Beer magazines, circa 1994

BeeR the MagazineInspired (again) by “The 5 Most Boring Topics in all of Beer Journalism” here’s a glimpse at what appeared in three magazines at the end of 1994.

I picked 1994 because BeeR the Magazine was new (and not long for this world) and because many the breweries that claim a lot more ink (or bandwidth) these days than do the founding pioneers weren’t yet in business. Although they are deserving, I didn’t include brewspapers (such at Celebrator, Ale Street News and the Brewing News family) because our archives were destroyed in the Flood of ’06.

All About Beer, BeeR and American Brewer were then the big three of glossy magazines. About the time BeeR died Beer Connoisseur I passed through town (lasting not even as long as BeeR). These days, of course, we have DRAFT, Beer Connoisseur (unrelated to V1.0), Beer Advocate and Beer Magazine, plus Imbibe offering regular beer features. You’ll spot many of these on the top row at Barnes & Noble or Borders, safely out of the reach of children. (American Brewer lives on, by the way. It always targeted the beer trade but in the 1990s also served information-thirsty beer newcomers.)

ALL ABOUT BEER (November)

Features
* Born to Brew – A look inside the brewing dynasties.
* Vietnamese Beers
* Pubcrawling Toronto

Columns
* Michael Jackson’s Journal – Czechs & Balances.
* Fred Eckhardt – Brewspeak: A Beginner’s Guide to Craft Beer.
* Alan Eames – On Groaning Beer and Babies.
* Byron Burch – Stylistically speaking, Oktoberfest.

Departments
These included news, homebrewing, Lucy Saunders on festival foods, collectibles, brewpub visits, book reviews and “Beer Talk.” The beers reviewed: Abita Amber, Labatt Blue, Purgatory Porter (it was spoiled), Redhook ESB, Berghoff Dark, Christoffel Blond, JJ Wainwright’s Select Lager, Red Tail Ale.

BEER (November)
That’s the cover at the top. BeeR was the brainchild of Bill Owens, who also published American Brewer. From the beginning Owens, himself a well known photographer, attracted very talented illustrators and photographers, although the magazine lasted only about a dozen issues.

Table of Contents
* A Question of Taste – A sensory exploration.
* The Art Guys – Using beer stuff to create art.
* The New Art of Ale – Randy Mosher on America’s innovative ales.
* Smuggler’s Brews – Snagging a few pilsners in Iraq.
* Garbage Pail Willie’s Last Great Batch – A story of homebrewed beer in Chicago.
* Plastic, Fantastic Brewpub – Northwestern Brew-Pub & Cafe in Portland, Oregon.
* Biere Au Naturel – Organic beer.
* A Glass of Wendy – Written by Garrison Keillor (yes, that Garrison Keillor).
* Proclaiming & Declaiming – Two Scottish musicians prefer stout.
* Eat Me, I’m on Irish Time – Kelly’s Irish Times in Washington, D.C.
* Das Münich Bierfest ist Goodt – Oktoberfest in Munich.
* Germany’s Other Brewfest – Oktoberfest in Stuttgart.
* Sing a Drinking Song – Beer at music festivals.
* Europe on a Gallon a Day – Tips from Tim Webb.
* A Really Cold One – Beer ice cream recipes.
* Book Reviews
* Michael Jackson – “On Meretricious Myths and the Sweet Taste of Truth.”
* Homebrewing – Charlie Papazian.
* Beer Festivals – Various reviews.

AMERICAN BREWER

Features
* 1994’s Best Tap Handles
* Financing on Tap – Tips for raising capital.
* Reviving Cincinnati’s Brewing Heritage
* Beer Engines in New England
* Interview with Paul Shipman of Redhook. Headline “Dark Clouds Over Paradise.”
* Rogue Ales in Japan
* Star Union – An Illinois brewery reborn.
* The Perennial Hop – In the American Northwest.
* Music Festivals – A different story than in BeeR. Bill Owens sometimes asked writers to rework pieces to suit his two magazines.
* Micro Goes Macro – Gordon Biersch.

Departments
Regular features included a column by Dick Cantwell (who still has a column in AB), a report on festivals, classified ads for brewing equipment, and BeerScopes (as stupid as the name implies).

Category 23: Looking for harmony in beer

Samuel Adams Longshot Homebrew Contest Category 23Perhaps it’s because I live in a state where Area 51 is famous, but Category 23 has an ominous ring to it. Particularly when you are asked to judge the category in a homebrew competition. Strange beers, experiments, successful and otherwise.

This year the Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest is all about Category 23. There will be no judging of pilsners, pale ales or stouts. Just beers that fit in Category 23 as defined by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP): “This is explicitly a catch-all category for any beer that does not fit into an existing style category. No beer is ever ‘out of style’ in this category, unless it fits elsewhere.”

Not every beer entered need be crazy. This is the category where you’d enter a honey ale, for instance. But it is one where wild and inventive beers are welcome (a honey ale aged with wild yeast and wood chips). A bottle of Chocolate Chili Bock — released only to make a point and not for sale to the public and pictured above — accompanied the press release about the contest.

“. . . as the years go on, the number of entries with unique ingredients that don’t fit into the first 22 traditional categories have multiplied,” Boston Beer founder Jim Koch said for the press release. “So why not channel all the creativity that we know is out there in the homebrewing community and see what they can come up with? My taste-buds are ready!”

Boston Beer celebrates its 25th anniversary this year — today, in fact, because it was on Patriots’ Day 25 years ago that Koch began deliver beer. The Wall Street Journal had a story today, the Boston Globe last week.

Maureen Ogle, author of “Ambitious Brew,” summed it up nicely in the Globe when she said Koch “remains innovative and he’s constantly experimenting. A lot of the other craft brewers lost sight of that when they expanded.”

