Do you think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?
Please leave a comment.
It would seem I’m struggling to find the balance (struck earlier in this non-contest ) between easy, at least for some, and impossible to identify. But I will keep trying.
I little research should make it possible to figure out the country. The location (city and actual drinking spot), well it helps if you’ve been there.
And a hint: Sometimes you can’t get a Corona. And that’s OK.
In a perfect world 21st Amendment Brewery would be hosting the 21st round of The Session rather than the 22nd. It didn’t break that way. Oh well, there’s still good news. The next gathering of beer bloggers falls on Dec. 5, and 21st Amendment is ready for action.
Quick class, what does that date mean to beer drinkers?
Sean and Nico, your hosts, write: “At the 21st Amendment Brewery, the repeal of Prohibition means we can celebrate the right to brew beer, the freedom to be innovative, and the obligation to have fun.
“What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?”
As usual, all bloggers are welcome to participate. Just post on Dec. 5 and drop them a line.
Given the sudden outbreak of tales about Italian beer (see below) and the reality I should save something interesting for a couple of print assignments I’m going to write a lot less here than I planned for Italian Beer Part II.
Instead I’ll steal an idea from this wine blog, which reviews wines using a single picture instead of traditional tasting notes. The new wave of Italian beers can’t be represented by a single image, but I’m suggesting this is a start:
The photo was taken at Pompeii. I didn’t choose it because it expresses something “classic,” but because of the balance and texture it shows. Those components are essential in any beer we might call exceptional. One complaint about the big hoppy beers that emerged in the United States and now the sometimes offbeat beers of Italy is that the colors sure are bright but they often clash.
Not every Italian brewer has it figured out, but there are enough to set a good example for the others.
Here’s one example. KeTo RePorter from Birra del Borgo, located about 70 kilometers east of Rome. The beer is a rich porter spiced with tobacco leaves (added during the final two minutes of the boil). Several other Birra del Borgo beers are available in the United States, however this one has had a little trouble getting label approval . . .
Anyway, perhaps we should considered the power of persuasion, but KeTo seem to have a little pipe tobacco sweetness in the aroma and flavor and surprising spicy notes that set it apart from other porters. You may or may not like this, you may or may not think it is worth the price, but Italian small-batch brewers must ask more for their beers (they are spending 40 to 50 percent more than large brewers for ingredients) so they better be offering something different.
That’s the easy part. Balance and texture are the things not even a volcano eruption can destroy.
Further reading
As noted last week, Evan Rail’s New York Times article nicely captures what is happening in the north and the beer/food connection in Italy. And Charlie Papazian, one the heals of Salone del Gusto in Turin, offered a whole series of posts on Italian beers. (Start here.)
Since like Papazian I noted that finding craft beer in Italy is still a challenge in some areas, such as Florence and Venice, I must agree that sometimes you have to work to find these beers. However, after I wrote that post I learned that 300 bar/pubs in Rome serve craft beer and that a growing number of bars, led by the pioneering Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa’, specialize in flavorful beer.
Also, I have to correct Papazian when he writes, “Are any beers being exported to places like the USA? Very, very few.” If you live in the right parts of the United States it is easier to find a range of Italian small-batch beers than in most cities in Italy. Importer B. United International has a dozen Italian beers in its portfolio, listed here.
FrankenBrew: How to Build a Micro-Brewery, is now available on DVD.
I haven’t seen this video, assembled in 1995, in some time and fully expect it will be dated. In a good way.
Tom Hennessy, one of the founders of Il Vicino in Albuquerque, put it together, featuring New Mexico microbreweries that were small and smaller. And in many cases not survivors.
It originally had a subtitle along the lines of building a brewery for “less than $20,000.” That notion’s obviously dated, and it’s a heck of a lot harder to start a brewery these days with used “re-purposed” equipment, so I wouldn’t suggest this is the video you need if you are dreaming of starting your own brewery. (Additionally, Hennessy was always quick to point out the idea might have been to get started on the cheap, however the bigger plan was to use the profits to buy “real” equipment.)
If you care about American small-batch brewing it’s worth owning even if you don’t live in New Mexico (we do, although we lived in Illinois when we first saw the video). It captures an important bit of history from a time when a lot of small breweries opened on a shoestring. Some became rip-roaring successes, more didn’t make the cut. Big picture: It’s important to hear the voices of those who don’t succeed as well as those who do.
Maybe more important, I remember grinning a lot the last time I saw this video. I look forward to seeing it soon and grinning some more.
Too much time on the road? I thought I posted this and some other bid of news last week, but just found it in my draft cue. With a few revisions, because Jonathan moved to quickly to get the Google group going, here’s the top item. The others also need a little updating, perhaps later today (today being Croatian time).
Chatter continues here and there about the possibility of a beer blogging conference, mentioned here a while back, and also opportunities for bloggers to work together. So a couple of quick thoughts:
* It won’t happen over night, so maybe we begin with regional meetings as suggested here by Alan.
* Such meetings would be facilitated by the Google group suggested and quickly created by Jonathan Surratt. This is something that would help us all every day of the week. It would also make it easier, for instance, for five bloggers to discover they’ll be at the Great Taste of the Midwest and arrange a meeting. Or perhaps a group Twitter effort. One note I read from the American Wine Bloggers meetup is that everybody was twittering.
* If we all end up at a American Beer Bloggers Conference the event will be a reflection of the beer blogging community, and while our blogs have a lot in common with wine blogs I think the agenda would be much different than at the wine conference. One of the best posts out of that one came from Steve Heimoff (be sure to read the comments as well.). I like wine and I like wine blogs, but one of the joys of life is that beer and wine are different. There’s no reason beer and wine blogs shouldn’t be as well.