Month: February 2008

Go figure: Budometer is a wine taste test

Call it a beer mindset, but when I saw “Budometer” I thought beer.

Turns out the test you can take at the Wall Street Journal or here (“get your buds done”) is designed to help you discover what kind of wine taster you.

But before moving along, consider that the guy behind this, Tim Hanni, “is on a mission to combat snobbery in the wine industry.”

He argues that no one has a palate superior to anyone else’s, and that there’s nothing wrong with liking wines many experts consider tacky, like White Zinfandel. He also thinks traditional tasting notes comparing wine to berries or chocolate are useless in helping most consumers find wines they enjoy.

The takeaway: Not everybody tastes everything the same way. That clearly is relevant to drinking beer.

Hanni has classified tasters into three categories: tolerant, sensitive and hyper-sensitive. And the The Lodi International Wine Awards will use these classifications at its upcoming competition.

Hanni’s also interested in the role aspiration plays in preferences, because “the amount of time and effort you put into learning about wine strongly influences preferences and buying behavior.” Now we’re moving into the territory of $750 bottles of wine (the new price for Screaming Eagle).

Go ahead take the test even if you’ve vowed wine will never pass your lips. You might learn something about your beer drinking self. I scored between 6 and 7 on the scale of 9, putting me with the “intensity and balance are key” crowd.

Monday musing: 10 tons of hops – How much beer?

Hops ready to go to workHow much beer will those 10 tons of hops Boston Beer is selling to small breweries make?

Left to their own devices, these hops might provide proper bitterness, flavor and aroma for 40,000 barrels (31 gallons to a barrel) of craft beer. However most of the East Kent Goldings or Tettnang Tettnanger the brewer of Samuel Adams beer is offering for sale will end up part of recipes that include other hops, so their influence will reach, what to you think? Two, three times more?

Forty thousand barrels is a pretty impressive number, although the estimate could be high. If you want simple math, Boston Beer uses one pound of hops per barrel for its Boston Lager, so that’s 20,000 barrels for 20,000 pounds. But Boston Lager is hoppier than a Weiss beer you might brew with the Tettanger and these EK Goldings have a higher percentage of alpha acids (more bittering punch) than the hops in Boston Lager.

So let’s fantasize about 40,00 barrels. That’s pretty much what Dogfish Head Craft Brewery made that in 2006. Oops, that might not be the best example. Pretty sure Dogfish Head needs more than 10 tons of hops to make 40,000 barrels.

More impressive is that it would equal the production of all these breweries combined in 2006: Brewery Ommegang, Allagash, Three Floyds, Weyerbacher, Founders, Green Flash, Live Oak, Midnight Sun, AleSmith, Jolly Pumpkin, Atlanta, Alpine and Surly. Most of these breweries grew in 2007, but that would have been a lot harder given the current hop situation.

Still if you really need a number to look at you could easily calculate how “kilograms of alpha” (that’s the phrase some mega-brewers use) these hops will provide. The Tettnangers have already been measured at 4.2% alpha acids, the Goldings will likely be 6%.

One opinion, though. These hops deserve to be talked about using adjectives, not numbers.

Sam Adams sharing hops with smaller brewers

Jim Koch, Samuel AdamsJim Koch sent a big old hops valentine to smaller breweries on Thursday. Ten tons worth.

He told them that Boston Beer, brewer of the Samuel Adams beers, will sell 20,000 pounds of hops that otherwise would not be available to smaller breweries. The company will sell the hops at its cost, which is considerably less than they would bring on the open (or “spot”) market.

Koch revealed the offer to Brewers Association members Thursday in a forum for association members, telling them:

“For a couple of months now, we’ve all been facing the unprecedented hops shortage and it’s affected all craft brewers in various ways. The impact is even worse on the small craft brewers — openings delayed, recipes changed, astronomical hops prices being paid and brewers who couldn’t make beer.

“So we looked at our own hops supplies at Boston Beer and decided we could share some of our hops with other craft brewers who are struggling to get hops this year.”

