I’d rather have a beer with Dennis Kucinich

Clinton vs. ObamaNot only do I not care if my beer is hip, but I also will not cast my vote for president (in the primary or general election) based upon which candidate I would rather have a beer with.

That’s just a dumb idea.

Obviously the National Beer Wholesalers Association leadership wasn’t thinking of me when they came up with an online poll that lets you vote on who you would most like to have a beer with.

Apparently George Bush was that guy in 2000. Don’t people know he doesn’t drink?

So today we’ve got this story in the San Francisco Chronicle about how Barack Obama needs a good turnout among wine drinkers to have a chance of winning the California Democratic primary.

The big showdown between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could come down to California’s “beer-drinking Democrats” versus its “wine and cheese” liberals – with the Bay Area playing a pivotal role in the outcome.

Pollster Mark DiCamillo, who has been taking the state’s political pulse for 30 years, describes the beer vote as mostly blue-collar workers, the elderly and ethnic Democrats, especially Latinos, in the Los Angeles area and rural parts of the state.

The more liberal, more educated, wine-and-cheese crowd congregates here in the Bay Area, where more than a quarter of the ballots will be cast in the Democratic primary Feb. 5, he says.

And as DiCamillo sees it, the blue-collar group likes Clinton and the wine-and-cheesers go more for Obama.

“If Obama has any chance of winning California, we should see it here in the Bay Area,” DiCamillo said. “And he’ll have to be winning here by double digits” – no easy task, considering the Clintons’ long popularity in the area.

So who’s leading the beer NBWA’s poll?

Obama.

Isn’t he supposed to be the wine guy?

But what about high-priced water?

Monday’s post about wine prices and perception caused Josh Mishell of Flying Dog Ales and BeerDinners.com to drop me a note about an episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit! (Showtime) featuring a “water steward” hawking high-priced bottled water — in bottles being filled from a garden hose out back.

Thanks, Josh.

Took all of 15 seconds to find it on YouTube.

The “beer steward” stuff starts about two minutes in.

So now we know beer drinkers are smarter than wine drinkers and water drinkers.

Barrels II: What’s the point?

Continuing last week’s discourse about barrel-aged beers the thought occurred to me I hadn’t bothered to mention why we even care. It’s not the the story behind any of these beers that matters first, but what’s in the glass. Some you would call spectacular, but there’s good reason to appreciate beers that gain extra complexity, nuance, structure, texture, etc. from wood without romping directly to spectacular.

You can’t polish a turd

If you’re not familiar with this term from my Midwestern youth you can probably figure out the meaning. Barrel-aging does not make a bad beer good. It does not necessarily make a good beer better, and may even make it worse.

Case in point: A few months after Goose Island introduced Bourbon County Stout in 1995 we were at Abita’s brewpub in Abita Springs, La., and they had Dickel Dog on tap (a draft-only experiment). It was something akin to a regular-strength brown ale aged in George Dickel bourbon barrels. Bourbon flavors totally overwhelmed the base beer. A beer that was likely perfectly good going into the barrel was, to my taste, no longer enjoyable.

And then there are the beers that were not particularly good going into wood . . .

So start with good beer

Think it’s chance that the two versions of Lost Abbey Angel’s Share (one from bourbon barrels, the other from brandy barrels) are the top two rated barley wines at Rate Beer? Or perhaps that the beers that went into the barrels were pretty exceptional.

BrewDog ParadoxAnother example would be Paradox from Scottish micro BrewDog. First shipments of BrewDog beers are due in the U.S. at the end of the month.

In less than a year BrewDog has grabbed attention for beers across the spectrum — both malt- and hop-centric &#151 and a certain attitude. “They’d be comfortable in San Diego,” one British judge at the Great American Beer Festival said.

For instance, the label for Punk IPA reads, “It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate the depth, character and quality of this premium craft brewed beer.” And, “Just back back to drinking your mass marketed, bland, cheaply made watered down lager, and close the door behind you.”

To create Paradox, founders James Watt and Martin Dickie age a strong stout (Rip Tide, not quite a strong at 8% abv, won “Best Imperial Stout” in the Beers of the World competition) in whisky casks from Duncan Taylor.

The beers spend four to six months in wood. “Some types of casks instill the flavors quicker than others, we constantly monitor them and decide when they are ready,” Watt explained via e-mail. The version I had was aged in Islay casks, and some drinkers may find the intense blast of smoke, peat and even a bit of iodine startling when compared to beer from bourbon barrels.

But if you like distinctive Scotch whisky such as Laphroaig or Ardbeg then you’ll find that the stout rounds the whisky flavors left in the barrels and vice versa, creating something altogether new.

Finding balance (with wood)

So you see it can take a beer of some heft to stand up to the intensity of barrels that once held spirits. That’s not the direction every brewer chooses to go. For instance, Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing near Boston lets barrels that once held bourbon dry out, then dehydrates them to avoid an impression of “heat” that can come with spirits.

