musing

Getting your glasses ‘beer clean’

Boston Lager glassThe specially designed Samuel Adams beer glass is back in the news – because Boston Beer has shipped thousands free to subscribers of Beer Advocate and All About Beer magazines as well as American Homebrewers Association members

So that gives me a chance to add something missing from the first review: The new glass is hard to get “beer clean.” It might make you think those complaining about the unusual shape have a point.

And yes, “beer clean” is an actual term in the bar and restaurant industry vocabulary. (Something I wrote about in Real Beer’s Beer Break newsletter back in the day.)

If you haven’t already noticed the difference a clean glass makes, try this. Drink a glass of milk from a glass you don’t intend to use to serve beer. Wash it out a few minutes with hot water (no soap). Pour a beer. Is that the head you are used to seeing? The Belgian lace?

Now wash the glass with soap. Pour another beer. Same problem? Soap film can be just as nasty a villain as other residue. Now wash the glass with baking soda. Pour another beer. This one probably looks better.

Detergents may contain various fats or glycerin, which is why you are better off using baking soda. Another choice is dishwasher detergent (and then maybe baking soda).

This is easier if you designate glasses only for beer – beside milk looks a little strange in the Trappist goblet. After washing them let the glasses air dry in a dish rack. If water droplets cling to a glass or if spots show while drying, then the glass is not clean. Wash it again.

Beer by the numbers: Bad idea

Cheers to Don Russell, who this week asks why we need a score to choose a beer. The headline: 100-point scale for beer ratings a rank idea.

Specifically, he writes about Pislner Urquell hanging an advertisement on its bottle necks declaring it the world’s “highest-rated pilsner.” That according to the Beverage Tasting Institute, the same guys who sparked the Anheuser-Busch vs. Capital Brewery silliness.)

Russell doesn’t like ratings based on a 100-point scale taken from wine, because:

– They’re unneeded.
– They’re inflationary.
– They’re anti-beer.

On the last count he writes:

The mere process of rating wine, in which a few experts – whose standards do not reflect the masses – influence the marketplace, is elitist and autocratic.

Beer is democratic by nature and should reject any high-handed incursion by taste-makers who insist they know better.

Russell gives Jerald O’Kennard, who runs the Beverage Tasting Institute, a chance to speak up for using the 100-point scale. And I know first hand that consumers like the ratings. They are one of the most popular features in All About Beer magazine, which I write for regularly.

No arguing that people like numbers and use them. So they good or bad for small breweries?

This is an area where we can look to wine, because the 100-point scale has been debated far longer. And since I’m biased I suggest you check out an essay by W.R. Tish: Ten Reasons We All Lose When Numbers Dominate the Marketplace.

Most of the time you could just plug in beer when he writes wine and the sentences make perfect sense.

Try it with his final point: “We are living in the Golden Age of wine; quality and selection of bottlings available in the US are both unprecedented. If we all stop slinging numbers around so frequently, more people would be able to enjoy this Golden Age.”

Miller promotes ‘The Craft’

Miller beer musicMiller Genuine Draft is partnering with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to sponsor music artist interviews and performances. The series is called “The Craft,” which should get the attention of small breweries, and particularly their fans, who figure the word craft belongs to them.

“The Craft” series of interviews, developed in conjunction with promotional agency Arc and executed by GMR Worldwide and digital agency Digitas, aims to explore the experiences that shaped the songs written by popular musicians. (The Craft refers both to songwriting and brewing beer.)

“People got the connection between making music and making beer,” said Jonathan Sickinger, associate manager for sports and entertainment marketing at Miller. “And they wanted to know more about both.”

For years we’ve appreciated that Miller supports live music. I’ve got a poster of Terence Simeon from an MGD-sponsored tour above where I store grain for homebrewing.

But I also know when you ask “What is craft beer?” you get passionate responses. Witness the 67 comments at Seen Through a Glass or a shorter discussion here. No need to revisit that topic.

Instead a short story from Tony Simmons of Pagosa Springs Brewing that I used in the little essay about if your brewer is an artist.

Simmons was once in a class at Siebel Institute with a woman who worked at Miller Brewing. Out of curiosity, not intent, he asked her what it would take for him to get a job brewing at Miller.

“You couldn’t,” she told him. “We hire engineers and train them to brew our way.”

So you think that is the way a great guitar player interviews drummers?

Don’t blame Congress for bad beer

Gotta love that headline. It appeared at Earthtimes.org in what was basically a pointer to a longer story in The Hill, a Washington newspaper, about the House Small Brewers Caucus.

The 35 members of the caucus (they hope to have 100 by the end of the legislative session) promote small breweries, trade beer-making advice and drink a few beers together. They even have a website with information about brewing and tips on pairing food with beer.

Not surprisingly, legislators from Oregon head the caucus. The story begins with the fact that Democrat Peter DeFazio brews at home. Both he and co-chair Greg Walden, a Republican, display a link to the caucus website on their home pages.

Just another sign of a different attitude about beer gaining traction with (some) lawmakers.

Malt (and barley) matters: Part II

The SessionAnd now – taking a break from our swim in the pool of listmania – we return to our regularly scheduled conversation about what makes the beer we drink different.

So time for Barley Part II (you knew I had another old image I was itching to show you).

In his Great Beers of Belgium, Michael Jackson writes about how Brother Thomas – then the brewing director at Westmalle – favored malts from Beatrice-Gatinais in France because of their softness, but the varieties he chose each year varied. That would indicate he was more concerned with quality than consistency, but that is another conversation. The point would be that he recognized that not all two-row pilsner malt is created equal.

Jackson describes how important this was to Brother Thomas: “In discussing a malt from elsewhere, widely used by other brewers, I asked whether he thought it was perhaps a trifle harsh. ‘It’s brutal!’ he replied, thumping the table.”

Brother Thomas may have been a little harsh himself, but the fact is that two different varieties of barley – let’s say Optic and Scarlett – kilned to the same color and then used precisely the same way in a recipe may produce beers that taste noticeably different. One might showcase hop bitterness, another a richer malt character. One isn’t necessarily better (or the other “brutal”) but they are different.

Weyermann Malting® in Bavaria proved this to a panel of industry members, including many brewers, a few years ago. Weyermann brewed four pilsners on its pilot system, each with malt produced from a different barley, and in a blind tasting the panelists had no trouble telling them apart.

As a result, some breweries have since begun ordering pilsner malt made from a specific barley. This isn’t necessarily realistic for your average small brewery and certainly not for the local brewpub you should be stopping by tonight.

So maybe I don’t have a point, but it seems like information you should have.

Barley Part I (in cased you missed it).