Category: Books and Beer

Session 97: A $40 Room And Maybe Free Beer

sessionlogosmWe are asked to write about up and coming beer destinations for this month’s edition of The Session but I wonder if I’m living the rougher and readier reality. Beer travel? From what I see it often includes some sort of relapse into undergrad lifestyle. I am having bit of a creeping feeling that this two star hotel on the old four-lane route out of Albany, New York might be serving that up for me this weekend. But the room ain’t bad and soon pals will arrive. The solvent againt will prove to be the bond.

See, as I mentioned, I am attending the New York Brewers Association fest and conference at some other fancy pants hotel without $38 CND rooms. And to be fair I got this deal in Hotwire weeks ago. But it illustrates one of two ways beer and travel interact for me. I go to beer events or I find beer wherever I go. I have never traveled to find only beer. But that was covered in Session #93 four months ago. Not to mention sorta during Session 29.

Beer destinations? You may want to have a good look in the mirror if you dwell too much on the idea. You will find good beer on life’s highway if you are good at noticing stuff. You will also find other good stuff if you keep you eyes open for that as well. And if you don’t want your grand children to think you were an alcoholic back in the day get some photos of that stuff, too, when you travel. Travel gives you perspective. Or at least it should. Jeff knows. Go hicking in Franconia and you’ll find some good beer along the way. And, if not beer, wine or rum or even a nice cup of tea. It’s a big world out there. Don’t let the grandkids down.

I Never Go To Beer Fests… Except This Week!

uhvb1aThis weekend will find me at Albany attending the New York State Brewers Association second annual Craft New York Brewers Festival. The most exciting thing is that it is being held at a place called The Desmond Hotel. It is exciting because I love 1960’s first wave ska and, according to my notes, every band had to have a guy called Desmond in it. At least the great ones did. I am going to head south for the first time since September to man a chair at a table to see if I can help Craig spread the good news about our history of Albany ale as folk spin around the dance floor to these sorts of song stylings.

The Craft New York Brewers Festival will bring together 40 New York Breweries (and brewers) from every region of the state featuring up to 90+ hard to find and award winning beers. To make this very special event more exclusive, we will feature food sampling and pairing from local Albany restaurants and food vendors to go along with each brewery attending at no extra cost! This is a great opportunity to meet the NYS brewers that make the beer, and the owners of the local food scene in the Capital District that are such an important part of the community.

So, what do I do with the opportunity? I am not all that keen on fests as drinking sessions but I do look forward to having some decent conversations with folk in the trade. Its tied to the Association’s winter meetings. What to do? I might ask for a glass of gin. I might try an informal survey on what beer to pair with Anjou pears. Always wondered about that. Perhaps I might inquire as to what business strategies they have to better support better arm’s length beer business writing. Might expect the answer to be “what the hell is that?!?” though, mightn’t I. Frankly, the real question I want answered this weekend is whether anyone has been subject to section 3.11 of the NYSBA’s bylaws: Membership in the NYSBA, may be revoked by a majority vote of the Board of Directors for non-payment of dues, conviction of a felony or crime of moral turpitude, or willful violation of any other provision of the By-Laws of the NYSBA.. Crimes of moral turpitude? What the heck is that? Wonder if any of the members know. Might walk around asking members if they know anything about that. Perhaps it has some thing to do with unholy collaboration projects. That sort of thing. Evil.

Say hello if you are around the Des. After 8 pm, I understand, known as El Des.

Book Tour Tales: Why Do I Love Upstate New York?

cobbleskill

Back home. Been in the USA since Thursday and, unlike a lot of you who have to cross an ocean or get out a map, I was able to hit three grocery stores on the way home. See, I live 37 minutes from the international Thousand Islands Bridge, the most beautiful border crossing on the planet. So I bought laundry soap. But unlike most trips into the nearby Empire State, the family was not in tow. I don’t take off in another direction all that often. Which means I had a lot of time in the car to think about stuff. Or at least stuff other than where Mr. Bunny had gotten himself to. It’s always under the swim bag, by the way.

I had all the time in the world to think about what attending the SUNY Cobleskill event Grain to Glass meant. It certainly was the opposite of that stunned big craft celebrity brewer neediness. The room was full of people interested in becoming better brewers, better hop growers, better business people. It was also held on alumni weekend at the school, largely an agricultural college. There were chain saw demonstrations as illustrated past the corn stalk. There was free pulled pork from the hospitality school students, classrooms of diesel engine repair classes to check out and a whole bunch of other stuff. Beer was a topic among topics. It was a trade. It was placed in its proper place. A hipster free zone where no one gave a rat’s ass about the next PR twisty line coming out of the national Brewers Association board. Excellent.

