Those who know me well, know me in my unguarded moments, know me from my unpublished as well as published works...know that I'm
skeptical of the vaunted impact of
homebrewers on American craft brewing. Fritz Maytag wasn't a homebrewer,
Bert Grant wasn't a homebrewer, Jim Koch may have brewed some batches at home, but all directed at his commercial product. Oh,
I'll give you Ken Grossman, and Charlie Papazian, and -- here in Philly -- the influence of homebrew pioneers like
George and Nancy from Home Sweet Homebrew. But I can't help thinking the industry is
outgrowing the connection, and that homebrewers are mostly responsible for this bizarre fascination with stuffing hops into beers in every way possible...
And then I get a glass of something like this Stone/Fat Head's/Bear Republic collaboration project:
TBA. I know this beer has
homebrewing DNA (I know one of the homebrewers who was involved in the early origins of the 'style'), and I have a glass poured and waiting by the keyboard, and...wow, I can
smell Columbus from here and it's grabbing me...
 |
| Poor little unsuspecting broonale... |
Texas Brown Ale. The source of American Brown Ale, one of the earliest examples of the
American habit of sneaking up on an
unsuspecting English ale type,
sapping it with a weighted floating hydrometer, dragging it into a dark basement, and
ramming it full of hops until it shrieks with pine and citrus aromas... And it turns out to be a
killer success.
Why? Because it's a variant on
our beloved hopsamatic, an IPA with sweet body, a sweet brown ale with a
knife-sharp keel of steely hops. It is a beer that pleases, teases, and -- no, 'squeezes' would rhyme, but this beer
slaps, there's no way around it.
Excellent aroma, with the brown sugar and molasses swirling up through all the pine and citrus hops; good body, and again, sweet and bitter battle through. It
fights to the last sip, and the finish stays bitter.
All right, homebrewers. You win this round. This is a beer with impact, and a beer that goes back to the beginnings of craft brewing, and at the earliest...
it's a homebrew.
