Tag: Opinion

I feel at times, as a beer geek, that I have to apologize for the beer snobs of the world.

Here’s the scene: I am in a bar that has a Bourbon County Stout night. Black Friday with Goose Island. As someone who has been to many beer events, I know that events are not super fun for the staff and require extra work. If I see an issue, I will bring it up later when the dust has settled. During the event, I try to not be an additional problem.

Or, you could loudly proclaim that you are a sommelier (master, no less) and a BJCP judge and that the glassware is inadequate for the beer. You could also swirl your glass so roughly that you are making a beer milk shake. Then you could let a beer breathe for thirty minutes. All the while loudly talking about each aroma as if it were the Word of God.

If you really wanted to snob it up, you could ask the sniggering under his breath beer blogger about the horrible glassware and have said blogger tell you that a snifter would be better then the wine glass.

I didn’t want to be a dick to the guy. But I felt my hand was forced. The bartender had lost it after being told about wine glasses. Basically telling the bar that it was one of those nights. I couldn’t let beer snobbery stand unchecked so when the guy produced a home brew BCS clone and told me it was 45 out of 50 points, I told him no thanks. I don’t believe in points. Everybody’s palate is different and I trust certain people. With the implication being, I don’t know who you are and therefore I don’t trust you.

I could have easily been much harsher. I know of two beer people I wished had been there to really dig into the beer snob and left wounds.

It’s pretty simple. Don’t be a dick to the staff or your bartender. Tell them you appreciate their extra work and don’t ask for wine glasses when tasters will do on a busy night. Here’s a thought, if you stop before you speak, and ask yourself if you are being beer snobby,you just might get better service and enjoy your beer more.

If your mind can picture it despite the drought that looms large, Los Angeles used to be flooded by the LA River. Then the flow was boxed up and channeled into a concrete canyon. DWP and Mullholland and Chinatown with Jack Nicholson later, it became a bit of a joke. You could say the same about the L.A. craft beer scene. It was tidied up into bottles and cans of German lager early on and that was pretty much it until Craftsman came onto the scene.

Even then the river of beer was still tame, 1903 lager was fancy back then and really in demand. But now, the craft beer is booming like LA riverfront property and the flood of beer is enormous almost like the Mississippi.

L.A. has become a year-round beer town. I should know, I collate the Food GPS Beer Blast and I see the events that happen each and every week. Tap-takeovers happen with regularity. New beer releases are happening almost every week too. The growth of beer happenings has had the deleterious effect of making the recently concluded L.A. Beer Week just a super-sized version of what occurs the other 357 days of the year. (in a good way!)

Which meant that I missed quite a few events. Granted, I had other reasons not to attend some events. My day job keeps me in Burbank until 6pm, so getting to the South Bay or even Van Nuys for a weekday event is a traffic fight. Also my wine loving Mom was in town for ½ the week which blocked off a chunk of the schedule.

That meant not attending the Battle of the Guilds but the idea of SF-SD-LA in one venue sounds better than it plays out. Last year at Mohawk Bend the place was just jam packed and Naja’s Place is no better capacity wise which makes for lots of standing and waiting and less opportunity to really compare the three cities beer output. Next door King Harbor and their satellite taproom held more appeal to me.

Other “misses” for me were comparing and contrasting the Cascade collaborations with El Segundo and Phantom Carriage. Walker’s Wild Ride is always fun and the Metro Red Line idea was a nice touch. MacLeod’s cask event would have been nice to attend but I expect the crowd was healthy enough even without my presence.

This is no indictment of those creating events, the breweries or the L.A. Beer Week organizers. To the contrary. Taking Smog City as an example, I did not attend the many tap-takeovers they were featured in nor did I go to their Rarities and Barrel Aged party. Not due to any anitpathy towards them but primarily because I had driven to Torrance twice in May for their Anniversary and the bottle release of Cuddlebug. And they were pouring in Exposition Park so I got my fix. And I wanted to try a wide-ranging assortment of beers.

We have had invasions from Bell’s, Boulevard, Ninkasi and the like plus new local breweries ready to pop at any moment now. We don’t need a week to drum up support or beer, that support is here. The question that remains for me is what is next for beer in LA and how do we celebrate the origin story while moving forward.

Does that make me a tired old grump or someone who has already had his fill is up for your interpretation. Personally, I think it is a great problem to have a full river of beers fed by streams of L.A. interpretations of cask, Belgian and wild ales running through my backyard.

When people speak of craft beer people being snooty or uppity. It is usually aimed at the apparent seriousness and wine-ification of beer. Where some of the fun seems to be leached out of the simple act of drinking a beer.

And that leads me back to a question that I come back around to on occasion after visiting yet another, nicely appointed bar with a well-made bar and varied tap list with Etsy-esque bottles used as lighting fixtures and a cool logo. Why aren’t there more fun craft beer bars out there?

