musing

The Session #74: Pray for me

The SessionThe topic for the 74th gathering of The Session is “Finding Beer Balance.” Visit This Is Why I’m Drunk to see what everybody else is writing. It will be more interesting than the sad story that follows.

A.J. Liebling — a journalist who ate and drank to excess, and who described himself as bald, overweight, and gluttonous — once wrote: “The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day bring only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter’s hours on the road…. A good appetite gives an eater room to turn around.”

Liebling wrote very well about food. He was not an advocate of balance.

I write about beer. I’m pretty much bald and I can be gluttonous. Food, drink, zydeco, smoked meat, the theater, the theatre, high school basketball (in a previous life), things worth doing seem worth doing to excess.

I’m not sure this is going to end well.

Whatever happened to ‘extreme’ beer?

Did I miss the memo?

Stories about — and therefore praising, because almost all stories about beers not brewed by large corporations include a certain amount of praise — “extreme beers” seem to be appearing less often.

(And, yes, I’m aware that the Beer Advocate “Extreme Beer Festival” recently concluded. That’s one reason for the question.)

Maybe my radar needs adjusting. Or maybe they’ve been drowned about by tales of passionate nano-brewers.

The subject popped up again yesterday when Adrian Tierney-Jones wrote about the Charles Wells/Dogfish Head collaboration beer DNA New World IPA. Sam Calagione (who wrote a book titled Extreme Brewing) was there for the roll out, of course, and Adrian talked with him.

And afterwards I had a few words with Calagione and asked the question that was bugging me. Extreme beer? ‘It wasn’t about strength but innovation and flavour. I’m not hung up on nomenclature.’

And in that millpond the ripples keep spreading.

I’m still trying to wrap my head about this DNA beer, and understand just what “a reduction of our 60 Minute IPA” means, but it sounds like something that would have been called “extreme” not long ago.

This wasn’t in Jack McAuliffe’s business plan

This from the zoning application by The Rare Barrel in West Berkeley (California):

“We will be a gathering place for artisanal brewers, home brewers, beer enthusiasts and food lovers in general. We will bring to Berkeley well-paying jobs both in the brewery and the retail area that do not require an advanced degree.”

The headline on the story: City approves sour-beer brewery for ‘beer geeks.’

This probably made it easier for those sitting on the the zoning board to give the application a thumbs up: “The brewers will contract with several existing breweries to produce wort, an early stage of the beer, in kettles off-site so as to avoid ‘bakery’ type odors associated with brewing.”

Beer innovation #2416: Nip size cans

21st Amendment Lower De BoomSee that sleek, gold can on the right that looks like it’s waiting to make an appearance in Super Bowl commercial? Brilliant idea. It contained1 8.4 ounces (248ml) of Lower De Boom barleywine from 21st Amendment Brewery.

Lower De Boom is 11.5% alcohol by volume. I can’t count how many 22-ounce and bigger bottles my local beer shop has full of barleywines and other beers just as strong. No wonder they call them bombers. I get the concept that bigger bottles are for sharing, but Daria and I shared 8.4 ounces.

I don’t have much more to say the De Boom itself — it’s a bit American/pungent on the nose, but a dessert beer; rich, plenty of caramel and some dark fruit character, a little sweet, but it may dry out as it ages, or do you lay down beer in cans? And it comes with a back story. 2

*****

1 Yes, past tense. 21st Amendment spent far more sending the the beer to me than it would cost in a store. If I could buy it in St. Louis I would.

2 Cornelius De Boom was a Belgian-born ship owner who made it to San Francisco in time for the gold rush in 1848. De Boom Street, named for him, is the alley which runs alongside 21st Amendment Brewery. The brewery’s De Boom Street entrance is often referred to as “lower De Boom” by brewery employees.

Best beer name of the year – so far

This is the sort of thing you find when you read too many journalism-related blogs. Who names a beer Unemployed Reporter Porter? Can’t quite fit it all into a tweet, so from CT.com (meaning Connecticut):

Jon Campbell, who briefly made Hartford a more interesting place with his presence and reporting for the Advocate, has entered the homebrew game with his signature Unemployed Reporter Porter (pictured).

“Porter style beers were first popularized in the nineteenth century by merchant sailors and manual dock laborers,” the label reads. “Unemployed Reporter is crafted in the same tradition, honoring a profession likewise doomed to decline and irrelevance.”

For this new class of “expendables,” the label goes on, “we’ve included chocolate and roasted barley malts that are as dark and bitter as the future of American journalism, and a high alcohol content designed to numb the pain of a slow, inexorable march toward obsolescence. While Unemployed Reporter is especially delicious as a breakfast beer, it’s still smooth enough to be enjoyed all day, every day. And let’s be honest: what else do you have going on?”

Now head there to read the rest and look at the label.