Beer ****ing: This ain’t dental school

As I wrote last week in posting the Wikio rankings, bloggers sure like to blog about blogging. Sure enough, madness followed back-to-back posts by Andy Crouch (shouldn’t it amuse us all if those vault him into the top spot next month?). Too many “why I blog” posts followed to link to.

I already wrote my mission statement five years ago, so I acted on the fact I had nothing new to say by saying nothing (it doesn’t always work that way.) Until I read a monstrously long John McPhee interview in the Paris Review.

Like maybe 10,000 words into it you have this exchange:

I suppose one of the hard things for a young writer is to learn that there’s no obvious path.

MCPHEE

There is no path. If you go to dental school, you’re a dentist when you’re done. For the young writer, it’s like seeing islands in a river and there’s all this stuff you can get into—where do you go? It can be a mistake to get too great a job at first; that can turn around and stultify you. At the age of, say, twenty-one, you’re in a very good position to make mistakes. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four—each time the mistakes become a little more costly. You don’t want to be making these mistakes when you’re forty-five. But the thing is, in steering around all those islands, and finding currents to go around them, they’re all relevant.

Do you worry about outlets diminishing for writers?

MCPHEE

I’m really concerned about it. And nobody knows where it’s going—particularly in terms of the relationship of the Internet to the print media. But writing isn’t going to go away. There’s a big shake-up—the thing that comes to mind is that it’s like in a basketball game or a lacrosse game when the ball changes possession and the whole situation is unstable. But there’s a lot of opportunities in the unstable zone. We’re in that kind of zone with the Internet.

But it’s just unimaginable to me that writing itself would die out. OK, so where is it going to go? It’s a fluid force: it’ll come up through cracks, it’ll go around corners, it’ll pour down from the ceiling.

So two thoughts.

First, I wouldn’t say that Emily Sauter has things totally figured out, but head over to Pints and Panels to see her “beer reviews in sequential tradition,” otherwise known as cartoons. This weekend because I was clicking to read a variety of blogs I’ve never seen before because I was following the Beer Bloggers Conference on Twitter I was struck by how some blogs are a whole lot different, some not so much.

Pints and Panels, which I’ve been following since meeting Em at the Great American Beer Festival, falls into the former category. But that’s not the point. That Em and most other bloggers have more future than I do (geez, that looks dreary in black and white, but isn’t meant that way) doesn’t necessarily mean they see it more clearly than I (already feeling better), but they are going to be around for more of it (shoulders sag). And they are going to find different currents.

Second, the beer analogy (this is a beer blog, after all). You should already have it figured out, but one example. Only hours before Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing brewed his first beer using a “sour mash” other small-batch brewers were telling him he was crazy, that he’d destroy his brewery. If you’ve ever tasted Cerise Cassée you’re glad he didn’t listen.

Session #45: The taste of wheat

The SessionBeerTaster.ca is hosting the 45th gathering of The Session, and the topic is #45: Wheat Beers. Not sure how the turnout will be, given little gathering in Boulder this weekend, but head on over to BeerTaster.ca for the wrapup.

I could write a book about wheat beers. Wait, I already have. Making it all the more difficult to pick one beer to write about, or even a type from a particular region.

So instead, a little about wheat itself, what it contributes to wheat beers, what it tastes like. But don’t expect a definitive answer. As German brewing literature indicates, wheat by itself has little influence on esters and other fermentation by-products. It’s yeast quickly changes that.

I asked the question many times over in researching BWW and never walked away with anything definitive. Bob Hansen, manager of technical services at Briess Malt & Ingredients Company, had a pretty good answer, saying, “Wheaty, earthy. It is different, but you’d be surprised how non-different it is. You can use wheat to make a pilsner.”

Steven Pauwels at Boulevard Brewing in Kansas City said he likes the character unmalted wheat adds. “It brings a crispness that’s hard to describe. A little drier, makes a beer more drinkable,” he said.

Darron Welch, brewmaster at Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City, Oregon, views wheat as a facilitator. “I think it has a bready flavor,” he said. “Because it is foam positive it changes how yeast brings other flavors into play.”

And Jean-Francois Gravel of Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal, who provided a recipe for wit beer, added: “To me, wheat has a very delicate bready flavor with some acidity or refreshing tartness. I think the barley has more pronounced grain flavor and a sweeter perception. If you eat raw wheat and malted wheat you will see the difference of texture right away because the malted wheat is more crumbly and easy to crush. But the flavor difference between the unmalted and malted wheat is very subtle. The malted wheat will have a bit more . . . malty flavor.”

Did I mention I’m brewing a wheat wine on Sunday? Not sure what session that might be ready for.

These are people I want to drink beer with

Officially, this is a parody of the “I Am A Craft Brewer” first released 18 months ago. But it also stands on its own. Give it a look, and a laugh, and read on if you want.

Make no mistake. These are not random people off the street. Some of them work for Rifftrax (“We don’t make movies . . . We make them funny!), so they had a creative leg up. Because the video was posted on Conor Lastowka’s You Tube channel, I asked him for a few details, provided by email:

“I live in San Diego. I’m a writer for rifftrax.com and a homebrewer/beer fan. Sometimes they show our movies at the Stone Brewery during the summer, so that’s where we saw the original video, and we were talking about some way to get RiffTrax involved in San Diego Beer Week (editor’s note: that begins tomorrow), and we decided to make a parody of their video. It’s me, my wife, two co-workers and some friends who appear in it.”

