Category: Commentary

Text: I Am A Craft Brew Fan

Man – things are getting weirder and weirder out there. You know, I really don’t need any videos of people I will likely never meet telling me how great they are and how there is a unified movement of pure positivism that you can’t deny – even, I suppose, that time the beer kinda sucked or, worse, their experiment in your mouth ended up costing you $15 bucks too much. I mean it is fine and fun for them and their friends and at the conventions and all but let’s get a bit serious: is this about beer or fawning?

No, I think there has been a little too much attention placed in the wrong direction lately what with this wave of celebritosis, not to mention with the new found right for some beer people calling other beer people hateful, idiotic and uninformed on the one hand while others are acting like outright sycophantic cheese eating schoolboys on the other. You know what I think? We need to find our center again. We need to understand who is the most important person in each beery universe and that is the person in the mirror. Lew knew when he wrote about describing taste today:

But “Don’t write to impress, write to communicate” is good stuff. I can’t believe that one of his commenters — “Dr. Wort” — actually advises him to use the Lovibond scale to make more accurate descriptions of color. Great, let’s just all do it by the damned numbers. Useful. Beer tasting is subjective. There’s no way to get around that. Period. Never will. That’s why medals are usually awarded by blind judging and consensus, by panels. Best you can do. I don’t present my “reviews” as anything but my opinions. I don’t say you’re right or wrong if you agree or disagree; frankly, I don’t care, in the end. If you find them useful, and I hope you do, that’s great; if you don’t, I can understand that, too. They’re descriptive, not prescriptive. I hope you find the following reviews useful. I’m not going to worry about it, though, and neither should you.

I thought a similar thing when I was thinking about how to describe the fact that I really do not care about the preciousness of the thoughts of others to the detriment of my own ideas. And when I think like this, like you, I think of the Romantic poets as I mentioned over at Maureen Ogle’s place during a good exchange about ideas when I realized I needed to mention Billy’s Wordsworth’s fantastic 1804 poem “Daffodils” aka “I wander’d lonely as a cloud…” which ends:

“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”

That is it! I said that it’s all the “truth of the couch” – except with web twenny I get the interpretation of the daffodil… or the beer… or the movie… or anything under the sun from a hundred, a thousand folks laying upon the couch in pensive or, more likely, vacant moods. That is in fact so it. My sofa. My mood. My vacancy. So, if you want to go to movies and gush or crap about movies, feel free. If you want to go to fest and gatherings where you can meet brewers and folk that present about beer and think that was money well spent or a total drunken waste, fill your boots. If you want to read a book and think you’ll never be as clever as someone who gets their words set by members of the typesetters union or think it was a really dopey way for the author to spend two years of their life, well, to each their own on that, too.

But if you want any of those things or you just want to think about the beer in your glass and then tell people what you think of it – good or bad – don’t take guff off of anyone because at the end of the day it is only you… and the beer.

Extreme… X-Treme… X-Tre-m… XTRM… ?

Hub-bub. That is what is going on. There is hub-bub afoot these days about “extreme” beer. Here is what I know, though things may be changing on the fly, minute-by-minute as it were:

The Independent in England goes all yikes over BrewDog and other new strong beers even categorizing their article under the “health news” beat. Best ‘fraidy cat panicky quote: “alcohol campaigners have complained that drinkers may be unaware of the strength of the new products, a single 330ml bottle of which is enough to make an adult exceed their daily recommended alcohol intake.” Deary deary. Let’s hope know one in England under 40 has heard of gin either because I understand that, too, can get you tipsy.

Then Pete Brown goes yikey-doodles in response laying it on thick and hearty in return, due to the article’s reliance on his own work to create the “health news” in question. Best Pete-flips-lid quote: “[the article] creates a master class in hypocrisy that would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that it might damage brewers I care about who spoke to me in good faith.” Look, I know as a good North American I am supposed to think the residents of any EU nation are nothing but big daft socialist softies but I still find it hard to believe that anyone who might actually have chosen to try an extreme beer would be deterred by this “health news” – and suspect, for that matter, that many more would take it as an opportunity to explore the big brews mentioned.

