Craft Fibs – Page 19 – A Good Beer Blog

Do I Really Want to Show You How Good Beer Can Taste?

Really? I mean I am a fan of good beer as much as the next guy but do I really want to show you how good beer can taste as suggested by this article entitled “Craft beer aficionados want to show you how good beer can taste. Trust them.“?

Those friends who sold me on craft beers are now trying to sell the entire Pittsburgh population on them. Today marks the start of Craft Beer Week, organized by the nonprofit Pittsburgh Craft Beer Alliance. Local breweries, distributors, bars and restaurants throughout the North Hills and the metro area are featuring tastings and special events to spread, as they say, “the gospel of all things craft beer.”

The funniest thing, of course, is that if this theory is true all Pittsburgh Pirate fans should become Yankee fans, right? And you will all listen to The Decemberists and you will all know the reference in the band’s name and know why you have to be taught Dostoevsky when you are 20 from a guy who knew Pasternak… because of you don’t understand things on as many levels as I do you really can’t have passion. You won’t really be able to suck the marrow out of life and giggle as it drips down you chin. Because you won’t have passion. Like me.

To hell with that. Passion is that employer of the young who saps their joy for life. Passion offers periodic Google ad cheques in return. It asks you to be the unpaid brand ambassador. On Wednesday night, a intelligent and eager young person suggested to me that my interest in good beer was pure passion with a certain honest excitement. I took the time to gently crush that moment like a mouse under my heel. It was information, I said. Information and interest. Passion? I have children for that. I have my future. Most of all, I have awareness that we all face the grave and am informed of that by the smell of the forest or by the way ocean waves entrance you if you just stop and watch. That’s passion. I don’t buy passion by the six pack and I sure as hell don’t run into it at either the gala or during the week’s worth of events put on by the local brewers’ association.

Beer? It is tasty. It can even be fun. But let’s keep some perspective. Worrying too much about the taste in other peoples’ mouths should only really lead to something more sensible like this.

Do I Really Want to Show You How Good Beer Can Taste?

Beer? It is tasty. It can even be fun. But let’s keep some perspective. Worrying too much about the taste in other peoples’ mouths should only really lead to something more sensible like this.

Wicked Beer Fan Related Finger Pointy Gossip Action!

I have to say I have no idea these sorts of things went on but, even though it is Easter and I should be nicer especially having attended an excellent morning service, I just can’t stop reading the comments after the post that contains this:

…I have had to explain, and apologize, for certain “Toronto beer celebrities” as if they are actualy goddamn relatives of mine, for their obnoxious, entitled behaviour in bars I have only been two once – like it’s my non-existent brother we’re talking about… I doubt if this gets through to anyone in particular, but PLEASE, do not ruin any more places in Ontario or upstate New York for me – I am tired of having to explain that “no, I am NOT associated with that dickhead” to servers, bartenders and pub/restaurant owners from central Ontario to south of Buffalo. I have tried to be nice, but frankly enough is enough.

Never have I been happier to have created the idea of Easlakia… OK, once but that was really really personal. But where in the world does the idea of “Toronto beer celebrities” (sic) come from?? I mean even the idea of “Toronto celebrities” alone bends the space time continuum a bit, right? No, this is weird. Yet honest. Yet a car crash. And makes me wonder what stamp collectors say behind each others backs.

I live in a bubble out here. If this is what beer nerds are, I don’t know. I am taking another good hard look at Miller High Life. Just saying. Add a slice of lime, it’s a Mill-rona. It works.

