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.

    What about beer for Mother’s Day?

    The first of what will be many email solicitations just arrived suggesting a “beer of the month” club membership makes the Father’s Day present.

    You know it’s almost time to plant the tomatoes (we can get a late frost in our parts) and brew a wit beer once the “Dads and Grads” promotions begin.

    But what about May 9, Mother’s Day? What’s wrong with giving mom a membership in a beer club? Who’s assembling baskets complete with artisan cheese, chocolates and beer?

    No, these beers aren’t about marketing

    This started as a comment within the conversation following the previous post, but when it hit the third paragraph I thought it better to start anew.

    Perhaps I should have made myself clearer.

    – This is the opposite of marketing. We now have a broader choice of beers — some obviously better than others, and some pretty terrible — because brewers did not, and still do not, listen to marketers who said/say drinkers will not buy beers with distinctive flavor (America in the 1960s and 1970s). Sierra Nevada Pale Ale never would have got out a focus group.

    Which is not to say that some breweries aren’t trying to attract attention by promoting they have the beer with the most this or the most that.

    – The Halltertau hop growers started coming to the Craft Brewers Conference in 2007, obviously to promote sales of their hops. They do this by bringing beers that showcase their hops. Eric Toft, who grew up in Wyoming but who has lived in Europe for more than 20 years and been brewmaster at Private Landbrauerei Schönram for almost a dozen, writes the recipes for the beers. Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania brews them because a) Eric has a long-standing relationship with Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski, b) Victory has contracts for barley and hops with Bavarian producers, and c) the logistics of licensing and shipping.

    The pale ale was not created to sell anywhere, but to illustrate to other brewers (mostly American) that Hallertau hops make an excellent addition to beers other than those intended to mimic those from Bavaria. Basing a recipe, let alone a marketing campaign, on my tastes would probably lead to disaster, but my opinion is they are right. I’d much rather try a new not particularly high gravity pale ale made with Saphir or Smaragd (two newer varieties) and one amped up on another addition of Northwest hops. I like those beers, but well-done versions exist and it seems to standout brewers feel compelled to simply dial up the flavor intensity.

    Just my opinion, but I’m not sure you will find a better spokesperson for tradition in Germany that Eric. He pitches his yeast cooler and conducts primary fermentation cooler than most, automatically adding time to the production process. He uses only aroma hops, but makes some of the hoppiest (this is a relative thing) beers in Germany. That means more hops, more expense.

    Workers at the brewery skim the fermentation every day (open fermenters, also a pain in the brewers’ butt) so the bitterness is more mellow. Schönramer Gold, which won a gold medal in the World Beer Cup, lagers 10 weeks. That’s after the longer primary. You really need to visit the brewery restaurant (it’s not far from Salzburg) because its the only place you can get Schönramer Pils and Dunkel unfiltered.

    He believes that drinkers can taste the difference. Landbrauerei Schönram has doubled production since Eric took over (this wasn’t a start up; been around for more than 230 years). At the same time consumption in Germany has shrunk dramatically, so maybe he’s on to something. Just as Ken Grossman and Jim Koch were a while back and Alex Ganum is today.

    – The new wave of beer drinkers are asking questions other than “which beer has the most alcohol?” or “which one has the weirdest ingredients?” Some ask just that, but also about where the beer is from, about the ingredients, about production practices. They talk about flavor, and want to try new ones — sometimes “extreme.” But here’s what you should really love about them, Mike. They drive marketers crazy. The don’t just advertisers make things up.

    So I met the hop queen – but what else?

    Last Wednesday, just hours after arriving in Chicago for the Craft Brewers Conference, I dutifully posted a photo of Halltertau hop queen Mona Euringer, linked it to via Twitter and Facebook and after that pretty much went back to 1998 or some other CBC in a different technological era. Blog? Tweet? I didn’t even attend the seminars on social media. Sorry.

    I did use Google maps on my phone when those of us on the “bus from hell” finally seized control after an obviously clueless bus driver drove around in circles for more than an hour and a half before delivering us to a destination less than 5 miles from the hotel. As an aside, I was on the bus that got lost (not quite an hour extra that time) at the 2008 Craft Brewers Conference. Charles and Rose Ann Finkel were on also on both buses. The takeaway? Never get on the same bus with the Finkels and I at CBC.

    This wasn’t exactly planned. I expected to blog and tweet a little more. And it didn’t happen because wi-fi in the host hotel was fleeting and cell reception in the trade show worse yet (both true). Or because there was a rather high level of social activity each evening (obviously true). It’s just that I don’t transition well from information collection mode to dispersal mode. And when I wasn’t at a seminar (like “Proper Storage, Shipping & Handling of Hop Pellets”) there was a conversation awaiting. I particularly like CBC in the even years because of the World Beer Cup competition — judges from 27 countries attended this year.

