(Note: This post was amended Feb. 24 to eliminate babbling that got in the way of actual story.)

Tomorrow’ s The New York Times carries an article about “tasting Belgian golden ales.” Perhaps surprisingly American beers claimed four the first five spots although half of the 20 beers tasted hailed from Belgium.

The first and fourth favorite beers were from Dexter, Michigan — which as any card-carrying beer geek knows is home to Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. Jolly Pumpkin’s own Oro de Calabaza claimed the top spot and Leelanau Good Harbor Golden, brewed under contract by Jolly Pumpkin, the fourth. Eric Asimov writes:

“Both of these beers were unfiltered, giving them a hazy appearance, and aged in barrels, but beyond that they are completely different. While the Good Harbor was funky, the Oro de Calabaza was spicy, fruity and floral, with soft carbonation and fresh, vibrant flavors. Same man (brewmaster Ron Jeffries), different yeasts, at the least.”

Yes, except of course, for the Dexter microflora, embraced by Jeffries.

“The primary fermentation does indeed use different yeasts,” Jeffries wrote in an email. “The Oro is our ‘house’ strain, and for Good Harbor Golden I use either a cool fermenting clean ale strain, or ferments with a lager at slightly elevated temperatures. I can’t decide which I like best, so I bounce back and forth between the two. Next batch I might blend them. Now that would be cool.

“The Good Harbor oak tun (1200 liters) does produce different flavors than the barrels we age the Oro in. Similar but different. If I had to pick, I would say it tastes most like the 2000L we use mainly for Bam.”

The large barrel that Leelanau bought for use at Jolly Pumpkin is on the left side in the photo above. The rest are Jolly Pumpkin barrels.

I first tasted Good Harbor in the spring of 2007 for All About Beer magazine’s Beer Talk. We liked the beer.

After I had written my notes I took the second bottle the brewery sent to share with friends I get together with semi-regularly.

When you see a bottle holding a brand you’ve never heard of, such as Leelanau, you might as well be tasting blind. But my friend, Bill, took one sniff and declared, “This is Bam.” He knew it wasn’t Bam Biere, the session Saison from Jolly Pumpkin but that was the impression.

Only problem, I said, this beer is 7.5% and Bam 4.5%. “OK, Double Bam,” he said, suddenly looking inspired. “No, Bam Bam.”

I don’t think I ever expected to be reading about the beer I’ll always remember as Bam Bam in The New York Times.

You can buy used spirit barrels from Port Brewing (aka The Lost Abbey).

Cheap. Until you try to figure out how to get one home. Particularly when home is Vermont or Florida or another place not San Diego.

Watch to the end. Think about it.

In case you missed these blog posts last week . . .

You may now return to your glass of beer.

Lord knows how scientists may have manipulated orange genetics since John McPhee reported this in 1966, but here’s a little bit about the where involved with oranges.

He writes that taste and aroma vary based on “the position of the individual orange in the framework of the tree on which it grew. Ground fruit — the orange that one can reach and pick from the ground — is not as sweet as fruit that grows high on the tree. Outside fruit is sweeter than inside fruit. Oranges grown on the south side of the tree are sweeter than oranges grown on the east or west sides, and oranges grown on the north side are the least sweet of the lot. The quantity of juice in an orange, and even the amount of vitamin C is contains, will follow the same pattern of variation. Beyond this, there are differentiations of quality inside a single orange. Individual segments vary from one another in their content of acid and sugar.”

In “Oranges,” his book developed from New Yorker articles, the Catch-22 becomes obvious to McPhee when he checks to see if a restaurant offers fresh juice at breakfast.

“There were never any request for fresh orange juice, the waitress explained, apparently unmindful of the one that had just been made. ‘Fresh is either too sour or too watery or too something,’ she said. ‘Frozen is the same every day. People want to know what they’re getting.’”

Then he strikes up a conversation with a couple at the next table. “. . . they had an orange grove on their property, with three kinds of oranges, so that ripe fruit was on their trees almost eight months of the year. All year long, they said, they drank concentrate at breakfast. They hadn’t made juice from the fruit on their trees for more than ten years.”

People knew what they were getting.

But what was the price?

Pardon another brief advertisement.

