beers of conviction

“Brauereisterben: The sad state of German beer culture” has been making the rounds since Slate posted it yesterday. Not exactly news to those who have been paying attention. But Slate doesn’t devote much bandwidth to beer, and doesn’t count among those paying attention.

The word Brauereisterben, drawn for the term for Germany’s dying forests (Waldsterben), has been around since the mid-90s. No disputing that beer production and consumption are sinking, but when Americans are called upon to comment on anybody else’s beer culture we should take care using words like “sad state” in the headline.

It would have been one thing had Germans said just that in the story, but it hardly reads as if they were consulted. Additionally, the supporting evidence was at times questionable — or best I can tell plain wrong.

For instance, the statement that Berlin supported 700 breweries in the early nineteenth century. According to Ron Pattinson’s meticulously documented European Beer Guide 82 breweries operated in Berlin in 1800 and 42 by 1816. Go back to 1730 and 426 existed, but most of those would have been in homes. Where does the number 700 come from? Perhaps Wikipedia, which in turn cites the German Beer Institute. Pattinson has documented just a few of the errors there.

Or there is the aside that German beer production is less than half of the United States’ output — not surprising since Germany has only something more than a quarter of the population.

And then there are the parts of the story that are missing. Such as details in an article by Sylvia Kopp, who is German, in All About Beer Magazine three years ago. She wrote, “However, most Germans, when asked what beer they prefer, will answer, passionately, with a brand name. This is the German paradox: we love beer dearly, it is an integral part of our culture, yet it has become a commodity.”

The challenge is not unique to Germany. Brewers everywhere want to make regular beers special enough that they are not a commodity, but still regular beers. (Yes, there is another category of beers that are stronger, hoppier, include ingredients beyond the norm, and they are one way for brewers to make a statement that “Everything I make is special.”)

Kopp talked to brewers about this.

Sebastian B. Priller, the junior owner and manager of Brauhaus Riegele, the foremost independent brewer in Augsburg, holds a clear opinion: “When it comes to beer, Germans focus more on marketing, branding, sponsoring, pricing and all that, instead of talking about the product itself. I think it is high time to put the beer first: its taste, its ingredients, the way it is brewed, the food it pairs with. And we need to live this culture and celebrate beer like they do with wine.”

Of course she addressed the matter of the Reinheitsgebot (the story was headlined, “Ruled by the Reinheitsgebot?”) As did Barry M at the Bitten Bullet in commenting on the Slate story, noteworthy because he’s an Irishman living in Germany. If we get a look at this sucker from enough angles we might be able to figure it out.

So one more view. From a man born in Wyoming, who has lived in Europe and Germany for more than 20 years and been the brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for 13 years. The Bavarian brewery in Petting/Schönram — not far from Salzburg, Austria — has more than doubled its sales during that time.

Eric Toft has succeeded by emphasizing quality ingredients and traditional brewing methods, but he’s also an agent of change. Last week he bottled his first IPA in 750ml corked bottles. Most of that will go to Italy.

He is a member of Bier-Quer-Denker, a group of brewers who look both within Germany and beyond for inspiration. Bier-Quer-Denker, roughly translated means “beer lateral thinker.” For instance, for one seminar Frank Mueller from Brauhaus Riegele brought a kellerbier made with a mixture of three grains, including wheat, and fermented with an English ale yeast.

Toft makes a strong argument that the Reinheitsgebot should not limit a brewer.

“There has been a collective, though not all brewers are guilty of this, mass misinterpretation of the Reinheitsgebot — Reinheitsgebot as Einheitsgebot, meaning all beer must taste the same or all brands are interchangeable. Over the years, processes and technology in the breweries have also become very similar. I see the Reinheitsgebot as just the opposite,” he said. “Because we are forced to work within these narrow confines, we should see it as motivation for creativity and opportunity to set our brands apart from the others. This begins with the selection of the raw materials and carries through the entire process.

“The Reinheitsgebot should be a guarantee for the greatest diversity possible, unfortunately the opposite is true. But consider this: worldwide, 199 different hop varieties are cultivated. In Germany alone, we have 23 different varieties of two-row barley. The yeast bank in Weihenstephan lists 80 strains on their regular list, and more are available on request. Luckily, there is more than a handful of brewers around who are swimming against the tide.”

They aren’t ready to leave the German beer culture for dead.

Questions, questions, they abound today in the beer blogosphere.

* Mike Sweeney at STL Hops asks, “Can a beer ever be life changing?” It sprang from a tweet about Pliney the Younger: “Great beer = yes! Life changing = no” Read the answers (comments).

* Mark Dredge of Pencil an Spoon fame tries various beers with Jambalaya. As much as he loves Thornbridge Jaipur it doesn’t work with the dish. But Budweiser does.

