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A Beer Can Nerd In 360 Degree Wrap Around Vision

Posted: January 31st, 2010, 1:07am CET by Alan McLeod

An interesting use of panoramic digital photography... if a neat and tidy basement full of beer cans is your thing. Spot the Old Scotia can, a short lived Nova Scotian favorite. Spot the thrilled patient spouse.

All Saisons All Weekend All For Me

Posted: January 30th, 2010, 12:37am CET by Alan McLeod

Time was I used to post review posts that I added a bit here and there over time. I stopped when one reader noted that there was no way of knowing when these posts got updated. He was right. The internet sucks when you get right down to it, doesn't it. Why isn't there an autobot dedicated to the moment when I pop the cap on a bottle in the stash? Is it too much to ask that the recycling bins come with image understanding software that notes the bottles as I chuck them in? While we are at it - where the hell is my jet pack? Well, if the computer won't do it, then I am forced into the analog world of doing it by hand, typing out my thoughts until all I have are fistfuls of bloody stumps. And what a handful it is as I have amassed a whack of saison(s) that I intend to work my way though as time allows. Starting with:

Saison Dupont: I reviewed this back on New Year's Eve 2005. That was a wee 11 or so oz bottle bought at the LCBO so who knows under what conditions I was kept. Today, I would describe this contents of this 750 ml bottle bought at Cicero, NY's Wegmans a week ago for $9.19 a bit differently. On the slug, the hoppiness is intenser, astringent minwax furniture polish meets lavender and thyme. Below that is creamy grain and maybe white pepper but hard to say. Bright, like a bastard child of new undiscovered citrus and old fine tea. With a core of moreishness. On the swirl, the beer is chunky light pine cloudy under a thick mousse of white. The smell is like Orval but only after poured over plain shredded wheat cereal. A sensible 6.5%. BAers love it.

Three Floyd's Rabbid Rabbit: Rather than opening all these side by side, I am chain opening, only letting one speak to the next. I picked this one up for $8.99 for 650 ml at South Bend's City-Wide Liquors last August. It also pours bright, again the colour of aged pine laminate flooring. Where the Dupont's aroma is herbal and an echo of Orval, Rabbid Rabbit smells like the white chocolate insides of Kinder Surprise when doused with rose water. It's quite disconcerting. In the mouth, it is less sweet - which gives immediate assurance - but the bitterness is more twiggy and mineral than herbal. A bit more fruity, as in good canned fruit salad, than I would have thought was necessary. Makes me wonder if there was too much Gumballhead on the brain when it was formulated. The label says there is chamomile in it. A bit heavy on the chamomile perhaps. Perhaps covering the too strong 9%. Perhaps they know nothing of Mr. Tisane. BAers have great respect.

More in a bit or maybe tomorrow. I need some time. I have no idea what to do with the rest of the remaining 550 ml of that chamomile beer.

Fantome Saison: the last bottle of a six box I bought in Maine at Tully's from this shelf back in the summer of 2008 for $16 bucks each 750 ml bottle. I can smell the happy happy funk from here. I first had this back in November of 2006 and it still has that tell tale cat pee on lemon lollipop smell. In the mouth, glory. Lemon with an echo of cream of wheat, it's half way to gueuze by now. And is that such a bad place? Up there at 8%, thinner than you expect and acidic yet smooth. Bright and cheery with that pear and grape juice I met when I was just a lad of 43. The beer I always want even now at 46. Such commitment I have. BAers have a deep and abiding love. A beer that pairs well with Tennessee Ernie Ford as well as shoveling the driveway out as long as the snow's not too heavy.

Damn. That Hennepin four is really all Ommegang. What to do? Hey! Nope, I was wrong. Someone swapped two at the store. There's something to keep this going. Whew. More later.

Later: Now it's Saturday night. I feel bad about pouring that Three Floyds saison down the drain but it really was poorly thought out. Unless you are a person who like beer except for the absence of chamomile. Tonight's saison-a-rama focuses on:

North Coast's Le Merle: Part of North Coast's American Artisan Series and, at 7.9% of 750 ml saison for 10.00 sometime in 2009, it's easily worth investigating. It pours that proper pine lumbery deep straw under a fine white head. The aroma is in line with the Dupoint and the Fantome - bright citrus, pale fruit maltiness. In the mouth, it's gorgeous: creamy mouthfeel, round pale malt, herbal bitter, a touch of lemon juice acidity, astringent drying finish. The brewer says I am to expect exotic fruit which certainly could be explained as a bit of banana or passionfruit... but if Del Monte can make kids' juice packs with such flavours are they still really exotic? Plus, it as easily described in terms of apple of the slightly perfumed sort, Royal Gala maybe. Pairs well with the third episode the 1970s "Doctor Who and the Silurians." BAers rate it the equal of Rabbid Rabbit - a mad conclusion.

I am going to think on this one for a while.

Where Are We With The Price Of Inputs In Early 2010?

Posted: January 29th, 2010, 1:26am CET by Alan McLeod

Inputs. Or as the Teutonics might say "ingapüts". It's the short form for the costs of things that go into your beer. When the price of hops and malt went north in October 2007, we started reminding ourselves that when we are told costs have gone up we better check whether prices in fact have gone up. The last time we had a look was in March 2009 but there is reason to reconsider if we look, with a h/t to Tandleman, at the words of the managing director of English brewer JW Lees & Co, William Lees-Jones:

He said that although brewers and publicans have had to deal with a series of problems including three consecutive poor summers and the “ridiculous” duty-escalator tax, they had also benefited from reductions in energy and raw materials costs. The business had also imposed a pay freeze. “We feel that it would by cynical to hit our customers with increases since we have benefitted this year from reductions (in costs). Pubs must not price themselves out of the market.”

We have heard much from the British beer bloggers about the pressures of increased taxation as well as the particular effects of the weather on sale and sales. Those factors are not as critical at this point in the economics of North American beer. Even though prices in 2007 and 2009 are still cited for problems facing small North American brewers, one needs to ask where are we with critical input prices factors now in early 2010?

The Canadian Wheat pool reports that malting barley has continued to drop with a tonne sitting at $208 in October 2009 down from $320 in January 2009. In January 2010, it sits at $211 per tonne.
As far as hops go, while South African ones face drought, in Oregon, the hops prices plummeted in the fall of 2009 and the word "glut" is being used.

Given the recession and the associated increase in inflation, one would imagine there is no peaking of labour costs at the moment. And gasoline prices are no where near peak either. So, if there is a collapsing hop and malting barley market as well as a 9% increase in craft beer sales in the US is the consumer seeing the benefit? In the words of Mr. Lees-Jones, would it be "cynical to hit our customers with increases" in the current economic situation? Would maintaining prices not also perhaps be?

The New York Times Examines The Growler

Posted: January 27th, 2010, 3:42am CET by Alan McLeod

It has to happen sooner or later. The mainstream media has gotten the good beer bug and for the most part has added to the discourse. Stories about ingredients and techniques, stories about rare beers and beers from places that are hard to reach. And, now, the story of the growler beginning with the beginning:

“Growlers have been around since Christ was a child,” Mr. Granger said. “We’re not doing anything new.” In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, both The New York Times and The Brooklyn Eagle regularly published contentious stories about the containers, which then took the form of small galvanized pails. The articles cataloged the complaints of saloon keepers, who thought growlers cut into their profit, and those of temperance groups, who hoped to curb home drinking. “Rushing the growler,” connoting children hustling pails of beer for adults from bar to table, was a common expression. The curious name is thought to be inspired by the rumbling noise escaping carbon dioxide made as the beer sloshed about in the pail.

