Monday beer links: Hops, pumpkins, raw beer & more

Morning in the Halltertau region of Germany. Hops and corn that will soon be harvested
Morning on a farm in Germany’s Hallertau region. They grow hops here, but also corn.

The most widely read beer related story last week was surely the one about a study published in the journal Nature detailing the impact of climate change on hops grown in Europe. No surprise, things are not looking great going forward. It seems as if every large publication in the country had a take on it. Jeff Alworth at Beervana summarized the study nicely.

I am all for anything that draws attention to what global warming is doing to the planet, although, quite honestly, there are more and larger disasters looming than the demise of certain hop varieties. Even the ones I love. But I do wish the authors had acknowledged there are more agronomically vigorous cultivars available. And that there are new ones on the way. Now is the time for brewers to consider using them. More of my thoughts in the most recent Hop Queries. The newsletter is archived here. You may subscribe here. It is free.

Speaking of hops
As well as writing about why wet-hopped IPAs went dry, Doug Veliky offers suggestions about how brewers outside the Northwest (where unkilned, or “wet,” hop beers continue to thrive) may make them more relevant.

He writes they can been good relationship builders. In fact, growers and brewers in several states have figured that out. In September, Billy Goat Hop Farm in Colorado hosted the second Southwest Freshfest. This past weekend, 14 breweries poured beers in Cincinnati that were made with fresh hops from six Ohio farms.

Pumpkins for pleasure
Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice. “Regrettably, it’s not uncommon for pumpkin beers (or really, pumpkin anything) to be mocked and feminised, written off as gross, girly, or both. And of course for a lot of people, it’s neither of those things—it’s just not to their taste. I have found, though, that there’s one consistent exception: ‘Not (Southern Tier) Pumking, though. Pumking is great.’”

The best of St. Louis. Noteworthy because Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale is, I am told, one of the best in the country. And 2nd Shift Brewing, which when we lived in St. Louis had pledged never to make a pumpkin beer, now brews one called When Pumpkins Fly.

You might also enjoy
Raw beer is having a moment. In New Zealand. “It was the best brew day ever. It was incredible. Hard work, but I loved it.”

19th century Bavarian beer halls in Berlin. “Some contemporary publications commented on this as a ‘Bier-Kulturkampf’ (beer culture war) between the classic Berlin beer culture of top-fermented white and brown beer and the newfangled Bavarian beers that made an impact on Berlin architecture.”

The allure of Guinness. According to the World Travel Awards, a gala that has annually celebrated the best of travel, tourism and hospitality since 1993, The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin is the leading tourist attraction in Europe. Other nominees included Buckingham Palace in London, Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and the Acropolis of Athens.

The beer can as a canvas. “Is the chicken being hypnotized or is the chicken doing the hypnotizing? That’s the question.”

Your taste buds at 30,000 feet. Alaskan Airlines had created a blend intended to prove airlines coffee does not need to taste bad. “Taste buds react differently at high altitudes, and this blend was crafted with this in mind. Specifically, in an arid and pressurized environment, our palate’s ability to perceive nuance is diminished.” What might that mean for beer?

TikTok at its best. Jon May, a 25-year-old from Britain, plans to drink 10 pints of beer a day for 200 consecutive days. “On the one hand, you’re essentially killing your liver, and on the other, you’re doing something mildly impressive.”

Brewing with rice, the A-B way

Budweiser beer truck

(A quick warning: This post quotes a 19th century newspaper article that includes racist language.)

Here is a truck that last week was parked at the entrance of the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas.

Anecdotally, it wasn’t necessarily helping Budweiser sales. When I asked a woman at one of the beverage stands if more customers were buying Budweiser or one of the beers from Lost Forty Brewing in Little Rock 120 miles away, she quickly answered, “Lost Forty, the (Rockhound) IPA. I don’t think we sold a six-pack of Bud all day.”

Nonetheless, I give Anheuser-Busch credit for putting “rice” in big letters on the side of trucks that deliver beer. Some things about Budweiser may have changed since the 19th century, but rice is not one of them.

Founder Adolphus Busch, who ultimately had made the decision to brew Budweiser with rice, spoke often and bluntly about his distaste for beers made with corn. “Our main argument must be the quality of our product, that we do not use any corn,” he said in 1895. “While nearly every other beer brewed in this country, with hardly one exception, is made of cheaper material, viz: corn; that such a beer is not as wholesome or digestible as pure barley malt beer, the small addition of rice only improving it, and that the use of corn makes a very inferior article. The difference in the cost of manufacture between a barley malt and rice beer and corn beer is one dollar per barrel in favor of the latter, as a matter of course.”

