Good news, Saaz hops lovers

Saaz hops

When June and July hailstorms hammered about 20 percent of the hop fields in the Czech Republic, and 750 acres of 12,278 planted were described as a total loss, nobody could have expected that the 2021 harvest would turn out to be the best in 25 years.

That’s what can result from a proper amount of rain and mild temperatures in July and August. Repeat after me: Beer is still an agricultural product.

Farmers in Czechia harvested 18.2 million pounds of hops (for perspective, that’s about as much as Americans grow of Citra alone), 40 percent more than 2020 and 34 percent more than the 10-year average. Average yield of 1,467 pounds per acre (American farmers average 1,900) was an all-time high.

The Saaz variety accounts for 80 percent of per cent of production, and the 14.7 million pounds harvested easily exceeded the 10-year average of 10.9 million pounds. In addition, alpha averaged 4 percent, compared to the 10-year average of 3.1 percent.

As a result, Bohemia Hop reports that as well as fulfilling all contracts for Saaz this year it will be possible to fulfill postponed volumes from previous crops, and satisfy additional demand.

More hops
– Latest Hop Queries. Subscribe here.
– Even small breweries may benefit from a hop sensory program. (Subscription required)

Beer links: American lager, outdoor drinking & IBU

Which is the Czech pils?

Jeff Alworth wrote about something new he’d like to see develop in 2022: American lager.

He started with a question from Ben Howe at Otherlands Brewing. “(It) feels a bit strange to be making a perfect recreation of a German beer. I wonder what an American lager would look like if we developed a tradition as rich as Franconia’s.”

Alworth has some suggestions, obviously influenced by the concept of “national tradition” he puts forth in the new edition of “The Beer Bible” (if you haven’t bought and read it, you should). It’s no secret that I have some affection for hops and regionally sourced and produced beers, and the eight of you who read “Brewing Local” know I’m an authenticity skeptic who thinks it is a mistake to saddle brewers with somebody else’s tradition.

So I’m mostly good with where Alworth ends up.

“Imagine lagers like this: made with base malts from barley grown and malted locally, a more American hop schedule with local lager hops (soft bitter charge, late kettle additions, whirlpool additions, and small dry-hop additions), aged in a Brett-free oak foeder, served unfiltered and lively with the flavors of all those ingredients. That’s a pretty unusual, pretty American beer.”

I type mostly because I’m not sure what word I’d substitute for American, but I’d rather think in terms of a beer tasting like it is a Birds Fly South beer, or a Good Word beer or a Fair Isle beer.

And practically speaking, because one thing always leads to another, I don’t look forward to seeing American helles or American pils “defined.” Because I know some people haven’t learned anything from the recent blabbing away about style(s), IPA and beyond.

(Should you be curious, the photo at the top appeared here earlier this year. Both of those beers were categorized as Czech pils.)

CURLING
Actually, “beer curling,” which uses small kegs instead of curling stones. PLUS the beer garden at Land-Grant Brewing in Columbus, Ohio, has 15 heated igloos.

Read more

Monday beer links & wondering what stories well-traveled casks might tell

Happy holidays

We drove to central New Mexico this past weekend, so this will be brief. We hung out with family and friends, including some really into holiday decorations. The photo above is a single moment in the midst of a two-minute plus light show. Spectacular and worth the 450-mile drive (one way).

During the drive I thought a bit about how Alan McLeod’s Thursday Beer News Notes and how styles, style guidelines, competitions and ways consumers/writers choose to describe beer influence each other. Very complicated. None of this came up in conversations we had at the four breweries we visited, nor in the various conversations I was able to eavesdrop on. People were there because of beer, but not to talk about beer.

A few other links:

Casks, waiting to go back into action
CAMRA is looking for well-traveled casks. This is a press release, so nothing special about the reading. But think of the possible stories that could emerge if it were possible to interview casks that have been in and out of pub cellars for years.

HASHTAG SNOW PICS
Bring back the Christmas photo contest. New Belgium is ready.

MIGHTY FINE
What do they mean when they say fine wine? “It defines itself by having an active secondary market.” Beer-related lessons here?

AND MIGHTY EXPENSIVE
Investing in wine is for fools and the uber-rich. Another beer-relevant story.

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Are wineries and distilleries also being censored in Instagram?

Beer links: Repeat after me, ‘Gingerbread dive bar’

Miller High Life Gingerbread Dive Bar
The gingerbread walls of this dive bar are infused with Miller High Life and there’s Vermont maple syrup to pour on the branded bar floor to “recreate that distinct sticky floor feeling.”

