Stan Hieronymus

InventorSpot has posted what Seth Plattner calls the 10 Best Beers with Balls of 2007. The premise is that the “beers on this list push the limits of conventional brewing.” So you get Midas Touch Golden Elixir- The King’s Beer and BILK – The Weird Guy’s Beer (since it is made with milk).

Also Westvleteren 12 – The Monk’s Beer. This entry could have used a little fact checking. Besides referring to a distributor (the monastery sells beer only at its gate and the inn it runs next door) there’s the assertion the beer is “so named due to its 12% alcohol by volume.” This despite the fact you can read 10.2% on the photo with the story.

So why Westvleteren 8 (not quite so strong) and 12? And why Rochefort 6, 8, and 10?

Until the early 1990s, Belgian brewers measured gravity in Belgian degrees. This could, and can, be calculated by subtracting 1 from a beer’s specific gravity and multiplying by 100. Thus a 1.060 beer would be 6 degrees.

Today brewers measure in degrees Plato, but the beers may take their names from the former standard. Thus, Achel referred to its initial beers as Blond 4 and Bruin 5 when it resumed brewing. Westvleteren and Rochefort also call their beers by degree numbers as well as by the color of their crown caps.

When Westvleteren 12 was introduced in the 1930s it apparently started at 12 degrees (28 °P!) and was 12% abv. These days the starting gravity is about 21.5 °P. About because it truly varies from batch to batch. When I visited the brewery I saw notes where consecutive batches started at 21.5, 21.1 and 21.7.

That’s one of the things that makes Westvleteren special. Even though these batches will be blended into a larger lagering tank after primary fermentation not every — heck, not any — Westy 12 is exactly the same. It 12 will lager until it is appropriately clear. That’s generally about eight weeks, but can be 10, the monk in charge of brewing explains, “when you get a difficult one.”

The photo at the top reflects this. Brother Filip, the brewer in the late 1990s, wrote these words that mean, “Quiet… here matures the Trappist.” They mimic a much larger sign across a warehouse at the Moortgat Brewery north of Brussels, which admonishes drivers who speed by on the adjoining four-lane road not to disturb “den Duvel.”

Belgian law permits brewers more tolerance when listing alcohol content than in the United States. The listed content may vary by 1% alcohol by volume, compared to .3% in the States. The Westvleteren 12 will be between 10% and 10.5%

Apparently the judges for the Beers of the World World’s Best Beers competition didn’t get the memo from Men’s Journal that Lagunitas Pils is the best lager in the world.

They seem to think it is Budweiser Budvar Dark.

They did almost agree with Men’s Journal on the World’s Best Stout, picking Deschutes Obsidian Stout. The MJ panel thought it was Deschutes The Abyss.

Beers of the World, in case you didn’t know, is a British beer magazine. According to its press release: “An international panel of judges tasted their way through hundreds of entries from the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Australia and beyond to find the winners of each style.

“These style winners then went head to head at a blind tasting event, where the UK’s top brewers selected the best beers in each category.”

They came up with an admirable list, but like the beers ranked in the current Men’s Journal — and let’s be honest, like the ones we’ll be lauding two weeks from now at the Great American Beer Festival — you are best to consider it a collection of really good choices and little more.

It may have come to your attention I am schizophrenic on this matter of competitions/lists, given that I’m immersed in The Beer Mapping Project Fantasy League. I love the lists, but I also love making fun of them and somehow I don’t consider that inconsistent.

I’m not sure what breweries entered this particular competition. Deschutes Brewery from Oregon did quite well, but there were only a handful of other American winners. Obviously the judges were good — Roger Protz was the chairman.

“This is an exciting time for beer drinkers. More and more craft brewers throughout the world are making beers bursting with distinctive and exciting aromas and flavors.,” Protz said. “The judges have been overwhelmed by the quality of the beers entered for the competition and it has been an immensely difficult task choosing the winners.”

So it deserves to be taken seriously — as seriously as you take any such results.

Best of the best:
World’s Best Lager: Budweiser Budvar Dark, 4.7%
World’s Best Ale: Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted, 4.2%
World’s Best Stout/Porter: Deschutes Obsidian Stout, 6.4%
World’s Best Wheat Beer: Grolsch Weizen, 5.3%

Category winners:
World’s Best Pale Ale: Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted, 4.2%
World’s Best Dark Ale: Robinsons Old Tom, 8.5%

Sub-category winners:
World’s Best Standard Lager: Simonds Farsons Cisk, 4.2%
World’s Best Premium Lager: Full Sail Session Lager, 5.1%
World’s Best Dark Lager: Budweiser Budvar Dark, 4.7%
World’s Best Strong Lager: Voll Damm, 7.2%
World’s Best Standard Pale Ale: Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted, 4.2%
World’s Best Strong Pale Ale: BrewDog The Physics, 5%
World’s Best Standard Dark Ale Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown, 4.8%
World’s Best Strong Dark Ale: Robinsons Old Tom, 8.5%
World’s Best Stout: Deschutes Obsidian Stout, 6.4%
World’s Best Porter: Fuller’s London Porter, 5.4%
World’s Best Grain-Only Wheat Beer: Grolsch Weizen, 5.3%
(tie) Meantime Wheat Grand Cru, 6.3%
World’s Best Flavored Wheat Beer: Meantime Raspberry Grand Cru, 6.5%

There were still more trophy winners. Here’s that list.

