Stan Hieronymus

Vintage beers: Restaurants and auctions

Big feetHere’s another prediction for 2007 I should have made: Vintage beers will command more attention.

Item 1: Liquid Solutions, which sells beer through the mail and from its Oregon City store, plans to begin auctioning vintage beers next week (Jan. 19).

First up are a bottle of Chimay Grand Reserver from 1994, a six-year vertical of Sierra Nevada Big Foot from 1997-2002, and a 1996 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale.

Item 2: Manhattan’s chic Gramercy Tavern now has a vintage menu that includes about 25 beers, created with the help of Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver.

“Generally they’re stronger beers, darker beers. They’re not kind of easy-drinking things; they’re more for an after-dinner drink, good with cheese and chocolate dessert, that kind of thing,” Kevin Garry, Gramercy’s assistant beverage director, tells the New York Post.

The star of the list is the 1992 Thomas Hardy, which sells for $23 (that’s a 6.33-ounce bottle). Oliver provided those bottles and says in the story, “It’s almost a little underground secret among beer aficionados, you know, where you might be able to find the good stuff.”

Or you can just be lucky. We always had a fond spot for Hardy’s when it was brewed at the Eldridge Pope brewery, which we toured in 1994 (there are multiple stories there – including days of walking in the English countryside), but weren’t really looking for it in Amarillo, Texas, in May of 1999.

While filling the gas tank before heading south to Palo Duro Canyon I noticed a liquor store next door, and since I was done pumping and Daria and Sierra were still inside the gas station I ducked into the store.

I spotted two four-packs of Thomas Hardy in one cooler, pulled them out and saw there were from 1992. There were $10.95 a four-pack. The clerk seemed a little surprised that somebody would be smiling so broadly while spending that much for eight small bottles.

Later a friend asked my why I hadn’t suggested a discount because the beer was old. (Really.)

A heck of a hell

In a weak moment while responding to Lew Bryson’s comment in the X Beer discussion I seem to have promised to write something nice about helles.

Not tough duty. I warmed to the task by drinking a glass of Class VI Golden Lager from Chama River Brewing in Albuquerque. It’s almost always the first beer I order when we’re at Chama. I usually forget and just ask for a “helles,” then explain I want the Class VI when I get a blank look from the server.

The aroma is fresh and bready, just what you expect from German pilsner malt. The flavor is rich but not distracting and the finish spicy and dry. It’s a beer that doesn’t get in the way of conversation; with an added benefit of being less than 5% abv.

Augustiner

I don’t usually spend much time thinking about beer when drinking this beer, since there are matters of conversation and ordering food. But if I do it’s not hard to imagine myself standing in the malting halls at the Augustiner brewery in Munich, two flights below the brewery yard. The air is damp and smells thick, like a field of grain after a solid rain.

At the other end of the hall a machine churns to life – chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug, beating out a rhythm, squeaking from time to time as it advances toward me. It is gently turning the malt, which is spread a shallow 12-15 centimeters high.

Augustiner brewery(Given that eyes adjust better to dark conditions that my camera, the photos here don’t quite portray what I saw. The top one shows the hall, the one to the right the machine from a long ways away with the light “turned up,” the next a chalkboard that tracks the status of a batch of malt. The image at the bottom shows that Augustiner has left some tradition behind – picturing when malt was turned by hand.)

Malting boardAugustiner is the last brewery in Germany with its own malting facility, and its floor-malting is one of only two left in the country. Augustiner bills itself as the “keeper of the tradition” but this is about more than tradition. Most agree that floor malting produces superior malt. By maintaining its own maltings Augustiner also has the option to pick from different barleys, sometimes using older varieties of that malt suppliers no longer offer.

Augustiner also controls the degree to which the malt is modified. Its brewers prefer it less modified because they conduct a decoction mash for each of their beers, a practice pretty much abandoned by the other Munich breweries.

Which brings us to Lagerbier Hell, a delightful expression of pilsner malt and Hallertau hops wrapped in a 5.2% abv package. Another fresh and bready beer, with a satisfying hop quality. Does decoction make a difference? That’s another discussion – many brewing scientists will argue not in a way that can be measured; others maybe agree, then say they can still taste difference.

For whatever the reason, Lagerbier Hell has an extra layer of flavor. You notice it when you first taste it and you might again if you revisit the beer in a thoughtful way. Otherwise it becomes willing background to conversation – perhaps at one of the long communal wooden tables in the restaurant on the brewery grounds.

Augustiner

Beer drinkers don’t spit

Wine tastersAnd so it has been written many times: Beer drinkers don’t spit.

As opposed to wine tasters.

Michael Steinberger of Slate provides a primer on “How to spit with the wine pros” that should make you happy to be a beer drinker.

There’s more to it than you might think, and maybe want to know, but this is a story that should make you smile.

