TWTBWTW: What counts as innovation in beer?

Brewing tools -- from a different era

 

This.

I wish the thread (if you click about you’ll find a few more replies) had grown into a larger conversation, one that discussed what counts as innovation in beer.

I don’t know how Voodoo Ranger Juice Force IPA is produced, that is if the brewers at New Belgium have come up with a new magic process for pumping flavor into beer. But I do know that they were way ahead of the curve a dozen years ago. Which is why then-brewmaster Peter Bouckaert sat in on a panel about dry hopping at the 2010 Craft Brewers Conference. “If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I’d be on a dry-hopping panel I think you all would have been laughing,” he said at the time.

How and how brewers hop beer has changed more than a little bit during the twenty-first century. Does simply using more hops qualify as innovation? How about changing when in the process the hops are added?

And what about the form of hops that brewers use? The latest Hop Queries has a bit about SubZero Hop Kief from Freestyle Hops in New Zealand. SubZero is produced by New River Distilling in North Carolina. I wrote about New River four-plus years ago for Good Beer Hunting, should you be interested.

The process is innovative, but also . . . oh, that name. It speaks to brewers, and they are Freestyle’s customers. In “Cultural Strategy: Using Innovative Ideologies Breakthrough Brands,” the authors write, “A cultural innovation is a brand that delivers an innovative cultural expression.” Freestyle is marketing a better mousetrap — that is signaling that its hops are better than the competition’s — but visit their website to see they are signaling something beyond that.

(The same may be written about several hop growers; making connections is just as important for them as making connections with drinkers is for brewers.)

Back to New Belgium and Voodoo Ranger. The authors of “Cultural Strategy” (published in 2012) present “Fat Tire Beer: Crossing the Cultural Chasm” as a case study in Chapter 11. New Belgium had hired them as consultants in 2003. That was a while ago, when Fat Tire accounted for a ridiculous percentage of sales and Sunshine White and 1554 were second and third.

It is a fascinating chapter that reveals much about the thinking of niche breweries in the aughts, concluding:

“Crossing the cultural chasm requires moving from a marketplace dominated by insider customers, who often hold considerable expertise in the category to what we call follower customers, who simply want an accessible way to tap into a valued cultural expression that the product can credibly represent.”

Fat Tire is still important to New Belgium — here in Colorado many of the trucks that distributors use to deliver beer advertise the beer — but the Voodoo Ranger family does the heavy lifting. Perhaps somebody needs to write a book about re-innovation.

More That Was The Beer Week That Was . . .

After the meme
“I never imagined being the C.E. muthafucking-O owner of a brewery, but here I am. If I can do it, anyone can.”

B minus
“BrewDog is no longer a Certified B Corp. B Lab does not comment on companies that are no longer in the B Corp community. I’m afraid I cannot share any further information.”

Hops
– Use them or lose them. That’s the conclusion of this love letter to English hops.

– A list.

– I’m confused. The headline says two decades ago, but the story states, correctly, that a great (and short-lived) hop shortage began in 2007. The headline contends that Boston Beer “saved craft brewers from a catastrophic hop shortage.” Certainly, Boston Beer deserves credit for offering 20,000 pounds of hops to other small breweries at a very fair price. But the story also links to still another story that reveals Sierra Nevada sold 150,000 pounds “without much fanfare.”

Pubs
– I wonder if there are pubs at the end of the mysterious once a month train line and how one would get back if I got on it?

– The Samuel Smith empire.

– Informal neighborhood gathering places.

TWTBWTW: Horses at a brewery

Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NM

On tap at Ex Novo Brewing, Corrales, NMEx Novo Brewing in Corrales, NM, has horse parking. The stucco building in the distance is the brewery tasting room.

(As an aside, it also has a diverse choice of beers on tap.)

Just down the road, a sign in front of Village Mercantile Home and Farm Store this past weekend informed those driving by that it was Small Business Saturday, created to benefit local merchants the day after Black Friday. The Mercantile sells a lot of horse feed and serves the community in which we once lived quite well. Ex Novo has quickly become a family (and horse) friendly gathering spot and also serves the village well.

That’s simply an observation occasionally worth considering when viewing this week’s suggested reading. Speaking of which, Alan McLeod titled his latest beer link-o-rama “The Laziest Beery News Notes Of The Last 167 Weeks” and I can’t figure out why. There was plenty to read, plenty to think about, plenty of serious things to think about seriously. Instead, I offer this as a much lazier effort:

– Buying beer and beer merchandise is not going to have the world.

