The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, started by Stan Hieronymus of the Appellation Beer blog. This is how it works: on the first Friday of each month, beer bloggers write about a predetermined topic. A different blog is chosen to host each round of The Session. The host blog selects a topic, and then posts a roundup of all the responses received. For all you need to know about this beer blogging concept, including the upcoming topics, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s blog page about The Session.
I haven't done the Session for a LONG time, but this one caught my eye. It's hosted by James at Beer Bar Band. Topic:Your elevator pitch for beer. "You walk into an elevator and hit the button for your destination level. Already in the elevator is someone holding a beer…and it’s a beer that annoys you because, in your view, it represents all that is bad with the current state of beer. You can’t help but say something, so you confront your lift passenger with the reason why their beer choice is bad."
I decided that a person's beer choice isn't bad; I like the way things are going with the current state of beer. But solitary drinking...drinking with someone else is a lot more fun.
Hey, I see you have a [whatever beer; it really doesn't matter]. Did you get that down in the bar? Yeah? So...if I can ask, why are you taking it back to your room? Seems so lonely.
Bar's full of losers, hey? I hear you...that's pretty much why I'm headed back to my room, but that beer idea, that's a good one.
Tell you what. Beer's such a social beverage, and you seem like a sociable type; I kinda hate to see that go to waste. How about we go back down to the bar, and we can talk for a while over some beers. I'll get the next round.
It would be a relief to talk to someone other than my phone for a bit, right? Oh, we can talk about whatever, I just like conversation with my beer. Politics, sports, your mother-in-law, whatever.
When I go to Europe, I love the way people in bars will just strike up a conversation with you, sit right down at your table, and talk.
Here in the States, folks will go into a bar, watch the TV, and never say a word to each other. Seems like a waste of the centuries of effort that went into making beer the perfect drink for solving the world's problems for an hour or two.
As is quite appropriate, I chose to post my contribution to The Session for this month (topic: Session beers) at the blog for The Session Beer Project™. You'll find it here. It is by far the longest post I've ever put there.
I'm not really completely clear on what this month's assignment, from Andrew Couch at I'll Have a Beer, is. Or rather, I'm fairly sure I get it, but I'll be dipped if I can state it concisely. So...go read it. Meantime, what he did mention was blind tasting, and I do a lot of that, have for years, and I've enthused about it. It's kind of standing this idea on its head, but that's what I'm going to do.
I've had this bottle, an unmarked 22 oz. brown bottle with a plain gold cap, sitting in my Dedicated Beer Fridge for...years. I don't remember where I got it, whether it's homebrew, or brewpub sample, or a commercial beer the label fell off; I have no idea. So...nothing is giving me any expectations on this beer. There is no 'framing.' I don't even know if it's light or dark. This is the beer I'm going to open, drink, and write about...blind. As you can see, it's a nice amber/copper color. The aroma almost confirms it's an ale: fruity beyond hops, although there's clearly some hop character there, which is pretty impressive, since I know this has been in the fridge for at least three years. It actually smells like it might be a barleywine or a DIPA. There's some sherry character too, oxidation, which makes it more likely that it's homebrew or brewpub hand-bottling...but not definite. The aroma's strong enough that I can smell it clearly from a foot away.
Wow. It's big in the mouth, too. Hoppy, but not overly so; I'd peg this as a barleywine rather than a DIPA, because it's for sure got the power. There's bitterness spined down through it, but the malt's playing the winning hand. Actually, the oxidation's winning...and for me, that's not all bad: I like the sherry character, because this one's big enough that it doesn't go over the top. But I can't help thinking it would have been a real cracker when it was fresh. Gotta start drinking 'em when I get 'em!
What's this tell me about framing? Dunno. What's it tell me about blind tasting? It sharpens the senses and the brain. Not only do you not have the shortcuts that labels and styles deliver, you don't have the work of trying to objectify those inputs, leaving you free to focus on the beer, and nothing else. It kind of puts "style" in the backseat -- or the trunk -- which is where it belongs when you're drinking beer. All in all, a good exercise. Thanks!
It's an interestingly vague assignment for The Session this time, from Girl Likes Beer:
I would like you to pick your favorite beer made east form your hometown but east enough that it is already in a different country. It can be from the closest country or from the furthest. Explain why do you like this beer. What is the coolest stereotype associated with the country the beer comes from (of course according to you)?
December, 2000: my first and so far only trip to Portugal, though I'd happily return. Cathy had a business trip to Lisbon, and talked me into going along because it fell on our wedding anniversary. We walked all over Lisbon with her boss and his wife, in beautiful weather, then took the train out to Sintra on our last full day. We had a great time, though one of the best moments was solitary; I sat in the little square in Sintra, smoking an excellent little Cuban cheroot and drinking a glass of 40 year old tawny port.
But you know... There's the stereotype about Portugal: it's a wine country. It's Portugal, right? Well, aside from the fact that the table wines we were served were pure-D shit, and wine geeks to the contrary, vinho verde does nothing for me, I do love, flat-out adore port, and you can find it most places. But, and here's a big but, Lisbon is a beer town.
I mean, beer is everywhere. People were drinking it at sidewalk cafes, they drank it in the restaurants where we stopped for great fresh fish (mmmm....grouper) and "small dry cheeses from the hills" (a translation on the menu, and they were good, too), we had it in the 'beerhall' we visited, Real Fabrica (which was very cool, and had big-assed tanks of fresh beer that were filled from tanktrucks through ports in the sidewalk, I think), and there was even beer available at the bar inside the national Monument of the Discoveries, down on the Tagus. I didn't see anyone drinking wine except us, and I didn't do it anymore than I had to -- except for port.
But...for the most part, the beer's cold, and fresh, but pretty much uninspiring. There was UNICER SuperBock -- which most definitely was not either -- and Sagres, equally...um...wet. Then, our last night, after we got back from Sintra, we were looking to spend the last of our escudos, and stopped in another cervejaria, Ribadoura (honest to God, this is all from memory). It was a seafood beerhall, it was brightly lit, all the seafood was on offer in chilled display cases (barnacles...yuck. They looked like necrosed fingers), and they were drinking beer! I got a big-assed shrimp omelette that was very good.
But I wanted the dark beer I saw people drinking! Well, you know how you'll say a person in a foreign country "didn't speak a word of English"? That was our waiter. We tried English, German, and Spanish: nothing. Finally, I smiled, stood up, walked to a nearby table, said "Pardon me" (same in Portugeuse and English; different pronunciation -- a phrase I try to learn in the language of any country I visit) to the beer drinker there, and pointed to his dark beer, then nodded, smiling. Ah! Sim!
What I got was Sagres Cerveja Preta, a tasty dark lager that put me in mind of the better Munich dunkels. We were on foot, so I had a few more. It was good with the shrimp omelette, it was good with everyone else's dessert (I had decided to drink mine...), it was good. It was easily the best beer I had in Portugal (although the ridiculously tall pilsner glasses of cold Sagres at the (I'm not kidding) Hockey Caffee in Sintra had a strong situational appeal on a hot day).
And since Portugal is just about exactly due east of here...that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Saude!
Wow, did I really miss three months of The Session? Guess I did.
Back on the horse! Our assignment this month, from David Jensen at Beer 47, is Beer Desserts.
Pretty easy. I like beer as dessert. I remember sharing a big bottle of Chimay blue with my wife after a dinner I cooked in our newlywed apartment, and it made a great dessert (because I don't bake). A simple drizzle of Triple Bock on chocolate ice cream worked in the mid-90s (because what the hell else was I going to do with half a case of the stuff?).