Sure - if we accept the underlying theory of Ron Pattinson's good work - it's likely all a big fat lie but what a comforting lie. I wish I had a place I could walk to from my place, an empty growler in a satchel slung over my shoulder. Who wouldn't? Cheap and cheery and sustain-a-tastic, too.

Massachusetts: Baby Tree, Pretty Things, Holyoke

Posted: January 26th, 2010, 2:56am CET by Alan McLeod

The second Pretty Thing in a week. A quadruple ale with dried plums. Hmm. Where I come from that's a prune. And what better beer to have of Rrrrrrrrobbie Burrrrrrns than one with prunes - "the beerrrrrr that gud fir yir bowellllls." So, maybe I shouldn't quit my job and go into marketing.

I picked this up for $6.99 or $6.49 at C's Farm Market at Owsego or Liverpool's Galeville Grocery. I really didn't keep track. It pours a medium oranged brown with a fine film and rim of cream. There isn't a strong aroma but what there is has brown sugar, booze and a slight menthol note. In the mouth, plummy pumpernickel maltiness framed by that same light menthol hop presence. Apple butter. A nice citrus acidity up top with a deep small seam of smoke down at the bottom.

Batch one from April 2009. Brewery info as well as the story of this batch. More BAer love.

Beer Described As Both Salvation And Pointless Luxury

Posted: January 25th, 2010, 4:17am CET by Alan McLeod

Two news stories caught my eye in the British press today and both were about events in Haiti. In The Independent one we are told "Beer and Biscuits Saved Man Trapped in Rubble for 11 Days" while in the Daily Mail we learn "Aid Piling Up at UN's 'Cold Beer' Compound". The role of beer in the morality play of each tale is a little hard to bring into alignment as in the first case the story is a miracle while the second tells this tale of waste:

There are some signs that the aid is starting to get to those who need it. Next to the airport, at the UN compound – from where I sat writing this, with internet access, near the light from a shower block and with an ice-cold beer from the on-base bar (complete with potted plants) – supplies are starting to go out.

As far as I can tell the Daily Mail's Caroline Graham encountered this beer in a pre-existing bar at "the heavily fortified US-controlled Port-au-Prince airport and neighbouring United Nations compound." While it makes the headline, the ice-cold beer is simply there - not accused of being the root of evil yet somehow the mark of some sort of beast. The inequality in the world? The shame of luxury provided to those who are there to help the abject poor.

In the other story, the beer saves the man's life along with the mentioned cookies and Coke. The miracle man "had been working as a cashier at a grocery store on the ground floor" of the Napoli Inn Hotel in Port-au-Prince. The excellently named Wismond Exantus had dived under a desk when the earthquake struck and reached what he could from his small protected pocket in the rubble. The BBC's version of the story does not mention the beer. The New York Daily News only mentions the Coca-Cola. Did he really mention beer at all? Why do only UK papers seem to mention the point. And if he did, it's hard to figure out who shopped at his grocery store on a normal day. Just the hotel guests or the whole neighbourhood? Was ice-cold beer actually the right of the privileged few UN officials as The Independent would imply or was it the everyman drink in Haiti that it is in most places? The Associated Press whose reporter actually interviewed Wismond Exantus in his cot at a French hospital gives the story another more personal focus, mentioning the beer but also saying that he prayed and reciting psalms while buried and also that he was eager to get to a church to give thanks.

Who Are The "We" In The Good Beer Community?

Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 4:26pm CET by Alan McLeod

Martyn, the wise Zythophile, made an observation yesterday that includes a per-supposition that I am not sure has been explored:

It's not said often enough in this argument: we drink because we enjoy it, and the overall happiness that brings to society, I would suggest, vastly outweighs any disbenefits.

Because I do not know who "we" are in this sentence, I do not know if I agree wholeheartedly or disagree completely. If "we" are all drinkers, I cannot accept this at all. I have known people who died because of drunk driving and, way back in high school 30 years ago, escaped being smoked on the highway myself likely more than once when the driver in the car had had as much as the rest of us. The fact that society as a whole has a good time on Friday night does not comfort me when I think of the six kids, including a client of mine, who died back in the mid-90s when two cars hit each other on a rural Ontario road in the night. But if the word "we" means those who do not cause harm or commit crimes, who do not anesthetize ourselves to erase or excuse behavior - who do not misuse but rather use for the convivial pleasures the good beer brings - well, I can see that perhaps but only if that distinction and speaking about that distinction is part of the culture of good beer and a core principle of the passion for good beer.

I know many beer writers enjoy their connections with the great people who brew the beer beer and I am sure the experience is rich and rewarding. Due to my location it really isn't possible except in a small way. We simply do not have a thriving local brewing scene within a few hours drive from here, though there are glowing lights in the darkness. But we do have people who sell the beer beer whether in the hospitality trade or in retail. And they are liable for over serving and have to decide whether to sell to the inebriated and the long term alcoholic. For the most part, they take the question seriously. They do so knowing the marketplace includes reputation in the community, the "we" of the community.

The risk-reward analogy to mountain climbing or sky diving or bungee jumping is not apt. While it is true - even without the steroid issue - that elite athletes burn the candle faster trading off bad joints for glory now, for the most part the bystanders in the lives of athletes are not affected by these sorts of risks. The participants consent. The risks inherent with alcohol are not all consensual. So, while it is true that we can describe moderate use of good beer a health food, its healthiness is defined by that moderation and the context of increased concern for safety necessitated by the increased risks associated with alcohol and the realization that it is not inherently or universally healthy.

We should take an interest in ourselves whatever we do - increasing the benefits and reducing the harm. If we are thinking about good beer we should also take an interesting in increasing and sharing the benefits while reducing easily identifiable harm - including those harms short of full bore alcoholism. When I think about this blog writing and the thousand of you who I am told read my posts every day I sometime wonder if I have encouraged anyone into a habit that is harmful rather than convivial. I am not satisfied to think of the statistics, that "on average" I may have helped in my small way to highlight the benefits of good beer, that more of you have taken pleasure from my explorations if some few have gone the other way. You are the "we" as well as those around you. And, like the good shopkeeper, "we" need to be aware of that context and advocate for healthy and safe enjoyment as much as we advocate for broader interest in great, tasty, healthy, local or exotic, exciting good beer.

CNY Roadtrip To Stock The Stash

Posted: January 23rd, 2010, 2:56am CET by Alan McLeod

Back. I made it back. I hit four beer stores over around 500 km and nine and a half hours. Now, whereas Pretty Things was just a one time bottle that I passed in the night, now I have seven bottles representing three of their brews and any number of batches. Those canny little cap labels are mighty handy. Plenty of other good stuff, too.

I hit a Wegmans in Cicero, Party Source on Erie Blvd., Galeville Grocery in Liverpool and then headed north via C's Farm Market in Owsego. What did I learn? I had a good old chat with the guy who runs Party Source and finally met Bernie, the owner of Galeville Grocery. As is usually the case, talk is about other stuff as much as beer when they find out that I am from north of the border - health care and lucky Canada they say, taxes and unlucky Canada they say. The shops were all giving each other a run for the money with Party Source showing off its new siding less neon blue and green siding (as so poorly illustrated) as well as growler pours including a Rooster Fish. The other three were as packed with new and interesting beer as I have ever seen them.

