The Session #15: Beer and epiphanies

The SessionWriting about beer certainly changed my relationship with beer, and made what might look like a simple question next to impossible to answer.

I got to thinking about this because for The Session #15 Boak and Bailey asked those of us in the beer blogosphere to answer this question: How did it all start for you? And going further, “We’d like you to write about the moment when you saw the light.”

Looking over the early posts I’ve been startled that people can single out a beer or a where, because there is no single moment or beer I can point to. From the time going on 40 (gulp) years ago I thought “Hey, there’s something different about this Stroh’s from the the basic what’s-in-the-pitcher beer we’ve been drinking in campus bars” my relationship beer has been evolving. Still is. So across a few decades . . .

1980s, Central Illinois. Schlösser Alt. German bars in the Midwest moved enough beer that we told ourselves it was probably fresh. Dortmunder Union sure had more flavor than American lagers, but then we discovered this alt and bitterness.

1993, a lookout tower north of Mancos, Colorado. New Belgium Abbey Grand Cru. We were still Illinois flatlanders, enjoying a view of four states at 10,000 feet. The beer was brewed with yeast acquired from a Chimay bottle, but it was made nearby.

1994, Lyme Regis (south of England). Five days before a pint of Royal Oak (Eldridge Pope) in Sherbourne had been simply spectacular. This totally living Bass buried it. Bass. A lifeless beer not worth drinking in the States.

All of those experiences occurred separately from writing about beer. But we’ve also trooped into hundreds of brewpubs in the last 20 years, I’ve visited monastery breweries, only scratched the surface with American small-batch brewers and then there are hops . . .

Anyway, I also wouldn’t have been at the last 15 Great American Beer Festivals if I didn’t write about beer. So in October I wouldn’t have had either Cable Car or Toronado 20th Anniversary, brewed and blended by Lost Abbey and Russian River respectively to celebrate Toronado’s anniversary. (Yes, an option would have been to go to Toronado’s party.) One-offs that proved for the hundreth (or is that thousandth?) time that a beer can reveal something no other beer has before.

And no, it doesn’t have to be a new-fangled creation — later this year we’ll be sampling beers in the south of Germany and not much later in the north of Italy, which should be a pretty fun compare and contrast. And no, a beer doesn’t have do that to be great. And yes, perhaps I’m a little dense, but that beer can still surprise me is a joy.

For more Session posts, and perhaps even epiphanies, be sure to see Boak and Bailey’s roundup.

Beer still costs more than gas

Beer: Cheaper than GasFunny T-shirt today at Shirts on Sale (no affiliation deal; just a link), but the fact is that beer costs a lot more than gas. A gallon of gas around here — $3.35 to $3.45 in these parts this morning — will set you back less than half what a half-gallon growler of beer costs at a local brewery.

So don’t wimp out. Oppose suggestions we need a gas tax holiday.

Fact is our family would almost surely benefit more than yours (since our summer is full of diesel-powered travel), and we’re not biting on this short-term fix.

‘Extreme beers’ still sell newspapers

And now we step outside the beer blogosphere — where it might seem there is nothing new to say about “extreme beers” — to recognize that to normal people they are still a topic of discussion.

Peter Rowe, whose work in the San Diego Union-Tribune I’ve pointed to many times, used the occasion of the Craft Brewers Conference to revisit the subject: The art of crafts: Extreme or balanced? The great beer debate continues.

Much from the the usual suspects, such as Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery saying, “If a chef tells you this is the saltiest stew you’ve ever tasted, that’s not what I want to hear. Anybody can put more hops in a brew kettle. That’s not a skill.”

And Greg Koch of Stone Brewing countering: “There may be a brewer somewhere that is just shoving more hops in. But the ones that really shine are the big beers that are artfully made.”

Certainly worth your time.

Rowe also has a six-pack of beer trends.

Could Magic Hat be a local beer on the West Coast?

You don’t have to come here to read that Magic Hat is acquiring Pyramid.

It’s here, there and everywhere. Including the possibility that Pyramid will brew Magic Hat beers for the West Coast and perhaps vice versa.

