Remember ‘Here’s to Beer’?

Things I learned reading Advertising Age coverage of the National Beer Wholesalers Association meeting in Las Vegas:

* Beer Industry Looks to Rebuild ‘Brand Beer’

I would not apply for that job.

* The “Here’s to Beer” website still works, although the copyright is 2009 and the third of three Twitter posts is date 02.25.2009 (or 25.02.2009 if you wish).

I looked because National Beer Wholesalers Association president Craig Pursor says “there’s got to be some refocus and some collaboration.” Collaboration by exactly what brewing entities isn’t clear.

* “The brands that are growing are the brands the rich people drink,” said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily.

Thank goodness you don’t actually have to be rich to drink them.

And then there was the Blatz ‘fresh hop’ beer

James Ottolini stirs fresh hops into mash/lauter tun used as hop back

As Ron Pattinson is fond of pointing out, there’s little if anything truly new in beer. Not even “fresh hop” beers.

This weekend in St. Louis, 15 or so breweries will serve various beers at the Schlafly Fresh Hop Festival. We’re not Portland or Seattle (see this account), but Schlafly (otherwise known as The Saint Louis Brewery) flies in the fresh hops and the other breweries in and about St. Louis make what they will with them.

To get a feel for the trip to pick up the hops, read James Ottolini’s tweets. That’s him over the mash/lauter tun at the Schlafly Tap Room. To brew the fresh hop beer — the hops are Sorachi Ace — Brennan Greene and Stephen Hale turned the tun into a hop back. Ottolini, who oversees operations at Schlafly’s packaging brewery, Bottleworks, and various members of both brewery teams showed up the downtown brewhouse because, well, this was the first time they’ve tried this at Schafly and there’s always the chance something bad will happen and the story will become part of brewery lore. Brewers at Urban Chestnut Brewing (photo below, courtesy of Florian Kuplent) and Perennial Ales also used their tuns at hop backs while brewing beers to be served Saturday.

Mash/lauter tun at Urban Chestnut Brewing used as a hop back while brewing fresh hop beer

So there’s little efficient about the beers that will be served Saturday in St. Louis; not how they got here and not how they were made. Why bother? Been in a brewhouse when hops were added to the kettle? Smelled that aroma wafting into the air? Thought about where it is going? Away.

Same thing happens when hops are picked and dried (they must be dried relatively quickly, because otherwise they start to rot). Fresh. Green. That’s the smell of a hop kiln at harvest. More aroma lost forever.

Presumably these beers will deliver more of a grassy smack in the face — lemongrassy in the case of Sorachi Ace hops — than dried hops. They are more like grabbing a few cones right off the plant, rubbing them firmly between your palms and taking a deep whiff. A bold expression of the hop itself.

It’s worth remembering not everybody likes this, which must have been the motivation for a beer called Tempo that Blatz brewed more than 50 years ago. When Blatz president Frank Verbest announced the brewery would be testing the beer in 1955 he said that mildness and freedom from bitterness were what set Tempo apart.

Tempo wasn’t actually brewed with fresh hops, but instead an extract made from fresh hops. Otherwise, Blatz could have produced the beer only once a year. Verbest said the brewery spent two years and hundreds of thousands of dollar coming up with the process, partnering with companies outside the brewing industry. He likened it to distilling crude oil into gasoline and other derivatives. The efforts resulted in an extract which proved suitable for brewing beer without the bitterness common to hops, he said.

The Milwaukee Journal went into detail why Blatz pursued the project.

“The brewing industry, during the greatest boom in the country’s history is a sick business,” Verbest declared.

“Maybe Blatz has come up with the answer. This is the way we reason. Beer reached its peak in popularity during the period of unrestricted immigration just before World War I. Since the date the people have changed and their tastes have changed.

“For instance, the trend has been from bitter to sweet chocolate, from strong Turkish ciagrettes to mild Virginia ones, from strong cheeses to mild processed ones, from salty to mild butter.