I am working on it, every chance I get. Even spitting out mouthwash has become an opportunity to practice. If all this strikes you as a bit asinine and pathetic, you may have a point. After all, stylish spitting does not improve your ability to appraise wine; it only keeps your clothes clean and the floor dry. But the wine world is a clubby, often catty one, with its own rites of passage. If you want to be seen as legit by the Crips, it helps to have a drive-by shooting to your credit. If you want be seen as legit by wine geeks, you need to be able to shoot a mouthful of Chardonnay in a clean, straight line.

Good reason to stick to beer.

[Drawing copyright Slate.com]

The power of the label

Westvelteren corkThis really isn’t another beer & wine post, but we have to start with a little wine research.

The Economist carried a report a while back pointing out that the relationship between the price of a bottle of wine and its taste is weak, according to two studies in the Journal of Wine Economics.

In one study the reserchers charted how 120 people bid in auctions on champagne after tasting it blind, after inspecting only the bottle, and after tasting it while seeing the bottle. The bidding was 33% higher when tasters could only see the bottle than it was with blind tasting, implying that the champagne’s taste detracted from its perceived value. That’s why they mean by the power of the label.

Does the same thing happen with beer? Meaning what you’ll pay at a store or from a menu (as opposed to in action) because of a beer or brewery’s reputation.

This isn’t altogether bad. We should have brands we trust and to feel loyal to certain breweries (perhaps you had a great tour there, or you and a friend shared a bottled on a special occasion). But it doesn’t hurt to taste blind on occasion to keep some perspective.

For instance, I have a friend who recently paid “more than $20 a bottle” (he said with a sheepish smile) to have Westvleteren 12 shipped from Belgium. If you read Brew Like A Monk (go ahead and buy it, please) you’ll see I have great admiration for the beer and the Trappist monks to produce it. But I think my friend might do well picking up some Rochefort 10 (another Trappist beer) and tasting the two side by side. Rochefort 10 sells for $4.50-$5 in our part of the country and is relatively easy to restock.

He might decide the Westvleteren – before you comment, yes I know it comes WITHOUT a label – is well worth the higher price, but it won’t hurt to check.

Tired of extreme beers?

Here’s one “real” (compared to the previous list) prediction for 2007 and one resolution.

The prediction: We may eventually grow tried of talking about “extreme beer (or beers),” but we won’t quit drinking them.

I’m sure that you are going to be reading (and therefore talking) more about them because Lew Bryson has written an article I’m anxious to read for Beer Advocate magazine, whose subscribers often take a walk on the extreme side.

That should provoke plenty of discussion, but it seems both polite and sensible to wait until the story is published to join in.

However here’s a little background to explain my upcoming resolution.

In researching his story Bryson sent a request to a forum run by the Brewers Association. He received dozens of responses within a day, including a lengthy one that Teri Fahrendorf of Steelhead Brewing posted. (You can read his request and her response here.)

Much conversation followed, among commercial brewers and among enthusiasts at several beer discussion sites. Also from Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey, who wrote in his blog that “at no time have I ever considered what I do as a brewer to be extreme.” But he also points out that some spectacular beers have resulted from what Fahrendrof calls “testosterone-driven hop one-upmanship.”

Here’s where personal guilt sets in. These beers make good copy, and journalists live for good copy. I even won a an award (money, a trip) for writing about Imperial IPAs. More recently I wrote a story for All About Beer magazine about Sam Calagione, Arthur and three other brewers who made a trip to Belgium as part of Calagione’s research for his book, “Extreme Brewing.” Re-reading that story I see the words “extreme beers” used far too casually (by me).

The phrase has made for brilliant marketing since Jim Koch of Boston Beer began using it in the early 1990s. It’s easy to forget what a stir Sam Adams Triple Bock, then the world’s strongest beer at 17% abv, created when it debuted at the 1993 Great American Beer Festival.

“At the time, everyone was trying to make one new classic style. That’s what was driving innovation,” he said. “I wanted to step outside of that, to try to expand the boundaries of beer rather than expanding on traditional styles.”

And he wasn’t alone – in innovating or celebrating “extreme beer.”

But the term is double-edged because we’re not close to agreeing on a definition. When I type “extreme beers” I don’t mean they must be unbalanced, jammed with hops and overflowing with alcohol. More than 90% of the beer sold in this country is some form of international lager (Miller, Heineken, Corona, etc.). Folks, we’re not part of the mainstream. That IPA Fahrendorf brewed in 1990 is still extreme to most the population.

Roger Baylor (publican of Rich O’s Public House in New Albany, Ind.) has authored the motto for us all to live by: “Extremism in the defense of good beer is no vice.”

But, you know, I’m wrong to think everybody agrees. In her letter, Fahrendorf writes about brewers “more interested in balanced beers than in extreme beers.” That would imply the two are mutually exclusive. Clearly, we’ve got a failure to communicate.

Thus (finally) my resolution: I will not use the term “extreme beer” unless the conversation absolutely demands it, and when I do I will make it clear just what I mean.