beers of conviction

It’s time to bid a fond farewell to Great American Beer Festival coverage, so a few notes from the tattered pieces of paper I found in the pockets of my jeans after their official post-GABF washing:

No, it won’t be GABF East: Ten years after the Great American Beer Festival on the road didn’t play well in Baltimore (at the time Stephen Beaumont wrote “What If We Gave a Beer Fest and Nobody Came?”) the Brewers Association will give it another try on the East Coast, but not with something that looks like at all like GABF.

Plans for (savor) an american craft beer & food experience were announced just before the awards ceremony Saturday. The event is May 16-17 (2008) at the Mellon Center in Washington, D.C. One brewer said he had heard it will be a “high end, food-oriented event.”

Schlitz retro rumor: Word is Pabst will re-launch Schlitz beer using a throwback recipe. Pabst and Schlitz, of course, were two of the breweries that made Milwaukee famous in the 19th century.

Now Pabst, itself a contract brewer, owns the Schlitz brand. Schlitz was the second largest brewing company in the world in the early 1970s and still second in the U.S. (to Anheuser-Busch) in 1976 when the company made two incredibly stupid decisions. By 1982 it was out of business, although the brand has continued to be brewed at other breweries and sold as a low-price beer. The resurrected recipe is said to be from well before the 1976 missteps.

More wood at New Belgium: Brewmaster Peter Bouckaert of New Belgium Brewing seemed on the verge of giggling at the thought that a) his crew can finally take charge of the new bottling line and b) they have new barrels to play with.

Barrels? Like the four 60-gallon bourbon barrels a brewery near me is picking up? Like the first wine barrels he began infesting with critters back in 1998?

“No, 130 hectos,” he said smiling broadly. Most of us would call the 130-hectoliter vessels tanks, since they’re the same size as six other 130s the brewery added in 2001. They hold about 3,400 gallons each.

Overheard: Volunteer after being asked a question by a festival goer. “It’s fermented with Brett. Does that make it a barley wine?”

Best post I haven’t linked to yet (Because it wasn’t up yet): From Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station.

You don’t want it to end (b/c work awaits you Monday), but I hadn’t seen my two kids since they groggily dropped me at the airport Tues. at 6 AM, waving at me the whole time the train departed for the city. It’s funny that no matter how many medals I win, no matter how many colleagues I meet or made anew, no matter what I did wrong this weekend, Nick and Ella sprinted to me shouting “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy”. I love that gold medal I won this weekend, but I’d surely trade it for that experience coming home Sunday afternoon. (I told you it was a roller coaster of emotions-now go ahead and cry, you big tough guy!)

Alpha King results: Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, the original Alpha King winner, returned to the victory stand this year by placing second. Pliny the Elder from Russian River was first, and El Camino IPA from Pizza Port San Clemente second. None medaled in the GABF judging.

Beer I enjoyed most: AngelsShareCeriseCasseZwickelbier-
IchBinEinBerlinerWeisseKiwandiCreamAleOrodeCalabazaBlindPigIPA-
GoldenArmPilzHopSueyWatermelonFunkSigdasGreenChiliPrimaPils

or maybe it was

OtisAltTheGreatPumpkinRed&WhiteBoscosFlamingStoneBeer-
InterludeSaisonBrettPennWeizenStormcloudIPABeerHunter-
Brooklyner-SchneiderHopfen-WeisseOompahLoompahChocolateBeer

There were others as well.

25,000 gallons of beer, 1884 beers on the festival floor, 39,000 bottles and cans to be recycled, etc. etc.

That’s the Great American Beer Festival by the numbers, according to the Brewers Association, which has even more figures for you to read at the GABF site.

So how much do you think all that beer was worth? Enough that everybody who paid $45 for entrance got his or her money’s worth? Lord knows that I saw plenty of people trying to make sure they did.

The following paragraphs originally contained a painful amount of arithmetic. Like number of attendees and volunteers, one-ounce servings (potentially more than 3 million; had to pass that one along), the price of tickets, street value of the beer and more.

You don’t care. So I’ll justify the headline, note the total value of beer dispensed likely was north of $1 million, and get to the point.

Breweries are not compensated for the beer they serve on the floor, but few were shy about serving the really good and sometimes really expensive stuff. They could have kept it at home for themselves or sold it for more than the average pint. So it seemed almost outlandish for Samuel Adams to dole out shots of its ultra-expensive Utopias. And way too generous for Flossmoor Station’s brewers to part with their last keg of Killer Kowalski.

