Drinkability is no longer a dirty word

At the outset of this week’s Drink Beer, Think Beer podcast, guest Jenny Pfäfflin talks about drinkability and how that is one of the qualities that make Dovetail Brewery beers special.

She might not have used the words “drinkable” and “drinkability” a decade ago, because they belonged to the largest of breweries. Anheuser-Busch built a campaign for Bud Light around “drinkability” in the aughts.

The company reportedly spent $50 million on its “Drinkability is Difference” campaign.

The brewers who at the time presented themselves as Davids taking on Goliath weren’t about to go anywhere near the word “drinkability.” And quite honestly, in 2011 when Dr. Michael Lewis, founder of the professional brewing programs at UC-Davis, wrote “Drinkability: Countering a Dash to the Extreme” 1 in the MBAA Technical Quarterly many brewers I talked to were offended.

He offered his definition: “Drinkability is the brewer’s mantra and holy grail: a beer should not be satiating or filling, it should be more-ish, crisp not heavy, tasty but not fatiguing and should leave the consumer satisfied but willing and able to have another.”

On the other hand, craft brewers “may equate drinkability with preference or liking or distinction or even with inventiveness, rarity, and cutting edge uniqueness. There is therefore a trend within the domestic and craft segments to move to the extremes, one in the lighter direction and the other heavier. While heavier beers are fascinating avenues of brewing arts and science to explore, there is some danger of leaving the consumer far behind.”

Put another way, “As the success of light beers has caused the macro-domestic industry to make ever-lighter beers, so the success of many highly characteristic beers leads the craft industry to the opposite extreme and ultimately, to a different definition of drinkability that drives this trend.”

Remember, this was 2011; so long ago that IPAs were clear, and also bitter. He didn’t stroke many egos when he wrote, “if one looks rationally at the craft segment, what is surprising is not its success but rather the lack of it.” He was, and is, a proponent of craft brewers’ skill set, but not necessarily a fan of their choices.

It sure appears that his words have stood up well.

“American craft brewers have not merely imitated Old World ales but have reinvented them to create something that is uniquely American. I see no reason why the same talent and inventiveness should not do the same for lagers. The old idea of full flavor, flavor balance, distinction, character and deliciousness might provide a clue to the future. The craft industry has already made a start on this journey and there are a number of splendid lagers appearing in the market place and I don’t doubt more to come.”

And it’s OK to talk about their drinkability.

*****

1 Michael Lewis, “Drinkability: Countering a Dash to the Extreme,” Master Brewers Association of the Americas Technical Quarterly 48, no. 1 (2011), 25-26.

Monday beer links: A poem, iconic beers & sad farewells

Can a brewery be good for a community? Last week the Smyrna, Georgia, city council voted to sell green space near the community center so a brewery can go there.

Economic Development Director Andrea Worthy pointed to the revitalization of the downtown area as the main reason for supporting the vote. Smyrna is within the inner ring of the Atlanta metropolitan area. “It’s different than a restaurant, it’s different than a coffee shop,” Worthy said. “It’s really a community gathering place that invites a lot of other visitors to downtown. It serves as a community center where folks can meet up, [it] increases foot traffic for other businesses downtown.”

“A Breakdown Of Smyrna’s Controversial Decision To Sell Public Land To A Private Brewery” is a long form (more than 3,000 words) account of how and why the deal was made.

FOR READING OUT LOUD
Just in time for Burns Night, Martyn Cornell has discovered a poem written in the form known as “Burns stanza,” an ode to “Gude Stout Ale.”

CREAM BEER
Alan McLeod returns to a favorite topic, cream beer, tying it to immigration, which included brewers with contemporary skills.

As a silly aside, here’s one of several suggestions why cream ale was called cream ale. In 1837, a dialogue called “The Beer Trial” in the Journal of the American Temperance Union drew attention to charges that brewers in Albany sold adulterated ale. It refers specifically to Albany Cream Ale, and a fellow named James, who was spotted drinking the beer by a friend, says, “I asked why they called it Cream Ale, and they said it was because the foam looked yellow, like cream.”

ICONIC
– Thanks for the (UK) memories.