Prices? I noticed that The LCBO sells Orval for about 60% of what it costs in Syracuse and that Rogue Yellow Snow is about a buck more there than here. Great deals... if you can find those beers on shelves in Ontario. Funny thing about a monopoly. But the real difference is selection. Over 90% of the beers are unavailable up here and are at prices that make a Canadian beer lover weep. Wegans grocery store wanted just $15.99 for a Great Lakes variety 12 pack and $9.49 for Brooklyn 1. Wegmans even had 750 ml bottles of Saison Dupont for 9.19 and St. Bernie Abt. for $10. 95. At the grocery. Made me think of Mel in Braveheart shouting "Freedom!". Then it didn't. Then I paid my duties and taxes at the border. Then I went home.

Are There Too Many Questions About What's Too Many?

Posted: January 22nd, 2010, 1:19am CET by Alan McLeod

Lots of talk around these days. Pete has posted his series on the media and stories about representing alcohol use in the UK. Jay has had a mirroring series that has been a theem for sometime. I am still not fully satisfied because, while Pete and Jay each have honestly shared past experience about alcohol use, the question of alcohol and harm is not limited to the serious question of alcoholism. Which led to my comment at Pete's: "...but are we any closer to knowing how many people alcohol kills a year or how much drinking costs the economy?"

There have been lots of bloggy points of view, including mine that seems to say that Canada may be insulated from the neo-prohibitionist question culturally. I am not sure it is really scaremongering. The question led Mark to ask how many drinks people are having - people really do not seem off line with the recommended levels of consumption leading to his conclusion:

Neo-prohibition is an easy and quick tick in a big government box; educating the nation is a difficult tick. Some people are terrible and unsafe drivers; some people are unsafe drinkers. Some people does not mean all people.

But is that the point? There are public safety issues as well as health issues that are not directly related to serious alcoholism. I have a sense that people aren't recognizing this. Do I care that only some do the wrong or suffer the wrong? That I'm alright, Jack? There were 34,638 driving under influence convictions in 2006. 14,517 in California. In Canada, the Federal government estimates 750 Canadians die a year in alcohol related accidents. People will pick at the stats - however, hard it is to pick at a conviction unless you think the state is corrupt. But even if they are off by 50% that means 375 people died.... from the thing we beer fans and beer nerds and beer hounds consider an innocent and, generally, healthy past time.

Isn't the point that when you do something in a healthy and fun fashion you should set yourself apart from those who do a similar thing in a harmful way? Shouldn't beer bloggers be against drunk driving and other misuse of alcohol as much as they are for social drinking? Some may say that they only want to support the positive side of good beer but without the whole story is that really being positive, just convenience or willful blindness?

Massachusetts: Jack D'Or, Pretty Things, Holyoke

Posted: January 21st, 2010, 2:58am CET by Alan McLeod

If you have read this blog for a while you will appreciate that I like saison. A few years back I wondered out loud if it was going to ever be the next big thing and I may have had my wish granted to some degree as they are out there even if they haven't exactly bumped macro pilsner off the shelf. Pretty Things, which calls itself a beer and ale project, says this is simple table beer but they are being coy. A sensible $5.99 paid for a bomber belies the quality here. A while back, I inhaled upon one of their Saint Botolph's Town rustic dark ales. It happened so fast, without a moment to type notes. I have high hopes for this one.

It pours yellowed straw ale under a fine white head. The aroma is lightly citrus with herbals. I once grew lemon verbena and which I can't say it reminds me of that it did remind me that I once grew lemon verbena. There is also a creamed sweet maltiness. In the mouth, there is pith and white pepper, twiggy minty notes as well as a cream soft malty underbelly, smoothed from the oats. A bit of pear juice but also a nod to cox orange pippin apple as well as a mid-mouth astringency. Apparently no spices whatsoever if the brewer is to be believed (who's calling them liars? you??) so it coaxes all the herbal notes from hops. And yeast strains. Why don't we argue more about having more interesting yeast strains? But no spices. Sorta like those early Queen albums proclaimed in the liner notes that no synthesizers were used now that I think of it. In fact it goes rather well with 1974's Queen II now that I think of it. I don't know if it would be Zepworthy for, perhaps, even Houses of the Holy, a record I might rather pair with Fantome but still it does remind you that these earthier manorial beers like certain aspects of the 1970s overly dramatic folk tale art rock playbook, even for their pre-democratic roots, are far more than table beer.

I would like to try it against Hennepin. I am thinking this is a bit bigger and maybe more complex but shares the moreishness. Like all saisons, primal. I particularly like the use of the cap security label to tell me that this is a representative of their April 2009 Third Batch. We are in this for the data after all. BAers are in love.

Is It Required That I Box If I Drink Boxer Lager?

Posted: January 19th, 2010, 1:27am CET by Alan McLeod

We read in the Toronto Sun this morning that:

"Majit and Ravinder Minhas, the sister and brother who own the Minas Creek Brewing Company, received a letter from the AGCO in December about the name of their Boxer Lager. The complaint seems to centre on the beer’s name, which could be construed as using sports to advertise, a no-no under Ontario’s liquor regulations. Its unknown to the public who filed the complaint."

Now, I have not had a Boxer Lager or any beer by Minhas Creek Brewing of the western Canadian province of Alberta. Regardless, it strikes me that these sort of questions are important in that they tell us all what we all think of ourselves, how we as a community believe we are susceptible to advertising as well as which issues are the ones which convey special risk. And if not "us" and "we," well, then it tells us what the bureaucrats think of us. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has published a "Guidelines for Liquor sales Licensees and Manufacturers" [warning .pdf!!!] which may well be the rules that the brewers of Boxer brand macro lager is running into - especially section 1(3) which states:

1(3). Except for public service advertising, the holder of a license to sell liquor or a manufacturer of liquor may advertise or promote liquor or the availability of liquor only if the advertising...does not imply that consumption of liquor is required in obtaining or enhancing:

(a) social, professional or personal success,
(b) athletic prowess,
(c) sexual prowess, opportunity or appeal,
(d) enjoyment of any activity,
(e) fulfillment of any goal, or
(f) resolution of social, physical or personal problems.

The idea of advertising goes to the very heart of identity under this guideline. "Liquor" is defined to include beer and "advertising" means "the act of making the brand generally or publicly known" as well as "brand advertising" as well as any representation intended to attract attention to the brand name. So the act of advertising is in a way the brand itself. And we need to be protected against the force of promoting the brand. And look at that word "required" - does Boxer Lager suggest that you are required to drink the beer to be a boxer?

And, if Boxer Lager can be understood to be required in obtaining or enhancing athletic prowess, how about other professions? How about Abbot Ale from Greene King sold at the LCBO these days in a humble can? Isn't that promoting professional success as much as Boxer Lager promotes athletic success? Isn't being Bohemian, the name of a brand sold by Molson Coors, also the filfillment of a life's goal for some? There must be other beers that trip up this rule. Surely Konig Pilsener from Germany or King Pilsner from Ontario offer the highest level of assurance.

Why pick on just the Boxers?

Has An Unacceptable Level Of Drinking Been Described?

