What comes after the hype is gone?

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone
                    – The Boys of Summer, Don Henley

Has it really been four weeks since I posted links here? Indeed, and it seems as if it would be easy to sort through the headlines since Nov. 6 and assemble a post of only stories about the craft beer apocalypse. I am left searching for a phrase that is the opposite of “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Doug Veliky gets to the “what’s next” question at the end of “Recognizing Hype Cycles” (which, of course, I first read as “hop cycles” when the email arrived.) Dave Infante and Aaron Goldfarb not so much in the Taplines podcast “How Finance Bros Discovered Hazy IPAs.” Unless you think designer gummies are the answer. Anyway, I suggest reading the first and listening to the second, which provides a case study.

Obviously, the Beer Crunchers post is a business story, beginning by stating, “The key to navigating these cycles successfully begins with self-awareness and an accompanying business plan that accounts for the fact that you’re in one.” And concluding, “The number of breweries and the collective output of each will find their proper sizing in each region and at each pricing tier, with less volatility and more stable churn of customers. This is the ultimate end game for this Hype Cycle in Craft Beer.”

So what do things look like after the boys of summer are gone? Veliky writes, “Craft beer will need to reimagine the experience and rely less on beer itself to be the sole driver of consumption by focusing less on people who are into beer and more on people who enjoy good beer with ‘X’.” He follows this with photos of Treehouse’s golf course and other un-brewery-like venues.

And who, in the case of beer, are the boys of summer? Turn to Taplines and the story it references.

That many have moved on to high-end bourbon or designer gummies revealed how badly conceived or operated many small breweries are. It didn’t change the reason that so many breweries that opened since 1976 have succeeded. Is there a reason to believe any of that will change?

In “Nothing Has Been Done Before: Seeking the New in 21st-Century American Popular Music,” Robert Loss writes, “The opposite of the new is not the old, it is sameness, or anything that limits the generation of significant possibilities.” And, he argues, it’s that mediocrity that makes the new possible. Otherwise, “the new would be indistinguishable; it would not exist.”

That’s true for pale lagers, hazy IPAs, and even smoked beers.

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First, the occasional reminder. Each Monday, I begin bookmarking posts I might link to here the following Monday. If Alan McLeod links to one of them the following Thursday or Boak & Bailey do the same on Saturday there is a good chance I will delete the bookmark. I expect you will already have seen them (that’s your homework). Three examples from the past week: chasing beer foam, bar pizza, and exploring Belfast. I am inclined to repeat the links here only if there is a comment I absolutely need to add.

Cat on a brewing log - Apocalypse Brewing, Louisville, Kentucky

Why not go to the Kentucky source? Perhaps it is the headline that bugs me. “Central Machine Works Resurrects Kentucky Common Beer With Help From the Smithsonian.” I don’t think resurrect is the right word to use because Leah Dienes at Apocalypse Brew Works in Louisville has been brewing the lone example of the style cited in the BJCP guidelines since 2014.

That’s Dienes’ cat snoozing on brewing logs from the beginning of the 20th century provided by Conrad Selle, co-author of “Louisville Breweries.” Kentucky Common might not have ended up in the BJCP guidelines — leading homebrewers and commercial brewers thousands of miles from Louisville to brew a type of beer they had never tasted — were it not for research by Dienes, Selle and homebrewer Dibs Harting. Credit where credit is due.

Making connections. There is a story here that combines business and culture: brewery incubators give people of color an opportunity they might not have otherwise. There is a well-worn origin story: homebrewers go pro.

There is also one about the future, and reimagining experiences. For instance, the founders of Casa Humilde “started with parties and homebrew, and they have continued to host events, bringing in their other passions with good food and music. All of this appeals to their community that, like Funkytown’s (the other brewery featured in Jeff Alworth’s post), has been overlooked by craft beer.”

An Out of Prague Pilgrimage. “If you’re ever in Prague, take the time to make the trip out to Únetice for some of the best beer on the planet and if meaty snacks with rye bread are your thing, that too.”

Field beer? “The name ‘Field Beer’ came to us because we wanted to put focus on the fields and agriculture of the regeneratively grown wheat which plays a big role in the beer.”

Beyond listicles. A couple of lists that are actually useful. A guide to happy hour deals at Portland, Oregon, breweries. The 10 best beers in Costco’s advent beer calendar.

In today’s Grodziskie news . . .

Inside Browar Grodzisk, 2014

2014

Browar Grodzisk

2019

The European Beer Star competition added Grodziskie as a category this year.

Browar Grodzisk, which was (re)built on the remains of the last brewery to operate in the Polish town of Grodzisk, won the gold.

That feels right.

The new owners of the old brewery are as intent on reviving the style and share pretty much everything there is to know about brewing Grodziskie here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The complete EBS results are here.

Dank. Dankitydankdankdank

Sierra Nevada Dank Little Thing
The subject line on an email from Sierra Nevada Brewing about the newest edition to its hazy IPA series reads, “Say high to our new Dank IPA.” Not “hello,” not “hi.”

And the headline atop the message within reads, “Stop & smell the hops. Wait, is that . . .”

Here is the entire message, with a couple more winks and nods, “For the latest Limited Edition in our Hazy IPA Series, we rolled up a mix of sticky, floral, and tropical hops into a Dank Little Thing. Amarillo, Chinook, and CTZ varieties help pack that resinous flavor, while botanical terpenes spark an aroma that fills a room. Stash it while you can because Dank Little Thing is only here through February 2024.”

