Ron Pattinson started it: “Innovation. I’m starting to truly loathe that word. Especially its inappropriate use in relation to brewing. And the subtext that, by definition, “innovation” is a good thing. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t want innovative beer. I want tasty, refreshing beer.”
So Alan McLeod asked: “When is enough enough? When is too much too much?”
And Stephen Beaumont answered: In Defence of Innovation.
What the heck are these two Canadians and a guy blogging from Amsterdam talking about? As Pattinson has written many times there’s really little new in beer. Certainly not highly hopped beers, not strong beers, not beers flavored with herbs or flowers, nor beers laced with wild critters.
Can beers still be innovative?
These days, to be “innovative” seems to take the form of modern brewers reaching backward into beer’s past, for example by embracing mostly abandoned methods and/or ingredients.
Such as: all the Dogfish Head “ancient recipe” recreations, and their recent corn-chewing experiment; Fritz Briem Gruit; Allagash’s new coolship-and-microflora project.
These things are really only “innovative” in the context of modern brewing. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t quite count.
There are other ways brewers can innovate without the results necessarily being apparent to the consumer. This might include advancements in behind-the-scenes brewing techniques (Sierra Nevada’s torpedo method of dry hopping comes to mind) that could impact things like efficiency and consistency (not necessarily but not precluding the actual drinking experience). Being only an outside observer, I don’t know how much of this brand of innovation is actually taking place.
Innovation means- Change the containers? Beer in a Kevlar bag? A rebirth of Pewter mugs to serve in? Home keg delivery? Co-op pricing for groups? Pubs with bags of fresh hops to put in your pewter mug,,choose you’re variety and create your own flavors,,,glass to glass? Small containers of hops to go bar hopping with just in case the beer you love is not available,,,you could perhaps “dress a pig” with fresh hop lipstick? Scratch and sniff can lids that pop hop aromas up your nose every swigg? The very same beer brewed with different hops and marketed that way?
My brother used to just LOVE beer slushies,,,,when he was little. Dad hid the beer after that.
Too much to type,,,,creativity is still out there. Guess we’ll all see what’s next!
Don’t you consider the use of wine and bourbon barrels an innovation?
Peter H. No, not really. People have been ageing beer in barrels for years. Did no-one ever use second-hand ones before? And I’ve had plenty of “barrel-aged” beers that tasted more like they’d just had a shot of Bourbon poured into them.
I disagree, to a point, with Ron. Making an effort to integrate flavors that might remain in the barrel – and here I agree that it doesn’t always work out that well – qualifies as new and I guess innovative.
But back to what Brad wrote. Behind-the-scenes changes are constant.
Pilsner Urquell is not produced at all like it was a few decades ago – when it lagered in open wood vats. If this we’re the comment section I would include a photo since they still age a tiny portion of beer in wood and show off those tanks during a tour.
So here does innovation equal better quality? I guess it depends on how you define quality.
Interesting timing on this. Stan, last night I was paging through Brew Like a Monk (love it), specifically the description of Orval and how they always seem to be modernizing and updating their brewery. (Not to mention treating the recipe as a bit less than an immovable object at times.)
At least in the context of the age-old monastic brewing tradition and the images that conjures up, these shiny new brewhouses sure do seem “innovative.” Though whether that quite counts for anyone replacing an old bottling line, I don’t know — odds are they’re not reinventing the wheel, just following the trend of modernization. Are we talking about a brewery “innovating” within its own walls (e.g. switching to cylindroconical tanks to reduce fermentation time, as Orval did) or doing so within the wider sphere of brewing itself?
As someone who is developing an appreciation for small, subtle, well-honed beers, I can appreciate novelty fatigue. This is typical in the arts, where experimentation takes a movement by increments past what could recognizably be called the source. But if you fault this development, I don’t think you can simultaneously fault the same form for lack of innovation.
Almost never does innovation take a Bob Beamon jump–it’s usually an incremental process. So a brewery brews a pale ale with fruit–not innovative. Then it brews it’s apricot pale with a new hop that has a distinct stone-fruit note. Okay, still not innovative. Then a brewery brews that beer with two strains of yeast and ages it in an apple brandy barrel. Now you offer this beer to someone who hasn’t followed the increments and ask, “is this something different?” well, isn’t that exactly the process other styles went through to arrive where they are?
A lot of these new beers are interesting but ultimately not final products. But I’d turn the question around and ask if people really believe all this experimentation is a phase leading nowhere but to futility. Do people really believe nothing new and lasting will not emerge from this (pardon me) *ferment*? I don’t. And I watch the process of group creation with fascination and wonder.
Brad,
I asked the question thinking in terms of what ends up in the glass. Of course the behind the scenes and what you taste in the glass are related.
You mentioned Torpedo and massive late hopping and dry hopping would be another example. I’ve been a defender of stupidly hopped beers thinking they help brewers and drinkers learn more about hops, leading to a better hop experience. Late hopping is one of the results.
Torpedo was an innovation undertaken thinking first about flavor. When breweries make “advancements” because they speed the process, for instance, then somebody should be waving red flags.
Did I just chance the topic?
Jeff – I’d say much of what has been going on since 1976 (New Albion) or if you prefer 1965 (Anchor) has been the sort of evolution you describe.
Which steps away from the norm (not always something new, but sometimes a step “backward,” such as Alex and open fermentation) will end up sticking? We’ll have to say.
Steve has pointed out some good examples but they are mostly beers that are always going to be on the rare side.
On the other hand something like American small-batch brewers taking hops that were bred for efficient bittering (high alpa) and using them for flavor and aroma has a wider impact.