If I live to be 200 I’m pretty sure I’ll still be thinking bad ideas I’ve never suggested before.
For example, the one that I would ask brewers at the Great American Beer Festival this question: “Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than the Europeans have for generations?” (If you’ve forgotten, here’s the background.)
It came with a guarantee the answers would be boring. Like anybody was going to say, “Sure, I make six beers better than anything from Cantillon” or “The guys from Schneider were begging us not to ship beer to Germany.” I went to sleep last Thursday (GABF Day One) painfully aware of what a dufus I am.
Two conversations Friday reminded me I really need to pay more attention to this blog’s mission statement.
The second was between a festival attendee and Southampton Publick House brewmaster Phil Markowski, who was signing copies of his Farmhouse Ales at the time. The man asked something about if Americans brewers now “broke more rules” than Belgian brewers.
“Go to any booth and you’ll see rules broken,” Markowski said. “If somebody can do it and it tastes good then that’s fine.”
The first came earlier in the day when I asked Anders Kissmeyer, former brewmaster at the Nørrebro Brewery in Denmark and now technical editor of the Scandinavian Brewers’ Review, the “better” question.
“The question about which is better is ridiculous,” he said. “As long as people are working at making better beer, that’s what matters.” Because, most time at least, the result is improved beer.
Kissmeyer isn’t shy about praising the spirit of experimentation in United States. “The Americans are not only giving the English and the Germans and the Czechs a kick in the ass, but also the Belgians,” he said.
So Kissmeyer set me straight and then provided context. Markowski offered more context and Garrett Oliver, signing The Brewmaster’s Bible at an adjoining table still more when he leaned over and said, “The Europeans don’t understand that we have an idea of what’s going on everywhere.”
Kissmeyer does because he ventures to the United States somewhat regularly. Oliver does because he goes everywhere. They are better qualified than most to talk about “better” and they know better than to waste the time.
Thanks, Anders. We’ll see if I can stick the the mission statement written nearly six years ago.
I still don’t understand what they mean by “better”.
I’ve just gone through the 49 comments in the original post, and I still don’t understand what they mean by “better”. (though, that might also be because it’s late here and the “discussion” between Jeff and Mike got a bit tiresome at some point).
Hi Max – A fair point. Anders was in Denver to judge in the GABF competition. Obviously the judges must pick a gold medal winner, silver and bronze. So they are saying, that according to the guidelines the brewers enter under, the winner of gold is “better” than any of the other beers.
That’s quite different than the way I interpret the Denver bartender who declared American-brewed “Belgian-style” beers better than Belgian-brewed “Belgian-style” betters. He implied the American brewers had surpassed the Belgians on some (unspecified) qualitative basis.
I still haven’t answered the question, have I?
Here’s a little question. Usually the claim (which is sometimes unjustified and somtimes quite justified) made against you and yours is that Americans do not have a reasonable grasp on what is going on elsewhere. So when Garrett says the “Europeans don’t understand that we have an idea of what’s going on everywhere” I understand that to be atypical or at least potentially so. Which leads to the question: is US craft beer in being ecumenical as well as experimental going against the grain of US tradition or is it in line with it?
Stan, this is reminiscent of the discussions going on just about everywhere since GABF about which breweries and beers are “over-rated”.
I think it’s lazy blogging (if that’s possible) to list a bunch of breweries and declare that they are overrated if you’re not going to discuss who is rating them too highly and what their rating should be.
That’s where the discussion should really be, not the list.
I guess this is a roundabout way of thanking you for spending so much time on getting the questions right.
I had a great experience at Norrebro Bryghus a couple of years ago. Not only is it a fantastic place to eat, drink and hang out, but I got chatting with the barman and mentioned that I had met Garrett Oliver a few times. He said something like “Garrett has been an enormous influence on us”, and then he bowed to me – a proper bend-at-the-waist bow too, not just a head bob.
If that’s not an acknowledgement that America is kicking everyone’s ass, I don’t know what is.
Your not suggesting that the bow was somehow the demonstration of an ass kicking, are you?!??!?
Alan – I think the short answer would be against the grain.
But to the top of your comment, and to relevant to Zak’s and ollllo’s. I originally had several paragraphs in there about how American beer drinkers are not nearly as worldly as Garrett (and many other American brewers). And therefore downright arrogant. You’d think they brewed Brooklyn 2.
It’s not just a matter of drinking in situ – a Belgian cafe, British pub and German beer hall can be quite beguiling – but of understanding beer tastes different every mile it travels. There’s a big homecourt advantage. If you are going to compare an American beer to a European beer you need to taste both at their best. (Although tasting them both at their worst has a certain interesting value.)
I’m glad you’ve revisited this. The heat to light ratio on this issue is invariably poor. Although I have never had the pleasure of visiting the states a couple of thoughts occur, please tell me if they are off the mark.