Could these guys probably create something centered around a mainstream lager that would make me laugh out loud? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Would they be motivated to?

Rhetorical question.

 

How Wikio ranks the US beer blogs

Guess I’ll have to try harder.

Wikio ranks Appellation Beer No. 2 among US beer blogs in its November listings. This is only the second month for the US rankings, and just like last month Beervana is No. 1. I know this because the folks at Wikio sent me a sneak preview, which I’m sure you’d rather look at than my commentary. Seems pretty interesting just days before the first Beer Bloggers Conference. (Commentary will follow.)

1 Beervana
2 Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home
3 Brewpublic
4 Brookston Beer Bulletin
5 Seen Through a Glass
6 A Good Beer Blog
7 The New School
8 Drink With The Wench
9 The Session Beer Project™
10 Beer in Baltimore
11 Bay Area Beer Runner
12 Beeronomics
13 Brouwer’s Cafe
14 BetterBeerBlog
15 Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET
16 KC Beer Blog
17 Show-Me Beer
18 Washington Beer Blog
19 Thirsty Pilgrim
20 It’s Pub Night

Beer

Ranking made by Wikio

Jeff Alworth of Beervana offered a good look at the methodology last month when he showed up in the top spot. Take the time to read it, and consider his caveat: “no one reads beer blogs.” Obviously he means “hardly anybody” because he, like I, appreciates that you are reading us.

Pete Brown has been recapping the UK rankings for more than a year. This has led to interesting conversations across the way, given that if there’s anything beer bloggers like writing about more than beer it’s beer blogging.

I particularly appreciate that Martyn Cornell of Zythophile (No. 5 this month in the UK, with a bullet) asked one set of good questions, then still more.

But to return to the US rankings and the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference. I don’t know if these ratings will be discussed, but I do know there are seminars on things like SEO that you can see here (that’s “search engine optimization”). All this will surely make the Wikio rankings dynamic and interesting to watch . . .

. . . if you consider navel gazing a sport.

About those reports of more Westvleteren beer

News last week that Abbey Saint Sixtus, the Trappist monastery at Westvleteren in Belgium, might boost production of its much-cherished beer and sell it through supermarket channels led to the consumption of considerable bandwidth on beer discussion boards.

Perhaps some of the questions not addressed by that story were answered in the various threads, but not in the few I had time to read. And I didn’t see a mention of the report from Danny Van Tricht in September that the abbey had installed new lagering tanks. Gee, doesn’t that make you wonder just how much more beer Saint Sixtus might brew?

I don’t have a definitive answer, but an email response from Brother Joris — the monk in charge of brewing at Saint Sixtus — would indicate “not much” and even that won’t be on a permanent basis.

He explained, “I am not allowed to give away more details on the matter, as it should be a surprise.”

He wrote that the reports the brewery would sell beer away from the monastery are not correct, adding, “We remain faithful to our sales policy and we have no intention of opening a second channel for the distribution of our beers in the way suggested by the media.” He indicated the monastery is considering a one-time special project (that would not last for long) to raise additional funds for construction work on the cloister.. “This will however not come down to ‘Westvleteren being for sale in the racks of a supermarket,'” he wrote.

He further explained that the new tanks make the production schedule more flexible, so that brewing needn’t be delayed because beer in the lagering tanks isn’t ready for bottling. This makes it possible to produce a fixed quantity each year (currently that might vary between 4,200 and 4,750 hectoliters a year — comparable to about 3,600 to 4,000 U.S. barrels).

Digression No. 1: Stephen Beaumont has asked what will become of Westvelteren’s cult status should they become easier to buy. The notion — not Mr. B’s, should there be any confusion — that the Saint Sixtus beers might be “dumbed down” is laughable. By adding lagering tanks the monks assure that beer will not be hurried out the door. When I visited the brewery in 2004, Brother Joris explained that the 8 usually lagers four weeks but that the 12 might take two months to ten weeks, “when you get a difficult one.”

If the monks at Saint Sixtus wanted to ramp up production they already could have. The thoroughly modern brewhouse installed in 1989 could crank out a lot more wort, and the squares for primary fermentation sit idle more days than they are used. Plenty of breweries around the world have shortened lagering or aging times to meet growing demand.

Digression No. 2: In cruising through discussion boards I saw it suggested, and I’m paraphrasing, that “the monks should brew more beer to raise more money for the poor.” How come nobody finishes that sentence with what they are really thinking? “. . . and make it easier for me to buy their beer.”

In fact, larger monastery breweries, notably Westmalles and Chimay, help support other monasteries, multiple charities and local economies. Chimay, with 150 employees in its brewery and cheese making facility, is one of the largest employers in one of Belgium’s poorest regions. Westvleteren sells its beer in wooden crates (pictured at the top) manufactured in a “shielded workplace” for those not able to work in a mainstream environment.

But that’s not why they brew. Monks — Benedictine, Cistercian and Trappist — live by the rule of Saint Benedict, written about A.D. 530. Among other things, it calls on monks to be self-sufficient through their own labor.

Brother Joris puts it quite well: “We live on brewing, but we do it so we can continue with our real business, which is being monks.”