DRAFT

Bad beer and who should be talking about it

You connect the dots.

The conversation

John Harris, whose Ecliptic Brewing should be serving beer soon, was talking about the first months at Deschutes Brewery in 1988, where he wrote the initial recipes and brewed for four years. Batch after batch of beer tasted sour, and he dumped each one. It turned out that there was a design/construction flaw. Fixing that solved the problem.

“These days we could probably have saved the (sour) beer and made money on it.”

He laughed, but he was serious.

The story

Joe Stange’s DRAFT magazine story I mentioned a while back later came on line, leading to discussion here and there, particularly interesting here, about how many breweries is too many breweries. Beyond the matter of variety discussed first time around, there is the one about quality.

“What the industry is afraid of is low quality, and that will taint the quality of craft beer overall,” says Jeff Schrag, owner of Mother’s Brewing, a regional microbrewery that opened in 2011 in Springfield, Mo. “But I don’t know,” he adds, looking thoughtful. “There’s a lot of beer now that’s tainting the image of craft beer.”

Some links

– Brian Yaeger riffs on this at The New School in a post titled, “95% a-hole free?” . . . as opposed to the good old “asshole free” days.

It’s not like this is new. Consider what Ken Grossman had to say in 1981 in Zymurgy magazine (summarized by Maureen Ogle in Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer): “More often than not, he complained, homebrewers tried to go commercial ‘on a shoestring, and with such low technology and understanding of producing a high quality beer’ that they produced foul swill.”

That might come across as a little chippy. Would it be better to be specific, to name names? Last week Charlie Bamforth, the Anheuser-Busch endowed Professor of Brewing Science a the University of California at Davis, was in St. Louis. He spoke a few minutes at a Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA) gathering. I’m told that “back in the day” almost everybody at these meetings worked at Anheuser-Busch and wore a tie. A lot more beards these days. Plenty of young faces, including many people who work at the ABI pilot brewery and students in a brewing class at Washington University. Bamforth was as entertaining as always, shifting quickly from one topic to another. At one point, and I’m not exactly sure why, he said, and I must paraphrase, one thing he can’t abide by is one brewer talking bad about another. So that’s something you learn in beer school.

– Brandon Hernandez pokes a hornet’s nest with “Truth in beer reporting and other novel concepts.”

Yes, the fact that Hernandez derives income from Stone Brewing Co. (as a communications specialist) muddies the water, but lots of interesting insights in the comments. And you’ll want to read what another panelist had to say, and then Alan McLeod’s take.

– Boak & Bailey, starting from an entirely different place (a post by Adrian Tierney-Jones), ask a question: End of the Kid Gloves Era? Maybe this is inside baseball (or cricket), just writers talking to writers, but consider this: “Perhaps it is time for beer writers to accept that conflict with ‘the industry’ is necessary and desirable.”

That way the brewers don’t have to be the a-holes.

‘Native ales’ and ‘Spokane Style’

Christopher Staten writes about “native ales” in the current DRAFT magazine (March/April, “25 Unexpected Getaways” on the cover). Even though the tagline here reads “celebrating beer from a place” I have to pause when considering his conclusion.

But in terms of the big picture — that “what story will they tell in 200 years?” question — native beers have the potential to define the American craft beer industry’s legacy.

That’s bold.

Although Lakefront Brewery’s Wisconsinite is made with all Wisconsin ingredients this is really a story about yeast.

Case in point: Vinland One. For the series’ first release, [Mystic Brewing founder Bryan] Greenhagen isolated a yeast strain from a Massachusetts plum he bought at a local farmers market. Called Winnie, the wild yeast imparts plum, mango and touches of spice to the saison base, giving it character more akin to wine. Technically, One isn’t an ale or lager; it’s something unique. Greenhagen’s also working on developing yeast cultures from blueberries in Maine for Vinland Two, slated for release this September, and berries and grapes from a family farm in Vermont. While the lack of local ingredients suited for his recipes (mainly noble hops) prevents him from brewing a complete native beer, his use of local, wild yeast makes Vinland exclusive to his region.

“Biodiversity can help us make our own unique beer,” he says. “Even though we work within the Belgian tradition, how can we bring that back to make things that are actually distinctive and, in some cases, beer you couldn’t make anywhere else?”