And, then, Stan asks the musical question – with a lot less of the yikes – as to what “extreme beer” actually means to you… and to me. Specifically, he asks:

What I’d like to know is if the term “extreme beer” means something specific to real live beer drinkers. I’ve never heard a customer at a bar say, “I’d like an extreme beer, please.

 

Good point but since the advent of extreme beers I have also never heard a customer say “I’d like to try a few more of all these wonderful new experimental session beers you offer, good publican.” That’s because extreme beer has had this Vulcan Mind Meld on so many craft brewers that all their explorations are based on turning to the volume to eleven, too often to focus on quantity of taste as opposed to quality. There is no room for modest balance (or modest price for that matter) where all on offer is extreme.

What’s it all mean? My comment at Stan’s begins extreme beer means nothing to me and that is as honest as I can put it. Mainly because it is really nothing new. Experimentation with very strong beers like Samichlaus or Thomas Hardy Ale well predate the X-TR-M label. Experimentation with odd and intense ingredients has been going on in home brewing well before Papazian’s first book. While you are at it, just consider the simple fact of Belgian brewing history or even only the sour branch of it. But besides all that – aside from the claims to new and exciting – for too much of the time extreme beers simply disappoint because they taste like you’ve just sprayed aerosol furniture polish in your mouth or because you really didn’t want to revisit the undergrad skull splitting headache the next day. Yet it has been latched upon as a means to market, to increase price and perhaps forgo value in a way that ignores that the adjective “extreme” has become a bit of a joke in other areas of pop culture.

X3M09? One year later and I still feel now as I did a year ago – the push for more ends up feeling like nothing so much as branding and hyping and inflating of a particularly tedious sort. A little like those ads aimed at “off-centered” people, I really look forward to the day that we look back at “extreme” brewing as we do the song stylings of Rick Astley. Must I quote the Scottish play? Has it come to that? Extreme beers are…

…but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

None of which speaks to the quality of any particular beer. Some are wonderful and lovely. But for all the US strong beers I have enjoyed I have disliked more… and more than once felt a bit ripped off. And I suspect most feel this way – though both the panicky health nuts on one hand and the craft marketing hype machine on the other might not like to admit it. The trend is not for death by ale, is not for beer that could sterilize surgical instruments while tasting like steak sauce or shoe leather, is not for the 25 dollar bottle that captures the essence of a thousand hop blossoms. And, because of that, it does a disservice to the bulk of more moderate craft beers and the vast majority of beer sales and buyers.

Were there that North American beer consumer lobbying group, I would expect that a backlash against the focus on extreme might have started some time ago. But we have none so it’s not begun. Maybe it should.

So How Many Calories Are In That Beer Anyway?

calories1You would never confuse me for a jogger. I am big. I like that. I was over six foot at twelve. A small giant. I can pick up things others can’t. Move large objects. I am often asked by little old ladies to reach the high shelf for them at the grocery store. But you have to watch it. Over two decades ago I took the advice of a doctor to watch my blood tests right after he told me I had the results of an 80 year old. In my family of Scots coffin nail puffers, whisky tipplers, fish ‘n’ chip eaters and sofa lobby dossers, well, the genes aren’t that good and my 1980s fry pan diet was not helping. Twenty odd years later filled with daily salmon oil pills, soy and other bits and pieces of the good stuff has resulted in having the cholesterol and blood sugar levels of a daily runner. But I am still big. Good for leaning into the bumper of a car needing to be unstuck in the snow. Not so good for the second 45 years I consider my allotment in life.
calories2So, what to do about that? What to do about the beer? Got me thinking. You know how you play the game of justifying beer. I knew a guy in undergrad who, as part of his “fit yet party” plan, made sure he had over 50% of his caloric intake dedicated to the beer. He didn’t look real good. He invented new shades of grey with his body. Checking around the internet I found a few sources of information on calories and beer but not the real nugget I was searching for. I wondered what was the number of calories in a huge Belgian beer like a 750 ml Trappist quad. Hard to find out. Too much information is couched in the round about approach, in the comforting justification like those found in this article by Michael Jackson from 1994:

On the question of quality, I realised I was worrying unnecessarily: speciality beers would exclude anything as watery tasting as Miller Lite (96 calories per 12oz or 35cl, standard American bottle) or as bland as a regular Budweiser (150 calories). We could have a similar serving of a European-style lager or a pale ale for about 180 calories or less.And, curiously, a beer full of flavour and colour such as Guinness stout weighs in with only 140 calories per 35cl serving. The same amount of wine could rack up more than 240 calories, although we usually serve grape in smaller glasses. But whichever the accompaniment to a meal, the drink contributes far fewer calories than the food.

