Four pounds of beer conversation starters

Oxford Companion to BeerCan you imagine two wine drinkers sitting in a cafe arguing about monoterpenes1 and asking the bartender to drag a copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine from the the bookshelf to settle a bet?

Me either. However, I can envision The Oxford Companion to Beer on top of a bar, it’s otherwise elegant cover a bit beer stained.

Amazon reports the book will be available Oct. 7, but editor Garrett Oliver will be signing copies the week before at the Great American Beer Festival.

Pre-publication promotion states “this book is the perfect shelf-mate to Oxford’s renowned Companion to Wine and an absolutely indispensable volume for everyone who loves beer as well as all beverage professionals, including home brewers, restaurateurs, journalists, cooking school instructors, beer importers, distributors, and retailers, and a host of others.” More details are at
Amazon.

I have not seen the list of more than 1,100 entries, but the preview includes topics such as Acetyl CoA and Breweriana; pretty diverse before we even leave the Bs.

Last May, I suggested that every blogger should own Brewery History, No. 139 because it is full of thought-provoking topics. It might take a while to digest Companion to Beer when it arrives — the 960 pages weigh in at four pounds — but it obviously will be packed with a heck of a lot more conversation starters . . . and let’s hope the definitive information to end the conversations that get a bit tedious.

1 I just flipped open a page and pointed my finger. Funny that we’d expect to see turpenes covered in this book as well.

Putting the Dutch in Dutch Porter

I’m not sure if “A Practical Treatise on Brewing, and on Storing of Beer; Deduced from Forty Years Experience” by William Black, published in London in 1835 will make the bibliography for “For the Love of Hops,” so I am passing along this little story now.

It comes from a short chapter called, “The Flavour of London Porter.”

No single house can imitate the different flavours of all the great London establishments; but the flavour of any particular house can be easily acquired. By the way, talking of flavours, I must take the liberty of relating an anecdote which is said to have occurred during the last century.

A Dutch house was at that time in the practice of getting whole gyles of porter brewed on purpose for them by one of the great houses of London. On one occasion one of their clerks was in London at the time of brewing, and went to see the process. He unfortunately, poor fellow! tumbled into a copper of boiling worts, and before he could be got out again was actually boiled to death. The gyle of beer was sent to Holland, and turned out to be very good.

The next batch sent, however, did not turn out so well, and the Dutch house complained of it, saying it had not the same flavour as the preceding gyle. The answer returned by the London house was, that they had no means of giving them precisely the same flavour, unless they would send them over another Dutchman. So much for flavour.

How can Dutch Porter not be a recognized style?

This is hop terroir

Hops growing in Tettnang

The Tettnang hop growing in the southwest of Germany. (And the photo that has replaced one taken along the Beartooth Highway leading into Yellowstone as my desktop background.)

More next week, but if you’re of a mood to consider terroir Zac Early has a “new, looser interpretation” (music included).

It’s official: America now IPA country

Sales of IPA (known as India Pale Ale in some parts, but quite often simply called I-P-A) in the United States surpassed those of Pale Ale for the first time this year, according Symphony IRI.

The data is primarily for packaged goods sold in supermarkets, convenience stores and big box stores but there’s no reason to believe it would be different if you tossed in, say, beer sold on draft in pubs and bars. Officially, “seasonal” is the No. 1 craft beer style, but that’s another discussion.

In his “Craft Brewing & Mid-Year Category Sales Review” Dan Wandel of Symphony IRI told Brewers Association members that IPA sales increased 39 percent in the first half of the year, continuing an ongoing trend that moved it past Pale Ale. He also said that IRI now tracks 253 IPA brands, up 76 in the last six months.

As well as reporting the basic facts (craft beer dollar sales increased 14.3 percent in the first six months, but sales of Blue Moon and Shock Top beers are growing even faster) Waddell took a look at what else beer drinkers buy when they go shopping for their favorite brands.

When craft beers are in a shopping basket there’s a good chance that imported wine will be. Products such as natural cheese, fresh cut salad, yogurt, orange juice and canned tomatoes also index highly. When other beer is in the basket there’s a much higher chance cigarettes, processed cheese slices and frozen pizza will be.

And we wonder how stereotypes get formed.