– Don’t sleep on Gale’s Prize Old Ale. Martyn Cornell brought a bottle to share at Ales Through the Ages. I tasted about an ounce and I endorse his recommendation.

– Holiday ales. “Since Twitter is dying, perhaps we can get back to commenting on blogs. I invite you to discuss your favorite winter beers.”

– If you are paying a premium for flavor and “craft” why shouldn’t NA beer cost as much? (That’s me asking the question after reading the story.)

– Remember when beer weeks were special? “San Diego’s brewers have come too far to let San Diego Beer Week become just another week in San Diego beer.”

– Brewing Local, redux. Small world. This was a topic of The Session more than 10 years ago. And, yes, I wrote an entire book centered on the topic. One that shows up in this hip hop video.

TWTBWTW: Tree beers & other reasons to ask what is beer

Best of show beers Copa Baja

What on tap at El Sume in Mexicali

Welcome to MLX Beerfest in Mexicali

Yes, there is a lot of IPA out there, but as the photo at the top illustrates there were beers of many colors on the best of show table last week at Copa Baja in Mexicali, Mexico. And 17 of the 24 beers on tap at El Sume (where the bottle list is also pretty dang impressive) were not IPAs. The third photo? Well, welcome to the MLX Beerfest that followed two days of competition in Mexicali, Mexico.

Another busy week, so another quick list of reading suggestions:

What is beer? No seriously. Pete Brown wrapped up is keynote at Ales Through the Ages by quoting Hilary Mantel: “History is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organizing our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record.” This post is more fodder for that conversation.

Strictly speaking. During the final session of Ales Through the Ages, in which some presenters took questions from attendees, the topic of beer styles came up. And how we should view them at a time when, as Brown wrote on Instagram, “The very definition of beer is highly debatable.” Pretty good timing that Em Sauter posed a similar question – “Do Strictly Defined Beer Styles Still Have Value in the Modern Craft Landscape?” – one day later.

Birch trees that soon will provide water for beer at Scratch Brewing

Liquid assets. Speaking of beers made with alternative water sources, I am reminded of “single tree beers” from Scratch Brewing in southern Illinois. The photo above was taken in the woods outside Ava, Illinois. Those are birch trees and the sap in the buckets ended up in a beer Scratch made in 2015. That’s the first year the brewery took all tree beers to the Great American Beer Festival.

In a place. I write often about “from a place,” but that is only part of the place story. As always, I wonder how what Jeff Alworth writes about might change the beer in our glasses and the places we might choose to gather to socialize over beer.

The Costco indicator. “This time around the Costco gurus looked hard at their customer base … and blinked. They decided to pass on a fee increase, which could mean a lot of things but might mean that they believe even their affluent member base is feeling the economic heat. And that’s not good news for wine, since these are the customers driving the U.S. market these days.” What might this mean for beer?

Corn in Chocolate City. “As the city has changed [in recent years] then the beer culture [has come to] reflect the newcomers.”

And from Twitter:

Best name ever for an unbearably hip IPA

Cheap Idols Dressed in Expensive Garbage

Cheap Idols Dressed in Expensive Garbage.

I’ve been meaning to suggest the title of still another great song from John Moreland would make a great name for a beer. Finally getting it done. [Click to see the video]

I’m in the midst of a 10-day road trip, so just a few links related to the beer week that was, and basically no musing. Road trip ends next Sunday, and then there is Thanksgiving. Things might be quiet on the link front for a while.

Here goes . . .

Drive Thru Brew. Speaking of beer names.

Wah Gwaan: Where Jamaican-Inspired Beers Breakthrough a Broken System. I can vouch for Jerk Drum, flavored with jerk seasoning, peppers, ginger . . . and that’s not all.

Belgian Beer. “Over the last half-decade, Belgian beer’s wattage has dimmed stateside. Saisons have struggled to find traction and comprehension. Local breweries and taprooms have proliferated, negating the need for beer imported from across the Atlantic.” Sadly, this is true. It is a reminder that brewers, who often talk about how much they like the beers and who make Belgium an essential beer destination, don’t actually decide what will be popular.

Bottles. This is a sponsored post advocating for packaging beer in bottles. And now the side of the story (from the viewpoint of winemakers).

