The Session #70: Beyond the hype

The SessionThe topic of discussion today for The Session #70 is “Don’t Believe The Hype.” That’s easy. I don’t. Which is liberating. It allows me to appreciate beers that are highly hyped, in fact.

I might have more to say, but not the time to do it.

So instead, I’m doing the internet thing and pointing you to Simon Johnson’s excellent post on the topic.

And, off topic, I’m thinking it would be great if the Reluctant Scooper got together with the HoseMaster of Wine for some sort of wine-beer collaboration.

Look for more, on topic, Session posts in the comments following the announcement post.

The future of beer writing? Yawn. The future of beer? More interesting

Mike Veseth, author of Wine Wars, has checked in with his thoughts on Andrew Jefford’s “The Wine Writer is Dead” that has attracted much attention from wine writers and bloggers. (The full speech is here, and Jamie Goode’s excellent commentary is also worth your time.)

Jefford gave his speech at meeting of European wine bloggers. That’s the context. I read Veseth because he often presents a “sideways” view, with economics often at the center of the conversation (his blog, after all, is called The Wine Economist).

I’m not really worried about whether wine writing is dead or alive. I’m more interested in wine reading, which I specifically do not define as reading about wine exclusively in paid (generally print) publications. Wine reading seems to be changing dramatically and that’s the more interesting trend. Unsurprisingly, I tend to think about this in economic terms.

Economists who study the economics of food choice believe that a key factor in the growing consumption of high fat fast food is cost — fast food is relatively cheap both in terms of money and time, which are strong economic incentives. Even when healthier food is available and consumers understand something about nutrition the economic incentives push and pull them into the drive-through lane on the margin.

I think the economics of readership (and wine readership) works the same way. I’m not saying that writing on the internet is the intellectual equivalent of “empty calories,” but the shift of readership from traditional print publications to electronic media is influenced by economic incentives (as well as other factors of course).

At this point my mind went another direction than Veseth’s essay, thinking instead about how the shift to online information consumption (which may include entertainment, and may or may not take the form of reading) might change beer, or if it makes a difference at all. By beer I mean something beyond measurable changes to what’s in my glass (those still matter) — my overall beer experience.

Quite obviously, it is now cheaper — ah, the economics — and easier to reach a larger audience (and the beer audience is becoming bigger still). One example of how that can provoke change: It’s pretty well understood that Über beers get the bulk of the attention at beer rating sites and therefore promote big beers. However, how much attention would Lew Bryson’s The Session Beer Project have received in an all-print world (OK, with a bit of usenet chatter thrown in)? So there’s one for small beers.

And yesterday there were a couple of hmmm moments. First, a report from Shanken News Daily about how “bars like to feature the newest brewery in town or the hottest brand fueled by social media” created a flurry of conversation on Twitter. Later, Charlie Papazian asked “Do you give a damn about who makes your beer?” and opened online voting on the topic. Of course, I care. That “where” matters (as ingredients, and human involvement, and a few other things) is pretty much the premise behind this blog.

But while I think that MillerCoors should make it clear to consumers that it owns and operates AC Golden Brewing within the confines of its giant Colorado brewery I’m as interested in the rest of the story about the beers being brewed there. Is somebody going to that? How? I haven’t seen it in print. Will I online?

I don’t expect you to share my lifelong fascination with what used to be called “print” or even how stories are told. Although I take particular joy in being able to use words to describe walking in an experimental hop yard with a plant breeder, I understand there’s every chance that photos, a bit of audio, even video might work better for many (OK, most) consumers. These new fangled devices provide the opportunity to create something like The Long Strange Trip Dock Ellis from ESPN.com. Go read. Feel free to insert you own expletive, as [expletive] wow.

The point is not the medium, of course, but the message. The best beer-related example I can point to is Evan Rail’s Beer Matters, which is clearly on message but lacks the Dock Ellis Treatment. It runs more than 6,000 words, longer than you’d ever read in a beer print journal.

It seems it could only exist in this new medium. Of course, the essay costs $1.99 to read. It always comes back to economics, doesn’t it?

Another way to think about aroma, hops and beer

DRAFT magazine hoppy beer evaluation

Does this illustration courtesy of DRAFT magazine1 make you think about beer aroma and flavor any differently? Particularly hops? The point is not whether you find grapefruit more prominent in New Belgium’s Ranger IPA or Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA or if you agree that Anderson Valley Hop Ottin’ IPA has more bitterness than Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale but less hop punch.

