Ales Through the Ages (brochure included)

Sorry, this event has been canceled.

Questions about Ales Through the Ages II have popped up in various forums, so here is the speaker lineup again. You may download the brochure with the complete schedule and vital information here.

For a sense of what took place at the first Ales Through the Ages, read Martyn Cornell’s recap.

The speaker lineup this year:

FRIDAY, October 19
5:15 p.m. – Keynote presentation. Pete Brown.

SATURDAY, October 20
9 a.m. – From Caelia to Celctic Brews & Brigid to Benedict: Beer Beyond Roman Rule. Travis Rupp.
9:45 a.m. – The Sexual Habits of Hops: How They Changed Beer, and Changed It Again. Stan Hieronymus.
11 a.m. – British Fungus: Brettanomyces in British Brewing. Ron Pattinson.
2 p.m. – Messing About with Old Ale & Beer. Marc Meltonville.
2:45 p.m. – Pale Ale Before IPA: The Birth of a Legend. Martyn Cornell.
4 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

SUNDAY, October 21
9 a.m. – Gruit: Back to the Future of Brewing? Butch Heilshorn.
9:45 a.m. – Molasses Beer, Hops and the Enslaved: Brewing in 18th Century Virginia. Frank Clark and Lee Graves.
11 a.m. – Albany Ale: 400 Years of Brewing in New York’s Hudson Valley. Craig Gravina.
2 p.m. – The Nobel Failure: How Vermont’s Period of Prohibition Shape the Present Culture and Landscape. Adam Krakowski.
3:15 p.m. – Speakers Roundtable.

Monday beer links: The past, present and business as usual

BEER AND WINE LINKS, MUSING 07.23.18

End of prohibition drinking
We spent the weekend in Savannah on the Georgia coast — the city that Billy Sunday called the wickedest in the world. We had hoped to drink gin from a glass-sized bath tub at the American Prohibition Museum but it turned out they only serve it that way during evening hours. We did, however, spot a rare 1933 IPA bowl. Anyway, pardon the brevity this Monday and feel free to provide your own musing.

THE PAST

The Problem with Nostalgia.
“We don’t, as it happens, believe in the Good Old Days. Slops in the mild, buckets of sawdust and phlegm, and ladies only in the lounge, if at all? Fascinating, but hardly desirable.” Agreed, but there’s also this: “Nostalgia serves a crucial existential function. It brings to mind cherished experiences that assure us we are valued people who have meaningful lives.”

Thousands of Londoners pass through a historic brewery every day without realising it.
Technology makes easier to imagine what was in place before 19th century streets and buildings “were rubbed from existence like timetravellers who murdered their grandfathers.”

What did 17th century food taste like?
“Fried eggs don’t change the course of history. But taste does change history.” Bonus: Contains a recipe for “Snaill water.”

Read more

A few disjointed thoughts inspired by the latest hop acreage report

US hop production 1971

Let’s call this the state of U.S. hops 0 BC (Before Cascade).

The chart is taken from The Barth Report 1970/71. The measure is hectares, one equaling 2.47 acres. U.S. hop farmers harvested almost 46 million pounds of hops in 1970 (compared to more than 106 million in 2017) and exported about 10 million. Between September of 1970 and April of 1971 U.S. brewers imported 13.6 million pounds of hops, 88% of them from Germany and Yugoslavia (since dissolved – about one third of the hop production was in what is now Slovenia). They used imported hops for traditional, classic, some say noble, aroma and flavor. They briefly thought Cascade might serve as a substitute.

The story about the birth Cascade has been told many times (by Mitch Steele in IPA: Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale and here). After verticillium wilt devastated the Hallertau aroma crop in the early 1970s, Coors Brewing offered contracts at then-lucrative prices to support growing Cascade. By 1975 farmers in the Northwest had planted more than 4,300 acres of Cascade, or 13% of the total crop. But brewers — let’s call them pre-craft brewers — soon discovered a) the aroma wasn’t quite why they expected or wanted, and b) Cascade does not store well. “The beer tasted OK, except when the beer drinker would have another bottle of beer . . . something would come up through the nose he wasn’t familiar with,” said Al Haunold, the USDA hop geneticist at the time. “We know now that it is geraniol.”

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Session #137 announced: Good in Wood

The SessionHost Jack Perdue has announced the theme for The Session #137 is “Good in Wood” and that the topic is “is deep and wide and meandering, romantic and historic, personal and professional.”

That’s pretty opened ended, but he has a few suggestions for those who crave more direction:

  • Historic uses of wood through a beer lens
  • Physical characteristics of wood and that relationship with beer
  • Professional and personal experiences such as wood-themed beer festivals or tours
  • A favorite wood-influenced beer style or experience, e.g. your first bourbon barrel-aged beer, a special Flanders red moment or why you don’t like a lambic

The Session #137 meets Aug. 3.

Harder to spell? Amyloglucosidase or Reinheitsgebot?

One of the secrets to brewing the reigning beer of the moment, Brut IPA, isn’t really a secret. Many brewers give full credit to the enzyme amyloglucosidase, which plays a significant role in producing bone dry beers. Its not unusual to read that craft brewers have been using the enzyme “for a while” in “big” beers like imperial stout.

But just for the record, the enzyme was first used by breweries that don’t fit the definition of craft to make light beers. And only a few years ago the people who work at breweries that do fit the definition mostly talked among themselves about using enzymes. Jack McAuliffe and Fritz Maytag might have something to do with that.

When Frank Prial of the New York Times visited McAuliffe at New Albion Brewing in 1979 he wrote:

Jack McAuliffe boasts that his beer is a completely natural product. “We use malt, hops, water and yeast,” he said. “There are no enzymes, which the big breweries use to speed up the process of mashing and aging; there are no broad-spectrum antibiotics, which they use to stop bacteria from growing, and there are no heading agents to create an artificial head. The proteins which are filtered out of most beers are what make the head. We don’t filter.”

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 2015 that marked the 50th anniversary of when he bought controlling interest in Anchor Brewing Company, Maytag said, “I wanted to be holier than the Pope.”

Mind you, there was no beer in the world more traditional than ours. Pure water, good yeast, malted barley, hops. Period. No additives, no chemicals, no nothing. That was a theme we felt strong about. To make old-fashioned beer in a pure, simple way.”

Times change.