Beer sommelier redux

Salt sommelier? Water sommelier?

These job descriptions make beer sommelier seem like less of a stretch, don’t you think?

The Los Angeles Times has a story about how the food business is booming, “and with it, there’s a boom in jobs you’ve never heard of.”

Consider the specialty Christina Perozzi has carved out for herself. She calls herself a beer sommelier, doing for microbrews what a traditional sommelier does for Super Tuscans. She says she “geeked out” on beer while working at Father’s Office in Santa Monica, a bar known for its extensive selection of beer, and now her “biggest passion is teaching people how beer pairs with food.” And so she helps restaurants and bars develop beer lists and train their staffs, organizes pairings with chefs at public events and teaches beer classes.

Perozzi has a blog (christinaperozzi.com), is writing a book (“Beer 4 Chx”) and says she would also like to branch out into beer tours, any one of which would have been job enough at one point in time.

Personally, I’d like to nab a job as an “affineur.” It refers to the person who improves the flavor of a cheese through aging for a few months or enhancing by some method such as washing in brandy.

Or maybe beer?

These are our beer glory days

Catching up after 10 days offline (and often off the grid), I see that Eric Asimov of the New York Times devoted his column Wednesday to Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation, an even-handed look at modern day beer culture.

He framed the story by venturing to Boston to share beers with Todd and Jason Alström of Beer Advocate. Asimov writes correctly:

Each of the Web sites has its partisans, and crossover is common, but at beeradvocate.com, discussions seem to get louder, arguments rage more fiercely and passions flow close to the surface.

Asimov repeatedly gets to the point: “. . . the real action in beer culture takes place on a far more visceral level, in the rants about why so many good restaurants have wine lists as thick as books but only carry three beers, or whether beer lovers have a bias against big breweries, or whether high-alcohol extreme beers are great or ruinous.”

And I really like what he notices at the end (go read it). But – and you knew this was coming – there’s something that bugged me.

“One of our main goals is trying to raise the image of beer as a whole and bring back the beer culture,” Todd said. “We had a beer culture but Prohibition kind of reset the button.”

Not exactly. Maureen Ogle surely grimaced if she read this, because in Ambitious Brew she endeavored to correct the oft-told (but factually inaccurate) tale that America had a booming beer culture before Prohibition and that big, greedy brewers flattened it after the Noble Experiment failed.

Bob Skilnik further substantiates that this is a myth in Beer and Food: An American History (more on that book later in the week).

Beer itself began to change in the 1870s – lager took over, beer factories took over, beer brewed with adjuncts took over. And the places where people drank beer also changed. Both Ogle and Madelon Power (Faces along the Bar) document the role the Anti-Saloon League in the ultimate success of those in the Prohibition movement. The Anti-Saloon League would not have succeeded if saloons had not provided plenty to be against.

Bevo MillIt’s not like brewers didn’t know what was going on. In 1916, August A. Busch – the second member of his family to guide Anheuser-Busch – built the Bevo Mill in St. Louis as part of an effort to associate beer with something other than wicked saloons.

Kind of a Here’s to Beer of the early twentieth century. By then, Busch had already launched Bevo, which took its name from the Bohemian pivo (beer) and contained less than one-half percent alcohol. The Bevo Mill, a replica of a Dutch windmill, was a high-class restaurant, with beer and wine (no hard liquor) available only at tables. There was no bar. No sawdust. No bawdy women.

Yes, you could say he was battling windmills with a windmill. That didn’t hold off Prohibition, as you know, but the restaurant still operates today.

My point would be that we are not returning to the past glory days of American beer and beer emporiums. These are the glory days. Peruse the Brewers Association Beer Style Guidelines, all 41 pages, and ask yourself how many of those styles were available in 1870 or 1915. And that’s before we get to the matter of quality.

It’s only been 30 years since Jack McAuliffe launched the short-lived New Albion Brewing Co. so we’re at what? Chapter Two? Chapter Three? This is creation, not re-creation, which is why matters like ingredients, batch size, shaking the frat boys image, and so on are important.