Oh Dear – The “Cake Boss” Of Beer Gets Panned

What a disappointing graphic. But appropriately so – don’t you think? See, I have mentioned how I have been utterly unthrilled by the prospect of a TV show about Dogfish Head and their business operations. This is not to say you should not be thrilled by the show and not to say that I do not like some beers by Dogfish Head – though not all. It’s just that the whole Cake Boss thing has been done. The format is tired. My chosen photo captures that, doesn’t it. Besides – I love the beer not the brewer. Celebrity brewer infomerical? That’s a bit sad. So, give me something new. Give me Man v. Food any day. Or maybe a show about craft beer or even the history and taxonomy of beer generally. But not this:

…the series focuses on Sam Calagione, the proprietor of the Delaware-based Dogfish Head Brewery. A telegenic and voluble type, Calagione waxes eloquent when he describes his company’s mission. He claims that Americans are the kind of people who refuse to accept what’s shoved down their throats, and that’s why we demand distinctive beer. Then he goes ahead and contradicts that by noting that craft beers are only 5 percent of the U.S. market. He says the philosophy of the company is stated in a long quotation from Emerson about individualism that is posted on an office wall. Since it’s too many words to put on a bottle, the company’s motto is “Off-centered ales for off-centered people.” Calagione’s skill at crafting baloney is put to good use in the first episode, in which Sony Records commissions him to create a beer to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release of Miles Davis’ album “Bitches Brew.” Inspired by jazz, which he says is a mixture of African and American elements, Calagione decides to blend an Ethiopian honey beer and an American imperial stout, even though the aforementioned statistic would suggest that the quintessential American beer would be a bland, fizzy mass-produced lager.

That’s from Media Life magazine‘s web site. A hat tip to Andy for mentioning it on Facebook. Not a source that has a particular agenda or at least one that has any skin in the craft beer game. And what about the name, Brew Masters. Is it a claim? Any why the plural? I would have thought that that time would have been reserved for a show that might talk about a number of masters of brewing from breweries around the world. That was the show I was hoping for – Stan and Ron wandering the globe meeting the beery, getting a zillion perspectives. It appears my disappointment in regards to the scope of and planning for the show may be matched by results. Oh dear.

But, as with my not giving of the rat’s ass about Beer Wars and then seeking your input on the experience, you may have a different point of view. And maybe a better graphical representation of your mood about the whole thing. You should. You better. Let me know what it is.

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.

I Have Never Really Bothered With The Pour

There are many things that can get attached to an idea or experience. I presume the more precious or particular the key advice, the more likely you are dealing with a barnacle that needs scraping off the hull of your given ship of life.. or a consultant hunting for someone to bill. Like this mystic wisdom about pouring your beer:

There’s more to pouring a beer than you may think. Pouring a beer improperly can pollute wonderful aromas, cause an improper release of CO2, and hinder the flavors of the beer. If you want your beer to fulfill its potential, consider this advice…You want to cock the glass a certain way depending on the style of beer. If the beer is highly carbonated, tilt the glass at a 45 degree angle and start pouring down the side. Wait until a third of the pour you want is in the glass, then tilt the glass upright and pour in the center. If the beer is lower in carbonation, start pouring downwards into the center of the glass earlier. A head the width of two fingers is a good rule of thumb for what you are looking for, Deman says.

I have never been particularly anal about how to pour a beer but even I would not look for a two inch head on a low carbonation style like mild. You’d drive the life out of it. But no doubt I’ve been a lifetime beer polluter and had no idea. Better rule of thumb: do what you like when you pour your beer and it probably works for you.

Book Review: A Life On The Hop, Roger Protz

I bought a copy of this book after looking around and only finding Knut’s observations from last summer on the difference between its marketing and that of Pete Brown’s Hops and Glory. There was a press release by its publisher CAMRA, a nibbly bit by the NUJ, a smidge from his editorial assistant but I couldn’t seem to come up with a review other than the one that Knut found in The Westmorland Gazette:

A Life on the Hop is an amusing romp around the beer world and is devoid of beery jargon. It will be enjoyed not only by beer lovers but also by those who enjoy travel writing.

Magic. I’ll miss print journalism when it dies.

There has been much sport made of Mr. Protz but it is not something that I really understood as he is not a often discussed writer in this part of the world. So, being the good boy that I am, I thought I would have a read of his autobiography to learn a bit more to either join in the slag-fest or, more fairly, get a bit of perspective. I was in for a little shock.

