Author: Alan

Having A Go At Beery Long Writing With Max

I have a few things burbling away. First in line, as you know, Albany ale needs to be properly addressed – especially given Craig’s more detailed research and clearer organization of the topic. Having stumbled upon the forgotten center of brewing of America before the lager invasion, it’s worthy of a proper job. But I had a rotten 2012. Things got in the way of good intentions and an even better topic. Time passed. Colds and flues came in and out of the house. The cat died. And I watched as Boak and Bailey gave hints that they were doing some long writing about beer in post-WWII Britain. Funk deepened. Not that I have lusted for authorship but there are bigger ideas than a blog can capture.

And, there is the opportunity to write in a format that is not only longer but… weirder. I was thinking of something mixing both Lawrence Stern’s Tristram Shandy of the 1760’s with The Compleat Angler of 1653 with Dada and Duchamp added for good measure. Which naturally made me think of the man with the biggest drinking vessel I have ever seen. Surrealistically large. Max, the Pivni Filosof takes up the story:

I must say we are both very excited with this. We’ve been exchanging e-mails like two long distance lovers (minus the raunchy pics, fortunately) in order to give a shape to this project. It’s still too soon to say how long it’ll be or when it’ll be ready. What we are sure of, though, is that it will be something completely different to anything that’s so far been written about beer. The topics we are going to deal with, well, I guess those that follow our blogs can pretty much figure them out, and they will all be wrapped in a fun and perhaps rather surrealist narrative. The first words have already been smithed, the journey has just begun. We’ll see where it takes us. Be ready.

Not sure I am ready. But I do look forward to discovering how not ready I am. Especially the footnoting. I am hoping one will be scratch and sniff. A Kindle can do that now, right?

What Does A Critique Of Beer Culture Look Like?

I’ve been thinking more and more about the framework of the beery discourse and what has gotten us to this point. Still no comprehensive US history of beer. Still we live with the very language of beer controlled by organizations with middle managers, accountants and committees. And a growing trend such that, like things polysynthetic, the task of learning and describing the state of good beer appears to include a lot of creative writing – as in creation of the thing purported to be the subject of study. Not sure these are good things. There are stands being taken. I keep coming back to a post Jeff wrote a few weeks ago called “I Feel A Veto Coming On” in which he announced his rejection of a certain sort of beer:

…I must institute a similar policy with any experimental beer using crazy ingredients. I’m going to start from the position that anything that might plausibly be sold as a candy bar, salad, or entree is not worth drinking.

See that? That’s a position being taken. And one that makes sense. If you think about it, if the experimental beer is based on the adding of “not beer” to “beer” it is clearly a distancing of itself from beer. A dilution. A covering up. A distraction. One need not inaugurate the Protz Shield and Papazian Cup to point out the weakness in a trend or a shape shifting of the market. So, I take up Jeff’s policy and ask you to consider doing the same thing. Maybe 2013 is the year we can put the focus back on the beeriness of beer.

Book Review: How To Love Wine, Eric Asimov

htlw1aI picked this book up in the pre-Christmas self-gifting spree and, as I mentioned, am glad I did. I have followed Eric Asimov for sometime probably starting with some of his studies of beer styles that, at the time, were hailed as something of a break through for good beer. Not that I always agreed with him but following his writing has helped my appreciation of wine – especially his tackling of specific and perhaps under appreciated sorts of wine like sherry. In the book, a manifesto backed up by autobiography, he extends my appreciation by identifying themes and preferences all of which may be summed up in this brief passage at page 119:

I’ve become a firm adherent of the notice that wine is for drinking, not tasting. Only by drinking, swallowing, savoring, and returning to a wine, and repeating the process over time, can one really get a full and complete idea of what’s in a bottle and what the wine is all about. A taste is fine if you believe that understanding a bottle consists of writing down impressions of aromas and flavors. It’s like buying music over the Internet – if a fifteen-second snippet offered everything you needed to know, why pay for the whole song.

