the session

12May2010: Beer linkorama

You do have to live within the Greater London area to apply for this position, but what better reason to move?

London’s historic Old Spitalfields Market has announced it’s looking for a candidate to resurrect the ancient role of Ale Taster. Entries are due by May 23. From the website:

In medieval times, ordinary citizens were appointed to oversee and inspect various aspects of everyday life, effectively doing the work of our modern Inspectors of Weights and Measures. Not surprisingly, one of the most popular offices to be held was that of the Ale Taster also known as Ale Conner. His duties involved visiting stalls and inns on market days and during the town’s fairs to ensure that the ales, beers and other produce on sale were of good quality.

“Ale Tasters would have been a familiar sight in London.” explains Malcolm Ball, chief executive of Wellington Market Company, the company responsible for Old Spitalfields Market.

He added that he felt that the ancient office would still hold its value even centuries on. “Although the attraction of such a role may seem obvious at first, the 21st Century version would incorporate many more responsibilities than the original. Our ceremonial Ale Taster would become an ambassador for the promotion of drink and food in the area. Modern tastes have evolved and become so much more sophisticated in recent times and people demand ever greater levels of quality and variety.”

The site also explains: “The candidates will really have their knowledge tested by a number of different rounds. Blind-tasting will be the order of the day and contestants will be pitted against one another in a bid to claim the ceremonial role. The final round will consist of a one minute pitch to the panel of judges to demonstrate presentation skills.”

I’m already thinking a cage match pitting the English Ale Taster and the Wynkoop Beerdrinker of the Year might be in order.

  • Tomme Arthur did a better job of explaining why collaborative brewing leads to better brewing than I last week in writing for The Session. To understand the sweet spot brewers are in right now he points to a less-good scenario: “But I do fear the day when Collaborative beers are less about imagination and more about SKU’s and push pull scenarios.”
  • Think Batch 19 from MillerCoors could turn out to be the next Blue Moon White? Me either. Right now it is being tested in four markets, and no matter how it does in the tests it doesn’t look like the brewing company would wait for the same organic growth it allowed Blue Moon (pardon the plug, but details in “Brewing with Wheat”). A mini-interview with Keith Villa — the brewer who wrote the recipe for Blue Moon White and came up with the idea of serving it with a slice of orange — is worth your time.
  • This isn’t exactly new, but Lake Placid Craft Brewing closed its brewing facility in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and F.X. Matt Brewing in Utica now produces all Lake Placid beer for distribution. Lack Placid still brews its own beer at its brewpub. I heard it suggested at the recent Craft Brewers Conference we should expect more of this. Many small-batch breweries have built up a certain following, but recognize that at their size production is be too labor intensive and inefficient to make them sustainable — that is a business that would be passed from one generation to the next. Meanwhile they can find breweries, like F.X. Matt, with excess capacity and well-run packaging plants, perfect operations to produce better quality controlled beer than they can make themselves. Nothing wrong with this. For instance, Matt has long brewed beers for Brooklyn Brewery. But let’s hope these breweries are honest telling the whole story behind their beer.
  • Speaking of the importance of where. Emerald City Beer will soon be making beer in Seattle’s old Rainier Brewery and will focus on lager. Founder Rick Hewitt plans to use Washington-grown ingredients.
  • From the New York Times: “Pairing a DVD and a Drink Takes Care.” No, no, no. Not if it’s beer. Keep it simple. A good movie. A good beer. Am I missing something?

    • Session #39 recapped, Session #40 announced

    The SessionMario Rubio has recapped The Session #39: Collaboration, and Erik Myers has issued marching orders for #40 on June 4: Session Beer.

    There are a thousand ways to approach this.

    What is your definition of a session beer? Is it, as Dr. Lewis suggested at the Craft Brewers Conference this year, “a pint of British wallop” or is your idea of a session beer a crisp Eastern European lager, a light smoky porter, a dry witbier, or even a dry Flemish sour?

    Is it merely enough for a beer to be low alcohol to be considered a session beer, or is there some other ineffable quality that a beer must hold in order to merit the term? And if so, what is that quality? Is it “drinkability”? Or something else?

    What about the place of session beer in the craft beer industry? Does session beer risk being washed away in the deluge of extreme beers, special releases, and country-wide collaborations? Or is it the future of the industry, the inevitable palate-saving backlash against a shelf full of Imperial Imperials?

    What are some of your favorite session beers? When and where do you drink them? If you’d like, drink one and review it.

    For additional preparation visit Lew Bryson’s Session Beer Project.

    The Session #39: Collaborative learning

    The Session
    Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning.

