Coming in September: Kveik Fest, Kveikstokk

Yes, back-to-back posts related to Nordic farmhouse brewing. (The first.)

Events are planned in Chicago and Toronto showcasing beers brewed with kveik (which is a yeast, not a beer style) and author and beer anthropologist Lars Garshol, who has introduced brewers previously influenced by German/Czech/Belgian/English traditions to one they barely knew existed.

Lars Garshol talks about kviek in Bergen, Norway
Lars Garshol points out where kveik belongs on the family tree of yeast during a talk at the Bergen Ølfestival last September.

Burnt City Brewing in Chicago will host the Inaugural Kveik Fest Sept. 7. Three days later, Garshol will appear at Kveikstokk in Toronto.

Appropriately, Kveik Fest is sponsored by Omega Yeast, which made kveik strains available in the U.S. more than two years ago. The one-day invitational will include traditional and experimental beers fermented with kveik from 30 Chicago-area and national brewers. Tickets are $75.

“Kveik is particularly exciting to so many brewers because it contributes great combinations of flavors to beer and is extremely versatile when it comes to brewing different styles,” Ben Saller, head brewer at Burnt City, said for a press release. “Once we started experimenting with the Norwegian yeast strains available from Omega Yeast in the past couple of years, we soon had this idea to design an event around highlighting yeast as an ingredient. Creatively, there’s so much that can be done with kveik and the range of citrus and tropical flavors and aromas it can bring to the table.”

Escarpment Labs, which funded sequencing of kveik strains and helped establish that they are genetically distinct, and Burdock Brewery will host Kveikstokk. Garshol will be talk about his travels in Norway, documenting the living farmhouse brewing traditions as well as some of the special ingredients in use. There will be kveik-fermented beers on tap brewed by Burdock, Escarpment Labs and friends. Tickets are $25.

Sahti and beyond: Viking Age Brew

Ancient Viking BrewHeikkie Riutta, a farmer in the Finnish municipality of Sysmä, won the Finland’s National Sahti Competition in 2006. He brews in the tradition taught to him by his father, one he will pass on to his sons. Sysmä is barley-centric, and like others in the region, Riutta brews his sahti without rye. Lighter color and lower alcohol strength are also typical for the region, and Riutta focuses on drinkability over alcohol strength, making beers in the 6-8% ABV range.

In contrast, Veli-Matt Heinonen makes a stronger, sweeter sahti, like others found in the Padasjoki region where he lives. He learned to brew from his mother in the 1980s and the recipe, which contains about 10% dark rye malt, hasn’t changed much since. Before adding hops he puts them in a bucket and pours boiling water over them to reduce the bitterness.

Mika Laitinen provides recipes from these two and others in Viking Age Brew: The Craft of Brewing Sahti Farmhouse Ale, the recipes supporting his assertion early on that sahti may be called a beer style but not by those who favor narrow style guidelines.

“Farmhouse ales always pose a challenge for those who want to categorize beers by style,” Laitinen writes. “Brewer-specific variation is enormous, and regional preferences may be overshadowed by ‘noisy’ individual examples.” In addition, these beers were not brewed to be shipped to a bottle share somewhere in the middle of the United States. Freshness is a gigantic variable. “The ale can taste different on the same day, depending on whether the pint was drawn from the top or the bottom of the fermenter.”

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Monday beer briefing: Toeing the line between bland and sublime

07.22.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS

1) The Breweries Cooling And Heating Up For Summer.
We drove to Louisville this past weekend for GonzoFest and related exhibitions at two museums, but also traveled a bit of the Bourbon Trail along the way. We toured Willett Distillery, plenty impressive with eight barrel warehouses but dwarfed by nearby Heaven Hill Distillery. And then we drove by Jim Beam, which is simply massive, at first glance stunning in a similar way to coming around a bend of Interstate 55 in St. Louis and first seeing the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

Size and context matter. That’s clear in the second (but #1 here) of two stories analyzing beer sales during the first six months of 2019. Consider this: Dollar sales of the top 10 craft breweries in grocery, convenience and other chains stores tracked by the research firm IRI did not match Michelob Ultra’s revenue. And then this: there are more than 7,000 other breweries to consider and the off-premise accounts such as those IRI tracks only about 60 percent of craft beer sales. The Brewers Association is in the process of compiling results from a midyear survey of all its members and those numbers will make it easier to understand how they are doing in aggregate.

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Monday beer briefing: NYC homebrewing, finding farmhouse ales & perfect-to-average pubs

07.15.19, BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING

John LaPolla, Bitter & Esters1) How Homebrewers Built New York.
I’m not sure I agree with this premise: “The recent explosion of new breweries in New York is totally consistent with what’s happening elsewhere—but homebrewers being at the center of things is not.” It’s pretty easy to find breweries with homebrew connections just about everywhere, clubs are often incubators and that’s not only in the United States. The club house for Cerva Serra in Caxias, Brazil, is downright amazing. There is a nano-size brewing system members can reserve, there are two large fermentation cellars (one for ales, one for lagers) and a roomy classroom area. I don’t mean that this isn’t an interesting story or to denigrate what has happened in New York. I wish I had not already left Homebrew Con a couple of weeks ago when Bitter & Esters was chosen homebrew Shop of the year by the American Homebrewers Association. The Brooklyn shop has certainly been at the center of whatever has happened in the five boroughs. That’s co-owner John LaPolla on the right, looking pretty happy about the award.

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A briefer beer briefing: ‘True Craft’ dead & Celis brewery apparently as well

07.01.19 BEER & WINE LINKS

Alan McLeod found plenty interesting to write about last week, but Boak & Bailey not so much. I am in the latter camp. Brevity today will be followed by silence next week, because beginning Wednesday I’ll be bouncing between cities in Brazil.

1) The $100 million question.
A San Diego Union-Tribune reader asks what happened to the Stone Brewing Company program called “True Craft” and Peter Rowe answers. “True Craft sounded too ambitious to be true, and that proved to be the case. Reached while traveling in Europe this week, Greg Koch confirmed that True Craft is dead. ‘That hasn’t been active for some months,’ Koch said. ‘It was an idea that never came to fruition.’”

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