Reaching Back Into 1780s Hudson History

hudsonwg27sept1787aI buried the grape vines the other day. Gave the lawn one last mow. The Red Sox have been gone from my TV for about five weeks now. Winter is coming. Thank God that there is the hunt for beer and brewing history to fill the dark cold nights.  Craig forwarded me this one image a few months ago and it has sat in my inbox waiting for the right time. He spotted it at a display on the US Constitution – a newspaper ran the text of the Constitution and Faulkner’s ad on the front page.

It’s from the September 27, 1787 issue of the Hudson Weekly Gazette and it neatly fills a gap. We’ve traced the career of William D. Faulkner from Brooklyn in the late 1760s to Albany in the early 1790s. We had known that there was a lull in his career after the disruptions of the American Revolution so it’s exciting to see that by just four years after the peace he was settling into the mid-valley town of Hudson, NY. Just as the Hessian Fly was decimating grain crops. The ad states that his previous brewery was destroyed by fire. That would be one of the two Rutgers’ Maiden Lane breweries that he left Brooklyn for in 1770, the brewery of Anthony Rutgers. Or, was it the Cow-Hill brewery in Harlem Craig mentioned when he sent the image, referenced in our book. That would give Faulkner a five brewery colonial career. The man was on the go.

And he likes himself. He “ever commanded the first a market and home and abroad” confirming again he was an exporting brewer when they were supposed not to exist.  The inter-coastal and inter-colonial trade in beer is waiting to be explored as is the ranges of beer which were brewed. Look at the ad again. It includes a price list:

Stock Ale at 5 Dollars, per Barrel.
Mild Do. at 3 Do. per Do.
Ship and Table Beer at 12s. per Do.
Double Spruce at 16s. per Do.
Single Do. 11s. per Do.

Remember that “Do.” is ditto and that “s” is shilling.  Currency in the years after the end of the Revolution remained in flux: dollars and shillings in the same ad. Same in Upper Canada. And there is also the assertion that his best ale will be warranted to keep good to any part of the East or West Indies or any foreign Market while name dropping Taunton and Liverpool Ale along with Dorchester and Bristol Beer. A pretty confident and skilled brewer. Good to see “Stock Ale” on offer, just as we see it in the Vassar brewing logs from nearby Poughkeepsie of the mid-1830s.  Philadelphia’s Perot in the early 1820s uses the term “long keeping” instead.

Just like these other brewers, Faulkner was speaking to his market. You would not name this range of styles or the other famous English beers if your customer did not know what they were, didn’t have a need for Stock Ale. As time passes and the new Republic gets some decades under its belt, these lists of styles on offer become shorter. Perhaps to match the simpler nature of the struggling society moving away from the coastal economy, driving inland.

Will Corona Suffer Because Of A New Nativism?

I am seldom happier to not be an American as I am today. Don’t get me wrong. I love the USA and live in a border town. Friends and family abound below the line. But that was a tough thing to watch yesterday. A birth of something? Maybe an end to more than is immediately obvious. Maybe something like this:

Rob Sands, CEO of alcoholic beverage giant Constellation Brands, came to New York City on Wednesday to talk about Corona beer and Robert Mondavi wine. And before he even took the stage, the company’s stock took an 8% nosedive. That’s because investors are worried about what Donald Trump’s victory could mean for Constellation Brands stz-b , owner of a Mexican brewer that targets an American customer base that could potentially face deportation.

Nativism has a long track record in the arc of American history and has crossed paths with the brewing industry. In the early 1840s, new German immigration to New York City led to tavern brawls and court cases. Interestingly, earlier German brewers seemed to have an easier go.  Likely due to the lack of greater contextual pressures like the disappearance of clean water in Lower Manhattan. Plus the intervening Jacksonian worldview.

Corona is certainly the leading Mexican brand facing the US consumer in the grocery and convenience stores.  Is it prone to neo-nativist slur? Would another beer be more patriotic in the new Trumpian society? Could be. Just a thought – but could be.

