beers of conviction

A heck of a hell

In a weak moment while responding to Lew Bryson’s comment in the X Beer discussion I seem to have promised to write something nice about helles.

Not tough duty. I warmed to the task by drinking a glass of Class VI Golden Lager from Chama River Brewing in Albuquerque. It’s almost always the first beer I order when we’re at Chama. I usually forget and just ask for a “helles,” then explain I want the Class VI when I get a blank look from the server.

The aroma is fresh and bready, just what you expect from German pilsner malt. The flavor is rich but not distracting and the finish spicy and dry. It’s a beer that doesn’t get in the way of conversation; with an added benefit of being less than 5% abv.

Augustiner

I don’t usually spend much time thinking about beer when drinking this beer, since there are matters of conversation and ordering food. But if I do it’s not hard to imagine myself standing in the malting halls at the Augustiner brewery in Munich, two flights below the brewery yard. The air is damp and smells thick, like a field of grain after a solid rain.

At the other end of the hall a machine churns to life – chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug, beating out a rhythm, squeaking from time to time as it advances toward me. It is gently turning the malt, which is spread a shallow 12-15 centimeters high.

Augustiner brewery(Given that eyes adjust better to dark conditions that my camera, the photos here don’t quite portray what I saw. The top one shows the hall, the one to the right the machine from a long ways away with the light “turned up,” the next a chalkboard that tracks the status of a batch of malt. The image at the bottom shows that Augustiner has left some tradition behind – picturing when malt was turned by hand.)

Malting boardAugustiner is the last brewery in Germany with its own malting facility, and its floor-malting is one of only two left in the country. Augustiner bills itself as the “keeper of the tradition” but this is about more than tradition. Most agree that floor malting produces superior malt. By maintaining its own maltings Augustiner also has the option to pick from different barleys, sometimes using older varieties of that malt suppliers no longer offer.

Augustiner also controls the degree to which the malt is modified. Its brewers prefer it less modified because they conduct a decoction mash for each of their beers, a practice pretty much abandoned by the other Munich breweries.

Which brings us to Lagerbier Hell, a delightful expression of pilsner malt and Hallertau hops wrapped in a 5.2% abv package. Another fresh and bready beer, with a satisfying hop quality. Does decoction make a difference? That’s another discussion – many brewing scientists will argue not in a way that can be measured; others maybe agree, then say they can still taste difference.

For whatever the reason, Lagerbier Hell has an extra layer of flavor. You notice it when you first taste it and you might again if you revisit the beer in a thoughtful way. Otherwise it becomes willing background to conversation – perhaps at one of the long communal wooden tables in the restaurant on the brewery grounds.

Augustiner

The power of the label

Westvelteren corkThis really isn’t another beer & wine post, but we have to start with a little wine research.

The Economist carried a report a while back pointing out that the relationship between the price of a bottle of wine and its taste is weak, according to two studies in the Journal of Wine Economics.

In one study the reserchers charted how 120 people bid in auctions on champagne after tasting it blind, after inspecting only the bottle, and after tasting it while seeing the bottle. The bidding was 33% higher when tasters could only see the bottle than it was with blind tasting, implying that the champagne’s taste detracted from its perceived value. That’s why they mean by the power of the label.

Does the same thing happen with beer? Meaning what you’ll pay at a store or from a menu (as opposed to in action) because of a beer or brewery’s reputation.

This isn’t altogether bad. We should have brands we trust and to feel loyal to certain breweries (perhaps you had a great tour there, or you and a friend shared a bottled on a special occasion). But it doesn’t hurt to taste blind on occasion to keep some perspective.

For instance, I have a friend who recently paid “more than $20 a bottle” (he said with a sheepish smile) to have Westvleteren 12 shipped from Belgium. If you read Brew Like A Monk (go ahead and buy it, please) you’ll see I have great admiration for the beer and the Trappist monks to produce it. But I think my friend might do well picking up some Rochefort 10 (another Trappist beer) and tasting the two side by side. Rochefort 10 sells for $4.50-$5 in our part of the country and is relatively easy to restock.

He might decide the Westvleteren – before you comment, yes I know it comes WITHOUT a label – is well worth the higher price, but it won’t hurt to check.

Michelob Celebrate – Does it suck?

