beers of conviction

Food & Wine gets it (right)

Russian River Brewing barrel roomThis is beer and food done right, mostly for the food and wine crowd.

Maybe precisely for that crowd since it is in the June issue of Food & Wine magazine (the grilling issue).

In “The Keg vs. the Cork in Sonoma” chef San Yoon of the Father’s Office in Santa Monica, one of Southern California’s first “good beer” bars, takes writer Ray Isle on a tour of Sonoma County breweries.

There are plenty of recipes, attractive photos of beer and food, and inviting descriptions of what the beers taste like. A picture of Yoon sitting on barrels at Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa (rather small if you already clicked on the link above) is a striking full page in the magazine.

(A quick aside. The barrel room at Russian River isn’t quite as sexy as the magazine makes it appear. The photo here is more what it looks like to the human eye on an average day. But barrels sure do give beer some razzmatazz. Imbibe magazine ran just a killer two-page picture of Jolly Pumpkin’s Ron Jeffries in his barrel room in the its March/April issue. Barrels are suddenly [almost]) as cool as babes in T-shirts.)

Food and Wine even includes an online bonus: An interview with Russian River owner/brewer Vinnie Cilurzo.

Can you ‘nail’ a Belgian style?

Dan CareyIn all fairness to Todd Haefer – who writes a Beer Man column that appears in many newspapers part of the Gannett chain and already catches enough grief for some of his comments – he didn’t write the headline and the term didn’t appears in his copy, but here it is:

Beer Man: New Glarus nails the Belgian style

The headline made me giggle. Haefer is writing about New Glarus Belgian Quadruple, part of brewer Dan Carey’s “Unplugged” series. Quadruple is simply a word you don’t hear Belgian brewers use. It became a term of convenience – meaning dark and very strong, ala Westvleteren 12 or Rochefort 10 – after Koningshoeven began shipping LaTrapppe Quad to the United States in the mid-1990s. That Trappist monastery is located in The Netherlands.

So not only does the headline insinuate that any style is something so specific that it can be “nailed” but that a Belgian brewer or consumer would cotton to the idea.

Speaking of styles serves many good purposes, but testifying for the other side here is Carl Kins, a Belgian beer enthusiast who has judged several times for the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. “We Belgians do not like categorization that much. Whether it is strong blonde ale or abbey style is not very relevant, as long as the beer tastes good,” he said in the chapter called Matters of Style in Brew Like a Monk.

Last week Stephen Beaumont wrote about this beer and Enigma, another in the “Unplugged” series. Spend a little time with his descriptions and it becomes apparent that Carey is more focused on “nailing” a great beer than capturing, or recreating, a style.

Is your brewer an artist?

It starts with a quote from Louis Nizer, the famous trial lawyer and author. He said:

“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.”

Don Russell paraphrased Nizer to begin a column about making a case for extreme beer. Along the way he wrote:

Beerwise, the most inspired brewers are not just craftsmen, they are artists.

If there is an avant-garde movement among these brewers, then it is extreme beer.

And later, “Session beers, I’m afraid, are Norman Rockwells.” This led to a flurry of discussion at Seen Through a Glass about *xtr*m* beers and session beers, but only a little about brewers as artists.

Brewer at workSo what about that? And who to ask? How about brewers? I printed out part of Russell’s column and took it to the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Austin. I showed it to a dozen brewers along with another old saying that farmers make wine and engineers make beer.

I asked them to choose one of four words to describe themselves: artist, artisan, engineer or farmer.

Eight chose artisan, four chose artist. Most also said it depends on how you read the definitions.

“Since artisan essentially takes in artist, then artisan is appropriate,” said Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery.

Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station Brewing, a school teacher before he was a brewery, suggested a fifth choice. “Some brewers are just producing a product for profit,” he said. “I lean toward artisan.”

Steve Parkes, the brewer for Otter Creek and Wolaver’s Organic Ales, picked artist, “By this definition.” Parkes is also the owner and lead instructor of the American Brewers Guild. Does that mean he’s in the business of training artists?

“No, artisans. The artistic component needs to come from them,” he said. “I can’t train that. I can give them the tools, but I can’t teach inspiration.”

Tony Simmons (call him an artisan) of Pagosa Springs Brewing told an interesting story. He was in a class at Siebel Institute with a woman who worked at Miller Brewing. Out of curiosity, not intent, he asked her what it would take for him to get a job brewing at Miller.

“You couldn’t,” she told him. “We hire engineers and train them to brew our way.”

John Graham of Church Key Brewing was part of the conversation. “On tours I tell people it is half heart, half science. You have to follow the rules,” he said. “I’m definitely not an engineer.”

We decided we might have to track down a German brewer to find an engineer. But that’s wouldn’t be Eric Toft, a native of Wyoming who now brews at Private Landbrauerei Schönram in Bavaria.