The book is subtitled “Memoirs of a Career in Beer” and the key word is “memoirs” – as this really isn’t an autobiography but a series of anecdotes arranged in themes based largely but not solely on geography. I learned this in the first chapter when I thought I would learn about his childhood but where I learned about pubs he liked in around his first London newspaper work in Fleet Street – the Cheese, Punch, Old Bell, Old King Lub, Black Friar and the Globe. I didn’t know what to make of it – not much Roger, lots of tavern. Then you are quickly into chapters take you through the Czech Republic, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium Germany, Mexico and the USA as if someone were gleaning through one’s old note books in search of favorite and perhaps not too often repeated yarns of a wag. About a hundred pages in, I started turning down page corners after I read errors vaguely Canuckois like:

a. Fraunce’s Tavern in New York dates from 1790 “when New York was still under British rule” [p.107] The British left in 1783 (some moving to help found my town) and the building dates from 1719.

b. the Yakima Valley of Oregon was once part of “French Canada” [p.124] even though the French speaking part of Canada was far to the east and I think that the Yakima was south of the part of the area of the British claim.

I folded down more corners until I stopped around page 167. I didn’t really care that I doubted his explanation of the genesis of the term steam beer [p. 117] or that lambic is the oldest beer style known to mankind, being close to beer dating back to Egypt, Babylon and Mesopotamia [p. 129]. Did it really matter that Babylon was a city state within Mesopotamia? Was I missing the point?

I didn’t miss that there is something of a cranky, indiscreet tone to these travels. Targets include Tories who put him up for the night, corporations and two older ladies encountered in Prague having a private conversation:

I was crossing the square with Graham Lees, a CAMRA founding member with an acerbic turn of phrase, when we passed two elderly American women who were eyeing the fabulous architecture of the area. “Y’know,” one of them said to her friend, “it’s nothing like Poughkeepsie.” Lees went red in the face, chased after them and snarled: “Of course it’s nothing like fucking Poughkeepsie. It’s been here for several fucking centuries.” It was his finest hour.

That’s the finest hour for an arsehole, perhaps. It’s that kind of small coarse tone that you hear in a far too graphic and entirely gratuitous of an account of the suicide of a brewer in an early chapter and the tragic affect on the family or, later, the naming of names of fellow beer tourists who may have broken marital vows at Oktoberfest. You may come away wondering what sort of person would make that part of a book.

Yet he is obsessed with beer. And has spent a life following it – a life that I realize the more I write about beer sometimes can mean hard scrabble and closed doors. It’s a little bittersweet when despite all the years he is not able to arrange for proper accommodations on an invite to the US and back on a liner. It’s a little poignant when he thinks that when someone isn’t able to meet with him because Roger is going to reveal the truth about a merger when it is likely the guy was just too busy. It is a tough old road and a long one. It’s likely one that he takes pride in taking – a road not often taken when he started out. That pride and hard effort comes out as well.

One beer writer chastised me for an unkind comment by email a few months ago, saying: “anybody who started writing about beer since 1995 (just picked that year out of the air – maybe it should be 2000… should pause. If it weren’t for people like Roger they might not be able to be doing what they do.” He also said that he wouldn’t use him as a source but the point is still a good one. When it wasn’t easy, when it didn’t pay well and no one could roll out of bed and blog their thoughts within 17 minutes, Roger was out there writing about beer. He probably got you from one stage of interest to another at some point. And that is what the book is really about. You will get irritated, you will not find out the information you might have thought you would find and you will turn down corners when you find another error – but you will get a sense with the man.

So, buy the book and share your thoughts. Just don’t go on a beer tour with him and give him any reason to think you went off for the evening with the buxom lonely lush. You may read about it later.

Craft Or Kraphtt: Porter, Michelob Brewing, St Louis, Mo.

