musing

And the brewing gods are . . .

A press release for the third Philly Beer Week (PBW) indicates at least 865 events are planned for June 4 to 13. That’s pretty [insert your preferred obscenity ending in -in’] impressive.

The one that caught my eye: The Forum of the Gods, “a spirited afternoon of beer talk, beer drinking and big names in brewing, with all proceeds going to benefit PBW.”

And who might these gods be?

Jim Koch of Boston Beer; Phil Markowski of Southampton Publick House; Tom Kehoe of Yards Brewing and Wendy Yeungling of D.G. Yeungling & Son. The forum will be moderated by Don “Joe Sixpack” Russell, PBW executive director. Mortal or god? Not clear.

Tickets are $25 per person, which includes nectar from each of the four participating gods.

But back to all the other events. Bryan Kolesar has translated the crazy schedule of events into a spreadsheet you can download. Fine work by a mere mortal.

If Yuppies still exist what do they drink?

As I walked out one evening, down Columbus Avenue,
The sushi bars were shuttered, the dark cantinas, too.
I stood there in the darkness, as an empty cab rolled by
When all at once I heard the sound of Yuppies in the sky.

I’ve seen them in commercials, sailing boats and playing ball,
Pouring beer for one another, crying, “Why not have it all?”.
Now I saw the ghostly progress, down Columbus Avenue,
I heard the cry for mercy, and it chilled me through and through.

– Tom Paxton

So I was listening to “Yuppies in the Sky” this morning (as sung by Mr. Paxton) and the question at the top occurred to me.

Perhaps a silly thought, but Yuppies were in their “prime” about the time we started talking about microbreweries. Plus Yuppies certainly were (or should I be typing are?) about badges. And, like it or not, beer that isn’t yellow in the glass still serves as a badge.

I’m pretty sure I saw Yuppies drinking non-yellow beer about the time the 1980s morphed into the ’90s, but I don’t seem to have any photos. Wonder what was in their glasses.

That’s me on the left

Draft magazine’s On the Beer Blogger Beat: Stan Hieronymus.

I think my answers are the the shortest so far. The brevity should surprise those who drink beer with me.

Anyway, in case you are wondering, that’s Brother Antoine from Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy in Rochefort on the right of the photo I provided.

And it’s a good thing Noah asked me for my input before Draft made “Who’s your favorite beer blogger?” it’s question of the week.

The Session #39: Collaborative learning

The Session
Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning.

“I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told Luke Nicholas after tasting the beer for the first time since they brewed it in February. He liked what was in his glass, but his experience with brown malt — a key ingredient in the recipe and one Nicholas had not used before — told him it wasn’t time to bottle the beer. Nicholas reassured him that what he was tasting had been bottled weeks before so he could bring some to Chicago. The rest was still maturing.

Luke Nicholas and Kelly RyanThat’s what’s called collaboration.

The theme for the 39th gathering of the Session today is collaboration — Mario Rubio is this month’s host and will have the recap — and I expect various bloggers to come at it from many directions. Let’s just hope we don’t hear the story of Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale too many times.

I’ll try to keep it simple. Nicholas is founder and chief bottle washer at Epic Brewing in New Zealand. Ryan, also a native of New Zealand, is brewery manager at the Thornbridge Brewery in England. They met last year when Nicholas was in England and ended up brewing a collaboration that melded, although that might not be the right word, Epic IPA and Thornbridge Halycon.

Since Ryan would be in New Zealand in February for his brother’s wedding they decided to brew another beer, in this case a stout, a style Nicholas had never made. This was also his first experience with brown malt and two English hop varieties, Target and Bambling Cross.

“I woke up excited to go to the brewery,” Ryan said. “(The process) energizes you. A mass of information goes back and forth.”

The resulting beer is plenty stout, 6.8% abv with 54 bittering units, and even at a young age in early April full of textured flavors, smooth but complex. Half the batch has been packaged and hit the market last week. Half is aging in American oak barrels that previously held Epic Armageddon IPA and likely will be released at the end of August.

Both Nicholas and Ryan judged in the World Beer Cup in Chicago in April, and they spent plenty of time together during the following days at the Craft Brewers Conference. Information flowed freely, but not necessarily the way it would formulating a recipe or standing over a mash tun in the brewery. Nicholas calls what happens during brewing collaborations a cross pollination of ideas, and it breeds better brewing.

Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer. They also make for good stories in print and cyberspace for those who haven’t already heard them a thousand times. When they start to seem old remember the stories may be repetitive, the experiences are not.

******

The photo above was taken at CBC. Luke (on the left) is mugging for one camera, Kelly for another, and that object between them is an unlabeled bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout they are about to open. Clearly a historic moment. You might find pictures documenting the brew day more informative. Details about the beer itself are here.

Do we blame the beer or something else?

We interrupt the silence here for two quick links.

In fact I’d collected a bunch of stories during the last several days that I put the much of the beer world at arm’s length (in other words, I could still reach for a pint). I planned a “beer linkorama” today. There’s the madness in San Diego to comment on, Slate’s take on the Miller Lite ad campaign, several interesting blind tastings, more on corks, etc. But you’ve probably already seen those things.

Instead I suggest you start with Pete Brown’s “CAMRA’s noxious culture of entitlement.”

Read the comments, give it some thought.

Before you dismiss such boorish behavior as specific to a few bearded oafs in the UK consider the question it provokes from Alan McLeod: “Where Else Hides The Culture of Entitlement?”

This isn’t just about beer and I don’t think it is a generational thing, but I suspect you can easily add to Alan’s list of five.