I mean, there is nothing wrong with that information but who really has the 200 ml glassware which that Jack Michaelson fellow set out with the meal he described? OK, let’s just say I wouldn’t. And what of that big Belgian bomb? Here are a couple of handy lists setting out the of beer to calorie ratio for a huge number of brands. They work on the 100 ml principle. Unfortunately I don’t and neither do you. So let’s think in terms of a 2000 ml scale which is roughly the equivalent of a North American six pack or four UK pints. What does the available data tell us?

  • Guinness (4.1%) – 2000 ml equals a little under 840 calories.
  • Blue Moon (5.4%) – 2000 ml is around 1026 calories.
  • Anchor Porter (5.7%) – 2000ml equals 1180 calories.
  • Dragon Stout (6.8%) – 2000 ml equals 1240 calories.

You can see where I am going with this. I feel like I am breaking some sort of guy rule. Some sort of unwritten law of the beer men. But we have to walk in this world in awareness. So you will not cringe when I note that one McDonalds Angus burger and medium fries is 950 calories or that the same number of calories in raw chopped red cabbage is found takes over 30 cups…which is like 3 bushels, right? You can handle this information. Because you are strong. Because you really prefer a six of Anchor Porter to 46 cups of raw chopped red cabbage.

But how do you know what is in what you put in you? Bob Skilnik, author of Beer and Food, is on the job with his Drink Healthy Drink Smart project that goes along with his book Does My BUTT Look BIG In This BEER. I think it is a great idea, especially for those of us who are closer to (yes, I will say this) retirement than high school. I have not downloaded a copy of DMBLBITB but at only seven bucks you and I probably should. With any luck he’ll tell you what’s in that corked bomber of craft brew quad. Once you know, you may want to plan around it. You may want a few cups of cabbage after all.

When Should A Beer Blog Pay For Itself And The Beer?

Interesting to note that there are two comments today from pro-writing bloggers (ploggers?) mentioning how their connection to the blog connects directly or indirectly to income. Jack Curtain over at his Liquid Diet states:

…I want to once again express my deep gratitude to everyone who sent me their best wishes and especially those who generously “tipped the bartender” as a result of this posting, including one very kind snail mail of a brewpub gift card to which I will put good use. It is both demeaning and embarassing to ask for money, but I also think that the time and effort which goes into this site warrants some support now and then…

Jack is a writer who brings incredible experience as a newspaperman, beer columnist and published author. Another leading beer writer is Pete Brown who also touched on this idea today when he wrote:

“…I may be using some of the answers to this for a commercial project for which I will be paid money. If this offends your sensibilities and you feel it contravenes the unwritten ethics of blogging I apologise.

I find these comments somewhat unfortunate. Not because there shouldn’t be politeness in the world of beer writing but that this should not be an issue at all. I have been a very lucky beer blogger. See, I get ads and do so in a significant part because I have been doing this beer blogging for so long and have built up an insane body of work (1,543 posts and exactly 5,000 comments as of today). And I hope that body of work is also entertaining and informative. Beer pays for itself though those ads and has done so for three years now. It’s not a fortune and I spend it wisely. I don’t go to beer fests, don’t jump on planes to Europe for all those drinking sessions with Knut or Ron or Jeff or Pete (and a whack more to be sure) or drive deep into the US with Lew and Jay and Stan (and to be sure a whack more, too) – and I sure don’t buy every $32.00 Norwegian porter that I have recently seen foisted upon the shelves of beer stores in the northeastern US. But I do buy beer and gas and hotel rooms and generally use the money and goodwill the blog generates for sustaining my interest and also – as the impending Christmas Photo Contest 2008 prize list should show – to thank you for your support (…and mucho mucho gracias to those fine brewers who have already agreed to forward prizes.) I even have to pay taxes on the revenue as business income after deducting expenses as it is not incidental. I actually think that is very neat.