“I got into this because I thought it was artisinal and connected to agriculture,” he said. “You still need to be an engineer to run a brewery.”

Matt Brynildson of Firestone-Walker Brewing made it clear he envies Toft. “I would call myself an artisan, but I totally wish it could be more farmer,” he said nodding toward Toft. “Or to be as connected as he is.”

Toft regularly visits farms where his hops are grown and others that produce barley for his malt. All are less than 200 kilometers from the brewery. He uses a single barley variety – Barke – without regard to yield or how easy it is to grow (always a consideration for malt companies), paying farmers more if necessary to get what he wants (flavor).

Toft was in Austin helping the Association of German Hop-Growers and the Halltertau Hop-Growers Association. They advertise hops as the “spirit of beer,” but I’ve also seen hops referred to as the heart of beer or the soul of beer. Others call malt the soul of beer.

Does your beer even have a soul? Do you care? The answers could be no, and no. That’s fine. But I suspect if you said yes the fact it is brewed by artists or artisans might be as important as the ingredients used.

Tuppers’ beer comes with a guarantee

An obvious question now that the sale of Old Dominion has been completed is: What about the beers (such at Tuppers’ Hop Pocket and New River Pale Ale) that Old Dominion brewers under contract?

Bob Tupper addresses this at the Tuppers’ website (link courtesy of DC-Beer).

He’s confident about the continuing integrity of the products bearing his family name.

Ellie and I are excited about the new possibilities for distribution that this arrangement offers. And we believe that the new company will be as committed to brewing exceptionally high quality beers for us as Old Dominion has during our 11 years together. Those who are concerned about A-B’s influence should note the continuing quality and creativity of the Goose Island Brewing Company after A-B’s purchase of a minority ownership. The ultimate guarantee is that Ellie and I both have day jobs and a kid who will finish college next year. No amount of money will entice us to put our name on a product of which we are not truly proud.

Granted you wouldn’t expected him to say much different, but the image of a man standing behind the quality of his beers (and that would be the point, he considers them his beers) is reassuring.

The Session #1: Left Hand Milk Stout

The SessionHope you’re in a stout mood today, because you’re going to read a lot about them in various blogs in the first round of The Session. The theme today is “Not your father’s Irish stout.”

By Monday I will summarize posts on this topic from here and there and provide links.

As the instigator of this event I felt an obligation to make a good choice. I don’t mean the most spectacular stout I could find, but one that sets a tone for how I intend to approach this on a regular basis.

I thought first about a New Mexico beer, because I believe you should drink local and we have some excellent stouts in our state. But unless you come visit then you aren’t going to have much of a chance to find one of these. So I picked a beer from the region, from a brewery I know well, and one I’d certainly call “a good home”: Left Hand Milk Stout.

We (Daria and I) met Left Hand Brewing founders Eric Wallace and Dick Doore not long after they opened in 1994, introducing ourselves at the Great American Beer Festival because my aunt Gretchen lives in Longmont, where Left Hand brews. It took us three more years to get by the brewery, and it was the 50th for our daughter, Sierra. She was taken with the red-and-white Left Hand logo we brought home, and it’s likely one of the reasons she learned her left from her right early on.

Left Hand BrewingAlthough Left Hand distributes its beers in New Mexico, we often could find seasonals only in the Longmont area (this has changed, plus the Milk Stout is available year round and at a nearby grocery store). Left Hand produced just 20 barrels of Milk Stout the first year it was brewed and we missed it.

The second year our timing was better, so we were in Longmont about the time it was released. On the way to my aunt’s house we stopped at a liquor store. When I headed directly to the cooler and pulled out Milk Stout the man standing next to me – surely the one whose large motorcycle we had parked next to, given his leather garb and tattoos – nodded in approval.

“It’s smooth man,” he said.

It is, but like that biker not too smooth. The addition of milk sugar (lactose) provides a constant creamy sweetness that balances an abundance of aromas and flavors. Typical for Left Hand, the beer is made with five malts plus flaked oats and flaked barley. It proves a brewer can pack impressive depth and complexity in beer not much stronger than Budweiser (5.2% abv vs. 5%).

The nose is chocolate and burnt toast, with more rich chocolate and coffee flavors in the mouth. The finish is relatively dry, leaving a memory of coffee and sweet cream.

Michael Jackson writes extensively about milk stout in his Beer Companion. Its London inventors sought a patent in 1875, they deemed the deemed the invention of a milk beer so unique. Jackson reports that by 1936 Mackeson’s Milk Stout was available nationally and the style began to be included in the range of most breweries.

The Mackeson’s label included the rather bold claim: “Each pint contains the energizing carbohydrates of ten ounces of pure dairy milk.” That didn’t last long.

Jackson concludes his history lesson with this thought: “For those with a lifestyle sufficiently leisurely, or eclectic, to permit a mid-afternoon or early evening restorative, a glass of sweet stout and a piece of cake is an innocent pleasure.”