Then, there was thinking about where I fit in to that proper place. People were really interested at that event and the others Craig and I attended about their region, their history and their beer. Beer was part of their culture. They were not there to learn about their niche hobby. There was no beer community. There was beer in the community. So, they wanted to know about traditional hops as opposed to new hybrid flavoured hops. Folk there – like at the other events – want to know about US ale brewing history, how there was two centuries of beery life before lager. It’s good to imagine how brewers in training might want to emulate those who came before them instead of some big craft guy who they see on YouTube or a TV ad. Are you picking up a theme?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the real treats of the trip was talking with a guy who has run a bar called The Lionheart for a quarter of a century who has found the way to sell three dollar pints of US craft beer while making a good living. A lot of it has to do with running a good bar with great staff but a lot of it also has to do with ignoring the next big thing that never turns out to be the next big thing. Taking care. Supporting local. Looking for value. Remembering the customer pays the bills not the suppliers. Including different sorts of clientele. Serving a mix of clients was also the obvious decision Browns of Troy which was running a charity event in another section of the brewery while we were holding forth in another space talking about the city’s brewing heritage. In a third section, the bar crowd were kicking back Brown’s great oatmeal stout or an IPA made on site as Jeter played his last game for the Yankees on the big screen. And as the Giants beat the Washington Whatchamacallits on another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s it all mean? Why do I bother spending holiday time and more money on discount hotels than I will ever make on the book to visit again and again. I was telling someone how weird it is studying and writing about the history of a city I have no personal connection with. Yet when I am there – whether it is Troy or Cobleskill or Syracuse or up in the North Country – it feels like a place that is entirely normal. Not to mention beautiful. Yesterday afternoon I cut out of the SUNY event to take three hours to doddle my way over to Syracuse on a warm Saturday afternoon care of route 28 then along route 20 to route 92. Changing leaves. Pre-interstate main roads though small towns, along river valleys over rolling hills farmed for generations. Took me through watersheds that meet the ocean at Baltimore, New York and east of Montreal. Bought a hot dog at a Stewart’s.

Reading what I just wrote, if I am Stan I might think about how beer comes from this place and with the farmstead brewing and hop yards and cideries there is a lot to be said for that. But it is also a great place that you can learn about through its beer, its bars and its breweries. Beer isn’t a community. It is a window through which you can get to know about a community. That is why I am actually optimistic. You may not catch that from time to time but I do disagree with the idea posted by Boak and Bailey last week that beer is not as rich a seam as food, or music, or film. Beer is as rich but you have to know what beer isn’t to appreciate the point. Beer is not passive and it is not haute or elite. It is pervasive and innocuous. When we say beer is like bread we have to remember it is really like bread. An everyday thing. But we live and have lived in the everyday for hundreds and thousands of years in communities built around the brewery as much as the church and the town hall. That’s what people do as they do other stuff with their lives. Like these guys who you can see in the background of the picture above. People of the beer, I’d say.

That’s worth writing about.

Another Milestone In Writing Ontario’s Beer History

Milestone? Ramming over 400 years of history into the form of one book tends to make you forget milestones. Too many fly by. Jordan and I are coming to a final point with all the text placed in one spot with a real beginning, middle and end. With still a few weeks to go and without spilling too many beans… what have I learned?

=> An iPad mini is not unlike a shovel. Years ago, I kept an acre vegetable garden and dug it and turned it every year with just a shovel. One Saturday morning I said “to hell with this” to the sky and bought myself a bright red $1000 Toro rototiller that could be started on turf and, before moving forward, would straight drop down turning the ground to gorgeous fertile soil. I called it “Lil’ Shiva” for obvious reasons. Two days ago I bought the 15.6 inch laptop on sale that I am typing on now. Not squinting as much all of a sudden.

=> I am glad I shared in the writing of The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer with Max first. It got a lot of mental content out of the way but also got me in the habit of sitting down and pounding out 400 or 800 words not as a stand alone thing like these paragraphs but as part of a bigger statement. I’ve started its sequel.

=> Ontario’s general history is far more interesting than folk would tell you. Huge chunks of the social and political story can’t fit into the narrative solely for reasons of scale. It is sad that there is no well known book simply called The History of Ontario as there are similar works in other, more self-aware jurisdictions. The story of the provinces brewing gives some hints as to why that book might not be on a bookshelf near you. You will have to wait, however, until June to see what I mean.

