place/local/ingredients/sensory

Yesterday Jeff Alworth filed a dispatch from Bend, Oregon, headlined “American Palates: 82% IPA.” He reported a definite lack of diversity at the brewery taprooms he visited, leading him to write, “The point of all this? Hoppy ales have taken over American brewing, and we’re never going back.” And, “When a country develops its own beer culture, diversity declines.”

Perhaps this means Oregon is more advanced than we are here in the Midwest, because we have not yet developed a similar beer monoculture. (The caveat being, as Alworth points otu, that we are talking about everything outside of industrial pale lagers.) To make reassure myself I’ve rounded up what’s on offer at six of the seven breweries within two and a half miles of our house.

I’m not saying where we live (near that small green park left of central on the map) is typical of St. Louis, Missouri, the Midwest, whatever; just telling you what’s nearby. That Twitter asks if it should translate the menu board at Side Project Brewing from French or tweets from Urban Chestnut Brewing from German may be a sign we don’t fit in quite anywhere.

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Late last month I tweeted this compare and contrast after Alan McLeod suggested we could use a “Tree Of Brewing Traditions.” (A fine idea, by the way, so waiting for somebody to step up and do the work.) So you’ll understand why when I first saw the interactive beer wall at Schlafly Bottleworks last week I thought immediately of the ceiling at Strefa Piwa Pub (Beer Zone) in Krakow.

So Bottlesworks at the top, Beer Zone below. The Schlafly map is a work in progress, but right now you can tap one of those circles and details about the beer will pop up on the screen in the center. Wondering what the hops are in American IPA? There they are. Stephen Hale, whose title really is ambassador brewer, says that in a later version customers will be able to tap on any of the hops in that beer, say Amarillo since it is in APIA, and find out what other beers are brewed with that hop.

Of course, I immediately suggested more refinements. Like listing other beers fermented with a POF+ yeast strain when you tap the saison button. This is why I don’t get asked out much.

Jester King Brewery promoted Averie Swanson to head brewer this week. She replaces Garrett Crowell, who is leaving Jester King with plans to start his own Texas brewery.

That’s Swanson in the background of this photo, with Marika Josephson of Scratch Brewing in the foreground. Swanson joined Jester King co-founder Jeffrey Stuffings and Crowell at Scratch last August, where six brewers assembled collaborated to make a beer that was mashed in wood, boiled in wood, and fermented in wood. Josephson is doing her best to keep wort from boiling over, while Swason stirs the mash for the next batch.

“I’ve never had this much fun,” Swanson said at the time.

Craft Beer Austin has an interview with her.