musing

Inspired, at least in part, by BrewDog’s Equity for Punks, Adrian-Tierney Jones has a half dozen questions for us this morning (a.m. in the U.S., that is):

I am talking about the sly sense of exclusiveness that is seeping through the world of craft beer. Do you want to be in my gang? Is it a good thing, has beer lost its democratic edge? Was its democratic edge just another manifestation of mindless rabble-rousing, the guy in the corner, drunk on god knows what, taking potshots at easy targets — drink Bud, Blue Ribbon, Stella, whatever?

“Is this what the craft brewing revolution has come to, a freemasonry of various lodges looking uneasily at each other, or will love of good beer overcome any drift towards tribalism? The love of elitism. And what of the wider world? Will commentators in the media (whatever branch) be overwhelmed by this sense of singularity in a world which is usually represented in their pages or on the screen by closing pubs, ‘oh look women drink beer’ featurettes, the very odd shrug on the rising star of cask beer and predictable points scored on the horrendous fashion sense of CAMRA members.

As beer becomes more exclusive, but more knowing, more distanced from its ur-source of a refreshing but uncomplicated drink, then it becomes more valuable, changes its character, at least in the minds of many of us — however, as this drive to exclusivity continues, I wonder if it might hinder its growth and its clubbiness put off people who like a beer but don’t consider it their life and deliver them into the arms of whatever drink offers them a alternative and less threatening sense of belonging (maybe beers that are the equivalent of those ads for ‘exclusive’ figurines of Native American warriors looking narky or kittens wearing high heels). A two-tier system of beer appreciation waits perhaps?

I didn’t plan to quote quite the much, but so many nice phrases. “. . . more exclusive, but more knowing.”

Cheers to the Newark Star-Ledger for featuring Greg Zarcardi and High Point Brewing in Butler, N.J., today.

The hook (why he’s getting the attention now) is that Zacardi “was selected to represent the United States this weekend at The Mondial de la Biere Strasbourg-Europe in France where he will speak about the history and evolution of American microbreweries.”

Zarcardi has been making excellent weissbiers in the tradition of southern German breweries (like Schneider-Weisse or Weihenstephaner Hefe Weiss) since 1996 without getting much attention. That can get a little frustrating, as he explained when I talked to him for Brewing With Wheat.

“The biggest consumers of wheat beers want German wheat beers,” he said. When he conducts blind tastings, which he calls the “Ramstein Challenge,” locals like those at the Deutscher Club in a nearby town prefer his beers to well-known German weiss beers. “You can taste the difference in a locally brewed wheat beer. They love our beer, but it’s not German. They still buy the German beers.”

Although his original plan was to make only wheat beers, non-wheat beers now account for about 40 percent of his production. But somebody is going to have to explain this to me:

His recipe won him several awards, and was recently rated No. 1 at Oktoberfest in Germany.

Huh?

In 1881, the brewery workmen of Cincinnati drew up a number of demands to be presented to the brewer. These were:

1. A reduction of work day from thirteen to ten and a half-hours.
2. A reduction of Sunday work from eight to four hours.
3. A minimum wage of $60 a month.
4. Freedom for the worker to seek board and lodging wherever he liked.

&#151Herman Schluter, The Brewing Industry and the Brewery Worker’s Movement in America, 1910

Before you even get to the dedication page of St. Louis Brews: 200 Years of Brewing in St. Louis, 1809-2009 the authors offer a page of similar quotes and an explanation. “When co-author Henry Herbst began toying with the idea of doing a book on St. Louis brewing history, he though that Wooden Barrel and Iron Men would make a good title, serving as something of a tribute to the vital ‘little guys’ in the brewing industry. . . . Simply put, there would have been no beer barons, the stars of this book, without the hard work and expertise of their employees. May this book also serve to preserve their efforts.”

This weekend I’ll be drinking to Iron Men — and thinking I’d like to write a book called Iron Men and Wooden Barrels (a small edit) — and to authors Henry Herbst, Don Roussin and Kevin Kious. I don’t want to bore you with the whole FTC thing still again but I bought this book the moment I saw BeerBooks.com was selling it, signed by the authors no less. However, I once had a pleasant conversation with Herbst and he said something I used in a story. Consider my endorsement of his book tainted if you like.

Or give this song by Steve Earle a listen and think FTC every time he sings FCC.

