musing

“We’re not new. We’re not small. We’re not young. And that makes the story less interesting to a lot of people. It’s the way of the world. That’s a challenge for the craft beer breweries of our generation. There’s a lot of pressure to constantly be reinventing yourself for new generations.”

              – Steve Hindy, co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery

Hindy is a really smart guy. If you are silly enough to think you want to open a brewery the book he and co-founder Tom Potter wrote about their experiences, Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery, is essential reading.

Links take me to dozens of stories a day that I don’t finish. I read the Nona Brooklyn interview with Hindy to the end.

Sure it’s a business story, but with lots of sensible thinking about how an enterprise can still be local even after it’s no longer small. And how a brewery can still offer customers experiences that are new after not everything is new; beers for the generation that made it a going concern and for the generation that will keep it in business.

If you could climb into a machine that would take you to any time and place, what beer related destination would you pick?

Here’s a sample answer: Sonoma, California, 1977.

Quick. Name three brands that have driven national awareness of craft¹ beer.

Given that Boston Beer Co., Sierra Nevada Brewing and New Belgium Brewing emerged as the Craft Big Three credit must go to Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and New Belgium Fat Tire.

But these aren’t the brands leading growth for those companies now. So it hardly seems a surprise that today Shanken News Daily reported sales of Samuel Adams seasonal beers² have surpassed the venerable Boston Lager. The seasonals are Octoberfest, Winter Lager, Noble Pils and Summer Ale (fall through summer).

So far this year, seasonal beers accounted for 25% of case sales, Boston Lager 24% and Twisted Tea Original 20%. Twisted Tea sales are up 36% for the year, with Twisted Tea Half & Half growing 52% (off a smaller base).

Previously, you’ll recall, Shanken’s Impact Databank reported that Fat Tire accounted for 70% of New Belgium sales in 2008, 67% in 2009 and 60% in 2010. And that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale sales slipped from 76% of the company’s total in 2009 to 71% in 2010.

Diversity indeed.

¹For the sake of simplicity, the Brewers Association definition.

²Through Oct. 2 in food, drug and convenience stores, so this doesn’t take draft sales into account.

So much for my plan to get through the week without writing about The Oxford Companion to Beer so that I, you know, have time to read more of it for pleasure.

Clay Risen, who blogs at The Atlantic online and presumably immediately reaches a larger audience than all us beer-specific online trolls put together, has written in defense of the book. And he hauled out the big paint brush, the one you use for broad strokes.

• He writes: “Nevertheless, online critics have made an intramural sport of identifying the book’s omissions.” And: “It’s a shame that would-be critics have spent their entire time fact-checking the precise rules of the Royal Court’s brewing guidelines under Henry VIII (subject of one catch), because they’ve overlooked the achievement of the book as a whole — though, given their vehemence, it’s a good bet they weren’t going to give it a chance in any case.”

Because Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson both contributed to the book, it hardly seems they weren’t inclined to give it a chance. Both have written in comments several places that they’d rather not be in the position to make corrections.

• He writes: “But what I find striking is how relatively few errors have been identified in the weeks since the book has been out. The Wiki has only about 40 entries, and most of them deal with matters of interpretation. In a book that may have upwards of 100,000 factual statements in it, the presence of a few dozen errors, while regrettable, is pretty impressive.”

Not sure where that 100,000 number comes from, but if 40 errors have been spotted in 1,100 entries that already amounts to something amiss (admittedly sometimes very small) in more than 1% of the articles. More important, the measured (and very long, so set aside some time) review at I might have a glass of beer makes it clear why every single mistake makes a difference: “One can only guess how reliable the rest of the information is.” You would think, as a journalist, that Risen would appreciate this.

• He writes: “As a dedicated drinker all but ignorant of the chemistry behind brewing, I feel I’ve already learned a lot — and I’ve only read through the five entries that start with ‘acid-.'”

Hold it. He’s only on the a’s?

Back when you could crack wise when discussing The Oxford Companion to Beer I casually mentioned that it would be nice to find the tasting notes written more than 400 years ago by Heinrich Knaust.

His book — Fünff Bucher, von der Göttlichen und Edleen Gabe, der Philosphischen, hochtewren and wunderbaren Kunt Bier zu brawen, first published in 1573 — brought together much of what was understood about brewing at the time. According to Richard Unger in Beer in the Middle Ages he described about 150 beers from Germany in detail. I’ve only seen this one:

“The noble Hamburg beer is the queen of all other wheat, or white, beers, just as the Dantzic beer has the precedence and is queen of all the other barley, or red beers.”

I continue to hope that his work will show up in Google books, so occasionally do a new search. Which is why today I found this in Language and its Functions by Pieter Adrianus Verbung:

“He studied at Wittenbergunder Melanchton and Luther; at an early age he become headmaster of the Gymnasium of Cöllin (Berlin), turned later to jurisprudence, was the author of many words on theology, more philosophy and law, all of them with a polarizing tendency. he wrote lyric and dramatic poetry, inter alid so called ‘school drams,’ often with biblical content, in German and Latin. It was fatal for his reputation as a humanist that the only work of his to achieve fame was his so called beer book.” (Italics added for emphasis.)

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be beer writers.