When was the last time you read beer writing like that. Focus on the complete idea of what’s in the bottle? No reference to being a pal of the wine maker or how it fits into a structure of styles? A fluid first approach to appreciation. What is the proper route to thinking about good beer or any good stuff? Is there such a thing? I’d argue not. So, why limit examinations about approaches to appreciation to just beer? Here is what I am starting to think. If you love beer but don’t explore wine, you have failed yourself. You have failed yourself in the same way that you would if you sought to learn about all good beer but didn’t want to eat every vegetable in the produce section or turned your nose up at fish or blue cheese. If you don’t know any wine writers by name, here is a start. But just a start.

More than that, how about taking on a small project of trying wines or spirits… or maybe nuts and cheeses as an adjunct to your interest in good beer. Or just a sort of wine. Since I have been trying various lower cost dry sparking wines like Spanish cava I have come to a point where I think of them a lot like the drier sorts of saison. I have also come to think of lightly sweeter wine like you find in a German spätlese is a good reference point to appreciate some of the implications of residual malt in a beer world a bit mad with hop acid. It’s all the knowledge so why not? Is it any different from knowing about your local cheeses, meats, breads, or garden produce? Not to mention if you are this sort of foodie.

Wine v. beer? Why bother fighting when wine and beer offers a much broader, more interesting range of flavours. Me, I am going to focus on a few things but one will be the fact that I live very near a wine region that is taking off and that offers many more options than an hour and a half’s drive for good beer does. See, as I mentioned last summer, my local beverage is in large part actually wine. And there’s some pretty good stuff over there in Prince Edward County. Expect a few more posts on local wine in 2013. How about you? What is worth writing about in addition to good beer near you?

Thinking Back To Blogging When We Was Young

I heard the news about Aaron Swartz like everyone else. And then I heard another way as way back when I started blogging I belonged to the Berkman Thursday discussion group through the Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. I still get the digests via email when something is posted coming up on a decade after it was busy. This week I received this:

It is with great sadness that I share with you the news that one of tech’s bright minds and a blog group participant, Aaron Swartz, has left us. Many people are sharing thoughts about this amazing fellow. I’ll share a few links below. Some local memorials have already happened and more are yet to come. Since Aaron was on the MIT Mystery Hunt team sj and I and several other blog group folks are on, we are tentatively planning a gathering during the Hunt. If you’re participating in the Hunt, keep an ear out for more info.

It was sad news. I knew the guy was young but when I look back I really had no idea that in my late 30s I was in a chat with folk then only a little more than a third of my age. It was interesting stuff and the discussion was hopeful. There was lots to dream about. I saved stories to my blog like this one from 2004 about how blogs might make money one day. I wrote hopeful things this even though for the life of me I have no idea now what I meant to be saying. I argued. And on Thursday evenings for a while I would fire up the computer, turn on the speakers and listen as the Berkman bloggers’ group talked. There was a chat function – was it on IRC? – that allowed anyone to participate. So I have this dim recollection of chatting about blogging with a lot of people including Aaron. Maybe I just listened or watched his words pass on the screen.

At some point I got less interested in the theory. An argument point developed that somehow folk were able to appropriate the works of others. I didn’t disagree with the point as I had no clue what the heck was meant. The idea generally faded but it took a number of years for the fine points to come to the surface. No one speaks of a “mash up” world any more like in 2004. But Aaron did, I think.

I won’t connect dots and I don’t expect you would either. As was pointed out, there was depression involved. At least one pal of mine died at his own hands due to depression. It’s sad. Does not take a grand design or conspiracy or even anything that makes very much sense. But when I think of the keen interest I had a decade ago and the voices that I listened to in pursuit of that interest, his was in the forefront. And he was so young. As young as my kids now. Sad news.

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Pass Peter’s Pewter Pottle Pot, Please!

pottle

In my quest for objects out of which to drink ale, I have a 1940s ceramic part pint, an 1840s pewter quart pot and have declared 2013 the year of the 1700s etched ale glass. But, what ho! Something came before my eye today that I had not only never seen before but never had heard of – the pottle! Not an actual pottle but just the concept.

As you can see, that is archaic word for a half-gallon. The image above is a handy illustration from the entry for “Ale” in 1725’s smash best selling book Dictionaire oeconomique: or, The family dictionary. Containing the most experienced methods of improving estates and of preserving health, with many approved remedies for most distempers of the body of man, cattle and other creatures…. You will have to excuse me for deleting more than half the title but you get the hint. But now you know that there are 16 pottles to a firkin. That’s knowledge, baby.

