Boak and Bailey have posted the roundup for The Session #15, writing “there are many roads to good beer.” Their recap includes 43 participants.
Perhaps some host will ask us to explore the detours as well. Just kidding, Alan.
Thomas at Geistbear Brewing Blog will host the June session. Look for his announcement soon. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it June 6 (yes, D-Day). We’ll be en route to Prince Rupert, B.C., that day and a date with a ferry to take us up the Inside Passage.
Writing about beer certainly changed my relationship with beer, and made what might look like a simple question next to impossible to answer.
I got to thinking about this because for The Session #15 Boak and Bailey asked those of us in the beer blogosphere to answer this question: How did it all start for you? And going further, “We’d like you to write about the moment when you saw the light.”
Looking over the early posts I’ve been startled that people can single out a beer or a where, because there is no single moment or beer I can point to. From the time going on 40 (gulp) years ago I thought “Hey, there’s something different about this Stroh’s from the the basic what’s-in-the-pitcher beer we’ve been drinking in campus bars” my relationship beer has been evolving. Still is. So across a few decades . . .
1980s, Central Illinois. Schlösser Alt. German bars in the Midwest moved enough beer that we told ourselves it was probably fresh. Dortmunder Union sure had more flavor than American lagers, but then we discovered this alt and bitterness.
1993, a lookout tower north of Mancos, Colorado. New Belgium Abbey Grand Cru. We were still Illinois flatlanders, enjoying a view of four states at 10,000 feet. The beer was brewed with yeast acquired from a Chimay bottle, but it was made nearby.
1994, Lyme Regis (south of England). Five days before a pint of Royal Oak (Eldridge Pope) in Sherbourne had been simply spectacular. This totally living Bass buried it. Bass. A lifeless beer not worth drinking in the States.
All of those experiences occurred separately from writing about beer. But we’ve also trooped into hundreds of brewpubs in the last 20 years, I’ve visited monastery breweries, only scratched the surface with American small-batch brewers and then there are hops . . .
Anyway, I also wouldn’t have been at the last 15 Great American Beer Festivals if I didn’t write about beer. So in October I wouldn’t have had either Cable Car or Toronado 20th Anniversary, brewed and blended by Lost Abbey and Russian River respectively to celebrate Toronado’s anniversary. (Yes, an option would have been to go to Toronado’s party.) One-offs that proved for the hundreth (or is that thousandth?) time that a beer can reveal something no other beer has before.
And no, it doesn’t have to be a new-fangled creation — later this year we’ll be sampling beers in the south of Germany and not much later in the north of Italy, which should be a pretty fun compare and contrast. And no, a beer doesn’t have do that to be great. And yes, perhaps I’m a little dense, but that beer can still surprise me is a joy.
For more Session posts, and perhaps even epiphanies, be sure to see Boak and Bailey’s roundup.
Hosts Boak & Bailey have announced the theme for the next Session: How did it all start for you?
Continuing the “Beervangelism” theme, we’d like you to write about the moment when you saw the light. At what point did you realise you were a beer lover/geek/enthusiast? What beer(s) triggered the conversion? Did someone help you along your way, or did you come to it yourself?
In short; how did you get into good beer?
If you’re not familiar with The Session, it’s a beer blogosphere gathering where bloggers all over the world drink and write about beer based on a theme, and then post their thoughts on a designated Friday. In this case May 2.
All participants are welcome. See Boak & Bailey for details.
Jeff Bell/Stonch has posted the roundup for The Session #14: Beer People. Many outstanding posts, and one terrific suggestion from Jay Brooks.
But I wish I’d written this (and not only because it would mean I could still share a “snob beer” with my Dad):
Bob is my Dad. He drinks Labatt’s Blue religiously. Before Labatt’s it was Michelob. Before Michelob it was Pabst or Natural Light. My Dad has never taught me about original gravity or dry-hopping. He’s never taught me about the difference between a Kolsch and a Pilsner or cascade hops and chinook hops. In fact, my Dad has really taught me only one thing about beer in my whole life. He taught me that beer is something that can bring two people together on the same level and be genuine with one another.
Read the rest at Beer, Maine & Me.
In setting the theme for The Session #14: Beer People Jeff Bell asked for “pen portraits.”
At the risk of appearing lazy I’m letting the subject speak for himself. Ed Reisch was the fourth generation of his Springfield, Ill., family to oversee operations for Reisch Brewing Co. The brewery operated from 1849 until 1966, although Reisch left in 1964 to work for Pabst in Milwaukee
I visited him in December to collect his oral history, in this case using video. Here are a couple of minutes in which he talks about brewing Pabst and Andecker (Pabst’s high-end beer) in the 1970s.
The Reisch Brewery is gone . . . It was not insignificant — by the early twentieth century it occupied three acres and 11 building, shortly before Prohibition producing nearly 80,000 barrels annually. Ed Reisch was born in 1919, and played in the brewery as a youth during Prohibition, when malt syrup was produced there.
But the Reisch story continues . . . One of Ed’s sons, George, is a corporate brewmaster at Anheuser-Busch and George’s son, Patrick, is training to become a professional brewer. That will make six generations.
So more later.