The brewery will sell 10,000 pounds of East Kent Goldings from Great Britain and 10,000 pounds of Tettnang Tettnangers from small farms in the Tettnang region in Germany. Both are “aroma hops,” horribly under appreciated and the kind being dissed by brewers chasing alpha, but at the same time becoming crazily expensive.

Samuel Adams will limit the amount sold to any one brewery in order to assure as many as possible get hops.

“The purpose of doing this is to get some hops to the brewers who really need them. So if you don’t really need them, please don’t order them,” Koch wrote. “And don’t order them just because we’re making them available at a price way below market. Order them because you need these hops to make your beer. We’re not asking questions, so let your conscience be your guide.”

This is explained in the “Hop-Sharing Program” area at the Samuel Adams website (you will have to verify your age). The FAQ answers most of the questions I’ve been receiving during the day. (These are not “left over” hops for instance; in fact they haven’t even arrived in the country. Boston Beer will be glad to use them if any aren’t claimed.)

I know whose beer I’m drinking tonight.

Why drinking beer is better than delivering beer

We’ve taken all you’ve given
But it’s gettin’ hard to make a livin’
Mr. President have pity on the working man
                   – Randy Newman

Talk about a job that sucks.

Conversation overhead this morning at the gas station/convenience store between a delivery man for the local Anheuser-Busch distributor and woman behind the register.

Driver: So does that mean you want them stacked five boxes high? Six? Seven?

Woman: It needs something on the top that looks special.

Driver: The price is the price. That’s where it has to go.

Woman: He said he wants it to look like a display. If it doesn’t then we’re going to take it out and put something else in. You’ll have to ask him.

Granted you may not care if this gas station has a pile of Bud Light and Budweiser cases (which it always seems to) or Miller Lite or boxes of Coors with a train running across the top. And we’re pretty sure it won’t be cases of Sam Adams or Fat Tire no matter how great the display might look.

But I see a guy checking his watch. He’s supposed to be headed on to his next stop.

He already knows he’s going to be late getting home, and it’s Valentine’s Day.

Hardly seems fair.

Scallop Stout: What’s next? Monkfish?

Out of hops? Try scallops.

British brewer Shepherd Neame has used them to make Scallop Stout.

“There’s a hint of smokiness and a slight taste of the sea but no fishiness. I can find no scientific reason for why it works, but it does,” brewer Stewart Main said. The newspaper report states the 3.7% abv beer “is made using traditional methods but with a handful of scallops thrown in for an hour.”

Bivalves and stouts aren’t exactly strangers. Not only have Guinness and other producers long advertised serving oysters with stout but once in a while brewers even tossed them into kettle.

Guinness oysters ad

It can get confusing. For instance, Marston’s Oyster Stout contains no oysters.

Writing about oyster stouts several years ago, Michael Jackson made it clear (“Heaven sent – downing oysters by the pint“) there is a balance to be struck, be it stouts with oysters included or in finding the right stout to go with oysters.

A stout must lean to the dry side if it’s to accompany oysters. Despite its fullness of body, Guinness’s Dublin-brewed, strong (7.5 per cent) and quaintly named Foreign Extra Stout does the trick. especially if it is lightly chilled. The regular bottled or canned stuff is arguably too sweet and the jury is out on the draught version.

Murphy’s and Beamish are barely dry enough, but there is a case for the peppery, spicy Cain’s Superior Stout, from Liverpool. I have long loved the toasty, faintly anise-like porter from Harvey’s of Lewes, East Sussex.

Not sure what he would have written about Scallop Stout.

However, What to Drink with What You Eat includes a story from Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver:

“One of the funnest dinners I have ever done was with the Westchester association of country club chefs. I paired seared diver sea scallops with brown butter sauce with a Taddy Porter from Samuel Smith, which is a dark beer with a buttery, residual sugar and caramel taste to it, and a slightly chocolatey aroma.

“They were surprised to see a light dish with a dark beer. We deconstructed the scallop, which is sweet, with a caramel sear, and the butter in the brown butter sauce. With the beer, I am delivering a round, soft buttery flavor with caramel.

“You have carbonation that scrubs the palate and removes fat and oil. This audience of chefs was shocked, and said it was one of the best food and beverage combinations they ever had.”