So some stuff you may not have seen, mostly about the business of beer but bound to affect what ends up happening with the beers themselves.

Magic Hat CEO Martin Kelly previously worked for Pyramid (one of many stops on his resume). He left Pyramid in 2004 and shortly thereafter began at Magic Hat. Vermont Business Magazine provided details in a 2006 profile of Magic Hat founder Alan Newman.

Kelly, a self-described “a corporate gypsy,” served time at Coca Cola, Miller Brewing Co, Borden Foods, and was CEO of Pyramid Brewery, a craft beer company on the West Coast, before he came to Magic Hat to develop a five-year plan.

“I had the explicit intention of not being here more than three months,” Kelly said. “But in working through, I became excited about the potential for Magic Hat: the brand, the company Alan had created, and the opportunity for organic growth and expanding. Alan said, ‘Now, don’t you want to stay on and execute the plan?’ And I said yes.”

According to Kelly, who runs Magic Hat under the whimsical title of Potentate, Pilot & Primary Prestidigitator (P4), he has three major areas of focus: “Build the relevance of our existing brands in existing markets and grow market share; continuously evolve our portfolio of beers to keep it fresh, interesting and relevant to our community of consumers; and maintain our methodical expansion into new markets.”

Shortly before he left Pyramid, Kelly closed a deal to take over Portland Brewing, providing perspective by comparing it to agreements such as Anheuser-Busch taking a stake in Widmer and Redhook.

“The craft brewing business is very competitive and changes daily. To stay ahead, breweries must keep moving forward,” he said. “Some breweries have chosen to go the route of aligning themselves with large, multinational, industrial brewers. We believe that approach can stifle creativity and lead to less choice for consumers. Our approach aligns two independent Northwest breweries and retains the creativity and integrity craft brewers are known for.”

But Portland wasn’t particularly independent after Kelly left Pyramid. The Portland brand essentially disappeared, although MacTarnahan’s seems to be thriving.

That’s good enough reason for me to pass on making predictions. Instead I’ve posted a rather long interview with Kelly from 2002. Lots about distribution, but that’s part of the business of beer.

And he also talked the importance of “where.”

“We are local, we are in Seattle. An import can’t be from Seattle, they can’t,” he said.

So if Magic Hat is brewed in Berkeley and sold in Berkeley is it a local beer or a Vermont beer? And which will Californians want?

I don’t know.

Monday morning musing: Grading on a curve?

To jump start your brain this morning: Two beer posts and a wine link that provoked one of the posts.

Stephen Beaumont on Great Beer vs. Popular Beer.

The number one beer in the United States, for example, is Bud Light, a pale lager with, frankly, some complexity of character, but a flavour profile so that thin it’s almost unnoticeable. This is the choice of the general public, and the general public is well served by it. I am not. I prefer more flavour, more aroma, greater depths and complexities of character and a more notable and lingering aftertaste, and I prefer those general traits in any beer I drink, under any set of circumstances.

Jeff Holt at Wort’s Going on Here? wonders why not a single American macro can get a decent score at the beer rating sites.

So, Corona versus Landshark? On both sites, both beers are rated as “To be Avoided.” Say you are stuck in a resort in Mexico that doesn’t have a beer above 8% ABV, as the top 12 beers on the Beer Advocate list of the top beers. So you can only choose between ten or twelve “D-” beers?

There’s something fundamentally flawed about these beer ratings. Are you telling me that sitting under a Live Oak Tree on a hot, Texas July day a Trappist Westvleteren 12 is better than a cold Budweiser?

And from Eric Asimov of the New York Times, whose notes about the upcoming book “The Wine Trials” provide Beaumont with a starting point. (You’ll want to click over for the entertaining comments &#151 wine people get snippy in such an amusing way.)

In the end, the book seems to divide wine consumers into the casual buyers who are pushed this way and that by forces they don’t understand, and the wealthy conspicuous status seekers who also are not quite aware of capitalism and marketing. Unacknowledged are the serious wine lovers who are knowledgeable, experimental and passionate, and who, yes, are in control of their own destinies.

Perhaps we should be happy beer doesn’t “merit” such serious academic study.