Oh, those terpenes. Consider what Kate Bernot wrote about Seventh Son Pineapple Express in Craft Beer and Brewing. “Once you get a whiff of this beer, you understand why the brewery has to say explicitly that it contains no THC. This pineapple sour is brewed with cannabis terpenes that are, yes, pungent, but they’re also thoughtfully integrated with the fruit and acidity. There’s a pineapple-core earthiness that passes the baton directly to the minty terpenes before the two elements dance back and forth across the tongue. I’ve never tasted a beer like it.”

Humulus lupulus (hops) and cannabis are part of the larger Cannabaceae family. Many of the same botanical terpenes are found in both, as well as many others plants (for instance, basil and lavender, a few of many profiled in “Brewing Local”). That’s a topic for another Wednesday.

Right now, consider the name Sierra Nevada chose for this release. Not everybody agrees that “dank” is a proper hop aroma descriptor. But who doesn’t understand what it implies?

Dank has been part of the hop sensory lexicon at Yakima Chief Hops for years, explained YCH sensory and brewing research manager Tessa Schilaty.

“We define it as smelling like cannabis, which is on the ASBC lexicon under herbaceous. We wanted to avoid having the word cannabis appear on our product descriptions, as we do a lot of work internationally with countries where cannabis is both frowned upon and very illegal,” she wrote in an email.

“People use the word dank to describe a variety of aromas, but most of them appear elsewhere on our ballot, for example musty (which we have under earthy) or onion/garlic (which is its own category). It therefor made sense for us to use the word dank to define something which was not elsewhere represented on our ballot, and which is one of the common uses of the term by brewers.”

In contrast, there is the American Society of Brewing Chemistry list of terms to describe the aroma of hops. Included are 107 words. As Schilaty points out, cannabis is filed under herbaceous. Dank is not to be found.

That did not limit the team at Sierra Nevada in charge of new beer names.

A Better Burden: Forest & Farm, indeed

Narrow Path Brewing beer menu

The description of A Better Burden on the menu at Narrow Path Brewing outside of Cincinnati lists the ingredients, then two words: Forest & Farm.

“Those words are my attempt to help the ones tasting the beer to envision and place themselves within a setting,” Narrow Path owner/brewer Chad Powers explained. “That description is a hopeful reminder to folks that this beer has true origins in our natural world and that the resulting liquid is as much an offering from the land as it is from the brewer.”

A Better Burden is on my “Best in 2023” list in the current issue of Craft Beer & Brewing magazine. I expect you understand that means it was one of the beers I enjoyed most from a universe of choices I had not tasted previously. Otherwise, the “best” list would be scattered with well known, and deserving, beers such at Rochefort 8. Nine of the 10 beers described were new to me; the exception being Urban Chestnut Stammtisch. (The collection of contributors’ lists is also available in podcast form.)

I’m writing about A Better Burden because 70 words in the magazine did not seem like enough about this combination of smoke and cedar that I find sublime, and many other people may not. A Better Burden is a collaboration between Narrow Path and Nine Giant Brewing, and Powers and Mike Albarella have brewed it together at Narrow Path the past three years.

They had both read ”Historical Brewing Techniques” by Lars Marius Garshol right when the book became available. They wrote the initial recipe together and have subtly changed it each year. The base malt and the alder wood smoked malt come from Sugar Creek Malt Co. in Indiana. “We knew that Caleb (Michalke) had built a Såinnhus, and we wanted to use ingredients that were as local as possible and that were produced as traditionally as possible,” Powers said.

They chose his Stjørdal malt knowing it would be the most polarizing ingredient in the grain bill. Smoke is particularly assertive in this batch.

Finding cedar for Narrow Path Brewing A Better Burden

Powers harvests the cedar every year from the same hillside across the river in Kentucky. “A good friend of mine is an ecologist at Eastern Kentucky University, and he oversees several conservancies across the state,” Powers said. The friend plants seeds while Powers cuts off the ends of branches. “I like to do it when the weather is cool and brisk but also when there’s enough sun to feel some warmth on my face.”

The first year they fermented the beer with a commercially available Voss kveik strain. The last two years we’ve used strains that were not, until recently, commercially available. Caleb Ochs-Naderer, now the program chair of the brewing science program at Cincinnati State, was brewing at Nine Giant when they brewed the beer the second and third time.

He has been a long-time kveik fan/evangelist, and traveled to a homebrew gathering in Norway several years ago. He brought back a catalog of dried kveik that he stored in his freezer. “We selected a strain called Stalljen because it was described as saison-like without any phenolic notes. We rehydrated the yeast from their dried flaked state and fermented in the upper 80s to low 90s,” Powers said.

Cedar for A Better Burden arriving at Narrow Path Brewing“I think the thing I love most about the beer is that it certainly makes me feel something, often several things. The time and effort spent harvesting the cedar with my friend realigns my heart to a deeper connection and purpose in brewing.

“I can feel the sun on my face as I’m reaching to trim a branch in the cool autumn air. I can feel the wind on my face as I give thanks to the grove of trees that play such an important part in the entire experience. Something in me awakens each time I sip.”

(Nine Giant often takes names of beers from song lyrics. Powers was looking through Nordic and Viking poems/chants and found a translation of Hávamál that had the phrase “a better burden” in it. “That idea and the specific turn of phrase resonated with me.”)