Which beer is not like the others (III)?

This might have been more fun the first time than the second, but that won’t keep me from asking again. (However, I do promise not to roll out a quiz on St. Patrick’s Day, the next official beer drinking holiday.)

The goal is to identify the outlier and explain why it doesn’t belong on the list. There may be more than one answer, although I happen to have a specific one in mind.

a) Rogue Chocolate Stout
b) Foothills Brewing Sexual Chocolate
c) Meantime Brewing Chocolate
d) Dieu Du Ciel Aphrodisiaque
e) Boulevard Smokestack Chocolate Ale

‘Craft’ beer and degrees of sucking

ABSTRACT

You may declare that a beer sucks because it is genuinely flawed. For instance, you spot the tail of a mouse in the bottle. You might say it sucks because you’ve had the beer before and it was much better then. That’s probably not the word I’d use, but I understand. You might yell that it sucks because it isn’t too your taste. Say it’s a cucumber beer (I’ve picked on pumpkin beers enough). Now we’re talking like people who’ve maybe had a few beers.

THE BACKGROUND

Today Max takes us nicely from Point A to Point B to Point C. Before quibbling with his conclusion and providing a longer answer than fits in a comment at A Good Beer Blog, the suggested reading:

Mark Dredge is promoting a larger discussion about if using the term “craft beer” in the UK is in order. Good comments there, and further chatter in various UK blogs. But I particularly like Barm’s response at I Might Have a Glass of Beer. Beyond the fact it is simply good reading he makes it clear this is not a discussion for Americans to join in. It is about a different beer culture.

To move the conversation along, a takeaway from Dredge:

It (“craft beer”) is a suggestion that what you are getting has more investment than a hefty marketing budget; it has a heart and soul, it’s made for people who prefer taste to TV commercials.

And from Barm:

Everyone knows the beer range of the third-rate microbrewery. There’s the 5.0% boring golden ale; the 4.2% brown bitter that tastes mostly of toffee; the 3.7% session ale, suspected to be the 5.0% ale with more water in it; and the seasonal beers which are the 4.2% bitter rebadged with a lewd cartoon on the pumpclip. I don’t see any reason to dignify this stuff by labelling it “craft”; nor do I understand how, if we are to refuse it the label “craft”, we can objectively distinguish — other than by taste — between it and beers that we like better. In which case, the definition has become “beer that I like”.

Now, on to Max:

Passion could serve well as an emotional reserve when things aren’t going too well, but real success depends on other factors: proficiency, professionalism, seriousness, business talent, knowledge of the market, determination to do things well and respect for the consumer, specially for small brewers.

My quibble would be that it is passion, or conviction, that sometimes takes a beer from “better than good enough” to great. Because the brewer invests in better ingredients and better equipment.

CONCLUSION

The road to excellent beer is paved with good intentions. They are not enough.

Which takes us full circle to the question Alan asked: “Is It Fair To Say A Brewery Sucks… Or Even A Beer?” My comment: To the questions in the headline: Yes, and yes. As long as you are prepared to say why, and why you are qualified to make the judgment.

It was late, so I was thinking quite literally rather than in any philosophical sense (remember that Alan was a contributor to “Beer and Philosophy” and you never know when he’s going to go all Socrates on you). I arose this morning to this fair question: “Who is qualified? What is sucking?”

The comments that followed answer this pretty well. Most beers fall between “awesome” and “this sucks,” although we tend to overuse both of those words. And beer appreciation is subjective.

But there are objective measures, which I was referring to in my literal comment. Quality control is quality control. Were somebody to finance us we could start pulling bottles off the shelf and putting them through their paces. Any wild yeast? Buttery diacetyl (don’t shoot – not always bad)? How’s the dissolved oxygen? There are other measures, but you get the point. Not only could we say, “This beer sucks” but we’d be able to say “This one will soon.” And at some point we might decide, “This brewery sucks.”

(OK, a brewery can’t account for a consumer who buys a six-pack of beer and leaves it sitting on the sunny-side of the car on a hot day for two hours. That beer is screwed.)

It takes just as much conviction for a brewer to focus on process as stuffing “wow” in the bottle. Those are the brewers who invest in laboratory equipment, and people who understand how to use the equipment. That’s easier when a brewery is growing — or “achieving scale” — even if it makes it look a little less “crafty.”

Just to be clear, I still want the “wow” factor (well, sometimes). I’m not abandoning New Beer Rule #4. It takes something special for a brewery to make great beer decade after decade. Certainly passion on the part of somebody. But passion goes beyond brewing great beer. It includes delivering great beer.

What beer would you lick off a table?

I’ve already figured out I’m going to be behind what almost everybody else in the beer world is reading for all 2011, accepting that learning a hell of a lot about hops is a fair trade. Thus this three-week-old entry from Miss Manner just hit my radar.

Dear Miss Manners:

My boyfriend and I were sitting at our kitchen table having a beer the other night. He accidentally knocked his beer over, spilling some out onto the table before it could be turned upright.

I was absolutely shocked when he proceeded to loudly suck up the spilled beer from the table.

My face apparently showed my shock. A long argument then ensued over the questionable appropriateness of his action and my reaction.

Can you please help me to better articulate why sucking up a spilled drink from a table is just flat wrong?

Try explaining that any behavior that would be considered offensive in a dog is also offensive in a human being (although you needn’t alarm your pet because the reverse is not necessarily true).