There are a few references to pewter pottle pots on Google mainly referencing legal cases where a whole bunch of things are listed as being stolen or being in a will. In 1267, it is recorded in The Court Rolls of Ramsey, Hepmangrove, and Bury that a number of naughty brewsters of Ramsey were brought before the rather ripely named William De Wassingle – who I have no doubt was called “Assingle” behind his back – to pay fines and pledge security. Earlier in the day there was a far more interesting case which is recorded as follows:

6 d. from Emma Powel for making unclean puddings, as presented in the last view. Pledge: Simon de Elysworth. Order that henceforth she not make pudding.

You wag, Assingle. Anyway, in the brewster cases on that day, the security pledged against failure to pay the fine included many pottles. Four centuries later but still over 350 years ago, in 1659, the court heard an action of trover and conversion brought against one Gervase Maplesden by one Gabriel Beckraan for a number of things including one pewter gallon pot, one pewter quart pot, one pewter pottle pot and one pewter pint pot. Battlin’ pewterers action! Nothing like it.

But where are the pottle pots now? Not only can I find none on the internets for sale but none even pictured. Can you send an image to one of these massive drinking vessels? Have you ever seen one?

Ontario: Headstock IPA, Nickel Brook, Burlington

I suppose I should write from time to time about what is actually in my fridge. I suppose I should also check out what is in that brown paper bag back there.

Nickel Brook’s Headstock IPA has become my “go to” beer which, to be fair, is because that can of Narragansett Porter back there is the only one I have and maybe one of a handful in Canada. Why do I like this so much? Well, it is big but not insane at 7% but has as much wallop as any number of stronger DIPAs I have had from the states. Then you have to simply like the price, $2.65 for a 473 ml can. No, I am not able to explain how it is we have 473 ml cans and not 500 ml cans but it is what it is. I can get almost three litres for just over fifteen bucks and it is the backbone of the weekend. It pours a slightly less than clear orange amber with a rich foamy white head. The aroma is pungent Seville marmalade. Sweet bitterness in the mouth. More orange flavours including bitter pith, pink grapefruit juice, prickly spicy green weedy hop, white pepper burn in the finish all in a satisfyingly rich even thick brew.

BAer respect. I like it way more than their average suggests.

The Greatest Cease And Desist Letter Ever!!!

And just in time for Christmas…

Normally, one would not like a cease and desist letter claiming that one had breached someones intellectual property rights. I mean we as bloggers are supposed to get all hot and bothered about these things, right? We’re living in the post-legal mash up paradise promised by the Boingsters back when blogs were new, right?? Well, that all came crumbling down yesterday when the following love letter popped into my inbox:

The undersigned declares under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of the above referenced author, the owner of copyright in the Intellectual Property, and Hachette Book Group, Inc., the exclusive US publisher of the Intellectual Property, including without limitation, the cover and other art incorporated therein (collectively, the “IP Owner”). I have a good faith belief that the materials identified below are not authorized by the IP Owner, her agent, or the law and therefore infringe the IP Owner’s rights according to federal and state law. Accordingly, we hereby demand that you immediately remove and/or disable access of the infringing material identified below.

Frig, said I. I am a lawyer. I know when the jig is up. For a second, it was like the ending of “The Public Enemy” and I was Jimmy Cagney. But when I looked at the link I knew what was going on. See, six years ago, I posted about how great it was that I had found the text to a 1987 article in The Atlantic magazine called “A Glass of Handmade” by William Least Heat Moon, a bit of writing that was my introduction to thinking about good beer. And I tucked away a copy of the text in the articles section of this blog because I was sure it was fluke that I had found it and that I would never find it again, assuming all copies of that issue had long been sent to the dump or lodged in the back of a barbershop I would never visit. Flash forward six years and, once I realized what was going on, I removed the article from public view and, just like that, me and the lawyers at Hachette Book Group were at peace. In fact, they were quite nice about it and let me know what is going on and it is good news:

Thanks for removing the essay from your site. We appreciate it! And, yes, it is included in Here, There, Elsewhere which comes out on January 8th.

So, now no need to have the article squirreled away from fear it would disappear from knowledge. You can get your own copy of Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road by William Least Heat-Moon on discounted pre-order from Amazon right now. A little late for Christmas but as important an essay on early US craft beer as there is. I can’t encourage you to get your own copy enough.