Firstly, the american craft movement seems to have grown out of a homebrew enthusiast subculture for whom competition and ‘objective’ evaluation of beer is second nature. As a UK homebrewer i’m as mystified as Pivní by what the “best” might be and how one could discern it, beyond obvious flaws. Whilst competition and access to tasting panels have clearly had great benefits, perhaps they have led to a little complacency as well. I have been bemused by the few american ‘english’ bitters that I have tried in the bottle, however, on U.S. homebrew forums they are often treated as style templates. I imagine this bias could influence peoples judgement of which is “best”.
Few things are more gratifying than finding out that someone, somewhere, is interested in your culture and traditions. And nothing twists the knife more than having that tradition tagged, boxed, and placed on a high shelf where you can’t reach it.
If that comes across as unduly negative then apologies, I am, in fact, a great fan of american brewing. Fortunately I live just round the corner from Zak’s shop which always has a decent range.
Matt – I might feel compelled to make your third paragraph a separate blog post to make sure more people read it. Thank you for chipping in. American readers (and obviously most of you), please pay attention.
To your observation in the second paragraph, indeed homebrewing has been a training ground for most the beloved brewers at small brewers – but it doesn’t seem like many were immersed in homebrew competitions.
To the concept of “best.” Do you have a favorite bitter? If so, what makes it better than your second favorite?
1. I always say, “beer is local.” It’s probably effectively the theft of your concept, Stan, but it’s a good concept. Beer is produced for regions by regional brewers–and you get beers with distinctive accents. It’s difficult to identify causality. This thread seems to shift from “American beers are better,” to “American drinkers are less educated and more arrogant.” I’m actually hip to that, but you have to be careful. Americans have a tendency to oscillate between the poles of triumphalism to inferiority. I’m not particularly convinced the average German beer drinker knows a whole lot about Belgian styles.
2. “the “discussion” between Jeff and Mike got a bit tiresome at some point”. Sorry!
3. Fred Eckhardt famously said (something like), “the best beer in the world is the one I’m drinking.” Amen, brother.
That the US brewing scene has changed dramatically over the past 20-30 years is obvious. That some European countries (particularly some Scandinavian countries and to a much, much lesser extent, Britain) have noticed and been influenced by this also seems obvious (though perhaps a bit less so).
But, that, I think, is where agreement will end. Some of us see this change as a period of experimentation when an interesting new beer is created, but then is jumped on by legions of other microbreweries who diminish it (barrel-aged, for example). Others may see this as a “golden age” when the choice and quality have never been so good. Some may even think both are true.
At the same time, I think there is some misunderstanding by Americans about European breweries that follow the American model. At least in Belgium and the Netherlands, these tend to be breweries (or beer companies) that produce beers specifically for the US market (as they perceive it). De Struise is a good example of this – hugely popular in the US, in their early years, 95percent of their beer was exported to the US and Denmark. The US is a very young and very large market, and is attractive to certain entrepreneurs.
I don’t think asking which is “better” is relevant. It’s a bit like saying: my wife is more beautiful than yours.
It doesn’t matter about ‘better’. Beer is of its place – the more places a beer drinker visits, a more rounded experience s/he’ll get.
The point for me, is that all beer cultures evolve and are evolving. In the UK for instance, in the last 100 years, beer styles like porters and milds have been established, then supplanted and overtaken. And in all markets and countries in the past couple of decades, a global beer monoculture has been proposed by the industrial brewers, which sits uncomfortably with local traditions.
It’s easy for a Garrett Oliver (who sometimes paints in very broad strokes) to suggest a blinkered outlook or dependence on tradition is a kind of brake on change – I don’t think it’s necessarily the case. But evolution won’t necessarily be identified by seeing something that looks American. It’ll be something that fuses the learning and observation of the brewer to that country’s tradition. That’s where the US craft scene was born. And so the cycle goes…
And let’s not forget that, even in a hothoused brewing environment like the US, we’re still talking about a niche product in markets dominated by global ‘brands’. Better to me to lead the uneducated drinker to the trough and fill it with good beer.
Stan, to be honest, I think the question is very hard, if not impossible to answer.
If it’s international competitions what we are talking about. Well, as a consumer, they don’t mean anything to me. It’s not because I doubt the honesty or expertise of the judges, or have an issue with the way beers are evaluated/categorised, it is just that one panel of judges today will yield different results than another panel of judges evaluating the very same beers. Besides, beers will have to travel to get to those competitions, some longer than others and some travel better than others, which will affect the results, even though such factors are never taken into account (it would be impossible to do so). I remember a couple of years ago Gambrinus Premium won a bronze medal in its category at the World Beer Cup. However, if you do a blind tasting of Czech Sv?tlé ležáky, it is very unlikely that it would come out on top.
