Although a few more entries may show up it seems that 183 judges at the World Beer Cup, held in Chicago in April just before the Craft Brewers Conference begins, will have more than 3,400 beers to judge over the course of two days.
Does that sound like work or like fun to you?
The 2010 WBC will be the largest commercial competition ever, eclipsing the 3,331 beer entries set at the 2009 Great American Beer Festival.
The judges come from 27 countries including the United States, with 63 percent of them from outside the U.S. Several countries not represented in 2008 will be this year: Benin, Cambodia, Fiji, Greece, Haiti, Ireland, Mongolia and Namibia.
Before you haul out the calculator, 3,500 beers for 183 judges works out to less than 20 beers each. Oh, were it that simple. Each beer is judged by by six judges in each round, and multiple times if it advances (the more popular categories require three rounds).
Don Russell and Jack Curtin (twice, in fact) point out a few of the problems with “The Best 25 New Beers in America” from Maxim magazine (in pdf format).
Like that some of the beers aren’t exactly new. In fact, isn’t Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen 25 years old (new name aside)?
Jack, in a wonderful turn of the pen, calls it Truly Dumb Shit. But Don finds a reason to like it because the article labels Philadelphia its favorite beer burg. Did I mention he lives in Philadelphia? That’s the charm of lists, ending up on them. They not only provide fodder for conversation — 25 best new beers and none of them wild or barrel-aged? — but what brewery doesn’t want its beer mentioned in Maxim?
Also it never hurts to consider the view from outside the world of the beer obsessed looking in. Call it serendipity, but while moving files about my office the last couple of days (using the word “organizing” would be an overstatement) I happened across an article from 1975 called “The Great Gulp: A Consumer’s Guide to Beer” that appeared in Oui magazine.
Rock critic Robert Christgau kindly archived it at his website. Dinosaur that I am I printed it out, which meant I had to find a place to file it — some day I’ll get this digital thing down. The real serendipity is how I stumbled across the piece to begin with. Christgau labeled James McMurtry’s “We Can’t Make It Here” the best song of the aughts (I’m good with that, and you can make up your own mind by listening here), leading me to Christgau’s site, leading me to the beer story.
Christgau and Carola Dibbell, with the help of a tasting panel, provide grades for 46 American beers and 11 imports. They didn’t taste everything available in the United States at the time but made a heck of an effort, which itself makes a statement about America’s beer monoculture in 1975.
To assess the ratings presented below, we not only sampled beers blindfolded but tried to live with them as well. This technique had its debilitating consequences, but after months of unpremeditated naps, we had learned to distinguish some of our beers all of the time, and all of them some of the time. However, because beer is fragile, we may not have sampled all of them in optimal condition, and some beers, particularly the smaller and more westerly ones, were unobtainable.
Although I recommend spending time with all 4,600 words a few highlights for those reading this at work:
“One of our conclusions was that if you’re thirsty, there’s no such thing as an undrinkable beer – therefore our ratings, which ordinarily descend to E-minus, stopped at D-plus. Many of the best beers in the country are virtually unknown, but the size of the company is no clear indication of mediocrity.”
About Anchor Steam: “The beer also contains four times the usual amount of hops, the flower that gives beer its bitterness. ‘Steam’ just means carbonation. Our bohemian friends found it winy, but we found it one more instance of San Francisco’s chronic confusion of eccentricity with quality. B.”
About Shopwell Premium (purchased in New Jersey): “As with all house brands, the first virtue of supermarket beer is bulk-order economy. But whereas Ann Page jams and Jerseymaid yogurt also taste good, all the supermarket beers we’ve sampled are best consumed quickly, very cold and under pressure of great thirst. This one was made in a brewery in New Jersey that Shopwell refused to name and told us was in Pennsylvania, doubtless for fear of reprisals. From the taste, we figure it’s economical because it uses a lot of water and we daren’t imagine what kind of grain. It’s called ‘Premium’ because words are cheap. D Plus.”
About Ballantine Ale (not graded): “. . . is metropolitan New York’s only surviving contribution to the brew-master’s craft, and the Indian Pale (‘aged in wood’) is so bitter it starts conversations at parties.”
About Dixie: “Traditionally the white beer in New Orleans (Jax and Falstaff shared the black market), Dixie emerged from the civil rights years with a nearly four-fold increase in sales, while Falstaff’s sales went down dramatically after a liberal ad campaign up North. B Plus.”
As you can see, not necessarily long on beer expertise but maybe Maxim should hire Christgau for an updated story on what’s new since 1975.
