Anything but cloves

Pumpkin beers seem to be bigger than ever this year. Almost any liquor store I walk into has a large display with six-packs stacked to eye level.

But this headline: Anything but cloves sums things up nicely.

This week’s On Draft started as a comparison of pumpkin ales, but after five brews, I decided that pumpkin pie spice was the patchouli of the food world. How anyone can tolerate such toxic levels of clove and nutmeg in their beer is beyond me. Pumpkin is just a wee category of fall beers, anyway, so I decided to broaden my horizons.

In the end, though, the author does recommend a Pumpkin beer: Elysian Brewing Co. Night Owl Pumpkin Ale, a reminder that it doesn’t hurt to keep sampling and that the best choice could be a beer at your local brewpub.

Beer for the Baskin-Robbins crowd

Chocolate beerChances are that neither you nor I will ever see Frederick Miller Classic Chocolate Lager because it’s only due to be distributed in the Midwest.

But it has attracted a lot of attention than any of the excellent chocolate beers brewers have been producing for years. The latest is this story from the Associated Press, which is looking for an underlying trend. That would be beer with more flavors. Not just beer with more flavor, but different flavors.

Thus the story consults Felicia McClain, an analyst with Mintel Research. “They’re trying to do something to bring some spice back into beer,” she says. And Mintel has a list of the top 10 selling beer flavors from 2005. Presented here without further comment:

1. plain (regular)
2. pumpkin
3. honey
4. vanilla
5. nut
6. pomegranate
7. brown sugar
8. spice and spicy
9. lime
10. orange

Beer, cheese and wine school

The Tria Fermentation school begins classes tomorrow (Wednesday, Oct. 18) with Prof. Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware at the helm.

The Philadelphia school is the brainchild of Jon Myerow, who also owns the Innovate cafe Tria. He’s focusing on wine, cheese and beer, with classes led by by winemakers, fromagers, brewmasters, authors and other fermentation experts.

Food & Wine magazine recently picked the Tria Fermentation School as one of “America’s 50 most amazing wine experiences.”

Upcoming classes include:

BEER: The Extreme Beers of Dogfish Head, with Sam Calagione, Wednesday, October 18, 6:30-8 p.m., $30.

CHEESE: The Artisanal American, with Liz Thorpe, Friday, October 20, 7:30-9 p.m., $45. Thorpe, Director of Wholesale at New York’s famed Murray’s Cheese, and co-author of the forthcoming Murray’s Cheese Handbook, will present her six favorite autumnal American cheeses.

BEER: Brewing with Wood with Rob Tod. Tuesday, October 24, 6:30 to 8 p.m., $40. Tod, Founder of Allagash Brewing in Maine, will discuss four examples of wood-aged beers from Allagash along with examples from California’s Russian River and Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin breweries.

WINE: High Elevation Wines from Down Under with Michael Dhillon. Wednesday, November 1, 6:30-8 p.m., $50. Australia’s Dhillon will share the trials, tribulations and extraordinary rewards of high altitude winemaking and small productio.

WINE: The Allure of the Languedoc with Bruno LaFon, Friday, November 3, 6:30- 8 p.m., $45. Students will learn why LaFon, a former Burgundian winemaker from the family of Domaine des Cômtes Lafon, headed to Languedoc to participate in the rebirth of the region. LaFon will host a tasting of his delicious estate wines.

WINE & CHEESE: Classic Pairings with Michael McCaulley. Monday, November 6, 6:30-8 p.m., $50. After covering wine and cheese basics, McCaulley will introduce students to some classic marriages that have withstood the test of time as well as some more modern pairings.

BEER: The Dark Side with Tom Baker. Wednesday, November 8, 6:30-8 p.m., $35. Baker, founder of recently departed Heavyweight Brewing, will debunk the myths and demonstrates the incredible diversity of black beer.

CHEESE: Spanish Dairy Rising with Adrian Murcia. Tuesday, November 14, 6:30-8 p.m., $45.

The school is located at 1601 Walnut Street, Suite 620, and the number to call for information is 215.972.7076.

Beer naturally

Real aleFirst, beer. Tomorrow a New York Times tasting panel will report back on porters. Eric Asimov writes in advance he “was impressed with the high quality of porters available today.”

Second, wine. In his blog, The Pour, Asimov writes today about what winemakers are really saying when they describe themselves as “non-interventionist” – pretty important if we are to accept the concept of terroir. The post was provoked by an interview he did with the Michael Rolland, the flying winemaker villified in the movie “Mondovino.”

In it Asimov mentioned the names of some California winemakers who favor moderation when it comes to the balance between restraint and fruit bomb. Rolland replied:

“Are they as successful in the marketplace? No,” he said, warming to the subject. “Wine is done for what? The public! Wine is a business. They want to make wine to sell wine. In the U.S. they are honest enough to tell you they want good ratings. They don’t want loser wines.”

Now, back to beer. Asimov’s post could lead to a discussion of why bigger, bolder beers get so much more attention than classically restrained beers (Double IPAs vs. a German hell from a countryside brewer, but not here, not today.

Instead, consider the statement “Wine is a business.” Now replace the word “wine” with “beer.” We simply have to accept that. Beer is business, but – here’s the good part – it can be more.

Asimov’s post sent me to the bookcase to pull out a copy of Beer Naturally, co-produced by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1976. Primarily a book of loving, mostly black-and-white, photos – hops twine being strung, vines, harvesting of barley, floor maltings, well-worn kettles – the book illustrates how beer can be brewed naturally while also acknowledging the ways brewers break with tradition.

But the strongest message is the photos and the first words of the book:

“Beer at its best is a reflection of a golden field of barley, a reminder of the rich aroma of a hop garden. Scientists can argue endlessly about the merits of the man-made concoctions which go into much of today’s beer but the proof of the pint is in the drinking … the best of British beer is produced from the gifts that nature gave us and by methods which have been proudly handed down over the centuries. The story of beer is a story of nature and of craftmanship; a story of farmer and brewers who join forces to greate beer naturally.”

View from atop New Belgium

Peter Bouckaert

New Belgium Brewing’s Peter Bouckaert gestures into the distance while giving a tour to members of the media who were in Colorado during the Great American Beer Festival, making a bit of a joke we’ll get to in a moment.

This view is from the roof of the brewery. The building under construction is the new packaging facility. When it is complete New Belgium will be able to brew and ship 850,000 barrels of beer per year – and that’s capacity for the current site.

What then? If you know just where to look in this photo you’ll spot Anheuser-Busch’s Fort Collins brewery (current capacity 10 million barrels) in the distance. New Belgium will take that over in 2010, Bouckaert said, smiling while adding “just kidding” in case the A-B employees on the tour (which next went to the A-B plant) were worried.

New Belgium shipped 370,000 barrels in 2005 and will likely sell about 435,000 in 2006. That number is constrained by the currently packaging line, which runs 24/7. “We’re bottling gold,” Bouckaert said.

Among items on display in one of the brewhouses (below) is the original five-hecoliter system that Jeff Lebesch began brewing on when he and his wife, Kim Jordan, started the brewery in the basement of their home. In front are a couple of the wine barrels that Bouckaert began experimenting with in the late 1990s (eventually producing La Foile). The Fat Tire bicycles to the right are examples of those each employee receives after one year of working at New Belgium. After five years they get a trip to Belgium.

NBB brewhouse

The photo below shows a mini-shrine hanging on one wall of the hospitality area of the brewery. Call it beer folk art.

NBB shrine