One Quick Thing: Tripel D

I tweeted this yesterday, so I feel like I should blog, too. So before I get to it in a full-scale post...

I got to try the new Tripel D at Otto's. It's kind of a slightly scaled-up Double D fermented with Chouffe yeast. Wow. It was, as I told Sam Komlenic, like an amusement park ride. What a fun beer! The hops are big, the spicy yeast notes are right up front and explosive, the hops go off in your nose, and it's sweet like good candy. One of the most dangerously drinkable 9+% beers I've ever had. Fantastic stuff, and should be on shortly; Charlie pushed things a bit to get us a sample.

Imperial!!!!

Sorry I've been away; I've got Goat Race stuff and a visit with Martha's Exchange brewer Greg Ouellette to write about. But I'm working this morning, and I double-dosed the coffee-maker. And the coffee tasted bigger, richer, more complex, and the buzz is definitely more intense, and I'm being innovative!

Yes! It's IMPERIAL COFFEE!!!

Wow. Now I get this whole thing like I never did before.

Session Beer, Extreme Beer: there's no "versus," how about "and"?

There are two odd pieces of writing out in the beer press right now. Sam Calagione wrote a response to my last "Steaming Pile" column in Ale Street News, the column in which I opined that 'imperial' beers, while riding high, may be coming to the end of their cycle on top of the beer hype wheel. In Beeradvocate magazine, the Alström brothers' "Beer Smack" column was titled "Session vs. Extreme Beers."

In both pieces, the desire and nascent movement to popularize session beers was portrayed as being planned at the expense of extreme/imperial beers, implying a wish and a hope for failure of big beers. To make things short and clear, that's ridiculous. There is no versus in the equation. I don't speak for everyone, obviously, but speaking for myself and nearly everyone I've talked to about session beers, we'd love to see all types of craft beers thrive. I can't imagine why anyone would feel differently. This is not about taking away anything. This is about the classic image of the craft beer market: not a bigger slice of the pie, but a bigger pie.

The last thing we need is a trumped-up "fight" between segments of the beer biz. We had enough of that with the Sam Adams wars in the 1990s. There's nothing to fight about here. I'd like to see session beers get more attention from the beer press, and from beer drinkers, and from brewers. I'm doing what I can to help that along because I'd like more choice when I go out to drink. I'm not doing it to bash extreme beers, to benefit one brewer over another, or to make money for myself; believe me, The Session Beer Project ain't a moneymaker. Like Rodney says, can we all get along? There's no reason to make it look any other way.

Todd Ashman: Not done with big beers!

Folks, I've got to make a retraction here, or at least a clarification. There's a piece of mine on session beers up on the BeverAge site this month in which I quote Todd Ashman, the legendary brewer who made Flossmoor Station, a south Chicagoland brewpub, a destination for beerlovers, with beers like "Trainwreck o' Flavors."

I talked to Todd extensively for my piece in the recent BeerAdvocate magazine 'extreme beer' issue, and, well, I evidently got an impression from him that was not quite accurate. I used material from that interview in the BeverAge piece (not recycled; I always have way too much stuff to use, and the BeerAdvocate extreme beer interviews produced tons more good material than I was able to use). Here's what I wrote in BeverAge:

Todd Ashman made a name for himself in the late 199Os at Flossmoor Station, a south Chicago brewpub. Ashman was one of the pioneers of barrel-aged beers, brews with huge flavor profiles derived from a varied program of wood-aging. I talked to him recently; he's getting ready to open 5O/5O Brewing in Truckee, California, where he'll be brewing mostly session-strength lagers. "I enjoyed doing that kind of stuff," he told me, "but when I left Flossmoor Station, I got a fair amount of it out of my system."

Some of the reason big beers are out of Ashman's system is that it's just not as much fun now. "It became more mainstream," he admitted. "People are buying them and drinking them, and if it's accepted, well, you're not really pushing the envelope so you've got to go on to something else. These [extreme brewers] are trying to find the next great thing. The doubling and 'imperializing,' the super-sizing of beers: something's going to catch on, but I've found that we're losing focus on what we're trying to do here."