But that is not the real point. The real point is that there is yoinks and yoinks of money in beerand those who write about it should be supported by those who make beer, sell beer, distrubute beer and market beer….and maybe even those who are interested in reading about beer. I am not about to hit you, my readers, up as a result of this. I am not having an epiphany of how to make riches out of this gig. I do this because I like it. But if you are that part of the readership selling a beer, wouldn’t it seem clever to you that a few well placed ads for that beer collectively costing less than one print ad might be worth your while? As far as I am concerned there is a group of perhaps teo to twenty beer bloggers who deserve serious global attention for this sort of marketing. In addition – and this is even more to the point – there are dedicated and interesting local scene beer bloggers who should be supported by that local scene. If you are a microbrewer and you don’t know who your local beer bloggers are you are missing a huge opportunity. And, to be honest, if you are a brewer launching a new beer and you are not sending out samples by courier to beer bloggers as many brewers do (thank you very much) you are frankly pretty close to being out of line. Why would you expect your fans to be doing all the new media innovative heavy lifting they do for you and your beer without some recognition and compensation? Why is the incredible opportunity they present not part of your business plan?

By the way, I am neither embarrased to point this out or expect your sensibilities will be offended. Not that Jack or Pete are wrong in having such good manners but I think we should be a wee bit more realistic about all this – realistic about how money and new media work in the new craft beer economy. Now, excuse me as I am off to Twitter this post and place a link on Facebook to spread the word.

Did Franklin Know That Much About Beer Goggles?

I doubt not that moderate Drinking has been improv’d for the Diffusion of Knowledge among the ingenious Part of Mankind…drinking does not improve our Faculties, but it enables us to use them.

Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood, No. 12, 1722.

Franklin was 16 or 17 when he wrote that under a pseudonym. Smart kid. You know, quoting Franklin on beer can be dangerous stuff but, in this case, you know that is it true because you can read it for yourself on the internet. When I read that passage above in the introduction of Salinger’s book, I thought not about Franklin or his sayings but beer goggles. They were in the news lately, as this piece from CTV reminds us:

Anyone looking for a mate in a bar, take note: Beer goggles really do make people appear more attractive, British researchers say. Scientists at the University of Bristol found that study subjects who consumed alcohol considered people to be about 10 per cent more attractive than did people who did not consume alcohol…Both the male and female subjects not only found members of the opposite sex more attractive, they also found members of the same gender more attractive, too…The researchers also found that men deemed women to be more attractive for up to 24 hours after they consumed alcohol.

See, it’s that last bit that Franklin’s words mirrored – the continuing effect of the alcohol upon the faculty of the mind, an effect that lasted long after the alcohol ceased to exist in the body. Does the moderate drinker see the world through sunnier lenses generally? I wonder. I have had occasion by times to abstain for days on end – hard as it is to imagine – and it is in those times when find my imagination a little less vital, the roses passed sometimes unnoticed. Those are sad times. Pete Brown wrote the other day, by contrast, about how an introduction to craft beer opening the doors of perception to a whole new way of thinking about drink…but maybe it goes further than that, as Pete himself may be implying in his nod to good old Billy Blake, Franklin’s junior by half a century, who wrote:

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

Isn’t that what the wee dram (or whatever the scientists of Bristol gave their human guinea pigs) did? Did it not cleanse the mind and reveal beauty? Is that no what Franklin saw when he was but a lad?

The Anonymous Brewers Speak: Rating The Raters

anonbrew2aFrom Alan: Recently I was contacted by a brewer who wondered if he, too, could write for A Good Beer Blog. Sure, no problem I thought. If Knut and Travis can, why not a craft brewer? But the brewer wanted to do it under the cloak of anonymity. I wavered. I wondered. I let it go for a while. Brewers usually stay silent like the one to the right. Then, quite a while later, unbeknownst to the first, I got a message from another brewer a world away asking for exactly the same thing. I knew then that there was a venue needed. A way for brewers to share what they really felt. So, from time to time they, too, can post here and share their thoughts. This is the first, a message from someone I will call Brewer A.¹ Please feel free to comment as you would in response to any post.

