This is my contribution to The Session #29 hosted by Gail and Steve from Beer by BART. The theme is “Will Travel for Beer.” Visit them for the recap of what others have to write on this topic.

Our family loves travel — even in the years we don’t visit 49 states, 9 Canadian provinces and territories, and 15 countries in Europe — and think pretty highly of beer, but there a few times we travel for beer. Because we don’t have to. If a good beer experience isn’t always available right around the corner then it’s usually not too long a drive. This ain’t 1994. Thus my real advice to you is travel a lot, visit national parks, brake for good pie, and the beer will take care of itself.

But that’s a bit short for a Session post, isn’t it? So here are five destinations to consider if you intend to combine travel and beer.

1. Neuhaus in a bit of northern Bavaria known as the Oberfplaz on German Reunification Day, the only day of the year all the Zoigl breweries in town serve their beer. By chance I wrote about this for Session #20.

2. Poperinge in the West Flanders region of Belgium for its Hop Festival, held on the third Sunday of September every three years (next one in 2011). This is not a beer festival (though an afternoon of Poperings Hommel Bier works fine), but you can go beer hunting the rest of your time in Belgium. So get there early to visit the hops museum, then find a place to enjoy the parade.

Residents from throughout the region, and as far away at Germany, dress up to participate the lengthy celebration that weaves through the town. Including a stunning number of children, such as those in the photo above, many in hop costumes.

3. The English countryside, on foot, “rambling” from town to town, sleeping, eating and drinking in pubs. We did this in 1994 and really need to go back.

4. Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City, Oregon. The most beautiful setting for a brewpub in America. Great beer and food almost seems like a lucky bonus.

5. The National Homebrewers Conference. The June 2010 gathering will be in Minneapolis-St. Paul (the public parks capital of the world). Greg Noonan of Vermont Pub & Brewery said this back in 1998, but it remains true:

“When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant. You gotta keep getting the guys who say, ‘Cool, I can sell the beer I make. I can do it.’ ”

The NHC is one look at the future of American beer. You don’t need to be a homebrewer to appreciate the week. Top-flight commercial brewers will be there to share secrets and serve beer.

We’re headed into Yellowstone National Park, then on to Grand Teton, so I’m not expecting to post here the rest of this month.

Don’t worry about us. We’ve got beer from Grand Teton Brewing and Snake River Brewing to get us through the thirsty moments.

See you in July.

It’s hard to spend much time drinking local beer in Oregon and not get excited about what’s in the glass.

Not only in Portland — which was at the center of the recent “best beer city” silliness — but in Pacific City, Enterprise, Eugene, Hood River, Newport, Bend, Parkdale and, gee, the list never seems to end. Although a few breweries ship their beer far from home, and that’s a fair amount of the state’s production, the majority simply sell local beer to local drinkers.

This is not to say every beer was great, but Oregon’s been leading the nation since the mid-90s and somehow there’s still more local beer than there was not long ago, better and a wider variety, with more people drinking this beer in more places. Having visited forty-six states since we left home thirteen months ago I feel pretty confident typing there is no other like Oregon. And although I’m not sure why this makes sense to me, and appreciate it might not to you, leaving Oregon the other day made me stop to appreciate what I’ve seen elsewhere. I wouldn’t say other states are catching up so much as they are in hot pursuit.

In Florida, which has never been known for breweries making particularly frisky beer, suddenly you have Saint Somewhere Brewing and Cigar City Brewing making cutting-edge beers. In Kansas City, Boulevard Brewing recently released Two Fools Double Wit, its latest seasonal in the Smokestack Series, a beer that starts from a “sour mash.” In Pittsburgh, Scott Smith at East End Brewing used 60 loaves of rye bread to brew an old-style Russian beer called Kavass.

I grew up working for newspapers, so skepticism is second nature to me. I find it hard to believe that sales of beer that costs far more than people were paying a few short years ago can continue to be so robust given the current economy, but so far I’m wrong. We’ll discuss why another time. Instead consider something from Mike Kallenberger, Insights Manger at MillerCoors. “One thing I’ve learned is once a trend starts it can keep going longer than you’d expect,” he said. Discussing what’s referred to as the “adoptive curve,” he added, “I don’t think craft beer has begun to reach the tipping point.”