Anyway, the DRAFT and Imbibe stories were about how brewers are finding flavors never previously associated with beer and there’s no need to repeat all of that here.

Instead a little more from Matt Trevisan, the winemaker at Linne Calodo Winery who helped set the blends for Firestone 10 and Firestone 11, because it’s a chance to look down another road available to brewers.

Trevisan was discussing how tannins from wood add to mouthfeel and the decisions that go into choosing a level of toast (that’s barrel talk) when he explained the idea of “dressing up the wine.”

Three months in wood will do that. “It jumps out of the mouth, the aromatics at the start and the impression at the finish,” he said. “It’s shorter in structure, but it jumps.”

That changes after six months in a barrel. “You’ll think that you’ve over-oaked it,” he said. “Then by 12 to 15 months it will integrate and soften. The impression of wood won’t be as strong.”

A lot to learn.

Why you might like expensive beer more

Expensive beerNow some Monday afternoon musing (because I just came across this).

This is how the Times Online leads the story: “Restaurants charging inflated prices for wine could be doing their customers a favour. A study has found that people who pay more for a product do enjoy it more.”

This was in fact serious research at the California Institute of Technology in which scientists tested how marketing shapes consumers’ perceptions and whether it also enhances their enjoyment of a product.

They asked 21 volunteers to sample five different bottles of cabernet sauvignon and rate their taste preferences. Without telling the volunteers, the researchers presented two of the wines twice, once with the true price tag, and again with a fake one. They passed off a $90 bottle of cabernet sauvignon as a $10 bottle, and presented a $5 bottle as one worth $45.

Here’s the science part: The volunteers’ brains were scanned to monitor the neural activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex – the area of the brain associated with decision-making and pleasure in terms of flavor. Researchers found “expensive” wines made the cortex more active.

Antonio Rangel, who led the research team, told the BBC News website that the experiment showed how “expectation can affect the actual encoding of the pleasantness of the experience.”

The BBC expanded on the story:

Wine expert Jancis Robinson says she was not surprised to see that the research was carried out in California.

She argues that American attitudes to wine can be very different to those of the British wine-buying public.

“At least seven years ago, I was told by a sommelier at a top restaurant in California that he couldn’t sell wine that was priced at under $100 at bottle,” she says. “He was able to sell the same wine when he raised the price to more than $100.”

And back to the Times Online:

Other researchers point out that the subjects in the study were not paying for the wine. The pleasure they derived from the belief that they were drinking expensive wine might have been diluted if they had been picking up the bill.

Scott Rick, a researcher in neuroeconomics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said: “There are people who derive pleasure from spending, and those for whom it is painful. In a study of 13,000 people it emerged that 15% were spendthrifts to whom spending gave pleasure and 25% were tight-wads to whom it gave pain, and the remaining 60% fell in between the two.”

For the record, this is not why we should be paying more for some beers. We should because they are worth more (though not necessarily nine or ten fold more).

Your turn, Alan.

Monday morning musing: America’s hippest beer?

All About Beer MagazineI’m not sure what to think of the cover for the latest All About Beer magazine that prominently features New Belgium Brewing co-founder Kim Jordan with a headline that reads She makes America’s Hippest Beer.

Jay Brooks writes inside about the greening of America’s breweries (New Belgium is at the forefront), but it’s also made clear that “hippest” on the front refers to Fat Tire Amber Ale.

Look, I’m a fan of New Belgium (had Fat Tire with dinner in a restaurant Saturday) and have been writing for AABM for more than 14 years. I’m certainly not trying to pick a fight, but the hippest beer in America? In further considering the idea I came to a series of (eventually painful) conclusions:

* I have no idea which beer America’s drinkers might vote hippest.

* I don’t care if my beer his hip.

* Therefore I might just be old.

I finally figured this out after a comment from jesskidden in the discussion about “extreme beers”:

I also noted that I found using “sick” as a synonym for “great” (especially for beer) to be confusing- “This beer tastes SICK!”

This wasn’t a Belgian brewer talking about his lambic going through a bad phase. This was more like the e-mail I received from a brewer who talked about a store’s sick selection, meaning I’d like it.

Hey, it’s good that the next generation thinks beer (“craft,” “extreme,” “micro” or whatever) can be sick.

Now I’m wondering why I find the question of who brews the sickest beer more compelling than who brews the hippest.

– Philly Beer Week “officially” lasts 10 days (March 7-16), but it starts with a festival a week earlier. And it looks like they plan to pack at least a month’s worth of events in. Quite a schedule at the website.

And they’ve even got this cute commercial:

– And a story that just makes you smile — The Seattle Times updates what Charles and Rose Ann Finkel have been doing since buying back Pike Brewing in 2006. Let’s saw they aren’t resting on their considerable laurels. “Now our overall goal is to make it a world-class brewery,” Charles said.