Chocolate: Homebrew gone awry?

Researchers are reporting (I like the National Geographic version) that chocolate was discovered by accident by Central American Indians who were making beer.

“In the course of beer brewing, you discover that if you ferment the seeds of the plant you get this chocolate taste,” said John Henderson, an anthropologist at Cornell University. “It may be that the roots of the modern chocolate industry can be traced back to this primitive fermented drink.”

Duvel shaped chocolate

In a new study scientists chemically analyzed the Honduran pottery fragments.

“It was beer with a high kick,” said study author Rosemary Joyce, an anthropologist at University of California, Berkeley. “But it would not have tasted anything like the chocolate we have today.”

The Geographic suggests this could inspire new chocolate dishes.

(It) could “fuel creativity and spark the imagination of chocolatiers and chefs,” Alice Medrich, author of Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate, said by email.

“As a result, we get new ideas about using chocolate in savory as well as sweet dishes and about pairing the flavors of chocolate with other flavors, too,” Medrich said.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking that if you performed an MRI on the brain of Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery — the master at turning what scientists discover in ancient pots into beers we could never imagine — you’d see the wheels spinning at record speed.

Of course this only confirms a beer and chocolate connection that’s hardly a secret. Lucy Saunders devotes a chapter to “Chocolate: Another Fermented Favorite” in the recently released The Best of American Beer & Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer.

The photo above is from a chocolate shop in Brugges, where they shape really good chocolate into all manner of things, including a Duvel bottle and glass.

Further Reading:
– Pete Slosberg talks about shifting from the beer business to the chocolate business.
– A “chocolate companion” from Stephen Beaumont.
– Saunders offers recipes at her beercook.com site.

No, Pabst did not buy part of Southampton

Apologies, because I really don’t plan to make this site all Southampton-Pabst all the time. But since the question was asked and I obviously did not make it clear before . . .

Strategic alliance means just that. Pabst did not buy Southampton Brewing or an portion of the company. Southampton owner Donald Sullivan explained via e-mail:

“Pabst has not bought any percentage of SHB. Southampton stays independent. The strategic alignment is affording SHB a well established distribution network with full sales and marketing and marketing support while allowing PBC to begin to offer it’s distributors a specialty brand that has legitimacy in terms of quality and reputation.

“SHB receives economies of scale with market penetration equal to most or all of regional/national competitors while PBC is able to access and offer the myriad of styles available through the SHB license agreement.”

Tomorrow will focus on actual beer, not business. Hope that’s not an empty promise (because I don’t have a clue what it might be about).

Phil Markowski talks about Pabst deal

Prepare your knee.

Pabst Brewing announces that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Southampton Bottling to market and distribute its award-winning line of craft-brewed ales and lagers.

Jerk.

Oh my God, what are they doing? Selling out.

Those last words are from Southampton brewmaster Phil Markowski, saying out loud what he knows many in the beer loving community are thinking.

Southampton BrewingLet’s cut to the chase. Markowski is one of the most respected brewers in the country and many of the beers he’s brewed at Southampton Publick House in Long Island developed a cult following. They are beers of conviction (my words, not his).

Whether you figure Pabst abandoned conviction in the 1870s by joining the rush to adjunct brewing, in 2001 when it closed its last brewery and became a marketing firm, or sometime between I’m comfortable saying that Pabst currently doesn’t sell many, perhaps any, beers of conviction. That changes when this deal closes during the first quarter of 2008.

To be clear, I’m not calling the myriad of brands (remember we’re talking about Pabst, Schlitz, Lone Star and a host of others) Pabst markets bad beers. They are well executed, which is why Pabst was honored as Large Brewing Company of the Year at the Great American Beer Festival in 2006 and 2007. Remember that what they choose to do they do well.

So what’s going to happen with the Southampton beers? Markowski discussed the future Friday while his car was on a ferry, taking him to his Connecticut home after he’d finished a day of brewing at the Publick House in Southampton. He lives pretty much equidistant, meaning 2½ hours, from the three breweries where he makes Southampton beers.

At Olde Saratoga Brewing in Saratoga Spring, N.Y., he supervises production of three year-round brands sold in six packs, as well as seasonal beers sold in 22-ounce bottles. At Sly Fox Brewing in Royersford, Pa., he brews beers packaged in 750ml corked bottles. And in Southampton he brews beer for the pub, with a part of a few batches sometimes ending up in bottles.