Maybe not even in Portland.

What’s astonishing is that you can have so many pretty big brewing companies and so many small ones in the same city. It’s only about a 15-minute walk from Widmer Brothers, which is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, to Upright Brewing, which began selling beer in April. Widmer is thoroughly modern, fermenting more of its flagship Hefeweizen in a single unitank than Upright will sell this year. (Widmer’s tanks have a capacity of 1,500 barrels, but are only filled with 1,100 barrels of Hefeweizen.)

Upright is located in the basement of a renovation-in-progress called the Leftbank Project. Founder/brewer Alex Ganum hadn’t even started school when Kurt and Rob Widmer founded their brewery in 1984. He calls Upright a farmhouse brewery and is employing open fermentation; wide open, as in no tops at all on two fermenters in a special-built room. He recently added a Post-it note to the entry that reads, “Don’t sneeze.” (That’s the photo at the top.)

He resists the efforts of others to classify his beers as “Belgian.” “I feel like we are more Northwest than anything,” he said. “We’re big (Frank) Zappa fans here. I think Zappa’s music is a lot like our styles.”

Listening to him I thought of a conversation last summer with Dan Carey, co-founder and working brewmaster at New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin. He was happily showing off his brand-spanking-new brewery, a $21 million beauty built strictly based on demand within Wisconsin; New Glarus doesn’t ship its beer beyond its home state. “We like to talk about local,” he said. Now the discussion turned to influences and Carey considered the question about if he could describe himself more as a German, Belgian, English, Czech or American brewer.

He couldn’t. “I’m like the Japanese, or like the Australian winemaker,” he said. “I try to learn from everybody and take what I can use.”

The result is better local beer.

Oops, I missed the anniversary on this by a bit. It was thirty years ago on June 12 that New York Times wine writer Frank Prial penned a full-length and very complimentary feature on Jack McAuliffe and his New Albion brewery. You have to pay to download a pdf version of the article, but it’s a great read through the lens of history.

This was so long ago that there was no reason for Prial to call New Albion a microbrewery, a craft brewery or a boutique brewery. Simply a brewery that made “what may be one of the country’s best beers.”

And . . . “At 95 cents to $1.05 per bottle, including deposit, it may well be the most expensive domestic beer sold.”

So let’s call it a buck for a 10-ounce bottle. Taking inflation into account that works out to 31 cents per ounce in 2009 dollars and cents. Or $3.72 for a 12-ounce bottle, $22.32 for a six-pack of those, and $7.84 for a 750ml bottle. Just so you know.

Matt Van Wyk at Oakshire Brewing in Eugene, Oregon, has a new standard answer when he’s asked how many IBU (International Bitterness Units) are in one of his beers. “About one hundred.”

How many in the Perfect Storm Imperial IPA? “About one hundred.”

How many in the Oakshire Wheat? “About one hundred.”

He’s not trying to be rude, just having a little fun at festivals with a question brewers hear all the time. I think the answer is brilliant because it naturally moves the conversation from a number with questionable meaning to one about aroma and flavor.

Make no mistake. Hops are about more than bitterness, about more than being macho. They are about aroma and flavor.

That said, next week Stone Brewing releases its 13th Anniversary Ale and it’s been measured at 100 IBU. I emphasize the word measured because breweries and their fans sometimes toss around crazy claims about beers with 120 IBU and more. Next time somebody tells you a beer clocks 100-plus ask whoever tells that if he or she had seen a proper lab analysis. I know of a couple of beers that have topped 100, but only a couple.

Brewers should know better and what they say should reflect that. First because education has been an important part of craft brewing since the get-go. Second because when it comes to perceived bitterness the big numbers may not be that important. There’s some question if us mere mortals can actually detect any additional bitterness above 60 or 70 IBU.

Why do brewers fall into this trap? Everybody, and that includes me, asks about IBU. The number is a shorthand for telling us the volume of hops added to a recipe, which may well impact aroma and flavor. It’s unfortunate that a number sounds so precise, but is usually based on a formula a heck of a lot more accurate for beers of something sane like 40 IBU. Adjectives would be so much better, although it can be a challenge to describe the difference between piney and in-your-face-big-ass piney.