This is the press release the Spoetzl Brewery sent out to announce the release of Shiner 101, its newest beer:
The release suggests heading here for more information, mostly a video of Spoetzl brewmaster Jimmy Mauric talking about beer in Czech. At least I think it’s beer. He could be describing his pet poodle for all I know.
Is that really Jimmy Mauric talking? If you look closely you’ll likely conclude not, but that doesn’t matter. How closely might Shiner 101 replicate a “Czech-style” beer? I’m looking forward to finding out, but again that won’t be the point of the beer.
You can be darn sure it will be a beer of the region. Shiner’s Czech heritage is real. From the Czech Heritage Society of Texas:
The town was originally called New Half Moon but changed to Shiner in 1888. Czech and German immigrants were induced to settle in the area in the 1870s by Henry B. Shiner through his sale of cheap farmland. The prairie around Shiner was fertile and ideal for growing cotton. The Shiner Brethren Church was organized November 8, 1881. A cemetery is located adjacent to the Church. SS. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church was built in 1891. St. Ludmila’s Academy Catholic School was opened in 1897. The Spoetzl Brewery, which still operates today, was originally built in the early 1900s by the Shiner Brewing Association, a stock company of local men.
Mauric grew up in Shiner, playing on the brewery grounds when he was a kid. He started working in the bottle shop when he was 17, walking a mile and a half to work. He since bought the homestead where he grew up. When the wind blows from the south he sits on his porch and smells fresh wort (usually destined to become Shiner Bock, which accounts for 87 percent of production).
He was always good at fixing things and worked his way up at Spoetzl, becoming assistant brewmaster in 1991 and brewmaster in 2005. Spoetzel sent him to the Siebel Institute of Technology to master brewing. When he was in his 30s he attended an area junior college to learn more about computers and technology. This June he will have worked at the brewery for 32 years.
These days Shiner advertising makes a big deal out of the fact that “Every drop of Shiner is brewed in Shiner.” Mauric certainly believes where is in ingredient in the beer.
“You can duplicate the water chemically, but it’s like a seasoned pot: Most people have a favorite frying pan that just makes everything taste better,” he says. “I don’t think you could copy the flavor from our brewing kettles.”
And there’s the town itself, with a population of little more than 2,000, a place you’d likely never know about were it not for beer. Gonzalez, 20 miles to the west, is five times larger. Have you ever heard of it? In that case you are probably a barbecue savant and answered, “Sure, Gonzalez Food Market.”
“The pride in the beer has always been here,” Mauric says. “Good times. Bad times. How people related to Shiner was the beer.”
I type Andy Tveekrem is headed home and you know the city.
Drum roll, please. The link to the news that includes the answer. It’ll be a new brewery. One of the owners was backpacking in Thailand when he learned Tveekrem would be available and immediately e-mailed his partners. Amazing what happens when you can get wi-fi in Bangkok.
Bonus points if know where Bill Morgan (formerly brewer at the former Diamondback Brewing in the same city) might be.
If you don’t already think that Conan O’Brien can be brilliant go back and watch Season 4 of The Simpsons. He was the producer for some of the very best episodes. But perhaps the Simpsons aren’t for you . . . and perhaps you’re still pissed off at O’Brien because he twice seemed less than cordial to Michael Jackson when Jackson appeared on his show (here’s Jackson’s account of the first).
But let’s agree that O’Brien is a popular niche product. So are Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but they’ve earned a spot in our culture at least equal to “microbrews.” I didn’t have a beer in hand the other day read David Carr’s analysis in The New York Timesthe mess NBC has made of “The Tonight Show” franchise, but I might have had my beer goggles on.
In the old paradigm, networks operated from Olympian heights, but with cable outlets multiplying, a network’s size and mass audience are not always an advantage. While cable networks can pick and choose their spots, building discrete successes while living off a combination of fees and advertising, broadcast networks are at the top of a huge ecosystem where their every move lands forcefully on affiliated locals.
In a country this size a niche can be pretty big. Big enough that large companies, some of them breweries, will start to covet that share. They need to be careful how they go after it.
The message to the younger talent is one thing — wait for a turn that may never come or may be taken back at any second — but the message to younger audiences is even clearer: a legacy industry will default to legacy assets and ride them down to the bitter end . . . .
Twitter nation was livid, of course. “Nice work NBC. Take out the only late night host my age range and younger will even consider watching,” said @MatthewJBrown, Tweeting the sentiments of many.
Based on the times Jackson appeared on O’Brien’s show it seems he might not understand this analogy:
He clearly isn’t Miller Lite. He might not be Blue Moon White or Samuel Adams Boston Lager. But he’s bigger and more real than Duff.