Well, how to get started? Sites like R(H)atebeer.com are a thorn in the side for many brewers. They are dominated by a handful of posters that don’t reflect the opinion of the general public. As with most critics they go off half cocked and I think often fully pickled. They pretend to know grain and hop varieties that they feel were used in a certain beer. I have seen the same poster rate the same beer twice in the same day and give it very different reviews. Hiding behind the mask of anonymity (like I am now) instills false bravery into these fellas (mostly boys but not all.) I have witnessed raters backing up a certain opinion to follow later in the same paragraph with “but I have not tried it yet.”

These raters looking to increase their numbers will will gather at fests to collect single mouthfuls of a new beer in the same way they once collected mint condition action figures. No need to engage the brewer or enjoy the beer for the sake of it – just get “Han Solo in the original packaging” and never open it up.

This involves further discussion. Maybe nine RateBeer guys and I could split a six pack and talk.

¹Stan’s point is excellently made: it’s Secret Brewer XJ17 from now on.

The Beer Drinkers’ Bill Of Rights

earlyrights
A depiction of the first debates on the rights
of beer drinkers, Greece 4th century BC.

I’ve been thinking about this beer stuff for a while now and have decided that it is right and proper that a Beer Drinkers’ Bill of Rights for us all be established. Any bill of rights, after all, is just a statement of fundamental law under which the many and individually weak define their relationship with powerful forces controlling a jurisdiction, whether they be the state or in the trade. That being the case, it is time that we admit that we have a jurisdiction of our own, that we assert the existence of the nation of those who love beer and that we define some elemental principles which the people of that nation hold to be self-evident

To that end I propose as follows:

1. All have the right to beer, the right to own beer and the right to their own beer.
2. Local beer shall be available and shall be excellent.
3. Beer shall not be taxed in undue proportion to other consumables.
4. Beer, including its constituent elements, shall be explained and explicable to the drinkers of beer.
5. Regardless of the source, beer shall be snob-free, plainly advertised and made available with minimal intermediaries, both in terms of consultation and transaction between the brewer and the drinker.
6. Beer shall be offered in a variety of packaging formats which shall include low cost formats.
7. Beer shall be safe and shall be accepted as a wholesome food and shall be recognized as an important and moderate agent in the pursuit of happiness.
8. The diverse rights to and of beer enunciated herein shall be guaranteed subject only to such reasonable limits as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

It may be the cold medications, sure, but I am convinced of the need of this. There may be amendments and additions to this list which can be submitted to via the comments as a form of constitutional assembly. Further, commentary upon each right shall be enunciated though discourse.

Do We Love The Beer Or Brewer?

Lew has written another segment of his unfolding manifesto on his relationship to craft beer and the craft beer industry and triggered a long discussion. I take this as his key point:

I have to tell you, this kind of “let’s treat craft beer with kid gloves” stuff has been bugging me for years. It’s one of the main reasons I started this blog and my website. I don’t have a lot of patience with people who blast beers from positions of ignorance — “This IPA sucks! I hate hoppy beers!” — but when a beer is not good — poorly packaged, poorly formulated, or just plain insipid — I don’t want to be told by some brewer that it wouldn’t be nice to say so, or that if I felt I had to say so, I should say so nicely.

Hey, we’ve all heard it from mothers and grandmothers (and editors): if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything. Well, how am I going to talk about light beer, then? Seriously, if a critic can’t say negative things, he’s gagged. And if I can’t say those negative things in an entertaining, creative way…what the hell am I getting paid for?

He is right but in being right also begs the question of the importance of his rightness. Don’t get me wrong. I like Lew lots. I even make a point of paying for his books and not hitting him up for review copies largely because he was an early adopter or at least supporter of my blogging about beer, what, for the best part of four years now. All I mean is like any voice with audience you have to remember that the subject matter itself is the important thing. Last month I thought out a bit of my mini-manifesto around being a fan. But while I am a fan of the great brewer I am really a fan of the brew more than anything. And I am really only a fan of what the brew does for me…not Lew… not the brewer… and not you out there (however nice you all are – and you are.) As a result, I am quite content not to get Cantillon and other Belgian sour beers, quite content to describe Rodenbach Grand Cru thusly…

That is all there but you have to appreciate that the acidity is that of a sub-puckeringly sharp wine. Vinous does not cover how sharp. Tart but only in the sense of King Tart of the Tartonians. Within the tart the is some reflection of spice and certainly a gooseberry-rhubarb custard trifle would go well with this.