“But while tastes have been changing, beer has remained the same. There has been a trend to use less hops, which give the sharper bitter taste to beer, but otherwise the change has been packaging.”

It’s not clear how long Tempo remained on the market. In 1958, a Milwaukee man sued Blatz, claiming they had not honored a 1954 deal in which he turned over his secret process for extracting the fresh hops. And in 1959, Pabst Brewing bought the Blatz label, along with Tempo and the rights to the process by which it was made. That deal was voided in 1969 because of anti-trust measures and G. Heileman Brewing acquired the Blatz brand. The Tempo name, related formulas, Tempo extract remaining in Pabst plants and Tempo bottles were all listed as assets.

It seems Tempo survived into the 1970s. However there turned out to be a better idea for fresh hopped beers.

Session #56 roundup posted

The SessionReuben Gray has posted the roundup for The Session #56: “Thanks to the Big Boys.”

A pretty good turnout for a topic Reuben feared wouldn’t generate much interest. Not everybody was inclined to actually thank the “Big Boys” (a category not everybody viewed the same way), at least without sarcasm dripping of their posts.

But Phil at Beersay was only briefly intimidated by the subject matter. “As this is my first dabble as a contributor to The Session and I have to confess to nearly backing out waiting for an easier topic,” he wrote. Then the inspiration came to him, not quite in a dream . . .

Pete Brown will host The Session #57. Look for his announcement soon.

The authenticity trap

I will leave it to you to consider the beer connections.

Last week, The NY Times’ outgoing restaurant critic, Sam Sifton, asked this Question for Curious Readers: What role, if any, does “authenticity” play in our understanding of good restaurants?

Interesting comments, one of which led to a post in David Byrne’s Journal (yes, that David Byrne) which poses many questions: “When does a little bit of illusion connote authenticity to us by enhancing our enjoyment and our experience (illusory as it might be)? When does it either not ring true at all or go so far and become so perfectly accurate, as to enter the creepiness of the uncanny valley?”

(Couldn’t resist injecting one comment. We’ve all been in that faux Irish pub, right?)

Today, Jonah Lehrer writes in The Frontal Cortex about the “drive for distinctiveness” that appears to be an essential component of Westerners. You know, standing in line with everybody else, so you can be the only one you know to have tasted [fill in the beer name]. He examines the findings of two social scientists presented in “Food, sex and the hunger for distinction,” a paper I’ll try to work into “For the Love of Hops” because, well, wouldn’t you buy a book with that in the bibiography?

Anyway, he concludes, “. . . this won’t be news to retailers. They’ve long catered to our desire for uniqueness, selling us mass-produced commodities that promise to express our real, authentic selves.”

Today’s beer ethics forecast: partly cloudy

Right or wrong, black or white
Cross the line you’re gonna pay
In the dawn before the light
Live and die by the shades of gray

– Robert Earl Keen

Do you care about beer writing ethics? Do think those the last three words even belong together in a sentence? Or do you figure we’re all here for the free beer and any free beer is a good beer?

Pete Brown writes today about “Blogging, ethics and payola – what is OK?”

A timely coincidence for some of us, because there is a move afoot to revive the North American Guild of Beer Writers. You can get a glimpse of this by following @nagbw on Twitter. And a glimpse is likely all you’d want. Lots of emails flying about, inside baseball beer communications1 chatter, including about ethics.

For a taste, look at the longest lasting discussion to ever break out here. It started with a Kenneth Tynan quote — “A critic’s job, nine-tenths of it, is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.” It turned into a conversation about much more, again including ethics. I found it interesting (and participated) and since I’m paying for the rent here I guess that justifies it.

For me it’s a matter of trust. Ethics matter for the same reason getting the facts right matters.

But do those who don’t write about beer in print or cyberspace care?

1“Communications” because typing bloggers/writers or writers/bloggers and discussing where they overlap leads to whole ‘nother conversation.