place/local/ingredients/sensory

TWTBWTW: Being local versus being for locals

"Death of a Salesman" set

An interesting thought from Alister Reece.

“This also got me thinking about how so many of the beer styles we love and take for granted are a combination of location in a physical sense and locale in a population sense.”

I’m in the process of assembling a lengthy recap about what I’ve previously written “hop terroir” for the next issue of Hop Queries. Much of the research focuses on geographical differences, but there is more.

The first question asked here, back in 2005, was, “Does it matter where a particular beer, any beer, is brewed?” In thinking about this way too much in the years since, I’ve returned often to something Amy Trubek wrote in “The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.”

“This broader definition of terroir considers place as much as earth. According to this definition, the people involved in making wine, the winemaking tradition of a region, and the local philosophy of flavor are all part of terroir. Unlike the narrow view of terroir, this humanist point of view is not really quantifiable. Terroir speaks of nature and nature’s influence on flavor and quality, but here the human attributes we bring to ‘nature’ are cultural and sensual rather than objective and scientific.”

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– Changing colors. We were New York City last weekend (the photo at the top is the set for “Death of a Salesman”; they were pretty specific about the rule against taking photos during the play) when I read this story about how New Belgium is making over Fat Tire. Had we been at home in Colorado, perhaps I could have tracked down a can of the beer and provided drinking notes. I will put that on my to do list.

– The Meaning of Dry January. I was wrong last week when I typed the link I posted then would be the only one to a story about Dry January. Beer drinkers may choose to quote this, “One takeaway from my research is that lower-alcohol-content beverages are better. It’s easier in a social situation to drink and continue drinking and not worry about your consumption.” They should read the rest of the story.

– What are the elements that make a beer memorable? Context. Context. Context.

– The shelf turd abides. A “a vessel of ironic detachment.”

– You Were Never Going to Go to Noma Anyway. I spent too much time in the week reading about changes at Noma, the hyperlocal Copenhagen restaurant, blah blah blah. Because I’ve been reading too much about the place since I wrote “Brewing Local” and wondering about how fine dining, beer and inclusivity (or exclusivity) fit together. So I’d also recommend you take a look at “Noma and the Fizzle of Too-Fine Dining,” “Noma’s closing exposes the contradictions of fine dining,” and “How much does our food tell us about who we are?”

TWTBWTW: Beer dreams & history lessons

Frankenmuth Christmas POS

Take away the golden moonbeam
Take away the tinsel sky
What at night seemed oh so scenic
May be cynic by and by

The first time I met a friend’s wife, a few minutes into a conversation that was bouncing about randomly and at a quickening pace, he said, “Don’t worry, his brain is hyperlinked.”

I mention that because the first story linked to here posted last month, not last week, and I’m going to totally spoil the ending by quoting it verbatim. And note the second time I read it I put on the soundtrack to The Fantasticks and fast forwarded to “This Plum is Too Ripe.” The four lines at the top come from the song.

So here is “You Can Go Homebrew Again,” and the final paragraph:

“While just about everyone that has brewed more than one batch of homebrew dreams of opening their own brewery, just about every brewery owner dreams of just being able to brew with the freedoms and joy of homebrewing.”

The holiday spirit fills our house at the moment. We drove 160 miles round trip yesterday to cut a tree in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest. Doesn’t look like a farm tree, but it is a great tree. That’s an explanation why brevity rules here this week, and likely the week after, and surely the week after and the week after.

Ingredients
– Early history of hops. As is expected from Lars Garshol, a thorough and well documented examination of the use of hops in beer. I’ll comment more in Hop Queries later this month, but for now. . . He mentions the 1970 discovery of a boat in the Kent region of England that was carrying a cargo of hops almost 1,100 years ago. In a 23-page paper that resulted, botanist D. Gay Wilson offers quite a bit about what was known about hops in beer at the time as well as a proper bit of skepticism about some attempts at history. I quoted this bit of wisdom from Wilson in “For the Love of Hops” and in several presentations since: “Beer is a popular subject, and the literature abounds in unsupported statements, misleading or inaccurate quotations, and inadequate references.”

