Could an obsession with hops be bad for beer?

Hops in Hopsteiner experimental field

Talking about the “wine-ifcation” of beer isn’t new at all. But I don’t think I’d seen “sommify” before Monday, and certainly not in connection to beer or hops.

“How hops got sommified” doesn’t dwell much on the how and instead focuses on if and why.

This is a fair question: “A lot of brewers have taken to labeling their beers with the hop varieties. I tend to wonder if this is actually more polarizing and intimidating for beer drinkers, especially as there are more and more varieties of hops . . . I’ll see a big beer list that’ll say, ‘This is our IPA with Cascade and some other random hop you have never heard of.’ I don’t know what to choose. Is beer going to, unfortunately, make a mistake with this obsession with hops? Or is this a good thing for beer?”

As a person who sometimes gets handed a beer and asked “Can you name the hops?” I understand what it feels like to, well, feel stupid. And I know it may not be healthy to be able to recite the parentage of Citra (50% Hallertau Mittelfrüh, 25% Fuggle, 20% Brewer’s Gold, 5% East Kent Golding and 3% unknown).

However, I am a fan of being informed. Listing all the raw materials that go into a particular beer — including varieties of barley, other grains, herbs, whatever — gives an interested drinker a better idea what to expect when they order a beer. And that list of ingredients may set any particular beer apart from a generic one (i.e. a commodity).

In the second part of the podcast, Ryan Hopkins, CEO at Yakima Chief Hops, talks about the business of growing and selling hops.

There are hundreds of varieties now, but what was true 150 years ago is true today; some cultivars are valued more highly than others. In the last part of the 19th century, hops grown on the European continent could be classified into 10 categories. Those from the towns of Saaz (in what is now the Czech Republic) and Spalt (Germany) constituted Class I and commanded the highest prices. Class IV included those from the regions of Hallertau, Auscha, Styria and portions of Wurtemmberg and Baden. Class IX (northern France, Belgium and Holland) and Class X (Russia) hops sold for between 10 and 15 percent of the most coveted cultivars. What a hop was called and where it was from was most often the same.

Less than 20 years ago many hop varieties sold for less than they cost to grow. In contrast, the hop business, and the IPA business, is booming today because when drinkers know the names of hops those hops are not a commodity.

Who’s your drinking buddy now?

beer foam

Doing a bit of Feedly cleaning last week I counted 212 beer-blog feeds I follow. Of them, only 26 of them had published a new post in the last month. For many it was more like years since the last post. Sure, I should be embarrassed that I lousy job I do curating the list, but that is not the point.

In the 13 or so years I’ve intermittently posted links on Monday I’ve always looked beyond blogs, and beyond beer stories for that matter, for interesting items to pass along. If you are disappointed that I don’t point to more beer blogs, well, so am I. But let’s face it. Beer blogs are dead. That is why you are not reading this.

‘Drinking buddies’ – 8 years later
Hard truths.

“(The movie) captures so much of what’s been wrong with craft beer culture that we’re literally only starting to confront right now. These ideas of there being such in-demand breweries that people who brew there can act however they want; that you should want to work at those breweries so badly you’d be willing to put up with anything; that because it’s a brewery, basic workplace behavior expectations don’t apply and people can drink and make women feel objectified and even threatened . . . these elements were all there all along, hidden under the haze of us all viewing craft beer like this bohemian, artistic, no-rules beast, where we didn’t have to closely examine anyone’s behavior because everyone was supposedly united under this pious goal of sticking it to Big Beer.”
[From Hugging the Bar, a newsletter you should be reading.]

Whoa!

It’s only business
Anheuser-Busch InBev NV “Chief Executive Officer Michel Doukeris is considering a sale of some German beer brands it has owned for decades as the world’s largest brewer aims to prune less profitable businesses and trim debt.

“Doukeris has said that a ‘big revolution’’ is afoot in the alcohol industry, with more than 60% of growth being driven outside of beer. He’s seeking to insulate AB InBev against a stagnant performance in beer by doubling down on the company’s more nascent Cutwater Spirits canned cocktails, canned wine, e-commerce platforms and energy drink brands.”

Acidity
This is a story about wine, but there are beer lessons to be learned. Including this:

“Often, high levels of acetic acid are accompanied by an excess of another volatile molecule, ethyl acetate. It has the pungent aroma of nail polish remover . . .

“At high concentrations, these volatile compounds conspire to make a wine that’s aromatically distracting at best and downright unpleasant at worst. Elevated levels can even deliver a burning sensation in the throat.”

