the session

In the first two contributions to The Session #132 (Homebrewing Conversations) I read Boak & Bailey explained why their homebrewing kit remains in the attic and Alan McLeod wrote it was “no hobby for this old man.”

And I thought about Fred Eckhardt (longtime “dean of American beer writers” until his death in 2015), talking about the first beer he brewed and why he quit. The stories are deep within this longer collection of paragraphs, so here are quick extracts.

Eckhardt’s experience with his stepfather’s homebrew in the 1940s was pretty common. The recipe for 10 gallons included a 3-pound can of Blue Ribbon Hop Flavored Malt Extract, 10 pounds of sugar, water and a cube of Fleischmann’s Yeast. “It was hideous beer, but it had alcohol and it did sustain me and my friends in college,” he said.

He began learning about winemaking in the 1960s, but had no interest in recreating his stepfather’s homebrew. During a trip to San Francisco in 1968, just a few years after Fritz Maytag had rescued Anchor Brewing Co. and its unique steam beer from extinction, Eckhardt enjoyed an Anchor Steam with a friend.

“He said, ‘This tastes just like homebrew’ and I thought, ‘You don’t know what homebrew tastes like,'” Eckhardt said. “Then I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could make beer like this?”

Given the amount of information available to homebrewers today — in print, on the internet, from other brewers — it’s hard to imagine now what a formidable task that seemed to be 30 years ago.

Eckhardt ended up writing a booklet called “A Treatise on Lager Beer” because there was nothing like it, and various editions sold 120,000 copies in the next 11 years.

And why he quit.

I was on national TV as the last person in the country to brew illegally,” he said. NBC sent a cameraman to his house the night before homebrewing was legalized (in 1978) to shoot video of boiling wort through a window.

“I made the beer (a barley wine) and I never bottled it — I just forgot about it for years,” Eckhardt said. “That’s one of the reasons I quit homebrewing, the bottling. I used to bottle four or five bottles from a batch to get the information (for articles he was writing about brewing) and leave the rest.”

. . . he has spoken to scores of homebrew clubs across the country. “The crazier the group, the more successful,” he said. The Foam Rangers in Houston invited him back every year to lead a beer tasting during the Dixie Cup, a homebrew competition and celebration unlike any other. They produce a new “Fred T-shirt” every year with Eckhardt’s likeness on it.

Winemakers do nothing comparable. “Winemakers are so serious. Beermakers are frivolous,” he said.

Here’s to frivolous.

The Session, which was not conceived as something that would be around 11 years, wraps up 11 years on Friday. Host Jon Abernathy asks contributors to write about “homebrewing—the good, the bad, your experiences, ideas, (mis)conceptions, or whatever else suits you, as long as it starts the conversation!”*

The topic is timely, even if you didn’t realize it. Last week the Brewers Association and Charlie Papazian announced that next January he will be stepping down from the BA. Papazian and Charlie Matzen, both school teachers at the time, founded the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colo., in 1978. Papazian started the Great American Beer Festival four years later. And the following year, the Association of Brewers was organized to include the AHA and the Institute for Brewing and Fermentation Studies to assist the growing number of new breweries.

And here we are today. Where might we be otherwise?

*****

* Those unfamiliar with The Session can find details about how to participate in Abernathy’s post.

Jay Brooks rather hastily summoned us for the 131st gathering of The Session today. He has kept it simple, posing three questions.

Question No. 1
“For our first question of the new year, what one word, or phrase, do you think should be used to describe beer that you’d like to drink?”

I’ve answered this one more than once: Beer. That’s it. Beer.

Question No. 2
“For our second question of the new year, what two breweries do you think are very underrated?”

Since I already picked Summit Brewing for Craft Beer & Brewing magazine that has to be one.

And Chuckanut Brewery another. Even if Will Kemper’s beers are referred to as underrated so often you think they might have become overrated. They can’t be overrated.

Question No. 3
“What three types of beer do you think deserve more attention or at least should be more available for you to enjoy?”

Again, I’ll lean on a thought put forward at CB&B, and that is we need more lagers that taste like lagers. This notion that pilsner is the new IPA has led to too many pilsners with a minimum of pilsner malt/yeast character and a maximum of dry hops, sometimes even stinking of the American Northwest.

Next, on a cold evening it may seem silly to wish for more German weissbeers (hefeweizens if you must), but it will be warm again and there won’t be enough.

Finally, more porters please.

Your dream beer festival?

Free admission? Nothing but 100-point rarities you’ve never tasted before? Only local beers? Only brewers pouring? Only eight-ounce servings (or 1 or 4 or 16)? No lines?

Host Brian Yaeger has asked us to write about designing “your dream festival” for the 130th gathering of The Session, providing a list of criteria to consider (size, style, location, you get the idea). And he suggests that we conclude “with a note about why you can see trying to make this fantasy fest a reality or why you’ll never advance this idea of yours beyond the Session post!”

The thought occurs to me that if you dream big you should find somebody else to take charge of execution. Or to phrase that idea as a confession: Part of what makes it a dream beer festival is that somebody else organizes it.

