Month: October 2010

Delaware: Theobroma, Dogfish Head, Milton

Mark Dredge has a piece in this morning’s Guardian out of the UK entitled “The Beer of Yesteryear” which scans the range of recent brewing efforts to recreate beers older than, say, 500 years ago. These are beers which use ingredients available to former culture including Theorbrama by Dogfish Head. I had one on hand and thought I would see if it has any appeal. Mark tells me:

Theobroma, part of Dogfish’s Ancient Ale series, is based on “chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions.” It contains Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, honey, chillies and annatto.

The bottle adds that it is based on chemical residual evidence from before 1100 BC with additives from later Mayan and Aztec drinks. So, seeing as the Aztecs come from about 1300 to 1600 AD, it is sort of a made up mish mash. Its as much a traditional drink as one from, say, that one Eurotrash era that stretched from the Dark Ages of around 800 AD to the world of George Jetson in the year 2537 AD. That would be an excellent era… right?

Well, as a beer it is a bit of a disappointment as well. Booze overwhelms pale malt which is undercut by the exotic herbs all of which has an oddly “beechwood aged” tone to it. I get the cocoa. I get the honey. But I don’t care all that much. It leaves me disappointed like that imperial pilsner experiment of Dogfish Head’s in 2006. Only moderate respect from the BAers. A bit of a boring beer that may be the result of a fantastically interesting bit of archeological work. Who knows? Maybe the sense of taste of those Central American practitioners of human sacrifice wasn’t as haute as one might have expected. Or maybe it paired well.

What Does It Mean When We All Talk About Style?

Now Stan has jumped into the fray on the usefulness of “style.” It reminds me of all the little words we use to convey something other than the personal experience: expert, connoisseur, judge. There is so often a downside to any of these things. Consider what Hemingway said of “aficionado“:

The aficionado, or lover of the bullfight, may be said, broadly, then, to be one who has this sense of the tragedy and ritual of the fight so that the minor aspects are not important except as they relate to the whole. Either you have this or you have not, just as, without implying any comparison, you have or have not an ear for music. Without an ear for music the principle impression of an auditor at a symphony concert might be of the motions of the players of the double bass, just as the spectator at the bullfight might remember only the obvious grotesqueness of a picador…

So, there are two things in there. First, unless you see the whole context, including the negative, you do not see the thing in itself. Second, not everyone will see the whole thing: “either you have this or you have not.” I accept this. But I do not accept where it is taken to lead, which are inevitably forms of exclusive, excluding superior capacity. The thing lumped together as “expertise.”

The thing is… I have never met one of these craft beer experts. I’ve met lots of interesting and pleasant and hardworking people but never an expert. It is perhaps natural that people would want to lead or be seen to lead given that beer is such an immersive topic. It reaches into you like good radio, consistently generates conviviality, pervades our extended northern culture and powers a good segment of the economy. Yet it is also a fraud in ways that experts might not be comfortable acknowledging. It can dope us, distract us and place us behind the wheel of a car. It can affect your health and too often costs too much. It engenders the flimflam of celebrity and may be making suckers of us all.

For me, an idea like “style” is great if it serves your particular hobby interest in good beer. So, if you like to judge and enjoyment of being a judge is your entry to the subject, well, go ahead and have 2,000 “styles” for all I care. But if you are an impressionist and want to record your personal perceptions of experience, that is just as valuable and style is pretty much irrelevant. After all, a poem is as useful as the textbook. If you want to play at aligning flavours in solids and fluids and call it “pairing” feel free but you will notice that actual taste of the beer and food is so particular that “style” quickly starts being a bit thick for practical purposes. And finally but perhaps most tellingly, if you wish to reach into history, you will find that “style” is a moving target and in the end a disappointment.

As Stan has noted, all this talk of style is one of the most interesting examples of the beery discourse. A evening seminar was given this week in England and the English-speaking beery world was set abuzz. Somewhat antithetically, too. Because if there were such things as fixed styles, experts and the rest the seminar would have been a lecture and no one would have needed to discuss it further.

What Is My Methodology? Perchance Schmethodology?

I have found myself wondering what the heck I am doing with all this Albany Ale stuff but I’m not too concerned. It is interesting in itself and I think it is informing me on a pretty interesting big picture question – what makes the Albany and the Hudson River so different from the St. Lawrence Valley, my river. You will recall that during Ontario Craft Beer week this past June, I wrote a number of posts on the development of Ontario after the American Revolution but it is important to remember that, like the Dutch in the Hudson, the upper St. Lawrence also had a 1600s existence when it was all New France.

The big question I have is why did Albany create this export trade while my city did not? There are some basic answers around the odd semi-autonomous existence of early Albany while Kingston has been firmly tied to its Empires. Also, there is simple geography with Albany being a deep water seaport while Kingston has always sat behind rapids and locks. Difference makes sense. But is that it? Looking more closely, there are the details. And details can get obsessive with a range of ways to get at them:

  • Who is doing what? You can find this information in newspaper ads, business directories and gazetteers. People have always been obsessed with what others are doing and putting it in a central place so thoers can see it. Google is making this information available to all for free without travel.
  • How is it being taxed? Beer has attracted excise and sales taxes for centuries. This is Professor Unger’s approach. I have not really gotten into this level – yet.
  • What is being brewed? Ron Pattinson’s obsession with day to day brewing logs is a less to us all in detail. And he is getting some of the brewing replicated as his trip to Boston this weekend shows.
  • Who is allowed to deal with beer? Beer is also regulated along with all booze. Tavern and brewery license records exist as do the court records of applications and charges for violations. Taverns and Drinking in Early America by Salinger is largely built on this sort of analysis.
  • Where does the beer go? Pete Brown has taught us a lot about that. Mapping trade routes is another avenue to this stuff. I have asked about Dutch East India ale as well as Bristol’s Taunton ale. What made for the demand for these beers and what made them eoungh good value to the other end of the world to buy them?
  • Beyond all this, there is Martyn. The funny thing about Martyn’s work for me is that I can’t understand where he gets his data – his focus on words amazes me. I don’t know if I could be so elemental and authoritative. But West Country White Ale inspires.

So, there is a lot there – a lot for anyone in any town to use to figure out the path of their local brewing trade. And there are a lot of other people hunting as well. Me, I have no idea what I will learn about Albany or Kingston or beer or anything else. But it is worth the hunt. And why not? Weren’t we all supposed to be citizen journalists, historians and novelists? Isn’t that the promise of the internet or is it really more like that personal jet pack we were all supposed to have by now? I think you might all want to get all be scratching around a bit – even if not as obsessively as others.