place/local/ingredients/sensory

Dispatches from the brewing local front

WHAT THE L?

Fullsteam Brewery in North Carolina has made a small change in the signage it uses at beer festivals.

A line that previously read “AUTUMN LAGER festbier, 6% ABV, 99% local” now reads “AUTUMN LAGER festbier, 6% ABV, 99% L.”

Fullsteam founder Sean Lilly Wilson explained why in the brewery’s newsletter.

The goal is two-fold: first, to intentionally have people ask “What is “L?”” That question provides an opportunity for dialogue. It allows us to share what we mean by local and why we believe it matters.

Secondly, the effort is to ultimately normalize it. Why waste time on IBUs when it’s a meaningless measurement of perceived bitterness? Why bother with SRM (a color metric) when you generally know a pils is going to be light and a porter dark?

L matters to us and to a growing number of breweries. L to us means Southern-sourced (overwhelmingly North Carolina) from independent farmers, foragers, maltsters, and tree growers.

Ultimately, we want customers to care more about origin and how buying local can strengthen the state’s agricultural sector. For us and a number of L-centric breweries, that matters more than specious statistics and formulas.

Truly local beer is a metric worth measuring. But in a No Laws When You’re Drinking Claws era, we have to find new ways to make it matter.”

Fullsteam has spent more than a half million dollars on local ingredients — local being Southern states, mostly North Carolina — since opening in 2010. “I hope to ramp that up each year, to where that $500k isn’t over nine years, but every year!” Wilson wrote via email.

The ingredients and where they come from:
Malted corn: From Riverbend Malt House in Asheville and Epiphany Craft Malt in Durham.
Malted barley: Foundation, Ruby and Vienna from Epiphany.
Malted triticale: From Epiphany.
Hops: Aramis from France and Saaz from Germany.
Yeast: House lager yeast (not of North Carolina origin).

LOCAL CONNECTIONS

Via Josh Chapman at Black Narrows Brewing Co.

ASSUMING YOU LIVE IN NORTHERN BOTSWANA

HOMINY

Coming in September: Kveik Fest, Kveikstokk

Yes, back-to-back posts related to Nordic farmhouse brewing. (The first.)

Events are planned in Chicago and Toronto showcasing beers brewed with kveik (which is a yeast, not a beer style) and author and beer anthropologist Lars Garshol, who has introduced brewers previously influenced by German/Czech/Belgian/English traditions to one they barely knew existed.

Lars Garshol talks about kviek in Bergen, Norway
Lars Garshol points out where kveik belongs on the family tree of yeast during a talk at the Bergen Ølfestival last September.

Burnt City Brewing in Chicago will host the Inaugural Kveik Fest Sept. 7. Three days later, Garshol will appear at Kveikstokk in Toronto.

Appropriately, Kveik Fest is sponsored by Omega Yeast, which made kveik strains available in the U.S. more than two years ago. The one-day invitational will include traditional and experimental beers fermented with kveik from 30 Chicago-area and national brewers. Tickets are $75.

“Kveik is particularly exciting to so many brewers because it contributes great combinations of flavors to beer and is extremely versatile when it comes to brewing different styles,” Ben Saller, head brewer at Burnt City, said for a press release. “Once we started experimenting with the Norwegian yeast strains available from Omega Yeast in the past couple of years, we soon had this idea to design an event around highlighting yeast as an ingredient. Creatively, there’s so much that can be done with kveik and the range of citrus and tropical flavors and aromas it can bring to the table.”

Escarpment Labs, which funded sequencing of kveik strains and helped establish that they are genetically distinct, and Burdock Brewery will host Kveikstokk. Garshol will be talk about his travels in Norway, documenting the living farmhouse brewing traditions as well as some of the special ingredients in use. There will be kveik-fermented beers on tap brewed by Burdock, Escarpment Labs and friends. Tickets are $25.

Monday beer briefing: worthiness, consolidation and Baas Becking

04.08.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING

Bill Wesselink, Dovetail Brewery
I spent about 21 hours during two days midweek at Dovetail Brewery in Chicago. It was quite noisy as times — I understood that the brewery sat next to the city’s Brown Line, but I didn’t know it had built a nest between two train tracks. Yet, when trains aren’t running it can be flat out quiet, particularly in the coolship room, looking at wort sometimes produced using decoction, and other times with a turbid mash. The turbid mash itself is less peaceful; co-founder Bill Wesselink raised an ugly looking blister doing some of the mixing by hand. Not until I was catching up Friday did I realize what a noisy week I had happily missed much of, one with many stories that intersected. So a different format today, and here goes . . .

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For Monday beer briefing, complete this sentence: “Beer is …”

02.11.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

Eleven days into February and do you know where your flagship beer is? Or what a flagship beer is? My contribution to #Flagshipfebruary posts Friday, and that’s when I’ll add more thoughts here. So this is a No Flagship, No Corn roundup. If you somehow missed the Chronicles of Corn you should be reading Alan McLeod’s Thursday posts.

A Long, Strange Trip — Wicked Weed is Opening Something in Atlanta, But They Don’t Know What it is Yet.
A story as strange as the headline suggests. Wicked Weed co-founder Walt Dickinson rambles just a bit throughout, and there is no single takeaway. He asks, and answers, the question I find everywhere I go these days. “For me, the big line is, ‘How big can we get without compromising the quality?'” Dickinson says. “And I know there’s incremental compromise that happens with scale, but not from production. I think that’s the biggest myth I’ve ever heard.” He provides an interesting example, but I suspect it is not that simple.

Brewers are ready for the low-ABV revolution. But are beer drinkers?
Because this is the way many people think. “First, you take the serving size of your beer. Then, you multiply by the ABV. Divide by the price, and there you have it: the absolute value of the buzz in your bottle.”

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Corn vs. rice in beer: Been there, done that

A-B advertisement decrying use of corn

This particular advertisement appeared in Puck magazine Feb. 22, 1893 as part of a national campaign mounted by Anheuser-Busch. It does not mention that A-B used rice rather than corn, so it would seem that the rather constant referral to the use of rice in Super Bowl commercials that just aired is a step toward truth in advertising.

In all fairness, A-B long ago quit obscuring the fact that Budweiser was brewed with rice, as Bud Light is today. As soon at large breweries began using adjuncts in the final decades of the nineteenth century there were arguments about whether corn or rice was superior.

On January 30, 1881, well before A-B took aim on beers brewed with corn, the author of a full-page article in the Chicago Daily Tribune chose the side of rice in the rice versus corn debate. The author stated, “Corn beer is not a drink for Americans or Germans. It is good enough for the Spaniards, Greasers, Indians, and the mongrel breeds of South America.” Instead the author lauded the exceptional crisp taste that resulted with rice, and added, “for years the ‘blonde,’ or light colored beers have been fashionable and grown into public favor in America.” The author also suggested most breweries in Chicago used rice, while Milwaukee brewers used corn.

Anheuser-Busch founder Adolphus Busch, who ultimately had made the decision to brew Budweiser with rice, spoke often and bluntly about his distaste for beers made with corn. “Our main argument must be the quality of our product, that we do not use any corn,” he said in 1895. “While nearly every other beer brewed in this country, with hardly one exception, is made of cheaper material, viz: corn; that such a beer is not as wholesome or digestible as pure barley malt beer, the small addition of rice only improving it, and that the use of corn makes a very inferior article. The difference in the cost of manufacture between a barley malt and rice beer and corn beer is one dollar per barrel in favor of the latter, as a matter of course.”