It’s just strange enough to be compelling

Relatively early in Ska Brewing’s parody of the “Brew Masters” series on Discovery Ska co-founder Bill Graham hints that perhaps what we are watching could be more tightly edited. He’s right, but for some reason I couldn’t quit watching.

It makes much more sense if you saw the first episode of “Brew Masters.” And as long as they were going to begin with an allusion to “Star Wars” they might as well have asked Sam Calagione to appear as Yoda during his gracious cameo.

But, as I’ve written before, beyond excellent beer there are many reasons to like (even in a Facebook way) Ska Brewing. This video reflects that.

Session #49: Regular beers are part of the revolution

Reverence taps at urban Chestnut Brewing Company

This is my contribution to the 49th gathering of The Session. The theme is “regular beers” and my post is a bit late, but I have a good excuse. Besides, as the host I guess I can do any dang thing I want. Just to make sure all the dispatches from far flung outpost have arrived I will wait until Tuesday to post the roundup.

What kind of beer do you drink after a Mardi Gras parade?

The SessionOK, maybe it depends on how much you were drinking while begging for beads, but for the sake of what follows let’s agree it would be a “regular beer.”

Saturday much regular beer was consumed along the Soulard Mardi Gras parade route that stretches from Busch Stadium in St. Louis to the Anheuser-Busch brewery, and plenty more in parties that continued into the night. That’s another story, including how Mardi Gras in St. Louis compares to Mardi Gras in New Orleans (much colder).

This one’s about how beers of the revolution often become regular beers. Because standing in front of the taps at Urban Chestnut Brewing — located pleasantly out of the way of the madding Mardi Gras crowd — it appears that regular beer might reside on either side of the line demarking what UCBC calls beers of revolution and beers of reverence.

Urban Chestnut, which was still waiting for brewing equipment to arrive when I visited St. Louis in November, began serving its beer little over a month ago. Its menu describes the Revolution Series as “Our contribution to the renaissance of craft beer ~ brewing artisanal, modern American beers.” The Reverence Series is “Our celebration of beer’s heritage ~ brewing classically crafted, timeless, European beer styles.”

Beer and cheese samplers at Urban Chestnut Brewing

The seven beers available Saturday are pictured (along with the cheese sampler) above, the Reverence Series on the left, the Revolution Series on the right. They are described in detail at the brewery website, along with plans for other beers.

I was impressed, impressed enough to consider what beer I would bring home in a growler were the keepers of the airways willing to let me do that. Were it to share with friends looking for something different it would have been the Hopfen (a “Bavaria IPA”) or the Zucker Weisse (“essentially a Berliner Weisse,” with more bready/doughy character than I can remember tasting in any commercial version of anything called Berliner Weisse). To drink myself, that would be different. TBD or Wasandis, the unfiltered pils.

But when you call your brewery Urban Chestnut and you make a beer with chestnuts chances are that’s the beer people from out of town will be talking about. Winged Nut is the sort of beer that you wake up one morning and they are pouring on the Today Show.

Saturday we watched a couple — Baby Boomers, if you care about demographics — come in and order without surveying the draft board. Obviously not their first visit. They took their goblets of Winged Nut to a table by the window, hauled out their books and began to read.

Brewing a beer with chestnuts is not totally new. In fact, Italian brewers produce more than 40 different chestnut beers. However, I’m not sure any of them ferment those beers with a yeast most often used in fruit-rich/spicy Bavarian weissbiers. It’s different, it’s good, and at 6.5% alcohol by volume it packs a punch. Saturday it appeared some drinkers have already made it their regular beer.

The Session #49: Regular beer (guest post II)

The SessionThe topic for today’s 49th gathering of The Session is “regular beer.” Since I’m the host I offered to publish posts from readers who don’t maintain blogs. This is the second of two.

By Bill Farr (a semi-regular commenter here)

How I gained a regular beer and wrestled with virtually every issue related to “good beer”

The beer I drink most often is Arrogant Bastard Ale. For me to get to the point of having a regular beer, I managed to hit pretty much every topic that appears in the beer site forums – among others, scarcity’s perceived effect on flavor, variety, drinking “local,” the perceived quality of a brewery, the evils of marketing – and one that rarely gets addressed except to be quickly dismissed. I’ll close with that one.

I live in Illinois, and up until a year or two ago, Stone Brewing Co. didn’t bring their beers to Illinois. I learned of Arrogant Bastard years back through my brother-in-law, who had found a clone homebrew recipe for the beer in Zymurgy back in 2003. He tried the recipe and raved about it. I tried his brews, and he was right. Of course, who knew how the homebrew compared to the actual beer?

Well. I became aware that Stone was available in Indiana, and occasionally was able to cross the border and pick up their brews. Loved them. LOVED them. Waxed rhapsodic in written reviews. Especially loved Arrogant Bastard, and occasionally mentioned that it was my favorite beer, or one of two (neither of which I could get regularly). Wondered how much of this was due to only having a few bottles a year.