Change is constant
Dijon mustard producer Grey Poupon has released a white wine that is infused with Grey Poupon mustard seeds, along with honeysuckle. Can a beer be far behind?

Always for pleasure
Fresh Hop Beers
Go here, click through. It really is a terrific great guide, and an example of how fresh hop beers are part of a time and place.

Hoppy connections, diversity, and flying suds

Steven Pauwels of Boulevard Brewing sniffing hops at Segel Hop Ranch
Click to view on Instagram.

If you looked at my Instagram feed the past month you would see photo after photo of American brewers visiting hop farms in the Northwest, assessing this year’s crop and interacting with the people who grow those hops. This is a good thing, communication that was much less common not long ago.

In some cases, those brewers may have a contract to buy a certain amount of a certain variety of hops from that farm. Or they may be thinking about it.

That may also be a good thing, but not always.

Such was obvious the past two years when smoke from fires in the Northwest tainted many harvested hops. For instance, last year smoke settled into Oregon’s Willamette Valley about the time Crystal hops were ready to harvest. One grower delayed harvest, waiting for the smoke to clear. It did not. The hops were harvested and a brewer who had a contract to buy them rejected them (the farmer agreed they smelled unpleasantly of smoke).

In this case, Indie Hops, a broker who would have processed those baled hops into pellets, was able to supply that customer (and others) with Crystal from previous crop inventory.

All that to explain why I paused when I read that English hop growers charting a new path could mean a new generation could be “dealing directly with breweries, bypassing the hop merchants who have been a key element of hop-buying in this country for generations. It’s a shift that has the potential to revolutionise the perception of English hops, in this country and further afield.”

Goodness gracious, these are not easy times for English hop growers. They deserve better. Stronger relationships with brewers, which may or may not include direct sales, would surely help. So will English-specific varieties that excite brewers, and drinkers, as much as New World hops from the United States and down under. And hop merchant Charles Faram has been the leader in breeding those sorts of varieties. The merchant-grower relationship can also be a valuable one.

I should add that “charting a new path” is a lovely story.

“Life changed when a neighbour invited (Will Kirby) to a hop harvest. ‘I just fell in love with the buzz, and the smell,” he says. “There’s something about hops that really grabs you.’”

My kind of guy.

A few other stories from last week you might want to read:

Diversity
Other voices, other rooms: “You can get lost in the amount of podcast content that is out there about beer. However, like the larger industry, voices of women, people of color, and LBGTQ folks are often underrepresented in the podcast universe.” 11 podcasts changing that.

You talkin’ to me? A second Black-owned brewery opened Saturday in Chicago. “Funkytown is a brand meant to reflect the perspective of its Black owners. The label on (the) flagship pale ale is a riff on an iconic ’90s-era hip-hop album. . . . Expect most everything else of Funkytown’s to follow the ethos. Beer names and labels will reflect the founders’ tastes in music (hip-hop and R&B), often with a 1990s vibe (‘the clothes, the music, the culture, the slang, the lack of digital technological pervasiveness,’ one owner said).”

Jamhal Johnson, co-owner of Moor’s Brewing, which opened earlier this year, said the theory he most often hears is that cost drives Black people from craft beer. He doesn’t buy it.

“I feel it’s never been marketed to that group in the right way. It’s always been marketed to, for lack of better term, beer nerds — a ‘You have to be part of the culture’ type thing. My idea is to create a craft beer brand and focus on marketing it to the people with imagery and messaging that resonates with that group.”

Outsider advantage
The “technical evolution of fine wine is being driven by those outside of the industry . . . Most of these people are wine outsiders – pioneers and agitators, passionate about wine but seeing it as an advantage that they are not part of the establishment. Between them, they have garnered hundreds of millions of investor dollars and venture-capital funding to turbocharge their growth.”

And the beer analogy would be?

Lead of the week
[Via New York Post]

LIVINGSTON MANOR, N.Y. — The suds are flying as a bitter battle brews between beermakers in this Catskills hamlet.

And . . .

But the yuppie imbibers have bumbled into an old-fashioned, small-town brew-haha, gossiped about at the barber and at bars, complete with alleged beer-trayals and backstabbing.

Always for pleasure (except when it’s not)

Ales Through the Ages V2.0, virtual edition

Change of plans. The second Ales Through the Ages conference Nov. 12-14 will be virtual, with a shorter, more focused agenda.

