Session #130: Ron Pattinson’s dream festival is good enough for me

The SessionYour dream beer festival?

Free admission? Nothing but 100-point rarities you’ve never tasted before? Only local beers? Only brewers pouring? Only eight-ounce servings (or 1 or 4 or 16)? No lines?

Host Brian Yaeger has asked us to write about designing “your dream festival” for the 130th gathering of The Session, providing a list of criteria to consider (size, style, location, you get the idea). And he suggests that we conclude “with a note about why you can see trying to make this fantasy fest a reality or why you’ll never advance this idea of yours beyond the Session post!”

The thought occurs to me that if you dream big you should find somebody else to take charge of execution. Or to phrase that idea as a confession: Part of what makes it a dream beer festival is that somebody else organizes it.

Ron Pattinson has the right idea. He assembled a collection of historic lager recipes he’d like breweries to make and serve at a festival. He found somebody — Florian Kuplent, diploma brewmaster and co-founder of Urban Chestnut Brewing in St. Louis — who thinks this is a good idea. UCBC has recruited breweries from across the country to make beers from these recipes. Planning is ongoing, but 20 to 25 lagers will be poured March 3 April 22 at the brewery’s Grove location. Ron Pattinson will be there, and so will I.

This is a better festival than I could have dreamed up. It’s the one I am most looking forward to in 2018; closely followed by Fonta Flora Brewery’s State of Origin Festival in June in North Carolina (one I’ve wanted to get to the last couple of years, but didn’t fit into the schedule). The one I wish I could have attended this past year would have been the Norsk Kornøl Festival in Norway.

That these began as somebody else’s dream is fine with me. I prefer writing about other people’s dreams to revealing my own.

Monday beer links: In search of the new(s)

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 11.27.17

South Dakota badlands

Rather than finishing with something from Twitter this week start with this (click on the date to see the full exchange).

Then consider Boak & Bailey’s suggestion to “Refresh You Feeds.” They write, “It’s easy to get stuck in a rut following the same few people you’ve always engaged with since year dot and thus get the idea that Beer Blogging is Dead when some or all of them give up the game. Meanwhile, whole new waves of blogs have come, and maybe gone, and probably been replaced by yet more.”

All true, and it is also fair to consider the comment in the Twitter thread that “these people are starting to sound like my dad reacting to Cobain.” Even if I am not sure if who these people are (or if I might be one of them). I’m not prepared to embrace every new beer “innovation” but I think it would be stupid if we didn’t recognize the need for change or that some people today may view beer differently than just about anybody did in 1957, 1987, or even early in 2017.

But like Boak & Bailey (“we sometimes end up featuring the same names time and again for various reasons”) I know that when I spot something new from particulary people in my RSS feeds I am more likely to end up showing you a link the following Monday. For instance, last week I didn’t even wait to suggest reading Martyn Cornell’s post about Norwegian farmhouse brewing, instead tweeting about it as soon as I saw it. There’s a good chance that when Cornell writes something I will point to it, just as I often end up linking to posts by Lars Garshol, who is prominent in this particular story.

But, no surprise, I’m a lot better keeping track of the topics that interest me — and kveik punches a bunch of buttons, even before I read “landrace yeast” for the first time last week — than I am finding new voices. Typing that, of course, does not excuse me from being open to listening for and to them.

However, to return to the top, I don’t expect you’ll be seeing a lot of links to “more brewers writing.” I follow plenty of brewers on Twitter, but a) I understand they have agendas*, and b) I prefer them 140 chaaracters (I know, stuck in the past) as a time.

– The biggest news of the week was Lefthand Brewing in Colorado suing White Labs for $2 million dollars. The Small Business Administration defines companies with up to $35.5 million in sales and 1,500 employees as “small businesses” and the amount of the suit isn’t the most important thing in the story, but $2 million just doesn’t sound “mom and pop” to me. What is important is quality and taking responsibility for quality.

– Somebody in Colorado is going to consider this news because Peter Bouckaert’s nephew is involved. It is a big deal in Georgia because it is the first brewery in the state not to rely on distributed beer as its primary source of revenue; this was impossible before a recent change in Georgia laws. And in Atlanta itself, it is about the beer. Some days I get up in St. Louis and go to bed in Atlanta, or vice versa. But eventually I’ll be registered to vote in Georgia, so I’m focused on what’s behind the third door. And this may influence what you see showing up here from time to time.

– Following up on last week’s idea for a book: Rural Beer. More fodder. As an aside, we once spent an afternoon in Valentine, Neb., getting our minivan made drivable. It was the summer of 1991. I do not recall beer being involved, but the guy who fixed our car was very friendly. We were on our way home from South Dakota, both the Black Hills and the Badlands (pictured at the top).

– The focus of In Defense of ‘Craft’ is on craft cocktails, but the conversation about becoming a master craftsman, compared to being an artist, is relevant across many categories of food and drink. Full of sound bites, like this one: “There is an art form in our business, but it’s about being the impresario, choosing and creating the experience. That’s art. The chef and bartender enact that experience. That’s craft.”

– This week’s terroir sighting. With field blends, vine growers and wine makers blend not to obfuscate the taste of a place but to intensify it.

– It’s been more than 10 years since I posted the first of 10 “New Beer Rules” and more than seven since I came to my senses and quit making them up. So I’m OK with the notion that rules are for suckers, and certainly hope that nobody sees the book “The New Wine Rules” and decides to do something similar to beer.

– Rather than finishing with a tweet, as is usual at the end here, a comment about social media.

Beer or pie? You make the call

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 11.20.17

A few things I’ve read in the last week or so that you might be interested in.