In the meantime, I drank like the stereotypical craft beer drinker as portrayed in, um, our literature. There was always a different beer or three in my fridge, and I was always trying something new. Believed in drinking local brews – frequented my local brewpub, drank a lot of brews from relatively local brewers. And . . . and eventually realized that certain brews and breweries kept re-appearing, because I liked their stuff.

And Stone entered the Illinois market. And by this time, there’s a backlash against Stone by some folks on the beer site forums – the beer’s too pedestrian, too gateway, too behind the times, no longer as good since they opened the larger brewery, too reliant on marketing, only as popular as it is because the company bullies others. “Huh,” I said, being unable to imagine a world where Arrogant Bastard would be deemed “pedestrian” or a “gateway” brew. And bought a bottle or three, and it was as good as it ever was.

And now I buy a bottle or two a week, and often it’s the only beer I drink in a given week. And I’ve learned a couple of things. One is that, for me, here’s a case where the beer’s former rarity didn’t make it taste better. It’s really good, and more often than not, it’s what I want to drink when I want beer. I explore other brews when I visit places, or when somebody recommends something, but . . . I’m not minding that, say, half the beer or more I drink in a given year is Arrogant Bastard. A corollary to this is that my experience drinking Arrogant Bastard and other Stone brews hasn’t provided any evidence of a change in quality in the beer produced by Stone over the years. Nor a diminishing in complexity, nor any evidence that other breweries have passed Stone by. Which suggests to me that the next great thing doesn’t mean it’s a thing not to be missed – I don’t need to try everything from every newly-loved and praised brewery. I don’t feel my life is somehow less full for not yet having the chance to try X, or perhaps never getting the chance to try Y. It’s ok. I’ve found things that bring me joy.

I’m a bit perturbed that my drinking locally has diminished, but . . . if my local breweries don’t produce something I want to drink as consistently, what do I do? Reduce my enjoyment? It’s tricky – rarely are all the ingredients of which a beer is made local to where the beer is made, so it comes down to local jobs and pride. And I guess that for me, if the local guys are able to sell all they make, I don’t have to feel guilty. It’s presumably going to folks who enjoy it as much as or more than I do.

Whether marketing is a bad thing — well, if people care, more power to them. The beer’s good.

So, having a regular beer has helped me make personal peace with many of the burning arguments on the RateBeer and BeerAdvocate forums. But it hasn’t helped me resolve one issue that rarely comes up on the forums except to be quickly dismissed. That issue is whether I (and others in the good beer community) drink too much for my (or for their) own good. Arrogant Bastard is over 7% abv, and only comes in a 22 oz. bottle. I already know I am susceptible to problems drinking — even a glass of beer or two at night might mess up my sleep and hence my effectiveness the next day, and a bomber of Arrogant Bastard is a bit more than a glass of beer. I know it affects my weight negatively, because I like to eat when I drink. And I know that, after a certain amount of alcohol, I’m going to want more alcohol. It’s here where the fact that Arrogant Bastard comes in single bombers rather than, say, six-packs helps — if I only buy one at a time, I can only drink one at a time. But that one bottle is still a lot of alcohol, and a lot of calories.

I’ve learned that it’s easy for me to stop drinking for weeks at a time, and that drinking socially is easy. But I also know how easy it is to drink too much in the comfort of my own home, and how easy it could be to do it all the time. And I read the folks who contribute to many of the beer site forums, and I wonder if the pursuit of enjoyment and camaraderie and connoisseurship has moved to the point of potentially dangerous drinking for many of them. And, well, to each their own, but no one does this in a vacuum, and there are family and friends and co-workers who are affected, and every time I see a “how do I convince my significant other it’s ok?” thread, I cringe. It’s not necessarily OK, and I wish we did a better job recognizing that. Beer is a great thing, and can bring joy and promote friendship. And yet it can bring pain and problems depending on what we do with it, be it session beer or wine-strength brew. We do ourselves a huge disservice by minimizing this aspect.

PS – By the way, that Zymurgy clone recipe for Arrogant Bastard? Surprisingly close!

The Session #49: Regular beer (guest post)

The SessionThe topic for today’s 49th gathering of The Session is “regular beer.” Since I’m the host I offered to publish posts from readers who don’t maintain blogs. This is the first of two.

By Jeffrey McElfresh, Dayton, Ohio

Regular beer holds a special place in my beery heart, because, it is anything but “regular.” First, a definition: regular beer, to me, can be anywhere between a Kolsch, CAP and an APA. It’s a beer that is subtle in complexity or character and super drinkable because of that trait. Regular beer is not “dumbed down” nor does it require a sophisticated palate or the ability to appreciate the “finer things.” It has individual balance to the point that it tastes “right.” It is both easily missed and easily recognized by all beer drinkers. So, this “regular beer” is truly something special. It is the measurement that allows each of us to put all other beer into a perspective that we can trust. Price point does not define this beer and neither does my definition of style.