And if it is innovation, creativity and what have you that defines “better”, well, I must take issue on that. I won’t get into the argument of how innovative or not American brewers are, but all that experimentation happens because the market allows for that. The average Czech or German brewer would hardly be able to get away with a 10%ABV, 120IBU Trippel Barrel Aged Double Imperial Sour Black IPA, and that is because he would have hardly any market for it and since a brewery is a business he will have to brew what the people will want to drink (and this without even considering how many Czech or German brewers actually like those “experimental” beers from the US)
If for “better” you mean that those beers will taste better to a considerable number of people who have tasted more or less the same range of them. Can you really tell me with a straight face that the average American brewer can do a better desítka, sv?tlý ležák or dunkles than the average Czech/German brewer? I don’t have much experience with those kind of lagers from that side of the pond, but Veklý Al, someone who knows his beer very well and who’s lived in CZ for several years and now is living in the US, will probably laugh at the idea.
I’m not implying here that European brewers are better than American ones, they are simply different, they work in different markets and environments.
Oh! And one more thing. The idea of “European” as a unit it’s already quite amusing to begin with.
“The question about which is better is ridiculous,” – Anders Kissmeyer.
I’m with him.
Jeff – American beer drinkers (those in the niche, of course) know most than most. But, also of course, they don’t know what they don’t know. German drinkers don’t claim to know about American or Belgian beers.
Max asks about the skill of American brewers when it comes to desítka, svetlý ležák or dunkles. Most American drinkers wouldn’t have a clue how to classify these sorts of beers.
Sid, I don’t think Garrett was suggesting we disregard tradition. Or that future “classic” must look American. More important, a totally agree that “all beer cultures evolve and are evolving.”
To that end you have “The ‘Bier-Quer-Denker” in Germany, a group of brewers looking beyond standard styles and flavors. And Evan Rail has chronicled Czech beer made with Northwest hops. “Really, in the land of Saaz, did you ever think you’d taste beers made with Cascade or Chinook?” he wrote in email.
Mike, these beers are not being brewed to be shipped to the US, but for local consumption. Of course they also don’t account for a lot of sales right now, so we’ll have to wait to see their actual impact. Also, I don’t think we should overrate the notion these beers are “American influenced” just because some use American ingredients. When Americans use hops from Japan or New Zealand nobody calls those beers x-influenced.
Max, can I just say I pretty much agree?
Stan, you are right, I think I should clarify.
– desítka: a 10º Plato Pale Lager with around 4%ABV. The most popular “style” here in CZ by far.
– sv?tlý ležák: the quintessential Czech Pale Lager, wrongly called “Bohemian Pilsner” by the BJCP
– dunkles: an amber lager hugely popular in Bavaria.
These are “simple” styles that any Czech or German brewer should be able to brew with their eyes closed, but that quite often, can still surprise even the most well traveled drinker, e.g. Kout Desítka.
So now, can you really tell me with a straight face that the average American brewer is better at those styles than the average Czech or German brewer?
So now, can you really tell me with a straight face that the average American brewer is better at those styles than the average Czech or German brewer?
Did I leave the impression I think that is true?
However, it brings up another question that is just as impossible to tackle. The skill of an “average” brewer in a region. How do you compare the ability of one brewer (in Oregon) to brew an American IPA with the skill of another to brew desitka? A fun question for the pub, I guess.
(And what better illustrates the cultural difference than the fact I can get a browser to properly display the acute e in svetlý?)
This is all starting to sound very familiar, Stan. Think “Favorite Beer City, USA.”
Back in the day, my fellow countrymen prided themselves on the fact that Canadian beer was better than American, completely discounting the impact of beers like Anchor Steam or the then-infant Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Were our mainstream lagers (ie: Canadian, Blue) more full-bodied than the American ones (ie: Bud, Miller High Life)? Yes they were. Even Michael said so.
But today, comparing “American beer” to “Canadian beer,” or “Belgian beer” or even “European beer” is nonsense. I presented a six beer tasting to a largely newbie audience last Thursday and bowled them over, utilizing beers from five countries including established and newer craft markets. Each brew made its mark in an entirely different fashion, which is, IMO, ultimately what craft beer is aall about.
Shall I compare one of Boulevard;s Smokestack series to King Brewery’s Pilsner to St. Bernardus Abt 12 to Augustiner Helles to Meantime IPA? Only if I’m to be very, very foolish…
Stan, if a beer company is exporting 95 percent of its output, how can that be “for local consumption”?
Mike, I wasn’t discussing Struise but the examples cited.
Stan,
It wasn’t my intetion to mean that YOU were giving that impression. Anyway, what you say in the next paragraph of your comment shows how little sense this whole thing makes. Which is the point I wanted to make to begin with.