beers of conviction

Because foeders & indigenous

First foeders at New Belgium Brewing, 2000All About Beer posted a story yesterday about foeders (or foudres should you prefer the French spelling to the Dutch) and the Foeder for Thought Festival today in Florida.

I point to this primarily, to be honest, so I have an excuse to use this photo. I think I have posted it here before, but I like it. It was taken at New Belgium Brewing in June 2000. The brewery had recently taken delivery of its first four 60-barrel foeders (it now has 64, many of them larger). The tanks were outside because they were being swelled (filled with water) to make them beertight before they were filled.

This tank didn’t take to swelling all that well, and my back got soaked while I captured this image. Not long before New Belgium had put its first 2,000 hectoliter tanks (about 1,700 barrels, or twice what the average brewpub produces in a year) into place. They are in the background.

The AAB story features Foeder Crafters of America prominently. They are local*, and I wrote about them for Beer Advocate magazine last July. Their business has really taken off since Nathan Zeender of Right Proper Brewing and I visited them last April. That’s Nathan on the right in the photo below and Matt Walters of Foeder Crafters on the left.

Nathan and Phil Wymore from Perennial Ales* will be talking about foeders in one of the Salons at SAVOR in June. Here’s the whole skinny about Foeder Beer: A Search for Delicious, “Perennial Artisan Ales of St. Louis and Right Proper Brewing Co. of Washington, DC both use large oak foeders as a conduit for the expression of their house mixed-fermentation cultures. The goal is characterful beers with layers of complexity and charm. For the vast majority of the human endeavor of fermentation, wood vessels were the medium—these current-day foeder beers are really more revivalist than innovative. Taste the results of their experimentation with four unique beers.”

You can catch that and still have time for Indigenous American Beers – Past & Present at 9:30. Again, the description, “What did the first beers brewed in America taste like? Join Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery and ‘Brewing Local’ author Stan Hieronymus as they provide insight into the beers Native Americans had been making for hundreds of years before Columbus arrived. Sample beers recreated from ancient recipes—once you try all three, Stan and Sam are sure you will agree that militant beer laws like the ‘Reinheitsgebot’ and pants are equally cumbersome and unnecessary. They invite you to wear a loincloth or one of those sweet brewer’s kilts to this seminar in a show of solidarity.”

Matt Walters, Foeder Crafters of American, Nathan Zeender Right Proper Brewing

* Perennial Ales is also local, meaning St. Louis, Missouri. I point this out because yesterday I was talking to a college student who noticed my cell has a New Mexico area code. I explained I live in St. Louis and he asked where St. Louis is located.

A gose. w/ cactus. in a can. from Sierra Nevada.

Sierra Nevad Otra Vez

Remember back in the day when you said “We’ll see Ballast Point sell for a billion bucks before Sierra Nevada releases a gose-style beer made with prickly pear and grapefruit and packages it in a can?”

Put that prediction in the loss column.

Otra Vez will be available year round beginning in January. In case you are curious, it means “another time.” And I thought it meant “alternative universe.”

(Photo courtesy Sierra Nevada Brewing)

Ales Through the Ages, March 18-20

Ales Through The AgesA weekend of beer and history in Colonial Williamsburg, with a speaker lineup that includes Randy Mosher, Martyn Cornell, Ron Pattinson, Mitch Steele, Tom Kehoe and other people more interesting than you realize (plus me, so there’s the disclaimer).

You need to need more? “Ales through the Ages offers a journey through the history of beer with some of the world’s top beer scholars. We will explore ancient ales and indigenous beers of the past, examine the origins and consequences of industrial brewing, discover the ingredients brewers have used through time, and share a toast to brewers past.”

I’m not sure where else on earth you’ll be able to see Martyn Cornell, Mitch Steele, and Ron Pattinson give presentations on a Sunday morning. (Here’s the whole program.)

So pardon the plug for an event I’m speaking at. Even though it’s not until March 18-20 I thought you’d want to know about it. Registration is already open.

What if [fill in the beer blank] never happened?