It seems fair to add the turn the LongShot contest has taken to a list that starts with Triple Bock (1993).

Back to the contest. This isn’t like the knife fight in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” There are rules. You can read them here. What’s noteworthy, given plenty of discussion in the blogosphere about the proliferation of “beer styles” and beer evaluation in general is that a) Category 23 makes room for “beers without homes” (to steal a phrase from Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey Brewing) without adding new categories and b) because of what’s central in judging this category.

In part: “A harmonious marriage of ingredients, processes and beer. . . . The overall rating of the beer depends heavily on the inherently subjective assessment of distinctiveness and drinkability.”

Isn’t that how we should assess all beers? Of course. It’s just more obvious when you aren’t focused on if a beer conforms to style guidelines.

A few details

* As in the past, three regional judging competitions will take place to narrow the entries down. Three finalists from each region (9 finalist total) will move on to a second round of judging.

* The second round of judging will take place in Boston, with four finalists earning a trip to the 2010 Great American Beer Festival, where winners will be announced. The two winning beers will be brewed and distributed nationally.

* Details are at the Samuel Adams website. After signing in, click on No. 4 on the right, then the Longshot logo.

Brewers and their stainless steel

“A brewery is no place for a Norwegian with a stainless-steel fetish because you can really blow your bank account.”

From Mark Stutrud, founder of Summit Brewing in Minnesota. The Star Tribune article also quotes a 29-year-old grocery warehouse worker who aspires to be a fiction writer. If he’s stretched for cash, he said he’ll buy a cheaper non-malted alcoholic drink, rather than switch from craft beer to the standard stuff. “It’s an acquired taste, and it’s hard to go back.”

18April2010: Beer linkorama

Should Molson Coors have been surprised by the shitstorm that followed the announcement it will launch a clear beer as part of a drive to increase the number of women lager drinkers in the UK?

I gotta think they could have been better prepared, but it might have taken supernatural powers to plan for the double blast (as in two barrels of a shotgun) that Melissa Cole and Ashley Routson delivered, then the comments that followed. Go look. I’ll wait.

Stephen Beaumont adds more the the topic so I’ll keep it brief. Recent studies have found men and women perceive some flavors and aromas differently (make that some men and women, because there’s nothing universal about these perceptions, so they very from man to man, from woman to woman). For instance, men (in general) are more likely to describe the aroma of Citra, a new-ish hop prominent in Sierra Nevada Torpedo, as “tropical fruit.” Women are more likely to find it “catty” (as in cat piss or liter box).

Should brewing companies — and it’s generally the largest ones that have the money to finance such research and make those changes — design beers to appeal those preferences? Should they draw up marketing campaigns with that in mind?

And a few more links since you made it this far . . .

  • Why beer matters. The second place runnerup in the little contest Pete Brown staged. You’ll notice in the comments that a few readers think that maybe Shea Luke should have been the winner. “I’m not a brewer, I’m not bearded, I’m not retired, and I am absolutely not a bloke, but, do you know what? Beer definitely matters to me.”
  • A cautionary tale of wine. Scary headline — “The Coming Carnage in the California Wine Industry” — but even scarier tale. It’s a story about business rather than romance and lifestyle, about wine rather than beer, but worth reading and considering.
  • The 5 Most Boring Topics in Beer Journalism. Could everything that needs to be written about beer have already been written? Is it time to move on? (In all fairness to Jay at Hedonist Beer Jive that is not is point. Go read — don’t let me misquote him.)
  • Beer labels as a work of art. Michael Halbert didn’t set out to be a beer label artist. “My wife was very religious and did not drink, so by extension, neither did I. The company I was working for at the time did a lot of ad work for Anheuser-Busch, but I told my boss I didn’t want to work on that account.” He eventually split with his wife, which is why millions of drinkers have bought his artwork.
  • Wines That Pack A Little Extra Kick. Lettie Teague writes about wines that clock 14% abv and more. “That’s one thing that the alcohol-haters leave out: Alcohol delivers flavors. ‘It’s like the fat in the meat,’ as Aldo Sohm, wine director of Le Bernardin in New York, once said to me. (I wasn’t sure if he meant it as a good thing, but I decided to take it that way.)”

    • Beer for Mother’s Day? An answer

    Teri Fahrendorf was way ahead of me.

    While I was wondering why more beer marketers don’t pay attention to Mother’s Day, Fahrendorf — a brewster herself and creator of the Pink Boots Society — was sending a message to the small breweries of America via the Brewers Association Forum, calling for action rather than blogger-like pondering.

    Grass Roots Mother’s Day Event:

    Once in our ancient brewing past, beer was brewed by mothers, in their homes, for their families. Now that rarely happens.

    One goal of the Pink Boots Society is to reach out to the fair gender, expose women to great beer, and encourage them to learn about it and enjoy it. We hope to create more female beer drinkers and homebrewers in the process, (which are additional Pink Boots Society goals).

    Mothers Day is celebrated around the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe, each May. Let’s invite folks to bring their mom out for a beer that day.

    If you own or work for a brewery or brewpub, consider inviting your customers to “Bring Mom Out for a Beer” on May 9, 2010. Offer moms free brewery tours and free or low cost samplers of your beers from 1:00-4:00 pm.

    If you own or work for a beer-centric pub, then design your own creative idea to get mothers in your door and tasting great beer on May 9th from 1:00-4:00pm. Feel free to share your great idea on the Pink Boots Society forum and let me know how it went.

    We don’t currently have a nifty way for you to register your individual event online, or to publicize it through PBS. Try grass roots tools, like Twitter, Facebook, and anything else you can think of. We’d love for you to email us your success stories, so we can spread the word.

    Grass roots and beer pair so nicely.