=> I have far more interest and even affection for big institutions like the Hudson’s Bay Company and big people like E.P. Taylor. Rather than being the massive faceless corporate monoliths they might be taken for today, they each were cutting empires out of the hinterlands in their way. Consolidation was inevitable in the brewing industry in its day just as much as it was in the automotive industry. Today, we don’t expect to buy cars made in our own local communities. Why would Ontarians of 1890 or 1949 care any more whether their beer was local? PS: Labatt > Carling even if it was smaller until their last competitive decades.

=> How about the beer? If Labatt were to bottle its Export IPA circa 1900, it might well blow more than half of the craft beers brewed today out of the water. The beer I would really like to try most, however, is early 1800s ship’s beer. Simply brewed with few ingredients and low alcohol, it is one of the lost brews that would have been an utterly common place thing in a shore town like mine two hundred years ago. Common as Kleenex or coffee in a paper cup.

So, there you go. An update or sorts. Still plenty of writing and editing to come but the end is near. Then another book. And maybe another if things work out.

The League Of Diastatic Brown Kilnfolk

I need a new project. The writing and working and new kitten stuff is simply not enough. So when I was reading Ron Pattinson‘s new book The Home Brewers Guide To Vintage Beer yesterday as the six year old did not do much during a kids’ basketball practice at the Y, I was struck by this passage on page 11:

The earliest porters and stouts were brewed from 100 percent brown malt… It was custom to use straw as a fuel in the final stage of the kilning, where the temperature was increased dramatically.

See, in these hop-crazed times we worship a false idol, a flavouring agent. That error has spawned a thousand flavoured beers posing as craft. But we know that adding watermelon or lye or New Zealand hops to a beer only succeeds in making the beer taste of the adulteration. It is time that the focus of brewing returned to the making of better beer. And that means paying attention to the malt.

Which is the point of the LDBK. See, when I was a bad home brewer I liked to manipulate the malt, I would toast it immediately before mashing to make the oils more volatile and available. I used to let some malts soak for days in cold water in the fridge and pour the resulting tea into the boil right at the end. It worked. It was easy. But ever since I tried the 1855 collaboration porter brewed by Pretty Things and Ron, I have wanted to taste what should be considered the holy grail of brewing: pre-1800s beer made with proper diastatic brown malts.

That is where the LDBK comes in. See, what needs to be determined is how diastatic brown malt is made. What we know is that it was made of malt and that it was made by kilning. What has been forgotten is how the malt got darkened without destroying the enzymic properties of pale malt that allows the grains’ natural starches to convert to fermentable sugars. This conversion is something that can and should happen in every home every second week. Through collective experimentation and statistical analysis of results, it may be possible to establish the practical point at which pale malt may be toasted and darkened to create brown malt as well as the manner in which it might be done to protect the enzymic action. That in fact is the motto of the LDBK. Protect the Enzymic Action. What is the Latin for that?

So, start kilning and mashing. It takes a kilo of pale malt, pots and pans, graph paper and curiosity. While it may be that the critical feature is pre-kiln, that mention of the use of straw and flash heating may be key. The trick might be to darken the outside so fast that the inside is not fully heated. Then mash it in small batches to see if the resulting 66C porridge goes sweet. Like a rare steak on the grill, the point might be to preserve both characteristics through the process. Just a theory. But that’s where all great advances in human understanding begin. With a theory. And some graph paper. You in?

Best thing is that others are trying.

Maureen, Trains, Meat And Beer

4302I do this every time, don’t I. I start reading a book and then start writing the review before I am a third of the way in. Why can’t I be a good little reviewer – especially when Maureen Ogle was good enough to make sure by email that I would be interested in a review copy of her new book In Meat We Trust. Once I got into the second chapter this morning at the YMCA as six year olds played, I knew I had made the right call even thought the book was about the history of the US meat industry.

See, in the history of brewing in Ontario that Jordan and I are working on, the second half of the 1800s was the only period throughout the 400 years of beer in the colony then Province that was without a pre-existing myth set out for us. You have your explorers and you have your New France. After 1783, you have your Loyalists, then pioneers and the expansion of settlement. Then in the early 1900s you have temperance, then prohibition followed by industrial macro gak with craft following up in the rear. That’s it, right?

Nope. As it turns out the good stuff we know as modernity pretty much occurs between the US Civil War and WW1. Mass communication and transportation. The shift from local to national markets. The vision to view the private marketplace in an imperial way just as Britain and her competitors had as nations for centuries. It’s when things scaled up. From our research, Jordan and I have identified a similar thing. And just as the names Swift and Armour have continued in the US food trade due to decisions made in the 1870s and 1880s, brewing names from Ontario at the time like Labatt and Carling are still known for the same reason.