Session 117: I Predict More Predictions Ahead

sessionlogosmThis month’s edition of The Session finds us being asked by Beer Means Business to think to the future:

Over the last 10 years, numerous topics have been presented and the bloggers who discussed them expressed a rich diversity of perspectives or specific areas of interest. Therefore, I refrain from giving you further ideas or examples. There are no limits in time, space or nature either. I would like you to let your imagination free, and capture ONE thing you think we will see MORE of with an explanation of the idea.

Forecasting is a pretty tedious affair. What we will “see more of” is all a lot of folk are writing about these days. The last year has seen the rise self-appointed seers unaccountably yapping about fascinating topics like “a bubble is coming” to “there is no bubble coming.” Oh… and the brewery who brought me, fed me and watered me is going to be important to you. Personally. Soon. Count on it. You know, this sort of forecasting appears to be largely a matter of explaining how what ever is happening today will continue. My favourite one is how ABInBev is, again, in peril of imminent collapse. As it dismantles big craft. Wow. We need a word for that. Beforecasting? Borecasting?

None of this sort of writing matters – but I expect to see more of it.  It’s the packing styrofoam of beer writing. The filler between the interesting bits. I wish it weren’t so. I wish folk would be a bit braver in putting their own ideas into the discussion. I wish publications were a bit more risk taking and independent. I wish the actual business of beer were explored like any other industry of comparable impact. There are a lot of big brains out there. Good brains. And not just moaning negs like me. Folk who can create the better next thing.

I am not holding my breath. Because I need to breathe. But I have hope. I am a hopeful person. As I move blog posts from the old blog system to this one I am reminded how much richer the discussion was from, say 2007 to 2013. So I know it can be done.

MacKinnon Releasing A Beer With Terroir… Really…

mack1

This is odd. A rare case, indeed. A press release that you are really interested in for what is actually set out in the press release:

Bath, ON – You’re invited to raise a glass with MacKinnon Brothers Brewing Company on Monday, November 7th. Get the first taste and celebrate the release of our brand new 2016 Harvest Ale: the first beer made using 100% of ingredients grown on our own family farm. This landmark beer uses Newport and Vojvodina hops, which are grown on trellises in the corner of our brewery pasture, as well as AC Metcalfe barley grown in a field on the west side of the farm. All of the malt for the brew was malted in Belleville by our friends at Barn Owl Malt. As a family farm for 8 generations, brewing a 100% farm-sourced beer has been on our minds since the inception of the brewery. The beer itself is a malt-centric variant on the German Marzen style, using our
favourite ale yeast. At 5.0% ABV and 18 IBU it showcases the unique characteristics of our farm grown barley. Beyond that, it’s instilled with a backbone of hundreds of years of resilience and ingenuity. Need we say more?

It’s two years now since I first began running into the MacKinnon Brothers’ beers around the area. I dreamed of the idea of the heritage grain farmer brewers brewing a beer with their own malt, hops and water… and maybe a few local yeast cells in their. Seems like the are ready to raise the standard for “terroir” as a word with actual meaning in the craft brewing world.

Very cool. Too bad it’s being released while I am shackled to my desk, pinched by the tight black shoes of regret. You could go. Monday, 7 November at 1915 County Rd 22, Bath, Ontario. You could.

Eephus, Bricks And Mortar – Left Field, Toronto

imageIs it just me or are samples you don’t ask for different? A wee giftie. A few brewers still send me stuff like these two beers from Toronto’s Left Field Brewery. I don’t hunt them out anymore and get so few these days it hardly matters. That’s what I tell myself. I still pure, right? Let’s be honest. Years ago, though recent enough to have been in this house, two separate UPS vans met face to face on the street where we live. They laughed over how they were sick of dropping of stuff at my place. Each driver had a box packed with various beers sent by gracious and keen distributors anxious for approval, when once this blog was the sort of place read, I am told, by the staff of the New York Times Food and Drink section. Now? Let’s stick with that word – different.

I still get samples I don’t write about. Some free beer is still just that Heineken Light sent in a cheap beach cooler with a 57 cent AM/FM radio built into the side. Or it’s an oddly foul crap craft that should never have been made. In an embossed bottle made so badly that the extra trim cuts you, leaving you will bloody palm. That was a great one. Beer from Left Field are nothing like that. With Game 4 between the Cubs and the Tribe on, they certainly fit the evening’s entertainment given the brewery’s baseball themed branding. The neck label is shaped like home plate. The names are usually linked to the game.