TWTBWTW: Beer history, reality check & pub porn

Miller Lite Christmas decorations

Call it Beer History Week. There’s Ales Through the Ages in Williamsburg, Va., and Beer Culture Summit in Chicago. They are both hybrid conferences, that is in-person and virtual.

So first up today, Martyn Cornell — who’ll be presenting at both conferences — digs deep into a new book that “picks up a tall stack of received wisdom on the origins and development of two of Belgium’s most iconic, most revered beer styles (lambic and geueze) and smashes it all on the floor.”

He writes, “for me this is exactly reminiscent of the situation surrounding the histories of porter and IPA at the start of this century: lots of terrific stories, repeated by everybody, all unfortunately powered by myth, misunderstanding and a total lack of actual evidence to support them.”

I’m pretty sure sorting out myths from terrific stories will be discussed in after hours drinking socializing in Williamsburg.

Reality check: brewing is a business, a changing business

Hitting reset. The headline on this story summarizes it well, “The Lost Abbey shifting its model to match current industry trends.” As does the headline on a second story, “Vow of Modesty — Amidst Sales Pressures, The Lost Abbey Downsizes to Preserve a Longer Future.”

Beyond . . . well, something. Lost Abbey made its way into pretty much every trade-related conversation I had after their right-sizing story posted Tuesday. Whether the people I was speaking with were at small breweries content to remain small, at somewhat larger (but not really large) ones in the midst if figuring out how large they should be, or hop vendors who sure as shootin’ need to know how their customers are doing, the news was not shocking.

I don’t doubt there are brewers out there who thought, holy shit, what business have I got myself in to? And others who still consider themselves immune. They just don’t happen to be the brewing types I talk with regularly. It understand this is a luxury, one consumers may also enjoy. So two paragraphs from this story about non-beer from beer pioneers:

– “Today’s craft breweries of a certain size are morphing into multi-threat operators whose foundational fealty to ‘traditional beer’ has been tempered by drinkers’ changing tastes, increased competition, and investors’ demands, too. Or they’d better start soon, because there’s a paradigm shift afoot: The country’s biggest craft beer producers are becoming ‘beverage companies,’ like Boston Beer Company and those dastardly macrobrewers before them.”

– “Don’t fret if you’re a longtime craft beer fan who loved the whole small/local/independent thing, either. There are still, like, a bajillion beer-making craft breweries out there for you to patronize.”

Personally, I value the “making a connection” and “brewing interesting beer” thing more than the “small/local” thing, but it does seem the two are often intertwined.

Is this cheating? We used to live around the corner from Jason Pellet of Orpheus Brewing in Atlanta, and I know the lengths he goes to in order to add unusual flavors to his beers. (You’ll find him quoted in this story.) I appreciate the effort, but I’m not going to spend much time worrying about if a brewery I have no connection with is flavoring its beer with an Amoretti product. That is somebody else’s fight. But it seems like a statement from the company that they are working with half of the 9,000-plus breweries in the country requires supporting evidence.

You might also enjoy

Kölsch noir. Koln in black and white.

The class of 2012. This story fits under the umbrella of the business of beer, but it also touches upon how what we expect from breweries is changing. Not only what’s in the glass, but what roles they play within the various communities that support them, including financially. As Jeff Alworth points out, more than 7,000 breweries have opened during the 10 years the nine breweries he focuses on have been operating. Together those breweries are part of a big story.

There are hundreds, well thousands, more small stories. They are often similar, but still unique to their place. The neighbors drinking excellent lagers at Fritz Family Brewers in Niwot, Colorado, don’t give diddly-squat that Varietal Beer in Sunnyside, Washington, had four fresh hop beers on tap during hop harvest. I look forward to reading (or listening to, because: podcasts) stories about such breweries. The stories don’t have to be 2,000 words long and it is OK if the people within are as ordinary as you and I. (Don’t take that wrong. You may be special. I can be ordinary enough for both of us.)

ID required. The link may get you past the age gate or you may have to plugin a birth date (your own or a random stranger’s). Honestly, I included the link so I could post the picture at the top. Bigger Beernaments and adding keg functionality to a tree stand? Not on my wish list.

Pubs. The pictures in this new book and the descriptions of the four finalists for Pub of the Year 2022 . . . they seem like magic, don’t they?