Maureen shows that the train lines stretching westward across America brought, first, live cattle then chilled carcasses and finally butchered cuts of meat from Chicago to the cities of the US eastern seaboard. The new transportation technology allowed for the best quality finished product to be shipped for the least cost. So, too, with beer. While no one in their right mind loads cart for the pioneer edge of settlement with barrels of beer when whiskey is available, train cars of beer barrels sent by brewers with vision can crush a lot of local old school brewer hundreds of miles away. It’s so… modern.

No wonder the peak number of breweries was in the 1880s and not just before prohibition. Incorporations and collusions were just the thing for late Victorian brewing magnates with facilities located on railway spurs to ensure the beer and money flowed. And as with big brewing so too big butchery in the last years of the 1900s. I will keep reading In Meat We Trust to find out what happens next. You should be, too.

So Now #JordanAndAlanBook Has A Name

Just so you can plan your Father’s Day shopping for 2014, the book contracts have been confirmed with the publisher History Press, aka our reputable publisher. Never thought I’d have one of those.

And, as befits a birthday, it has a name: Ontario Beer: A Heady History of Brewing from the Great Lakes to the Hudson Bay. I noticed something about the name. It goes against the regular direction of things. The general theory goes that Ontario grew east to west. But it really grew west to east after the last Ice Age, then later south to north with the Five Nations and their neighbours, then a blip in the east with Cartier… but then north to south-westish with Henry Hudson followed two generations later by the first outposts of the Hudson Bay Company, then a blip in the far east with Lasalle and Frontenac followed by then a little continuing action at the very southwest across from Detroit until the Loyalist surge south to west at Niagara along with south to north along the St. Lawrence, then very far east to west after the War of 1812 and west and west and north and north-west and west until… now.

Better get at it.

Ontario: When Was The First Beer Downed Here?

A puzzle. As has been noted, Jordan and I have accepted the offer to co-write a book on beer and brewing through Ontario history. It is part of the series put out by The History Press series on regional brewing histories. Which leads to lots of questions. Like… how does one write a history? But that is a big question. A more specific question is what was the first beer consumed in what is now Ontario. One candidate is the beer found in the hold by the mutineers of Henry Hudson’s ship in 1610 who set poor Captain Hank and a few others adrift in James Bay and then set to ripping the Discovery apart as recounted in 1625 by one sailor who was present:

…there were some of them that plyed their worke, as if the Ship had beene entred by force, and they had free leaue to pillage, breaking vp Chests, and rifling all places… In the Hold they found one of the vessels of meale whole, and the other halfe spent, for wee had but two; wee found alſo two firkins of Butter, some twentie seuen piece of Porke, halfe a bushell of Pease, but in the Masters Cabbin we found two hundred of bisket Cakes, a pecke of Meale,of Beere to the quantitie of a Butt, one with another.

The trouble is that while it is clear that the mutiny was in James Bay but not clear that the mutineers drained the beer at or near the western half of the bay’s shore line that later becomes Ontario as opposed to Quebec. They do keep the eastern shore in sight on the way home after they abandon Hudson and the others left to their own devices. But that was after they gunned the beer. Where did they do that? Such problems I have. Well, not the sorts of problems these lads me but, you know, modern problems.

Waking Up At The Wrong End Of Lake Ontario

Did I write wrong up there? I meant “western” or at least “other” I suppose. Having a house emptied by the call of a cottage as I stay home to work next week, I needed something to do. And I had a bit of business to take care of with Jordan. That thing I didn’t get into any details about a couple of weeks ago. Book deal. Or rather a “promise to write a book” deal. We had to sign some papers and what better way to celebrate than a short tour of some beer spots around his hometown.

Once I got to the hotel, I got directed out of the downtown that I am most familiar with to head out in a taxi, past the protesting Egyptians at the legislature, around the mass of celebration that was the PRIDE event and north to The Rebel House, a pub celebrating its 20th birthday this year. I found Jordan out back in the beer garden. Well, he called it a beer garden but I would have called it a back patio. Which was about the only point over the next six or seven hours that I did not raise with him. I deeply don’t care about the difference but wonder why I think things like that. I had tweeted as I drove west that I wanted a Left Field Eephus and the spot was picked well as it was in very good shape for a dappled table in a backyard on a perfect June afternoon. I am not used to Toronto being this pleasant. At this point of the afternoon I attributed it entirely to the gem of a drinking spot.

