beers of conviction

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.

Come on, NY mag, take beer seriously

New York Magazine – high profile in a high impact market – has a story about beer. Before you begin celebrating with hopes another mainstream publication gets it read what Stephen Beaumont has to say at World of Beer. (The magazine piece is online, but you should read his commentary, then use the link he provides to the article.)

Beaumont points out that this is not an altogether terrible story, but that the end result of rounding up what the magazine calls “untrained but enthusiastic drinking aficionados” can frustrate those of us who know something about the beers described. He writes:

Which makes me wonder if these same magazines would assemble a tasting panel to cast judgment on a mix of chardonnays, ports, Champagnes, sherries and first growth Bordeaux. Somehow, I think not.

Bingo. Quite honestly, I think it is easier for somebody to “understand” when they taste a great wine than it may be when they taste a great beer – because beer covers a wider spectrum of flavors. Certainly few magazines are likely to take a couple of chardonnays, a single viognier, a sauvignon blanc and lump them in a group with a catchy name (such as “Ordering in” – one the NY mag uses in “Ales in Comparison”).

I have a category here for beer and wine (and will file this post there), but the comparisons can make me uneasy. There are times when a glass of wine tastes better than a glass of beer (though I could add vice versa). A bottle of wine may have attributes than no bottle of beer shares. That’s why comparing Wine, the category to Beer, the category gives me reason to pause.

Attitudes toward the two, those can be compared, and that’s why Beaumont’s conclusion that “most of those procedural errors could be easily fixed if editors just instructed their staff to treat their beer tastings as seriously as they would a panel assessment of wines” rings so true. Also, if they had to foot the bill for 21 bottles of top-line wine (17 really, plus a few for Yellow Tail and friends) then they might have thought twice.

We just returned from Northern California, where we drank truly wonderful wine and equally wonderful beer. One difference is that the beer was cheaper. We’re not talking $300 and $500 bottles of wine (at the winery – forget the restaurant wine lists) but really good Sonoma County wines that cost $20-$35 a bottle (750ml).

Yet if you are looking for that “something else” in the bottle – could be terroir or whatever reason some people use to justify buying trophy wines – then nuance (or creativity or regard for tradition) is just at prominent in Sonoma Country beers such as Russian River Damnation or Bear Republic Racer 5 as it is in the best wines. Damnation costs $8 for a 750ml bottle, Racer 5 just over $3 for a 22-ounce bottle (and $7.99 for a six-pack).

Those beers should probably cost more, and do by the time they get to New York City. I’m not rooting for them to command wine prices just so they’ll be taken seriously, but it going to take something to keep one from being dismissed because it “looks like road tar.”

The magazine panelists dissed some excellent beers (be sure you read Beaumont’s detailed rebuttal), so it’s not like they weren’t getting the good stuff. That’s the discouraging part.

Another tale of dumbed down beer

Today’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, the story is in the subscriber only part of the site) examines the ongoing cutbacks at InBev.

The “hook” is that InBev is closing its brewery in Hoegaarden, which has been widely reported. You wouldn’t run out and buy WSJ to learn that, but there’s more to the story:

– How has InBev responded to cultural shifts are leading increasing numbers of drinkers to wine? “We don’t think it is going to reverse,” said InBev regional director Stefan Descheemaeker. “We have nicknamed Western Europe as the ‘mother of all challenges.’ ”

One initiative has been to close about a dozen breweries. “How many breweries do we need? It’s an ongoing study. “Technically speaking, we don’t need many,” Descheemaeker said. So much for the days when Interbrew liked to bill itself as the “World’s Local Brewer.”

– The company has launched Hoegaarden Citrons, flavored with lemon and lime.

– In Hoegaarden, David Duerinckx, a worker at the brewery, says the traditional the white beer has lost its original flavor. “Twenty years ago it was more acidic,” he said. “You used to be able to compare different batches. Now it is sweeter and it is standardized. This is our tradition that is going away.”

But the last word goes to Iain Lowe, a spokesman for CAMRA (Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale, but a defender of other traditions as well):

“InBev is debasing beer. By all means, come out with new beers but don’t abandon existing ones, [simplifying] the taste so no one dislikes it but no one really likes it, either.”