musing

A good home? Where John Maier brews

Jeff Risley provided the link to this first video during a presentation titled “Electronic Marketing to Your Fan Base” at the Craft Brewers Conference. Then I came across the second – a closeup look at brewmaster John Maier – while viewing it again.

Thinking back to Alan’s Do We Love the Beer or Brewer? discussion, I don’t really care if these clips simply explain why I so like Rogue beers and admire the brewery or if I’m confessing to having fallen prey to marketing wizardy. I just like them, and may watch them again this evening with a Rogue beer in hand.

Rogue founder Jack Joyce was among those at the seminar. After the video finished and several people commented on how amusing the tour guide had been, Joyce simply said, “He’s no longer with us.” I think he was kidding.

Innovation, Czech style

Rambousek beerWe already know this, but brewing innovation doesn’t stop at the U.S. borders. It isn’t limited to Belgium, or even to such new-ish hotbeds as Denmark and Italy.

Evan Rail of the Prague Daily Monitor writes that 10 new Czech microbreweries are due to open this year. He describes some beers I think we want to try:

Partly inspired by the nascent homebrewing movement, many of these smaller makers have introduced highly innovative half-liters: Rambousek’s outstanding chestnut-honey lager, Primátor’s excellent English Pale Ale and Zamberk’s to-die-for Imperial Stout.

Bigger breweries, Budvar and Pilsner Urquell, are also experimenting with new beers. Rail doesn’t have much nice to say about Budvar’s effort, but Pilsner Urquell seems to be showing an unusual willingness to think small although its plant for producing Pilsner Urquell itself expanded.

As if to counterbalance, Pilsner Urquell’s two new beers imitate the limited production, historic origins and unusual styles of a great Czech micro. Called Master, the new line claims inspiration from a sixteenth-century text on brewing by the court physician to Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. (It’s worth noting that the new brews are only said to be “inspired” by the past: both are modern, bottom-fermenting lagers, produced in Pilsner Urquell’s state-of-the-art brewery in Plzen.)

For now the beers are available only on draft and only at home. Bottles will come next but not distribution aboard.

Bootie Beer: RIP?

The Milwaukee Journal reports:

Bootie Beer Corp., a Florida company that turned to a Wisconsin brewer to produce its suggestively named beverage, has been getting its posterior kicked.

City Brewing produced Bootie Beer under contract for a Florida company, but hasn’t for more than a year (and apparently nobody else has either). This isn’t about City Brewing, but about the non-brewing marketing company called Bootie. Although Bootie’s flashy website wouldn’t make you think so, the company lost $6.6 million in 2006.

In February, Bootie Beer Co. announced that it had entered into an investment banking agreement with Orlando-based KMA Capital Partners Inc. to raise up to $25 million for Bootie. But KMA spokesman Jack Craig told the Journal that KMA’s involvement with Bootie ended.

There’s a chance the Bootie may survive this. Investment firms holding notes that can be converted into Bootie stock have claimed that Bootie defaulted and hope to take over the company.

So I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what the future might bring. I’m taking the optimistic view and thinking, “Bootie Beer: RIP.”

Ground zero for beer?

Beer giantWhere is the center of the beer universe?

I ask that question because tomorrow I’m headed to Austin, Texas, for the Craft Brewers Conference. Hundreds of brewers will be there, the folks responsible for beers that are getting written about in the Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine magazine, Condè Nast’s new and stylish Portfolio and all sorts of surprising publications.

So will Austin be the center of the beer universe (or should that be Beer Universe?) the next few days?

Every other year judging for the World Beer Cup is held in conjunction with the Craft Brewers Conference. Then you’ve got more than 2,000 beers, plenty from outside the United States, and also brewers from around the world who’ve come to judge (and perhaps pick up medals at the awards ceremony). Those years it’s even easier to argue that CBC is at the center of the beer universe.

For instance, next year the CBC/World Cup combo will dance in San Diego. Some folks in San Diego would argue the region might already be some sort of beer epicenter, so they have no doubt about April of 2008.

This is probably a rhetorical question, although you are welcome to suggest an answer.

Tasting notes: Different approaches

Hey, cowboy, what are you drinking?In the course of the conversation that sprung from my post about a review of Three Floyds Dreadnaught Imperial IPA I promised to post what I think are interesting style of “tasting note.” Too long for a comment, so – cowboys and others at the bar – here goes.

Style 1: The experience

Ben McFarland, twice Beer Writer of the Year in the UK despite his tender years, and fellow Brit Tom Sandham recently spent 30 days in California working on a book for CAMRA about where to drink beer on the West Coast. Toward the end of a story McFarland wrote for the Celebrator he describes judging beers at the Bistro Double IPA festival in Hayward.

This was not intended as a tasting note, but I think would much the same if McFarland first wrote that he had tried Pliny the Elder, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid and Ballast Point Dorado and was describing them. Here you go:

Double IPA is a beast of a beer style, the hoppiest, most high-octane in the world. But it’s quintessentially California and, well, we thought we could handle it.

We couldn’t. In a dank, grim cellar in Hayward, our brains pleaded with us to put the glass down and step away from the potent potions. But it was too late. The devilish liquid had adopted a Vulcanlike grip on our souls, entwining our senses like poisonous ivy and with all the insidious charm of liquid crack.

Brimming with hops, hops and more hops, the IPAs flooded our nostrils with their resinous, herbal fumes; puckered and pickled our taste buds; rendered our mouths drier than an Egyptian’s flip-flop; and left and aftertaste that stayed longer than the mother-in-law.

Entertaining as all get out, conveying a sense of what it is like to drink hop monsters, but not long on sensory evaluation.

Style 2: Sensory notes in story form

For Beer Talk in All About Beer magazine writers have space for 75-100 words He’s what Michael Jackson wrote about Grand Teton Black Cauldron Imperial Stout:

The mountains can do things to a man’s mind, and Wyoming can be a lonely place. A brewery with a mammary name, in a place called Jackson Hole, makes a beer called “Black Cauldron.” Sounds like a witch’s brew, but in a style closer to Catherine The Great. This Imperial stout has a good burnt barley aroma, and some espresso and cocoa. The body is more liqueur-ish (Bailey’s?). The palate reminds me of Sambuca, and the finish suggests cherry liqueur chocolates. Rather sweet and innocent, after all that innuendo.

I taste on the same panel with Jackson (not too intimidating) and chose to focus on the fact the beer is relatively low in alcohol (7.5% abv) for style and the sensory consequences.

Style 3: Experience first, with tasting note

Warning, this is a wine review from Alder Yarrow, one of the best known wine bloggers. The tasting note at the bottom is not short (about as long as Jackson’s above) but the experience/background portion clearly is the star. (Extra credit for the food pairing).

I think this is an excellent template, although I’d like it better if he didn’t assign a score (but that’s another topic).

Stephen Beaumont provides a Taste of the Month at his World of Beer site, also contributes to All About Beer’s Beer Talk and you’ll find his tasting notes a variety of other places. So his notes may seem chameleon-like.

I like the format his has chosen for participating in beer blogger’s monthly session. In April he wrote about Brother Thelonious from North Coast Brewing in California. Instead a number at the end you get useful facts/opinion.

As long as I mentioned The Session, Lew Bryson contributed my favorite post of April. Not sure how to classify it, mostly just wanted to draw it to your attention.