beers of conviction

The Anchor way: ‘Big is not always better’

If you, like I, think fresh Anchor Liberty is still one of the best beers on earth then the announcement that Anchor Brewing has been sold makes a difference on a very personal level.

In terms of the Future of Craft Brewing overall? Not so much.

Not like it would have between 1965 and 1977, when Anchor accounted for 100 percent of sales of what we now call “craft beer.” In 1980 Anchor sold 81 percent of craft beer and still more than half of it in 1984, just before Jim Koch and Samuel Adams beer arrived. Five years later Koch’s Boston Beer Co., at the time contracting to have its beer brewed at struggling old-line breweries with excess capacity, vaulted past Anchor into the No. 1 spot.

Anchor production peaked at 108,000 barrels in 1996 and began to slip a bit by 1998, at which time it accounted for less than 2 percent of “craft” production. Today Anchor brews less than 5 percent of what Boston Beer makes and about 1 percent of the craft beer.

To be clear, Fritz Maytag and Anchor cast outsized shadows. Maytag’s place in history is, well, Maytag’s place in history. We can only guess what beer choices American beer drinkers would have today had he not saved Anchor Brewing in 1965. But whatever the new owners do — and as Jay Brooks writes this new stewardship begins somewhat oddly — it hardly seems likely any changes will reshape the craft beer landscape that Maytag shares great responsibility for creating in the first place.

I’ll leave it to others to speculate about that and to recount much of what Maytag, who remains as chairman emeritus, and everybody he worked with at Anchor accomplished. Instead I suggest considering something he didn’t do.

In 1992 Maytag investigated the possibility of a direct public offering to raise funds for expansion. At the time the five largest small breweries in the country were Boston Beer (273,000 barrels sold), Anchor (82,654), Sierra Nevada Brewing (68,039), Redhook Ale Brewery (49,000) and Pete’s Brewing (35,700).

Bo Burlingham provides the history in “Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big,” writing, “Besides, the company would eventually have to move up to the next level. It was the natural order of things. Every business has to grow or it dies, right?”

Then Maytag changed his mind. “I realized we were doing the IPO out of desperation — because we thought we had to grow,” Burlingham quotes Maytag. “It occurred to me that you could have a small, prestigious, profitable business, and it would be all right . . . So we made the decision not to grow . . . This was not going to be a giant company — not on my watch.”

By 1996, when Anchor sales peaked, Boston Beer had grown to 1.2 million barrels a year. Pete’s Brewing, which also sold beer brewed under contract, rocketed to 425,600 (its top), while Sierra Nevada (265,000) and Redhook (224,578) both more than doubled Anchor.

Ten years later Maytag was interviewed by USA Today. “Big is not always better,” he said. “Small companies like ours can still knock ’em dead.”

Category 23: Looking for harmony in beer

Samuel Adams Longshot Homebrew Contest Category 23Perhaps it’s because I live in a state where Area 51 is famous, but Category 23 has an ominous ring to it. Particularly when you are asked to judge the category in a homebrew competition. Strange beers, experiments, successful and otherwise.

This year the Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest is all about Category 23. There will be no judging of pilsners, pale ales or stouts. Just beers that fit in Category 23 as defined by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP): “This is explicitly a catch-all category for any beer that does not fit into an existing style category. No beer is ever ‘out of style’ in this category, unless it fits elsewhere.”

Not every beer entered need be crazy. This is the category where you’d enter a honey ale, for instance. But it is one where wild and inventive beers are welcome (a honey ale aged with wild yeast and wood chips). A bottle of Chocolate Chili Bock — released only to make a point and not for sale to the public and pictured above — accompanied the press release about the contest.

“. . . as the years go on, the number of entries with unique ingredients that don’t fit into the first 22 traditional categories have multiplied,” Boston Beer founder Jim Koch said for the press release. “So why not channel all the creativity that we know is out there in the homebrewing community and see what they can come up with? My taste-buds are ready!”