Hold that thought.

Now consider the news earlier this month that No-Li Brewhouse in Spokane, Washington, successfully lobbied for the “term and beer classification Spokane Style.” Spokane Style beer must be brewed and packaged in Spokane by Spokane residents and use all ingredients exclusively to the region (meaning from within 300 miles).

So just what is ‘Spokane Style’? “Like the Matrix, no one can be told what Spokane Style is”, said [co-founder John] Bryant with a laugh, “but you must taste.”

“When you pride yourself on using only the finest ingredients and the greatest attention to detail”, said co-founder and Head Brewer Mark Irvin, “you know what Spokane Style is. You can taste it.”

Can you taste it?

Why?

Does it matter?

These, in fact, are the questions I’ve been asking here for more than seven years. Maybe it’s time to get serious about finding some answers.

Another way to think about aroma, hops and beer

DRAFT magazine hoppy beer evaluation

Does this illustration courtesy of DRAFT magazine1 make you think about beer aroma and flavor any differently? Particularly hops? The point is not whether you find grapefruit more prominent in New Belgium’s Ranger IPA or Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA or if you agree that Anderson Valley Hop Ottin’ IPA has more bitterness than Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale but less hop punch.

I like it because the colored meters make it easy to think in terms of volume (synonym: impact) as well as the way the aroma components fit together. This is different than spider graphs (here are a couple more examples beyond the one that follows), so brilliant that I take back everything nasty I said when DRAFT used the antiquated tongue map as an illustration in its early issues.

Cascade hop, Barth Haas Hop Aroma Compendium

This spider chart appears in The Hop Aroma Compendium compiled by Joh. Barth & Sohn. The tan portion indicates how two beer sommeliers and a perfumist perceived the aroma of raw Cascade hops, while the green shows how that changed in a cold infusion (similar to dry hopping).

These work best if you are willing to accept, perhaps even embrace, a certain amount of ambiguity. Members of tasting panels at breweries are trained to identify X or Y as this or that aroma or flavor. That’s so their brewers can make beer with a certain level of consistency. (See New Beer Rule #4.) Drinking, and enjoying, beer can be altogether different, and it might be best not to get too specific when trying to pick out particular aromas or flavors. In How to Love Wine author Eric Asimov devotes an entire chapter to “The Tyranny of the Tasting Note.” It’s a topic he’s addressed before, and tends to get wine writers pretty riled up. He makes excellent points, but also some I’m not sure I agree with. Probably something better examined in a separate post (maybe even the next one). But a key takeaway is that when somebody starts describing “aromas of apricot, jam, guava, and jackfruit” that there’s little chance another drinker will get then that tasting note is not only useless, but discouraging.

These visual representations are much friendlier. Both managing editor Jessica Daynor and beer editor Chris Staten provided details via email about the illustration in DRAFT.

“. . . there’s no formal data behind the sensory ratings — just our ratings of each flavor element from 1 to 5 (that number was multiplied by 6 in design, which is how we got the final artwork you see in print),” Daynor wrote. “We feel that part of our job as editors is to present beer to readers in as many digestible ways as possible, and particularly for people new to beer, sometimes, it’s more practical to make sense of flavor elements visually, which is what we did here. It’s so easy to make generalized statements about IPAs: ‘They’re really bitter;’ ‘They’re hoppy;’ etc., but what does that actually mean? And if that’s the case, then aren’t all IPAs the same? With that piece, we’re trying to show that even among the most common IPAs on shelves, there are many flavor nuances that make each beer unique.”

Staten added: “I’ve always been intrigued with the path beer drinkers take when they’re first exploring the world of hops. Often, I run into newer drinkers who say they love IPAs but can’t figure out why particular IPAs rub them the wrong way — lot’s of the time it’s because they aren’t focusing enough on the flavor profile to discover likes and dislikes. The piece was just a casual way to let these particular readers know that there’s a wide range of hop flavors, and a wide range of flavor combinations/perceived bitterness/etc. from IPA to IPA.”

A casual way. I like that.

