I’m just asking.
I’d like to see somebody investigate the relationship between the impact of a changing beer demographic and a changing city demographic. It seems interesting to me, maybe even important, but I’ve got things like brewing with bark and what was cream ale sold in New Orleans in 1856 like to sort out.
I thought about this because Next City points to a map tool that can “serve as gentrification warning system.” (Pretty easy to tell where they stand on gentrifcation.) And the example given is San Francisco, Ground Zero for what is now broadly and generally referred to as “craft beer.”
(If you are still with me, you might want to open Tom Paxton’s “Yuppies in the Sky” in a separate window.)
Basically, there is a Next Generation of Beer Drinkers (there always is) and there is plenty of generalizing about what Gen Y and Gen Z value. Is it going to bother young upperly mobile good beer drinking consumers that they are becoming pins on an “Urban Displacement Project” map? If so, what are they going to do about it?
Tom Paxton is a fine singer and important figure in popular music history His version of “Bottle of Wine” is great.
As for yuppies, I never understood the consternation about them. It’s nothing new, in folk music, one thinks of “Little Boxes” by Peter, Paul and Mary (can’t recall if they wrote it or it’s a cover).
All yuppies are, are younger people whose economic prospects improve because our economic system to date has allowed this for much (not all) of the population. That’s a good thing because creation and consumption of wealth helps lift everyone in society, e.g., those with higher salaries pay more taxes. Many of the folkies – the late Phil Ochs comes to mind – were concerned about anomie and regimentation but prosperity is a good thing when compared to the alternative.
Not sure how it all relates to beer, I think there was always a beer the up and coming in society wanted because it was “in”, it might have been Wuerzburger imported draft in 1908 (or Urquell), a Milwaukee “import” to New York in the 40’s/50’s or Heineken if you could afford it, a Beck’s in the 70’s, a Belgian white style later on. It wasn’t so much the beer itself as the symbol it afforded, of a piece with the wines favoured by the group, restaurants, cars, vacations (e.g. eco-holidays), etc.
The beers change in this crowd: beer itself doesn’t change for the beer crowd, i.e., its verities.
Gary – Malvina Reynolds wrote “Little Boxes” but Pete Seeger popularized it and most people think he wrote it. (Most people being a relative term, of course.) Obviously, it was coincidence but it pretty well represented the state of American beer in the early 1960s.
Thanks and point taken Stan but still, there were beer nuts then. They searched out imports, visited small breweries, made a pilgrimage to Brickseller, knew where to find Stegmaier or Yeungling Porter or Michelob draft come to that. The beer crowd itself doesn’t really change but the market does as the formEr’s influence waxes or wanes.
Pete Seeger! Always loved his work, ditto Ochs and all that crowd but never bought the politics side.
Did you see the NY cream ale news item I made reference to the other day? NYTs 1851-52. I suspect your New Orleans cream ale could well be “imported” New York State cream ale. Vassar’s mid-1830s log book shows southern sales and brewing was not practical in the south – plus they hung on to their hard liquor tradition.
I believe this is a pre-Pro recipe: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1398/47457/
I had it in NYC once and it was very good, note the high BA score for an ostensibly pre-craft style. Mine wasn’t nitro and I don’t think nitro is really needed although it might mimic some forms of older dispense, compressed air maybe.
Even mid-30’s beers had a lot of character, the much-discussed standardization did take place but it was a slow process and didn’t take hold IMO until about end of the 60’s.
Gary
One thing we have learned from the various Albany Ale recreations, Gary, is that pre- prohibition is not too helpful in the sense that 1835 is very different from 1875 and again from 1910. One very instructive beer we brewed was from 1904 and it had characteristics of crony post-prohibition lager as well as deeper ale aspects. Both technological and taste change appears to have been constant.
I would add that the recipe to create the beer in this advertisement from the Times-Picayune in 1841 likely was much different that the one you pointed to. It likely would not have contained corn.
Can’t speak to the Albany ale recreations, I’d like to have tried them, but data I’ve seen from the 30’s and earlier suggests in general hop rates were much higher than today for macro productions, that adjunct was often used but not always and not always as much as today, and FGs were higher than today, so I believe – not trying prove anything – that 19th century and to-mid-1900’s cream ales and lagers were more palate-impactful than the typical macro beer of today. I’ve had homebrewing recreations of pre-Pro lagers at festivals in years past which were extremely good and have read similar reports online from others.
Do we know for sure? Nope, just as we don’t know if any particular recreation actually meets its original model… Sam Adams Boston Lager uses 1lb hops per U.S. barrel I understand today as its 1800’s predecessor did and it is very flavorful IMO, another example.
The other too though is, there were better and worse qualities then, just as today, but on average, that’s what I think..
Gary
That ad looks like a delivery to me, Stan. Read and Brothers is a Troy NY brewery shipping south: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nytigs/BeerBrewing.html
Furthermore (to be enunciated like Daffy Duck) in 1835, the name of the firm was Read and Son and they gave evidence at the 1835 NY State Senate hearing on adulteration of beer. Their detailed recipe is located at page 40
Thanks, Alan. Going to be tricky to footnote, since that’s the 40th page of that particular hearing (like page 550 in the book).
Gary, the 1904 was off a brewers log by a senior pro brewer with assistance from Ron on the techniques. You can say all you like about “we’ll never know” but by that measure no one much has cause to get out of bed in the morning, I agree that the hopping rates were likely generally higher for cream ales of the late 1800 compared to macro cream ales/lagers of the 1950-80s but I am not sure how far that gets you. What is interesting is how the move to other fermentables in the progressive era of industrial scientific brewing from say 1875-1915 shows a transition rather than a quick break. Drinkers tastes lagged behind technology. They wanted what they were used to even though there was a progression to lightening as new drinkers joined the cohort and old guys dropped away.
I can figure out the actual legal citation for the document if that helps, the reference as if I were to cite it in a court document.
Re the 1904, that’s one beer Alan. I’ve had numerous recreations as I said, the Empire, the Sam Adams, etc. I’ve read 1930’s analyses, which couldn’t have been much ahead, in technology/blandness, from the pre-Pro era, e.g. by A.L. Nugey which convinced me his beers on average had much more taste than today’s macro norm. We will never know but if I should get up in the morning to use your term, that’s my opinion.
Gary
Depends on what “good for beer” means. The biggest problem I’ve seen with the growth of the artisanl/hand-crafted/whatever scene in general is that it’s too often run by dilettantes making inferior goods but people still pay handsomely for them because they’re hip. There’s nothing worse than paying $6 for a beer I could’ve made better at home.