That was also about the time I learned about beer floats. I loved root beer floats as a kid (and Sprite floats with vanilla work pretty well too, BTW), so when someone handed me a glass of porter with a scoop of vanilla, I was ready for it. A couple years later, I was helping to plan beer dinners, and we had porter, with vanilla, with whipped cream and shaved bittersweet chocolate on top. I think the best I've ever had is Heavyweight Perkuno's Hammer Baltic porter with black raspberry ice cream in it. Oh, God, I can remember it now, how the ice cream mixed with the darkly fruity maltiness of the beer.
Guinness cake, chocolate chip cookies with Yuengling Porter, chocolate mousse made with Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, all that dark beer and chocolate stuff's almost too easy. But I love hefeweizen, pears, and a triple creme cheese, or a Liefmans Frambozenbier with cheesecake.
Lately I've been enjoying blended beers for dessert. I whipped up a fruit lambic mix for Fine Dining magazine recently, a blend of Lindemans Peche and Framboise I called a Peach Melba, light and effervescent. A blend that didn't make the cut for that article -- to my chagrin -- was the Doppel Espresso: two parts doppelbock, one part coffee beer. Like coffee with dessert, all in one glass.
Beer desserts? Why not? I have had beer with breakfast, beer with sammiches, beer with barbecue, beer with feesh, beer with stew, beer with salad. Pretty great stuff, beer; it even goes with dessert.
Today is the first Friday of May, so it's time for The Session, beer blogging on a common topic. The hosts this month are Joe & Jasmine, at Beer at Joe's, and the topic is beer cocktails. Here's what they had to say about it: "What’s your favorite beer cocktail (and yes, despite the title of this post, it can be a black & tan* or a shandy)? Find a recipe for that or a new one, try it, and tell us why you did or didn’t like it–even if you think beer cocktails are nothing but a good way to waste a beer. Have fun and try something new!"
I've been drinking beer 'cocktails' for years, not long after I started drinking beer, actually. My first was a Berliner Weisse with a schuss of raspberry syrup, stirred with ice in a goblet, and it was wonderful: refreshing, not too sweet, cold, and very different from what I was used to back in 1983.
The next was a long line of black & tans* (also called half-n-halfs, checkerboards, mother-in-laws, and other...less printable names) at brewpubs, starting at the first brewpub I ever entered, the Front Street Pub, in Santa Cruz (sadly closed, but a seminal place for me: it was where I first had squid, shark, and oyster shooters, and where I first wrote about beer). I loved the mix of hoppy amber and dry/roasty stout or porter, and drank it often. The first time I saw the layered-look black and tans, with the nitro-stout floating on top of (usually) boring lager, I was amused, and disinterested. Then I got a layered black and tan in a yard of ale at Cambridge Brewing back in the early 1990s, and I changed my mind: layers good!
Since then I've mixed a lot of beers. We were mad for it in the mid-1990s, then slacked off a bit -- just bored, I think -- and now it's popping again, an echo of the cocktail craze, maybe. I suspect that's why, earlier this year, I was commissioned to write a piece on beer cocktails for a cooking magazine. We went through a number of recipes, and they finally settled on three: a beer with non-alcoholic mixers, beer with beer, and beer with spirits.
There were a couple of leftovers, recipes that they didn't particularly care for. Naturally enough, I thought they were pretty damned good, and I don't want them to go to waste...and the chances of selling another beer cocktail piece seem slim. Here they are. I enjoyed them, hope you do too. (And yes, Stephen, I even mixed liquor with my beer!)
Dry Season – Saison is a spicy, ‘farmhouse’ style of ale from Belgium that I thought might lend itself to the spicy botanicals of gin. I mixed a dry London gin with plenty of juniper (you can spend more, but Gordon’s is crisp and full of flavor) into a glass of saison (I had a bottle of Victory Saison, so I used that), and the result was a somewhat lighter, turbo-charged saison. Take 8 oz. chilled saison and 1 oz. dry London gin. Fill a red wine glass with ice and cold water to chill. Dump the ice and water, add the gin and swirl to coat the glass. Add the saison, pouring to splash. Inhale and enjoy.
Doppel Espresso – Doppelbocks are damned good stuff, and they're a beer wine drinkers can really understand: they aren’t bitter, they’re strong, and they can be either dry, or sweet like a dessert wine. But they also have a nice chocolatey character to them that can get overlooked. I thought some coffee might bring that chocolate out, and it does. A great after-dinner beer cocktail: coffee and dessert in one glass. Take 2 parts chilled doublebock (Spaten Optimator is good; I used the Pennsylvania-brewed Troegenator) and 1 part coffee beer (I used Flying Fish Imperial Espresso Porter; there are a variety of coffee beers available on the U.S. market; check your local brewpubs, too). Blend in one glass by pouring together. Simplicity and deliciousness.
*Before the inevitable "Black and Tan is offensive to the Irish!" comments come rolling in (and I won't allow them to post, so don't waste your time and mine)... The Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, the British paramilitary group that quickly gained a reputation for brutality in the early 1920s in Ireland, became known as the "Black & Tans" because of their uniform colors, true enough. But "black and tan" as the name for a mix of a dark and lighter beer actually pre-dates that, going back into the 1800s. So stop being all Irish-American (like my wife and I are (descended out of Counties Wicklow and Antrim, respectively)) and in my face with it, and relax, and enjoy this delicious mixture for what it is: beer.
I always liked the round-ups on The Session, and now I get to do my own. Next month's Session is on beer cocktails, and will be hosted on May Day by Joe & Jasmine @ Beer At Joe's.
I was very pleased that a fair number of people either tried a smoked beer for the first time or enjoyed one for the first time -- one of the things I was hoping for when I suggested this topic -- so I'm going to list them first. And yeah...a lot of us wound up with Schlenkerla; hell, so did I!
Hey, Not Bad! Dean at Eat, Drink, Run, Live hadn't even heard of the stuff before: "RAUCHBIER? What the fuck is that?" But he got his Schlenkerla -- uh-huh -- and he liked it.
Al at Hop Talk admitted smoked beer wasn't his favorite, but found one that wasn't bad: Weyerbacher Fireside. And Ron, the other Hop Talker, doesn't like porter or smoked beer, but liked Stone Smoked Porter. Good day, guys!
Put Nemsis in the "Convinced" category; the first rauchbier was so good, a second one had to follow. That's success!
Edmond at MMMM...Beer isn't quite in the smoked beer virgins category: he'd finally found one he liked, and decided to get a full bottle for The Session.
Not everyone liked it...they never do, that's okay. It's rauchbier, right?
Not So Much... Beer Sagas' experience was just not so great; well, that happens. He decided to file it as a learning experience, though!
The Reluctant Scooperisn't convinced, even though he gives convincing you otherwise a game try.
Matt C. liked his Alaskan Smoked Porter, but doesn't get the whole idea of smoked beers...and doesn't like most of them (that's right; at A World of Brews you get two posts for The Session!).
But most of you? You love this stuff.
Bring It On! Andrew Cooper, The Beer Adventurer, got me drooling with his food-pairing enthusiasm.
Rob Cannon jumps on the new Smoked Bock at Goose Island Clybourn and finds it wonderful with the pulled pork sandwich (I'd expect nothing less from a blog called Sophisticated Brews and Sustenance in the Windy City).
Mario at Brewed For Thought was ready, willing, and able, and got lucky with a cask of Sierra Nevada Imperial Smoked Porter (got some of that myself in Chicago on Tuesday; damned nice!).