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 7:41pm CET by Alan McLeod

Pete Brown has run a series of posts this week and last that delve into stats being issued by various government agencies and health lobby groups in the UK. It is important work that Pete is doing as there is no stat worse than the unexamined stat. Today's post was called "More Hilarity with Statistics" which examined claims about the level of drinking in Scotland. I made a comment over there but did some more rooting around to make sure I agreed with what I was seeing and, to avoid looking like a totally rude idiot being all finger pointy in the comments, thought I would set it out here instead. I also got thinking because even if a stat can be discredited it does not mean that the underlying facts necessarily do not exists, only that they are not well described. But, as I said in the comments, I am really bad at math so I am happy to be corrected.

The BBC story Pete began with was titled "Scots 'Drink 46 Bottles of Vodka'" by which they mean per person per year on average. Pete suggested that this was not particularly well researched as tourism trade taking the booze away was not figured in - but then when I ran the numbers I saw this pattern:

Scotland has about 8% of the UK population
total UK booze sales in 2007 were worth over 41 billion pounds
and therefore, Scotland's booze sales can be approximated at around 4 billion pounds.

I took the numbers from this soul suckingly slow .pdf source. I read them to meaning that if every penny of the 25 million pounds spent at distillery shops was non-Scots resident alcohol sales, removing it entirely from Scottish consumption, it only represents well under 1% of total Scottish sales? If that is the case, the variation is under a bottle of vodka a year. I said that even if I was off by a whole decimal point and the distillery sales represent 10% of sales isn't it still a little bit alarming that every Scots adult averages 41 or 42 bottles of vodka a year? By which I mean I had a gut feeling it was in fact pretty high. But is it?

A little more looking around further, found information stating that 30% of Scots adults say they do not drink - which means the drinking Scot averages 58 or so bottle a year working off the conservative 41 bottles a week stat. It is more like 65 a year if you go by the BBC's number of 46. I got the "did not drink" percentage from this pdf. So you have 30% of Scots not drinking, 35% drinking up to the average and 35% drinking over the average.

What does that mean? 58 bottles a year on average means 1.12 x 700 ml bottles a week at 40% that means 313 ml of pure alcohol a week. By comparison, a standard Canadian 12 oz 5% beer has 341 ml. Which means that average Scots drinker's booze consumption is the equivalent of 19 standard 5% Canadian beers a week. Sounds like a bit more than you might think is a good idea, week after week day after day. But not fatal. It's maybe what we expect the average healthy working Joe would drink in a week. Similarly, a US 22 oz bomber has 650 ml. At 8% that is 65 ml of pure alcohol. Which means that the Scot's drinker's booze consumption is the equivalent of 4.8 bombers of 8% US craft beer a week. Is that going to scare off a craft beer fan? Hardly.

But it is an average and that is what I think is the real concern. It means 35% of Scots drinkers adults drink more... because 65% drinkers there drink less including the 30% who abstain. I think those numbers are troubling. They may well be wrong so please do your own a arithmetic. But if they are not wrong - is there not a valid public health concern where 35% of your population is doing that level of drinking. I don't really care if you think there is no such thing as a public health concern from a libertarian point of view as that is not the point here. Nor does someone called "Alan Campbell McLeod" care if you think this is only a Scottish problem. I think we can all agree that there is a point beyond which alcohol is unhealthy. Is that point been identified by the BBC report?

Why Does The RSC Want A Can Of Watney's Party Seven?

Posted: January 17th, 2010, 4:36pm CET by Alan McLeod

I was trolling Google for beer stories this weekend when I came across a story in Britain's Daily Mail about Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry looking for an unopened can of Watney's Party Seven Draught Bitter. Though a venerable brewer, the name "Watney's" rings though the recent decades for those who care for good beer as a brand that came to represent the anti-Christ of UK brewing. Richard Boston cites Watney's twenty times in his 1976 Beer and Skittles. And there is that Monty Python sketch set in a tourist agency that captured something of the early 70s culture that Watney's came to represent:

What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

I was particularly curious that it was The Royal Society of Chemistry which was looking for the beer because they are the publishers of the greatest beer book I have read to date, Hornsey's A History of Beer and Brewing that I reviewed back here in 2006. Well, helpfully the RSC has a blog and last Wednesday an explanation of the project was published which includes a clear description of their interest in this seven pint can:

...which discipline of natural philosophy is responsible for this nectar of culture, health and prosperity? Well of course I wouldn’t be writing about it if it weren’t chemistry. But therein lies the problem – who these days cracks open a can and thinks to themselves “thank goodness for the clever research chemist who invented a vinyl co-polymer/C-enamel coating for tin cans”? But chemists are the ones behind all these advances in canning technologies and the art of zymurgy (“chemistry of brewing and distilling”, dontcha know).

Looks like they want to study the technology behind the notorious can to see what the chemists were up to at the time. Martyn Cornell's post on bottles briefly reminded us last week in the last paragraph that canning has been one of the biggest changes in how we consume beer over the decades since the days of Monty Python, Richard Boston and Wantey's Red Barrel. So, it sounds like the RSC may be up to a reasonable bit of industrial research worth following which may lead to pointing out that - however horrible the stuff in the can was - it was also something of a breakthrough in the history of the beer canning process.

New York: Rejewvenator, Shmaltz, Saratoga Springs

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 12:39am CET by Alan McLeod

A beer made of fig. Who knew? Not me. I found this in the stash and it was good. I was pleased.

I have really enjoyed the He'Brew branded beers from Schmaltz Brewing that I have been able to get my hands on. Perhaps my best beer bottle pr0n even. This one is no different. The label proclaims it is the "Year of the Fig" - or at least last year was... or was it 2008? It was. 2009 was about dates.

I've had a fig beer before, Brasserie de Blaugies Darbyste, but this format of a 7.8% brown ale is a better expression of that wonderful fruit that is not a fruit at all. Rich even lush with apple butter, a nod to tobacco. Fig even. Softly moreish.

BAers have respect.

FTW: My Lamb's Wool Express Ale Mulling Experiment

Posted: January 15th, 2010, 1:18am CET by Alan McLeod

I finally got around to making that Lamb's Wool, an 18th century form of English mulled beer that I wanted to try to make over Christmas. But I never found the time to core the apples, bake the apples, heat the beer, baste the apples and sit down to a meal of hot backed apples and mulled beer.

Fortunately, we live in a modern age. An age of miracles. An age where apples can be dried. When did they figure out how to dry an apple anyway? Right around when infomercials started I bet. Anyway, I poured a bottle of Leffe Brown and another of Southern Tier dark porter into a pot on the stove, grated in nutmeg and real cinnamon stick and floated some dried apple slices as the whole thing simmered. I used cinnamomum verum and not the one dimensional more acrid and more common cinnamomum aromaticum. Call me a snob but I warned you. I was looking for dark malty, limited bitter beers. Any duration of simmering and reduction can make the bitterness of beer go way too far.

The effect was surprisingly like hot cocoa as opposed to hot chocolate. Rich yet a touch dry. In fact, I completely get the idea of buttered ale as a wee nob wouldn't go amiss (...and how many times have we all thought that?) I left the swelling apple slice in the mug as I wanted to replicate the whole "eat the apple" thing and, as I noted it's dehydration was being reversed by re-beer-ficiation, I figured it would be tasty. It was. Next time I put in five times the dry apple.