Todd e-mailed me last week, concerned about this piece, and rightly so. Maybe he'd over-stated how much session-strength stuff he was doing at 50/50, and maybe I was hearing what I wanted to hear for the story I was doing, but Todd's message was clear: "I don't recall saying that I'd abandon brewing big beers, though I would start to brew more session style beers. Kellerbier, Zwickel, Landbier in particular."

I was shocked, and immediately scrambled back to my notes. First thing I checked was the two paragraphs above, what I'd actually written. I did overstate the brewing regimen of 50/50: Todd wants to work in more of those session-strength lagers, but said it would be mostly ales. My mistake, and I do apologize. The "abandon brewing big beers" concern is more open to interpretation; I probably could have phrased that better.

Like I said, could be me, could have been him, but I'd like to clear up any possible misunderstanding: Todd Ashman has not hung up his big beer-making boots. And wherever you fall on the session v. extreme question, I think you've got to be glad about that. Cheers, Todd: sorry to have concerned you, glad we could work it out.

"Aren't you the guy who wrote that piece about extreme beers being boring?"

Just got off the phone with Jason Ebel, one of the two brothers at Two Brothers Brewing (Warrenville, IL, if you get a chance, drink it, great beers). And we're talking, we've talked before, and I say, so, you had a pretty good year last year. Do you do any extreme beers, are they a sideline, or a cornerstone?

Jason laughs, and says, "Aren't you the guy who wrote that piece about extreme beers being boring?"

Ah, yeah, that was me...

"Probably the biggest help to our brand was extreme beers," he said. "We launched a line of 22 oz. bombers of big beers. Not only were they wildly popular, they hyped awareness of all our other beers. People tried the big beers, said wow, and wanted to try the six-pack beers, and suddenly didn't mind paying 8 or 9 bucks for the six-pack."

Really? Well, good for you! Always glad to hear about a brewer doing well...guess there might be something to Sam C's theory about extreme beer driving session beer sales. Takes all kinds.

SBP: Are session beers the LCD?

Are session beers the Lowest Common Denominator? Can they only aspire to quench thirst? Are they the Norman Rockwell to extreme beer's Jackson Pollock, just "illustration" compared to "avant-garde art," unable to "generate excitement, spawn creativity or lead us to new ground"?

Don Russell defends "extreme beers" in his Joe Sixpack column today with just this phrasing. I suppose I should be mildly honored; the column was apparently inspired by my recent BeerAdvocate magazine article "Extremely Boring?" (not my suggested title, BTW), which was a little 1500-word contrarian counter-weight to an entire issue that fawned over extreme beers and their brewers. It must have been one hell of an article: folks like Tomme Arthur and Sam Calagione were scrambling to refute it before it even came out, before they'd even read it.

Don at least got the point of that piece: that extreme beers get all the attention of press and geek, that the session beers that most breweries are making -- and making well -- are getting the back of their hand. Even Stan Hieronymus (and to say "Even Stan" does him a serious disservice, but let it stand for now) recently noted the ridiculous dissonance: "The 25th highest-rated Imperial/Double IPA at Ratebeer.com gets a 3.96. The top-rated Dortmunder/Helles gets a 3.71." 'Nuff said.

But Don then exaggerated something I gave him as a requested comment. I am quoted in his column:

"You can hide crappy brewing with a ton of hops or a barrel of malt," Bryson explained in an e-mail. Though he said he enjoys well-made extreme beers, [emphasis added] he added, "I also don't think most of them are that innovative. They're just big. That's what I find boring."

And so Don said, "Bryson calls extreme beer "boring.""

I thought it was pretty clear that I was saying that I found beer after beer that just "goes to 11" boring. That's what I said before here, and I would respectfully request that you go read that Buzz from my site, "Just Because You Can...", if you haven't already. I'll wait...