*****

1 The November/December issue (“Top 25 Beers of the Year” cover).

Beer magazines, circa 1994

BeeR the MagazineInspired (again) by “The 5 Most Boring Topics in all of Beer Journalism” here’s a glimpse at what appeared in three magazines at the end of 1994.

I picked 1994 because BeeR the Magazine was new (and not long for this world) and because many the breweries that claim a lot more ink (or bandwidth) these days than do the founding pioneers weren’t yet in business. Although they are deserving, I didn’t include brewspapers (such at Celebrator, Ale Street News and the Brewing News family) because our archives were destroyed in the Flood of ’06.

All About Beer, BeeR and American Brewer were then the big three of glossy magazines. About the time BeeR died Beer Connoisseur I passed through town (lasting not even as long as BeeR). These days, of course, we have DRAFT, Beer Connoisseur (unrelated to V1.0), Beer Advocate and Beer Magazine, plus Imbibe offering regular beer features. You’ll spot many of these on the top row at Barnes & Noble or Borders, safely out of the reach of children. (American Brewer lives on, by the way. It always targeted the beer trade but in the 1990s also served information-thirsty beer newcomers.)

ALL ABOUT BEER (November)

Features
* Born to Brew – A look inside the brewing dynasties.
* Vietnamese Beers
* Pubcrawling Toronto

Columns
* Michael Jackson’s Journal – Czechs & Balances.
* Fred Eckhardt – Brewspeak: A Beginner’s Guide to Craft Beer.
* Alan Eames – On Groaning Beer and Babies.
* Byron Burch – Stylistically speaking, Oktoberfest.

Departments
These included news, homebrewing, Lucy Saunders on festival foods, collectibles, brewpub visits, book reviews and “Beer Talk.” The beers reviewed: Abita Amber, Labatt Blue, Purgatory Porter (it was spoiled), Redhook ESB, Berghoff Dark, Christoffel Blond, JJ Wainwright’s Select Lager, Red Tail Ale.

BEER (November)
That’s the cover at the top. BeeR was the brainchild of Bill Owens, who also published American Brewer. From the beginning Owens, himself a well known photographer, attracted very talented illustrators and photographers, although the magazine lasted only about a dozen issues.

Table of Contents
* A Question of Taste – A sensory exploration.
* The Art Guys – Using beer stuff to create art.
* The New Art of Ale – Randy Mosher on America’s innovative ales.
* Smuggler’s Brews – Snagging a few pilsners in Iraq.
* Garbage Pail Willie’s Last Great Batch – A story of homebrewed beer in Chicago.
* Plastic, Fantastic Brewpub – Northwestern Brew-Pub & Cafe in Portland, Oregon.
* Biere Au Naturel – Organic beer.
* A Glass of Wendy – Written by Garrison Keillor (yes, that Garrison Keillor).
* Proclaiming & Declaiming – Two Scottish musicians prefer stout.
* Eat Me, I’m on Irish Time – Kelly’s Irish Times in Washington, D.C.
* Das Münich Bierfest ist Goodt – Oktoberfest in Munich.
* Germany’s Other Brewfest – Oktoberfest in Stuttgart.
* Sing a Drinking Song – Beer at music festivals.
* Europe on a Gallon a Day – Tips from Tim Webb.
* A Really Cold One – Beer ice cream recipes.
* Book Reviews
* Michael Jackson – “On Meretricious Myths and the Sweet Taste of Truth.”
* Homebrewing – Charlie Papazian.
* Beer Festivals – Various reviews.

AMERICAN BREWER

Features
* 1994’s Best Tap Handles
* Financing on Tap – Tips for raising capital.
* Reviving Cincinnati’s Brewing Heritage
* Beer Engines in New England
* Interview with Paul Shipman of Redhook. Headline “Dark Clouds Over Paradise.”
* Rogue Ales in Japan
* Star Union – An Illinois brewery reborn.
* The Perennial Hop – In the American Northwest.
* Music Festivals – A different story than in BeeR. Bill Owens sometimes asked writers to rework pieces to suit his two magazines.
* Micro Goes Macro – Gordon Biersch.

Departments
Regular features included a column by Dick Cantwell (who still has a column in AB), a report on festivals, classified ads for brewing equipment, and BeerScopes (as stupid as the name implies).