 

 

 

 

Finished up and then jumped into a taxi for another flying trip back south to the Queen and Beaver on Elm off Yonge for a few more pints and a bit to eat. I was there by myself back in late 2009. Supper ended up bring a variety of minor cuts of meat. Cured and dried lamb, ox cheek and deviled lamb kidney that Jordan reported gave him dreams of zombies. Note the action photo of beer nerds at a feeding to the upper right pausing not to pray but to take digital photos. I suspect the great moral order gave him nightmares for that alone. The best thing – or a best thing – was the dimpled mugs of County Durham ale, the quiet capable and utterly unmarketed brewer to the west of Toronto. Black tea hopping did a great job cutting the rich bits of mammal and the accompanying sauces. Quiet downstairs as the place was packed watching the fitba upstairs. First time I encountered one of these, too.

 

 

 

After dinner, we marched south down Yonge through the PRIDE celebrations during which I realized what was going on in my mind. Toronto did not smell Toronto-ish. With so much of the downtown shut to cars and with it being Sunday not to mention one free from the heavy heat the city gets in summer, well, all the towers were washed with cool sweet lake air. One last stop at beerbistro! where a third local Ontario ale was the focus, Peterborough’s Publican House Square Nail pale ale. We passed on the Baladin investment opportunity as I suspected the owners might have wished they had. Baltimore slapped the Yanks on the big screen behind the bar.

 

 

 

 

On the way home, I hit Churchkey 40 km north of the 401 picking up a White IPA and a few strong brown ales, then carried on to Sharbot Lake for a few packs of bacon and sausage at Seed to Sausage apparently in celebration of my ale and meat themed trip. Or thus themed life. Drank many ales, ate many meats. Call the headstone carver.

Father’s Day Tomorrow May Find Me Typing

There may come a time that beer and brewing will only mean writing to me. Not that I have any real issue with beer but right now I have three co-writing projects all of which add up to around 150,000 words. I realized just now that that’s a lot of words when I finish typing out all those zeroes. But I am, frankly, inspired by Boak and Bailey and their jump at long writing about post WWII UK beer culture. I notice, however, that they are each other’s sole co-writers and they are sensible enough to be writing one book. So, maybe an explanation of what the hell I am up to is in order.

=> The first, the Alan and Max book is the furthest ahead already at over 35,000 but I am not sure what to make of it. It’s intended to be funny and all about craft beer culture. It might be titled “Lies Craft Beer Taught Me” but probably not. Unlike the other two projects, it is largely creative writing, an exploration of good beer culture with little respect for space and time – let alone craft beer culture. Writing with Max has been a truly refreshing experience as we have completely different paths in life and come from different cultures yet have come to a very similar place in our thoughts about the good beer community and the pressures as well as interests imposing upon it. We are planning on a Kindle release when it is ready to go.

=> And, as you may well have suspected, Craig and I are writing about Albany Ale with a real return to focus. We are working on a series of article we were invited to write for Brewery History. The first, on the brewing scene in the upper Hudson in the 1600s is about 70% there. There have been spin-offs, too, which is to be expected after more than two and a half years. Craig has already done a presentation with more to come as well as some interviews with local media. Living five hours drive away from the subject matter is a bit of an issue for me but, well, you do what you can. We have spoken to a publisher about a proper book on the topic, too. We shall see what the future holds but we are very confident there is enough information there to justify two covers and an index.

=> Third project? Can’t tell you yet because papers are in transit. Jordan and I were invited to write it and we are all a giggle about the prospect. It may end up having aspects of the other two projects though I can confirm that, unlike Max, it will not include a description of a tube up Jordan’s butt. I can also confirm that we have a reputable publisher. I can tell you that because during a conference call I asked “so, can I confirm that I have a reputable publisher?” and was told that I could. More detail should be forthcoming in the near future but suffice it to say there shall be interviews, research and plenty of emails before the thing comes into the world.

All of which means I must like co-writing. I think I do even though I’ve been a solo operation for most of the ten years that I have been writing here. What I like about co-writing is the chance to see a large idea through the eyes of another. What is really interesting at the moment is seeing large and related ideas through the eyes of three others concurrently. Craig brings more zeal than I have as well as a greater capacity for detail. Jordan has an inordinately large vocabulary by far plus a wider vision. Max is more incisive and also not weighed down by presumptions about both beer and writing that I carry as part of my own personal baggage. Sounds like therapy when you put it that way. Which it might be. The overall effect is making sense of these past ten years writing in a basement, putting it all into some order. Which may leave little time for the drinking of beer due to the thinking about it.