Month: August 2008

Sometimes the road beckons, beer be damned

Cape Breton Highlands

“You should have been here yesterday.”

Oooh, that can hurt.

“Too bad you can’t be here tomorrow.”

That might inflict even more pain, because sometimes it seems like there should be a way to hang around an extra day (or two more weeks if necessary).

In New Glarus, Wis., it was Dan Carey talking about a Czech-style lager they would brew the next day as part of the Unplugged Series. Triple decoction with 100% undermodified Moravian malt, Czech hops, fermented in oak, krausened at bottling . . . after more than two months of lagering.

And then showing off the new open fermenters dedicated to the production of Dancing Man Wheat (can’t youenvision the billowing wheat head?). “We’ll be brewing it tomorrow,” he said, standing in the yeast propagation room, which smelled a bit of banana. “Too bad you can’t be here tomorrow,” he said. There are those words again.

In Portland, Maine, brewmaster Jason Perkins opened a door to display the wood foder recently acquired from Bonny Doon in California. It would be put to work — you guessed it — tomorrow, filled without about 2,800 gallons of Allagash Tripel nearing the end of regular fermentation. That was to be inoculated with a grundy full of funk the brewers have been collecting. It might be two years before anybody tastes what comes of this.

Right after I mentioned some of this in a post, Sean Paxton scribbled on my Facebook wall: “How long are you on Maine? I am doing a beer dinner @ the Ebenezer’s Pub the last week of August.”

Aug. 28, as a matter of fact, the beer dinner everybody is linking to. Don’t just look at the beers being served, but the ones that Sean is cooking with. Aug. 28 will be the 100th day of our adventure.

Gotta be there, right? Not when we fly to Germany three days later. But then that excuse doesn’t earn much sympathy from you, does it?

Monday musing: Beer, ala the NY Post

What if the New York Post printed a beer column?

If you aren’t familiar with the Post, and its well known Page Six, this may be lost on you. I picked up the paper because a) a tabloid is easier to deal with on a windy morning at the beach and b) while most other newspapers are struggling to retain readers the Post rolls merrily along. I figure there’s something to be learned here. Post.

Beyond what rock star’s ex-girl friend is sleeping with what movie star, that is. Or who’s shopping for multi-million dollar villas in Croatia.

Perhaps I got too much sun, but I began to imagine beer stories that would interest the Post and how they’d be written. Before reading please remember there’s less chance they are true than the fact Eric Clapton is a dud in the sack (who knew?).

A-B St. Louis brewery– Where’d the Budweiser tap go? Our spies report that Stella Artois is now on tap (along with Bud Light) in Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis brewery board room.

– What brewery that has long advertised using Saaz hops in its best selling beer might be experimenting with Sterling hops?

– Spotted on the Jersey shore: An airplane dragging a banner advertising $9 pints of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA and $3 bottles of Miller Lite during happy hour at The Animal House. $9 pints? Have you checked the prices on airplane fuel recently?

– No reports what they did with the left over food, beer and wine, but Saturday’s seven-course dinner at Caffe Taci was cut short when beer chef Sean Z. Paxton and television star Rachel Ray reached an impasse over what beer to use in the Flemish stew. “Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock,” Paxton was heard muttering later in the evening over a glass of Saint Lawrence Smoked Porter at a popular Village watering hole.

I have more, but will spare you. However, one serious thought. Would life be better if small-batch beer were popular enough for the Post to pay attention?

#5 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world is this?

This week’s “Where in the beer world?” includes a person . . . for those of you with facial recognition software.

A hint? We bought “scratch and dent” cheese at a store in a nearby town. These are cheeses presumably from small-batch cheesemakers of the region that didn’t end up quite right in the package, and thus cost a little less. This is one of America’s great cheese regions, but the S&D swiss did not do well in a family tasting. It seemed a like a good idea at the time, but later I thought, “Would I buy scratch and dent beer?”

I know I promised we’d be talking about prizes for sharp-eyed contributors (readers are four-for-four), so here’s the first: a $50 gift certificate at BeerBooks.com. Lots of great books there to choose from, but Carl Miller also has other cool stuff. Including a bunch of new photos.

Comments are open.

Monday musing: Let’s hear it for small

Both catching up and musing . . .

– Nice interview with Jim Koch by Fortune. He says Sam Adams make flag waving, that is pointing out that every U.S. brewery larger than Boston Beer is foreign owned, part of its marketing program. Here’s the part I like.

Our destiny is to remain very small. We don’t make a mass-produced or mass-marketed beer. We make a very flavorful beer that really only appeals to 5% of beer drinkers. If we were a car we’d be a Porsche. Everyone is familiar with it, but the market share is probably what ours is.

He’s talking about Sam Adams, of course, but for “we” substitute “Goose Island” or “Berkshire Brewing” or “Boscos” and the thought is as valid.

Good old Falstaff – Both Jay Brooks and Maureen Ogle are commenting on a Slate article “And the next great American beer will be…?” Hop you can follow all those links.

That’s good enough excuse to play the nostalgia card and include this old Falstaff advertisement. I pretty much agree with what Jay has to say and with Maureen’s take on the silly Schlitz revival.

But I disagree with the notion Budweiser (or Bud Light), Miller and Coors are not American beers. Have they changed from when they were made at breweries fully owned by Americans? Are they not still brewed by American workers?

– Todd Ashman of FiftyFifty Brewing in California has organized a different sort of collaboration. In other projects brewers get together and make a beer at one or the other’s breweries. Like this one.

Concentrated Evil will be something different. Ashman first brewed the strong, dark Belgian-inspired beer made with raisins, exotic sugars and aromatic spices at FiftyFifty. Then he shared the recipe with Zac Triemert of Lucky Bucket Brewing in Nebraska and Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station Brewing in Illinois.

This is like “indentic-ale” projects among regional breweries (Eugene, Chicago-area breweries, New Mexico breweries to name three) where brewers used the same recipe and sometimes the exact same ingredients (except for water) to make a beer. But in this case the breweries are in California, Nebraska and Illinois.

Problem is, how could anyone easily compare the results? Here’s the really good news for those who will be at the Great American Beer Festival in October. All three versions will be available in Denver.

This should be a great opportunity to debate the importance of “where” in the beer versus (or should that be plus) what the brewer adds. Heredity versus environment, anybody?

– Angel’s Share from Lost Abbey was chosen as the best American cask-conditioned beer at the Great British Beer Festival. No surprise (I’ve already written enough about the beer), but a here’s what Andy Benson, manager of the Bieres Sans Frontieres bar, had to say: “American beers are often a surprise to the British palate, they are so intensely flavored that most people either love them or hate them, nothing like the insipid lagers we usually associate with America.”

– It appears the way is clear for Bell’s return to Illinois. That’s a good thing, because Bell’s has been an important part of Chicago becoming a better beer town, and Chicago was essential to Bell’s “early” success. I put early in quotes because Larry Bell’s brewery was hardly an overnight success.

#4 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world is this?Just to mix things up, this week’s photo for “where in the beer world?” was not taken during our current adventure (which began May 21).

It was snapped on a previous trip.

Want a hint? It’s not the world’s most expensive hop cone.

For those unfamiliar, here is how “where in the beer world?” works.

Please leave your answer about where the photo was taken as a comment. Also feel free to comment on the picture, maybe come up with a caption, even if you don’t know where in the beer world . . .