Is this just another sign of the globalization of beer?
The Washington Post has a story about “Belgium’s upstart innovators,” which of course prominently features De Struise Brouwers — a lightning rod when you talk about “new wave” brewers.
In the story, Wendy Littlefield of Vanberg & Dewulf, one of the first companies to import Belgian beers, expresses the concern about the “noise” these beers generate that’s been discussed at length in comments here.
Littlefield worries that these “extreme” brewers, who represent only a small fraction of the Belgian beer market, are overshadowing the traditionalists — or worse. Struise and [Picobrouwerij] Alvinne, she says, “really, arguably, are hurting the very culture that they claim to be arising out of.”
No arguing that if you disregard the international pale lagers that 90 percent or so of the world’s beer drinkers consume that more brewers outside of Belgium are fermenting beer with yeast taken from Belgium and that more brewers outside the United States are making hops from the American northwest a prominent part of the flavor and aroma in their beers.
Does the out-of-balance attention heaped on these beers, particularly the often out-of-balance ones, endanger traditional* beers?
* “Traditional” is no more easily defined that “craft,” so let’s not start.
This would be a different sort of globalization of beer tastes. (In the first round, those international pale lagers swept aside local breweries.) The parallel in wine, where Two Buck Chuck and Yellow Tail are signs of globalization, isn’t exactly parallel. But Mike Veseth’s discussion of “disruption” in Wine Wars does provoke the same questions beer drinkers might have.
Veseth draws upon two political economists, starting with Joseph Schumpeter and the well known concept of creative destruction: the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” He also points to Karl Polanyi’s theory of the “double movement.”
So a dialetic is unleashed, which is the heart of the double movement. Economic change (the first movement) provokes social reaction (the second movement) and it is the combination of the two that pushes economy and society forward. The future is not just one movement but both in a continuing dynamic interaction.
Take a deep breath. It is only beer. His point is that there are always going to be new products, new producers, new technologies and — this is important — new consumers with different tastes. But how those whose interests are threatened react will also determine the future of beer.
Haven’t the light “pilsners” that dominate the planet already creatively destroyed tradition? This is the problem with dialectics and tipping point arguments – they are, unlike life, binary. The new wave of beer is a third thing – neither tradition or industrial. So we are managing a trialectic discourse. Or is it quadralectic if we add local into the mix?
Which, now that I think of it, invites the consideration of how national craft and local are at odds in the US market.
I think its awesome that one of my favorite beer writers is citing arguments from my thesis adviser. Go Mike! Also, write more about beer…
That said, her argument is silly. The “traditional” beer makers in Belgium don’t really exist. All the breweries have changed their styles, ingredients and much more over the years. Hell, some of the Trappists didn’t even have brewing programs 30 years ago. Not much for tradition.
Alan – quadraletic, at least, as long as you allow the link that many new brewers keep with “tradition.” And I think they people who drink the stuff are comfortable, often excited, to explore both national “craft” and local. Down the road, as nationals get bigger, we’ll see.
Okobojicat, beer technology has never been static so I’d argue that a brewery could remain true to tradition although embracing more modern methods. Ayinger in Germany, Westmalle in Belgium, etc.
Let’s keep in mind here that “tradition” was not always tradition. Some form of “beer,” whether it involved honey, sorghum or rice has been brewed for thousands of years around the globe. The only way to keep up with modern tastes is to experiment with new flavors.
Be reminded here that hops were not always involved in the brewing process and role of yeast in beer was only realized in the past couple hundred years and was not even included in the Reinheitsgebot purity law of 1516.
I think it is important not to forget tradition but we would not be where we are today in beer had everyone always done what the person before them had done.
Jeff Alworth has also riffed on the WP article, and with his headline coins the term “International Extreme.” I generally try to avoid the term “extreme beer” because it is so inexact.
But I’m hoping International Extreme, uppercase or not, has legs.
Stan, after I posted my thoughts, I made the rounds of the blogs and wasn’t at all surprised to see this interested you, too.