Turn up the volume another notch or two from big-ass and you have Stone 13. That was the impression out of the tank when I tasted it, before it was dry-hopped for the second time. For the record Stone calls this a 90-plus IBU beer, but the first batch in the bottle measured dead-on one hundred. The lads in the brewery added four and a half pounds of hops per barrel, more than any Stone beer ever.

They did a quick check on the wort prior to fermentation and it measured about 130 IBU. A pretty impressive number, don’t you think? But . . . “IBUs drop during fermentation because the pH of the liquid drops from about 5.3 to about 4.5,” Stone brewmaster Mitch Steele explained via email. “This reduces the solubility of the iso-alpha-acids, the bittering component of hops, so some bitterness solidifies and drops out, and/or gets absorbed by yeast.”

So now you know what it’s best to say “about” when talking about the IBU in beers brewed with bunches of hops.

Working on a post about Stone 13th Anniversary Ale, that it measures 100 IBU and why that’s a story. Meanwhile I noticed this reading the text written for the back label on the bottle:

“No matter where you are, we are thankful and hugely flattered when you choose Stone. However, if you’re outside our region and you often choose a quality craft beer that is more local, we understand.”

Cheers to Stone. The 13th is supposed to start hitting stores June 29. Don’t know whether that includes Jackson, Wyoming, but even if it does we’ll be toasting Stone with a little Snake River Zonker Stout.

It was a winter afternoon in Juneau, Alaska, more temperate than most in the Lower 48 U.S. states would imagine but cold enough for frozen lakes and plenty of snow. A day of work done, Alaskan Brewing Company co-founder Marcy Larson headed out on cross-country skis with her dog, Jasmine, at her side.

They were headed to the Mendenhall Glacier when they came across Romeo, a black wolf well known to local residents. “People let their dogs play with him,” Larson said. “In my mind that’s a mistake. Then he’s not a wolf anymore.”

Romeo trotted toward Jasmine, signaling he wanted to play, but Larson and her dog moved on. When they reached the cliffs near the base of the glacier Jasmine was the first to spot a mountain goat about 30 feet above them. They paused again.

“We left him behind and went skiing,” Larson said. “But later I thought where else can you ski to the base of a glacier, run into a black wolf and then a mountain goat?”

*******

Life is different in Alaska — you feel the tension between man and wilderness everywhere — and sometimes that means brewing beer a little differently.

“Our goal is to keep growing without having any negative impact by being here,” said Ashley Johnston, who doubles as Alaskan communications manager and sustainability spokeswoman.

That’s put Alaskan on the cutting edge — in 1998 it was the first craft brewery in the country to install a carbon dioxide recovery system, with Sierra Nevada only recently becoming the second — and even in what could be uncomfortable territory.

No, not uncomfortable for Alaskan Brewing. Co-founder Geoff Larson spoke in no uncertain terms last June when the brewery was still in the process of putting a mash filter press online, only the second installed in North America (Molson Coors owns the other). “We’ll extract more from the grains that we want, not what we don’t,” he said.

Plant engineer Brandon Smith is pictured with the mash filter press.

But uncomfortable for some other brewers. “In North America, like this is forbidden land,” Alaskan plant manager Curtis Holmes said.

That’s because malted barley grains are milled more finely than in conventional mashing and that more is squeezed out of them. Which is why a mash filter press is more efficient (using about 6 percent less barley malt to make the same amount of beer). The concern I’ve heard when visiting other breweries and talking about the process is that the resulting beers wouldn’t have the same mouthfeel they would otherwise and might even taste astringent.

It’s easy to understand the skepticism, because this is a serious break with tradition. I happen to be a sucker for grants myself, like from Orval (right). I appreciate the magical role they play in gentle but efficient lautering (or sparging) — although, just to be clear, few breweries still employ grants as part of the lautering process. I value tradition; it’s in the mission statement and why all the words here about the mash press.

So back to that. What press coverage there’s been about Alaskan installing a mash press focused on news about savings — less water consumed, less grain used, less spent grain to deal with, and less energy used — that are good for the bottom line. Where’s the discussion about what the beer tastes like?