John Duffy at The Beer Nut loves smoked beer, but found Mikkellr's Barrel Aged Smoke A Ciggy to be over the top, and was going home to soothe his palate with a Schlenkerla.
Except for mistaking Hamburg for Bamberg (sounds a lot alike!), Ted's got a real nice entry on his Barley Vine blog, although he'd rather have a Schlenkerla than the Stone Smoked Porter he got.
Velky Al meant well, and was ready for smokin', but he Fuggled up and left his post at home...where he has no Internet. Luckily, he had pictures and memories.
Ray Daniels blogs behind a wall -- don't ask -- so you can read his account of an experimental smoked bock here.
My man The American Don did a post on his Beer Brotha blog back in November all about smoked beer and smoke-filled rooms, and decided it was too good to waste.
Barry Masterson -- Adeptus at The Bitten Bullet -- loves the stuff, but found introducing it to friends was not such an easy proposition.
Stephen Beaumont at World of Beer recalled a shared smoky experience we had in Germany a few years back that involved a smoky beer that had no smoked malt; a real beauty, and the beer I'd have done for The Session if only I could have found one. Prost, baby!
Brian Yaeger at Red, White, and Brewdove in headfirst with four smoked beers: Einenbahn Defumada, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Stone Smoked Porter, and Schlenkerla Urbock. And then his buddy Chris homebrewed a smoked beer as well.
Mark Andersen (In Search of Beer Paradise) is a seasoned smoked beer veteran, and has some great pix of Bamberg to boot.
Paul found some cool wordplay (what would you expect from a guy who calls his blog A Flowery Song?) and some second-hand smoke in his entry.
The entry at Hump's Brewing is about Joshua Humphrie's comparison of Weyerbacher Fireside and his own Maple Smoked Stout.
Jon (The Brew Site) chose a classic beer -- Alaskan Smoked Porter -- and a classic format: the structured tasting note.
Jimmy comes up with some interesting ideas at HopWild for adding smoke to beers -- not saying they're good ideas! -- and drinks two smokers: Stone Smoked Porter and Schlenkerla Weizen ("I like it - but it just seems wrong.").
Tom Cizauskas not only drank some Schlenkerla Fastenbier -- the lucky dog -- but he posted photographic evidence on Yours For Good Fermentables that he had it on Friday.
Our man at A Good Beer Blog, Alan Macleod, didn't just have a Spezial, he had ribs soaked in barrel-aged beer for double woody goodness.
Tim joined us for the first time, and -- understandably -- got confused a little by a post called The Session on my blog: his thinkingbrewpost is about a session-strength rauchbier. Extra credit, Tim!
And Some Are Different... Mark Dredge did a nice Bert & Ernie story you'll never see on Sesame Street, pointing up how smoke beers are simply a love-hate proposition. No arguments here.
Peter wrote a very complete entry at BetterBeerBlog, adding in his thoughts, an explanation of smoked beer, tasting notes on the Sierra Nevada Smoked Imperial Porter he had, and notes on the bar where he got it. (What, nothing on the traffic?)
The folks at Beer-O-Vision tasted Stone and Schlenkerla on-camera: have a look.
And finally, the brother-from-a-different-mother who talked me into this, Jay Brooks, takes the wheel of his Brookston Beer Bulletin and drives us on an exploration of whether smoked beers are legitimately more about place of origin and consumption than most other beers. For me? I'd say yes...as long as the 'place of consumption'...is me.
Thanks, everyone. It was a hoot, and I'm glad you all played along.
Today is the first Friday of April, so it's time for The Session, beer blogging on a common topic. This month it's my turn to host it. I invited people to write about smoked beers. Anything you want to write, the only 'rule' is that you actually have to drink at least one.
Here's where you want to leave a comment with your URL, or you can e-mail me the link (your comment may not show up immediately, so don't double-post; I moderate comments to keep out spam and jackasses). Drop it off here, and I'll do a round-up later this weekend. Cheers!
It's Friday, and it's Lent, and I am at least a practicing Catholic, if not a perfect one, so I'm not having the smoked meat that I'd like. And my cheesemonger didn't get in any Bruderbasil and I just don't care for smoked Gouda, so I'm doing smoked fish. Because I love smoked stuff, smoked cheese, smoked fish, smoked meat, smoked sausage, smoked nuts -- anyone ever had smoked fruit? -- and smoked beer. But I most of all love smoked beer with smoked food.
So, first course: Spezial Rauchbier with cold smoked salmon made at my local fishmonger's. Nothing 'spezial' here, no smoking juniper twigs or Nova Scotian peat, nothing e*treme, just plain old German rauchbier, made with smoked malt. The only thing special about Spezial is that it's so damned good, and it's one of the Bamberg breweries I've been lucky enough to visit, a wonderful session that I still look back on fondly. The smoked salmon is still moist, delicious, and the Spezial doesn't overwhelm it. As rauchbier goes, Spezial is fairly mild, yet very tasty.
Second course: Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen and whitefish. And now the pair's stood on its head: the beer is bold and rocking, and the fish sure doesn't overwhelm it (the fish is nice, too, moist and yummy). I love this beer, huge, smacky, rambunctious, and ready for food, and I've liked it in multiple servings from the first time I tried it.
Smoked beers represent a great example, maybe the best, of beer's directness. When a winemaker wants a smoky character in wine, they use grapes and yeast and oak that have produced wine with hints of smoke before...and they suggest that smoke to the consumer. When a brewer wants smoke in beer, on the other hand, they do just that: they put smoke in the beer. Period. They smoke the malt, just like you smoke fish or cheese or meat, and then brew the beer.
Smoke has been tagged as a carcinogen. Well...this is just one of those times where I'm going to remind myself that I could get killed crossing the street. God help me, I do love it so.
Thanks to everyone for participating in The Session!
We're working on getting The Session back in shape -- we got kinda flabby with non-beer style-related postings (!) last year, which apparently pissed some folks off -- and it's looking buff and stylish: we just had a round of light low-calorie lagerboy workouts, courtesy of The Beer Nut. But before we get carried away with this health craze, I'd like to invite everyone to join me out back of the barn, where we're going light up some smoked beers.
There may be more smoked beers than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio; it's not just rauchbier lagers from Franconia. Within the last year, I've had a strange smoked wheat beer, light and tart, that local brewers insisted was a re-creation of a Polish grodziski beer; a lichtenhainer, another light smoked wheat beer; several smoked porters; the odd Schlenkerla unsmoked helles that tastes pretty damned smokey; and, yeah, several types of smoked lagers. You've got three weeks, is what I'm saying: go find a smoked beer.
Because I'm not going to tell you that you have to like them, how you have to drink them, or whether you can have an expensive one or where it has to be from. But I do insist that if you blog on this Session, that you drink a smoked beer that day.
Which I'm sure means that some of you will fail to do that and proudly blog about it and have what you think is a real good reason. I swear, it's like trying to push string...
Have fun, smoke 'em if you got 'em, and you better get 'em!
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month John Duffy of The Beer Nut asks: "I want to know what's so great about [plain, yellow, fizzy lagers] and what's awful. Are we talking just lawnmowers, barbecues and sun holidays here, or is there a time for some thoughtful considered sipping of a cold fizzy lager?" See it all here, shortly.
There are going to be a lot of folks reminiscing about when they drank fizzy lager this month, I'm guessing. I put plenty of them down my steaming craw back in the day, God knows (and some of them came back up). There's going to be people "giving them a fair chance" and deciding that yeah, they really do suck. There's probably even going to be some "screw you, I'm not drinking those." As I said: I'm guessing.