I’ve got no problems drinking Budweiser and as a beer it fascinates me, particularly its history. It’s very pale, doesn’t bellow out a huge aroma (most people drink it straight from the bottle so forget late hops), but has that classic bite of apple. It’s clean and crisp, cold from the fridge it’s uncomplicated and easy to drink: it is what it is. With jambalaya… it was perfect. I wanted it to just be ok, but it was spot on.

I ask, why aren’t more people who take the time to drive across a town or a country to find a beer different this open minded about Budweiser?

* Alan McLeod, not surprisingly, manages to pose a pocketful of questions without using a question mark. (Disclaimer, and he politely links this direction.) You need to head on over to understand the headline at the top.

I had just viewed Zak Avery’s video salute to Bell’s Hopslam before I got to reading Alan. Curiously — those of you studying Struck and White today will understand no irony was involved &#151 when I went to add comment that this is where he could find love and good video I found he’d already done that himself.

Six of the top eight new “craft beer” brands in the United States in 2010 were IPAs of some sort (sometimes “imperial” or “double,” sorry Mr. B), according to Symphony IRI, which tracks beer sales in various channels.

Curiously, although “American-Style India Pale” annually draws more entries than any other category at the Great American Beer Festival, before 2010 no single brand could be found at Walmarts across the country. Now there are three — Sierra Nevada Torpedo, New Belgium Ranger IPA and Samuel Adams Latitude 48. Sierra Nevada introduced Torpedo in 2009, the other two were new in 2010 (Latitude for just the last four months and still it was the second best selling new “craft beer,” behind Ranger.)

What does this mean? That IPA is going mainstream, going viral, about to trend on Twitter? Something like that. Plus thousands more people will get the story behind India Pale Ale wrong. (Save yourself the pain — just tell them to go buy Amber, Black & Gold and/or Hops and Glory.)

One bit of explanation. Symphony IRI tracks packaged goods through a variety of channels, such as supermarkets, convenience stores and big box stores. The places lots of people buy lots of stuff. IRI doesn’t get data from every single liquor store, including perhaps the one where you buy special beers. They don’t track sales in bars or brewpubs. Places where IPA was already on the radar.

However, when the Brewers Association finishes collecting information from its members and announces “craft beer” sales totals for 2010 they’ll likely reflect what Dan Wandel of IRI told BA members in a conference call on Thursday. He reported that dollars sales of what IRI calls craft beer (pretty much the same definition as the BA) increased 14 percent and case sales 12 percent.

Supermarket sales of Torpedo soared 154 percent in 2010. IRI now lists it as the 11th best selling craft brand (its definition, so no Blue Moon White, which would be No. 1). However that’s classifying seasonals and variety packages as brands. The top-selling six actual beers are Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Samuel Adams Boston Lager, New Belgium Fat Tire, Shiner Bock, Widmer Hefeweizen and Torpedo.

Two more data points: IRI began tracking 53 additional IPA brands in 2010 and IPA’s share of what constitutes the IRI craft universe grew from 9 percent to 11 percent.

Many of these new drinkers may well tweet “I’m drinking such and such IPA at such and such pub” without even knowing that’s short of India Pale Ale (see above). That might be just as well, because they start hearing about beers brewed for a long journey as sea, built to last, full of hops that act as preservatives and they’re going to be tempted to stick a few in their cellar to see how they age.

An interesting idea, but not necessarily a good one for American IPAs. To quote from the Brewers Association style guidelines, “The style is further characterized by fruity, floral and citrus-like American-variety hop character.” And those American hop aromas — love ’em or hate ’em — are highly volatile. Much more so than the hops that would have flavored nineteenth century India Pale Ales.

After a couple of months many of those floral, citrusy, catty aromas that identify an American IPA will fade from even the most carefully bottled and handled beers. Subject them to a little bit of heat or agitation in transit — you know, like on a moving boat — and they’ll be plain old pale ales even sooner.

The best time to drink an American IPA and have it taste like the brewer intended was 600 words ago, when you read the headline.

ABSTRACT

You may declare that a beer sucks because it is genuinely flawed. For instance, you spot the tail of a mouse in the bottle. You might say it sucks because you’ve had the beer before and it was much better then. That’s probably not the word I’d use, but I understand. You might yell that it sucks because it isn’t too your taste. Say it’s a cucumber beer (I’ve picked on pumpkin beers enough). Now we’re talking like people who’ve maybe had a few beers.