Busch was not alone. On January 30, 1881, a full-page article about beer in the Chicago Daily Tribune stated, “Corn beer is not a drink for Americans or Germans. It is good enough for the Spaniards, Greasers, Indians, and the mongrel breeds of South America.” Instead the author lauded the exceptional crisp taste that resulted with rice, and added, “for years the ‘blonde,’ or light colored beers have been fashionable and grown into public favor in America.”

In 2015, when I was researching Brewing Local, A-B was the largest buyer of rice in the United States, and using about about 8 to 9 percent of the total crop annually. I was told that in some years, depending on both the barley and rice crops, that rice ended up costing A-B more.

On any given day, their St. Louis brewery took delivery on about two million pounds of grain—malt, corn grits, and rice arriving in railcars that held about 200,000 pounds, depending on their cargo.

The process was repeated daily in 56 breweries around the world that were brewing Budweiser in December of 2015.

First thing after arrival, a worker would take a composite sample out of each compartment in a rail car. “If there is a taste issue we will reject the whole car,” said David Maxwell, then brewing director at Anheuser-Busch InBev.

“We don’t want grassy (like fresh-cut grass),” Maxwell said. “Mold will jump out at you, like walking into a basement.” They are looking for a starchy taste. Rice has a higher starch content and lower protein content than any other cereal adjunct. “We want quality starch,” Maxwell said, and freshness is the key. A-B has strict guidelines for transit times; 21 days from milling until it is in silos ready to use. “It’s all about time. After you mill it time and temperature are the enemy,” he said

The recipe for Budweiser must be adjusted based on the specifications of the current crop of barley, malted of course, and rice. The rice is milled to break it down into the smallest starch particles so it easily liquefies. It makes up about 30 percent of the Budweiser recipe. The rice is added to the cereal cooker with about 7 percent malt, enough to kick off enzyme activity and gelatinize it. It is brought to a boil, and then boiled for 15 minutes. “You really want to break it down. You can see it gelatinize,” Maxwell said.

The barley will be mashed in at the same time the cereal mash begins, sitting basically long enough for a protein rest before the cereal is pumped in. That will bring the mash to conversion temperature, and conversion could take 30 to 50 minutes depending on the crop year. When a new crop comes in brewers at the pilot brewery evaluate it, then provide the parameters for a blend.

“They’ll say it is in this window,” Maxwell said, rather than specifying an exact amount of time. “Then we’ll lock it in the brewhouse.” There will continue to be variables. For instance, long grain and medium grain rice gelatinize at a different rate. “We’re trying to hit a (gravity). I know where I have to be at. How do I get there?”

First up for Monday a.m.: Alcohol and pleasure calculation

Candice Ivory at King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas (2023)
Candice Ivory and her band rip it up at King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Arkansas

Cotton, ready to pick
It’s time to harvest cotton in the Delta, and picking cotton looks much different than picking hops

Drive-By Truckers, Overton Park Shell, Memphis (2023)
Drive-By Truckers cast giant shadows at Overton Park Shell in Memphis

Happy Indigenous People’s day. Daria and I had a busy weekend out and about in the Mississippi and Arkansas Deltas. We got knocked to the ground by a car just walking (with the light) across a Memphis street, but otherwise had too good a time to be yammering on here. Pleasure was always top of mind, so starting there again this week.

A formula for pleasure. Search for the word wine. Replace it with beer.

Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thump! Rattle, scrape. Thanks to @thebeernut for pointing to this story on X (just when you think you are out a gem like this suck you back in). In case you woke this morning thinking “Why cork bags?” Now you know.

Love hops? Love lager? Or if you woke up this morning wondering what defines a West Coast Pilsner, here you go.

Duff beer luggage tag

Duff in the real world. That’s my Duff luggage tag. It is the second one I’ve owned. Not sure if the first one accidentally came off in transit or was stolen.

Is cask ale right wing, left wing, both, or neither? You can have the same discussion about “craft beer” in the US. In fact, Dave Infante has in his Substack. Ask a subscriber to forward you a copy, or subscribe yourself.

What comes after umami? Scholars have discovered evidence of a sixth basic taste. This is very early research and nobody is talking about the implications of what this might mean for understanding more about how we taste beer.

GABF streamed. The Beer Crunchers GABF Running Diary is much more coherent than I would have managed. “Go for the people, the conversations, the research, the inspiration, and the chance to get out of dodge and reset your mind a bit.”

The 10 oldest beers in America. Maybe.

Good Monday morning: (almost) always for pleasure

Third Eye BrewingI’m not promising to lead off with links to beer pleasures every Monday, but I was happy with the way it went last week. So here goes . . .

– In Croatia and Montenegro, “There’s still a thrill of the hunt in this kind of craft beer environment, which is obviously long, long gone in the US, perhaps to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to breweries. And you quickly become so much less jaded in a scene like this . . .”

– Third Eye Brewing was a big winner at the Great American Beer Festival. David Nilson’s story focuses on the joy of drinking their beers.

