beer & wine

Should you, do you, the smell the cork?

Lost Abbey corkI do like the sound of bottle of beer being uncorked, the pop followed by the lively sound of carbonation, or perhaps . . .

“Oh, bleep, we’ve got a gusher.”

Not to harp on the beer versus wine thing but that’s one thing beer has over wine (Champagne excepted). I thought about this a couple of weeks ago when I watched a waiter hand a customer in the restaurant a cork after he opened a bottle of wine. The man sniffed the cork and nodded, then the waiter poured a bit of wine. The man swirled and sniffed, then nodded again. The waiter went on to pour two full glasses.

Was there a point to this? I understand that sommeliers will sometimes smell a cork for a sign that a wine might be “corked” but it is hardly dependable. And beer is susceptible to the same problems with tainted corks.

But I don’t think you are going to catch me smelling the cork next time we have a bottle of Ommegang or Saint Somewhere or some other beer sold with a cork-and-cage top. Just doesn’t feel right.

 

Monday musing: The carbon footprint of Fat Tire

The carbon footprint of New Belgium Fat Tire AleNew Belgium Brewing and The Climate Conservancy have released a 36-page paper that assesses the carbon footprint of a 6-pack of Fat Tire.

If you are one of those people who flips to the last page of the mystery book, the answer is “3,189 grams of CO2.” The New Belgium blog points out that “in and of itself is kind of a meaningless number. However, it provides a baseline to measure the results of future improvements and, most revealing, is what makes up that number. There definitely were some surprises.”

Not exactly light reading, because green is a complicated color.

You’ll notice, for instance, that glass and retail (red and blue) make up almost half of Fat Tire’s carbon footprint. So if New Belgium sold less beer in bottles and didn’t insist it be refrigerated along its route to us then its footprint would be smaller. And the brewery would sell less beer, and we’d be less happy with the condition of what is in the bottle. See, not so simple.

You may not want to wade through the entire report, but at least take the time to read the conclusions (page 34) and give them a little thought.

– James McMurtry is a favorite musician and I’m working on a book about brewing with wheat. So I gotta love this intro to a review of Childish Things:

McMurtry is like wheat beer – cloudy, agricultural, substantial and something of an acquired taste, you might be put off after a few sips but if you get the taste, it’ll stay with you.

I like Childish Things better than the reviewer, but that’s another discussion.

Beer in the big cities: NY Craft Beer Week Sept. 12-21 puts a nice focus on neighborhoods and crawls.

Nothing timid about Beer Exposed in London, Sept. 25-27. Look at the lineup of speakers. Boak (of Boak and Bailey, where I learned of the event) expresses concerns others of us might share browsing through the hip web site.

But… the whole thing smacks a bit of “beer is the new wine” to me. There’s quite a hefty entrance fee — £14 in advance, £17 on the door, which doesn’t include any of the beer walks or talks. Lots of the talks are focused on beer and food. There’s no-one over the age of 30 on the promotional material. There’s even a bloody dress code. Although if this is mostly to stop the sexist t-shirts, I don’t mind so much…

I’ll look forward to reading reports from the UK blogging contingency.

 

Win a copy of ‘Grape vs. Grain’

Bamforth: Grape vs. GrainGot a caption for this photo of brewing professor/author Charlie Bamforth taken during a food-fashion-themed cookout?

If you can do better than this . . .

“A kiss of tannin; a kiss of hops… brightens, rather than bitters.”

“Both of Charles’ students get an A, for Alcohol.”

. . . then scoot on over to the Cambridge University Press blog for a chance to win a copy of Bamforth’s newest book, Grape vs. Grain and five Grape vs. Grain coasters.

Next week I hope to have time to “review” (or maybe compare and contrast) Grape vs. Grain and He Said Beer, She Said Wine by Sam Calagione and Marnie Old.

Meanwhile, if you are going to be in San Francisco on May 8 you could stop by Anchor Brewing at 5:30 p.m., meet Bamforth and get a book signed.

Keep the beer; I’ll take the Cartier

At the risk of poking the hornet’s nest — I don’t have a category here for “ethics” and not really criticism per se — I must pass along this story. Seems like a better deal than a trip to St. Louis.

From the UK wine magazine Decanter:

Wine magnate Bernard Magrez has outraged a group of journalists by offering each of them a Cartier wristwatch worth €1,650 (£1,322/$2,641).

The watches were distributed after a press lunch hosted by Magrez and French actor Gerard Depardieu on 26 March. The lunch was held at the Alain Ducasse restaurant at the Hotel Plaza Athénée in Paris. Around 50 journalists attended – including wine critic and ex-Revue du Vin de France editor Thierry Desseauve, Philippe Bidalon from L’Express magazine and Gérard Muteaud of Le Nouvel Observateur.

One journalist told Decanter.com that he and his colleagues discussed the situation and agreed among themselves that keeping the watches could be misconstrued.

Or maybe correctly construed.

What do ‘image seeking’ beer drinkers pick?

IPA - Woman and hopsMerlot does not suck.

Oh, sorry, this is a beer blog. But before returning to beery talk this wine fact just in: Merlot made up 20% of the wine purchases made by a group labeled “image seekers,” called that because they like to others to think they know a lot about wine, according to a 18-month study called Project Genome, conducted by The Nielsen Co. and released by Constellation Wines.

It seems that not everybody saw the movie Sideways. Or maybe consumers talk one way and buy another. Project Genome defines “image seekers are consumers who use the Internet to harvest factoids about wine and like to experiment with trendy wines and packaging.” However, when they bought wine for home it was merlot.

So what’s the beer of image seekers?

According to IRI the best selling craft style nationally is Pale ale. But in various parts of the country the leader may be Pale ale, wheat beers, bock or amber lagers.

Sour beers? Those red-hot Italians? Barrel aged? Nowhere to be seen.

How about IPA? Fifth in three different regions and fifth overall — with a bullet (up 34% in supermarkets in 2007).

Perhaps the next merlot.