful effect that people talk about it,” Schneider said in 2008. And Drexler added, “We’ve got to take people by the hand and lead them to new worlds of taste. Customers, as well as chefs, culinary staff and traders, are searching for innovations.”

The video concludes with Drexler laughing as he explains that TAPX creates a platform for something new every year. He obviously enjoys the thought. Perhaps not in 2012, but surely soon, he won’t have to look beyond Germany for a hop with aromas and flavors previously considered exotic and unhop-like (or should it be un-hop-like or unhoppy? – whatever tells you this isn’t what brewers meant by “hoppy” just a few years ago).

Brewers attending the giant industry trade show Brau Beviale 2011 in Nuremberg earlier this month got a chance to rub and sniff several new hop varieties being developed at the Hop Research Center in Hüll. These cultivars are just ready for their first brewing trials and have many more tests to pass in the field before they end up in any commercially brewed beer. They don’t even have names beyond their designation within the breeding program; for instance 2007/018/013 tastes of tangerine and 2009/001/718 of watermelon, with grapefruit-like notes and also the impression of honey.

It’s going to be hard for the German beer market to remain “deadly boring” with hops like these.

¹ 3-sulfanyl-4-methylpentan-1-ol and 3-sulfanyl-4-methylpentyl acetate for those of you scoring at home.

As Ron Pattinson is fond of pointing out, there’s little if anything truly new in beer. Not even “fresh hop” beers.

This weekend in St. Louis, 15 or so breweries will serve various beers at the Schlafly Fresh Hop Festival. We’re not Portland or Seattle (see this account), but Schlafly (otherwise known as The Saint Louis Brewery) flies in the fresh hops and the other breweries in and about St. Louis make what they will with them.

To get a feel for the trip to pick up the hops, read James Ottolini’s tweets. That’s him over the mash/lauter tun at the Schlafly Tap Room. To brew the fresh hop beer — the hops are Sorachi Ace — Brennan Greene and Stephen Hale turned the tun into a hop back. Ottolini, who oversees operations at Schlafly’s packaging brewery, Bottleworks, and various members of both brewery teams showed up the downtown brewhouse because, well, this was the first time they’ve tried this at Schafly and there’s always the chance something bad will happen and the story will become part of brewery lore. Brewers at Urban Chestnut Brewing (photo below, courtesy of Florian Kuplent) and Perennial Ales also used their tuns at hop backs while brewing beers to be served Saturday.

So there’s little efficient about the beers that will be served Saturday in St. Louis; not how they got here and not how they were made. Why bother? Been in a brewhouse when hops were added to the kettle? Smelled that aroma wafting into the air? Thought about where it is going? Away.

Same thing happens when hops are picked and dried (they must be dried relatively quickly, because otherwise they start to rot). Fresh. Green. That’s the smell of a hop kiln at harvest. More aroma lost forever.

Presumably these beers will deliver more of a grassy smack in the face — lemongrassy in the case of Sorachi Ace hops — than dried hops. They are more like grabbing a few cones right off the plant, rubbing them firmly between your palms and taking a deep whiff. A bold expression of the hop itself.

It’s worth remembering not everybody likes this, which must have been the motivation for a beer called Tempo that Blatz brewed more than 50 years ago. When Blatz president Frank Verbest announced the brewery would be testing the beer in 1955 he said that mildness and freedom from bitterness were what set Tempo apart.

Tempo wasn’t actually brewed with fresh hops, but instead an extract made from fresh hops. Otherwise, Blatz could have produced the beer only once a year. Verbest said the brewery spent two years and hundreds of thousands of dollar coming up with the process, partnering with companies outside the brewing industry. He likened it to distilling crude oil into gasoline and other derivatives. The efforts resulted in an extract which proved suitable for brewing beer without the bitterness common to hops, he said.

The Milwaukee Journal went into detail why Blatz pursued the project.

“The brewing industry, during the greatest boom in the country’s history is a sick business,” Verbest declared.

“Maybe Blatz has come up with the answer. This is the way we reason. Beer reached its peak in popularity during the period of unrestricted immigration just before World War I. Since the date the people have changed and their tastes have changed.

“For instance, the trend has been from bitter to sweet chocolate, from strong Turkish ciagrettes to mild Virginia ones, from strong cheeses to mild processed ones, from salty to mild butter.

“But while tastes have been changing, beer has remained the same. There has been a trend to use less hops, which give the sharper bitter taste to beer, but otherwise the change has been packaging.”

It’s not clear how long Tempo remained on the market. In 1958, a Milwaukee man sued Blatz, claiming they had not honored a 1954 deal in which he turned over his secret process for extracting the fresh hops. And in 1959, Pabst Brewing bought the Blatz label, along with Tempo and the rights to the process by which it was made. That deal was voided in 1969 because of anti-trust measures and G. Heileman Brewing acquired the Blatz brand. The Tempo name, related formulas, Tempo extract remaining in Pabst plants and Tempo bottles were all listed as assets.

It seems Tempo survived into the 1970s. However there turned out to be a better idea for fresh hopped beers.

She looked puzzled. Daria explained we were talking about an aroma associated with a litter box. She giggled, clearly not understanding this was a serious discussion.

Yesterday Pete Brown wrote about “dank” — a descriptor which comes with its own interesting sidebar. But that aside, Pete’s post and the comments that followed illustrate the challenge of describing what we smell and taste.

There’s no arguing that hops such as Citra and Eldorado contribute aromas hops previously have not. But it’s not clear if some aromas considered “bad” a few years ago are now acceptable. At least for the niche within a niche that constitutes those who enjoy hop-centric beers. And descriptions of flavors not acceptable in England in the 1930s that simply refer to “rank American type” or “Manitoba” don’t provide much help. On the one hand, brewers didn’t care for American Pacific Coast hops because of their “peculiar aroma.” On the other, they found drinkers liked an “American tang” in moderation.

It would have been nice had there by a beer flavor wheel (at the top) or a beer aroma wheel (bottom – click on either to enlarge). The former is better established, but both are works in progress. Use them as you will, but feel free to digress, as @olllllo did here: “David Schollmeyer’s Bucket Hugger is on @Papagobrewing and is a licorice mule with velvet socks.”

Good analysis may follow.

Now, just on the basis of this — ignoring all the other evidence, ignoring that the industrial revolution started in Scotland, ignoring that many of these breweries are nearer to sources of coal than sources of peat, ignoring that we know for a fact that several of the largest breweries made their own malt on site, ignoring that they used a lot of imported malt anyway … just on the basis of this map, exactly how likely do you think it would be that the beer from these breweries would have a peaty influence?

Of course this doesn’t happen if Ron Pattinson doesn’t compile the list of Scottish breweries in 1837 and build a map. Allowing Bam to take it a step further.

It starts with good, old-fashioned research. Often involving information you can’t just Google (or couldn’t until these guys did the work).