Okay? If you couldn't be bothered to read it, I understand: I've got a busy day ahead, too. So here's the nut:

This is what passes for much of the vaunted "innovation" in American brewing: turning up the volume.... Sorry, that’s not innovation. It’s about as creative as making a burrito with twice the stuff. Sure, you have to use a bigger tortilla, maybe even make them yourself to get them big enough, and you have to put in more spices to balance the additional beans and beef, but…putting more beans in a burrito doesn’t make it something else. It’s just a bigger burrito.

And that's what I find boring. You've got a new beer with a whole lotta hops and massive amounts of malt? That's nice, pal, but it's been done. Don't expect any more attention than, say...another brown ale would get. You put nuoc mam in your beer? That's interesting, but does it work with the beer to make something good to drink? Or is it just a weird ingredient?

I do not find truly innovative extreme beers boring. I loved Tomme Arthur's Lost Abbey beers at a recent Monk's dinner. I thought Sam's Red & White and Black & Blue beers were damned good. I'll even go along with the premise that some beers are coming out today and just getting a nod and a smile that would have been labeled "extreme" three years ago. The envelope's been pushed, no question.

But I don't go along with Sam Calagione's argument that beers we consider session beers today were once extreme beers. Don apparently does. "Twenty years ago, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was extreme beer" he says in today's column.

As it happens, I had my first SNPA just 5 months shy of 20 years ago, in Tahoe City, Nevada. I remember the day clearly, a great day spent with a lifelong best friend, my son's namesake and godfather. I remember it more for the rollicking powerboat and jetski rides on Lake Tahoe (and a warmly welcome dram of Glenlivet afterward) than for the Sierra Nevada. But the beer was great with my lunch, it was fresh and cool, and it quenched my thirst. Pretty sessiony stuff.

As I said, I remember the day clearly. The lake rippling in the breeze like a constantly cracking mirror, flashing bright points of sunlight in a dizzying pattern of chaos. The clouds towering over the mountains that rimmed the valley, tumbling over themselves in billowy hummocks. The crisp scent of the circling pine forest, the crunch of the hot sandy soil underfoot, the chatter of the roadside stream. Most of all, I remember the high-altitude blue sky, pure and clear and amazingly cerulean, sky as sky ought to be.

Session beer, Norman Rockwell? Maybe, which wouldn't even be that bad. If Norman Rockwell was "just an illustrator," the very best beer writer alive should be so creative.

But thinking back on that day in Tahoe, thinking back on that beautifully drinkable -- even then! -- pale ale, I think session beer's more like Maxfield Parrish. Incredibly beautiful and technically accomplished art, with subtleties that mere illustrators can't touch, and wholly, completely, accessible to both the casual observer and the educated critic.

Is extreme beer the avant-garde of brewing, as Don posits? Sure, no question. Is it open to misunderstanding, to ridicule, just as modern art and music has been? You bet, and that can be just as ill-considered.

But here's the thing. It's not about the extreme part: it's about the beer.

As any art historian can tell you, Picasso was a skilled painter before he ever put both eyes on the same side of a nose. It's easy to slap paint randomly on a canvas, to torch random bits out of a piece of steel, and call it art. It's easy to stuff a bunch of hops and malts into a kettle and call it extreme. But if you screw up your hydration, or get sloppy with your fermentation regimen, more hops don't mean a thing.

I'll say it again, and again, and again: well-made extreme beers are great to drink. I enjoy them, I'll continue to enjoy them, and I don't find them at all boring. But a poorly brewed or constructed extreme beer is worse than boring, it's not good beer. And even a well-made copycat, me-too extreme beer, an extreme beer that adds nothing to the discussion, is nothing more than a local brewery's line extension, a recognition that you can get some business by making something like that beer from Colorado/California/Delaware that's been selling so well at the local bar.

Kind of like making something like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, or Yuengling Lager. So are you an artist? Or an illustrator? There are only so many artists. I have no difficulty believing that there are artists making session beers, lavishing love and genius on them, and making them the very best beers they can make, every day. That's exciting to me.