Ron Pattinson has the right idea. He assembled a collection of historic lager recipes he’d like breweries to make and serve at a festival. He found somebody — Florian Kuplent, diploma brewmaster and co-founder of Urban Chestnut Brewing in St. Louis — who thinks this is a good idea. UCBC has recruited breweries from across the country to make beers from these recipes. Planning is ongoing, but 20 to 25 lagers will be poured March 3 April 22 at the brewery’s Grove location. Ron Pattinson will be there, and so will I.

This is a better festival than I could have dreamed up. It’s the one I am most looking forward to in 2018; closely followed by Fonta Flora Brewery’s State of Origin Festival in June in North Carolina (one I’ve wanted to get to the last couple of years, but didn’t fit into the schedule). The one I wish I could have attended this past year would have been the Norsk Kornøl Festival in Norway.

That these began as somebody else’s dream is fine with me. I prefer writing about other people’s dreams to revealing my own.

Gose. Check (at least in season).
Pale ale. Check.
Pumpkin beer. Check.
Cask pale ale. Check.
ESB. Check.
Brown ale. Check.
Rauchbier. Check.
Barley wine. Check.
Hefeweizen. Check.
Stout. Check.
Cask stout. Check.
American stout. Check.
Foreign stout. Check.
Imperial stout. Check.
Milk stout. Check.
Peanut butter milk stout. Check.
Barrel-aged imperial stout. Check.
Barrel-aged imperial stout you stand in line to buy. Check.
Saison. Check.
Mixed fermentation saison. Check.
Barrel-aged wild beer. Check. Check. Check.
American lager. Check.
American light lager. Check.
Zwickel. Check.
German pils. Check.
Czech pils. Czech.

This list, which could go on as long as the Great American Beer Festival awards ceremony because I haven’t even start in on IPAs, is brought to you by The Session #129. Host Eoghan Walsh has asked participants to write about “Missing local beer styles.” He suggested several variations, but still put this as the basic question: “What beer style would you like to see being brewed in your local market that is not yet being brewed?”

And the answer to that question is: Anything that exists in a style guideline somewhere that I can’t buy from a local brewery I probably will end up judging in a homebrew contest soon enough.

But when I think of “what next” and local beer I don’t think in terms of styles. I think about what brewers can do to give their beers “taste of place.” This is not new. I’ve quoted this 1854 story from Daily Missouri Republican about the “last days of lager” before, but it is constantly relevant.

‘The last days of Pompeii’ is a romance of Belwer [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], known to the world; but ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis,’ is a romance yet to be written. We certainly will not pretend to write it, for we claim no merit as a novelist; but we will give facts, plain facts, and if any one feels interest enough in them to use them for a theme of romantic literature, we most cordially allow him the privilege of doing so.

“With last Sunday, September 17th, the last drop of Lager Beer in St. Louis went down to – posterity. It was, and is no more. During the past extremely hot summer, it must have been some sort of gratification to our German population to have resorted to a good glass of Lager Beer, and freely did they make use of it. At places where, as we are told, the best of that article was kept, scarcely enough hands could be procured to serve the daily increasing number of consumers. But the extraordinary demand, occasioned by the extraordinary heat, soon exhausted the supply. One house after the other announced to its customers, that next day ‘the last barrel of Lager Beer’ would be tapped. This direful news brought grief unto many, and not a few were this person: stopped at street corners by inquisitive friend, with the often-repeated query ‘Where is good Lager Beer yet to be had?’ At last, two places only remained where the needful could be got – one, a spacious bar room, was the Mecca, during the day; the other, being a garden, in the evening. But days hurried on. The demand, having been concentrated to these two places, was too great for their supply, and finally, the bar room gave out. Matter now seemed to wear a gloomy appearance. ‘Mr. K. has shut his house,’ was sad tiding indeed. However, the consolation remained. The delicious fluid could yet be obtained at the garden, as so it went on for a few days. But, alas, only for a few days. One fine morning, as a social company were gathered under the beautiful acacia trees in that garden, the otherwise very kind and affable host, with one glass full of Lager Beer, in his left ‘fist,’ advanced toward the company, and handing, it to one of them, pronounced it to be positively, ‘the last drop of our last barrel!’ Great consternation followed this announcement, because it then became evident that the days of Lager Beer in St. Louis for this summer were numbered. But soon a report was spread, that a certain Mr. G. had two kegs of needful yet left for his particular friends. It did not take long for that report to make the round of the particular friends of this benevolent gentleman, numerous as they are, but it embraced even foes, and the two kegs had only a bare existence, for soon after they were tapped a deep, hollow sound, in answer to a nick at the bottom, gave satisfactory evidence that they were empty.

“In the afternoon of that very same day it was discovered – how we cannot tell – that at a certain brewery downtown, a few barrels were still left to satisfy the wishes of our German community; and, in pursuance of this information, a perfect migration of our German citizens took place to the popular spot. But there, as we are informed, the Lager Beer is also gone! and so we have recorded ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis.’”

I’d like to have a taste of that beer, because history and local and all that. Maybe I’d even end up missing it when it was gone. I suspect not.