This bit of speculation from W. Blake Gray hit my radar too late to appear in the Monday links: “The Judgment of Paris tasting was the single most important event in the history of wine. In a 1976 blind tasting, French judges chose Napa Valley wines over the best of Bordeaux and Burgundy. The repercussions still echo to this day. But what if it never happened?”

His speculation — starting from a slightly different but important perspective, that the tasting happened, but Time magazine never reported it — is both amusing and illuminating. There must be a beer doppelgänger out there, right? Maybe we’re looking at a Session topic. Even though no beer event, event, incident, development, whatever, resonates like “Judgment of Paris” there’s got to be a starting point. What would it be?

Three quick contenders . . .

What if Fritz Maytag had not bought Anchor Brewing in 1965?

What if the committee charged in 1906 with interpreting the meaning of the Pure Food and Drug Act had decided to implement some sort of legal differentiation between all malt and adjunct beer, or enacted a proposal that lager beer be required to lager at least three months? (Both were considered and rejected.)

What if the USDA had not released the Cascade hop variety in 1972? The story.

The last days of lager beer in St. Louis

A story about sales of lager beer in St. Louis ending for the year in September of 1854 was repeated in numerous newspapers, and later in a variety of books. It was a reminder that at the time lager beer was seasonal and it also served as a benchmark when measuring future lager sales, including in comparison to what was referred to as common beer.

Lager beer sales, St. Louis, 1854

The other day I found the original story in the Daily Missouri Republican, and although it doesn’t include any facts not otherwise reported it does add wonderful context. It seems that back before there were imperial stouts brewed under a full moon and aged along with the cremated remains of John Wayne in the wagon he drove in Stagecoach to stand in line for there were, well, lagers.

So here’s the report:

“‘The last days of Pompeii’ is a romance of Belwer [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], known to the world; but ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis,’ is a romance yet to be written. We certainly will not pretend to write it, for we claim no merit as a novelist; but we will give facts, plain facts, and if any one feels interest enough in them to use them for a theme of romantic literature, we most cordially allow him the privilege of doing so.

“With last Sunday, September 17th, the last drop of Lager Beer in St. Louis went down to – posterity. It was, and is no more. During the past extremely hot summer, it must have been some sort of gratification to our German population to have resorted to a good glass of Lager Beer, and freely did they make use of it. At places where, as we are told, the best of that article was kept, scarcely enough hands could be procured to serve the daily increasing number of consumers. But the extraordinary demand, occasioned by the extraordinary heat, soon exhausted the supply. One house after the other announced to its customers, that next day ‘the last barrel of Lager Beer’ would be tapped. This direful news brought grief unto many, and not a few were this person: stopped at street corners by inquisitive friend, with the often-repeated query ‘Where is good Lager Beer yet to be had?’ At last, two places only remained where the needful could be got – one, a spacious bar room, was the Mecca, during the day; the other, being a garden, in the evening. But days hurried on. The demand, having been concentrated to these two places, was too great for their supply, and finally, the bar room gave out. Matter now seemed to wear a gloomy appearance. ‘Mr. K. has shut his house,’ was sad tiding indeed. However, the consolation remained. The delicious fluid could yet be obtained at the garden, as so it went on for a few days. But, alas, only for a few days. One fine morning, as a social company were gathered under the beautiful acacia trees in that garden, the otherwise very kind and affable host, with one glass full of Lager Beer, in his left ‘fist,’ advanced toward the company, and handing, it to one of them, pronounced it to be positively, ‘the last drop of our last barrel!’ Great consternation followed this announcement, because it then became evident that the days of Lager Beer in St. Louis for this summer were numbered. But soon a report was spread, that a certain Mr. G. had two kegs of needful yet left for his particular friends. It did not take long for that report to make the round of the particular friends of this benevolent gentleman, numerous as they are, but it embraced even foes, and the two kegs had only a bare existence, for soon after they were tapped a deep, hollow sound, in answer to a nick at the bottom, gave satisfactory evidence that they were empty.

“In the afternoon of that very same day it was discovered – how we cannot tell – that at a certain brewery downtown, a few barrels were still left to satisfy the wishes of our German community; and, in pursuance of this information, a perfect migration of our German citizens took place to the popular spot. But there, as we are informed, the Lager Beer is also gone ! and so we have recorded ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis.'”