Is Canada The Nation Best Built For Beer?

Posted: January 14th, 2010, 3:05am CET by Alan McLeod

I am having a nice glass of beer. Belgian beer as it turns out. I was trying to read Pete Brown's series on "Answering the Neo Prohibitionists" but I am reflecting on how nice it is to live in a country where there really isn't any organized political outcry against beer as in the UK or any shock and surprise when our leaders have a beer. Nor is there the need to take the sorts of stance Pete feels compelled to take. Consider this:

No one questions that our soldiers in Afghanistan get a beer ration. Most likely would think they should get more.
Twice as many Canadians would like to have a beer with our third party left wing socialist leader, Jack Layton, as would vote for him. When you think of it, we don't even have a public outcry when pollsters ask which politician you would rather have a beer with. It's a valid question culturally.
We think it is important to ask why our Washington embassy has fine wines but crap beer.
We have a not too private sense of pride that 144,000 glasses of beer was sold at the recent World Junior Hockey Tournament held in Saskatchewan brining in over $1,000,000 in revenue for the event. That's about 43 beers for every 100 tickets sold. The sort of story makes us beam.

We are a funny land. Both egalitarian and reasonably libertarian. Largely urban but the cultural myth is that everyone thinks they live in the woods. We canoe. Beer, like curling and pushing the stuck cars of strangers out of snow drifts, plays the social role of a leveler which is important as we like the level as in middling centrist politics as well as the goal of moderate personal success and security. If we had a palace of historic national treasures like other lands it would like have a hall dedicated to early and significant Canadian beer drinking vessels.

Neo-prohibitionists? Anti-neo-prohibitionist diatribes? No thanks. There's likely curling to watch on TV, a good beer to sip and life is only so long.

Book Review: A Life On The Hop, Roger Protz

Posted: January 13th, 2010, 2:21am CET by Alan McLeod

I bought a copy of this book after looking around and only finding Knut's observations from last summer on the difference between its marketing and that of Pete Brown's Hops and Glory. There was a press release by its publisher CAMRA, a nibbly bit by the NUJ, a smidge from his editorial assistant but I couldn't seem to come up with a review other than the one that Knut found in The Westmorland Gazette:

A Life on the Hop is an amusing romp around the beer world and is devoid of beery jargon. It will be enjoyed not only by beer lovers but also by those who enjoy travel writing.

Magic. I'll miss print journalism when it dies.

There has been much sport made of Mr. Protz but it is not something that I really understood as he is not a often discussed writer in this part of the world. So, being the good boy that I am, I thought I would have a read of his autobiography to learn a bit more to either join in the slag-fest or, more fairly, get a bit of perspective. I was in for a little shock.

The book is subtitled "Memoirs of a Career in Beer" and the key word is "memoirs" - as this really isn't an autobiography but a series of anecdotes arranged in themes based largely but not solely on geography. I learned this in the first chapter when I thought I would learn about his childhood but where I learned about pubs he liked in around his first London newspaper work in Fleet Street - the Cheese, Punch, Old Bell, Old King Lub, Black Friar and the Globe. I didn't know what to make of it - not much Roger, lots of tavern. Then you are quickly into chapters take you through the Czech Republic, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium Germany, Mexico and the USA as if someone were gleaning through one's old note books in search of favorite and perhaps not too often repeated yarns of a wag. About a hundred pages in, I started turning down page corners after I read errors vaguely Canuckois like:

Fraunce's Tavern in New York dates from 1790 "when New York was still under British rule" [p.107] The British left in 1783 (some moving to help found my town) and the building dates from 1719.
the Yakima Valley of Oregon was once part of "French Canada" [p.124] even though the French speaking part of Canada was far to the east and I think that the Yakima was south of the part of the area of the British claim.

I folded down more corners until I stopped around page 167. I didn't really care that I doubted his explanation of the genesis of the term steam beer [p. 117] or that lambic is the oldest beer style known to mankind, being close to beer dating back to Egypt, Babylon and Mesopotamia [p. 129]. Did it really matter that Babylon was a city state within Mesopotamia? Was I missing the point?

I didn't miss that there is something of a cranky, indiscreet tone to these travels. Targets include Tories who put him up for the night, corporations and two older ladies encountered in Prague having a private conversation:

I was crossing the square with Graham Lees, a CAMRA founding member with an acerbic turn of phrase, when we passed two elderly American women who were eyeing the fabulous architecture of the area. "Y'know," one of them said to her friend, "it's nothing like Poughkeepsie." Lees went red in the face, chased after them and snarled: "Of course it's nothing like fucking Poughkeepsie. It's been here for several fucking centuries." It was his finest hour.

That's the finest hour for an arsehole, perhaps. It's that kind of small coarse tone that you hear in a far too graphic and entirely gratuitous of an account of the suicide of a brewer in an early chapter and the tragic affect on the family or, later, the naming of names of fellow beer tourists who may have broken marital vows at Oktoberfest. You may come away wondering what sort of person would make that part of a book.

Yet he is obsessed with beer. And has spent a life following it - a life that I realize the more I write about beer sometimes can mean hard scrabble and closed doors. It's a little bittersweet when despite all the years he is not able to arrange for proper accommodations on an invite to the US and back on a liner. It's a little poignant when he thinks that when someone isn't able to meet with him because Roger is going to reveal the truth about a merger when it is likely the guy was just too busy. It is a tough old road and a long one. It's likely one that he takes pride in taking - a road not often taken when he started out. That pride and hard effort comes out as well.

One beer writer chastised me for an unkind comment by email a few months ago, saying: "anybody who started writing about beer since 1995 (just picked that year out of the air - maybe it should be 2000... should pause. If it weren't for people like Roger they might not be able to be doing what they do." He also said that he wouldn't use him as a source but the point is still a good one. When it wasn't easy, when it didn't pay well and no one could roll out of bed and blog their thoughts within 17 minutes, Roger was out there writing about beer. He probably got you from one stage of interest to another at some point. And that is what the book is really about. You will get irritated, you will not find out the information you might have thought you would find and you will turn down corners when you find another error - but you will get a sense with the man.

So, buy the book and share your thoughts. Just don't go on a beer tour with him and give him any reason to think you went off for the evening with the buxom lonely lush. You may read about it later.

Why Does That Word "Pairing" Make My Temples Ache?

Posted: January 11th, 2010, 3:26am CET by Alan McLeod

This has bugged me for a while. And that it bugs me bugs others, too. Here is what I know. Someone somewhere in the last few years decided we needed to "pair" beer with food. Prior to that, people just drank beer with their food and were generally happy with the many ways that great beer goes with good food. But one of the greatest turns of a consultants' art is taking the obvious and often done, repackaging it and selling it back to you. That is what I suspect is going on with this "pairing" idea. Not that I have any issue with people being sold what they already own. It's just not something I like to have done to myself. So, I worried when I read the very worthwhile Mark Dredge at the very interesting Pencil and Spoon write this over the weekend:

Today’s post is about pairing beer and food and is a simple overview of the tricks which beer can play that makes it a great companion to your lunch.

To which I asked "as opposed to the centuries of simply eating and drinking that have happily served mankind?" and to which Mark responded "Yes. Exactly opposed to that." I have no idea what that means. What is the opposite of eating good food with good beer that still includes eating good food with good beer? When hasn't beer been "a great companion to your lunch"?