Boston Beer celebrates its 25th anniversary this year — today, in fact, because it was on Patriots’ Day 25 years ago that Koch began deliver beer. The Wall Street Journal had a story today, the Boston Globe last week.

Maureen Ogle, author of “Ambitious Brew,” summed it up nicely in the Globe when she said Koch “remains innovative and he’s constantly experimenting. A lot of the other craft brewers lost sight of that when they expanded.”

It seems fair to add the turn the LongShot contest has taken to a list that starts with Triple Bock (1993).

Back to the contest. This isn’t like the knife fight in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” There are rules. You can read them here. What’s noteworthy, given plenty of discussion in the blogosphere about the proliferation of “beer styles” and beer evaluation in general is that a) Category 23 makes room for “beers without homes” (to steal a phrase from Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey Brewing) without adding new categories and b) because of what’s central in judging this category.

In part: “A harmonious marriage of ingredients, processes and beer. . . . The overall rating of the beer depends heavily on the inherently subjective assessment of distinctiveness and drinkability.”

Isn’t that how we should assess all beers? Of course. It’s just more obvious when you aren’t focused on if a beer conforms to style guidelines.

A few details

* As in the past, three regional judging competitions will take place to narrow the entries down. Three finalists from each region (9 finalist total) will move on to a second round of judging.

* The second round of judging will take place in Boston, with four finalists earning a trip to the 2010 Great American Beer Festival, where winners will be announced. The two winning beers will be brewed and distributed nationally.

* Details are at the Samuel Adams website. After signing in, click on No. 4 on the right, then the Longshot logo.

No, these beers aren’t about marketing

This started as a comment within the conversation following the previous post, but when it hit the third paragraph I thought it better to start anew.

Perhaps I should have made myself clearer.

– This is the opposite of marketing. We now have a broader choice of beers — some obviously better than others, and some pretty terrible — because brewers did not, and still do not, listen to marketers who said/say drinkers will not buy beers with distinctive flavor (America in the 1960s and 1970s). Sierra Nevada Pale Ale never would have got out a focus group.

Which is not to say that some breweries aren’t trying to attract attention by promoting they have the beer with the most this or the most that.

– The Halltertau hop growers started coming to the Craft Brewers Conference in 2007, obviously to promote sales of their hops. They do this by bringing beers that showcase their hops. Eric Toft, who grew up in Wyoming but who has lived in Europe for more than 20 years and been brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for almost a dozen, writes the recipes for the beers. Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania brews them because a) Eric has a long-standing relationship with Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski, b) Victory has contracts for barley and hops with Bavarian producers, and c) the logistics of licensing and shipping.

The pale ale was not created to sell anywhere, but to illustrate to other brewers (mostly American) that Hallertau hops make an excellent addition to beers other than those intended to mimic those from Bavaria. Basing a recipe, let alone a marketing campaign, on my tastes would probably lead to disaster, but my opinion is they are right. I’d much rather try a new not particularly high gravity pale ale made with Saphir or Smaragd (two newer varieties) and one amped up on another addition of Northwest hops. I like those beers, but well-done versions exist and it seems to standout brewers feel compelled to simply dial up the flavor intensity.

Just my opinion, but I’m not sure you will find a better spokesperson for tradition in Germany that Eric. He pitches his yeast cooler and conducts primary fermentation cooler than most, automatically adding time to the production process. He uses only aroma hops, but makes some of the hoppiest (this is a relative thing) beers in Germany. That means more hops, more expense.

Workers at the brewery skim the fermentation every day (open fermenters, also a pain in the brewers’ butt) so the bitterness is more mellow. Schönramer Gold, which won a gold medal in the World Beer Cup, lagers 10 weeks. That’s after the longer primary. You really need to visit the brewery restaurant (it’s not far from Salzburg) because its the only place you can get Schönramer Pils and Dunkel unfiltered.

He believes that drinkers can taste the difference. Landbrauerei Schönram has doubled production since Eric took over (this wasn’t a start up; been around for more than 230 years). At the same time consumption in Germany has shrunk dramatically, so maybe he’s on to something. Just as Ken Grossman and Jim Koch were a while back and Alex Ganum is today.