And then there was The Lost Abbey, dispensing Cuvee de Tomme ($15 for 375ml), The Angel’s Share ($15 for 750ml), Veritas 002 ($20 for 750ml), Cable Car ($30 for 750ml) and 10 Commandments ($12 for 750ml). Five beers that are impossible or next-to-impossible to find, ones that would sell out at the brewery door at the brewery door were they available.

“There might be $10,000 worth of beer there,” brewmaster Tomme Arthur said in passing on Friday.

He did the math Monday when he got back in the brewery, and sent the numbers along.

“Total value of beer on the floor at the GABF = $9,084.

“Winning third Brewer of the Year award = Priceless.”

Sure the 200-plus beers that will win medals today at the Great American Beer Festival are “country class” (and maybe world class), but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll wax romantic after settling in with a pint or two of one of them.

No, nothing’s wrong with the judging process – I agree with Michael Jackson’s assertion that the GABF (and World Beer Cup) approach to evaluating beers is the finest anywhere.

However you need spend only a few minutes talking with judges or a make a few stops on the festival floor to be reminded that for some conversations we must separate drinking beer from tasting beer.

Drinking includes the pleasure of pints in the pub with buddies, while cooking at the grill, or over dinner with friends. You might occasionally take a sip and think, “Whew, that’s something special,” but that’s not required.

Tasting is different. Tasting allows us to experience, and perhaps evaluate, many beers rather quickly. In the case of judging GABF, this year 107 judges had just five sessions to evaluate more than 2,800 beers. Beers entered in popular categories (IPA was the largest, with 120) had to pass through three rounds.

In the case of festival goers, it means tasting just one ounce at a time.

Brewmaster Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station (Illinois) judged for the first time this year. “There were so many beers I thought, ‘What a great beer in a two-ounce sample,'” he said. “It makes you think you (brewers) have to enter something that will stand out for two ounces.”

That’s not the way Van Wyk thinks when he is formulating a recipe. “You’re not looking at guidelines you have to hit,” he said. “You are thinking of what flavors you will like and what the customers who will be drinking your beer will like.”

Van Wyk paused to pour a sample of Zwicklebier for Darron Welch of Pelican Pub & Brewery (Oregon). Welch took a sip and smiled. “This reminds me of Germany,” he told Van Wyk.

The beer stands out at a single ounce (the festival serving size) at a time, but part of that is because it’s easy to think: “This would be great in a half-liter mug.”

Welch spent some time Thursday seeking out saisons (he has one entered, but mostly he’s still tasting others and thinking about ways to make his better). “I didn’t find a bad one,” he said. “But at the judging table I’m going to be less about ‘I really like this’ and more about ‘This isn’t as balanced or . . .”

Welch’s beers captured five medals last year, but he understands they might win none this year.

“It’s fun, it’s agonizing,” he said. “And if you win it’s good marketing. Your customers have an affirmation from the outside that the beer they though was great really is. I’ll go back and somebody will say, ‘I told you so.'”

Of course those customers aren’t just tasting. They’re drinking.

Further reading: New Beer Rule #3.

About the photo: The festival added a new diversion this year: “You Be The judge.” Festival goers may sit down with a GABF judge and evaluate and discuss a beer (“blind” as the judges do, rather than the unveiled pints on the floor). Here Will Meyers from Cambridge Brewing (Massachusetts) shares his knowledge.

Snowing on Raton, come morning I’ll be through the hills and gone.
Mother thinks the road is long lonely, little brother thinks the road is straight and fine, will little darlin’ thinks the road is soft and lovely,
I’m thankful that old road is a friend of mine.

– From Snowing on Raton, by Townes Van Zandt

I was not snowing yesterday when I drove over Raton Pass, happily because we’ve been on the stretch of Interstate 25 in a snowstorm before and I don’t recommend it.

However, shortly after I reached Colorado this pickup passed me with these really impressive looking antlers in the back. I hauled out my camera and took this picture (just for you) before he sped on his way. The truck had Wyoming plates so the driver apparently had farther to go then Denver (210 miles up the road).

Something I never would have seen had I flown to Denver (less than an hour from wheels up to wheels down from Albuquerque, but nearly five hours by the time you deal with airports – only 90 minutes faster than driving).

When I left the canyon I popped a Kevin Welch CD into the player. His music is perfect for that stretch of the road, foothills and antelope to the left, prairie that stretches to Kansas and beyond to the right.

Oh, I do love living in the West.