Me, I've been happily eating food for almost my whole life. You should see my baby pictures. And since I was in the later end of high school, I have been drinking beer and pretty much as early as I could get away with it, I have been enjoying the consumption of good food with well made beer. I was lucky growing up in a seafood producing area of Atlantic Canada as my 1980s college days, among other things, were filled with regional beers with mussels in taverns as well as lobsters boils and early efforts craft beer. On UK trips and into the 90s, I liked plowman's lunches with English style pale ales of brewers I could find to like those at Kingston Brew Pub or The Granite Brewery or Rogues Roost. As I moved on, moved out and got mortgaged, I baked breads with beer in it as well as New England baked beans and Texas chili. As access to good beer increased along with my interest in beer, I was quite happy to pull out old cheddars, blue cheese and even things that came out of a goat and try them with any number of brews. They all went pretty well... as did most roasts, most seafoody things and a lot of other things. In fact, I have now established that gueuze goes with everything and if it doesn't, well, that thing is out of my life as long as the gueuze is in view. Get me in a room with a bunch of pals, a bunch of great beers and a pot luck of any types of food and I am happy to explore.

But I would never, you know, pair. I'd never get into that monogamous mindset where "this matches that" because we all should be aware that "these really go with those" and, if we are honest "all this pretty much is great with all that." Did anyone really not know this? I have had the occasion to point out to food professionals that real hefeweizen goes really well with eggs and bacon and that flavours stouts created, among other things, to go with chocolate do actually go with chocolate - but it's hardly the deepest thing I've picked up about beer. So, if it is not difficult information and it is something I've known for yoinks and most I know who like good beer have known for yoinks - what is all the interest in "pairing" based on?

Rhode Island: Lager And Porter, Narragansett

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 8:15pm CET by Alan McLeod

I got a few emails from very nice people representing Narragansett over the fall asking if I would like some samples and, of course, I said yes. From Great American Beer, I learn that the brand was bought back from Pabst in 2003 by Mark Hellendrung, a local businessman. So, while I was not expecting that much from a regional brewer, it's nice to be nice. I say "sure" and let them know about the special customs declarations needing being made and waited. No beer. How's it going with the samples I asked and they said they are on the way. After a few weeks the lager showed up - a six! How civilized I thought as I popped a 16 oz can. Then I waited. "Where's the porter?" I emailed. "It didn't arrive" they responded? They sent another sample which showed up 23 December and, boy, was it worth the wait.

The lager says it is just that - lager. But it is made for the Narragansett Brewing Company of Rochester New York. Fine with me. I like Rochester beer. It pours a light but burnished gold with a massive white rocky head when poured from a height. OK, about five inches high but slammed from the can. The aroma is not bad at all - grassy hops and fruity husky malt. You could be smelling a sauvignon blanc... or maybe just recalling the smell of a sauvignon blanc. Point is this: no off flavours. In the mouth I get sweet pale malt, some adjunct corn - but also lime leaf, apple juice, mineral, pear with a well balanced steel and maybe black tea bitter in the husky drying ending opening up a bit of yogurt tang in the end of the end. It is built for cold drinking but I like this a lot. If you have access to this on a regular basis and are buying any other standard American lagers you need to give this a try. Jason Alstrom rated it B+. I am not making this up.

Then there is the porter. As Lew said - "Wow!". It pours a fine mocha head over deep dark brown ale. The aroma is cocoa and date. One of the best smelling porters I have had the honour to schnozzle. In the mouth there is dry cocoa and cream as well as a really dusty texture. It is slightly honey and maybe even a note of lemon peel. The bitterness is in the room but minding its manners. It is not a huge in terms of body but neither is it thin. I like to think the same of myself. This one's label says that it is bottled by Cottrell Brewing Co of Pawcatuck, Connecticut for Narragansett Brewing of Providence, RI. So, really, neither of these are Rhode Island beers in the sense of a Rhode Island water source but the direction as to quality is coming out of America's smallest state and that, in this case, is the key. All BAers give the huge respect of a B+ for this beer.

What I really want to know is what this costs on the grocery store shelf. These beers have got to represent some of the best value in beer I have ever seen. The porter would not have surprised me if it poured out of a ten buck bottle labeled by a Danish or Scandinavian craft brewer. That good.

Scotland: Chaos Theory and Its Prototype, BrewDog

Posted: January 9th, 2010, 1:40am CET by Alan McLeod

I heard the news today. Chaos Theory was being delisted. Discontinued. One of the sure signs of a brewery moving into a next stage is rationalization and we have seen a bit of that with BrewDog. They have new staff and a new range for their experimental beer ideas. But once upon a time they were not rationalizing. They were a wee bit irrational, in fact, as they used to send me samples... including samples of prototypes. These two beers have been in the stash for at least a year. I think I got them in November 2008 along with a following email from James actually saying "sorry it took me so long to send them" even though it was free beer and I was Canadian. They have held up well. The prototype shows some crown cap rusting but the proper labeled version is quite clean. At over 7%, there's no issue as to condition with the best before being over six months from now. Let's have a go.

The two beers appear roughly the same - medium amber orange with a swell white froth and foam. On the sniff, the prototype is a bit richer but both are raisin tart with prototype leaning towards a really gorgeously complex set of orange peel, allspice, baked raisin edgings. In the mouth, the prototype suffers a tiny bit from a drabness - even with the swirl of malt richness - which could be time but also tastes like a bit of cardamom. There is a bit of a husky quality to it that butts heads with the fruit richness, too, the aroma's promise. A little bitter and even mineral in the finish even with the barley candy playing out. Still, big and fine and I'd have bought it if it ever made the shelves.

Theory put into practice is a notch finer. The note of the finishing hops stands out more clearly - tangerine peel, candy cane and even maybe a hint of coffee bean. In the mouth, there's a little less to work with than the prototype but there's more control even with all the bitterness. Softer water with weedy hops over peppermint and peppery hops over rich cream malt. Pear in the malt. Also big, pretty brash but not off kilter. A very well made beer that the BAers gave big respect.

BrewDog has been doing all things for (and to) all people including taking a brash, cheeky culturally appropriate stance that I love more than even each of their beers. But like childhood's end, it's no longer all about adding. Sometimes there is subtracting in life.

Allsopp's Arctic Ale And Arctic Homebrew In 1852

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 4:35am CET by Alan McLeod

There is a bit of beery backroom buzz about plans to make a movie about the Allsopp's Arctic Ale, the beer which accompanied a British navy expedition in the Canadian high Arctic in the mid-eighteenth century. The film maker's website is not up yet but there is a Facebook page which reports:

Sir Edward Belcher failed on his journey, abandoned four of the five ships in the ice, and returned to England to be court-marshalled (some thanks... huh?). A few of the bottles of Allsopp’s Ale came back to England, where in 2007 a bottle came up on EBay, and reportedly sold for $503,000 (this is what caught my interest). To my knowledge, there are only two bottles left in the world from the 1852 expedition. I have researched this ale in the deepest of all journals and records, both here and abroad. I now have a recipe for this Ale and intend to brew it near the Belcher Islands of the Hudson Bay in the Canadian Arctic.

