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?

Beer origin (and other) stories done right

Wasatch Brewing history

“Our Story,” posted on the Wasatch Brewing website is rather brief. To recap, Greg Schirf founded the Utah brewery, it opened in 1986 and a brewpub followed in 1988.

There is nothing about who brewed the first beers. She was Mellie Pullman, described by Tara Nurin in “A Woman’s Place is in the Brewhouse” as “a homebrewer, engineer, construction worker, and restaurant employee in Park City who, upon spotting a business plan for a brewery lying on a table in a friend’s condo, decided to quit her engineering job to invest and run its operations.”

She headed up the brewing operations and hired women to work with her in the brewhouse.

"A Woman's Place is in the Brewhouse"It’s the sort of origin story that has been told thousands of times since Jack McAuliffe (and Suzy Stern and Jane Zimmerman, although they are not mentioned much more often than they are) founded New Albion Brewing Company in 1976. But it will be new to most who read “A Woman’s Place in the Brewhouse” because it has pretty much been part of “A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs.”

“A Woman’s Place” is an ambitious book, exhaustive and at times exhausting. That is as it should be, because Nurin makes it obvious why women should be exhausted. Why, given the evidence she presents, should they still have to prove their place has always been in the brewhouse?

Earlier this summer, Jeanette Winterson published her latest book, “12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Got Next.” It is about female scientists and other visionaries. In The Guardian, Clarie Armistead wrote, “This means writing women back into history as active contributors to the modern world, capable of imagining the future, breaking codes and solving the knottiest scientific problems.”

That is what Nurin has done, going back and forth between ancient and not-so ancient history and history in the making. As a press release for the book states, “It’s a history that’s simultaneously inspiring and demeaning. Wherever and whenever the cottage brewing industry has grown profitable, politics, religion, and capitalism have grown greedy. On a macro scale, men have repeatedly seized control and forced women out of the business.”

The book is at its best when she is talking to the women of the “craft era,” about what has and has not changed, but also what might come next. Her final chapter concludes with a list of similarities women in the book share. “Always, without exception, focused on forward-thinking and looking forward, even when paying homage to the past,” she writes. “Thanks to them, I believe this book has no end.”

To return to Mellie Pullman, she did not disappear into the ether after leaving Wasatch. She settled into an academic career and since 2005 has been a professor at Portland State University, serving as the director of the business of craft brewing program. Tiah Edmunson-Morton collected her oral history for Oregon State University in 2016.

At Portland State, Pullman remains an agent of change in beer. Had she chosen a different path in academia, her influence would still be felt. When Pullman was still at Wasatch, a young bartender who worked across the street would stop in to ask her questions about brewing. Later that bartender, Jennifer Talley, got a job brewing at nearby Squatters brewpub. Her beers won more than 20 Great American Beer Festival and World Cup medals and she was given the annual award for innovation in brewing from the Brewers Association.

Talley obviously belongs in the brewhouse. She also wrote a book, “Session Beers: Brewing for Flavor and Balance,” that a new generation of brewers will be using for years.

A new generation of brewers will also be better off because of Nurin’s book, and she’s already collecting names for the next edition.

Craft malt: A map

Craft Maltsters Guild map

I defer to the malt expertise of Ben Keene and Jeff Alworth, but the map the Craft Maltsters Guild displayed at the Craft Brewers Conference earlier this month is one of those “picture is worth a 1,000 words” things.

The guild defines craft malt this way:

Small – A members malthouse produces between 5 metric tons and 10,000 metric tons per year.

Local – More than 50% of grains are grown within a 500-mile radius of the member malthouse.

Independent – Each member malthouse must be independently owned by a 76% majority of ownership.

Looking at the map, Hannah Turner, chair of the guild’s technical committee, volunteered there is work to be done in South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas — where they know a little about growing grains. That noted, the availability of locally produced malt and hops since the Brewing Publications brewing elements series* was produced is stunning.

* A bit of disclosure. I wrote the hops book.