Where is the British or Irish bar? Where is a bar with old-time videogames (Philly I guess). Or the charity pub (see here). Or hell a dive bar. A certain cookie cutter approach seems to have taken root. Breweries have taprooms in industrial districts and invite food trucks. Bars will have gastropub fare and multiple taps and multiple TVs. End of story.

How about matching the creativity of beers with a creativity in design and thematic elements. I’m not looking for Dave & Busters meets Charles Edgar Cheese but something fun. Maybe a design theme based on a bottling line or history of a local and perhaps long gone brewery.

I would like to see a little whimsy injected into the next wave of beer establishments. We already have bloggers belittling other bloggers for not being serious enough, we already have brewers suing over names, we already have a bleeping hellacious water issue in California.

There is enough serious. Let’s have a fun pub.

Criticism is a buzz word in the world of beer blogging. Mostly revolving around the topic of “There isn’t Enough”. That bloggers are playing it safe and letting breweries skate when they should be called out.

I am of the school that positivity leavened by realism doesn’t make one non-critical. But what gets lost in the “cheerleader” or “evangelist” debate is timing. When and where do you criticize a beer?

There are some who may want to try a beer multiple times over a span of time to see if a beer is progressing or moving backward or in stasis. That is fine if it is a core beer. Not so good, if it is a specialty one-off.

Do you criticize when a brewery is young? Or do you wait for it to find its sea legs? That method is foiled because some breweries are strong out the gate and can create unrealistic (or is it the converse) expectations. In SoCal, both Bottle Logic and Societe set high bars that other start-ups have not matched.

Do you speak to the brewer or to PR person? At a festival with thousands or quietly one on one? E-mail or in person?

These are all questions to ask yourself after you have formulated your constructive criticism. I know there are times when I simply do not want to hear any criticism. Whether delivered well or not. And since it is hard enough for married people who live together to recognize those “bad times”, you can imagine that opining about why a beer might not be up to snuff to a brewer who may have just spent time cleaning a kettle might be more difficult.

On this blog, I attempt to lay out why I don’t like a beer without outright stopping other people from trying that beer. My method is to be hopeful until I get let down repeatedly. But that doesn’t mean that anyone is off the hook. If beer 1 is bad enough to warrant a negative review, I will say so on this blog with a caveat that I hope it gets better or that I may not be the best palate for a particular style. Because the goal of criticism is to improve the NEXT effort. The goal is not to give your blog credibility or to drive someone to anger.

The way to get better beer is for people to be honest so that a brewer can then either use the opinion or not. Then the blogger can choose to either buy their beer or not.

There are times when I read other people’s blogs that I wish I had coined / turned a phrase as well.   It happened again, twice!  One of the usual suspects made me jealous.  Beervana, in a post about Goose Island and their line of sour beers said this, “Harmony and balance, far more than intensity, is what I value.”  Then one paragraph later, “Intensity is a marker of authenticity in the US.”

(You can read the full post HERE, and I suggest you do)

This is an issue that I think will become more important as craft beer reaches maturation and saturation points.  How does a brewery differentiate itself from others when all beers are turned up to 11?  How do beer drinkers value and judge beers after having their palate’s blown out by an extreme beer?

Recently, I have had a few pepper beers.  I am not equipped with a tongue that can withstand much (if any) Scoville units so I could not judge the merit of the peppers sourced but I could easily tell that what I was drinking on two occasions was nothing but heat mixed into water with some malt.  Balance was just not there.  Like having a meal where the salad was dosed in Sriacha, followed by jalapeno poppers and a main course covered in ghost peppers.  There was no counterpoint to the heat.

One was a hot pepper IPA but the hops were not to be found.  The other was aged in Bourbon barrels. (Which usually is the culprit when a beer is unbalanced.) But here again was not to be found by me as I reached to pour the offensive brew down the drain.  My first such drain pour in months.

The main trouble makers in my mind are hops and bourbon barrels, with strange ingredients a distant third. I know that I am not going to slow down the IPA, DIPA, BIPA, Imperial IPA train.  I ain’t jumping in front of that.  But I wish there were more purveyors of IPL’s or IPDopple or style mash-ups that would require a little more finesse.

The crazy thing is that well balanced hop bombs can be made.  Smooth and silky barrel aged beers can contain a multitude of flavors.  I have tasted those beers.  Lagunitas Sucks is a perfect example of a light but hoppy IPA.  I haven’t had the pleasure but Jack’s Abbey on the East Coast has a rep for making some great lagers with hops.  New Belgium had a peach beer aged in Leopold spirits barrels that contained a cornucopia of flavors.

But more often than not.  You get a big whiff of bourbon upon opening a bottle and then alcohol heat.  Any other flavor is subsumed into the bourbon.  Same with hops.  It is just a bracing bolt of bitter.  Hard to distinguish the different hop varietals when they are thrown with abandon into the kettle.

I hope 2014 and the years beyond will bring us more nuance and less intensity.  A broader spectrum of flavors and not a sledgehammer.