musing

Vintage beers: Restaurants and auctions

Big feetHere’s another prediction for 2007 I should have made: Vintage beers will command more attention.

Item 1: Liquid Solutions, which sells beer through the mail and from its Oregon City store, plans to begin auctioning vintage beers next week (Jan. 19).

First up are a bottle of Chimay Grand Reserver from 1994, a six-year vertical of Sierra Nevada Big Foot from 1997-2002, and a 1996 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale.

Item 2: Manhattan’s chic Gramercy Tavern now has a vintage menu that includes about 25 beers, created with the help of Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver.

“Generally they’re stronger beers, darker beers. They’re not kind of easy-drinking things; they’re more for an after-dinner drink, good with cheese and chocolate dessert, that kind of thing,” Kevin Garry, Gramercy’s assistant beverage director, tells the New York Post.

The star of the list is the 1992 Thomas Hardy, which sells for $23 (that’s a 6.33-ounce bottle). Oliver provided those bottles and says in the story, “It’s almost a little underground secret among beer aficionados, you know, where you might be able to find the good stuff.”

Or you can just be lucky. We always had a fond spot for Hardy’s when it was brewed at the Eldridge Pope brewery, which we toured in 1994 (there are multiple stories there – including days of walking in the English countryside), but weren’t really looking for it in Amarillo, Texas, in May of 1999.

While filling the gas tank before heading south to Palo Duro Canyon I noticed a liquor store next door, and since I was done pumping and Daria and Sierra were still inside the gas station I ducked into the store.

I spotted two four-packs of Thomas Hardy in one cooler, pulled them out and saw there were from 1992. There were $10.95 a four-pack. The clerk seemed a little surprised that somebody would be smiling so broadly while spending that much for eight small bottles.

Later a friend asked my why I hadn’t suggested a discount because the beer was old. (Really.)

Beer drinkers don’t spit

Wine tastersAnd so it has been written many times: Beer drinkers don’t spit.

As opposed to wine tasters.

Michael Steinberger of Slate provides a primer on “How to spit with the wine pros” that should make you happy to be a beer drinker.

There’s more to it than you might think, and maybe want to know, but this is a story that should make you smile.

I am working on it, every chance I get. Even spitting out mouthwash has become an opportunity to practice. If all this strikes you as a bit asinine and pathetic, you may have a point. After all, stylish spitting does not improve your ability to appraise wine; it only keeps your clothes clean and the floor dry. But the wine world is a clubby, often catty one, with its own rites of passage. If you want to be seen as legit by the Crips, it helps to have a drive-by shooting to your credit. If you want be seen as legit by wine geeks, you need to be able to shoot a mouthful of Chardonnay in a clean, straight line.

Good reason to stick to beer.

[Drawing copyright Slate.com]

Tired of extreme beers?

Here’s one “real” (compared to the previous list) prediction for 2007 and one resolution.

The prediction: We may eventually grow tried of talking about “extreme beer (or beers),” but we won’t quit drinking them.

I’m sure that you are going to be reading (and therefore talking) more about them because Lew Bryson has written an article I’m anxious to read for Beer Advocate magazine, whose subscribers often take a walk on the extreme side.

That should provoke plenty of discussion, but it seems both polite and sensible to wait until the story is published to join in.

However here’s a little background to explain my upcoming resolution.

In researching his story Bryson sent a request to a forum run by the Brewers Association. He received dozens of responses within a day, including a lengthy one that Teri Fahrendorf of Steelhead Brewing posted. (You can read his request and her response here.)

Much conversation followed, among commercial brewers and among enthusiasts at several beer discussion sites. Also from Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey, who wrote in his blog that “at no time have I ever considered what I do as a brewer to be extreme.” But he also points out that some spectacular beers have resulted from what Fahrendrof calls “testosterone-driven hop one-upmanship.”