And I can confirm that this endorsement is not part of any legal settlement!

This Is How US Craft Beer Will Kill Itself

An odd, coordinated set of press releases today from the US Brewers Association (BA) and its leading members via any number of media can be summed up in the final section of the statement:

The large, multinational brewers appear to be deliberately attempting to blur the lines between their crafty, craft-like beers and true craft beers from today’s small and independent brewers. We call for transparency in brand ownership and for information to be clearly presented in a way that allows beer drinkers to make an informed choice about who brewed the beer they are drinking. And for those passionate beer lovers out there, we ask that you take the time to familiarize yourself with who is brewing the beer you are drinking. Is it a product of a small and independent brewer? Or is it from a crafty large brewer, seeking to capitalize on the mounting success of small and independent craft brewers?

The first sensible reaction is, of course, who cares. But then you read the variation on the theme by Papazian with its needy and slightly offensive reference to Founding Fathers and blindness to the good jobs offered by the 94% of the beer market served by big beer, well, you just shake your head. Never mind that some US craft brewers are big enough to have multiple breweries and large ad budgets. Never mind that many US craft brewers use much the same processes slammed by their trade association as marks of falsity if not signs of the end times. What is most annoying is that the whole construct is based on the faulty definition of what is craft – therefore good – by the BA itself.

Whether it is the BA-named Shock Top or its step-cousin the BA-silent Matilda, each ultimately produced under the Anheuser-Bush InBev corporate umbrella, there are plenty of examples of perfectly good well priced beer made by brewers who do not qualify for BA membership. There are also plenty of duds and plenty of highly questionable value propositions placed on beer store shelves by BA members. Again, few are special, most are solid work-a-day folk and some suck. Given that, launching on another David v Goliath fight based on a questionable self-generated definition of “craft” without reference to the sort of quality and price determinations the consumer has to make when out buying beer is a dead end. It is thin stuff that most can spot. All that I can see is that I have been reminded that the bigs are making some tasty beer now at a pretty good price.

As I said, odd. But these are instructive moments. Look to see who lines up behind the press release, repeating the arguments. Ask yourself why. As long as the view of the consumer is not the focal point for the discourse, one has to be very careful about such things, sifting what is independent opinion from what is generated due to one’s job description.

Is There Anyone More Interesting Than Simon H Johnson?

simon1I like helping people. Say what you like, I am a people person at heart. I helped people today. I have been helping people so much this week, I have snapped at an old pal in my business life and been living on five hour sleeps. I made a lamb sausage curry tonight, too. So it is with some discomfort but for more giggles that I read Simon’s post today entitled “Reluctant Scooper regrets that…” about his regrets over not being able to respond to all the demands made of him including regrets that he can’t:

– read your blog just because you tweeted me to do so in BLOCK CAPITALS
– write 500 words for free in the next two hours for your magazine because the writer you usually pay to do it has got delayed at an airport with no wifi / is face-down in a vat of custard / has caught VD
– recycle your press release into an “innovative yet commanding” blogpost
– do any kind of RT / Like / +1. Even if you say ‘please’. Even if you didn’t ask in Comic Sans. Because you asked for it
– attend your bar opening which is three hundred miles away. On a Tuesday night. With 24 hours notice. Because all the proper beer journos have got gastroenteritis. Or a better offer…

It does remind me of my latest policy update. It appears that Simon has a lawn, too, but he is able to sum up the point of beer blogging succinctly with a “[i]f it isn’t for shits & giggles, what to we do it for?” Perfect. Exactly. This week I have been working through Shakespeare’s Local by Pete, perhaps his real breakthrough book. I have assisted with comments on the draft of another book. I got 16 beers worth of samples dropped off. I helped a household of seven stay sane. I thought a lot about Albany, NY in the 1600’s and how it is just possible they were exporting beer out into the larger Dutch West Indies colonies. I drove to Ottawa and back Thursday night. I worked at my job, too. I was told there was “a bunch of young beer people who follow you questioning your relevance to your face” and knew how important it was to not give a rat’s ass in any way whatsoever.

There is so much fun in all of this. So many shits and giggles. Why bother with the rest?