I’ll be a guest Sunday on The Brewing Network Sunday Session. The show begins at 5 p.m. Pacific.

We’ll be talking about Brewing With Wheat (I have a copy in hand, Alan, and it weighs 11.8 ounces), the book and the physical activity.

You can even ask questions live by joining the CHAT ROOM or calling 888.401.BEER. Show some compassion and don’t make them too tough.

Wait, did you hear that
Oh this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me
She said “There’s one thing you’ve got to learn
Is not to be afraid of it.”
I said “No, I like it, I like it, it’s good.”
She said “You like it now
But you’ll learn to love it later.”

  - Robbie Robertson, Somewhere Down The Crazy River

If you use Twitter and follow beer folks you’ve see a lot of pointers today to CraftBeer.com, one of three relatively new websites from the Brewers Association. The other two are a site for members of the American Homebrewers Association and one for Brewers Association members.

A bit of necessary disclosure: I did a bit of work for the CraftBeer.com site and I also write for association publications, including two books.

That’s not why I’m suggesting you take a look at this particular video about Ghost River Brewing. Hit the arrow and hang on until they get to the river. You’ll wish it was longer.

Anyway, nice music. Works well, don’t you think? Yet when they return to the Ghost River and Chuck Skypeck (he’s the guy talking) mentions the “sound of your canoe going through the water” Robbie Robertson’s music found its way into my head. Both the melody from “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” and one of those lyrics you never heard on the radio and will never forget.

A canoe, a river, a beer, music. All things that stamp themselves into your soul.

Sometimes we are our own context, meaning what you bring to a glass of beer influences what you take from it.

Rick Lyke writes about a 7-year-old bottle of Schlenkerla Urbock, his daily drink Monday, that opened with a big smoked ham nose. A fellow taster from Wisconsin taster said it was like smoked sturgeon.

Drinkers in Bamberg, Germany, where Schlenkerla beers are brewed, most associate them with meat, but in Wisconsin — home to Friday evening fish fries — smoke and fish makes perfect sense. The same in Alaska.

That wasn’t something Geoff and Marcy Larson of Alaskan Brewing necessarily considered when they first brewed Alaskan Smoked Porter more than 20 years ago. In fact, Geoff Larson didn’t react very well the first time a drinker told him his beer tasted like salmon. In fact he had smoked the malt that went into the beer at a fish smokery, but he had cleaned the facility obsessively in advance, fearing how fish oil might affect the beer.

“I took it inappropriately and defensively,” Larson said. Months after, talking to the late Greg Noonan — who had made his own smoked porter at Vermont Pub & Brewery — he began to understand just how powerful memories of smoke are.

“Greg talked about first using hickory and customers would ask if he put hickory smoked ham in the beer,” Larson said. “Then he used maple and they asked, ‘Hey, did you start throwing sausage in your beer?’”

It wasn’t salmon that drinkers noticed but the alder wood both the malt and fish were smoked over. In Southeast Alaska smoke from alder wood conjures up memories of campfires and smoked salmon. In the northeast maple smoke reminds consumers of Jimmy Dean Sausage.

The current (February 15 & 22) of The New Yorker magazine includes an article by Malcom Gladwell called “Drinking Games” that tackles a bit of drinking and culture. Unfortunately it’s not one the magazine chose to make free online, but you can read the abstract here.

Hey, it’s The New Yorker and Gladwell, so ideas all over the place. Two to consider:

Reading Gladwell it is always good to remember something Steve Pinker wrote in reviewing What the Dog Saw, a collection of Gladwell pieces.

The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.

More than anything the article raises questions I wish more people thought about.

Four Innovation Lessons from Anheuser-Busch.
(Thanks to Lager Heads for the, well, heads up).

It’s popular to write that [fill in the name of a large brewing company] could replicate any beer in the world if it really wanted to. But could it? Would its corporate culture let it?

Think of any innovative beer you cherish popular beer of the moment (amended 2.13.2010 to make the conversation about beer rather than marketing terms) — last weekend it might have been Pliny The Younger, this weekend Red Poppy 2010. Think these beers are a result of a “team” getting together, a bunch of test batches, focus groups, middle managers and upper managers signing off on everything?

Or one person, could be a single crazy and could be a few like-minded we-work-together collaborators, saying screwitthiswillbegreat?