Monday beer links: Some success is random; B.O.R.I.S. is not

Sometimes beer stories pop up during the week that seem to be thought about along side something that I am currently reading. Such as this story about “What’s the Next Big Beer Style?” It showed up about the same time I reached the seventh chapter of “Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction.”

First, about the list. Adam Beauchamp at Creature Comforts stays true to what he said when Creatures introduced its Cold IPA collaboration with Bell’s Brewery. Second, I like the honest answer from Mitch Steele of New Realm Brewing, which is that making predictions is a crap shoot. “A lot of us brewers are wishing we had crystal balls. But we keep hearing that beer drinkers are moving back to lagers and other lighter styles. We’re also hearing that West Coast IPAs are making a bit of a comeback.”

Back to “Hit Makers” and the chapter where author Derek Thompson considers how random success can be. “Making complex products for people who don’t know what they want–and who aggressively cluster around bizarrely popular products if a couple of their friends do the same–is unbelievably difficult work. It’s important to appreciate the stress inherent to being a creator, an entrepreneur, a music label, a movie studio, a media company. People are mysterious and markets are chaos. Is it any surprise that most creativity is failure,” he writes.

That is not exactly like brewing something new and trying to sell it, but it also not totally different. And there is this next thought, “One solution for taming the chaos is to own the channel of distribution.” Hmmm.

BRINGING IN OUTSIDERS
Can ‘Outsiders’ Like Me Disrupt the Wine Industry? The Answer Isn’t Clear.
“Our culture, our heritage, and the places we come from shouldn’t determine where we land or what we’re able to be a part of. The truth is, there is no wine gene.” Pretty sure there’s no beer gene either.

STILL BODACIOUS
From Ireland . . . “There are certain products of American brewing that were once spoken of reverentially, back when all that was thrilling in beer came from the USA, and as a still-scribbling hack who was around then, I take great pleasure in ticking them off.” The original B.O.R.I.S. revisited, plus brand extensions.

PUBS, BARS & SALOONS
The Chelsea Drugstore – the pub of the future?
“In the 1960s, British brewers sometimes behaved as if they didn’t believe the traditional English pub had a future and scrambled to find ways to reinvent the pub for the late 20th century. For Bass Charrington the solution was a glass and metal wonderland in West London, on the King’s Road – The Chelsea Drugstore.”

For whatever reason, when as I was reading the responses (click to expand) to Robin LeBanc’s question I thought of the final words in “Faces Along the Bar.” They are, “The saloon was a creature of its time, and its time was past.”

Britain’s ancient pubs (or are they?)
“It also looks like most claims from pubs about their antiquity are false. Does it matter and do we care?”

A RENAISSANCE
Indigenous Maori Winemakers are Guardians of New Zealand Terroir
– “We are the land, and the land is us.”
– “The history of the Maori people’s relationship with their colonizers is one that echoes other nations around the globe: that of devastating disease, broken contracts, loss of land and systematic cultural oppression.”

Monday beer links: Making connections

It is said that beer is about making connections. Here are a few.

CRISPY & CRUNCHY
Can a Wine Actually Be “Crunchy”?
Craft Beer Snobs Suddenly Love Lager
First the crunchy part. “It kind of describes something in addition to taste in terms of tension. It’s just a perfect, succinct word to describe that texture: the balance between density and acid structure. That addition of acid almost causes the liquid to seize in a way that gives it a bit more of a three-dimensional feeling or experience.”

Make of that what you will. Here is the partial sentence I was happy to see: “Texture is an essential and underappreciated aspect of taste.”

Which brings us to the second story. It is behind a Wall Street Journal paywall. I’d like you to think about this from Chris Lohring, founder of Notch Brewing. “I’m gonna go on record that I hate the term ‘crispybo.’” That’s because he doesn’t find most lagers to be crisp.

I’ve heard enough brewers use the descriptor “crisp” to understand that the word has meaning to them. But I’m with Lohring. Saturday afternoon I had the helles at Bierstadt Lagerhaus. It was not crisp. It was not crunchy. It had texture. Like high thread-counts sheets. Well, if they tasted of beer.

WHAT DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE?
Across the Industry, Calls for Craft Beer to Grow Up
Brewing students at Niagara College hopped up for equality and diversity ‘bevoltion’
From the first story:

“Last October, Esther Tetreault, co-owner of Trillium Brewing, hosted a panel on how to create a safe and discrimination-free work environment with HR professionals, attorneys and diversity, equity and inclusion professionals. While she believes the event was impactful and important, it was not as well-attended as she had hoped.

“‘I will say we were a little saddened, a little frustrated, a little disappointed, to not get more support, more responses and more engagement,’ says Tetreault about the event.”

From the second story:

“This is exactly where the conversation around creating ethical workplaces should start – early on during the educational process,” said Ash Eliot, co-founder of Brave Noise and “Women of the Bevolution.”