    I’ll be years (yes, really, another book project, details soon) writing about what I learned, so for now here’s one overarching observation from the conference, after the promised report from my conversation with the hop queen and the truth about Bavarian-style pale ale.

    Euringer, who turned 23 during the conference, still works on the family farm (hops, corn, and sugar beets — about 38 acres of hops) but also is studying business in school. Her great grandfather was the first in the family to grow hops, but her father has told her that she and her brother, Simon, are free to pursue whatever careers they want.

    Since Todd asked . . . Euringer, who began drinking beer when she was 16, likes the fruity flavors hops add to beer. She’s serious. She put in five hours each day at the trade show, often refreshing her glass with one of the five beers showcasing Halltertau hops that Victory Brewing made for the conference. “I can’t drink so much bitter beer,” she said.

    I asked her about Schönramer Pils, a 40-plus IBU beer that won gold at European Beer Star Awards last fall. “I like it because of what it tastes like,” she said. “But I can’t drink five bottles of it.”

    The day before the conference began she visited New Glarus Brewing in Wisconsin with the rest of the Halltertau hops contingent, and particularly enjoyed the new Two Women pale lager.

    Since Ron asked . . . The “Bavarian-style pale ale” created for the conference is a beer description, not a new style. A little confusing because for logistical purposes what we tasted was brewed in Pennsylvania, but it is Bavarian, pale and an ale, fermented with Weihenstephan #68, a top-fermenting yeast otherwise used to create weiss beers.

    The grist is 100% pale Franconian barley malt, and it was mashed (single-decoction) for a high attenuation. It was hopped with Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, Hersbrucker, Tradition, Select, and Smaragd in five separate additions. The starting gravity was 16 ºP, the final abv 7.2% and the IBU about 45.

    Now the observation, which is not exactly new, given that “microbrews” have been with us a while and these days the CBC seems awfully grown up (most of the sessions I attended focused on making beer, but options included “Craft Brand and SKU Proliferation: Great Opportunity of Great Danger” and “Intellectual Property law: Options and Protections for the Brewing Industry”):

    Sales wouldn’t still be growing if somebody didn’t want to drink all these beers. But the beers wouldn’t exist at all if people (we call them brewers) weren’t excited about what they make and how their work is received.

    Part One. Beer and food. I’m with Alan when he writes about the “need to ‘pair’ beer with food.” But shortly before the Gala Awards Dinner (for the World Beer Cup) on Saturday I spent a few minutes with Randy Mosher and Sean Paxton, who together created the menu that Sean then executed.

    Sean’s attention to detail and creativity defy description (hop scented hard boiled eggs in the salad, just amazing). But, as Randy pointed out, the meal stuck to the notion that beer shouldn’t be fussy, and therefore beer meals shouldn’t be either.

    Two evenings before Goose Island treated conference attendees to an equally amazing food experience, inviting more than a dozen Chicago chefs to create special dishes that were served with a couple of dozen of Goose Island beers. There were also a dozen variations on Bourbon County Stout served with a dozen chocolate desserts. All in the midst of about 1,000 barrels.

    My point would be that this food and beer thing excites brewers, just like Part Two.

    Vinnie Cilurzo repairing a barrelPart Two. Beers aged in barrels, sour and otherwise. Attendees filled the chairs, lined up along all the walls and took seats in the aisles for Vinnie Cilurzo’s talk called “Toothpicks, Garlic and Chalk: Three Key Ingredients to Any Brewery’s Barrel-Aged Sour Beer Program.” (In the photo on the right Cilurzo is using those tools to plug a leaking barrel at the Russian River brewpub.)

    It seemed like half those in the room raised their hands when he asked if they’d like to attend a pre-conference seminar next year (when CBC in in San Francisco) on barrel-aged sour beers. These beers intrigue brewers. They want to make them, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

    Again, not exactly new territory, but Friday afternoon I was reminded about the traits shared by people who make beer and people who drink beer when Mike Kallenberger of MillerCoors was talking rather specifically about craft beer drinkers (“What’s important to them when they’re not drinking beer, and why it matters when they are”).

    Summarizing Kallenberger is never easy, because he tends to tackle complicated subjects, so I’m going to grab one thread and hope I don’t tangle it. Craft-beer drinkers take risks because they they think they are worth taking, if there’s such a thing as a “responsible rebel” that’s them, and they see themselves as “making their own rules” rather than simply “breaking the rules.”

    Because they know they are right.

    Didn’t we just describe brewers as well? Recipes-by-focus-group don’t work for them on any level. Not telling them what new, new flavor drinkers will embrace. Certainly what they can’t do, what wouldn’t work, what people wouldn’t drink.

    They know better.

    Some are wrong. Some will fail. Some will make horrible, unbalanced beer. But I think we can tell the difference.