Not so with Bricks and Morter, a special release coffee porter. The back of the expensively presented painted bottle describes it as a tribute to the history of their neighbourhood’s brick trade. The coffee is from a nearby roaster, added during the final stage of extraction. I am told. The beer pours a deep cola with a thick, mocha coloured head.  One the nose, sweet dark coffee. In the mouth, a thick ale – bitter dark coffee made more so with a dose of twiggy hop. A small nod to licorice and eucalyptus. There is husky, rough texture to the beer that works, accentuating the espresso. The result is a 6% dark ale full of flavour that comes across as a light version of an imperial stout.

Eephus is an old friend. When I drink it I feel like I am cheating on The Whale, CBW’s flagship brown ale. I like brown ales.  Two years and a season ago in June 2014, I was out with Ron and Jordan on a rare trip to Toronto. The evening struggling to understand what good beer meant in that place at that time was well capped with Grizzly Beer, a solid comforting thoughtful brown ale at Bellwoods. Eephus was Left Field’s first beer and one that signaled good things. This bottle, like its sibling above, displays a fresh powdery texture that conveys goodness, thickness. A touch lighter at 5.5% there is no adjunct between you and the ale, unless you consider oats a novel ingredient. It’s flaked oats and not oat malt, by the way. Only a partial fermentable, a body builder that gives a silky touch. I will say that the hop profile is a bit more flowery, a bit more bitter than I recall from earlier happy sessions but it sits well in this incarnation.

An Eephus, in case you are wondering, is a slow looping trick pitch rarely trotted out, meant to throw off a batter. “Spaceman” Bill Lee would use when he was an Expo or a Red Sox.

I Have A Dream – A Dream About 1790s Porter

 

Bpewterporteroak and Bailey have posted about Ron‘s stock ale brewed with Goose Island, Brewery Yard. I asked which malt was used in the comments and learned it was Maris Otter, a variety introduced later than the era being emulated. Which is normal as very little older malt is actually available.

But that is changing. As Ed noted, work is being done to reintroduce the heritage English hop Farnham Whitebine. A year ago, apparently the first batch of the pale ale using malt made from Chevallier barley was made. Chevallier was introduced in the 1820s and became a key malt barley strain in the Victorian era. It’s return is a blessing for those who now want to explore the beers of over a century ago.

But I am greedy. I want more now. I want my Battledore barley based porter. As we pass from this era of amazeballs murk – just as we’ve long since passed the era of X-Treme heavy metal themed big bombs – I hope and pray we are moving into a time when at least rare strains of hop and barley become more and more available so we might know what the beers of our forefolk were really like. And so we might one day actually have a true double double.

A Good Beer Blog Renewed… I Hope

OK, so I posted this on Facebook on Saturday:

A bit of news about the blog. It will be gone by the end of the year. Seems like the dedicated server I have been living off for 13 1/2 years without paying a cent is going to be unplugged as it is a fire hazard… or a security risk… or just old junk. My servers masters are the best there are. And they likely know when time is up. I think I’ll back up all the content on a nice hard drive and put it all in a drawer. Not sure I actually need a dedicated website any more – you know, emotionally. Have to decide if I bother with a new site. ‘Cause Snapchat is where it’s at. And this space. It’s free. Maybe I’ll start a knitting blog. Or get better at the banjo. Or learn Finnish. All the things I might have done.

As it turns out I have been freeloading on an aging server. Once upon a time the artist Feist‘s website sat right next to my two blogs in the file folder tree. But now the code is old, the server creaky and reality has struck. I have been mooching on a private server. So… and with utter gratitude for 13 1/2 years of a great gift… it’s now time to move on and, so, we have A Good Beer Blog v.2 on WordPress. It’ll all be OK.

Soon, I will get the export of the archives and I expect everything will repopulate tickity-boo.  But there will be link rot. Of two sorts. All the internal links to other posts on the old beer blog will fail. And all the photos will need re-identification. So I need some priorities over the next wee while:

1. Christmas is cancelled. It’d be right about now that I would announce the rules for the impending Yuletide photo contest. I will now have other things to do in the allotted blog time in my life so it’s suspended for 2016-17;

2. Some classes of beer blog post are going to get more attention. The history posts over the last few years hopefully will be as good or better. That 2004 review of some tripel that I didn’t know was really a stout might look like hell.