…or to say of another of its general ilk: “I cannot hate it. Yet I am sure it hates me.”

If someone does not agree with me I do not understand how that changes the experience I have when those thing-like-fluids are in my mouth. For me, it is only about the fluid just as a pub is only about the actual experience you have or I have – not the hype or the good time a pal’s sister’s friend had 15 months ago. That may mean you have to take yourself seriously, too, and pay attention to what is in the glass and not rely on others anymore, even me, than you would rely on advertising or if the brewer is friendly, starting out or your cousin.

There. Another bit of the manifesto.

Hair Of The Dog: A Couple of Difficult Cases

This may turn out to be an epic. It may end in tears. Whatever it is you can click on each picture for a bigger image.

In the early fall – actually on September 28th 2006 just after noon – I jumped into my first LCBO private order, two cases from Hair of the Dog brewery in Portland Oregon being organized by the excellent gents, those Bar Towellers out of Toronto. I faxed through my deposit of $51.60 CND on a total order of $197.96 CND. I ordered one each of Doggie Claws and Fred, two 10% or so barley wines from one of North America’s top boutique brewers. I had a Fred when I was at Volo earlier this year. And then I waited. And waited.

Around the first of December, the order came into Toronto, I paid the balance and waited for it to make its way 220 km or so east to Kingston. Then there were rumours of issues with the capping. Excellent, I thought – bottle variation. The curse of decent wine. Jon Walker, a Bar Toweller, noted:

This thread worries me. As a result I went in to check on my stash of HOTD and indeed many of the caps are not fully crimped onto the bottles. Most flair at their base and do not fully grip the lip of the bottle. I was actually able to press up on one with my thumb and get the gas to release in the “PPST” common to uncapping. What do I do know? I don’t have a capper to close the caps properly (if they actually CAN be sealed, perhaps they are the wrong size???). I’ve got just shy of 70 bottles left and I’m loathe to believe I might lose some to oxidation due to loose caps.

The cases showed today, 21 December 2006, about 12 weeks after they were ordered which is really not that bad seeing as I think the beer was still in the tanks when the order was originally placed. But there was an obvious problem from one look at the case of Fred that seemed to echo Jon’s words above.

 

 

 

 

When I got home I decided to have a look inside and what I found was not pretty. The inside of the box was soaked. Ten bottles were seriously uncapped with significant beer loss with mostly empty necks like above at the right. In addition, twelve were showing little beer loss and two showed some promise. All were irregularly capped in the same way. Some caps show some rubbing and wear like there was a mechanical issue when they were put on.

It looked as though it was shipped upside down as there is plenty of yeast in the necks and a fair amount of beery sneakery out from underneath the caps. No violence to the box, just seeping. This may actually be a short term saving grace. The smell is also rich and clean, not sour like a bar on Sunday morning. I will have to have one. I am a little depressed, a little pissed off and a little curious. I have not even looked at the box of Doggie Claws.

 

 

 

 

Much to my surprise, the beer, picked from the worst group of ten, opens with a loud Pfffft!!The yeast had created a seal inside as you can see below to the right and it pours with a huge head. It is huge and lovely and lively. Hallelujah! Christmas is saved. Christmas is saved. And the Doggie Claws show no sign of leakage at all with the same location of the irregular capping as the Fred but with a lot less severity.

So it will likely be a crap shoot one a bottle by bottle basis but if that yeast cakes up it may last throughout the holidays at least. “Pour slowly to allow sediment to remain in the bottle” it says on the back. What can you do? That yeast is my best friend right about now, the life in the ale securing what the dim-witted capped and shippers could not. I would hope the legal saying “buyer beware” is popping into readers’ minds right about now.


J’accuse!