– The new wave of beer drinkers are asking questions other than “which beer has the most alcohol?” or “which one has the weirdest ingredients?” Some ask just that, but also about where the beer is from, about the ingredients, about production practices. They talk about flavor, and want to try new ones — sometimes “extreme.” But here’s what you should really love about them, Mike. They drive marketers crazy. The don’t just advertisers make things up.

So I met the hop queen – but what else?

Last Wednesday, just hours after arriving in Chicago for the Craft Brewers Conference, I dutifully posted a photo of Halltertau hop queen Mona Euringer, linked it to via Twitter and Facebook and after that pretty much went back to 1998 or some other CBC in a different technological era. Blog? Tweet? I didn’t even attend the seminars on social media. Sorry.

I did use Google maps on my phone when those of us on the “bus from hell” finally seized control after an obviously clueless bus driver drove around in circles for more than an hour and a half before delivering us to a destination less than 5 miles from the hotel. As an aside, I was on the bus that got lost (not quite an hour extra that time) at the 2008 Craft Brewers Conference. Charles and Rose Ann Finkel were on also on both buses. The takeaway? Never get on the same bus with the Finkels and I at CBC.

This wasn’t exactly planned. I expected to blog and tweet a little more. And it didn’t happen because wi-fi in the host hotel was fleeting and cell reception in the trade show worse yet (both true). Or because there was a rather high level of social activity each evening (obviously true). It’s just that I don’t transition well from information collection mode to dispersal mode. And when I wasn’t at a seminar (like “Proper Storage, Shipping & Handling of Hop Pellets”) there was a conversation awaiting. I particularly like CBC in the even years because of the World Beer Cup competition — judges from 27 countries attended this year.

I’ll be years (yes, really, another book project, details soon) writing about what I learned, so for now here’s one overarching observation from the conference, after the promised report from my conversation with the hop queen and the truth about Bavarian-style pale ale.

Euringer, who turned 23 during the conference, still works on the family farm (hops, corn, and sugar beets — about 38 acres of hops) but also is studying business in school. Her great grandfather was the first in the family to grow hops, but her father has told her that she and her brother, Simon, are free to pursue whatever careers they want.

Since Todd asked . . . Euringer, who began drinking beer when she was 16, likes the fruity flavors hops add to beer. She’s serious. She put in five hours each day at the trade show, often refreshing her glass with one of the five beers showcasing Halltertau hops that Victory Brewing made for the conference. “I can’t drink so much bitter beer,” she said.

I asked her about Schönramer Pils, a 40-plus IBU beer that won gold at European Beer Star Awards last fall. “I like it because of what it tastes like,” she said. “But I can’t drink five bottles of it.”

The day before the conference began she visited New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin with the rest of the Halltertau hops contingent, and particularly enjoyed the new Two Women pale lager.

Since Ron asked . . . The “Bavarian-style pale ale” created for the conference is a beer description, not a new style. A little confusing because for logistical purposes what we tasted was brewed in Pennsylvania, but it is Bavarian, pale and an ale, fermented with Weihenstephan #68, a top-fermenting yeast otherwise used to create weiss beers.

The grist is 100% pale Franconian barley malt, and it was mashed (single-decoction) for a high attenuation. It was hopped with Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Hersbrucker, Tradition, Select, and Smaragd in five separate additions. The starting gravity was 16 ºP, the final abv 7.2% and the IBU about 45.

Now the observation, which is not exactly new, given that “microbrews” have been with us a while and these days the CBC seems awfully grown up (most of the sessions I attended focused on making beer, but options included “Craft Brand and SKU Proliferation: Great Opportunity of Great Danger” and “Intellectual Property law: Options and Protections for the Brewing Industry”):

Sales wouldn’t still be growing if somebody didn’t want to drink all these beers. But the beers wouldn’t exist at all if people (we call them brewers) weren’t excited about what they make and how their work is received.