There is more information hanging about the internets about this stuff and not just pictures of that eBay bottle. Available Arcticky data includes the passage below from the book The Last of The Arctic Voyages by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B. about the failed search for the expedition of Sir John Franklin from 1852 to 1854. The book can be found in its entirety at Google books. Belcher was a bit of a tool in an old school way but, as a fellow Nova Scotian, one has to give him some props but we can leave it at that as far as the admiration goes. He did have a thing for the beer apparently - at least when stuck in the ice - as he noted on 21 December 1852 after the presentation of a pantomime on board his firmly frozen ship: "Allsopp. That name will live for ages in the recollection of all Polars."

It seems that in addition to filling the hull with Allsopp's Arctic Ale, Belcher also brought along a home brewing system. Here is the report of the production of beer on board starting around page 339:

Brewing from essence of malt and hops had been practised as early as the 6th of August last season, but the general adoption of our "home-brewed" did not fairly commence until the end of October; with what success I shall leave my readers to judge from the following report of the officer who superintended. It was much esteemed, and at times mixed to dilute the excellent beer supplied by Messrs. Allsopp.

"Her Majesty's Skip 'Assistance,' Wellington Channel,
October 31, 1853.
Sir,

"1. In compliance with your directions, I have the honour to report upon the beer brewed from the essence of malt and of hops on board this ship during the winter 1852-1853, as follows, viz.:—

"2. An experiment was made on the 6th of August, 1852, to brew with the proportions prescribed by the makers (Hudson and Co.). Eighty pounds of malt and three pounds of hops were mixed with boiling water, and then started into a fifty-six gallon cask (filling it), placed by the side of the galley-fire: when the temperature had fallen to 90° there was added half a pound of yeast, in a state of fermentation, made by mixing dried yeast, sugar, and flour, in hot water; but although signs of fermentation were occasionally apparent at the bunghole during the day, yet, from the low temperature that prevailed at night (consequent upon the absence of the galley-fire), it could not be got to work satisfactorily. The beer produced, although palatable and drunk by the ship's company, was so weak, from the inadequacy of the quantity of ingredients used, and so flat, in consequence of the inability to raise sufficient fermentation, that it was scarcely equal to the smallest table beer.

"3. On the 23rd of October, 1852, the ship being fixed in winter quarters, and the Sylvester warming apparatus at work, maintaining a constant equal temperature, brewing operations were commenced, with the view of keeping up a periodical supply for the ship's company.

"4. The proportions used were,—essence of malt, 120 lbs., and of hops 4 lbs., to fifty-four gallons of water: these were boiled together for two hours in the ship's coppers, and then put into a fifty-six gallon cask, which was placed (for the purpose of obtaining the highest temperature in the ship, steady at about 70°) by the side of the funnel of the Sylvester warming apparatus. In about eighteen hours after, the temperature of the mixture had fallen to 90°, when yeast was added, and generally in a few minutes produced vigorous fermentation, which was maintained for seven or eight days, the froth being thrown off at the bung-hole and received from a leather spout, nailed on the side of the cask, into a tub placed on the deck, from which the cask was kept filled as it became necessary, for the first two days almost every hour, and afterwards at longer intervals, as fermentation slackened. As soon as it had ceased to work, the cask was bunged up and removed, to settle and fine for a fortnight; it was then broached for issue.

"5. The beer thus produced was highly prized, and I think I may venture to state that, both for strength and flavour, it was all that could be desired.

"6. From this time (October 23rd) until the end of the following April, a constant supply of this beer was maintained, at the rate of one pint for each person twice, and sometimes three times, a week, besides other occasional extra issues; for which purpose it was necessary to appropriate three fifty-six gallon casks,—one to issue from, the next to settle and fine, and the third in a state of fermentation.

"7. The total quantities of the essences consumed during this time were—of malt, 1620lbs.; hops, 44lbs.; and the beer produced was 702 gallons.

"8. Although the beer thus necessarily issued a fortnight after being brewed was of good quality, yet I would beg leave to remark, that had it been practicable to have allowed it to stand for a longer period (a3 in the case of beer brewed in England), there is good reason to suppose that it would have become scarcely inferior to English porter of the first quality.

"9. There now remain for brewing (to be commenced, in pursuance of your directions, as soon as the hold is cleared), essence of malt, 780lbs.; hops, 40lbs.

"I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your most obedient, humble servant,
James Lewis,
Clerk in charge."

Captain Sir Edward Belcher, Kt., C.B.,
Her Majesty's Ship ' Assistance,' and Commanding
Arctic Searching Squadron.

Note Belcher actually calls it home brew. Other than that, I will leave interpretation and further explorations of the explorer's libations to others who are, you know, cleverer than me. Suffice it to say thank God for what beer these poor bastards could get their hands on 158 years ago, two or three thousand miles to my north.

Trends 2010: Is There Really Simplicity In Beer?

Posted: January 7th, 2010, 12:42am CET by Alan McLeod

I wrote this in the year end review but I am not sure I know what I mean or even if I mean it:

...bigger craft brewers and even some regionals are making interesting beers which are not bombs. Lew recently noted both Magic Hat Odd Notion Fall '09 and Narragansett Porter both of which I also found to be stunning for their value as well as their elegance. Yesterday, Andy was thankful for well crafted simplicity. Expect 2009 to be remembered for how we learned that cacophony in glass is not a brewers or a drinker's "go to" brew.

I think by I mean the opposite of a big bomb. When I used to home brew, I was well aware that it was far easier to make a bigger porter with about 6 sorts of dark malt and a few extra dark sugars than to make a good brew with only one or two pale malts. Bombastic was an entry level approach to tasty beer. Lots of interesting stuff going on. But simplicity should also not mean boring. It should mean balanced where are one or two showpiece ingredients. McAuslen's smooth oatmeal stout. The bread crust graininess of a Hook Norton Haymaker. The white pepper in Fantome saison. I am having a Margriet by Het Anker right now and I'd call that simple - quenching, lemony, peppery, herbal and creamy but also simple without being basic. Maybe that is pushing it, however.

Simplicity should mean easier, too. You don't need to pair even if you can eat and drink. You should also not be sent on a quest. An interesting discussion has broken out at Zak Avery's place. In which I am supporting the validity of good beer at home. Beer should not only be simple but having beer should be simple. Is that too much to ask?

Book Review: 33 Bottles of Beer, Dave Selden and Pals

Posted: January 6th, 2010, 1:44am CET by Alan McLeod

I got an envelope from Dave Selden of Portland, Oregon right after the end of the end of the photo contest. In it there was a real letter on real letterhead and two copies of the booklet 33 Bottles of Beer. I should have been a lesson to me as I still haven't mailed out the three prizes I was supposed to send - sorry Rob, Bill and Zak. I emailed them again saying how sorry I was for the delay. I may have to do that again between now and March.

But enough about me. Except for this. I don't go to fests really all that much. And I don't rate beers other than what I write about them here. So you would think that a little booklet for rating beer in a setting like a beer fest would be a snoozer for me. Wrong. This is one of the best made, well organized, function appropriate objects I have ever seen. It is a can opener in an age when there were no can openers. It is a shoe to those who never had shoes. It fits in your palm. It has a hefty paper cover. It has information on the inside cover. It has 33 identical pages of space allowing you to rate 33 beers. That's what the book is called, too. And the website.

The format of the rating page includes a little diagram of a spoked wheel. It has 16 spokes leading out to where 16 characteristics of beer are named - like linger, sour, toffee, floral. Along each spoke there are five points for the intensity of each characteristic to be noted. There is also space for text notes, numerical ranks of IBUs and ABVs not to mention a five star rating spot. A ticker's dream. I guess. Because I don't tick. But I can guess.