– I 100 percent endorse a visit to Augustiner Bräustuben in Munich. “It’s a classic beer hall with character to spare, more down-home than other beerhalls in the city.”

– Stephanie Grant shares (almost) everything she at and drank in San Diego. And we’re not just talking beer.

– Coors threw a party Saturday to celebrate 150 years in business, and Axios published this 8 fun facts about Coors Brewing you probably didn’t know. There’s a 9th less-known one. We live about six miles from the brewery.

– When The Beer Nut writes “At the end of the glass I felt like giving it a standing ovation” that’s a beer I’d really like to taste. A little surprised to see the hop Luminosa that far from its Oregon home. I’d write more about its heritage, but that might be construed as gatekeeping (see next entry).

Gatekeeping
Consider this: “The neverending impromptu pop quiz from the older, wealthier white man who has more knowledge and will grill you at the drop of a hat still has me on edge, and now I see it in modern beer spaces. I’ve spoken to many other working-class people who feel the same. It’s a ritual of gatekeeping and wealthy white men aren’t the only ones to do it.”

This story about tasting tools is also relevant. And because beer isn’t the only arena where this is happening, an interview with the author of Discriminating Taste: How Class Anxiety Created the American Food Revolution.

Good for business
– The socio-economic value of local pubs. This is a press release, so consider the bias.

– Cask ale revealed as the core of today’s UK pub culture. Another press release, and about a study conducted by a brewing company. Tread lightly.

Final words
“We want different views, we want a vibrant and rich ecosystem.”
– Alan McLeod, A Good Beer Blog

Monday beer links: pleasure and business

A pint at Machine House Brewery
Last week, during two sessions at the Great American Beer Festival and an afternoon at the Denver Rare Beer Tasting conversations with friends fell into two categories: a) pleasure, bouncing between talking about what was in the glass and catching up on life events; and b) the beer business, including if the sky is falling.

The three days were beyond pleasant because there was much more a) than b). On an average Monday here, and this week’s list will be short because three days of GABF festivities were proceeded by three days on Washington’s west coast, there is more b) than a). Thus, in not exactly catching up with what I missed online, this in the last paragraph (buried the lead, Mr. Alworth) of a post mostly about the competition related to GABF, reminded me I might be doing it wrong:

“I have been somewhat dismayed by how much beer chat has turned into industry and/or business chat. Discussions of the pleasurable turn quickly into the salable. The GABF is one antidote to that. People get together in a large hall to select the tastiest beers in the country, and later thousands more gather in an even larger hall to guzzle beer for the sheer pleasure of it. It’s a reminder that the root of our passion isn’t measured in dollars, but something only our tongues and noses can tell us.”

Indeed.

I don’t know that the balance will change here, but let’s start this week’s short-ish list with pleasure before moving on to business.

Did I say pleasure? While Investigating Festbier Boak & Bailey conclude “Festbier is not built for us.” But there is a journey, and discussing what we don’t like is part of understanding what we do.

A new home. That’s a proper pint of Machine House Brewery beer pictured at the top. It was disturbing to read earlier this year that Machine House Brewery had learned its lease was not being renewed. It did not seem like good news. Red brick and archways made the original location feel more “authentic” but owner Bill Arnott speaks well of the new neighborhood, and that ultimately determines how welcoming a pub is.

Speaking of authenticity. I too might be tired of reading about “How Modelo’s Marketing Beat Bud Light,” but this story behind at paywall (story) hooked me with a story about how the brand has leaned into “authenticity.”

As Modelo Especial’s marketing team worked through the final stages of scripting a commercial about a Hispanic matriarch making tortillas from scratch with her granddaughter, company lawyers had a note.

The lawyers wanted to show the grandmother flipping a tortilla with tongs, rather than the traditional, more risky technique of using her fingers. The marketing team pushed back, arguing that the commercial should depict authentic traditions, people involved said.

The final ad released this spring featured a finger-flipped tortilla plus the disclaimer: “Do not attempt.” The commercial abides by Code of Advertising regarding responsible behavior while remaining authentic, Modelo said.

What next, who next? I brought up this story a couple of times Friday and, not surprisingly, the brewers I was talking with hadn’t had time to read it. They promised to and I expect we’ll be talking about it before long. The nut: “As figureheads within the (craft beer) industry depart, it’s not clear who will succeed them—or whether national craft beer figureheads are even possible in an industry that’s increasingly crowded and specialized.” Put another way, change is gonna come, and who will initiate it?

Catching up on Anchor. The Anchor SF Cooperative (ASFC) has grabbed attention with thousands of donations to a GoFoundMe campaign, but their effort to buy the brewery still looks like a longshot. The head of the firm in charge of selling Anchor’s assets “emphasizes that he sees a real opportunity to sell Anchor as a going concern. ‘There’s going to be a future for Anchor Steam.’”