beer & wine

Palo Santo Marron: A beer and a movie

So would you pair Palo Santo Marron (shortened to Palo Santo for the rest of this post), the latest release from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, with popcorn?

Probably not, but it is tempting simply because the beer comes with a movie. Dogfish Head has enclosed “Take Time” with the first 10,000 four-packs of Palo Santo with a note that the length (19 minutes) of the documentary about making the beer coincides with the optimal time it takes to finish a snifter of the 12% beer.

As you can see, Dogfish made the video available on YouTube in two parts. I put the second part here because you get right to the nuts and bolts. Start at the beginning if you like.

Watching it (while drinking the beer, of course) the thought occurred to me that had there been DVDs and YouTube in the 1970s this is something Robert Mondavi would have done. Sorry to introduce wine and marketing but it’s relevant. The story behind this beer won’t fit on a neck label or in a Twitter feed.

Watch them head into the back country of Paraguay and shoot bullets at the tree this wood comes from. Or listen to Bill Wehr talking about the largest wooden brewing vessels (holding 10,000 gallons) built in America since Prohibition.

Now back to the beer. Were I to play the “describe this beer in one word” game with Palo Santo that word would be “bark.”

Not in the sense of a dog howling at the moon. Bark as in wood. Aromatic and intense, unlike anything I can remember, blending with a boatload of flavors that test the list of beer descriptors posted yesterday. Add chalky, charred and gritty for starters. That’s meant as a compliment.

Words to describe the beer you are tasting

More adjectives: 107 words to describe hop aroma and flavor.

Until robots take over our tasting world we’re left to consider how to communicate the aromas and flavors we experience with beer.

A review of “Perfumes: The Guide” in the current New Yorker magazine makes that point.

The words and the references are really useful only to people who have had the same experiences and use the same vocabulary: those references are to a shared basis of sensory experience and a shared language. To people who haven’t had those shared experiences, this way of talking can seem like horse manure, and not in a good way.

The book was written by Tania Sanchez and Luca Turin, and since Turin was the protagonist in the delightful book “Emperor of Scent” five years ago it gives me an excuse to quote this vaguely relevant passage:

“Look at beer, which is a very interesting cultural product. Beer smells like a burp. Gasses from someone’s stomach. Lovely. Again a product of fermentation, which is to say decay. Decay enhances smells and flavors, yet we have a sharp ability to identify decay, because decaying things will kill you. Bacterial and yeast decomposition.

“Which can give you ‘I wouldn’t touch that in a million years’ and, at the same time and in the same culture, mind you, ‘I will pay great sums to consumer Rodenbach,’ which is a miracle of a beer from Belgium. A miraculous, powdery apple flavor. Those Rodenbach yeast have an I.Q. of at least two hundred. Fucking genius yeast.”

Returning to the point. A shared tasting vocabulary serves a certain purpose. So I pass this along to do with as you please. It comes from the Merchant du Vin newsletter.

1. Words to describe malt flavors: Malty, biscuity, breadlike, grainy, rich, deep, roasty, cereal, cookie-like, coffeeish, caramelly, toffee-like, molasses-like, malt complexity, smoky, sweet, autumnal, burnt cream, scalded milk, oatmeal, rustic, layered.

2. Words to describe hop flavor and bitterness: Piney, citrusy, grapefruity, earthy, musty, spicy, sharp, bright, fresh, herbal, zippy, lemony, newly-mown lawn, aromatic, floral, springlike, brilliant, sprucelike, juniper-like, minty, pungent, elegant, grassy.

3. Words to describe fermentation flavors deriving from yeast: Fresh-baked bread, clovelike, bubblegum, yeasty, Belgiany, aromatic, tropical, subtle, fruity, clean, banana-like (and for some sour or extreme beers) horseblankety, earthy, musty.

4. Words to describe conditioning (carbonation): Soft, effervescent, spritzy, sparkling, zippy, pinpoint, bubbly, gentle, low carbonation, highly carbonated.

