place/local/ingredients/sensory

Session #144: The best beer to drink at home right now

A glass half full of beer from Scratch Brewing in Southern Illinois

The Session logoPerhaps because my brain is pretty much fried every day by the latest shenanigans elsewhere, even after reading Boak & Bailey’s broader explanation of how we might approach the topic for the Session #144 the headline (“The best beer to drink at home right now”) was not leaving my brain. Best beer. At home. Right now. So the Tuesday afternoon the announcement posted I checked to see what my options were. At home.

We don’t cellar beer (other than Big Foot, a habit we started long before the brewery quit using twist off caps in 2008) in our house, but we do have small fridge that was intended, by the maker, to hold wine. Beers meant to stand up to time may linger in there for a while, but seldom long enough that when opened scream, “You should have drank me last month.”

In the fridge I found a bottle of Scratch 131 tucked between, like it was hiding, bottles from Primitive Beer here in Colorado and from Fort George Brewing in Oregon. Daria and I first drank the 131 at the brewery two days after Christmas of 2023. We brought three bottles home, opened one when spring arrived and another as fall neared because I knew it belonged on my Craft Beer & Brewing Best in 2024 list. For The Session, I decided to be sure it is still terrific. It is.

I have only one thing to add to what I wrote at the time. I should have included that the ingredients were foraged from the wooded land that surrounds the brewery.

“Fresh flower petals, dried petals. Fresh herbs, dried herbs. Fresh roots, toasted roots. Inhale to recall a fall hike through the woods surrounding the brewery, exhale for memories of a similar spring ramble. One-thirty-one—a reference to the number of ingredients included in the recipe — is a beer of all seasons, and an advertisement for retronasal pleasure.”

It happens to be Scratch’s 12th birthday tomorrow.

Makes me wish I had a fourth bottle of 131 to open. Fortunately, there is a happy ending. We’ll be back in the Midwest a few days next month, which means we’ll be at Scratch.

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Visit Boak & Bailey for more contributions to The Session.

Not exactly a dive bar

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NM

Hopper Pub & Pizzeria, Rio Rancho NMFrom NYC’s craft beer scene faces sobering challenges as closures and mergers reshape the industry:

In the early years, many breweries were so beer-centric, they ignored decor, food concepts and beverages beyond their own beer and refused to even hang televisions — an approach that is no longer effective, said Aaron Gore, who has consulted with over 70 breweries on three continents.

He said while the spate of New York City brewery changes now feels jarring, it’s actually a “typical adoption curve.” Approaching a decade since its peak, craft beer is now a “normal good” that can be found even at many dive bars, said Gore.

The Hopper Pub and Pizzeria is not a dive bar, but it is also not what Suds Korge and Dregs Donnigan would have called a fern bar. It’s located in a strip mall behind a gas station in Rio Rancho, N.M. (shout out to Glengarry Glen Ross), and the walls are decorated with silly signs as well as beer signs and neon. A particle board floor is utilitarian.

However, the crust on their wood-fired pizza is perfect and the beer list has something for pretty much everyone. That they post the names of the beers are listed sans breweries indicates a certainly level of customer knowledge. Bone Shaker? From Second Street Brewing in Santa Fe. You know if you know.

There was live music last Monday, Veteran’s Day. That, it seems, is celebrated year round at the Hopper Pub.

Monday beer reading: Lager yeast, sexism & premiumization

Lager fermenting at Brauerei Schönram

Lager fermenting at Brauerei Schönram in Bavaria

A Washington Post story yesterday discusses how “scientists in Chile harnessed the biodiversity of Patagonia to make novel yeast hybrids, potentially paving the way for new lager beer flavors.”

Early on, the principal investigator (that means he has skin in the game), says, “All the lager beers that we drink now come from a single event from a yeast generated 500 years ago. That makes most of the lager beers quite similar.”

Coincidentally, last week Good Beer Hunting posted almost 4,000 words about lager yeast.

My nit to pick in the first is that lagers don’t have to taste quite similar. In the second, this is not what I think the best brewers do: “When we think about the history of lager, we’re talking about the history of brewers and scientists trying to understand how to get yeast to do what they want.” My experience is that the real skill is figuring at what yeast want and giving it to them. That’s when the magic happens.

The strains coming out of Patogonia may well produce unique flavors, but that’s no excuse to diss what brewers are already using. In “Modern Lager Beer,” the authors point out that there are “notable difference even within lager strains bearing the same 34/70 moniker.”

Two brewers traveled around Bavaria sourcing yeast directly to assist Brewing Science Institute mapping out variations. The samples they selected displayed differences in maltotriose fermentation, attenuation, sulfur production, acetyaldehyde production, diacetyl removal, and ester production. The authors also cite research that confirms that lager strains adapt to their environment, finding that chromosomal variations can begin to occur within a dozen generations.

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LEDE OF THE WEEK

DEI is so 2021. For many in the beer industry, as well as in the wider world, diversity, equity and inclusion has become old news, no longer worthy of column inches.

“I believe that the progress of social advocacy work in craft beer is in danger of stalling out completely or even rolling backward,” academic, activist and DEI professional Dr. J. Jackson-Beckham stated in a post on Crafted For All in September 2023. It echoed the feelings of many other DEI activists and advocates in the industry: One of powerlessness, frustration, and lack of support and progress has led to large-scale burnout.

— From Apathy Has Rained On Me — On DEI Burnout in the Beer Industry

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Process: Where greatness and quality meet

Jack's Abby Porch Fest

A can of Jack’s Abby beer

Thirty-eight years ago, Brewers Publications released its first title, “Brewing Lager Beer.”

Ten years later, when an expansive update, “NEW Brewing Lager Beer,” was published, author Greg Noonan wrote, “The trickle of knowledge available to craft and homebrewers when this book was first published has become a flood.”

Twenty-eight more years later, the newest book from Brewers Publications is “Modern Lager Beer.”

The flood has not abated, but new information is not all about MLB that is different. BLB was never just about lagers. It followed a “how to” approach, and served as a manual for home- and microbrewers, as they were known at the time. MLB is only about brewing lager and takes more of a “how they” approach. Authors Jack Hendler and Joe Connolly of Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers spoke with more than 70 brewers and beer professionals before they wrote the book.

What is the same is an important lesson: There is no one way to brew great beer, but there is a way.

The authors get right to the point in the introduction.

“When American craft brewers create lagers, they often do so without changing any of the processes or brewing techniques they use for their ales,” they write, later adding, “while American craft ale fermentation is at the absolute cutting edge of quality, American craft lager is lagging woefully behind.”

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Send your best homebrews to Denver (please)

Is purple a beer style?
Beer judging: You meet the most interesting beers

If you read Monday’s post before American Homebrewers Association executive director Julia Herz added more about Homebrew HQ at GABF, and the connection between commercial brewers and homebrewers now would be a good time to visit the comments.

I am a big fan of Homebrew Con, even though it is the only place where I’ve seen somebody fall asleep during a presentation I was giving (Baltimore 2016). However, I am down with the idea that “anyone who attends GABF in October as an AHA member will be exposed to an incredible beer and homebrew related experience unique to any other event in the U.S.”

Also, that the National Homebrew Competition awards will be handed out at GABF also has a nice ring to it. Bringing us to the point of this post. The entry window for NHC is open. You may pick which site you want to send your beer to for first round judging. If it is really good, I propose you send it to Denver. That’s where I have signed up to judge.