Miss Manners suggests that you head off further trouble by informing your beau that just as he is barred from licking the table when he is thirsty, he is also barred from chewing your slippers when he is hungry.

A great answer. But I’m betting Miss Manners has never spent a dollar an ounce (or more, particularly on premise) for beer. Not good for your image to be spotted licking a table, I agree, but — be honest — could you see yourself doing that? I’m guessing if so your decision would follow a quick calculation about how much the bottle cost, how hard it would be to replace, how clean the table was, and what you had to gain by such a display.

After all, you might have an image to uphold.

Announcing The Session #49: A ‘regular’ beer

The SessionFor reasons I don’t recall — but I’m pretty sure Alan is to blame — Season Five of The Session begins with your first three hosts returning to organize a round. I’m up first.

I imagine myself a Clydesdale, being led back to pasture come spring. (OK, that metaphor might not be working. Was I put out to pasture and now I’m back? Am I returning to another moment in the sun? It might be clearer after a few beers.)

For those of you who were not yet of drinking age when we began this monthly exercise here’s the appropriate historical link. There was no thought of “what happens after four months,” let alone four years. The first three sessions revolved around the S word, then all heck broke loose. Who would have predicted one month the theme would be Welcoming the New Kids?

In March of 2007 I couldn’t have guessed the topic March 4, 2011 might be “regular beer.” How vague is that? But when in December I was motivated to post my defense of “regular beer” the course was set.

Please write about a regular beer (time to lose the quotation marks). You get to define what that means, but a few possibilities:

* It might be your “go to” beer, brewed commercially or at home. The one you drink regularly.
* I could be a beer your enjoy on a regular special occasion. When in San Francisco I always like to start with draft Anchor Liberty Ale. But it might be your poker night beer.
* It doesn’t have to be a “session beer,” but it can be.
* It probably shouldn’t have an SPE of more than $25 (that’s a very soft number; prices may vary by region and on premise further confuses the matter). Ask yourself, is it what somebody in a Miller High Life TV commercial in the 1970s could afford? Because affordability matters. I’m all for paying a fair price (which can mean higher than we’d like) to assure quality and even more for special beers, but I’m not ready to part with the notion that beer should be an everyman’s drink.
* Brewery size, ownership, nationality do not matter. Brew length doesn’t matter. Ingredients don’t matter. It feels a little strange typing that last sentence, since the Mission Statement here says ingredients matter. But I hope you get the point. I prefer beer that costs a little more because its ingredients cost more, because there’s more labor involved. You don’t have to. Beer should be inclusive.

Still not clear? Consider this a sample post. It mostly illustrates you can write anything you damn please.

Everybody is welcome to participate, particularly “regular people.” If you don’t have a blog and want to write something in advance I will post it. If you are a blogger, email me with the URL on March 4 or post a comment here, and by early the next week I’ll write a wrap up with links to all the posts.

What would Elvis drink?

Before I stick my nose back into academic papers focused on terpenoids, sesquiterpenoids and preserving hop aroma and flavor . . . a few things I’ve been reading.

* The New York Times reports full-service gyms are losing members. “In the 70s, they came for community. Now they come in and disassociate themselves from everyone in the club. It’s killing the health club,” says a marketing consultant. A sign that “third places” revolve around community rather than design.

* Excellent observations (if “grim reading”) in Tandleman’s Beer Blog about dwindling beer sales and number of pubs in Great Britain.

Society is changing in ways we could never have predicted. The web, social networking, time shifting multi channel TV, more comfortable homes, price, health awareness, recession, job insecurity, generational attitude shifts and more, dictate that a pub will never again be on every street corner, bursting at the seams and the only place to go for an entertaining interlude.

And:

There’s a mountain to climb. Nonetheless, the pub trade still refuses as a whole to face up to this and the fact that to attract customers and keep them, it has to be better. It has to offer a smile, a warm welcome (that just means a “hello” or a “thanks”), good surroundings, decent food and an experience that is attractive and competitive against other offerings. It has to offer good service and a wide range of beers that people actually want to drink, rather than the ones they can buy cheaply and sell dear.

Natty Bo at Nacho Mamas* Draft National Bohemian beer is returning to the Baltimore area. To the rest of the country this is like the return of PBR. For those of you thinking huh? . . . Natty Bo was a long time Baltimore fixture, with a history that pre-dates Prohibition. Carling bought the brewery in 1975, then Heileman acquired it, then Pabst. Today MillerCoors brews Natty Bo for Pabst.

Fact is that when we are next in Baltimore we’ll likely be drinking something brewed in Maryland and more expensive than Natty Bo. However, while I can’t tell you the last one of those better tasting beers I had when we last visited Charm City a while back I do remember where I was sitting when I last had a Natty Bo . . . almost 10 years ago.

We were in Nancho Mamas, one of the few places you could still find Natty Bo in bottles inn 2001 (and you drank it straight from bottle). Friends of ours took us there, because they understood we had to see a place where every available inch is covered with a picture of Elvis Presley or a photo from old Baltimore (mostly sports) or a piece National Bohemian memorabilia. These included signs large and small, a gallery of bottle caps on the wall at the front entrance, buckets hanging at the bar and more.

Lots of tourists, and lots of regulars (many with tourists in tow). These days reviews at Yelp mostly talk about the nachos and margaritas, but indicate in passing the decor remains intact. I hope the regulars are as well. Beer, communities, pubs (or bars) — they all make each other better. And a little Elvis on the side is OK.