The thread here is interesting. “Traditional” is an imprecise term, but something like it needs to be put into the discussion. It’s true that beer has always evolved, and old styles have always died out in favor of new ones. But what’s different is that the evolutionary, local process is in danger of being supplanted by a very fast evolution not rooted in place. It’s hard to see how this current trend could plausibly lead to, say, something like Bavarian weizen or ordinary bitter. Those styles emerged because of conditions within one place. They don’t survive particularly well beyond it.
Alan, relatedly, I’d say that in the great pilsner era, we’ve always had light lagers riding above the beer world like a skin. Underneath it, largely intact, were a bunch of regions producing beer on a scale quite similar to what they’d always produced. The light lager is the new phenomenon, but it didn’t kill the old breweries. What’s threatening about the “international extreme” mode is that it competes with these smaller, regional breweries and their niche, dare I say “traditional” styles. That’s why I get anxious.
This notion of traditional is going to be the designated hitter argument of beer.
olllllo – Word.
Jeff – You packed enough ideas into your comment for about 3 separate posts ;>)
To pick just one, my concern is that when so much attention is heaped on “international extreme” beers it implies everything should be done with the volume turned up – bold flavors, lots of strutting. It sends a message that there isn’t room for nuance, nor is patience likely to be rewarded.
But there are plenty of “mature” breweries that prove on a daily base it is possible to remain rooted in tradition and push ahead – Sierra Nevada, Fuller’s and Schneider to name names from three different countries.
“Picobrouwerij” is an abuse of the metric system. Going by the BA’s definition of 6 million barrels per year, a picobrewery would crank out a whopping 6 barrels a year, or the equivalent of a homebrewer who does 5-gal batch 3 times a month.
Wikipedia indicates that they have four 1000-l fermenters… the annual use of one of these would exceed the production capacity of a picobrewery.
I anxiously await the first femtobrewery, which would produce a pint and a half annually.
Speaking of imprecision – pale lagers. They’re wonderful in the Bavarian countryside or parts of Austria or the Czech Republic, but the sort, I think, you mean is the industrial variety.
I read the Washington Post article. Lots of crap in there. Sure, from an American point of view, European brewers are falling all over themselves trying to copy extreme American beers. Right. The European breweries making extreme American-style beers are well-known in the US because that’s where they sell most of their beer. But, there are literally thousands of breweries in Europe making beer the old-fashioned (traditional) way.
Tradition can be very precise when old brewing records are studied, as Ron Pattinson and Martyn Cornell, among others, are doing.
Several weeks ago, a brewer in Bavaria gave me a lift to a bus stop rather than calling a taxi as I had asked. We chatted about beer underway and he told me his beer sold well when customers liked it and it met their expectations. Those expectations, I think, might also be called tradition.
Mike – I used three words, not two, and by chance “international pale lagers” played well off Jeff’s “international extreme” because the key word, in my opinion, is “international.” I think your story further emphasizes the link between local and tradition/traditional.
Stan, I find “international” too imprecise. They are industrial beers and it doesn’t matter where they are made. The fact that most, though not all, industrial brewers are international is almost beside the point.
Secondly, let’s not forget that industrial brewing didn’t really get its start until the mid-late 19th century, so all brewing previously was local. And thirdly, I suspect the balance between industrial vs. local/traditional really accelerated toward industrial only fairly recently – some years after Word War Two ended.
Interestingly, the early industrial brewers were nothing like the current crop – they apparently made some pretty good beer.
As far as “international extreme” goes – it seems more like wishful thinking to me than a valid concept.
Wishful thinking? Go read what he wrote.
And from Martyn Cornell:
“Porter, developed in London early in the eighteenth century, was the first truly global beer, brewed and enjoyed right around the planet.”
But thanks for giving me the opportunity to urge anybody who hasn’t yet bought Amber, Gold & Black: The History of Britain’s Great Beers, Martyn’s excellent book, to pull the trigger now.
Porter is an extreme beer? I don’t think so. There are a fair number of really weird beers from the 19th century, but I wouldn’t call them extreme, at least not in the current use of the term.