3. I am going to bring over certain archives from my non-beer blog, genx40.com. Much of what I wrote there was about news of the day and whether I had a cold or not but some is worth keeping so it will find a home deep in the archives.

I hope this all goes well but it will take time. This place is pretty spare but it’ll be a while before I can turn to the problem of smartening it up. Any helpful household hints are most welcome. The funny ha ha URL was Craig‘s idea, by the way.

The Fluidity Of Good Beer’s Paradigm Shift

Two bits of related US big craft beer industry news this week. First, Japan’s Kirin has acquired about 24.9999% of Brooklyn Brewery for an undisclosed sum on largely undisclosed terms. Second, Stone Brewery is laying off 5-6% of their workforce. How about we look at the latter first. Part of the news release states in part:

…the onset of greater pressures from Big Beer as a result of their acquisition strategies, and the further proliferation of small, hyper-local breweries has slowed growth. With business and the market now less predictable, we must restructure to preserve a healthy future for our company…

This is interesting. For some time I have been going on about the schism in craft beer. So long I bored myself with the obviousness of it. This statement confirms it. There are three sorts of craft: macro craft, big craft and micro craft. The one in the middle has the shortest shelf life. Boosters will deny it, but the sales slump for big craft has been a thing for a while. So steps have had to be taken and this is what it looks like after things change at the heart of a business. They are not alone. Remember, just last April, Stone tried to suggest that the outside investment funds they took on were “craft” investments. Silly PR committee. No one believed it. The immediate response today from Jason Alstrom reflected what might be going on: “Typical corporate response … Does not sound like Stone at all. They are having a tough time wearing those bigboy pants.” The CEO is blamed but the Board and ownership set out the tasks for the CEO to complete. Likely for very good reasons given the tired brand and founders.

In the other notable story, Brooklyn has taken Kirin’s cash. The transaction’s obvious and awkward effort to avoid hitting the 25% share level led me to review the Brewers Association’s definition of craft. An American craft brewer must be independent and to be independent…

Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcohol industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.

Notice that careful placement of “or” in that definition. Clearly, it is possible to control more of a craft brewery than owning the same relative measure in shares. How does that occur? By the transaction for the sale of shares including a shareholders’ agreement that effectively bars the corporation from doing many things without consent of the otherwise minority shareholder. As a result, the BA’s 25% ownership rule is meaningless in the world of creative financing and investment. Strings shall be both pulled and used to tie things down. Jason Notte commented on Twitter on the distinction between ownership and control as a factor in establishing the independence of a brewery:

I often wonder how deeply @BrewersAssoc dives into the details. They have a lot on the plate without auditing every deal.

The Devil is in the details, they say. If the Brewers Association is not able to keep up with the implications of the realities of business like investment terms why bother having the definition at all. Maybe that is the plan for 2017. These are, after all, the days and months of change. The big names of big craft are mostly moving out as the money moves in. It seems that only the man of yogurt is sticking around to bask in the twilight of these dusky days for big craft even after cashing out in his own way. He must be holding out for something more – but what?

Session 116: As Gose Goes So Goes It All

sessionlogosmThis month’s edition of The Session sees host Derrick Peterman ofRamblings of a Beer Runner asking everyone to write about the “German” sour beer style Gose:

I choose the Gose style in particular since it can be approached in so many different ways. Want to talk about the history of the Gose? How about how American breweries are taking this style and running wild with it with different spice and fruit additions? How else has the Gose manifested itself outside its German homeland? Is the Gose here to stay or will it go the way of the Black IPA, once the hot style but slowly becoming a largely irrelevant curiosity? (OK, that might not be your opinion of the Black IPA, but you get the idea.) Of course, we’re all on the look-out for a good Gose, so if there are any you particularly like, we’d love to hear about them.

You will see that I put German in quotation marks. Gose isn’t really a German style any more than Black IPA has anything to do with India. One of the most telling things about gose was set out in a recent tweet by Ron Pattinson:

Changing times. I used to wish more Goses were brewed.

