beers of conviction

Ales Through the Ages II

Sorry, this event has been canceled.

Some of the world’s brightest beer scholars and I will be returning to Colonial Williamsburg for another round of Ales Through the Ages. The last one was terrific (read Martyn Cornell’s recap) and the next one is Oct. 19-21.

My brochure arrived yesterday.

Ales Through the Ages, Colonial Williamsburg
Here’s the speaker lineup (there are also receptions and speakers roundtables Saturday and and Sunday):

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.
(Pardon the whining, but I also followed Travis last year. This is a lousy position. He is an engaging speaker who actually knows what he is talking about.)
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.

Monday’s fermentation links: ‘It’s just beer news’

BEER AND WINE LINKS 04.16.18

I’m pretty sure Alan McLeod was lamenting the use of the term “deep dive” in his commentary on recent beer news last week. Fact is when I see the words “deep dive” I expect what follows to go deep less often than not. The good news is that several of today’s links are to stories that dig decently deep. I might also add that I’m in the midst of three separate dives myself (also known as a bid idea), so posting here will remain random indefinitely.

Has American Craft Beer Taken Over the World?
Lew Bryson asks important questions, including these, “Is the success of American craft keeping other countries from developing their own palate? Is this some kind of beer imperialism?” I also was in Chile to judge Copa Cervezas de América, although I arrived too late for that trip to the coast. Later in the week John Roberts of Max Lager’s Brewery and I made it to Cerveceria SpoH. It is located in a leather-making district, where the air is pleasantly thick with the aroma of tannins. Spoh is hops spelled backwards (because somebody trademarked the word “hops” in Chile) and, sure enough, the brewery is best known for Animal IPA. But we also tasted beers that made it clear brewer Max Ivanovic is good at subtle.

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Lager diversity: Beyond pilsner and ‘lite’

The drumbeat supporting lager as the new new thing seems to be getting louder, but I’m pretty certain I heard such chatter before anybody suggested Juicy or Hazy IPA would become a defined style. And certainly before glitter beer began to glitter. Patience seems necessary. Nonetheless there is evidence of change almost hourly on my Twitter feed. For example (click on “talking about this” to read the conversations that followed):

But what comes after pilsners and light/lite beers? Burial Beer’s Ambient Terrain series looks encouraging. And there will be plenty of ideas to repurpose on display at the Urban Chestnut Brewing LagerFest in St. Louis.

Urban Chestnut Brewing Company LagerFest logo

Recipes for most of the beers that will be on offer came from Ron Pattinson’s wish list.

Firestone Walker Brewing, which you will recall makes a very popular pilsner (Pivo) and recently began shipping an all-malt lager (Firestone Lager) that is basically a helles, picked 1896 Munich Lagerbier. The only malt in the grist is Munich.

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Making lagers cool again

Ron Pattinson posted a bit of history Thursday about lagers from Barclay Perkins, plus a recipe for 1932 Draught Lager. And Kristen England added notes about brewing the version from Bent Distillery he’ll pour April 22 in St. Louis at LagerFest.

Cool stuff. Also this week, I’ve been trading email with other brewers about the lagers they made for the event. More cool stuff. But the highlight of the week was discovering that the Bolzen Beer Band has been added to the program. Only the addition of Brave Combo and some sort of battle of the alternative polka bands could make it better. They might bring down the brick walls at Urban Chestnut Brewing Company.

Recipe for Kulmbacher Export, brewed by August Schell Brewing Co.

Pattinson provided most, but not all, the recipes used to make the beers that will be served. Here’s the log from the December day that August Schell Brewing in Minnesota brewed an 1879 Kulmbacher Export. When I asked David Berg at Schell’s why he picked this particular recipe he replied, “My love for Oberfranken.” Although the recipe targets 80 IBU this beer is closer to the high 40s and “pretty dang bitter.”

For further reading he suggests digging into “Beer Brewing in Bamberg, 200 Years Ago.”

Different Days

We saw Jason Isbell (and The 400 Unit, with James McMurtry opening; pretty good deal) in concert last week. The playlist included his song, “Different Days,” and although the lyrics have next to nothing to do with what follows I heard his voice singing “Those were different days” when I came across this passage today.

It appeared in the May/June 1998 issue of The New Brewer magazine, at the time the journal of the Institute of Brewing Studies, the predecessor of the Brewers Association. The “Industry in Review” included a few paragraphs titled “Running Out of Novelty Flavors.”

This seems to be the case, and maybe it’s not such a bad situation. The short history of U.S. craft brewing contains an incredibly long list of different, non-traditional grains, herbs spices, fruits and a few vegetables that commercial brewers have put in their beer. Sometimes it’s more for fun and excitement—to create a special or novelty beer—and other times it’s more for profit—to participate in a growing category. Alternatively, it gives a brewery the distinction of being the “first” to brew with a particular ingredient, a claim to fame that usually far outlast the product itself. A notable example is the story of McMenamins Mars Bar Ale, which has achieved industry folk legend status, even though it was one batch of beer more than a decade ago.

In a market full of porters, stouts, bocks and wheat beers, brewers are still trying hard to come up with new beers to distinguish themselves from other competitors and crave out their own niche. In 1997 a few brewers made beer using hemp seeds and a few others made the first vanilla beers. Now that the list of all conceivable ingredients being in drinkable beer—within reason—seems close to being exhausted, the trend of trying to invent the new novelty may be ending.

That notwithstanding, craft brewing will continue to be a safe realm for creating new flavors and experimenting with different grains, different yeast, and new combinations of ingredients never before attempted. In addition, the whole world of indigenous beer styles brewed by different cultures still awaits the more adventurous micro- and pubbrewers.

No, I did not find this while researching pastry stouts.