– New Beers Everywhere, But Buyers Beware. Luke Nicholas, he of Epic Brewing in New Zealand, actually provides three posts for your consideration, linking to a couple within his own. You’ll also want to read The Emperor’s New Suds, in which Greig McGill asks, “Why should the consumer have to pay for an experiment which went wrong when the brewer should know damn well the beer should have been dumped?” as well as what Geoff Griggs has to contribute. But back to the questions Nicholas asks.
What is happening is the market is learning, everyone is learning. Those that know need to share their knowledge.
We just need more champions talking more about the bad stuff. I know that I needed to be told when I was first learning the different flavours in beer and what they were called. It is associating a word with a flavour. The first challenge.
Maybe a blog isn’t the best place to call bad beers out? Maybe it is?
Question: If I know a beer is bad technically to the point I wouldn’t drink it, should I share that information? Would you want to know?
Plenty of feedback at Facebook. [Via Luke’s beer]
– German beer’s existential crisis. The New Yorker uses the news that four of Germany’s largest breweries were hit by massive fines for price fixing to discuss the Reinheitsgebot, why the “craft-beer approach is surely a better method than price-fixing,” innovation, and other related topics. Nothing wrong with the story, but a reader might be left with the impression everything new is going on in Berlin.
A mention of the Bier-Quer-Denker, a group of brewers in Bavaria, would have been nice. Look at a map of Germany — big country, and Berlin is a long way from Bavaria.
Even Brew Berlin commented on this.
One question remains. Why does Filtz mention two of the youngest companies in the new German beer movement? Experimental brewers and start-ups like Riegele, Schneider Weisse, Crew Republic and especially the Radeberger spring-off Braufactum have been questioning the status quo for years.
[Via The New Yorker]
– When naming goes awry. Mouth Raper IPA. Really? [Via Beervana]
– Will your Coke taste better in a specially designed $20 Riedel glass? Looks like it would also hold beer. [Via LA Times]
– Artisanal toast. Bread jumps the shark. [Via Pacific Standard]
German all-malt beer, when tasted in its natural setting (i.e., freshly made and not mishandled or long-shipped or pasteurized) can be a great product. Not all of it – in particular a lot of helles I sampled in Bavaria and Austria had a strong sulphide smell and taste, to me anyway – but some of it didn’t and is amongst the best in the world. New York-based beer fans, not as a counter but as a complement to the New Yorker, might check into Paulaner’s new brewpub on Bowery around the corner from Whole Foods on Houston. The helles brewed there, using all-imported materials and made by a brewer who worked at Paulaner in Munich for some 17 years, is outstanding. The Pure Beer Law did mean something and still does because no adjunct lager can ever be as good, IMO. However, the beer scene needs to change to accomodate some very valid beer innovations elsewhere, and of course many of those innovations can be adopted while still adhering to the PBL. It is a bit like traditional cask ale in England vs. the American-style keg craft that is starting to pop up alongside it in many pubs. Old-school is great but it will wither unless change is accomodated. Whether better beer actually results is beside the point, which is that people want something new and are influenced by what happens elsewhere.
Gary