Added Oct. 19: Today I learned that Henry Herbst has died. Sad news, but at least he got to see his book in print.

Heineken, which owns Scottish & Newcastle, announced it is closing the brewery that currently brews Newcastle Brown Ale and moving production to Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.

Newcastle Brown first went on sale in 1927 and was brewed next to the St. James Park football ground in Newcastle. In fact, brand owners won Protected Geographical Indication status from the European Union, meaning Newcastle Brown Ale had to be brewed in the city. That lapsed in 2005 when production moved a couple of miles across the River Tyne to Gateshead.

The Telegraph writes about an appellation lost:

The day after “Broon’s” launch, it was said the local police appealed to the brewery to make it weaker because the cells were full of drunks.

The ale was also dubbed “dog” by drinkers, as they would make the excuse of going to “walk the dog” when nipping to the pub.

The first move took it a few miles from its ancestral home. Now it’s moving 90 miles away to the same brewery where John Smiths is produced.

I wish that I had a link you could click on so you could listen to Greg Noonan talking about starting a brewery in the 1980s.

Tom Bedell’s tweet on Sunday was a gut punch: “Bad news–don’t know the details yet, but Greg Noonan, pioneering founder of the Vermont Pub and Brewery in Burlington has passed away.”

I last talked to Noonan in January. I had only one question really, but after he answered that in detail and elaborated on the elaborations the conversation wandered still more. We talked about the Beer Oral History project and I confessed I was not collecting histories at nearly the rate I had planned when we began our family trip. “You’ll have to come up,” he said. “And you really should go over and talk to Dave Geary and then to Peter Egleston and . . . you’re going to be here a while.”

I still need to go, but there’s nobody I was looking forward to talking to me than Noonan. He was never afraid to say what he thought. I quoted this before. It comes from a column Fred Eckhardt wrote for All About Beer magazine in which he went looking for the meaning of “craft beer.” Perhaps his best answer was from Noonan:

“I wish that Vince Cottone had trademarked the term. (He would be) a good arbiter of what is and what isn’t ‘hand-made.’ (He would reject) beers made in ‘micro-industrial’ quarter-million barrel breweries and ‘fruit beers’ made with 0.003 percent fruit-flavored extract. (If Congress were to legislate an appellation, the licensing board should include) Cottone, Carol Stoudt, Randy Reede and Teri Fahrendorf (to ensure) its integrity. Craft brewed (should) mean pure, natural beer brewed in a non-automated brewery of less than 50-barrel brew length, using traditional methods and premium, whole, natural ingredients, and no flavor-lessening adjuncts or extracts, additives or preservatives.”

When we spoke in January I asked him if he felt the same. “Funny, I was just talking with some other brewers about this. We decided the sweet spot is about 30 barrels,” he said.

Sometimes words spoken can come across a little harsh in black and white. In 1998 we talked for a story about brewpubs celebrating their tenth anniversaries.

“I wanted to brew beer, and I thought, ‘I’m going to do it.’ You had a lot of people who had real passion for beer,” he said. “The love of beer was probably higher in that (1980s) group. That community of brewers pre-1990 was pretty tight . . . There was a lot more back-and-forth then.”

Today’s brewers might take offense, but recall that in 1998 money changers were at the door. There was beer love to be found, but you never knew who you might trip over to get to it.

In 2006 I saw him at the Great American Beer Festival, his first visit after many years. An Albuquerque brewer, Ted Rice, alerted me he was in the building. When he recognized him Rice insisted he try all the Chama River beers and told Noonan how important Brewing Lager Beer was to him.

There are big events, be it the Great American Beer or the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where you never find somebody you are looking for but then run into other people seemingly ever half an hour. That’s the way it was in 2006. I kept seeing Noonan. He’d recommend a beer. I’d suggest a booth he should visit. Sometimes he’d already have been there and would comment, usually telling me something about a beer I should have noticed myself.

He was always smiling. “Try that kolsch,” he said. “But don’t go near their blueberry beer. Still, you got to love their passion.”

He did. I sure thought I was going to see him back at GABF. I won’t, and I won’t be collecting his oral history. I can’t give you that recording, but here are a few of his words from that 1998 story:

“When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant. You gotta keep getting the guys who say, ‘Cool, I can sell the beer I make. I can do it.’ ”