I'm not going to do that, even though I'd planned to. My first beer, icy Rolling Rocks with the band, all that jazz. But screw it. Philly Beer Week calls, and I've got to get ready and get down to it. So I'm just going to pre-game a little with a tallboy (that's a pint can, for you Euro-styles) of Narragansett.
Is that good? Pre-gaming isn't, really, but on the other hand, it's been a long, crazy day, frantic e-mail as I get caught up going into the weekend full-tilt, like street-luging down Negley Ave. in Pittsburgh...and I could use a beer, just to slow down a little. Grainy, a little sticky, fizzy (and that's where most of the bitterness comes from, the fizz), and...not much else, really.
Is that bad? Well...I guess, if I was looking for much more. But you know, I drink soft drinks, too, I like to drink, and if I drank beer everytime I drank, I'd be like people describe Winston Churchill, in a constant state of varyingly mild inebriation. So this fits in that. I'm in the moment. I'm not thinking about it, normally, though I am now, of course. But mostly I'm thinking about the music that's playing (Nick Lowe, I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass), the upcoming evening (train ride, opening tap of Philly Beer Week, seeing friends and brewers, maybe hanging around and hitting one other event), my son coming home, the dogs nosing around (bright-eyed little beauties)...life.
I can do that with a glass of Sierra Nevada Torpedo. But it demands more attention. This...I was going to say is mindless drinking, but that's not really right. It's effortless drinking.
Is that bad? I don't know. But I don't really care, either. This is beer for other times. Beer for old friends. It's social. Should I be upset when my friends offer me fizzy lager? I'm not, except for a fairly short period in the early 1990s. I got over that. I draw the line at light beer, but that's okay with almost any mainstream drinker; that doesn't challenge them. Beer isn't about beating people up, any more than food is. At least, not for me.
Well, I'm done. Been nice sitting with you, but I've got to go. It's been nice. We should do this again sometime.
I'm hosting The Session myself next month: Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em. Rauch it up. Be there.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month BeerMe of Beer and Firkins asks: "What will I miss from 2008 and what will I excitedly await in 2009?" See all the links soon here.
What will I miss from 2008?
The Penn Brewery, which is closing for reasons that seem not nearly as clear as the new owners insist they are.
Jay Misson. Jay was a good friend and a craft beer pioneer, and was enjoying the hell out of cranking out excellent lagers and ales as 'executive brewer' of the small Triumph brewpub chain. His sudden death shocked us, and the sense of loss remains, solid and deep.
The carefree economy we enjoyed through the first half of the year, when it didn't matter that gas prices were up because we were all making money. None of us will probably ever look at the stock market, banks, or job security the same way again.
The incredible energy of the inaugural Philly Beer Week. This year's is looking more organized, better publicized, and solid in structure, but the crackling excitement of last year's white knuckle ride was something else: could we pull it off? Oh, yeah, we did, so much so that cities across the country imitated us...even New York and San Francisco, which was sweeter than Bassett's ice cream.
The hop shortage, which made brewers step back from the simple-minded "throw in 50 more pounds of hops" school of brewing "innovation." I think. We'll see.
What will I excitedly await in 2009?
Not much. This is going to be a year of small victories, I think, of holding ground. I don't expect to travel nearly as much this year, new whiskeys will likely be less common and perhaps less adventuresome, and there will probably be fewer breweries opening. I hope I'm wrong, and there are some signs already that things may not fall as far as feared, and rebound even more quickly. Much depends on the government -- which scares me -- and on the minds of the American people.
I am optimistic by nature; I have hope. But I also have perspective, and most of my hopes for 2009 are not focused on beer or whiskey, or even my own career writing about them. I have other things to hope for this year, both national and personal, and to the point that focus can help, I shall.
I do excitedly await Barack Obama's inauguration, because as a student of history and politics, I find it fascinating and hopeful. I excitedly await my 50th birthday, because it falls on the day after Friday the Firkinteenth at the Grey Lodge, and that means that 2009 -- finally! -- is a year with three Friday the Firkinteenths. I excitedly await March 22nd, my father's 80th birthday. I excitedly await December and the 20th anniversary for Cathy and I.
But for beer? I'm afraid I excitedly await 2010, when things will be better. I hope.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it falls, with serendipitous beauty, on the 75th anniversary of the passage of the 21st Amendment: Repeal. If only this were Session #21! We've been asked to reflect on "What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?" See all the links soon here at the 21st Amendment brewpub's blog.
21 Thoughts About Prohibition and Repeal.
1. Prohibition was about as likely to ultimately succeed as a law repealing gravity. People drink, and we've been enjoying alcohol for about seven thousand years or more. Note that longevity does not equal an invulnerable cultural position, but the stuff tastes good, too, and it makes you feel wonderful.
2. This did not stop people from attempting to make Prohibition work. Donkeys.
3. But note also: we had it coming to us. Prohibition happened because booze and the people who sold it were out of hand. Saloons were often dens of iniquity, drunken men did squander their paychecks and beat their wives and children, brewers and distillers were corrupt and fed graft money into a corrupt political system. We look back on saloon society and plentiful local breweries and a wide diversity of distillers (oh...for the days of rye distillers in Maryland and Pennsylvania), and we see things through amber-colored glasses, a beautiful Golden Age of Drinking. Well...there were some pretty cool things. But there were some pretty ugly things, too: see Gangs of New York.
4. There was something to that Golden Age, though. The heart sags to think of the local breweries and distilling traditions lost because the industry couldn't police itself. We had monastic breweries here in America, we had pot-stilled whiskey, we had flourishing wineries, and we had saloons that were opulent palaces of booze. All crushed, forcing us to start over from practically nil. Woe.
5. Enforcing Prohibition was a disaster. For every Eliot Ness, for every Mo Smith and Izzy Einstein (pictured here, sharing a legal drink after Repeal), there were a hundred corrupt enforcement agents who signed up for a chance to make bribe money, get away with shooting rivals, or to get inside information on raids for their gangster bosses. Enforcement was underfunded -- often on purpose -- and at times vicious: there was support among some Drys for not labeling wood alcohol as poison, or for simply poisoning all alcohol. And it never stopped more than a minuscule amount of the huge illegal trade in alcohol.
6. If all that sounds like The War On Drugs, the DEA, and Paraquat...well, draw your own conclusions.
7. But while you're drawing those conclusions, keep in mind the obvious. What the War On Drugs is today, Prohibition was yesterday; a doomed attempt to control an easily produced substance that a significant part of the population wanted to buy and consume, an attempt that built and hugely enriched a criminal organization, while making many otherwise law-abiding citizens criminals and scofflaws. Great...
8. Oh, and it also lost the government a huge source of taxes (not that I approve of those excise taxes, but I've found my opposition to them to be quixotic at best) and turned the quality of that product to crap. Thanks.
9. Prohibition was actually immensely popular...at first. It must have been, the 18th Amendment was ratified very quickly. Almost as quickly as the 21st Amendment was, 13 years later.
10. Prohibition was not, however, foisted upon us by Bible-thumpers, "conservatives," puritans, rural nutjobs, or Republicans. They had their place in it, but the progressives, liberals, city-dwellers, public healthmongers, and Democrats were right there beside them. Not a judgment either way, just truth. The Anti-Saloon League was the NRA of its day, the first real power politics practitioner in the modern era, and they didn't care what party you belonged to, as long as you promised to vote Dry.