VALUE ADDED
Communal Brewing in Bohemia
More about the brewing commune in Freistadt
Would you pay more for a house that came with brewing rights? Perhaps that is a rhetorical question.

PERHAPS IT WAS TIME
The Historic Jerusalem Tavern, One of London’s Best Pubs, Has Closed
The final night at ‘JT’
I spot a difference of opinion. “What was once a must-do for any beerhunter in London had become a moody experience best overlooked years ago.”

BEER IS AGRICULTURE

#nottwitter07

Shouldn’t “grocery store beer” be in somebody’s style guidelines?

Because this headline*: Craft Beer Experts Reveal Their Absolute Favorite ‘Grocery Store Beers’

*And maybe the fact that the Brewers Association released its 2022 style guidelines this week.

Cold IPA backs its way into style guidelines

Creature Comforts Get Comfortable campaign

The Brewers Association released its beer style guidelines for 2022 yesterday. There are no new style additions, saving us the usual complaints about a) too many styles, and b) everything about the latest addition being all wrong.

From the press release:

“A few examples of significant updates include adding several hybrid India Pale Ale styles to the Experimental IPA category; modernizing Session Beer and Session IPA to adjust the lower end of abv downward to 0.5%, as brewer interest in lower ABV beers has increased rapidly over the past two years; and standardizing language on Juicy or Hazy Styles based on brewer and judge feedback and adding verbiage about ‘hop burn.’

“‘As the craft beer landscape continues to evolve, we want to ensure that our Beer Style Guidelines continue to be a trusted resource worldwide and are in stride with the innovation that continues to be brought forward,’ said Chris Swersey, competition director, Brewers Association. ‘We took 2022 as a year to focus on housekeeping, to address some discrepancies within the existing beer styles, and for a small number of significant updates to certain beer styles.’”

Only a few words may still amount to a significant update. Which leads us to the marriage of the established style American-Style India Pale Lager and a style in waiting, Cold IPA.

The only change in the IPL guidelines between 2021 and 2022 is in the additional notes.

2021: “This style of beer should exhibit the fresh character of hops.”

2022: “This style of beer should exhibit the fresh character of hops. Some versions may be brewed with corn, rice, or other adjunct grains, and may exhibit attributes typical of those adjuncts.”

The change leaves room for one of the things that makes Cold IPA different than IPL, the use of adjuncts to lighten the body. There’s more, and Creature Comforts Get Comfortable 2022 beer is a good way to consider that.

Creature Comforts brews Get Comfortable each year in support of its Get Comfortable campaign, and for the last four years that has been an IPA made in collaboration with (in order) Russian River Brewing, Allagash Brewing, Sierra Nevada and Bell’s Brewery. Creature COO/brewmaster Adam Beauchamp and Bell’s vice president in charge of operations John Mallett talked about the beer during a launch event earlier this month.

Beauchamp said that the grist includes 30 percent Carolina Gold rice (check) and is fermented with lager yeast at a warmer than typical for lager yeast temperature (check – the other attribute that sets Cold IPA apart from IPL). He began grinning when he pointed out, “The A in IPA stands for ale, and lager inherently is not ale.” Then he laughed.

“What that does for me, it allows a really clear expression of hops that are not muddied by yeast character,” he said. Fruity flavors that result from interaction with ale yeast are not present to clash with fruity hop flavors. Sulfur compounds that result from cold fermentation with lager years are not present to clash with sulfur compounds in hops.

“I’m tremendously excited about the style,” he said. “I think people are returning to bitter beer after a short hiatus.”

Mallett told a story about how long Bell’s founder Larry Bell may have been waiting to taste this beer.

“Larry Bell is an incredible creative force,” he began. “There was a point, this was like 12 years ago, when Larry came to me and said ‘I want to make this beer.’ What that means is ‘I want you to make this beer.’”

The beer was a lager, quite pale, with a distinctive hop character. “Specifically, he had this dream where he was hiking in the Michigan upper peninsula,” Mallet said. He came upon a waterfall cascading over rocks, and there were pine trees all around. “And this is what the beer should taste like, the crisp cold water and the pine trees,” Bell told Mallett. “And can you please make this beer?”

Mallett paused. “And I’m like, did they mention what kind of hops in the dream?”

The hops in Get Comfortable are Simcoe, Cascade, Strata, Amarillo, Mosaic and “Centennial from Bell’s selected lots.” A bit more about “Bell’s selected lots” in Hop Queries Vol. 5, No. 10, which I promise to mail by Monday.

#nottwitter06

How important are “beer snobs” to the 6,000 (or so) breweries in the country that sell fewer than 1,000 barrels of beer a year?

Because this headline: “Craft Beer Snobs Suddenly Love the Humble Lager.” It is a Wall Street Journal story (which says something in itself), so behind a paywall. But the headline, subhead and beginning of the story will give you the gist. The humble lager is back. Not sure about the arrogant one . . .