More than any other beer regular beer helps to define our culture. I believe we all want something that feels comfortable, but not normal. We want something that others can relate to, that reflects our group mentality without destroying our individuality. This is regular beer. This is why it has so many names and faces. This is where we define the familiar. (Some draw lines in the sand they will never cross just to prove that last line) Sure, the majority of us spend a ton of time peeling off the pack (wild, sour, impy and oak), but unless you are a sociopath or cult of personality(J), we want to spread our joy and give it depth and meaning. We want to know we are happy by seeing it beyond our mirror. The social implications of regular beer may be one of the most significant tools we use in the days ahead to mediate the technological innovation that scars our interpersonal relationship skills.

And so I truly believe we will see “world class” regular beer flourish as the craft beer segment inevitably folds in on itself (sorry Sam?). That’s ok with me. I am always thinking of jazz when I consider this point. Beer can be angular, free, wild or careless, but it must have that swing (local innovation that delivers). It is after all, beer. Recognize it or not, the enjoyment will succeed.

Reinheitsgebot as Einheitsgebot?

“Brauereisterben: The sad state of German beer culture” has been making the rounds since Slate posted it yesterday. Not exactly news to those who have been paying attention. But Slate doesn’t devote much bandwidth to beer, and doesn’t count among those paying attention.

The word Brauereisterben, drawn for the term for Germany’s dying forests (Waldsterben), has been around since the mid-90s. No disputing that beer production and consumption are sinking, but when Americans are called upon to comment on anybody else’s beer culture we should take care using words like “sad state” in the headline.

It would have been one thing had Germans said just that in the story, but it hardly reads as if they were consulted. Additionally, the supporting evidence was at times questionable — or best I can tell plain wrong.

For instance, the statement that Berlin supported 700 breweries in the early nineteenth century. According to Ron Pattinson’s meticulously documented European Beer Guide 82 breweries operated in Berlin in 1800 and 42 by 1816. Go back to 1730 and 426 existed, but most of those would have been in homes. Where does the number 700 come from? Perhaps Wikipedia, which in turn cites the German Beer Institute. Pattinson has documented just a few of the errors there.

Or there is the aside that German beer production is less than half of the United States’ output — not surprising since Germany has only something more than a quarter of the population.

And then there are the parts of the story that are missing. Such as details in an article by Sylvia Kopp, who is German, in All About Beer Magazine three years ago. She wrote, “However, most Germans, when asked what beer they prefer, will answer, passionately, with a brand name. This is the German paradox: we love beer dearly, it is an integral part of our culture, yet it has become a commodity.”

The challenge is not unique to Germany. Brewers everywhere want to make regular beers special enough that they are not a commodity, but still regular beers. (Yes, there is another category of beers that are stronger, hoppier, include ingredients beyond the norm, and they are one way for brewers to make a statement that “Everything I make is special.”)

Kopp talked to brewers about this.

Sebastian B. Priller, the junior owner and manager of Brauhaus Riegele, the foremost independent brewer in Augsburg, holds a clear opinion: “When it comes to beer, Germans focus more on marketing, branding, sponsoring, pricing and all that, instead of talking about the product itself. I think it is high time to put the beer first: its taste, its ingredients, the way it is brewed, the food it pairs with. And we need to live this culture and celebrate beer like they do with wine.”

Of course she addressed the matter of the Reinheitsgebot (the story was headlined, “Ruled by the Reinheitsgebot?”) As did Barry M at the Bitten Bullet in commenting on the Slate story, noteworthy because he’s an Irishman living in Germany. If we get a look at this sucker from enough angles we might be able to figure it out.

So one more view. From a man born in Wyoming, who has lived in Europe and Germany for more than 20 years and been the brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for 13 years. The Bavarian brewery in Petting/Schönram — not far from Salzburg, Austria — has more than doubled its sales during that time.

Eric Toft has succeeded by emphasizing quality ingredients and traditional brewing methods, but he’s also an agent of change. Last week he bottled his first IPA in 750ml corked bottles. Most of that will go to Italy.

He is a member of Bier-Quer-Denker, a group of brewers who look both within Germany and beyond for inspiration. Bier-Quer-Denker, roughly translated means “beer lateral thinker.” For instance, for one seminar Frank Mueller from Brauhaus Riegele brought a kellerbier made with a mixture of three grains, including wheat, and fermented with an English ale yeast.

Toft makes a strong argument that the Reinheitsgebot should not limit a brewer.

“There has been a collective, though not all brewers are guilty of this, mass misinterpretation of the Reinheitsgebot — Reinheitsgebot as Einheitsgebot, meaning all beer must taste the same or all brands are interchangeable. Over the years, processes and technology in the breweries have also become very similar. I see the Reinheitsgebot as just the opposite,” he said. “Because we are forced to work within these narrow confines, we should see it as motivation for creativity and opportunity to set our brands apart from the others. This begins with the selection of the raw materials and carries through the entire process.

“The Reinheitsgebot should be a guarantee for the greatest diversity possible, unfortunately the opposite is true. But consider this: worldwide, 199 different hop varieties are cultivated. In Germany alone, we have 23 different varieties of two-row barley. The yeast bank in Weihenstephan lists 80 strains on their regular list, and more are available on request. Luckily, there is more than a handful of brewers around who are swimming against the tide.”

They aren’t ready to leave the German beer culture for dead.