11. Prohibition was foisted on us by a progressive lie, much like keg registration is being shoved down our throats now. It started in one town/township/county. But the drinking wouldn't stop, and booze would come in from every border. "Give us statewide prohibition," would be the cry, "and we'll show you how it can work! The outsiders are ruining our good work!" And they'd get statewide Prohibition, and the drinking wouldn't stop, and booze would come in from every border. "Give us national prohibition," was the cry, "and we'll show you how it can work! The outsiders are ruining our good work!" And they got national Prohibition...and we got Al Capone, Dutch Schultz, and Joe Kennedy. "Give us more money for enforcement, give us the military to stop smugglers, give us easier search warrants!" And they got it...and nothing happened. Prohibition, as Will Rogers said, made you want to cry in your beer, and then denied you the beer to cry in. Finally, people got fed up, and started talking Repeal.
12. Prohibition got a big boost from business -- John Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and other industrialists thought it would mean a clean and sober workforce that they could get to work more like the automatons they wanted -- and government -- because the feds now had the income tax and were rolling in revenue, and thought they didn't need booze tax any more. So did Repeal. When Rockefeller saw that his workers were still drunk, and now were sick from bootleg crap booze, and saw the taxes going to pay for an increasingly corrupt enforcement bureaucracy, he did an about-face. When the Depression hit in 1929, income tax revenues dropped, and the feds needed money to pay for jobs programs -- hey, start up the booze biz again, it's a two-fer!
13. Women were a major force for Prohibition -- they were feeling empowered by the suffragist movement and the Progressive movement -- and, again, for Repeal. Upper-class women were revolted by the corruption, by the blatant hypocrisy of Dry politicians who drank like fish, and by the lack of human sympathy displayed by the more cruel Drys (those guys who wanted to poison the drunks). Urban Catholics and immigrants were against Prohibition because it simply seemed unnatural to them; well, it was.
14. Repeal became unstoppable as the Depression deepened because of the two-fer effect mentioned above. But the damage to America's palate had already taken place. We got used to lighter (cheaper) beer, white (unaged) spirits, Canadian and Scotch (smuggled) whisky, and sweet fortified (cheaper) wine. It took us decades to re-discover what we'd lost.
15. Some of it never was recovered. Thousands -- thousands -- of breweries closed, never to re-open, and the idea of the local brewery was irreparably crippled. Hundreds of distilleries closed, and bourbon and rye distillers were left with a huge, irreplaceable hole in their warehouse inventories. Young bourbons tasted vile, and sold for such low prices that the bourbon business referred to sales as "swapping dollars": the cashflow from the income just barely balanced the outflow of production costs. Rye whiskey, America's heart-warming frontier spirit and the pride of the Monongahela, practically disappeared. We had a hole shot through our memories and our national palate that would take years to begin to replace.
16. Repeal was a gloriously happy occasion. The beer trucks rolled, wine flowed, hipflasks were openly waved. Happy days were here again! I would truly love to go back in time for those two days -- Happy New Beer in April of 1933 and Repeal Day eight months later -- to watch America celebrate the return of John Barleycorn and Demon Rum. And to eat the livers of the Drys...how did Conan put it? "Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of their women." Oh, yeah. That would have been sweet, watching the Anti-Saloon League hating all those fun-loving boozers.
17. The Drys often got the last laugh, or at least a long one. States remained dry, then counties, towns, as local option laws held on. Screwed-up liquor laws kept things weird: in some states, the word "saloon" was illegal. Morality and government greed got mixed in an unholy combination of taxes and control schemes: state stores, rapacious prices, and customers treated like unclean supplicants. An alliance of Baptists (who wanted no drinking) and bootleggers (who wanted no legal booze sales) kept many counties in Kentucky dry to this day. The Drys were salted through the state legislatures, and everyone seemed to think that the return of Prohibition was lurking right around the corner -- after all, it had happened once -- and they had to step cautiously lest it return.
18. But the Drys had been beaten. Prohibition continued to recede, the WCTU became a joke, the ASL withered and died (corrupt itself, at the end), and "temperance" was forgotten. The New Drys, the neo-prohibitionists, didn't really start to re-group until the 1960s, when they found a new home among the Science Geniuses and the Safety Nazis, the good people who were going to save us from ourselves with Science. They realized that Prohibition had been tried, and failed. They openly announced that they would bring their new order to the nation by limiting access to booze (liquor license procedures), by tightening who could drink (the 21 LDA), by re-defining "drunk" (the 0.08 BAC DUI limit), and by raising excise taxes. And that's what they've been hammering away on ever since, with some success.
19. How do we fight it? Two things. First, to quote Mad-Eye Moody (the fake one) in the Harry Potter books: CONSTANT VIGILANCE! The New Drys are constantly flooding the media with anti-alcohol bullshit. Whenever they do, someone should counter them. The brewers, distillers, and vintners didn't in 1919, and look what it got them. Don't ignore them; they are at work every day, earning their grant money and taking aim at your fun. Now, the second thing...we have to admit that they're not all wrong. I've heard ridiculous bullshit from our side too: "You can't get drunk on beer." "You're not an alcoholic if you drink the good stuff." And worst of all, this:
..
..
That's right, silence, as in not admitting the problems of alcohol exist. We have to be honest, or we can't hold them to the same standard. Remember: the reason we got Prohibition was because there really was a problem. A big one. We have to step up and be honest about fighting it.
20. In the meantime, the full fruits of Repeal are sweeping the nation at an increasing rate. Long-dry towns in the South (and North) are going wet, ridiculous laws are being repealed (limits on beer strength; draft beer is allowed in Montgomery, Alabama; South Carolina finally gets rid of airline bottles at bars; and the PA case law...how long, O Lord, how long?!), and attitudes are changing (lowering the 21 LDA is being openly discussed for the first time in 20 years). The New Drys are fighting fiercely, and ground is exchanged back and forth, but we're definitely in the fight.
21. As for me...I intend to celebrate this momentous 75th Anniversary of Repeal in the same way everyone else did in 1933. I'm going to get me to a brewery, and get a few big seidels of good lager beer.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "What is your favorite beer and why." See all the links soon here at A World of Brews.
You've got to be kidding me. I don't have a "favorite" anything. Despite Matt C. saying "BS everyone has a favorite", well, I don't. I don't have a favorite beer, a favorite whiskey, a favorite restaurant or brewpub, a favorite cheese, a favorite movie -- actually, there's a good example of why I don't do favorites. Let's go with it.
Say I had a favorite movie [beer]. I'd own [stock] that movie [beer] on DVD [in a kegerator], and I'd watch [drink] it, what? Three times a week [day]? Good God, how soon would I be bored senseless [bored senseless] by it. No, instead, we joined Netflix [go to the local beer bar] and we watch [drink] different movies [beers] all the time. And sometimes we watch [drink] an old favorite again -- like The Quiet Man [Augustiner Maximator] or Big Trouble in Little China [Tröegs Nugget Nectar] -- but not that often.
Get it? The thing I love about the beer scene in Pennsylvania, America, the world is that I can get a lot of different beers, almost whenever I want them. If not one particular beer, well, something like it -- or something completely different that I may find I like as much or more. A lot like Netflix, which is the multitap beer bar equivalent to Blockbuster's JAFSB. My favorite beer is a different beer. Doesn't mean I don't like repeating -- I remember the first night I got a glass of Philly Pale Ale I liked it so much I had three more -- but I don't get stuck in a rut either. Even when I go to Düsseldorf and get stuck into an all-day session at Uerige or Schlüssel -- oh, happy days -- you know...I come home, and have a HopDevil, or an Old Heathen, or a Stoudt's Pils, or a Walt Wit.
BS? I don't think so. Just too ornery to go along with The Session this month? Well... maybe.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "Beer memories." See all the links soon here at Bathtub Brewery.