In the lab at Alaskan, as a matter of fact, where a tasting panel of company employees convenes every weekday morning at half past ten. They come from all parts of the brewery, because more than half the people who work at Alaskan are BJCP certified judges.

Panelists first tasted test batches from the mash press back in 2000, which is also when other blind taste testing began. “I think it was 1998 or so when I first heard about mash presses and was curious,” Holmes said. By then there weren’t enough cattle in all of Alaska to dispose of the spent grain Alaskan Brewing was producing. In 1995 the brewery bought a grain dryer – another rarity among craft breweries – so it could dry grain (making it lighter) before it was shipped to Seattle.

In 2000 Meura, which is based in Belgium, sent Alaskan a three-barrel pilot mash filter press to test. “Our biggest issue was flavor. Would it be the same?” Holmes said. “We tested it with our old 10-barrel system, comparing what we got with beers off our 100-barrel system. There were no flavor concerns.”

Alaskan wasn’t ready to make the investment until last year, then spent eight months dialing in the recipes before fully implementing the mash press in February. “We took our time and waited to get it right,” said Dave Wilson, operations manager. The recipe for each brand was tested, then brewed using the lauter tun one week, the mash press filter the next.

The biggest challenge was matching alcohol levels, because the new system is more efficient. “There were no issues with flavor and mouthfeel,” Wilson said. “It was pretty easy to match fully attenuated beers within a month. The maltier beers were a little harder.”

The savings are real: 360,000 pounds of malt a year, one million gallons of water, and 65,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Spent grain now contains less water than in the past, making it easier to dry now and laying the foundation for using a biomass boiler in the future.

That’s good business, but not why the crew at Alaskan initiated this and many other energy saving programs. “In a town where we get 90 inches of rain per year you’re not necessarily thinking about saving water,” Geoff Larson said. “But this is about discharging less waste water down the drain and energy usage.

“In the U.S. we have a wasteful mindset. We’ve had the luxury of living where we do, but that’s changing.”

*******

The Larsons aren’t native Alaskans but clearly they are Alaskans. “There are different elements that affect us, obstacles and challenges we’ll encounter that others don’t,” Marcy Larson said.

She, Geoff and Jasmine are all certified for search and rescue operations. In some of the lower 48 states they’d likely be specialists, called upon for specific emergencies. That’s not the way it works in Alaska. “Our search dogs are trained to do a multiple number of things,” Marcy Larson said. “That’s the way it is in Alaska. There are fewer of us to do more things.”

The day I visited last year I met Jasmine because she had ridden to work with Geoff in his truck. This was not long after an avalanche knocked out hydro power in Juneau, briefly sending electricity prices skyrocketing five-fold. To help companies through the crisis the city sent out energy auditors who then suggested ways to conserve energy. The one who visited Alaskan Brewing told Geoff the brewery was already doing everything he might recommend.

And this was before the mash filter press was operating.

“The uniqueness of our location means we don’t always do things like others,” Geoff Larson said.

Think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Please leave your answer as a comment. This week a “what” answer is as valid as a “where.”

A hint: Yes, being able to read helps. Being a bit of a historian helps more.

What style beer do you think the one pictured at the right might be?

Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River (right around the corner from Full Sail Brewing) calls the beer Vaporizer and describes it as a Golden IPA.

I really liked the beer, which is generously dry-hopped with Challenger hops. Otherwise I wouldn’t have ordered a full glass after sampling it along with others. All the beers I tried were tasty as a matter of fact, all with plenty of hops (they say the Kolsch packs in 40 bittering units, and it tasted of every one). But I was a bit surprised by how hazy the beers were overall, even taking into consideration the dry hopping.

In fact, we’ve seen plenty of hazy beers in Oregon (not just the ones made with wheat). I guess there is a pun in there about “partly cloudy,” but I’ll pass. I’ve heard brewers in other states say if their beers aren’t a little cloudy their customers don’t understand they are “natural” but on a per capita basis — and granted I’ve only managed a small sample in a state with just a ridiculous number of brewers — a lot more haze in Oregon.

For the record, this isn’t something you taste or that changes my opinion of a beer.

Think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Please leave your answer as a comment.

A hint: That’s a wine bottle on the lower right.