Father’s Day beer: Cannonball Creek Project Alpha LXXV
There was plenty of interesting (new to me, even) reading last week, but I am sticking with my plan not to reenter the That Was The Beer Week That Was business.
However, this is a little different. On Thursday my beer RSS feed began filling with links to articles at Randy Mosher’s website, remodeled, in part, I think, to support his upcoming book, “Your Tasting Brain.” Mosher has added articles going back almost 20 years to his archives. Something for everyone.
Jeff Alworth yesterday used to news that the Brewers Association added seven new beer styles to the Beer Style Guidelines in advance of the Great American Beer Festival to rage about how there are too many beer styles.
This is one another of those discussions I feel like I’ve been part of more than enough times already, so just two thoughts.
I am happy that there is a defined category for West Coast Pilsner. Highland Park Brewery has won three GABF medals for the beer they call Timbo Pils at their website and describe as a West Coast Pilsner. Timbo has won as an American-Style Pale Ale, an India Pale Lager and in the India Pale Lager or Malt Liquor category.
The first GABF competition in 1987 included a dozen categories: Ales, Alts, Cream Ales, American Lagers, American Light Lagers, Bock/Doppelbocks, Continental Amber Lagers, Continental Pilsners, Porters, Stouts, Vienna Style Lagers, Wheat Beers. Where would you have entered Timbo Pils?
Vera Charles*Second, I’ll write more about the hop named Vera in Hop Queries this month. Meanwhile, the announcement that the 2025 competition will include a special category featuring beers brewed with Vera (formerly known as W1108-333 or HRC-003) caused me to imagine a festival that will never happen.
The fest would include beers named only after the hop “providing the leading role” in their aroma and flavor. In the GABF Vera competition, brewers will declare the underlying style. Not at this festival. Festival attendees could ask about other ingredients in the beer, about supporting hops, about the yeast, fermentation temperatures, lagering time, IBUs, whatever they wanted. Except style.
There could even be a competition. Similar to Juicy/Hazy IPA at GABF, the most entered hop category would be Citra.
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* Vera Katherine Charles (1877–1954) was an American mycologist. She was one of the first women to be appointed to professional positions within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Charles coauthored several articles on mushrooms while working for the USDA.
The headline — Costco Is Coming for Craft Beer — about store brand beers reads like click bait. The story itself, on the other hand, serves interested readers well. But . . . I can’t remember how many version of this I have read. It is a function of knowing that Mission Street Pale brewed by Firestone Walker and sold by Trader Joe’s won two gold medals and a silver at the Great American Beer Festival before purposefully hazy IPA existed.
Every few years there is a story about which Trader Joe’s beers are brewed at what breweries. (I’m pretty certain that shortly 2011, Firestone Walker quit brewing the Mission Street Pale and Trader Joe’s found another brewery to make the beer.)
That too many posts sound so familiar to me is one reason you won’t find a list of links here today, or on the Mondays that follow. Another is that a regular Monday posting does not sync the rhythm of life around here (or wherever we are). Random might work better.
I did not receive the press release about how Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head), Bill Covaleski (Victory Brewing), and Greg Koch (Stone Brewing, now retired) are “bringing their legendary friendship, their boundary-busting brews, and a rock-and-roll spirit that can’t be tamed” to Manhattan later this month. But you may read the basics and the astonishing verbiage here.
I’m sorry, but although these are founders of breweries that make really good beer who have spent decades in the trenches (and, full disclosure, Sam Calagione wrote the foreword for “Brewing Local”) I won’t be booking a flight to be there June 26.
For one thing, that poster is, well, I have no words — particularly because I know the lay of the nearby land and Beer Authority is a short walk from Madame Tussaunds wax museum. From the get go, breweries such as Victory and Dogfish Head, have emphasized “authenticity.” Granted, I’ve been in a Madame Tussaunds once in my life, decades ago, but nothing about it felt real to me.
That’s Marcin Ostajewski of Browar Grodziskie in line for breakfast at the 2024 Craft Brewers Conference in Las Vegas. In a little more than two weeks he and brewery president Krzysztof Panek will be talking about all things Grodziskie in Utrech, the Netherlands, during Carnivale Brettanomyces. The “yearly wild beer festival dedicated to deviant fermentation of all kind” is, in fact, about more than oddball fermentation.
The headline here hints of how diverse the talks will be, so I will leave you to explore the entire list on your own. These sorts of gatherings and exchanges of ideas are how beer culture avoids turning into the monoculture American beer seemed to be headed for in the 1970s.
One example, Aiden Jönsson’s examination of beer and the Gaia hypothesis: “Take a sip of beer and you will notice aromas and flavors that remind you of the world around you. Some of these play crucial roles in our physical environment by interacting with the atmosphere, oceans, and geology. We will explore some of the ways common compounds in beer reflect natural processes in our environment and climate, and how life could have evolved to use those compounds to regulate the environment to its benefit in Gaian ways.”