"Beer memories" could, I suppose, be memories of beers. Most of the really good beers I've had, though, have been with people around; beer's like that, it's social. So there are beers for many of the important people in my life. I'd like to introduce you to some of them.
Genesee Beer: My wife, Cathy. I fell hard for Cathy the second time around...it's a long story. But I laid my heart open for her one weekend in the Catskills with our gang of college friends, about 20 of us tubing on the Esopus Creek. She needed time to think about it; I was anxious but trying to seem nonchalant. So while everyone else went off to a swimming hole, she and I and our friend Bobby retired to the bar. The only beer they had was Genesee, and Cathy ordered three, clinked the cold bottles with us, and drank with gusto. I was in love, and my girl liked beer. I'll never, ever forget that beer, that moment, in the bar at the Antrim Lodge in Roscoe, New York. We've had a lot of really great beers together since then, and a few before that, but that's the beer I think of with her, cold and fresh in the first bloom of love.
Spaten Optimator: Cathy's oldest brother, Chris. I grew up with one sister, just the two of us. When I started dating Cathy seriously, I got to know her three younger brothers. One weekend, Cathy and I were up at her home, east of Poughkeepsie. We didn't have anything to do, so we went and toured some Hudson Valley vineyards, and Chris, similarly at loose ends, came along. We had some really gross sweet wine -- Niagara semi-sweet red, almond-flavored champagne -- saw some great scenery, and wound up in Beacon. We stopped in a little store, and found a sixpack of Optimator. We went down to the sandy beach at Little Stony Point, across the broad Hudson from Storm King Mountain, and in a windy skirl of light snow, drank the Optimator. We didn't say much, but I felt, that day, that I'd been accepted...and for the first time in my life, I had a brother. It was a good day, and a damned good beer.
Samichlaus: Cathy's middle brother, Curt. Cathy's family lived in Dover Plains, New York, and the beer choices in the early 1990s were pretty damned limited. There was a store about half an hour away, though, that had a decent selection, so about 1 on Saturday afternoons, Curt or Chris and I would head down there and stock up. One cold day all three of us went, and we got four bottles of Samichlaus along with a couple sixers of Saranac. Chris was driving, but Curt and I decided to open a Sami. We passed it back and forth, kind of like taking turns stepping behind a mule to get kicked, and got jovial real quick. Curt had always been -- and still is -- taciturn, but under the Swiss hammer, he got red-faced (we were onto a second bottle by now), laughing, and almost chatty. That was the day I finally got to know Curt. Thanks, Sami.
Okocim Porter: Cathy's youngest brother, Carl. This was a more somber occasion. Carl was living in Virginia by now. It was a rough time; Cathy's father was dying of cancer. Cathy was already up at the home; he'd been moved home by the hospice (who were great, and we still send them money every year) and the end was coming close. Carl drove up to our house from Virginia late on Friday night, in February, I think. My parents came down to watch Thomas and Nora (very young at the time), and Carl and I left early Saturday morning. When we got near Harriman, we decided to get off for coffee, and happened on a farm market. Impulse buy: we got a bar of horseradish cheddar, coffee, and some donuts, then got off the Thruway and headed east on Rt. 6 into the state park. It was snowing by now, so we decided to pull off rather than eat cheese while driving. One thing led to another, and I pulled out a big brown bottle of Okocim Porter. We stood back in the woods, silent, and passed the heavy, sweet, roasty beer back and forth as the snow drifted down through the trees. He and I remember that well, a day when we felt the years coming down on our backs, when we were becoming older men as the torch passed. Okocim is a beer I don't approach lightly; it is wrapped in memories, and opening one stirs them up.
Victory Root Beer: my son, Thomas. I got laid off when the company I was working for crashed and burned in early 1994. I was on unemployment for four months before finding work. One morning, Thomas, who was three at the time, said to me, "Daddy, why don't you go to work any more?" I felt about that tall. Fast-forward to 1996, when the writing was really starting to pick up, and he and I are sitting at the long bar at Victory, him with a Victory root beer, me with a HopDevil. And suddenly I smiled, and said to him, "Do you remember when you asked me why I don't go to work any more?" Yes, he said, puzzled. "Well," I said, and spread my arms wide, "here we are at work!" That was the day I knew I'd found what I was going to do, and realized that I really could do it.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: my best friend and Thomas's godfather, Tom Curtin. I moved to California in August of 1987, driving from Kentucky in a Volvo diesel station wagon. TC, a solid college friend who I'd spent many a crazed moment with, flew out to Denver to join me for the trip. We drove across Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, crazy driving of miles and miles and miles, and when we got to Lake Tahoe, we were ready for a break. We rented a boat, and went out on the lake; it was a great day. It was also the day I had my first Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and that was great, too. All cemented in my mind and memory, inseparable.
My last homebrew: my daughter, Nora. When Cathy was pregnant with Nora, I brewed up a batch of peach ale with the last ripest peaches of the summer. It fermented, I racked it, and it sat in secondary for two months. I bottled it -- "My Little Peach" -- about three weeks before she was born in January. A month later my company fell apart, two weeks after that my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer. I remember sitting at home, not spending money, watching the snow fall as I held my beautiful sleeping baby girl in my arms. And I never homebrewed again. I had become Mister Mom, and I just didn't have the time or inclination.
Beer takes me back to memories sometimes. Just seeing a label, just taking a sip, just thinking. Sometimes, most times, actually...it's just a beer. But you never know when you might be making a memory. Cheers, to my friends and family, and to all those with memories of beer.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "German beer." See all the links soon here at lootcorp 3.0.
German beer. Deutsches Bier.
As I'm writing this, I'm trying a German beer that's new to me, courtesy of Horst Dornbusch's new importing effort: Meckatzer Gold, from the Meckatzer Löwenbräu brewery in Heimenkirch. Appropriate (and tasty, too: good malty body, dry bitterness), because there are more damned beers and breweries in Germany than you can shake a stick at.
I've learned that, in the course of five visits to Germany -- more than I've made to any other country than Canada -- and I've also learned that I love the German beer culture, German drinking culture more than any other I've experienced. Mind you, that's limited experience, and Belgium's close, but it beats the U.S. hands down, and even edges out the Czech Republic.
Why? Well, in the U.S., we often get too hung up on the drunk part of things. That's sad, and disturbing. Worse, too often the bars are dark, dingy, and infested with loud music that makes conversation impossible. In the Czech Republic, it's almost like they don't even notice the beer, it's more like breathing: natural, and easy, but...not much joy. Portugal, which may well surprise you with how much beer culture it manages to have, actually came closest to the German ideal (because of German tourists?), but the beer just wasn't good enough. In Scotland, it was quite reserved -- or madly Dionysian, which says a lot about you Scots, I'm thinking. Belgian beer culture is fun, and respectful of the beer, but...almost a little too respectful, over-the-top, too focused.
I think the Germans get beer culture right; at least, for me. Germans like people around when they drink. They like beers they can drink for long sessions, but not so low-alcohol that you don't get that "social lubrication" factor going. They like solid food with their beer; nothing fancy, nothing cheap, belly-mortar to assist in that all-important buzz maintenance. The Germans have a huge state fair-like festival that centers, unashamedly, on beer, a festival that has been going on for almost 200 years and is emulated -- but never matched -- around the world. They sit, and they dance, and they talk, and they sing...and they drink beer. They all drink beer, the family, the grandparents, and they go out in the beerhalls till late in the evening, and they drink, and talk, and play cards...and I miss it when I think about it.