Ron pretty much reintroduced at least the English-speaking world to gose with his 2007 post “Gose” but what he described as gose in that post is not really what is called gose today. Does it matter? I live in a town, a region without regular access to Gose. When I think of comparables, I have always ensured I have backup gueuze in the stash but I have never hoarded gose. Not because gose is not interesting. It’s just that most gose is not gose. It’s a Gatorade alcopop. In just 2010, I could describe gose as “now lost” in my review of a book by Stan – though it was beginning to make craft brewery appearances in a truer form months later. In 2011, it was noted by Pete and Stan that the Oxford Companion to Beer missed, among many things, any reference to gose, though Garrett explained. Then the word “gose” – if not the beer – took off. It was already worth ridicule in 2012. By 2014, I was being offered low alcohol, salty Sunny D in one of the best beer bars in Toronto. Infantiled fruity gak. By 2015, it is the sign of the end times.

I have had lovely light, tangy, sea pinched gose. When it is done with respect, it is singular. Sadly, as with too much with craft beer, the low path is too often taken. The easy option selected. In the hands of a thoughtful brewer with a sense of tradition there is a memorable play of wheat, salt and herb that satisfies. It is fulfilling in a way that never attracts the idea of moreish. If I could I would put a small clay jug of cool real gose on the Thanksgiving* table this weekend to drink along with the turkey and cranberry. If I dared trust the word on the label. Which I don’t. So I likely won’t. If I could find it.

*Of which the New York Times is suddenly obsessed.

Book Review: Brewing Local by Stan Hieronymus

brewinglocalsmConfession. I have fed Stan in my home. I have been asked by Stan why he bothers discussing things with me. My name appears in this book. I am very fond of Stan. All of which may influence my opinion of his writings, of this book. Along with the fact that this was a review copy kindly forwarded from the publisher. Can’t help it. Heck, if I run the photo contest again this Christmas I might just give it away as the only prize. I’m like that.

But let’s work around that for the moment. As with his other books for the Brewers Publications series, Stan has written a practical guide. Starting with the second half of the book, we see it contains discussions on foraging, a directory of ingredients one might consider adding to a beer to capture locality in the glass and, then, a collection of brewing recipes – including one for an 1835 Albany Ale supplied by Craig which has its roots in a report to the New York State Senate from that year which I discussed now over six years ago. It is flattering but at the same time something I consider important. Beer and brewing in the north end of the Western Hemisphere has a history which goes back at least 439 years – not counting the Viking expeditions. You would think it was invented by the immigrants who moved here after the varying successes of the 1830s revolutions in Europe. It wasn’t.

Much to his credit, Stan goes even further back and documents one beverage of one of the peoples who were here before European colonization: corn-based tiswin of the Apache. He also ties late 1800s Okalhoma choc with the Choktaw people who were relocated in the genocidal trail of tears two generations before. There would have been others – but they were not by any means pervasive according to a Senacan cultural botanist pal of mine. Yet it is hard to believe that the brewers of New Sweden in the 1650s making beer from local pumpkins, corn, persimmons and watermelons didn’t learn something from the locals.

What the depth and breadth of Brewing Local conveys is a picture of a complex and largely unexplored understanding of indigenous vernacular brewing on this continent. It is an exciting time to have an interest in such things. Stan emailed me earlier this year that he would have included my idea of “four eras of cream ale” had he come across it in time. I suspect I hadn’t even written it in any proper manner before he saw it. Months later, I got to hunting around “cream beer” dating back to the early 1800s with the hints of its pre-lager existence, its earlier German immigrant foundations and its potential links to later 1850s Kentucky Common. All of which might also be worthy of a footnote or two in this book. Had I written it. Had someone – anyone – looked it up. There is so much yet to be pursued.

Which is a good thing. Which makes for a very good book. Because the book is both history and guide, both a “how to” and also a “why” which ties a lot of things together in a way that hasn’t been done before. It’s a part of a bigger collective work in progress. [I don’t find fault that Stan, for example, doesn’t mention the reason I think steam beer is called steam beer but that is also part of the bigger working out of things. I could be dead wrong.] Does this make it a milestone book in North American brewing history? Could be. I’ll have to read it a more few times to form a full opinion on this book. You should, too.