Month: April 2009

Maybe the rest of the world will forsake pale lagers, but that’s hard to imagine in Texas. We’re only a few days into April and it’s already getting plenty hot. When we headed to Threadgill’s yesterday for a bunch of vegetables I could only imagine ordering one beer — Live Oak Pilz on tap.

But today, assuming the clouds I’m looking at right now go away, when we spend a few hours boating it won’t be with Pilz in hand. Live Oak doesn’t package its beer.

(Yes, responsible boaters don’t drink and drive, but we’ll only be passengers.)

So should I go with beer from a bottle, Saint Arnold’s Fancy Lawnmower, or from a can, the new Mama’s Little Yella Pils from Oskar Blues in Colorado? Sorry, Mama, when there’s a good local alternative the rules of our trip make it easy to pick the beer brewed nearby.

I tell you what, though, I’m wondering why Oskar Blues didn’t hit on this idea before. Hot weather, and cold pilsner in a can makes for one fine match. (In fact, the answer it pretty simply. Since first packaging Dale’s Pale Ale at the end of 2002 the brewery has struggled to keep up with production.) Although, like the brewery’s other beers, Mama’s Little Yella Pils packs a lot more aroma and flavor when you drink it from a glass rather than straight from the can.

Both Live Oak Pilz and Mama have the pleasant grainy/grassy qualities I associate with a pale lager from the Czech Republic. And the all-malt flavors that, let’s be honest, many drinkers think interfere with drinkability. Not you, right?

Not the same as sitting in Domažlice and drinking Pivovar Kout na Šumav? 10°. But in a boat. From a can. This is progress.

Ron Pattinson writes today about perspective and change. He makes two really important points back-to-back.

The horizon of personal experience influences our view of both the past and the future. We extrapolate the present back into the past. I used to think Bitter and Mild, as I experienced them in the 1970’s, had been around for centuries. It’s a fault repeated in many books about beer. Even brewers have little concept of what went on before they started brewing themselves.

And before you even pause to consider that he gives us more to think about.

The future we expect to be a continuation of the present, with just the odd tweak. Who could have imagined in 1900 that Porter would have disappeared within 50 years? Or in the 1940’s that Mild would have disappeared from swathes of Britain by 1980? Will pale lager continue its domination for another 100 years? History tells us no. Its decline will be unexpected and surprisingly swift.

It is hard to imagine isn’t it? Harder still to think about what might take its place.