A final thought: Another a reason to hope that BrewDog finds a U.S. importer.

Who do you think said these things?

– “What’s probably changed the most in a generation is the variety-seeking nature of today’s beer drinker.”

– “I think the craft brews bring a really important interest among beer drinkers in how beer’s made, why beer’s special. I am astounded with how curious consumers are about beer, the process of beer.”

– “Beer’s a local business.”

Based upon the way the sentences are phrased and that it wouldn’t exactly be news for Deb Carey of New Glarus Brewing to say stuff like this you probably already knew it wasn’t somebody from the the world of small-batch brewing.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal has an interview with Leo Kiely, CEO at Molson Coors, today in a feature labeled “Boss Talk.” (Available by subscription or by buying the dead tree version.)

You may not consider what he has to say about management style, boosting share prices and consolidation in the beer industry relevant. If that’s the case, here’s one of my favorite links of the past week, with geeky details about Ballantine IPA in 1939, that I haven’t got around to writing about.

Still with me? I’m certainly not saying the guys in the boardrooms think like we do. Consider the first question and answer.

WSJ: How have American beer tastes been changing?

Mr. Kiely: What’s probably changed the most in a generation is the variety-seeking nature of today’s beer drinker. I sort of grew up as a beer drinker in the late 1960s, early ’70s, and my brand set was an import, Heineken, and a domestic brand, Schlitz. Today I watch a beer drinker in his late 20s, and he’ll have an import brand, maybe two, he enjoys. He’ll have a craft-brew brand. And the bulk of his beer drinking will still be a light lager.

Why, oh why do the big beer guys keep saying this? I guess they wouldn’t were it not true at some level but plenty of people have made it clear they aren’t ever going back to international light lagers.

To Kiely’s credit, the newly established AC Golden Brewing isn’t designed to throw bunches of advertising dollars at the “flavor of the year” before moving on to the next fad.

This gives us added flexibility and agility, and another way to get innovative ideas to market without redirecting critical resources from our core brands. We feel this gives us a real competitive advantage as a brand builder in the beer business. AC Golden will focus on patiently introducing a new brand and allowing it to grow over time. Look, we introduced Blue Moon 13 years ago and today it is one of the fastest growing craft-style beers. We like to call it our 13-year overnight success story.

Then there is White Shield in England. The Guardian recently offered a great story, beginning:

“It is miraculous. There is the gleaming, sprawling mass of Coors’ state-of-the-art brewery which looks more like an oil refinery than anything else. And there, to one side, in the Museum of Brewing, is the Worthington White Shield Brewery, a classic arrangement of copper mashing tuns and fermenting vessels, wooden floors and wooden joists, and even an old-fashioned hoist used to lift the sacks of malts. It’s like coming across the Koh-i-noor diamond in a box of theatrical paste jewellery.”

That’s not what’s going to be going on in Golden, Colo. But I know that next week at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver that I plan to try the Blue Moon Chardonnay beer that I missed last year (it won a medal). It was developed in Golden. So was a peanut butter beer.

Not sure I need to sample that one.

We (and I hope that includes you) toasted the life of Michael Jackson tonight, the words he gave us, and the beers for that matter.

I’m sure we will be again next week during the Great American Beer Festival.

This story from Martyn Cornell will be good to share then. The key paragraphs:

When I was researching the etymological roots of various European beer-related words, I discovered there had been a Gaulish personal name, Curmisagios, which translates as “the beer seeker”, or, if you like, “the beer hunter”. Among the tribes who lived in Gaul, home of Curmisagios, were the Belgae, whose own name was borrowed in 1790 by the subjects of the then Austrian Netherlands for the short-lived Etats-Belgiques-Unis – United States of Belgium – they set up during a soon-crushed rebellion against the Emperor in far-away Vienna.

The name Belgium was revived 40 years later, in 1830, by the Roman Catholic Flemings and Walloons of the old Austrian Netherlands for their own new country after they rose against the Protestant Dutch who dominated the post-Napoleonic United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In the 20th century the beers made in Belgium were championed by Michael Jackson, who – some of you can see where this is going already – called himself the Beer Hunter, and who was thus, in the language once spoken in ancient Belgium, the Curmisagios.

Cornell also is right to recommend Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion if you are going to read only one from the Beer Hunter.