musing

Thoughts on aging beer like wine

Don’t you think the discovery of truly vintage beers at Burton-on-Trent – one of the world’s most famous brewing centers – is a bit more exciting than when some Califronia hikes found a few 50-year-old cans of Coors?

Here’s how beer authority Mark Dorber described what he tasted of the UK beers:

“It’s amazing that beers this antique can still taste so delicious. Established wisdom would say beers this old should taste of vinegar, damp rags and Marmite. Instead, many show flavors of raisins and sultanas, baked apple and honey. The oldest – “ the 1869 Ratcliff Ale” – is bright and luminous like an ancient Amontillado sherry and has a meaty character like smoked partridge with hints of molasses. It’s amazing it tastes this good after 137 years.”

Beer writer Rupert Ponsonby added: “Ripe, sweet an dclean nose like oloroso sherry, sweet and smoky. Great balance with Christmas pudding and honey/dried fruit. Also syrupy roast coffee.”

The discovery caused George Philliskirk, the chief executive of the Beer Academy, to add, “This shows a potential for vintage beers to be taken seriously. Some top restaurants have started providing beer lists. Perhaps they should start including vintage brews.”

How good an idea is it to begin comparing aging beer and aging wine?

We’ve got more “vintage” beer in our chest freezer/cellar than almost anybody you know, but I still have reason to pause. One of the great things about beer is that brewers consider it ready to drink when they release it to the public. A winemaker might tell you have to wait 10 years or more for that multi-hundred-dollar bottle of red to “open up” and be at its best. He wants his money and caring for it between now and then is your job.

That noted, despite how well almost everything about wine has been scrutinized a recent artcile in Decanter noted “no one fully understands the process of wine aging.” Less is understood about beer.

In the best of circumstances new flavors will emerge, greater complexity, perhaps more balance, and even what the wine types call structure (yet paradoxically also a beer where the parts become seemless). Many beers handle age well – mostly those with a solid malt backbone, but also those – particular some from Belgium – where yeast continues to work its magic in the bottle.

I’m not saying laying down beer iasn’t worth doing – witness our cellar – but there can be disappointments. Both Dorber and Pohsonby use the word sherry in describing Ratcliff Ale. A beer aged for a much shorter time may already evoke comparisons to sherry or madeira. Some drinkers find that pleasing and others don’t. It shouldn’t be compared to a wine “opening up” since the flavors result from oxidation, which generally means the malt character is breaking down.

The next stop is a beer you won’t enjoy drinking, heartbreaking when you know there was once a delightful beer in that bottle. A couple of years ago in Belgium I had a bottle of Duvel that was more than 30 years old. Not a good idea.

There’s much more to discuss on this subject, in part because many American brewers are making beers that will improve for years rather than months – though maybe not decades. However, I think it’s best to fiish this post with a cautionary tale.

Anchor Our Special Ale

Last week a few beer writers and employees at Anchor Brewing Co. gathered at the San Francisco brewery to taste vintages of Our Special Ale dating back to 1995. Bill Brand wrote in his blog that the 1996 OAS was the star of the tasting.

Just two months ago I had the same beer. Our friend Jeff Scott was generous enough to share vintages from 1994 through 2001 (we quit at eight, when good sense prevailed).

Here’s what Brand wrote about the 1996: “Oh, would I ever like to have a couple of dozen of these. A dark brown color, with a slight head of foam and a bit of a licorice, malty nose with perhaps a hint of a medicinal note from, I guess, the spice-hop combination. Taste was quite full and malty.”

My notes: “Rich, chocolate nose, some roast. Sourness wrecks the flavor, but looking beyond that spice (spruce, ginger?) adds complexity. Tobacco, chocolate, then dry finish.” Four of us split a bottle and we didn’t finish the beer. Something happened in that bottle that shouldn’t have and oxidation made it worse. Did it happen when the beer was a year old, three, five?

The 2000 vintage was the second favorite of the tasting at Anchor and – honest to goodness – after the 1997, 1998 and 1999 bottles were all spot on the 2000 we opened seemed a bit sour (we weren’t sure if it was age or the combination of alcohol and spices).

The 2000 could have been a matter of different people tasting the same thing in a different way. Still, a lesson learned.

A mission Jimmy Stewart would understand

We love factory tours. You take the tour, see how products are made, and at the end perhaps enjoy some sampling – which could include eating, drinking or drawing with crayons.

You also may buy some of whatever is being made. We’ve hauled home Utz potato chips from Pennsylvania, Jelly Belly “Belly Flops” (rejects that look different but taste the same) from California, and beer from more than a few breweries.

But none in Texas.

A few years ago Texas voters approved a measure that allows wineries to sell (limited quanties) directly to consumers. Wine tourism generates serious bucks in Texas, so that it took until 2003 and a ballot proposition shows that neo-Probitionists types pack some punch. But in the other corner the newly formed Friends of Texas Microbreweries look well prepared as they seek to legalize direct sales to consumers. The FTM is a coalition of Texas craft breweries and beer lovers, with every Texas microbrewery lending support.

“We can no longer ignore the fact that 14 out of 19 microbreweries have failed in Texas in part because current regulations disadvantage microbrewing small businesses,” said Saint Arnold Brewing co-founder Brock Wagner. “This common-sense proposal will allow Texas microbrewers to compete with out-of-state microbrewers on a level playing field.”

Saint Arnold is at the fore, and launched the St. Arnold Goes to Austin Blog. The name? “It evokes the idealism of ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.’ We’re testing the idea that an organized campaign can succeed in changing the law through a little hard work and the grassroots support of the Saint Arnold Army.”