Like my friend and colleague Steve Beaumont said earlier today in his contribution to The Session, I almost believe that this culture, the where and the what and the how and the who of German beer drinking, is more a part of it than the actual beer, or at least as great. I remember a discussion -- not to say 'argument' -- that went on some years ago in several beer-lover arenas about whether it was possible to know a beer without having enjoyed it where it was born, in situ.
At the time, I thought the very idea was bullshit. And I said so: this is just one more way for the beer elite, the malterati, to separate themselves from the common herd. Now that we had discovered the same beers they had, now that importers were bringing us rare beers, now that craft brewers were making beers we could taste and not them (because no one can be everywhere)...they had to come up with some new divider, some new badge of belonging. Bullshit, I said, and drank stale bottles of German lagers in loud, dark, tiny bars.
Then I went to Germany, to Bavaria and Franconia, and my eyes were opened. It was not the "Red Stripe" effect, in which everything is wonderful because you're not at home; to be honest, not everything was wonderful...except when I walked into a beerhall. When you sat down across a trestle table -- solid, wooden, old, clean enough to eat from -- from a German, he or she would lift their glass and drink with you, and once they realized that you were not German, all they wanted to do was help you enjoy your stay. I met very few exceptions to this; three in five visits, one of whom disapproved of me because she was a tee-totaler -- unglaublich!
Is it the beer? Or the Germans? To tell the truth, I don't know, because I've had very little discourse with Germans outside of brewery and beerhall; it's where I go, it's why I'm there. What I do know is that whatever it is, I like it.
I'd like to visit the Scandinavian countries and see what beer culture is like there. I urgently want to visit more eastern European countries and drink there: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Baltics. I need to visit England. But I know that I'll be back in Germany before long, because, well, because I need to breathe that air, enjoy the people, and drink the beer.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "beer anniversaries." See all the links soon here at The Barley Blog.
I lived in California too early, and left much too early. I was working as a librarian for the Army at Ft. Ord (outside Monterey; it's a community college now, I think) in the late 1980s, and enjoying the hell out of the growing beer scene. We had the Penny Farthing Tavern (which is apparently still around), which was good for some Young's taps (used to love Ramrod in those days; there was Cooper's Ale and Stout and fresh-bottled Anchor at my local supermarket, and I made pretty regular trips to Front Street Pub in Santa Cruz (which is not still around, dammit), where I first wrote down my thoughts about beer. My buddy Bobby Gryce came out to visit, and we made it to Sierra Nevada (back in their first location), to SF Brewing, Walnut Creek/Devil Mountain, Triple Rock, Acme/Xcelsior (anyone remember that?), to Mendocino's brewpub, and the thoroughly horrible Monterey Brewing Co., which maintained a reputation as possibly the worst brewpub ever in the U.S. (at least, until Gettysbrew came along). Overall, a wonderful time for a guy really waking up to beer.
But I got itchy; the West Coast was just not for me, and I applied for jobs back East. Nothing happened, so I started planning another trip with my buddy Ray Lutz, up the coast to Seattle, following the footsteps of William Least Heat Moon from an article he wrote for The Atlantic in November of 1987 called "A Glass of Handmade." (If you've never read this piece, read it now (and thanks to Wes Jones for making it available); I'll wait...) I had it all planned out, as only I plan out things; I get a bit obsessive when I plot a beer trip. We were going to Redhook, we were going to Yakima, we were going to get some beer!
What I got...was the job I'd applied for; a computer librarian slot at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in DC. It was a plum position, a two-level raise, working in a favorite town of mine, getting back East on the Army's dime. And even though the job turned out to be a nightmare -- long story -- it still got me back East. I wonder to this day how my life changed then, and I regret it still that I never got to take that trip in May of 1988.
But you know, I still would have missed Deschutes, which didn't open till July 27 of 1988. It's that long ago that all this happened. Which is why today, for The Session, I'm drinking their 20th Anniversary Wit and thinking about that long, winding road that's led me here. Once a librarian, "backed up against the ocean, backed up against the wall, out there on the edge of America, desperate, and heading for some kind of fall...", then finding myself unemployed just as I'd sold my first piece of beer writing, keeping it together as I honed my craft, and now an apparently respected part of the industry. It's been hard work, and a lot of fun, and precarious at times...which I think Gary Fish would say mirrors his twenty years at Deschutes.
The beer? An excellent companion for reflection. Flavorful, yet not distractingly so; crisp, but not bland; spicy (with grains of paradise as well as the traditional coriander and orange) but not sickly; just the ticket for reminiscing on a warm afternoon. Cheers, everyone; happy Session.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "drinking anti-seasonally." See all the links soon here.
Rob DeNunzio ("Pfiff!") declared that this month's Session would be about "Drinking anti-seasonally." Rob has a bit more than the usual beer geek's animus towards light lager, and I think he wanted us all to drink heavy in the heat.
Screw that. I chose to interpret this differently, aided by the calendar and Thomas Jefferson. Today is Independence Day in America, The Glorious Fourth of July, and I chose to celebrate for The Session by going to a brewpub owned by Englishmen and drinking English-type real ales brewed on an English-made system with English yeast. That's anti-seasonal, in my book.
My wife's brothers are here for the long holiday weekend. This morning, Carl and I loaded up our bikes and headed to Stockton, NJ, up along the Delaware River. We rode the Delaware & Raritan State Park trail 12 miles to Frenchtown, then 4 miles up a decidedly more dodgy single-track to Milford. We racked and locked the bikes, changed into fresh t-shirts, and parked our butts at the bar of the Ship Inn. We each got 20 oz. pints of cask Best Bitter, and got thoroughly stuck into them.
The Ship Inn is a Ringwood yeast brewery, a yeast that raises the hackles of many a geek. To use Mr. DeNunzio's title: pfiff. Beer is as beer does, my momma always said (no, she didn't, but what the hell, Tom Hanks never played ping pong with the Chinese, either), and this is good beer. So good we had another, and then got a 5 liter polypin to take home.
I'm a solid American, a patriot, and I'll be picking up my craft beer (Sierra Nevada Summerfest and Flying Fish Farmhouse) later today. But those pints of English ale, hard-won by a long ride and standing determinedly session-strength against a craft onslaught of "Bigger! Bitter! Stuffed with more flavor than you can taste!", were a counter-move that made my day. Glad we smoothed things over with the Limeys.
It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "beer festivals." See all the links soon here.
I just told someone last week that beer festivals are pretty much work for me anymore. I was at the Mondial in Montreal, and while it was enjoyable, and the weather was great, and there were plenty of good beers -- new beers! -- and brewers -- new brewers, to me, anyway -- and pretty girls and grilled and smoked meat and all dat... I left before the session was over, and I only went back for an hour or so the next day. I would never have done that in the past. What happened? What stole my fun?
I used to enjoy beer festivals, and I'd stay till the last minute. I'd taste everything new that I could safely hold (I used dump buckets, I drank water, I'd eat, anything to try more beers), I'd talk beer, I had a great time. I met John Hansell at a beer festival, which led indirectly to my current position as managing editor for his magazine, Malt Advocate (which in those days was a beer 'magazine,' about 8 pages stapled in the corner). I met any number of brewers, including David Geary, who recently showed me the "business card" I gave him at a Stoudt's festival back in...1994? "I figured you'd be back," he said, "and you were."
It wasn't the working that was the buzzkill, though. I worked fests and still enjoyed them; hell, I even worked taps for brewers on some and had a fun time. I think what killed it for me was the Falling Rock Syndrome. People who go to GABF often enough, serious types (serious about beer, anyway), quickly learn that the Friday and Saturday night sessions are crazy, often given over to drunks. They head out to other, smaller venues, like Denver's beer bar supreme, Falling Rock, or a brewpub, or someone's hotel room.
