Hops shortage? What hops shortage?

This from the Monthly Mash, a regular dispatch from Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colo:

As most of you have probably heard by now, the craft beer industry has been hard hit by a global hop shortage this year. The chronic oversupply that characterized the hop market for the 90’s and much of this decade is officially gone, taking with it the low hop prices that microbreweries like Avery have enjoyed for so many years. For most breweries 2008 will be a year of compromise. Brewers will have to tackle the undesirable task of tinkering with their most prized recipes to try and figure out how to get the same flavors using fewer hops.

While some observers may posit that the hop shortage is a good thing, forcing brewers to become more efficient and prudent with their use of hops, we at Avery tend to disagree. Hops are the heart and soul of our beers and we refuse to compromise our recipes or our flavors. Even more, as if to scoff in the face of common sense and basic brewery economics, we decided to increase the hops that were added to this years New World Porter. The 2008 batch is truly a black IPA.

The beer debuts in just two hours at the Avery Tasting Room. Alas, it’s more than a seven-hour drive from here.

Brace yourself: Extreme beers in the NY Times

Pouring an extreme beerEric Asimov prepares us: “My column in Wednesday’s paper is on American extreme beers, a topic that I think is fascinating whether you’re a beer drinker or not.”

We’ll find out more tomorrow, including what beers the New York Times panelists liked. (Here’s the link, and you must check out the photo.)

The place for comment then will be Asimov’s blog. As I type there is but one comment, from the constantly entertaining Fredric Koeppel, but this is a topic that should generate scores more.

How many do you think? 50? 100?

I’ll be content to sit back and read. We’ve already talked this to death in the beer blogosphere.

But words from Koeppel, Asimov and Michael Jackson nicely frame what will surely follow tomorrow.

From Koeppel: “In beer, wine and food, the elements of balance, harmony and integrity mean everything.”

From Jackson (in the introduction to Beer-Eyewitness Companions): “Tomorrow’s classics will evolve from a new breed of American brews that are categorized by their admirers as ‘Extreme Beers.’ These are the most intense-tasting beers ever produced anywhere in the world.”

And from Asimov (after all, it is his blog): “Beauty often springs from the creative dynamic between the Old and New Worlds, in which the tension between tradition and liberation holds it all together.”

(The photo at the top is believed to document the first pouring of a pre-Prohibition Double IPA, brewed with twice the flaked maize of a traditional pre-pro beer and four times the amount of Cluster hops.)

The Session #12 announced: Barley wine

The SessionJon would like us to call it barleywine while some would call it barley wine. In any event, he’s announced that’s what we’ll be tasting for Session #12.

Is this the time to haul out the 1968 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale? Probably not.

But perhaps a vertical of newer versions, or maybe six Sierra Nevada Bigfoots, going only with the odd years so we can span 1997 through 2007 and still be able to walk.

Speaking of Bigfoot, Rick Sellers has the rundown on special packaging to celebrate 25 years of Bigfoot.

2008: The adventure begins

Stovepipe Well sand dunes

While some of you may have been sleeping in on January First we were venturing up and down the sand dunes nears Stovepipe Wells (Elevation 0) in Death Valley. If you click on the photo you’ll find it easier see one person (Daria) standing and another (Sierra, in pink) sitting.

What does this have to do with beer? Nothing, other than to explain why I suggested a while back there will be less blogging here in 2008 and 2009 than there was last year.

Long before the first post went up at Appellation Beer we were already planning a trip that will last nearly 15 months. After Sierra graduates fifth grade in May we’ll be headed north to Alaska. By August of 2009 we expect we’ll have been in 49 states, the District of Columbia, nine Canadian provinces, and 14 European countries.

Since they have nothing to do with the mission here, no need to bore you with trip details — there will probably be another blog for that.

When we started talking about this adventure it was to be even more of a sabbatical (other than for Sierra, for whom school never ends). Since then other beer-related projects have popped up. I’ll be working on a book about wheat beer for Brewers Publications, and want to get the Beer Oral History Institute rolling. Expect a few magazine stories as well — got to compensate for what’s happened to the dollar in recent years — and posts here when time and Internet connections permit.

But the recent trip should be pretty typical. Had we been planning to update the Beer Lovers Guide to the USA then when we returned home through Las Vegas we would have felt obligated to visit the city’s brewpubs and the Freakin’ Frog, a suddenly famous beer bar. Instead we went to the Hofbräuhaus, because in the fall we can visit the original in Munich.

So that’s our plan. Maybe we’ll see you along the way.

I guess that might involve beer.

If the beer’s good why aren’t you smiling?

Pete Brown’s name is short. And plain.

There, I’ve written something about him that wasn’t complimentary. Now I can go back to praising his posts (wouldn’t want you to think I have a crush or anything).

I’d be typing this even had I not had a conversation just Friday about what a splendid beer White Shield remains. You must read all of For Christ’s sake, cheer up!, both pre- and post-rant. To encourage you, I offer this:

The point is, there’s an attitude in beer appreciation that’s the same as the one I used to have when I was a teenage indie kid: back then, we thought anything on a major label was shit, anyone who actually got into the charts had sold out. It seems lots of beer fans enjoy being just as miserable as I was then. Big brewers churning out bland lager are easy hate targets, but when they start to show some interest in characterful beers, the vitriol only increases. Why?

So is he talking about you?