Here’s where personal guilt sets in. These beers make good copy, and journalists live for good copy. I even won a an award (money, a trip) for writing about Imperial IPAs. More recently I wrote a story for All About Beer magazine about Sam Calagione, Arthur and three other brewers who made a trip to Belgium as part of Calagione’s research for his book, “Extreme Brewing.” Re-reading that story I see the words “extreme beers” used far too casually (by me).

The phrase has made for brilliant marketing since Jim Koch of Boston Beer began using it in the early 1990s. It’s easy to forget what a stir Sam Adams Triple Bock, then the world’s strongest beer at 17% abv, created when it debuted at the 1993 Great American Beer Festival.

“At the time, everyone was trying to make one new classic style. That’s what was driving innovation,” he said. “I wanted to step outside of that, to try to expand the boundaries of beer rather than expanding on traditional styles.”

And he wasn’t alone – in innovating or celebrating “extreme beer.”

But the term is double-edged because we’re not close to agreeing on a definition. When I type “extreme beers” I don’t mean they must be unbalanced, jammed with hops and overflowing with alcohol. More than 90% of the beer sold in this country is some form of international lager (Miller, Heineken, Corona, etc.). Folks, we’re not part of the mainstream. That IPA Fahrendorf brewed in 1990 is still extreme to most the population.

Roger Baylor (publican of Rich O’s Public House in New Albany, Ind.) has authored the motto for us all to live by: “Extremism in the defense of good beer is no vice.”

But, you know, I’m wrong to think everybody agrees. In her letter, Fahrendorf writes about brewers “more interested in balanced beers than in extreme beers.” That would imply the two are mutually exclusive. Clearly, we’ve got a failure to communicate.

Thus (finally) my resolution: I will not use the term “extreme beer” unless the conversation absolutely demands it, and when I do I will make it clear just what I mean.

2007 beer predictions

It’s that time of year, to recap 2006 and make predictions for 2007.

Stephen Beaumont picks his Taste of the Year; Lew Bryson has started his Best of 2006; Jay Brooks checks in with both the top stories of last year and predictions for this; Bryan and Adam at Brew Lounge discuss 2007 predictions; A Good Beer Blog invites readers to participate (and offers a fine prize); and the list goes on.

So why not? Here are nine predictions for 2007. I’m leaving the 10th open for you. Submit an entry as a comment. The best (based upon some vague guidelines) will receive a signed copy of Michael Jackson’s 1977 World Guide to Beer.

Thomas Jefferson beer1. A bottle of beer homebrewed by Thomas Jefferson sells at auction for $56,403.

2. Modern Scientist reports that Brettanomyces, a yeast associated with “wild beers,” increases the IQ of laboratory mice by between 25 and 42 percent. Sales, and prices, of Belgian and American beers brewed with the Brett skyrocket. One skeptic serves Orval to his pet mouse every day for a month and declares him no smarter (but smart enough to have suckered somebody out of an Orval a day for a month).

3. SABMiller – seeing the opportunity to cash in on the wild beer craze and growing success of pumpkin beers with a single acquisition – buys tiny Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter, Mich., as well as the entire town of Dexter and one million used wine barrels for the production of “Great Pumpkin Wild Beers.”

4. Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware spends its advertising budget for the next 10 years on a Super Bowl commercial. Keeping the theme of the piece secret until the moment it is shown, founder Sam Calagione promises no Clydesdales will be injured during the course of producing the commercial.

5. Blue Moon Brewing buys Molson Coors Brewing Co.

6. Barack (is there anything he can’t do?) Obama wins Homebrewer of the Year in the National Homebrew Competition and declares that if elected he will name Fred Eckhardt the nation’s first Craft Beer Czar.

7. Beer blogs come of age. Gawker Media pays $875,000 for A Good Beer Blog. Little, Brown offers Beer Haiku Daily a $325,000 advance on a book deal.