Favorite comment I’ve seen posted: “Wow, the detail of the cornhole game will be lost on the target audience.”

What I don’t understand: The kits are “designed for fun, but not for consumption.”

NATIVE REPRESENTATION
Evan Rail writes about myths, misunderstandings and stereotypes related to Native Americans and the culture of beer. “There’s definitely a relationship between alcohol and Native American tribes, and a longstanding stereotype which was placed on Native Americans by colonialism,” LT Goodluck, a Native American brewer, tells him. “It’s just hard for Native Americans to shed that stereotype. I believe that once we get more Native Americans in the alcohol industry, maybe we can change the stereotypical view that seems like it dominates our culture.”

Related: The first version of Native Land, the collaboration beer mentioned in the story, I tasted, in this case from Outer Range Brewing, is really good. I’m looking forward to finding more. (Participating breweries and release dates.)

SAFE BARS
P.A.C.T in the Safe Bars P.A.C.T. stands for Promise of Awareness, Compassion, and Trust. Everything you need to know about the initiative. “Systematic and structural change takes a long time,” says Lady Justice Brewing co-founder Betsy Lay, “It requires a shift in culture and a lot of patience. We’re going to need large and small organizations to commit to this work: guilds, trade associations, individual breweries, vendors. There has to be buy-in industry wide.”

ECCENTRIC DAY
Friday was Larry Bell’s last Eccentric Day at Bell’s Brewery as the owner of Bell’s. He arrived wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Tommy Bahamas, sandals with socks and carrying a golf club. His name tag read “Tiger.” There is a YouTube interview.

My guess is that few who drink Two Hearted Ale have also had Eccentric Ale or know about Eccentric Day, although the beer and celebration have been around for more than 25 years. Back in the 1990s, Eccentric Ale was released on Eccentric Day one year after it was brewed. The day before, various friends of the brewery would brew the next batch. Randy Mosher once told a story seeing a shoe in the mash tun as it was emptied. It has since become a bigger, but different, party.

It grew organically into a community event. Will it remain the same under new ownership? The article about Eccentric Day 2021 is behind a paywall, but photos are not and tell a story themselves.

CELEBRATION WATCH
The beat goes on . . .

IPA: The *style* disruption that keeps on giving

There will not be a quiz.

– Jenny Pfäfflin kicked it off last Friday with this tweet that when I last looked had 508 likes.

– Joe Stange followed with this.

As happens, threads shot out in different directions. Feel free to explore.

– Yesterday, Alan McLeod pointed to to all of this in his Beer News Notes, choosing to highlight a comment from Garrett Oliver:

“I don’t ‘know’ a lot about jazz, but I still enjoy jazz. And I really don’t care what a jazz critic thinks I need to know – I’m having my own good time and I will not be fenced in by anyone. I’ve worked to demystify beer for more than 30 years. It’s supposed to be fun. And it is . . .”

– His post alerted Jeff Alworth to all this ruckus and he honed in on another Oliver comment (why in a moment):

“Because once your definitions and terminology mean nothing, your culture is ruined and cannot be recovered. Ask the French how they won. And then take a good hard look at the German brewing industry. Words have meaning (ask the Republicans). And nomenclature is culture.”

– And Stephen Beaumont joined the conversation, choosing still another Oliver comment:

“Yes, and that communication is super powerful. The French know this. Champagne is Champagne, period. Caviar is caviar. Diamonds are diamonds. If your words mean nothing and it’s the Wild West, you lose. Period. Might take a while . . . but you lose.”

[Last dash] Back to Alworth. Wednesday he asked: “What is ‘good’ in the context of a hazy IPA?”

I’m staying out of this. I’ll leave it to Tom Vanderbilt, author of “You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice.” (In Chapter 6 he writes about “beer, cats and dirt,” visits the Great American Beer Festival and talks with judges. They included Oliver, who also shows up elsewhere in the book. Vanderbilt also mentions beer in an opinion piece in The New York Times. But the beer references are not essential to his theses.)

So from the Times article (oops, I lied, more dashes):

– “The human brain is a pattern-matching machine. Categories help us manage the torrent of information we receive and sort the world into easier-to-read patterns.”

– “When we like something, we seem to want to break it down into further categories, away from the so-called basic level. Birders do not just see ‘birds,’ gardeners do not just see ‘flowers’; they see specific variations. The more we like something, the more we like to categorize it.”

– “When we struggle to categorize something, we like it less.”

Not sure this explains the popularity of IPA, hazy IPA or hard seltzer — but maybe I am missing something.