Part One. Beer and food. I’m with Alan when he writes about the “need to ‘pair’ beer with food.” But shortly before the Gala Awards Dinner (for the World Beer Cup) on Saturday I spent a few minutes with Randy Mosher and Sean Paxton, who together created the menu that Sean then executed.

Sean’s attention to detail and creativity defy description (hop scented hard boiled eggs in the salad, just amazing). But, as Randy pointed out, the meal stuck to the notion that beer shouldn’t be fussy, and therefore beer meals shouldn’t be either.

Two evenings before Goose Island treated conference attendees to an equally amazing food experience, inviting more than a dozen Chicago chefs to create special dishes that were served with a couple of dozen of Goose Island beers. There were also a dozen variations on Bourbon County Stout served with a dozen chocolate desserts. All in the midst of about 1,000 barrels.

My point would be that this food and beer thing excites brewers, just like Part Two.

Vinnie Cilurzo repairing a barrelPart Two. Beers aged in barrels, sour and otherwise. Attendees filled the chairs, lined up along all the walls and took seats in the aisles for Vinnie Cilurzo’s talk called “Toothpicks, Garlic and Chalk: Three Key Ingredients to Any Brewery’s Barrel-Aged Sour Beer Program.” (In the photo on the right Cilurzo is using those tools to plug a leaking barrel at the Russian River brewpub.)

It seemed like half those in the room raised their hands when he asked if they’d like to attend a pre-conference seminar next year (when CBC in in San Francisco) on barrel-aged sour beers. These beers intrigue brewers. They want to make them, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

Again, not exactly new territory, but Friday afternoon I was reminded about the traits shared by people who make beer and people who drink beer when Mike Kallenberger of MillerCoors was talking rather specifically about craft beer drinkers (“What’s important to them when they’re not drinking beer, and why it matters when they are”).

Summarizing Kallenberger is never easy, because he tends to tackle complicated subjects, so I’m going to grab one thread and hope I don’t tangle it. Craft-beer drinkers take risks because they they think they are worth taking, if there’s such a thing as a “responsible rebel” that’s them, and they see themselves as “making their own rules” rather than simply “breaking the rules.”

Because they know they are right.

Didn’t we just describe brewers as well? Recipes-by-focus-group don’t work for them on any level. Not telling them what new, new flavor drinkers will embrace. Certainly what they can’t do, what wouldn’t work, what people wouldn’t drink.

They know better.

Some are wrong. Some will fail. Some will make horrible, unbalanced beer. But I think we can tell the difference.

The Session #38: 1 beer or 1001?

The SessionWere Mr. Sixpack (otherwise known as Don Russell) to participate today in our monthly session then he might quote liberally from his entry in 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout.

“The Dark Lord exists mainly by reputation. His power is rumored, his character praised with cultlike obsession, yet he is rarely seen. Until, that is, Dark Lord Day, a holiday ritual for the devoted who flock from around the world to Three Floyds Brewing in Munster, Indiana, for his annual appearance.”

I don’t have such a description or such a beer to offer for this session, for which you’ll recall, Sean Inman provides these guidelines:

What beer have you tasted recently (say, the last six months or so) that is worthy of their own day in the media sun?

And to add a little extra to it, how does “great” expectations affect your beer drinking enjoyment?

AND If you have attended one of these release parties, stories and anecdotes of your experience will be welcomed too.

I’m not opposed to standing in line, literally as well a figuratively. On the first day of March I spent four straight hours calling a number in Colorado with hopes of getting through to book two nights in Jersey Jim, a former Forest Service lookout tower can you rent, and then I did the same the next day. Some years we get lucky and some years (like this) we don’t. I can drive to Mancos (where reservations are taken) in four hours and probably would if they accepted in-person applications.

Anyway, back to The Session. I’ve had a beer or two in the last six months as worthy as Dark Lord, but I wouldn’t exert as much effort to acquire any of them as I would for another night in Jersey Jim. Still one of these years I might try to make it to Dark Lord Day for the experience.

I promise to write about it.

(Head on over to Beer Search Party for more Session entries.)