That's what festivals have become for me: the meeting-up place for the after-party, and it seems like the "after" part gets earlier and earlier. I LIKE going to the after-parties, they're a lot of fun, they're usually people I know or people who know people I know, and it's all very convivial.
And they're not wall-to-wall people, packed in so tight they can't move. Some of the problem is like Yogi Berra said: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." Blame the festival promoters: stop selling so many tickets. I'd happily pay $10 more if I could move. Turn down the band's amps; I can't tell you how many times I've yelled to someone at a festival "If I'd wanted to hear blues, I'd go to a blues festival: I'm here to talk to brewers and I can't even hear myself think!" Better programs would be great: give me the brewery names, their websites, their addresses, what beers they have, and a little room for notes. Give me food options, give me some education options, give me no smoking and good ventilation, give me a beer garden to sit for a bit. Give me shuttle-to-lodgings/transit options.
I think beer festivals need to be re-worked. For our benefit, the fest-goers, and for the benefit of the brewers. Some of them are better, but craft beer -- and let's be honest, that's really the only kind that generates festival-going interest -- is hot, and people are interested. Give them a good experience. Maybe I'm just a crotchety old bastard. But if I don't think it's that fun anymore, maybe I'm not the only one.
Boak & Bailey invited us to tell stories for this month's Session: how did 'it' -- seeing beer in a different light -- start for you? I've always been a traveling kind of beer guy, so I decided to focus on where it started for me.
I had my first beer, my first full beer, in 1978. I was 19 years old, a late bloomer. It was a Genesee Cream Ale. I liked it. That's not where it started.
I had my first beer out of the American mainstream in 1981. I was 22, and I thought I knew a lot about beer. It was an Altenmünster. I liked it. That's not where it started.
I brewed my first batch of homebrew in 1986. I was single, living in a dry county in Kentucky. I read Charlie Papazian's book, I got the equipment and supplies, and I brewed. The first batch sucked. The second one was pretty decent. That's not where it started.
I had my first Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on August 14, 1987 in Tahoe City, at a deli, a little before noon (hey, like I always say: some people remember where they were when Kennedy was shot...and I'm dissembling: it wasn't "a little before noon," it was 11:55. I looked at a clock, it was so good). I got a bottle to go with my corned beef special. I loved it. That's not where it started.
Where it started was at the Front Street Pub, a brewpub in Santa Cruz, California. It was October of 1987, and I'd been living in California for two months, and the beer scene was just starting to pop. My boss's husband was a Brit, a likable guy who ran computers for one of the big vegetable outfits in the Salinas Valley. One day in September I was driving home and saw him jogging alongside the road. I stopped, said hi, and we got to talking beer. He told me I should really go over to Santa Cruz and see this place.
I did, and I was so taken that I got out a little notebook I'd been carrying for grocery lists and such, and started keeping a Beer Diary. That's where it really started, because that's when I started thinking about beer, about why I liked it, what it tasted like, what the people who drank it were like, what they said, how they thought about it, and about how we'd gotten to the place we were in.
I started it that day, and I've been keeping them for 20 years; I've got a file drawer full of them. I kept them for six years before I ever even thought about writing about beer for money; I just wanted to get some thoughts down so I could go back and look at them and think some more.
And you see, once I started thinking about what I was drinking, it just got more and more interesting. I went out to find more to read, more to drink, more people to talk to...and that's what I've been doing ever since, and in the process, I talked to a LOT of people. I became unafraid of stating opinions, and thinking as deeply about beer as I felt the urge to, and not worrying about what beer was supposed to be. That's some of the most important stuff to me about how I experience beer today: clearing my mind of pre-formed impressions and diving into the beer in front of me and enjoying it...assuming it's worth enjoying!
It all started at the Front Street Pub, a wonderful place in memory.
Call me unconventional (please, I love it when you do that), but when I read Chris O'Brien's proposal for The Session this month -- "Simply publish a post related to organic beer. " -- I decided to do just that...by posting about a non-organic vodka.
I did a few stories about organic beers in the past year, and mostly what I found is that there's a ton of disagreement about what "organic" means, as Chris points out:
Only beers verified by independent certifiers as meeting the legal organic standards are allowed to bear the USDA Certified Organic logo... Lots of brewers use Certified Organic malt and/or hops but have not had their facilities and processes certified. Legally and in practical fact these beers are not organic and are prohibited from being marketed as organic. But for this Session, it’s up to you to decide what to count as organic. Feel free to comment on beers that someone just tells you are organic, but be aware that just because someone has good intentions and seems trustworthy doesn’t mean that their beer is in fact organic.
I decided to take Chris at his word and sidestep the whole thing -- even though I have some organic beers available, like Pinkus, and Wolaver's, and Peak, that are eminently drinkable and worthy of praise -- to post about something "related to organic beer," a different concept that's been done rather well by McCormick Distilling, a huge outfit in Missouri that you probably haven't heard of before. The only brands they own that I'm really familiar with are Tequila Rose and Wiser's Canadian. But McCormick Vodka is the third-biggest selling domestic vodka in America...so they're doing something right.
This new brand looks right, too: 360 Vodka. 360 is not organic. It's sustainable, it's eco-friendly, it's really pretty neat. The distilling process uses an advanced still that re-captures much of the waste energy (200% more energy efficiently than conventional stills, they claim). The grain is locally grown to cut down on transport energy use. The labels are made from New Leaf paper: 100% post-consumer recycled waste paper (chlorine-free processing), the bottle is 85% recycled glass, 70% post-consumer, the glue on the label is soy-based. The bottle, as you can see in the picture, is a flip-top...and each bottle comes with an attached postage-paid mailer (attached by biodegradable fiber twine) and instructions on how to remove the bail and cap and send it back to McCormick, where they'll wash and re-use them. The sturdy case is all recycled paperstock, with no glue, and as you can see, it looks like a filebox...which is exactly what they advise you to use it for.
It's all pretty impressive, and when I talked to McCormick president Ed Pechar a couple weeks ago for a story, he was quite enthusiastic about it. The more they talked about the idea, he said, the more ideas people came up with. He was quite proud of the still, the most advanced technology they could find (something that's getting a lot of attention from distillers and brewers, by the way: energy-efficiency is going to account for a lot of plant upgrades in the next ten years). The buildings that hold the distillery have been designed to have a minimal carbon footprint, the website even runs on wind-generated power.
"It's not organic," Pechar told me, emphatically. "It is green, and sustainable, and local, and low-impact. Those are things we can do something about."
I'm not saying that organic is not obtainable, or a fantasy, or elitist: I'm actually cooking soup with mostly organic ingredients right now, and we get produce from an organic CSA. But low-impact and sustainable production, green production, is another, important angle.
Of course, the drink is important too. 360 has a clean aroma profile (yes, I know: it's vodka, it's supposed to. I'm a pro, and I used to really like sipping vodka: all vodkas are not equal, and they have distinct aromas if you pay attention), without any of the solvent aromas of cheap crap or the sweet tinge of doctored vodka. It sips smooth, no burn, with a nice, plush texture, and no off-flavors or aromas in the finish. This really is nice...for vodka, I mean: it is what it is. But I like this idea, and the execution is nicely done.
The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, started by Stan Hieronymus of the Appellation Beer blog. This is how it works: on the first Friday of each month, beer bloggers write about a predetermined topic. A different blog is chosen to host each round of The Session. The host blog selects a topic, and then posts a roundup of all the responses received. For all you need to know about this beer blogging concept, including the upcoming topics, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s blog page about The Session. 