I like it because the colored meters make it easy to think in terms of volume (synonym: impact) as well as the way the aroma components fit together. This is different than spider graphs (here are a couple more examples beyond the one that follows), so brilliant that I take back everything nasty I said when DRAFT used the antiquated tongue map as an illustration in its early issues.

Cascade hop, Barth Haas Hop Aroma Compendium

This spider chart appears in The Hop Aroma Compendium compiled by Joh. Barth & Sohn. The tan portion indicates how two beer sommeliers and a perfumist perceived the aroma of raw Cascade hops, while the green shows how that changed in a cold infusion (similar to dry hopping).

These work best if you are willing to accept, perhaps even embrace, a certain amount of ambiguity. Members of tasting panels at breweries are trained to identify X or Y as this or that aroma or flavor. That’s so their brewers can make beer with a certain level of consistency. (See New Beer Rule #4.) Drinking, and enjoying, beer can be altogether different, and it might be best not to get too specific when trying to pick out particular aromas or flavors. In How to Love Wine author Eric Asimov devotes an entire chapter to “The Tyranny of the Tasting Note.” It’s a topic he’s addressed before, and tends to get wine writers pretty riled up. He makes excellent points, but also some I’m not sure I agree with. Probably something better examined in a separate post (maybe even the next one). But a key takeaway is that when somebody starts describing “aromas of apricot, jam, guava, and jackfruit” that there’s little chance another drinker will get then that tasting note is not only useless, but discouraging.

These visual representations are much friendlier. Both managing editor Jessica Daynor and beer editor Chris Staten provided details via email about the illustration in DRAFT.

“. . . there’s no formal data behind the sensory ratings — just our ratings of each flavor element from 1 to 5 (that number was multiplied by 6 in design, which is how we got the final artwork you see in print),” Daynor wrote. “We feel that part of our job as editors is to present beer to readers in as many digestible ways as possible, and particularly for people new to beer, sometimes, it’s more practical to make sense of flavor elements visually, which is what we did here. It’s so easy to make generalized statements about IPAs: ‘They’re really bitter;’ ‘They’re hoppy;’ etc., but what does that actually mean? And if that’s the case, then aren’t all IPAs the same? With that piece, we’re trying to show that even among the most common IPAs on shelves, there are many flavor nuances that make each beer unique.”

Staten added: “I’ve always been intrigued with the path beer drinkers take when they’re first exploring the world of hops. Often, I run into newer drinkers who say they love IPAs but can’t figure out why particular IPAs rub them the wrong way — lot’s of the time it’s because they aren’t focusing enough on the flavor profile to discover likes and dislikes. The piece was just a casual way to let these particular readers know that there’s a wide range of hop flavors, and a wide range of flavor combinations/perceived bitterness/etc. from IPA to IPA.”

A casual way. I like that.

*****

1 The November/December issue (“Top 25 Beers of the Year” cover).

‘Wet hops’ are not retro

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a fine, but imperfect, story about five Wisconsin breweries partnering to create beer made with unkilned Wisconsin hops. The story hit a rough patch of air about half way in.

The advantage of using wet hops is that it produces a fresher, more authentic taste, said Jon Reynolds, managing director of the Midwest Hops and Barley Co-op, a growers organization based in Onalaska.

“People always ask, ‘What was beer like 100 years ago?’ ” said Russ Klisch, Lakefront Brewery owner. “Well, that’s probably what it was like.”

OK, trouble also appeared a little bit earlier, something in the second paragraph about the beers being “more flavorful.” Hey, I like the aromas and flavors that result when brewers use hops directly from the bine. There’s I reason a found time to attend the Hood River Hops Festival in September.

But I wouldn’t necessarily call the beers more flavorful, and I certainly don’t know what the bleep a “more authentic taste” might be.

I do know that using unkilned hops would not be the way to replicate the taste of beers 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, brewers used whole leaf hops (some, such as Sierra Nevada and Deschutes do today) that looked much like unkilned hops, but they were kilned and sometimes treated in such a way they lost many of their desirable attributes.1

One hundred years ago, Wisconsin brewers produced 5 million barrels of beer. One hundred years ago, the Wisconsin hop industry — which flourished briefly in the 1870s — was long gone.

That Wisconsin brewers are using Wisconsin hops is a pretty good story, and they way they are using them is equally interesting. No need to gussy things up with questionable claims and impossible to define words like “authentic.” (Yes, the C word also appears, but let’s not revisit that discussion.)

*****

1 They differ in other ways as well, but you’ll have to buy the book.