It seems safe to say that Todd Haefer does not like Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob Celebrate Vanilla Oak. He writes:

“I get the suspicious feeling that this is a beer that originated from marketing, not from brewers. It also appears that it was approved by marketers who only drink wine, or Perrier water, or soda pop. I can’t imagine anyone who seriously enjoys beer tasted this in advance and approved it for public consumption.”

And the flavor?

“So what does the beer actually taste like? Creme soda or a vanilla wine cooler without much of a head. The beer is too sweet, the vanilla too strong and the body is very watery. The oak characteristic is virtually non-existent, as is malt. It also left an unpleasant aftertaste, like Red Bull. I suspect imitation vanilla is also an ingredient.”

Haefer writes a weekly column for the Appleton, Wis., Post-Crescent, but his “reach” is broader, because many other newspaper in the Gannett chain that owns the P-C also run his review. That might or might not make his words more useful to you than those from a particular poster at Rate Beer or Beer Advocate.

Or than those of us who write 75-80 words about a beer every other month for All About Beer magazine. Here’s what I wrote about Celebrate last December:

“Could we label a beer packing 10% alcohol by volume and a distinct smack of bourbon introductory? Celebrate may well familiarize more Americans to wood-influenced beer than hundreds of small-batch brewers have in 10 years. A double blast of vanilla, from freshly milled vanilla beans plus bourbon barrel staves added during maturation, dominates from the nose to a sweet finish. Bourbon almost as prominent, more as it warms. An uncomplicated introduction.”

Do you get the feeling that this is a beer I’m not going to spend money on but understand others might? That would be good.

I’m not opposed to Haefer expressing his opinion assertively. That’s a lot better than a critic who feels obiliged to write something nice about every beer. I do wish he’d bothered to learn a little about the beer, because sometimes the story behind a beer becomes part of the beer.

For me, another part of the story is what others think of the beer because – like Haefer – it has more “reach” than any bourbon-oak-vanilla beer made by a small-batch brewer. Check out the Rate Beer reviews and those at Beer Advocate and you’ll see they are mixed – which given that this is an A-B product and most reviewers at those sites are biased against A-B indicates that quite a few people like Celebrate.

Barrels

It doesn’t hurt any “reviewer” to remind yourself not everybody shares your tastes. I much prefer, and am much more likely to praise, a beer that tastes like beer and certainly one with more complexity. A-B gets credit for experimenting with freshly milled vanilla beans. A small-batch brewer gets more for coaxing that flavor out of the wood. To me a beer that is aged in bourbon barrels rather than on staves has an almost unfair advantage.

So is there a lesson here? You have to decide if you want to read newspaper reviews, hang out at beer rating sites, lean on friends for advice, even trust what I write about these beers.

Meanwhile I get to tell one more story.

When I asked a distributor why his company chose not to stock Celebrate Vanilla or the new Celebrate Chocolate this year he said his bosses thought the price was too high for the average customer. Imagine what it would be if A-B had added in the cost of moving beer in and out of bourbon barrels instead of tanks that hold 1,400 barrels (its smallest) and more.

On the other hand it took Tomme Arthur of Port Brewing/Lost Abbey just a moment to do the math.

“We’d go out and buy the extra 834 oak barrels,” he said.

More on aging beer

The International Herald Tribune writes Some beers really do get better with age.

Nasser Eftekhari, owner of Beer Mania in Brussels, makes a good point: “Beer isn’t better after a few years, but different.”

Sometimes it is better, which is why we mess around with cellaring beer. (See the previous post and be sure to read Stephen Beaumont’s comment.)

Here’s how Jeff Boda describes a 1970 bottle of Chimay Grand Reserve: “Gone were the telltale signs of beer: the bitterness, the carbonation and the foamy head. In their wake was a thick brew that tasted solely of chocolate with a little dried fruit, something to be savored with only the best of friends.”

Anything but cloves

Pumpkin beers seem to be bigger than ever this year. Almost any liquor store I walk into has a large display with six-packs stacked to eye level.

But this headline: Anything but cloves sums things up nicely.

This week’s On Draft started as a comparison of pumpkin ales, but after five brews, I decided that pumpkin pie spice was the patchouli of the food world. How anyone can tolerate such toxic levels of clove and nutmeg in their beer is beyond me. Pumpkin is just a wee category of fall beers, anyway, so I decided to broaden my horizons.

In the end, though, the author does recommend a Pumpkin beer: Elysian Brewing Co. Night Owl Pumpkin Ale, a reminder that it doesn’t hurt to keep sampling and that the best choice could be a beer at your local brewpub.