I was going to write “wow” or something but that wouldn’t quite capture my surprise at how good this beer is. Poured at a chilly cellar temperature, there is an immediate mass of dry cocoa that sits in such balance with that bit of hop, a little java and that little nod to dark plum that immediately lets you know this is no ordinary budget beer. Chalky soft water makes it particularly moreish. In fact, if I had not bought this as part of a $10.99 12 pack at the A-Bay Mart the other day I could have been quite happy to pay $4.99 or more for a 22 oz bomber of this stuff.

Definitely craft. Nothing near kraphtt. Perhaps the most surprising value in beer that I have come across so far. BAers rate widely.

Single Cask Brews: Manufacturing Scarcity Or Pure Genius?

I just about flipped out when I saw this post over at 2 Beer Guys (from the April 16, 2008 issue of The Coloradoan) about the Odell Brewing Co. (with whom I am not familiar but which I am sure is nice and run by fine folk, and all) doing a limited run of a series of single cask beers – each brew never to be repeated and the cask retired:

…Each batch of the ale, which will have more vanilla and caramel tones, will make enough for only roughly 120 cases before the recipe is retired, creating an exclusivity factor not usually associated with beer. Each 750 mL bottle – hand-corked, hand-signed and numbered – will sell for $24.99. “It’s a one-time kind of thing,” John Bryant, Odell chief operating officer, said of the process they hope will put them at the forefront of the market.

Excellent. Because we all need another mechanism to raise prices through exclusivity. But am I being fair? Am I being a rogue consumer who is too tight with the wallet. I would encourage, first, that you consider two posts by Stan from last January in which he makes a number of points relating to overly limited runs of barrel-aged beer and the effect on price and popularity. And isn’t that very last point, popularity counter-intuitive? Makes me wonder whether some of these high rated beers are a lot like the 60’s – that many who claim to have experienced them were never really there.

But my point is more, I hope, to the point. What is the basis of a $24.99 price tag on these bottles of beer? Is anything else at that price point? I trust that each of you will consider your responsibilities as an active player in the market and avoid artificial inflationary events. And, sure, it will be a price that is paid but so is “jerk tax”, that premium you pay whenever a vendor can get you for one reason or another. Why not $18.99 or $35.99? Using the math from the story, scrapping the barrel after only one use adds 450/1440 or 32 cents to each bottle or about a tenth that the corked bottle does (if what a US brewer told me last month is true.) Are you so out of control that you don’t care? Are you the sort that will run to this, that will try to profiteer even? Or will you just say no? What do you fall back on to make this decision?

[Insert Beer] Wins [Insert Beer] Style Award

I have no real complaint over the 12,474,832 awards that are handed out for beers every year. I have never paid any attention to these things when making beer selection decisions – though, to be fair, when a label mentions a claim to one of them I think of it as red flag worthy of further investigation. “Antwerp 1931” only makes me wonder what the hell they’ve been doing for the last 76 years?!?!

But that is nowhere near as fun as this one, the beer that won the its own beer-style award:

Hoegaarden, the Original Belgian White Beer, was awarded its fourth consecutive World Beer Cup Gold Medal in the Belgian-Style White (or Wit)/Belgian-Style Wheat category at the 2008 Brewers Association World Beer Cup competition held recently in San Diego, Calif.

Don’t get me wrong – I am quite happy to have a Hoegaarden any time it is stinking hot. And I love most of its descendants the wittes and whites – except maybe for that one from Brouwerij Sint-Jozef…four years have not been enough to drive the furniture polish taste out of my memory. But, as mentioned and half of you will know, this is like awarding Adam the Annual First Guy Award. Hoegaarden is the defining standard and originator of the Belgian-Style White (or Wit)/Belgian-Style Wheat (aka 16A) which, oddly enough, comes from the place called Hoegaarden. It’s actually quite Hoegaarden-esque and, if Unger is to be believed, is one last legacy of the proud independent principality (or whatever) of Hoegaarden which lived as itself quite happily since the middle ages and subsisting on something they called “beer” that we call Hoegaarden.

So well done, Hoegaarden. You are the very essence of yourself.