    “I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told Luke Nicholas after tasting the beer for the first time since they brewed it in February. He liked what was in his glass, but his experience with brown malt — a key ingredient in the recipe and one Nicholas had not used before — told him it wasn’t time to bottle the beer. Nicholas reassured him that what he was tasting had been bottled weeks before so he could bring some to Chicago. The rest was still maturing.

    Luke Nicholas and Kelly RyanThat’s what’s called collaboration.

    The theme for the 39th gathering of the Session today is collaboration — Mario Rubio is this month’s host and will have the recap — and I expect various bloggers to come at it from many directions. Let’s just hope we don’t hear the story of Avery/Russian River Collaboration Not Litigation Ale too many times.

    I’ll try to keep it simple. Nicholas is founder and chief bottle washer at Epic Brewing in New Zealand. Ryan, also a native of New Zealand, is brewery manager at the Thornbridge Brewery in England. They met last year when Nicholas was in England and ended up brewing a collaboration that melded, although that might not be the right word, Epic IPA and Thornbridge Halycon.

    Since Ryan would be in New Zealand in February for his brother’s wedding they decided to brew another beer, in this case a stout, a style Nicholas had never made. This was also his first experience with brown malt and two English hop varieties, Target and Bambling Cross.

    “I woke up excited to go to the brewery,” Ryan said. “(The process) energizes you. A mass of information goes back and forth.”

    The resulting beer is plenty stout, 6.8% abv with 54 bittering units, and even at a young age in early April full of textured flavors, smooth but complex. Half the batch has been packaged and hit the market last week. Half is aging in American oak barrels that previously held Epic Armageddon IPA and likely will be released at the end of August.

    Both Nicholas and Ryan judged in the World Beer Cup in Chicago in April, and they spent plenty of time together during the following days at the Craft Brewers Conference. Information flowed freely, but not necessarily the way it would formulating a recipe or standing over a mash tun in the brewery. Nicholas calls what happens during brewing collaborations a cross pollination of ideas, and it breeds better brewing.

    Collaborations are good business, good marketing, good fun and often result in interesting beer. They also make for good stories in print and cyberspace for those who haven’t already heard them a thousand times. When they start to seem old remember the stories may be repetitive, the experiences are not.

    ******

    The photo above was taken at CBC. Luke (on the left) is mugging for one camera, Kelly for another, and that object between them is an unlabeled bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout they are about to open. Clearly a historic moment. You might find pictures documenting the brew day more informative. Details about the beer itself are here.

    The Session #39 announced: Collaborations

    The SessionMario Rubio has announced the topic for The Session #39. Collaborations. That simple. But not necessarily that simple.

    Feel free to have fun with the topic. Drink a collaborative beer. Who’s brewed some of your favorite collaborations? Who have been some of your favorite collaborators? Who would you like to see in a future collaboration?

    As the topic is collaborations, working with each other is encouraged. Look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

    A collaborative post about collaborations?

    An interesting idea.

    The Session #38: 1 beer or 1001?

    The SessionWere Mr. Sixpack (otherwise known as Don Russell) to participate today in our monthly session then he might quote liberally from his entry in 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout.

    “The Dark Lord exists mainly by reputation. His power is rumored, his character praised with cultlike obsession, yet he is rarely seen. Until, that is, Dark Lord Day, a holiday ritual for the devoted who flock from around the world to Three Floyds Brewing in Munster, Indiana, for his annual appearance.”

    I don’t have such a description or such a beer to offer for this session, for which you’ll recall, Sean Inman provides these guidelines:

    What beer have you tasted recently (say, the last six months or so) that is worthy of their own day in the media sun?

    And to add a little extra to it, how does “great” expectations affect your beer drinking enjoyment?

    AND If you have attended one of these release parties, stories and anecdotes of your experience will be welcomed too.

    I’m not opposed to standing in line, literally as well a figuratively. On the first day of March I spent four straight hours calling a number in Colorado with hopes of getting through to book two nights in Jersey Jim, a former Forest Service lookout tower can you rent, and then I did the same the next day. Some years we get lucky and some years (like this) we don’t. I can drive to Mancos (where reservations are taken) in four hours and probably would if they accepted in-person applications.

    Anyway, back to The Session. I’ve had a beer or two in the last six months as worthy as Dark Lord, but I wouldn’t exert as much effort to acquire any of them as I would for another night in Jersey Jim. Still one of these years I might try to make it to Dark Lord Day for the experience.

    I promise to write about it.

    (Head on over to Beer Search Party for more Session entries.)