musing

We can quit complaining now about how early some breweries rolled out their Oktoberfest beers.

Oktoberfest begins in Munich tomorrow. The Big One. About seven million people will visit during the next two weeks.

Oktoberfests across the U.S. during the next month (some even in October) will attract more in total. There’s something about them, don’t you think? Here in St. Louis, Urban Chestnut Brewing and Schlafly (Saint Louis Brewery) and hold their first co-celebration this weekend at Urban Chestnut. Next month’s Soulard Oktoberfest is the big one in these parts, with multiple tents, multiple bands (including once again Brave Combo, who seem to be on sort of an Oktoberfest trail), multiple vendors.

Beer is pretty much an essential element, although for years Cullman, Alabama, held a beer-free Oktoberfest.

Anyway, here are a few photos from when we visited the Cannstatter Volkfest in Stuttgart in 2008. Imagine the Wisconsin State Fair without the agricultural displays but a lot more beer. It’s billed as the second largest beer festival in the world, smaller than only Munich’s. As in Munich just a few local breweries sell beer. Unlike Munich, most are not beers available internationally, or even nationally. And the breweries offer more than a single festbier in their respective tents. You can cleanse your palate with a pils distinctively more bitter than you usually find nearby in Bavaria or choose a refreshing weisse beer to wash down typical Swabian dishes.

The festival began in 1818, occurs annually at about the same time as the Munich celebration, and attracts four million visitors over the course of two weeks. Three of the beer tents accommodate 5,000, and smaller ones pack in thousands. Outside food and crafts vendors share the midway with rides more impressive than those at the average U.S. state fair or seaside boardwalk, witness the photo at the top.

Those are young Germans — you know, the ones who no longer find beer relevant — standing on benches lining long beer tables, hoisting one-liter mugs, banging them together, singing along to songs like “YMCA” and boogying big time.

Earlier in the day we listened to brass bands like those you’d hear at Americanized Oktoberfest celebrations, playing traditional German tunes. After about every fourth song the afternoon bands stopped to sing “Ein Prosit” and lead thousands of revelers in a toast. Ohlala-Partyband, the group on the stage when the drinkers were on the benches, followed the same formula, but then quickly returned to belting out another pop song that doesn’t sound all that different in German.

“What I’d say is, if you can identify exactly where it was brewed, name the brewer and it has great aromas and good strong flavours (and perhaps a silly name), it’s probably craft beer.”

From a lengthy look at “a thing called ‘craft’ beer” in The New Zealand Record.

Of course there is a downside for those in the U.S. who’ve discovered how much they like New Zealand hops. This is why more of them will be staying at home.

This is stupid. Simply stupid. No expletive needed.

10 Best Beer Investments For Your Cellar

Even aside from suggesting you cellar Pliny the Younger.

Look at Michael Jackson’s list of the 42 best beers in the world in 1982.

One thing they share in common is that if you showed up where they were brewed you could drink a pint, half liter, whatever.

That’s what you do with beer.

Make it this one from Ska Brewing:

DURANGO, Colo., (Sept. 6, 2012) — Ska Brewing has been awarded five medals out of six entries at the recent Colorado State Fair Craft Beer Competition, and now believes it to be one of North America’s most important beer competitions.

Ska won a Gold medal for its Pinstripe Red Ale, three Silver medals for Steel Toe Stout, Buster Nut Brown and Special ESB, and a Bronze in the German and Rye category for its GABF Pro-Am winning recipe “On The Sly Again,” which will be released later this fall as #21 in the brewery’s (locally) popular Local Series.

“This is obviously an important competition,” said Ska President and co-founder Dave Thibodeau. “Having won five medals this year, it’s clear to us that this is an event with expert judges who are beyond qualified to determine who makes the best beer.”

Pressed further, Thibodeau acknowledged, “When we win a lot of medals, we feel like beer competitions are not only legitimate, but critical to the industry. I’m actually not sure if the industry could function without them.” He added, “Of course, that could change next year.”

There was more, but four paragraphs of laughing out loud is about all my heart can stand.

Oh, and I need to drink any beer that beats out Steel Toe Stout.

Starting from the bottom. The table is covered with labels from BrewDog Punk IPA bottles. There was a BrewDog beer on tap.

The coaster is from Carlsberg. Big brewery.

The glass is from Mahou, one of Spain’s largest breweries. I tried one beer from Mahou, because you should do that sort of thing in Spain. Very sweet, no hops that you would notice.

The beer is Fort American Pale Ale from Fort Cerveza Artesanal, one of the “next generation” breweries in Barcelona.

We stumbled upon Cat Bar in the Old Town area our last day in Barcelona. We were looking for a Christmas tree ornament, not beer. Turns out this place has a pretty good following in the vegan community (“Vegan artisan beer bar and restaurant featuring 30+ Catalan craft beers”) as well as beer folk.

The owner, Ron (“Just Ron”), happened to be talking to the woman pouring beer about scheduling for the follow week. Very quickly he told me:

– Cat Bar opened in January of 2011 and business has improved at a constant rate.

– That the distributor who handled BrewDog beers had gone bankrupt, which was pretty disruptive.

– That breweries like Fort and Llúpols i Llevats (Glops beer) are a second wave. The first wave isn’t 20 years old, but he said many drinkers find the beers, brewed mostly to mimic classic styles, somewhat pedestrian. Not every beer from the newcomers is all that good, he said, but they certainly are interesting.

I would have liked more bitterness from the Fort APA. A brochure on the bar said it has 20 bitterness units, although pretty obvious late hopping gives it a solid hop presence (Centennial – hmmm, good). OK, and little less caramel malt sweetness.

The day before in a liquor store a local had warned us away from buying Fort, because he said it wasn’t nearly as good in the bottle as on draft. So there’s work to be done. Saw beer from several American small breweries there as well. Including Great Divide (in this case not so) Fresh Hop Ale. Sitting nice and high, where the light could pound every day. Whoever ends up buying that vintage bottle isn’t going to taste the same beer consumers did something like 10 months ago in Colorado.

But that’s another story. Cat Bar, great vibe.