– Crowd sourced. Quite a list follows the question posed by Don Tse on Twitter. One thought after reading through suggestions is that you should know how to spell the name of a brand before calling it iconic.

THE OTHER SHOE
– Three, or more, Connecticut breweries have closed or soon will.

– Marin Brewing Company shutting down after almost 33 years. Marin opened in 1989 and won four medals at the Great American Beer Festival, three the next year and four the following year. The brewpub also laid claim to being the “first and best brewery on the internet.”

ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE
Can a brewery be good for a community? 2021 by the numbers at Allagash Brewing.

#nottwitter 05

Didn’t there used to be a difference between selling and selling out?

Because this headline: “When Big Breweries Sell Out, It’s Bad For Little Breweries.” This is just one example, and it seems to me that there is a difference between choosing to sell a business and abandoning all that some fans think you stood for. Further reading.

Book learning: fruity, peach = ethyl octanoate

As mentioned Monday, when asked to contribute a list of “best books” to a new-ish book recommendation website I chose five related to aroma and flavor. You can see my picks here.

Whether the books did or did not specifically mention beer mattered little when I made the selections. However, since you are here for the beer, a couple of beer-related excerpts.

First, from Luca Turin in “The Emperor of Scent.”

“Look at beer, which is a very interesting cultural product. Beer smells like a burp. Gasses from someone’s stomach. Lovely. Again a product of fermentation, which is to say decay. Decay enhances smells and flavors, yet we have a sharp ability to identify decay, because decaying things will kill you. Bacterial and yeast decomposition.

“Which can give you ‘I wouldn’t touch that in a million years’ and, at the same time and in the same culture, mind you, ‘I will pay great sums to consume Rodenbach,’ which is a miracle of a beer from Belgium. A miraculous, powdery apple flavor. Those Rodenbach yeast have an I.Q. of at least two hundred. Fucking genius yeast.”

Second, a rather simple* table from “Nose Dive,” which really is the field guide the full title promises.

Table from "Nose Dive"

* Simple compared, for instance, to the one for “pungent spices: mustards and peppers.”

If you click around the site you will see each entry includes a “closely related book lists.” It pleases me that the one list related to mine is from Gordon Shepherd, since one of his books is among the five I point to. But, dang, I wish there were more lists related to aroma and flavor.

Monday. Beer links. Trends & lifestyles.

Still not commenting about the Monster Deal. Still can’t get away from navel gazing (final 3 links).

DRINKS FOR BETTY
Over the years patrons started buying drinks for Betty White in the case that she ever returned to Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

THEN CAME MARCH 2020
From the Zenne Valley.

TRENDS
A half dozen. Smoked lager?

LIFESTYLES
– Beer.
– Wine.

LIFESTYLES II
In that first link directly above, Jeff Alworth writes beer is “an everyman (everyperson?) drink.” I would argue craft beer is not. (Please settle for this for now.)

It is good marketing to portray it as a working person’s drink, calling on images of laborers enjoying beer at the end of a shift. Consider this evocative sentence: “There would be twenty or thirty men either sitting on a grass bank of leaning against a wooden fence drinking and chatting before working and when the morning shift came up from work, some of them would buy a drink and stand or sit in the lane before going home.” But when we buy into that nostalgia, it might be best to stop and consider what we are longing for.

CYMBOSPONDYLUS YOUNGORUM
First, a beer was named for a fossil. Later, a species was named for the maker of the beer.

AROMA & FLAVOR
A newish site (still in beta) called “Shepard: Discover the Best Books” asked me to contribute to their list of “best books.” They might have been expecting 5 beer books, but instead I suggested 5 about aroma and flavor. More about the picks Wednesday.

COUNTERPOINT
Jeff Alworth on the state of beer blogging and media. “Grandpa’s old blog may seem peripheral to the media world—though by my reading this couldn’t be more wrong.”

NO COMMENT(S)
A wonderful post from Beth Demmon about the evolution of her personal bucket list would seem to be the sort of blogging Alworth is defending. But there is no opportunity to comment. I guess you have to do that on Twitter.

AN ALTERNATIVE
Why create a subscription site? Because it gives value to writing. Despite this view that all things creative are done simply for passion, writing about wine has a cost whether that’s travel, research, books, education, or just one’s time.

ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE