Tag: Opinion

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The Firkin for November 2013

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H2O.

Water. Part of the brewing process but sometimes left out of the drinking process.

I was reminded of this when I ordered a beer and was automatically given a glass of water too.

How refreshing in two senses. One the literal and the other the foresight to know that a good palate cleanser would make beer appreciation easier.

And with the holiday season in full swing, water is truly needed to cleanse the palate as you go from a winter warmer that could be an IPA, a stout or spice filled.

Now if only water would always come with your beer order along with in vogue (health-wise) nuts.

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The Firkin for October 2013

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The impetus for the October rant topic beer lists comes from two directions.  One was this blog post from The New School, from the Piss & Vinegar column.  I just wish I had coined the phrase “listicles”.  Classic.  The other is that I have been doing 10 Best Lists of different beer styles over on Food GPS covering styles like IPA’s, sour beers and pale ales that are brewed in California.  So what is my 3-D and not black and white take on lists in blogs?

Right off the bat, I have to agree that the numbered list is a beloved darling of the SEO set.  No getting around it.  And it is also a rubric that has sold magazines and self-help books too.  That means that many who write such lists are just filling in the blanks.  The 10 Hottest ????.  The 5 Best ????.  Combine that lack of interest in the actual topic in comparison to the maximization of hits and re-tweets and you have a recipe for hastily written, un-researched faux opinion.  And the lack of knowledge shows.

See example A

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Others create lists just to create a shitstorm of comments.  I will rank Heady Topper as the 9th best IPA in the U.S. just so I can rile up the interwebs.  Some days it seems that the horrible comment trolls are neck and neck with horrible content trolls.  Anybody who creates a best of beer list that doesn’t start with, “MY OPINION” in big caps or states repeatedly, that the author intends to invoke conversation and not provoke outrage is just not starting with the right frame of mind.

But with a little work and specificity, a list can be a helpful road map for someone new to craft beer or new to a part of the country, or new to a style.  My hope with the California Great California beer series is to give people visiting the state or visiting the breweries here a starting point.  Here are 10 sour beers from California that I think are a good place to begin your journey.  I try not to rank them (except for in my own head) and I try to provide a quick tidbit about the beer or brewery that I find of interest.  I also endeavor to not pre-bias a beer for someone by putting my tasting notes into the list.  Of course, I sometimes have difficulty following my own rules.  But my end goal is to create something akin to a shopping list.  (which is what I do monthly with my “Sean suggests” post).

The lists that I find most useful fall into two camps, those that are those written more in a travel guide type of style.  When visiting Point A, you should try the pizza from here, the burger from here and check out this particular museum.  It helps me get oriented to the city and lets ME decide what I would like to do. The same for your better than average beer lists.  It should steer someone to trying a beer that may have been previously unknown.  And in a perfect world, should make everyone reading it thirsty!

Secondly, I enjoy reading what other beer people like.  I will read about what Los Angeles area brewers are drinking.  I would read with avid interest any list coming from the L.A. Beer Blogger group.  Because I value their opinion and I think I can learn from them.  The reason why I would is because I know that they are beer fans first and foremost.

A good list is written by someone who knows and is passionate about the topic from whence he/she writes and is doing it for not just to get higher blog rankings.  Will it ever be “content full”?  Probably not.  But neither are cat videos.

 

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Session # 79

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Each month Beer Bloggers from around the world converge on one topic.  This month Ding’s Beer Blog has the hosting honors and has proposed this topic…

Anyone with any inkling of my online, in-person and blogging presence in the American beer world since 2000, will know that the whole of my beer experience in that time has been colored by, sits against the backdrop of, and forms the awkward juxtaposition to, my English beer heritage and what has been happening the USA in the last few years. Everyone knows that I have been very vocal about this for a very long time, so when it came to thinking about what would be a great ‘Session’ topic, outside of session beer, it seemed like that there could be only one topic; ‘What the hell has America done to beer?‘, AKA, ‘USA versus Old World Beer Culture‘.

This probably won’t be pretty, and you’re probably not gonna like it much, but hey, what’s new?

I didn’t quite know how to approach this topic.  Primarily because I don’t see American beer in opposition to any other type of beer.  I don’t see the brewers I know, “Doing things” to beer. Is the envelope being expanded and then crushed?  Yes.  But not in response to the good to great brewers in the rest of the world.

I reiterate that I don’t underestimate the impact that the craft beer scene has unleashed.  But I think that the “old World” is in a spot that the U.S. was in a few years back.  Stuck in a sea of Bud and Heineken.  And I think that Germany, Italy and Belgium as well as England will come roaring back.  Why? Because there is a gap of quality.  A gap of creativity.  And market gaps get filled.

That is why beers from here are so popular and so wildly inventive.  There was a yawning gap between the flavorless and what people yearned to taste.  Laws needed to be changed.  Competition needed to heat up and many other financial and brewing factors had to change.  You needed the rabble rousing and the Imperial IPA’s to open up the field.  And once it was open, it was OPEN and there was and is nothing that can’t be done.  I have had two beers which simulate the spice patterns in Horchata. You look up Mango IPA and get multiple hits.

And you see it in England with BrewDog and with breweries like Kernel.  You see it at Baladin in Italy. And you will see that creative spark lift the boat of World Wide beer to levels that you and I cannot imagine.

As long as the options remain open and brewers do not feel constrained to fit into a box then whatever beers are created will further the growth of craft beer.

 

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The Firkin for August 2013

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There are many items that the craft beer world has on its to-do list.

My rant today is about distribution. Or as sometimes happens, kegs sitting around.

Some breweries self-distribute which takes time. On the plus side, you are dealing with only your beers. So “you” are educating your customers on your beers. “You” know can store your beers in the best conditions. “You” know how fresh your beers are.” But that it is a lot of time that can be used in many other areas of brewing life. Some of which may be more important.

The seemingly natural progression seems to be distribute yourself until you are big enough to “sign” with a distributor. You invariably then sign with more and more distributors as your territory grows.

Finding that right someone who loves your beer as much as you do, seems to be the harder task. And this is the link of the chain that needs to strengthened, especially as more and more breweries start reaching that tipping point between driving the truck and working the hand cart yourself and having someone else do it. More distributors of different sizes and in different towns will be needed.

And when I say size, I am talking about a distributor to brewery ratio that isn’t skewed to the point where a business is repping such a big binder of beers that they can’t possibly sell all of them with the same vigor and they can’t Quality Control the living conditions for kegs and bottles (or cans).

Both of those issues will impede the growth of craft beer than anything Miller/Coors/Budweiser does primarily because it is hidden from sight. Say a new customer tries Brewery A’s beer at their taproom and really likes their Belgian Pale Ale. Next week they see it on tap but it tastes different. Next week, they don’t see the beer at all. A few weeks later they see a bottle of it and it tastes different there too. Mind you, it may not taste bad in the subsequent tastings but it has lost that extra zing.

How does a customer determine (if they even decide to) why the beer is less than it was. Different batch? Recipe being tweaked? Most people don’t know beans about how a craft beer gets to a tap at a bar. Even less know who the distributor for each brewery is. I can tell you who a few local breweries work with but past a handful I don’t and I write a blog about craft beer.

In my example, the cause of intermittent availability could be caused by how much was brewed but it could be that because it is part of a huge book of beers that it is getting missed and therefore not out to people who would put it on tap or stock it on shelves. It could taste different because there was a glut of it and some didn’t get put into a cold box in a timely manner (or at all). That dry hopped IPA may have waited at a distributor for a while before making it to a bar who then waited for a tap to become free to put it on.

Now the brewery shouldn’t have to track kegs. That is why they got a distributor! Bars shouldn’t have to be in charge of quality control. They are busy on the front lines educating customers. What can change is competition.

The more distributors there are, the better chance that your favorite brewery can find one that has the employee and cold box capacity to carefully handle their precious beer. It may be that a smaller house has better staff training and can move the product faster because of it. A bigger company may be able to spread the wealth to a wider clientele. Either way, the fear of losing clients will cause the underperforming distributors to up their game or pay the price.

The goal is to have the beer presented in its best light for each and every customer.

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Session # 78

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This month we have a writing “test” from BeerBarBand….

What better way to test our writing skills and remind ourselves of why we do this than to post your elevator pitch for beer.

“Elevator pitch” is a term used by marketers, sales people, film/tv makers and the like. It’s the delivery of a short but powerful summary that will sell their idea or concept to the listener in one swift hit.

Here’s the scenario:

You walk into an elevator and hit the button for your destination level. Already in the elevator is someone holding a beer…and it’s a beer that annoys you because, in your view, it represents all that is bad with the current state of beer.

You can’t help but say something, so you confront your lift passenger with the reason why their beer choice is bad.

30 seconds is all you have to sell your pitch for better beer, before the lift reaches the destination floor. There’s no time, space or words to waste. You must capture and persuade the person’s attention as quickly as possible. When that person walks out of the elevator, you want them to be convinced that you have the right angle on how to make a better beer world.

Here’s the rules:

  1. In less than 250 words or 30 seconds of multimedia content, write/record/create your elevator pitch for beer in which you argue you case, hoping to covert the listener to your beer cause.

So here goes……

Tell me about your thought process when you purchased the beer that is in your hand.  When you were staring at the shelves of beer choices, what was it about that particular beer that called to you? I ask because if you deliberately chose that beer, I want to know why. I will understand if faced with the dizzying array of craft available you are overwhelmed or if you are “slumming”.  But I want to know, if you know, about all the choices you have. 

Because you do have choice, you could drink a different beer every day for a year and still have some new beers to try in the next (and the next after).  And choice is good, it means that there are no excuses to NOT have a craft beer. 

You CANNOT say that you don’t like craft beer.  You CAN say that you have not found one you like but that means that you are wasting time with that one in your hand. You CANNOT say that you can’t find good beer.  It has invaded every town and city.  You just wanted to grab the closest or cheapest. 

Would you eat the same meal, night after night? Even the most lazy among us don’t do that. But it is what you are doing by buying that one beer over and over.

Once this elevator door opens, I want you to do some homework and find a better beer.  Craft beer is waiting for you.

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Session # 77

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Justin’s Brew Review is the host for the July edition of The Session and he turns the focus to the India Pale Ale….

“For quite some time now, I’ve been wondering what makes the India Pale Ale (IPA) style of beer so popular. Don’t get me wrong–I thoroughly enjoy it and gladly participate in #IPADay. I’m just wondering, why all the hype? What is it about an IPA that makes craft beer enthusiasts (CBE) go wild? Is it because CBEs want to differentiate craft beer from crap beer? I don’t care if a watered-down pilsener is labeled as “triple-hops brewed”; it wouldn’t satisfy someone looking for an IPA.”

At a recent craft beer event that paired brewers with coffee roasters, I had the honor of pouring for Eagle Rock Brewery. Their special coffee tap was called Panama Pale Ale, a Panamanian coffee infused Rye IPA. Call it PPA for short.

By my standards it was not too bitter. More coffee and rye than hops and quite tasty with a lovely coffee bean aroma. And it was one of the more popular beers if the people I was pouring for were to be believed.

So, even at a coffee-centric beer event, an IPA took center stage.

I can see why amber beers were popular once upon a time when it was still called micro-brews.  They appealed to a bigger percentage of our small craft beer population.  They are usually not over the top in terms of ABV or IBU.  They showcase malt and thus have a little more sweetness (and we know Americans like their sweets).  They are certainly closer, taste-wise to the lagers that most people know than an IPA ever will be.

It is amazing how fast that the India Pale Ale has grabbed the spotlight in the world of craft beer despite what I would consider pretty major hindrances to that happening:

1.       Bitterness is considered by the palate as a bad sign.
2.       And even if that is not an impediment, some IPA’s still destroy seasoned hopheads palates
3.       Hops (especially popular varieties) can be hard to come by and expensive.
4.       The market for IPA’s is now extra crowded.
5.       May require extra equipment to dry hop.
6.       Really need to be drunk fresh.
7.       Sometimes confusing names like Black IPA or White IPA
8.       Sometimes confusing IBU levels.  A DIPA from one brewery may be a regular IPA to another.

Then add to the mix all the history behind how the IPA “style” became what it is today plus account for all the tiny to large regional American differences, and the rise of the IPA is even more amazing.

And I have no idea why it took off so much except for some half-baked theories:

1. I have heard from many brewery folk that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was a formative beer in their appreciation of craft beer. Maybe that is a root cause for the love of IPA’s.

2. IPA’s are the IBU opposite of the BMC industrial water lagers and doing the opposite of what the big 3 did is not to be underestimated as a reason.

3. America has developed a taste for different coffee’s (some quite bitter) so an appreciation of bitter IPA’s may be a side effect of that revolution.

My hope is that the brewers and drinkers don’t just lock onto mega hop bombs and search out XPA’s and dry hopped pilsners and pale ales that are actually hopped like a pale ale. Because a world with only arrogant palate wrecking bastards is only slightly better than a world with watery lagers.

Thankfully, barrel aged beers seem to be balancing out the craft beer scales amongst beer geeks, so I am not overly worried of an IPA take-over but I do wish there were more cask ales and Czech style pilsners out there and if I get a second wish, I certainly hope to see more non-IPA best sellers.  I will always see Fat Tire as the New Belgium flagship.  No matter how good Ranger is.

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The Firkin for April 2013

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Enjoying the gamut of craft beer on a budget. It can be difficult simply because of the wealth of choices. LA is behind the craft curve and I could still easily drop many Franklins (or should I say Dead Presidents) trying to choose between new beers from Cambridge Brewing or barrel aged offerings from Cismontane. And that is not counting just trying to have beer on hand in the ‘fridge.

But you can get by even with less. First off, find places that sell singles or mixed six packs. Trader Joes being one and Sunset Beer Co another here in Los Angeles. That way you can taste a rainbow of styles instead of just one. And if you want to compound the interest, get a friend to get six other beers. Now you have 12 new beers.

When you head to your local beer bar order the sampler trays. At first glance it is more expensive than one pint but you will get a wide variety (usually four to five beers) and it is usually the same per ounce price if you want to do all that math stuff.

The third piece of advice is to not over drink. It is better to have one beer and really enjoy it than to have three or four in one night. More than likely the last one will be a blur and you will have not gotten the most of your money.

Ask for samples. Ask for half-pints.  Don’t be afraid of the bar staff. Most places encourage experimentation and will not turn down a customer.  But be responsible and buy something plus tip well.  Otherwise you many not get the same treatment the next time that you land on the barstool.

Don’t let high prices scare you off. A Firestone-Walker Anniversary beer or Parabola is well worth it. If you can’t find a bottle, follow your favorite brewery on the interwebs to find special events where the possibility of getting a taster for less money may happen.

Lastly happy hour is your friend. Use it.

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Session # 73

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Here is the topic for March courtesy of Pints and Pubs: The Beer audit

“Once or twice a year I take a beer audit. I open cupboards and boxes and just have a good look at what’s there. Some beers get moved about, some make it from a box into the fridge, others get pushed further to the back of the cupboard for another day. Often I just stare at the bottles for a while and think about when I’ll drink them. Apart from the enjoyment of just looking at a hoard of beer, It tells me something about my drinking habits.

I store too many bottles – over 150 at the last count, which would keep me in beer for over a month, compared to less than a week’s worth of food – but evidently that’s still not enough bottles as I return with more every time I leave the house.

I have a tendency to hoard strong, dark beers – great for a winter evening, not so great when a lazy sunny afternoon starts with a 9% imperial stout and then gets stronger.