– S. eubayanus found alive and well and living in Ireland.

Hard times
– In Chicago. “I think, unfortunately, in the short term, this is going to get worse. I think this challenge is here for the foreseeable future.”

– In the UK. There may still be a demand for interesting beer, but smaller brewers are being shut out from the market they created.

– In the US. Shoppers are beginning to spend cautiously just as rising input costs push up beer prices.

‘Tis the season
– What could be more true to the spirit of Christmas than standing in a crowded pub and singing Christmas carols?

– A brewery for winter.

– A list.

Obituaries
– Ray McNeill, via All About Beer and via The Commons.

– Martin Morse Wooster.

Wine
– Terroir.

– Wrapping up this That Was The Beer Week That Was with a little fun, because “Nothing says, ‘Merry Christmas!’ like wine-sodden guests hurling a bladed wood-cutting implement across the yard or garland-festooned living room.”

TWTBWTW: Horses at a brewery

Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NM

On tap at Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NMEx Novo Brewing in Corrales, NM, has horse parking. The stucco building in the distance is the brewery tasting room.

(As an aside, it also has a diverse choice of beers on tap.)

Just down the road, a sign in front of Village Mercantile Home and Farm Store this past weekend informed those driving by that it was Small Business Saturday, created to benefit local merchants the day after Black Friday. The Mercantile sells a lot of horse feed and serves the community in which we once lived quite well. Ex Novo has quickly become a family (and horse) friendly gathering spot and also serves the village well.

That’s simply an observation occasionally worth considering when viewing this week’s suggested reading. Speaking of which, Alan McLeod titled his latest beer link-o-rama “The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks” and I can’t figure out why. There was plenty to read, plenty to think about, plenty of serious things to think about seriously. Instead, I offer this as a much lazier effort:

– Buying beer and beer merchandise is not going to have the world.

– Don’t sleep on Gale’s Prize Old Ale. Martyn Cornell brought a bottle to share at Ales Through the Ages. I tasted about an ounce and I endorse his recommendation.

– Holiday ales. “Since Twitter is dying, perhaps we can get back to commenting on blogs. I invite you to discuss your favorite winter beers.”

– If you are paying a premium for flavor and “craft” why shouldn’t NA beer cost as much? (That’s me asking the question after reading the story.)

– Remember when beer weeks were special? “San Diego’s brewers have come too far to let San Diego Beer Week become just another week in San Diego beer.”

– Brewing Local, redux. Small world. This was a topic of The Session more than 10 years ago. And, yes, I wrote an entire book centered on the topic. One that shows up in this hip hop video.

TWTBWTW: Tree beers & other reasons to ask what is beer

Best of show beers Copa Baja

What on tap at El Sume in Mexicali

Welcome to MLX Beerfest in Mexicali

Yes, there is a lot of IPA out there, but as the photo at the top illustrates there were beers of many colors on the best of show table last week at Copa Baja in Mexicali, Mexico. And 17 of the 24 beers on tap at El Sume (where the bottle list is also pretty dang impressive) were not IPAs. The third photo? Well, welcome to the MLX Beerfest that followed two days of competition in Mexicali, Mexico.

Another busy week, so another quick list of reading suggestions:

What is beer? No seriously. Pete Brown wrapped up is keynote at Ales Through the Ages by quoting Hilary Mantel: “History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organizing our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.” This post is more fodder for that conversation.

Strictly speaking. During the final session of Ales Through the Ages, in which some presenters took questions from attendees, the topic of beer styles came up. And how we should view them at a time when, as Brown wrote on Instagram, “The very definition of beer is highly debatable.” Pretty good timing that Em Sauter posed a similar question – “Do Strictly Defined Beer Styles Still Have Value in the Modern Craft Landscape?” – one day later.