THE BACKGROUND

Today Max takes us nicely from Point A to Point B to Point C. Before quibbling with his conclusion and providing a longer answer than fits in a comment at A Good Beer Blog, the suggested reading:

Mark Dredge is promoting a larger discussion about if using the term “craft beer” in the UK is in order. Good comments there, and further chatter in various UK blogs. But I particularly like Barm’s response at I Might Have a Glass of Beer. Beyond the fact it is simply good reading he makes it clear this is not a discussion for Americans to join in. It is about a different beer culture.

To move the conversation along, a takeaway from Dredge:

It (“craft beer”) is a suggestion that what you are getting has more investment than a hefty marketing budget; it has a heart and soul, it’s made for people who prefer taste to TV commercials.

And from Barm:

Everyone knows the beer range of the third-rate microbrewery. There’s the 5.0% boring golden ale; the 4.2% brown bitter that tastes mostly of toffee; the 3.7% session ale, suspected to be the 5.0% ale with more water in it; and the seasonal beers which are the 4.2% bitter rebadged with a lewd cartoon on the pumpclip. I don’t see any reason to dignify this stuff by labelling it “craft”; nor do I understand how, if we are to refuse it the label “craft”, we can objectively distinguish — other than by taste — between it and beers that we like better. In which case, the definition has become “beer that I like”.

Now, on to Max:

Passion could serve well as an emotional reserve when things aren’t going too well, but real success depends on other factors: proficiency, professionalism, seriousness, business talent, knowledge of the market, determination to do things well and respect for the consumer, specially for small brewers.

My quibble would be that it is passion, or conviction, that sometimes takes a beer from “better than good enough” to great. Because the brewer invests in better ingredients and better equipment.

CONCLUSION

The road to excellent beer is paved with good intentions. They are not enough.

Which takes us full circle to the question Alan asked: “Is It Fair To Say A Brewery Sucks… Or Even A Beer?” My comment: To the questions in the headline: Yes, and yes. As long as you are prepared to say why, and why you are qualified to make the judgment.

It was late, so I was thinking quite literally rather than in any philosophical sense (remember that Alan was a contributor to “Beer and Philosophy” and you never know when he’s going to go all Socrates on you). I arose this morning to this fair question: “Who is qualified? What is sucking?”

The comments that followed answer this pretty well. Most beers fall between “awesome” and “this sucks,” although we tend to overuse both of those words. And beer appreciation is subjective.

But there are objective measures, which I was referring to in my literal comment. Quality control is quality control. Were somebody to finance us we could start pulling bottles off the shelf and putting them through their paces. Any wild yeast? Buttery diacetyl (don’t shoot – not always bad)? How’s the dissolved oxygen? There are other measures, but you get the point. Not only could we say, “This beer sucks” but we’d be able to say “This one will soon.” And at some point we might decide, “This brewery sucks.”

(OK, a brewery can’t account for a consumer who buys a six-pack of beer and leaves it sitting on the sunny-side of the car on a hot day for two hours. That beer is screwed.)

It takes just as much conviction for a brewer to focus on process as stuffing “wow” in the bottle. Those are the brewers who invest in laboratory equipment, and people who understand how to use the equipment. That’s easier when a brewery is growing — or “achieving scale” — even if it makes it look a little less “crafty.”

Just to be clear, I still want the “wow” factor (well, sometimes). I’m not abandoning New Beer Rule #4. It takes something special for a brewery to make great beer decade after decade. Certainly passion on the part of somebody. But passion goes beyond brewing great beer. It includes delivering great beer.

I’ve already figured out I’m going to be behind what almost everybody else in the beer world is reading for all 2011, accepting that learning a hell of a lot about hops is a fair trade. Thus this three-week-old entry from Miss Manner just hit my radar.

Dear Miss Manners:

My boyfriend and I were sitting at our kitchen table having a beer the other night. He accidentally knocked his beer over, spilling some out onto the table before it could be turned upright.

I was absolutely shocked when he proceeded to loudly suck up the spilled beer from the table.

My face apparently showed my shock. A long argument then ensued over the questionable appropriateness of his action and my reaction.

Can you please help me to better articulate why sucking up a spilled drink from a table is just flat wrong?

Try explaining that any behavior that would be considered offensive in a dog is also offensive in a human being (although you needn’t alarm your pet because the reverse is not necessarily true).

Miss Manners suggests that you head off further trouble by informing your beau that just as he is barred from licking the table when he is thirsty, he is also barred from chewing your slippers when he is hungry.

A great answer. But I’m betting Miss Manners has never spent a dollar an ounce (or more, particularly on premise) for beer. Not good for your image to be spotted licking a table, I agree, but — be honest — could you see yourself doing that? I’m guessing if so your decision would follow a quick calculation about how much the bottle cost, how hard it would be to replace, how clean the table was, and what you had to gain by such a display.

After all, you might have an image to uphold.