8. ESPN adds an Extreme Brewing competition to the X Games. Anheuser-Busch pays $10.5 million to be the exclusive sponsor.

9. International brewing giant InBev signs a deal with Abbey Sint Sixtus of Westvleteren to brew its cult beers under a special contract and sell them around the world. InBev announces that as well as distributing Westvleteren 6, Westvleteren 8 and Westvelteren 12 it will produce a special Westy 12 Lite for the American market.

Feb. 5 – The contest is closed. The winner is Peter Hooper, who lives almost directly north of me (in Colorado). To be honest, I couldn’t pick based on merit, so picked a winner at random. Thanks for participating.

Michelob Celebrate – Does it suck?

It seems safe to say that Todd Haefer does not like Anheuser-Busch’s Michelob Celebrate Vanilla Oak. He writes:

“I get the suspicious feeling that this is a beer that originated from marketing, not from brewers. It also appears that it was approved by marketers who only drink wine, or Perrier water, or soda pop. I can’t imagine anyone who seriously enjoys beer tasted this in advance and approved it for public consumption.”

And the flavor?

“So what does the beer actually taste like? Creme soda or a vanilla wine cooler without much of a head. The beer is too sweet, the vanilla too strong and the body is very watery. The oak characteristic is virtually non-existent, as is malt. It also left an unpleasant aftertaste, like Red Bull. I suspect imitation vanilla is also an ingredient.”

Haefer writes a weekly column for the Appleton, Wis., Post-Crescent, but his “reach” is broader, because many other newspaper in the Gannett chain that owns the P-C also run his review. That might or might not make his words more useful to you than those from a particular poster at Rate Beer or Beer Advocate.

Or than those of us who write 75-80 words about a beer every other month for All About Beer magazine. Here’s what I wrote about Celebrate last December:

“Could we label a beer packing 10% alcohol by volume and a distinct smack of bourbon introductory? Celebrate may well familiarize more Americans to wood-influenced beer than hundreds of small-batch brewers have in 10 years. A double blast of vanilla, from freshly milled vanilla beans plus bourbon barrel staves added during maturation, dominates from the nose to a sweet finish. Bourbon almost as prominent, more as it warms. An uncomplicated introduction.”

Do you get the feeling that this is a beer I’m not going to spend money on but understand others might? That would be good.

I’m not opposed to Haefer expressing his opinion assertively. That’s a lot better than a critic who feels obiliged to write something nice about every beer. I do wish he’d bothered to learn a little about the beer, because sometimes the story behind a beer becomes part of the beer.

For me, another part of the story is what others think of the beer because – like Haefer – it has more “reach” than any bourbon-oak-vanilla beer made by a small-batch brewer. Check out the Rate Beer reviews and those at Beer Advocate and you’ll see they are mixed – which given that this is an A-B product and most reviewers at those sites are biased against A-B indicates that quite a few people like Celebrate.

Barrels

It doesn’t hurt any “reviewer” to remind yourself not everybody shares your tastes. I much prefer, and am much more likely to praise, a beer that tastes like beer and certainly one with more complexity. A-B gets credit for experimenting with freshly milled vanilla beans. A small-batch brewer gets more for coaxing that flavor out of the wood. To me a beer that is aged in bourbon barrels rather than on staves has an almost unfair advantage.

So is there a lesson here? You have to decide if you want to read newspaper reviews, hang out at beer rating sites, lean on friends for advice, even trust what I write about these beers.

Meanwhile I get to tell one more story.

When I asked a distributor why his company chose not to stock Celebrate Vanilla or the new Celebrate Chocolate this year he said his bosses thought the price was too high for the average customer. Imagine what it would be if A-B had added in the cost of moving beer in and out of bourbon barrels instead of tanks that hold 1,400 barrels (its smallest) and more.

On the other hand it took Tomme Arthur of Port Brewing/Lost Abbey just a moment to do the math.

“We’d go out and buy the extra 834 oak barrels,” he said.