Texas is famous for several beers – most notably Lone Star and Pearl – that live on even though the breweries where they once were made closed long ago. You can’t tour them. Every Saturday morning Saint Arnold is open for tours. The only thing that might make those better is if you could take home beer or six.

Not everybody is trading up

. . . and that’s OK.

The Brew Blog reports that Miller’s “Take Back the High Life” campaign begins tonight. With the ads Miller is positioning Miller High Life as the best beer value.

Miller High Life brand director Tom McLoughlin sees the campaign fitting in with a countertrend to the trading up movement.

“We think we’ve tapped into a cultural insight, which we see could be a fruitful area. You write about it all the time: trading up. Consumers are reaching a breaking point on that, in terms of, are we trading up on everything?”

Of course not.

It’s been nearly two years since I talked with Michael Silverstein, author of Trading Up: Why Consumers Want New Luxury Goods, for a trade publication. At the time I wrote:

Reviews of the book are often paired it with “Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury” by James B. Twichell. Twichell writes, “One can make the argument that until all necessities are had by all members of a community, no one should have luxury. More complex still is that, since the 1980s, the bulk consumers of luxury have not been the wealthy but the middle class, your next-door neighbors and their kids.”

That’s good for brewers when beer is viewed a New Luxury. It’s bad when beer is not, because one of the premises of “Trading Up” is that consumer spending is polarizing. In order to trade up in a category she really cares about, an avid cyclists might save money by trading down in some that don’t matter to her — like her brand of toothpaste or beer.

The implication is manufacturers of products that are perceived as commodities have a problem.

Do the new Miller ads address that? Here’s how Brew Blog describes the ads: “Deliverymen repossess cases of Miller High Life from establishments that charge too much — preventing people from living the High Life. In one spot they descend on a bistro that charges an eye-popping amount for a hamburger.”

This means? Apparently that that the hamburger is overpriced so everything there must be. The food and drink aren’t worth more; they just cost more.

Or maybe that if you spend too much on hamburgers who won’t be able to afford your fair share of Miller High Life and will have to drink something cheaper. Quite honestly, it’s not clear to me, but then I don’t know what there is cheaper (and don’t feel the need to tell me).

In any event: Hogwash.

Let’s be realistic. Most beer drinkers consider beer a commodity, not worth paying more for than the brand currently on sale at the grocery store. I’m OK with that, just as the fact that some people don’t want to “trade up” to more complex flavors – or drink beer at all.

However, I am bothered by a commercial that implies that those of us who pay more for beer aren’t getting a better value than, well, Miller High Life.

The next generation of drinkers

Missed this story for about a month: Young adults key to wine growth (and breweries are figuring that out).

The articles reports the surge in wine consumption by the so-called millennial generation – defined generally as teens to late 20s – is one of the key reasons the U.S. wine industry has experienced robust growth in recent years.

But one beverage analyst suggested the increase was not caused by the wine industry. Instead, it is the result of the beer industry’s failure to effectively market its products, said Kaumil Gajrawala, an analyst with UBS Investment Research.

Beer companies lost market share to wine and spirits largely because their advertising campaigns in the 1990s and early 2000s were sophomoric and failed to deliver a message about the quality of their products, Gajrawala said.

To support his contention, Gajrawala played a compilation video of beer ads that showed bikini-clad women wrestling, overweight male sports fans in full-body paint, and men driving golf balls in ludicrously inappropriate places.

“A 23-year-old doesn’t want to identify with that,” he said.

Gajrawala then played newer campaigns by major beer companies like Coors and Budweiser, which he said are hipper and more likely to appeal to the millennials. The new ads are an indication brewers have learned the error of their ways, he said.

“Clearly, you can see the beer companies have changed their strategy in terms of how they are going after consumers,” he said.

That’s important for the wine industry because if the beer industry and its massive marketing clout does a better job of keeping young drinkers well into adulthood, wine may have a tougher time growing at the rates it has enjoyed, he said.

“The free ride for wine is probably over,” he said.

As most business stories, when this one refers to the beer industry that means the big breweries – the ones who could afford to broadcast stupid commercials. Those are the one now catching up not only with wineries but craft breweries who’ve been talking about the quality of their products all along.

These guys know where to find the good stuff

Jeff Bagby

This is the way it is supposed to work, but when you interrupt your beer culture for about 100 years then some things – like ongoing addition of “new blood” and thus innovation – start to fall through the cracks.

Food and wine magazines are constantly featuring the hot new chefs, new winemakers and even new sommeliers. In an interview in the New York Times wine authority Jancis Robinson was asked what she sees as the most important change in the wine world.

“Oh, the upgrade of quality, and the enthusiasm and ambition of winemakers everywhere,” she said.

That’s also happening in beer, although you’re less likely to see brewers’ mugs in glossy magazines.

Instead San Diego Union-Tribune illustrates the point with a feature on Jeff Bagby (pictured above at the 2003 Great American Beer Festival) of Pizza Port Carlsbad.

The author calls Bagby one of the county’s most intuitive brewers (how do you measure that?), “willing to base a beer on a hunch.”

“A lot of it is a shot in the dark,” Bagby tells him.

Perhaps – and if so his aim is still pretty good – but his beers are no accident. In part because it seems he’s always in “research” mode. The easiest way to find the new and interesting beers at the Great American Beer Festival is to ask Bagby – or another of his generation of New American brewers like Will Meyers of Cambridge (Mass.) Brewing – because he’s out talking to other brewers and tasting beer.

Now go back to Robinson’s quote. Do you think we could say this?

“Oh, the upgrade of quality, and the enthusiasm and ambition of beermakers everywhere.”

OK, not everywhere, but Robinson probably wasn’t including Yellow Tail either.