What changes? He won’t brew at Olde Saratoga anymore, because the brewery doesn’t have enough excess capacity. He’ll likely make Secret Ale, Double White Ale and perhaps IPA at the Lion Brewery in Pennsylvania, which is in the process of being sold. (Lew Bryson is the go-to guy for those updates). Nothing changes at the pub or with the 750s.

Phil Markowski“I intend to be on site for every brew indefinitely,” Markowski said.

“I have the intention of being totally hands on,” he said a little later. “There is no thought of changing the product or the integrity of the product.”

Those are words of conviction. He speaks just as assertively when it comes to contract brewing and batch size.

Arguments about contract brewing have been going on for more than 20 years. “I understand the roots of that (“contract isn’t the same as craft”) thinking, but I think that is changing,” Markowski said. “As the industry is growing up some of subjectivity is coming out of it. … It’s more, ‘How does it taste?'”

Remember the off-the-wall commercials that Miller ran 10 years ago featuring a fellow called Dick? One for Miller Genuine Draft told us, “It’s time to drink beer from vats the size of Rhode Island.” That pretty well epitomized a notion of micro versus macro that continues today.

“It’s less romantic, but the perception that you can’t make good beer on a large scale is wrong,” Markowski said. Then why aren’t the larger breweries winning medals in the GABF categories micros enter?

“They often become timid with a beer flavor profile,” Markowski said.

So here we are back discussing conviction. When the this deal was announced last week, Long Island wine blogger Lenn Thompson wrote:

… how many times have we seen terrific craft brews gobbled up by big brewers only to see the distinctive flavors disappear, resulting in watered down beers that are mere shadows of their former selves? I’m worried, but I guess we’ll see how this plays out.

Other than the Celis Brewery, which Miller literally ran into the ground, can you think of another small American brewery ruined when it was gobbled up? (And, to be clear, Southampton is not being gobbled.)

I may have forgotten one, but I can guarantee the list of smaller breweries that ran aground by underestimating beer drinkers’ interest in distinctive flavors is far longer.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of conviction.

The Session #10: Let it snow, let it snow

The SessionTed Duchesne at Barley Vine has announced the theme for The Session #10: “Let it snow, let it snow, Winter Seasonal Beers.”

The basics:

# Pick any Winter Seasonal beer you want. Or a sampler if you’d like (think the Sam Adam’s one I picked up earlier this week).
# If you select a single beer, let us know why you choose this beer.
# Extra credit for pairing your winter seasonal beer with a winter meal, or better yet a recipe based on the beer of your choice.
# Post your contribution to The Session on Friday, December 7. Send the links to your post and a few short days later Ted will post a round up of everyone’s contributions.

You don’t have to take the “let it snow” part literally. Just the beer.

Cottage brewing, circa 1912

Hops boxThink homebrewing is difficult? Here’s a recipe for Cottage Beer:

“Good wheat bran 1 peck, water 10 gallons, hops 3 handfuls, molasses 2 quarts, yeast 2 tablespoonfuls; boil the bran and the hops in the water until both bran and hops sink to the bottom; then strain through a sieve, and when lukewarm put in the molasses and stir until assimilated; put in a cask and add the yeast; when fermentation ceases bung, and it is ready in 4 days. This is an excellent beer.”

Doesn’t look too hard, although I’m not vouching for the end result. The recipe comes from a book called Lee’s Priceless Recipes, which included “300 secrets from the home, farm, laboratory, workshop and every department of human endeavor.”

The book was published in 1912, and I expect that all the pages in Beverages section were stamped “NOT LEGAL TO MAKE” when Prohibition came into full force in 1919.

Not sure why Corn Coffee would have been illegal, other than it sounds disgusting. Cherry Cordial, Egg Wine and Peruvian Bitters I can understand.

As you can tell by the Cottage Beer recipe, most of these were kitchen-size batches. But the one for Home-Brewed Ale? That takes 8 bushels of malt, 12 pounds of hops and 5 quarts of yeast. It calls for straining the cooled wort through a flannel bag into a fermenting tub.

My point? That ingredients grown and processed specifically to use in beer make better beer. And better ingredients make it better still.