Write it again, Sam: Another book

The things you learn reading the Wine Enthusiast Online: Sommelier Marnie Old and Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione are writing a book called He Said Beer, She Said Wine. It’s due in the spring of 2008.

Vinnie Cilurzo & Sam CalagioneCalagione (pictured here in plaid; that’s Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing with him, not Old – and that’s beer in their glasses, not wine) and Old recently have been conducting a series of dinner competitions.

They each pick a beverage to go with a series of dishes from star chefs. Diners sample both a wine and a beer with each of the dishes, make a selection as to which choice was better, and turn in a ballot voting for their preference.

The Wine Enthusiast explains:

While this was the eighth time Sam and Marnie had gotten together for their “He Said Beer, She Said Wine” Event, the outcomes have always been quite similar. “It always seems to come down to the last match,” Marnie notes, “but our main goal is to get wine lovers to appreciate good beer and beer lovers to appreciate good wine.” With the vast assortment of Dogfish Head brews and fine wine selections chosen by Old, that did not seem to be too difficult of a task.

Dogfish Head sales were up 37% in 2006, but Calagione is still able to churn out books almost as quickly as beer. The first – Brewing up a Business – targeted entrepreneurs; the second – Extreme Brewing – homebrewers; and this one from the prestigious combination of Penguin and Dorling Kinderlsey may reach the widest audience yet.

Have you heard about Bud Dubbel?

The SessionHow excited must the people at Anheuser-Busch be about the advent of The Session?

Certainly they must have been disappointed that nobody blogged about Bare Knuckle Stout for the first round of The Session.

Apparently they don’t want to be left out again.

Is it coincidence that Alan McLeod has chosen dubbels as the topic for April 6 and A-B seems to be brewing a beer to that style?

They are. Really. OK, we won’t be looking for it before April 6. Instead of pretending they did it for us it’s time to remove tongue from cheek (thus making it easier to properly taste beer).

Miller’s Brew Blog reports that A-B filed a certificate of label approval application with the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau for three new beers under the Faust banner. Of course that doesn’t guarantee anything, particularly widespread distribution.

The beers are Faust Belgian Style Dubbel (7% abv), Faust Dortmunder Style Lager (5.5%), and Faust Early American Pilsner (5%). (And how about a collective hmmm for that last one?) The brands are attributed to the Beechwood Brewing Group.

The SessionA-B first created a Faust beer for the Oyster House and Restaurant, naming it for its owner, A. E. Tony Faust (best friend of brewery founder Adolphus Busch). In the 1990s the brewery experimented with a series of specialty beers called American Originals. These included American Hop Ale and a golden colored lager called Faust.

The Brew Blog has a long list of other A-B products recently killed or possibly in the works, but these Faust beers look the most interesting.

Even if the Dubbel isn’t in time for what Alan’s calling the “Son of Session.”

Tuppers’ beer comes with a guarantee

An obvious question now that the sale of Old Dominion has been completed is: What about the beers (such at Tuppers’ Hop Pocket and New River Pale Ale) that Old Dominion brewers under contract?

Bob Tupper addresses this at the Tuppers’ website (link courtesy of DC-Beer).

He’s confident about the continuing integrity of the products bearing his family name.

Ellie and I are excited about the new possibilities for distribution that this arrangement offers. And we believe that the new company will be as committed to brewing exceptionally high quality beers for us as Old Dominion has during our 11 years together. Those who are concerned about A-B’s influence should note the continuing quality and creativity of the Goose Island Brewing Company after A-B’s purchase of a minority ownership. The ultimate guarantee is that Ellie and I both have day jobs and a kid who will finish college next year. No amount of money will entice us to put our name on a product of which we are not truly proud.

Granted you wouldn’t expected him to say much different, but the image of a man standing behind the quality of his beers (and that would be the point, he considers them his beers) is reassuring.