beers of conviction

Kveik: Time to think outside the farmhouse?

Kveik paparazzi
Joe Stange posted the photo above on Twitter, captioning it “Kveik and the paparazzi.” That’s Lars Marius Garshol on the left and me on the right. The photo below provides a close up look at kveik, but maybe not as clear a picture as we got today with the release of a paper in frontiers in Microbiology titled “Traditional Norwegian Kveik Are a Genetically Distinct Group of Domesticated Saccharomyces cerevisiae Brewing Yeasts.”

Kveik - just waiting for the wort to finish boiling
Backing up just a bit, not long after I landed in Norway two weeks ago I posted a short video of foam pouring out of an overcarbonated beer that have been fermented with kveik. That prompted this question: “Doing research for a future book, I hope?” The answer is that I am not working on a book involving Norwegian farmhouse beers, kveik, farmhouse beers from other regions, or other ancient drinks. Garshol has that under control, and although it seems the research part never ends (because it really doesn’t ever end) the result will be a book from Brewers Publications in 2020.

I was in Norway at the invitation of organizers of Bergen Ølfestival, a two-day event featuring more than 40 Norwegian breweries in the stunningly beautiful city of Bergen. I gave a rather technical presentation about hops to brewers the evening before the festival started, then a less technical one for the public on the first day. Of course, one of the ways Rolv Bergesen convinced me to make the trip was a chance to visit Norwegian farmhouse breweries. We (Daria, who arrived a few days after I did, Stange, and Garshol) headed to the Dyrvedalen valley south of Voss the day after the festival, and Sjur Rørlien took us to two farms where beer is still made. I will have details in a future issue of Zymurgy magazine.

Now back to kveik.

Lars Marius Garshol
Although Garhol’s presentation at the festival was in Norwegian the graphics made it easy to follow, and he laid out much of the information published today. He also posted an excellent summary in his blog, although this doesn’t really summarize easily.

At a geek level there is this: “The results were quite surprising: kveik belongs to Beer 1. This is the group that has Belgian/German strains on one side, and UK/US ones on the other.” Too geeky? If you are looking for background, I wrote about the family tree of yeast for All About Beer magazine last year.

At a disrupting the beer landscape level there is the fact that kveik ferments at much higher temperatures than other yeast strains without creating off flavors and it isn’t wild. It may have resulted from a beer from Beer 1 mating with a wild yeast, but it is POF- rather than POF+ (again see the family tree story).

When kviek started showing up in the United States less than two years ago brewers I talked to were interested in using it in “farmhouse” beers because it came from a farmhouse. They expected saison attributes because too often, and incorrectly, saison and farmhouse are used as synonyms. The brewers who will be creating new and interesting beers fermenting them with kveik are the ones who appreciate it for its difference. What might a porter made with kveik taste like, or a brown ale, or a beer made with two-row malt and three types of basil?

Ales Through the Ages canceled

Ales Through the Ages in Colonial Williamsburg has been canceled.

Scheduled for Oct. 19-21 in Virginia, ticket sales by the end of August did not meet a level that would guarantee the event would be successful.

The program looked as strong as somebody interested in beer history could hope for, but it would appear I might be wrong. That those who had signed up to attend were notified almost two weeks ago and that little conversation followed beyond some exchanges on Twitter also suggests (taking a deep breath) an overall lack of interest in beer history.

On a personal level, I am disappointed because I enjoy the company of the speakers who were to be there. As important, it is a learning opportunity lost.

Ales Through the Ages (brochure included)

Sorry, this event has been canceled.

Questions about Ales Through the Ages II have popped up in various forums, so here is the speaker lineup again. You may download the brochure with the complete schedule and vital information here.

For a sense of what took place at the first Ales Through the Ages, read Martyn Cornell’s recap.

The speaker lineup this year:

FRIDAY, October 19
5:15 p.m. – Keynote presentation. Pete Brown.

SATURDAY, October 20
9 a.m. – From Caelia to Celctic Brews & Brigid to Benedict: Beer Beyond Roman Rule. Travis Rupp.
9:45 a.m. – The Sexual Habits of Hops: How They Changed Beer, and Changed It Again. Stan Hieronymus.
11 a.m. – British Fungus: Brettanomyces in British Brewing. Ron Pattinson.
2 p.m. – Messing About with Old Ale & Beer. Marc Meltonville.
2:45 p.m. – Pale Ale Before IPA: The Birth of a Legend. Martyn Cornell.
4 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

SUNDAY, October 21
9 a.m. – Gruit: Back to the Future of Brewing? Butch Heilshorn.
9:45 a.m. – Molasses Beer, Hops and the Enslaved: Brewing in 18th Century Virginia. Frank Clark and Lee Graves.
11 a.m. – Albany Ale: 400 Years of Brewing in New York’s Hudson Valley. Craig Gravina.
2 p.m. – The Nobel Failure: How Vermont’s Period of Prohibition Shape the Present Culture and Landscape. Adam Krakowski.
3:15 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

Harder to spell? Amyloglucosidase or Reinheitsgebot?

One of the secrets to brewing the reigning beer of the moment, Brut IPA, isn’t really a secret. Many brewers give full credit to the enzyme amyloglucosidase, which plays a significant role in producing bone dry beers. Its not unusual to read that craft brewers have been using the enzyme “for a while” in “big” beers like imperial stout.

But just for the record, the enzyme was first used by breweries that don’t fit the definition of craft to make light beers. And only a few years ago the people who work at breweries that do fit the definition mostly talked among themselves about using enzymes. Jack McAuliffe and Fritz Maytag might have something to do with that.

When Frank Prial of the New York Times visited McAuliffe at New Albion Brewing in 1979 he wrote:

Jack McAuliffe boasts that his beer is a completely natural product. “We use malt, hops, water and yeast,” he said. “There are no enzymes, which the big breweries use to speed up the process of mashing and aging; there are no broad-spectrum antibiotics, which they use to stop bacteria from growing, and there are no heading agents to create an artificial head. The proteins which are filtered out of most beers are what make the head. We don’t filter.”

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015 that marked the 50th anniversary of when he bought controlling interest in Anchor Brewing Company, Maytag said, “I wanted to be holier than the Pope.”

Mind you, there was no beer in the world more traditional than ours. Pure water, good yeast, malted barley, hops. Period. No additives, no chemicals, no nothing. That was a theme we felt strong about. To make old-fashioned beer in a pure, simple way.”

Times change.

Monday beer links: What if the King hadn’t been dethroned?

BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 07.16.18

Farewell To The King
A decade after Anheuser-Busch’s sale, beer still pours from St. Louis brewery but much has changed.
Beer in America changed, July 13, 2008, when Anheuser-Busch agreed to a takeover from InBev. Before getting to the “what ifs” there is this new story, one published when the deal was finalized, and one that tracks how the story played out on the front pages.

At the time, columnist Bill McClellan asked, “If the brewery is sold, how will we know who we are?”

I remember interviewing a man who had just been fired from some dead-end job. I asked about his background. “My parents were both bottlers at the brewery,” he said. I said something to the effect that those were pretty good jobs. He nodded. “But I wasn’t raised to think I was better than anybody else,” he said.

If you’re not from St. Louis — or haven’t spent years here — that might seem like a strange thing to say. Why would the child of blue-collar workers even think of saying such a thing? But if you’re from here, you understand. Brewery jobs have always been special.

Read more