Plus it's only four bucks. Buy a stack, fill your rec room with shelves of them after you fill them. Handy and dandy. Heck, buy one if you are a ticker and let me know if it is as useful as I think it would be.

So Many Questions About Beer From Today's News

Posted: January 5th, 2010, 12:31am CET by Alan McLeod

There are days when the themes in the news do not weave a story but look like broken pieces upon the floor. I was going to consider this all in the form of epic multi-stanza haiku but there was only noise amongst the beer news:

Can Negro Modelo really ever be considered a rare find in the big city?
Are curlers still curlers if they cut back on beer?
Is being criminally disorderly while intoxicated substantially different from just being disporderly?
Should someone forced to sell beer? Even by the marketplace?
Would Toronto sports be better with beer not requiring a mortgage?
Should those on Twitter really get the cheap beer? And is the cheap beer any good?

What to make of the noise and the questions? This must be what it feels like to be dime a dozen.

So Doctor Who Regenerates Just As Stonch's Blog Ends?

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 10:56pm CET by Alan McLeod

Co-incidence? Just a fluke that the same holiday weekend sees Jeff close down Stonch's beer blog and the tenth Doctor making his exit? I was going to photoshop a Dalek in replacing the keg above but that would be a little too much effort on my part.

Jeff, first as "Stonch" and then as himself, was a big part of 2007's British beer blogging explosion and the one who did not at that time have a foot in the trade one way or another. For a long time, before he got into the pub trade and my house filled with more kiddies, we were sending chat messages about beer blogging back and forth every other day. I looked back to see of there was a particular back and forth worth summarizing what that was about and came up with this:

Stonch's: ... i might go and meet some folks at the pub now actualy
me: I hide from everyone...

The rest of the conversations are largely idle bitching sessions and working out strategies for maximization of ad revenue. Let the masters students figure that one out when they write their term papers on the early days of beer blogging. Jeff stuck his oar in with a heft in his early days but also rightly found the navel gazing boring. And, lest it be lost to mankind, in addition to taking a cask of homebrew on a train we all have to remember that Jeff was the one who gave us a time lapse movie of primary fermentation set to the music of Dolly Parton:

I haven't met Jeff yet and may never get across the Atlantic to visit his pub but I've liked following his life and writing so much I did a screen save of his last post for posterity. Hopefully someone has archived the rest.

Canadians Need A New Word For "Not Beer" Beer

Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 4:36pm CET by Alan McLeod

It was with sadness but not surprise that I read yesterday's interview of Richard Musson, the vice-president of marketing for Labatt Breweries of Canada in the Globe and Mail. Even with his focus on marketing, the answers come across like he is talking about about an unknown product from a continent you have never visited. Even his concluding summary gives one the yips:

Q: Was there anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't touch on?

A: No, we talked about Bud Light Lime. It's funny, when I came here two years ago, no one talked about Bud. They said, "Oh, it sells itself." I said, If you think that, in a few years' time, it'll stop selling itself. So I made a rule that, every presentation, we start with Budweiser. Otherwise you talk about the glamorous stuff, like Stella Artois - and in the end, what pays the bills is Budweiser.

For this to be the situation in Canada, the fact that Bud pays Labatt's bills is just weird. The flagship brand that kept Labatt afloat for decades, Blue, has been relegated to an upstate NY discount brand where a case can be bought for less than half the price it is offered a few miles to the north. And where is the Canadian nationalism? All the beer-like things mentioned by the brander are foreign - Mexican lime beer-like thing, Belgian pale ale beer-like thing and US eagle branded beer-like thing. An interview only ten years ago and certainly 20 years ago like this would have led to an immediate firing after outraged public outcry and even mockery of the very idea that Canadian beer is not the best in the world... even if it wasn't. It's like Canadian Tire no longer selling canoes, telling the market place that bass boats are all that people really want. Why doesn't the interviewer even raise the question?

And then there is that final point: how far do these trends have to go before we get to stop using the word "beer" to describe these fluids? How different is Bud Light Lime from Zima anyway?

S35: Looking Back And Looking Forward And Asking Why

Posted: January 2nd, 2010, 8:24pm CET by Alan McLeod

Here we go again - session time on the first Friday of the month. Except it's Saturday now. The question was posed by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune, the authors of The Naked Pint:

So we want to know what was your best and worst of beer for 2009? What beer mistakes did you make? What beer resolutions do you have for 2010? What are your beer regrets and embarrassing moments? What are you hoping to change about your beer experience in 2010?

I don't know what to make of those questions. Beer mistakes? Maybe taking beer too seriously. But did I do that? Maybe having too much some days. But I don't think I did - I am fairly moderate and tried not to over do. Who wants a hangover?

Is there a question behind the questions we should ask? Can beer play a role such that there are personal bests and worsts? Personal regrets and embarrassments? If we are in that level of relationship with a recreational mind altering substance... is that good? Of all my hobby interests, beer is the least obsessive in a way because it is light entertainment. Science fiction is immersive, political blogging is naively important, sports fandom creates something of one's identity for better or worse. Even with all the interest in beer and health or highway safety or questions of value or the simmering politics of even writing about beer, I've been writing this blog not so much as an exploration of beer but as an exercise in exploring my own relationship with the stuff. I don't know if I have learned enough to know whether or not the whole thing is not a regret or an embarrassment. A mistake.

Or not. Don't know. After six years, can I expect that this new year will come with any breakthrough?

Belgium: Oude Geuze, Drie Fonteinen, Beersel

Posted: January 1st, 2010, 5:36am CET by Alan McLeod

New Year's Eve. You want a cork on New Year's Eve, right? This wee pal says it was bottled on 17 January 2006 but it's not going to make its fourth birthday. The Shelton Bros label assures me that it would be good for a full decade but who knows where we'll all be in 2016. And where would that bit of musty mould on outside the cork underneath the capsule have advanced it I had left it longer?

A fairly gentle pop leads to a glass filled with faintly oranged straw toned beer under an inch thick billowing egg white head. One the schnoz, there is tart Gravenstein apple, well balanced earthy barnyard funk and an odd note like sardines. All balanced within that g(u)euze sense of balance - meaning wildly unbalanced. I could smell this all day. Daub small drops on my wrists to get me through the workday. In the mouth, it is all where it should be. Modest carbonation, some juicy fruit that adds refreshment even with the seam of bone drying acidity, then in the second half of the mouthful, there is mineral in the Riesling sort of mineral way. No sardines but lots of unsweetened under-ripe white grapefruit pith - the white stuff. Good thing that there are no sardine notes as that is one thing I am not missing. Not acidic enough to warrant Rolaids or anything but pretty damn tart. Like a bubbly light fino sherry without all that sherry stuff.

It would have been good to allow it to play with others tonight for a little compare and contrast but my geuze stocks are down to one panic bottle of Girardin in case the radio reports we have 48 minutes to live. BAers have a fine romance going on. If I had started my sour beer studies with this rather than that bastard of a beer Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru by Cantillon I might have gotten off to a better start. More from the brewery here if you can read -3 font. They refer to the "sennois" taste which, in my poor Wikipedia French seems to mean the sweat of working class recreational league athletes.

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