– Josh Noel suggests sugary pastry stouts are a sign craft beer is forgetting what beer tastes like.

– And Michael Kiser at Good Beer Hunting concurs, adding some advice: “Offer a pastry stout if you feel you lmust – especially if you can make a superb one. But use it as a gateway into something edifying, educational, and evolutionary for your customer.”

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Monday beer links: Luther, Tachtigers and koduõlu (oh my)

MONDAY BEER & WINE LINKS, 11.07.17

– Alworth’s 9.5 Theses is not just another listicle (which, if you recall my aversion to such things, is more than begrudging praise). As commenters suggest there are contradictions within, but that’s what you get when you think about things.

– The story of East-Indian Haantjesbier was not a contribution to this month’s Session (“missing local beer styles”), but it could have been. This reads like the beginning of an historical novel, doesn’t it? “The Tachtigers, as many Dutch people vaguely remember from Dutch class in high school, were a group of young, rebellious writers and artists who wanted to resist the complacency of the Dutch bourgeoisie of that time. And Haantjesbier is what was served at the Karseboom café in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam, where the Tachtigers met in 1881. In fact drinking Haantjesbier was an act of resistance in itself, because the actual fashion of the day in the Netherlands was Bavarian beer.”

– Seto kingdom day (and koduõlu).

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Session #129: When local isn’t a style

The SessionGose. Check (at least in season).
Pale ale. Check.
Pumpkin beer. Check.
Cask pale ale. Check.
ESB. Check.
Brown ale. Check.
Rauchbier. Check.
Barley wine. Check.
Hefeweizen. Check.
Stout. Check.
Cask stout. Check.
American stout. Check.
Foreign stout. Check.
Imperial stout. Check.
Milk stout. Check.
Peanut butter milk stout. Check.
Barrel-aged imperial stout. Check.
Barrel-aged imperial stout you stand in line to buy. Check.
Saison. Check.
Mixed fermentation saison. Check.
Barrel-aged wild beer. Check. Check. Check.
American lager. Check.
American light lager. Check.
Zwickel. Check.
German pils. Check.
Czech pils. Czech.

This list, which could go on as long as the Great American Beer Festival awards ceremony because I haven’t even start in on IPAs, is brought to you by The Session #129. Host Eoghan Walsh has asked participants to write about “Missing local beer styles.” He suggested several variations, but still put this as the basic question: “What beer style would you like to see being brewed in your local market that is not yet being brewed?”

And the answer to that question is: Anything that exists in a style guideline somewhere that I can’t buy from a local brewery I probably will end up judging in a homebrew contest soon enough.

But when I think of “what next” and local beer I don’t think in terms of styles. I think about what brewers can do to give their beers “taste of place.” This is not new. I’ve quoted this 1854 story from Daily Missouri Republican about the “last days of lager” before, but it is constantly relevant.

‘The last days of Pompeii’ is a romance of Belwer [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], known to the world; but ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis,’ is a romance yet to be written. We certainly will not pretend to write it, for we claim no merit as a novelist; but we will give facts, plain facts, and if any one feels interest enough in them to use them for a theme of romantic literature, we most cordially allow him the privilege of doing so.

“With last Sunday, September 17th, the last drop of Lager Beer in St. Louis went down to – posterity. It was, and is no more. During the past extremely hot summer, it must have been some sort of gratification to our German population to have resorted to a good glass of Lager Beer, and freely did they make use of it. At places where, as we are told, the best of that article was kept, scarcely enough hands could be procured to serve the daily increasing number of consumers. But the extraordinary demand, occasioned by the extraordinary heat, soon exhausted the supply. One house after the other announced to its customers, that next day ‘the last barrel of Lager Beer’ would be tapped. This direful news brought grief unto many, and not a few were this person: stopped at street corners by inquisitive friend, with the often-repeated query ‘Where is good Lager Beer yet to be had?’ At last, two places only remained where the needful could be got – one, a spacious bar room, was the Mecca, during the day; the other, being a garden, in the evening. But days hurried on. The demand, having been concentrated to these two places, was too great for their supply, and finally, the bar room gave out. Matter now seemed to wear a gloomy appearance. ‘Mr. K. has shut his house,’ was sad tiding indeed. However, the consolation remained. The delicious fluid could yet be obtained at the garden, as so it went on for a few days. But, alas, only for a few days. One fine morning, as a social company were gathered under the beautiful acacia trees in that garden, the otherwise very kind and affable host, with one glass full of Lager Beer, in his left ‘fist,’ advanced toward the company, and handing, it to one of them, pronounced it to be positively, ‘the last drop of our last barrel!’ Great consternation followed this announcement, because it then became evident that the days of Lager Beer in St. Louis for this summer were numbered. But soon a report was spread, that a certain Mr. G. had two kegs of needful yet left for his particular friends. It did not take long for that report to make the round of the particular friends of this benevolent gentleman, numerous as they are, but it embraced even foes, and the two kegs had only a bare existence, for soon after they were tapped a deep, hollow sound, in answer to a nick at the bottom, gave satisfactory evidence that they were empty.

“In the afternoon of that very same day it was discovered – how we cannot tell – that at a certain brewery downtown, a few barrels were still left to satisfy the wishes of our German community; and, in pursuance of this information, a perfect migration of our German citizens took place to the popular spot. But there, as we are informed, the Lager Beer is also gone! and so we have recorded ‘the last days of Lager Beer in St. Louis.’”

I’d like to have a taste of that beer, because history and local and all that. Maybe I’d even end up missing it when it was gone. I suspect not.