books

Undefinable, hopelessly misunderstood and absolutely essential

Craft: An Argument, by Pete BrownAbout halfway into “Craft: An Argument,” author Pete Brown cites two uncomfortable truths about craft as represented by the Arts & Crafts movement. The first is that craft is inherently selfish. The second is that it is elitist.

“This is why the Arts & Crafts movement ultimately collapsed over its various irreconcilable ambitions: by placing the dignity and job-satisfaction of the worker above all else and ensuring that they were paid a fair prices for their labour, Arts & Crafts objects necessarily had to sell at a higher price than mass-produced industrial products,” he writes.

Facts are facts. Nonetheless, Brown offers a thesis that what craft beer is is revealed by examining Arts & Crafts and other similar movements. To appreciate his idea, it is necessary to move beyond the argumentsthatwillnotend about the various definitions of “craft beer” and embrace the book’s subtitle: “Why the term ‘Craft Beer’ is completely undefinable, hopelessly misunderstood and absolutely essential.”

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Sahti and beyond: Viking Age Brew

Ancient Viking BrewHeikkie Riutta, a farmer in the Finnish municipality of Sysmä, won the Finland’s National Sahti Competition in 2006. He brews in the tradition taught to him by his father, one he will pass on to his sons. Sysmä is barley-centric, and like others in the region, Riutta brews his sahti without rye. Lighter color and lower alcohol strength are also typical for the region, and Riutta focuses on drinkability over alcohol strength, making beers in the 6-8% ABV range.

In contrast, Veli-Matt Heinonen makes a stronger, sweeter sahti, like others found in the Padasjoki region where he lives. He learned to brew from his mother in the 1980s and the recipe, which contains about 10% dark rye malt, hasn’t changed much since. Before adding hops he puts them in a bucket and pours boiling water over them to reduce the bitterness.

Mika Laitinen provides recipes from these two and others in Viking Age Brew: The Craft of Brewing Sahti Farmhouse Ale, the recipes supporting his assertion early on that sahti may be called a beer style but not by those who favor narrow style guidelines.

“Farmhouse ales always pose a challenge for those who want to categorize beers by style,” Laitinen writes. “Brewer-specific variation is enormous, and regional preferences may be overshadowed by ‘noisy’ individual examples.” In addition, these beers were not brewed to be shipped to a bottle share somewhere in the middle of the United States. Freshness is a gigantic variable. “The ale can taste different on the same day, depending on whether the pint was drawn from the top or the bottom of the fermenter.”

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Gose: Balancing tradition and innovation

Stephen Beaumont tweet

I was already thinking about the speed at which beer seems to be barreling ahead when this tweet from Stephen Beaumont showed up in my Twitter feed early (he’s in Italy) yesterday. The reason being that I’ve just finished reading Fal Allen’s Gose: Brewing a Classic German Beer For The Modern Era. Allen had never heard of the style months before Anderson Valley Brewing made its first one in July 2013. Now he’s written a book about it that fills 221 pages.

Gose: Brewing A Classic German Beer For the Modern EraThat he knew nothing of it is a bit humbling, given that it one of the “wheat beers from the past” I wrote about in Brewing With Wheat, which was published in 2010. Later that year I provided a “how to” guide on how to brew a gose for The New Brewer, the magazine for members of the Brewers Association. The point was that gose was a oddity. Now it is everywhere and includes beers that go well beyond your basic sour German ale with a bit of salt and coriander.

This allows Allen to dig into the history of the beer — yes, I’m jealous — while, as the title suggests, also placing it in a modern context. Are you drinking gose, and a lot of people are, and want to know all about it? This is a book for you. Want to learn everything about how to brew it from somebody who is really good at it. Again, the book for you.

One example. Goslar, where there style originated, was once a brewing center, with 300 breweries in 1500. As Allen writes, the gose origin story “has it that the salinity of gose once came from the mineral-laden water of the Gose river.” Later, as beers from Goslar gained in popularity other brewers added salt to emulate their character.

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Hunting for the next great beer experience

In April, there was a link on Twitter to a news story about a “Bavarian ‘beer world'” that caused me to ask Stephen Beaumont and Mark Dredge, both of whom have recently written books about beer adventures, if they have been to Kuchlbauer’s Bierwelt.

Dredge responded first, “I drove near it when going to drink zoigl but decided not to stop there!”

And Beaumont followed, “Can’t say I’ve ever been or, having read the article, are inclined to go. Animatronic beer gnomes?”

Not long after, Joe Stange — who lives in Berlin — added, “Kuchlbauer… The beer is fine but Hundertwasser is the real attraction.” Hundertwasser is the tower within the park.

All three of these men spell flavour with a u, but they’ve earned my trust and their most recent books merit attention. That Beaumont and Dredge have written ones called Will Travel for Beer and The Beer Bucket List respectively is something of a coincidence that illustrates it must be time for such a travel books (or books), along the lines one of those one hundred and one or one thousand and one before you die titles. That this is the eight edition of Good Beer Guide Belgium, which Stange co-wrote with Tim Webb, since 1992 points to a dynamic that isn’t just about Belgium.

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Book report: ‘Beer is for Everyone’

Once you’ve condensed what might be an entire post to a blurb that fits on the back of a book it may not rehydrate easily, not even with a healthy dose of beer.

So this is what I wrote about Beer is for Everyone!:

“The value of a fresh pair of eyes — or in this case a fresh pair of glasses — is apparent on basically every page. The author, who doubles as protagonist, foregoes making beer formidable and instead invites a newcomer to be comfortable. To adapt a line from page 89, ‘This book was meant for fun.’ ” I wish that I had included Jay Brooks’ suggestion that “it won’t be until later that you realize how much you learned about beer.”

But I think what remains most important is that the book is just plain fun. Author/artist Em Sauter is plenty serious about beer, which is obvious when her character speaks objectively about beer and brewing. It is equally obvious when she speaks subjectively. For example, see pages 104 and 105, where she describes Firestone Walker Pivo. “The beer bombards the senses in an utterly wonderful way. Bready. Spicy. Floral. Woody.” (Appropriate artwork accompanies the words.)

She also offers pairing suggestions: “From sushi to swiss cheese.” No surprise there. But then comes this: “Or from karate to knitting.” Not the way I’d think about Pivo, and maybe something that doesn’t even make sense to me. That’s fine. A discussion about the need for different voices broke out a while back. Listen to one of those voices.

The rehydration of thought stops there, but for more about what is in the book, and additional pages, see what Jeff Alworth had to say.