5. Words to describe body & mouthfeel: Rich, full, light, slick, creamy, oily, heavy, velvety, sweet, dry, thick, thin.

6. Words to describe warm ethanol (alcohol) flavors from strong beer: Warm finish, heat, vodka, esters, pungent, strength.

Don Barkley, micro pioneer, returns to his roots

Don Barkley, arguably the closest active link to America’s original microbrewery, is returning to small-scale brewing. The North Bay Business Journal has the scoop.

Visionaries from Mendocino County are looking to break down the walls between fine wine and craft beer in wine country. Don Barkley, a legend in U.S. craft brewing, left his post as master brewer at Ukiah-based Mendocino Brewing Co. in November and is preparing the inaugural releases this spring from a rare winery-brewery in south Napa.

Barkley worked for Jack McAuliffe in the 1970s at New Albion Brewing in Sonoma County shortly after McAuliffe started the first “built new” (it wasn’t really new) microbrewery. Last April when the Brewers Association honored the reclusive McAuliffe it was Barkley who accepted the award.

Barkley retired from Mendocino Brewing in November after nearly 25 years at the brewery. Mendocino acquired much of the new Albion equipment as well as the house yeast after New Albion closed.

He said he is looking forward to returning to smaller batch brewing, working in a 15-barrel brewhouse instead of with a 100-barrel system.

“Jack McAuliffe’s favorite comment was winemakers are poets and beer makers are industrialists,” Barkley said. “We’re going to see whether an industrialist can become a poet.”

This sounds like a discussion we’ve already had.

Go figure: Budometer is a wine taste test

Call it a beer mindset, but when I saw “Budometer” I thought beer.

Turns out the test you can take at the Wall Street Journal or here (“get your buds done”) is designed to help you discover what kind of wine taster you.

But before moving along, consider that the guy behind this, Tim Hanni, “is on a mission to combat snobbery in the wine industry.”

He argues that no one has a palate superior to anyone else’s, and that there’s nothing wrong with liking wines many experts consider tacky, like White Zinfandel. He also thinks traditional tasting notes comparing wine to berries or chocolate are useless in helping most consumers find wines they enjoy.

The takeaway: Not everybody tastes everything the same way. That clearly is relevant to drinking beer.

Hanni has classified tasters into three categories: tolerant, sensitive and hyper-sensitive. And the The Lodi International Wine Awards will use these classifications at its upcoming competition.

Hanni’s also interested in the role aspiration plays in preferences, because “the amount of time and effort you put into learning about wine strongly influences preferences and buying behavior.” Now we’re moving into the territory of $750 bottles of wine (the new price for Screaming Eagle).

Go ahead take the test even if you’ve vowed wine will never pass your lips. You might learn something about your beer drinking self. I scored between 6 and 7 on the scale of 9, putting me with the “intensity and balance are key” crowd.

Who’ll be deciding what our beer choices are?

TrendsetterThis is a story overtly about wine, so you might not care, and about trends, so you might not care.

Rather than revisiting the discussion about if we want our beer hip or sick I will simply argue that trends matter because they may determine what’s available for us to drink. After all, hipsters managed to slow the demise of Pabst.

So consider this report last week from the annual Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento, the largest conference of the year for the U.S. wine business.

The wines you’ll be savoring five years from now are being picked today by enological trendsetters barely old enough to drink.

Is it possible we might substitute the word beer for wine (and enological)?

The story reports that “what they’re looking for – wines that are quirky, regional, with rich background stories – isn’t what the mainstream domestic industry seems to be selling today.”

Can you think of a mainstream domestic drinks industry that seems to be struggling with growth?

Go give it a read. You may also enjoy the direction of this commentary: When the Young Eat the Rich.

You’ll find fodder for both sides of the “extreme beer” debate, for instance, but I’ll leave you with two takeaways:

– SABMiller may not yet have figured out how to wow the Gen Y millennials, but is right about their impact. They want products that are handcrafted, unique . . . “authentic.”

– Sommeliers, or Cicerones, are important.

And I also have to repeat the final quote of the story: “We way overestimate the knowledge of the American consumer.”

Is he talking about us?