The Session #74: Pray for me

The SessionThe topic for the 74th gathering of The Session is “Finding Beer Balance.” Visit This Is Why I’m Drunk to see what everybody else is writing. It will be more interesting than the sad story that follows.

A.J. Liebling — a journalist who ate and drank to excess, and who described himself as bald, overweight, and gluttonous — once wrote: “The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day bring only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter’s hours on the road…. A good appetite gives an eater room to turn around.”

Liebling wrote very well about food. He was not an advocate of balance.

I write about beer. I’m pretty much bald and I can be gluttonous. Food, drink, zydeco, smoked meat, the theater, the theatre, high school basketball (in a previous life), things worth doing seem worth doing to excess.

I’m not sure this is going to end well.

Whatever happened to ‘extreme’ beer?

Did I miss the memo?

Stories about — and therefore praising, because almost all stories about beers not brewed by large corporations include a certain amount of praise — “extreme beers” seem to be appearing less often.

(And, yes, I’m aware that the Beer Advocate “Extreme Beer Festival” recently concluded. That’s one reason for the question.)

Maybe my radar needs adjusting. Or maybe they’ve been drowned about by tales of passionate nano-brewers.

The subject popped up again yesterday when Adrian Tierney-Jones wrote about the Charles Wells/Dogfish Head collaboration beer DNA New World IPA. Sam Calagione (who wrote a book titled Extreme Brewing) was there for the roll out, of course, and Adrian talked with him.

And afterwards I had a few words with Calagione and asked the question that was bugging me. Extreme beer? ‘It wasn’t about strength but innovation and flavour. I’m not hung up on nomenclature.’

And in that millpond the ripples keep spreading.

I’m still trying to wrap my head about this DNA beer, and understand just what “a reduction of our 60 Minute IPA” means, but it sounds like something that would have been called “extreme” not long ago.

The man who would grow hops

Things you would not have seen twenty years ago:

– A “multimedia web narrative” created by college students.
– Farmers in Colorado growing hops.
– A Colorado brewery making a “fresh hop beer” — that is using hops taken directly from the bine.

The project is called “Hop to Sip” and the website promises regular updates between now and harvest in August, when Odell Brewing will produce a beer with Crystal hops grown in the Colorado Gold Hop Yard. It is a collaboration of stories from the Rocky Mountain Collegian, CTV, KCSU, and College Avenue at Colorado State University.

I’m already thinking I’d like to have that beer Odell is brewing with Larry Leinhart, the farmer in the video. He worked for both Pabst Brewing and Anheuser-Busch.

Hops link-o-rama

Seitz Farm TerroirThis is happening Saturday and I won’t be there. Who is scheduling my life? Wait, by the time the first beer is poured Saturday at the Urban Chestnut Brewing Hopfenfest I will have already done Saturdays at the Kernel, seen Helen Mirren in The Audience and, the time difference being what it is, be settling in for a pint of something on cask.

As greedy as it might be I’ll still pause a moment and wish somebody could put a glass of Seitz Farms Terroir Lager in front of me. Florian Seitz, who I have visited at the family farm in the heart of Bavaria’s Halltertau hop growing region, will in St. Louis to watch drinkers try a beer made with his hops. He doesn’t get to do that very often. “As a grower you are proud when you see what happens with your hops, when the product made from your own product is good,” he said when I was at the farm.

I’d like to see the look on his face Saturday.

And while we’re talking hops:

* More on how opinion has changed about what makes for good hop aroma (in some cases, of course) from Ed Wray.

Descriptions of new varieties used to be accompanied by notes on what percentage of them you could use before the flavour became unacceptable, and I once spoke to a retired Allied brewer who said he was only allowed to use a maximum of 25% Bramling Cross.

For further reading, see Rejected in 1960, Rejoiced in 2015? (Or buy the book.)

Made With British Hops* The British Hop Association has a new logo for brewers to use on pump clips, bottle labels and marketing materials. From the press release: “Ali Capper of the British Hop Association said ‘As a result of our recent work to promote British Hops, brewers were getting in contact wanting to promote the Britishness of their beer and I realised that we needed a new customer-facing logo. We’ve created something that will work at very small or larger sizes, that is clearly British and that promotes the provenance of British Hops.'”

The logo is available at the British Hop Association web site.

Ales for ALS* More hops with numbers, and in this case to support ALS research. Almost three dozen breweries have already signed up for Ales for ALS. Loftus Ranches and Hopunion are giving away a blend of proprietary hops to participating brewers, who will donate a donate a portion of the sales of the beers they make with them to ALS TDI, the world’s leader in ALS research.

The geeky details: Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and John Mallett of Bell’s Brewery designed the blend of 35% HBC (which stands for Hop Breeding Company) 462, 25% HBC 369 (otherwise known as Mosaic), 30% HBC 344, and 10% HBC 366.

The ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI) aims to discover and develop effective treatments and a cure for ALS.

This wasn’t in Jack McAuliffe’s business plan

This from the zoning application by The Rare Barrel in West Berkeley (California):

“We will be a gathering place for artisanal brewers, home brewers, beer enthusiasts and food lovers in general. We will bring to Berkeley well-paying jobs both in the brewery and the retail area that do not require an advanced degree.”

The headline on the story: City approves sour-beer brewery for ‘beer geeks.’

This probably made it easier for those sitting on the the zoning board to give the application a thumbs up: “The brewers will contract with several existing breweries to produce wort, an early stage of the beer, in kettles off-site so as to avoid ‘bakery’ type odors associated with brewing.”