Blame Covid-19.

This will be a “taste” of an in-person conference planned for November of 2022, with the same lineup of international speakers who were to attend in November.

I hope that isn’t too confusing. Basically:

– The original plan for 2021.

– A recap of the 2016 conference.

– The amended agenda for November.
“Travis Rupp, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, explores the production of beer in Roman Britain, while esteemed food and drink historian Marc Meltonville will discuss the era of the Tudors. Forbes beer writer Tara Nurin joins renowned author Lee Graves and Colonial Williamsburg’s Frank Clark to discuss the Who, What & How of Brewing in 18th Century Virginia, and Kyle Spears and Dan Lauro from Carillon Brewing Co. will explore operating a historic brewery in the modern world, and more!”

Crossing cultures, nostril news & grundy tanks

Good Monday morning. Let’s get to it.

Cross cultural
“In a bountiful society where fears of cultural difference nevertheless persist, food remains the least controversial,” Donna Gabbacia writes in “We Are What We Eat.” “As eaters, Americans have long embraced identities that are rooted in interaction and affiliation with other Americans of widely diverse backgrounds.

“The marketplace, and its consumer culture, may be a slim thread on which to build cross-cultural understanding. But given the depth of American fears about cultural diversity, it is better to have that thread than not.”

Are Mexican Lagers, or Mexican-style lagers if you prefer, building cross-cultural understanding? Or are they an opportunity neglected?

Before answering, read these two stories. They don’t treat this as a simple question. There’s a lot more going on than a single thought quoted from each, so don’t stop there.

One style for all
“The dichotomy of expecting certain things from Latinx brewers—like mole and spiced beers—and then admonishing them for not following a set of rules deemed necessary to be considered legitimate is a reality people who occupy any marginalized identity must endure.”

Tejano-Led Breweries Are Serving Up a Tex-Mex Craft Beer Revolution
Bobby Diaz sees Odd Muse “as an opportunity not only to build community, but create a better, more inclusive one. ‘Farmers Branch doesn’t really have a history of acceptance, so we’re trying to change that,’ he says. The Dallas suburb is best known in the state for 2006 housing ordinances designed to make renting a home as difficult as possible for undocumented immigrants, though the ordinances were never implemented and were ruled unconstitutional.”

Tuskafari
Last July, Josh Bernstein indicated he plans to write something about “the future of the American beer bar.” The Blue Tusk in Syracuse isn’t likely to be part of the story, because it closed this past weekend. “Where are we gonna go now?” said one of the regulars. “There’s other bars. But none of them are The Blue Tusk. Where are we gonna day drink, or night drink?” Will it be the Taphouse on Walton, which is moving into the same space? Or one of the bars Bernstein may be writing about soon?

Hops
Two paragraphs from this story about Bell’s Brewery, fresh hops and hop harvest and then you are on your own.

– From the author, “I might have even rubbed a few cones behind my ears as a form of beer fan perfume, so I smelled like Crystal hop magic the rest of the day.”

– “Honestly, we would totally fail at growing hops,” said (vice president of operations John) Mallett. “It’s hard and we’re not very good at it. Well, we’re ok at it.”

The buzz
This story focuses on non-alcoholic beer at the outset, but that is only the start. That should be apparent by the 11th paragraph, which includes this: “When I mentioned my upcoming visit to Athletic’s taproom to a friend, a psychiatrist who is a twenty-year veteran of A.A.’s twelve-step program, which he credits with saving his life, he replied, ‘Non-alcoholic beer is for non-alcoholics.’”

There are, however, a lot of details about NA, and in The New Yorker, which makes it a big deal. So it was necessary for some commenters to point out on Twitter they are growing tired of reading predictions that NA beers are going to become the next hard seltzer a big deal. The numbers suggest otherwise.

Which brings us to this question: What makes Germany different? NA beers have a market share of 7 percent there. There are now more than 700 different brands available nationwide. “The days are long gone when non-alcoholic beers were the default option for motorists,” says Holger Eichele, general manager of the German Brewers Association.

Sniff in stereo
“Many of us are not aware that one nostril actually perceives something different from the other.” Me included.

Always for pleasure
Who doesn’t love coming across grundy tanks in the wild? Spotted Saturday at Knotted Root Brewing in Nederland, Colorado, otherwise known as home to The Frozen Dead Guy.

Grundy Tanks at Knotted Root Brewing in Nederland CO. Who doesn't love grundy tanks?