Birch trees that soon will provide water for beer at Scratch Brewing

Liquid assets. Speaking of beers made with alternative water sources, I am reminded of “single tree beers” from Scratch Brewing in southern Illinois. The photo above was taken in the woods outside Ava, Illinois. Those are birch trees and the sap in the buckets ended up in a beer Scratch made in 2015. That’s the first year the brewery took all tree beers to the Great American Beer Festival.

In a place. I write often about “from a place,” but that is only part of the place story. As always, I wonder how what Jeff Alworth writes about might change the beer in our glasses and the places we might choose to gather to socialize over beer.

The Costco indicator. “This time around the Costco gurus looked hard at their customer base … and blinked. They decided to pass on a fee increase, which could mean a lot of things but might mean that they believe even their affluent member base is feeling the economic heat. And that’s not good news for wine, since these are the customers driving the U.S. market these days.” What might this mean for beer?

Corn in Chocolate City. “As the city has changed [in recent years] then the beer culture [has come to] reflect the newcomers.”

And from Twitter:

Real, natural, authentic, and local

The Atlantic has a story about pawpaws, the “quintessentially American fruit,” and why they are so hard to buy.

This is not news to brewers.

“Brewing Local” includes a recipe from Fullsteam Brewery in North Carolina for making a beer with pawpaws and a story about why Piney River Brewing in Missouri has made a beer called Paw Paw French Saison. Here’s a bit of the Piney River story:

Brian Durham was listening to National Public Radio on his drive to work one morning when he heard a report about preserving Pawpaw French, a disappearing dialect in the Ozarks. “I thought, ‘That’s it. We’re getting some pawpaws, we’re buying some French (saison) yeast,’” he said. Piney River Brewing was going to brew Paw Paw French Saison.

Piney River is located on a farm five winding miles outside of Bucyrus, Missouri, because Brian and Joleen Durham live on the farm. They bought their house in 1997 and the rest of the 80 acres they live on five years later. They raise beef cattle on the property, but were too busy with the brewery in 2015 to get around to selling any. They feed spent grain to the cattle and a sign on the long gravel driveway leading to the brewery warns, “Caution, cows may be drunk on mash.”

Pawpaws (do not) not scale. “You find it all around here in the river bottoms. Good luck getting them before the critters,” he said. They buy their pawpaws from a farm in Ohio.

Pawpaw French is far rarer than the Cajun French that is essential to the culture Bayou Teche is intent on preserving. It is considered a linguistic bridge that melds a Canadian French accent with a Louisiana French vocabulary. The French originally settled Old Mines, Missouri, around 1723, back when the area was part of Upper Louisiana. “My father and mother spoke French very fluently, but they didn’t want us to speak it because it (caused) such trouble in school,” said Cyrilla Boyer, a lifetime resident who was interviewed for the NPR report. She said in the 1920s and 1930s teachers would smack students’ knuckles for speaking any French in the classroom. Pawpaw French persisted in Old Mines primarily because the town is so remote.

Historian and musician Dennis Stroughmatt is Pawpaw French’s ambassador to the outside world. He first visited Old Mines back in the 1990s, and there were still hundreds of pawpaw speakers. “It’s like eating candy when I speak Pawpaw French. That’s the best way I can say. It’s a sweet French to me,” he said. He knows better than to expect the language to make a comeback, but hopes parts of it will survive, and that kids will learn some phrases, and will understand the area’s slogan: “On est toujours icitte,” which translates to, “We are still here.”

The Atlantic reports on efforts to breed “a better pawpaw.”

It might be best to pause and consider this: “It may not be the worst thing in the world for pawpaws to play hard to get. Even if it was possible to scale production and ship the fruit nationwide, doing so would be at odds with the urge for local, sustainable food that fueled the pawpaw boom in the first place. Planting huge pawpaw orchards might just add to the ecological toll of mass farming. Breeders could use genetic modification to improve the fruit, Brannan said, but ‘that’s 180 degrees from what people think of the pawpaw. The pawpaw is real, natural, authentic, and local.’ For all the weird, frustrating aspects of pawpaws, they are a reminder of just how far food science has come in a century-plus.”