My cellaring could be improved. I found three beers from breweries that closed last year. I found these, not hidden away in a box under the stairs, but in the fridge. The fridge!!!

My attempts to age beer usually just result in beer that’s past its best

The oldest beer in my cupboard is probably an infant compared to the aged beers people must have in their cellars

So, I’m interested to know if you take stock of the beers you have, what’s in your cellar, and what does it tell you about your drinking habits. This could inlcude a mention of the oldest, strongest, wildest beers you have stored away, the ratio of dark to light, strong to sessionable, or musings on your beer buying habits and the results of your cellaring.”

After reading the topic, the first thing I did was update my excel spreadsheet that has the relevant details on my “collection” of 50+ beers and then I added a new column.

That column is “better drink by”. And it is an addition that I should have started tracking from purchased for the cellar, bottle #1. And I now believe it is the third most important piece of cellaring technique behind storage and picking beers that can actually age.

From my experience, beer geeks have no qualms about popping the cork or cap of cellar beers. We love showing off either the width or breadth of our collections. The stories of epic bottle shares are legion. But we don’t always do it in a methodical way. If we could sort our beer lists by “fast approaching past their prime”, then we could choose from those first instead of letting our hearts and palates choose in a different direction. (Which admittedly may be just as good.)

That may sound a little too much like accounting and less fun and spontaneous but it might save people from skipping over a beer that was at its peak for one that could have chilled longer. And all it requires is a little extra research and some Excel spreadsheet sorting skills.

And it doesn’t even have to be a spreadsheet. You don’t have to hire an accountant to do it. It could be a handwritten piece of paper taped to the box. It could be an app on your iPad if you prefer to do everything on the cloud.

Heck, maybe you hire a friend (or me) to do the cataloging with the promise of opening one as payment.

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The Firkin for February 2013

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“And thus ends hate-watching’s brief, trend-piece aided reign as The Future of Television; you are now advised to find some other innocuous object that has no real effect on your daily life at which to direct unbridled, unfiltered online rage. Apricots, maybe. Apricots: What an asshole fruit, right?”

What does that hilarious piece of writing from the AV Club have to do with beer?

Well, it is parallel to the popular sentiment of hatred towards the Big Boys of Beer which reached a higher peak when the U.S. Department of Justice thwarted ABInBev’s plan to buy the portion of Grupo Modelo that they don’t already own.

It seems the Bud-Miller-Coors troika are hated simply for existing in our universe.  Now, I have written that without their blind ignorance of the fact that they were creating a market for craft beer drinkers by producing only watered down corn lager, we wouldn’t have the growing community that we do.  And that we should thank them for not “getting it”.

But I sense a certain amount of the hatred pointed at them and to a certain extent breweries like Sierra Nevada and New Belgium is simply because they are “big”  As if “big” was the problem and not the beer being produced.  Personally, I don’t see how Grupo Modelo being swallowed up whole will shatter the beer world.  Smart farmers of malt and hops and sellers of brewing equipment have been following and supplying the craft beer scene for awhile now.  And if the price of a six-pack of Bud Black Crown and it’s entrance to taste is higher, then more people will check out craft which will suddenly look more reasonable than they already are.

But back to my main point, why is “big” equated with bad?  It is almost certainly why the Brewer’s Association continues to lump Boston Beer Co. in with nano-breweries under the craft designation.  But why do we have to avoid “big” or it’s cousins “large” and “nationwide”.  Why is that word such a bugaboo?

I would love to see a huge Lagunitas.  More of the Sucks IPA for me which I don’t believe will suffer in quality just because it is made in quantity. New Glarus and Firestone-Walker can continue to tread the smaller path which is fine too.  We truly need breweries making good, solid craft beer at all levels of the brewery size ecosystem.

That is how you combat a monopoly.  By creating a solid base of thousands of breweries that have a growing market share.  If craft beer can reach 25% or higher, then it won’t matter if Miller and Coors and Budweiser and Modelo combine to form some mega-corporation / League of Doom (MiCoBuMo?) there will be a craft counterbalance.

So let’s stop hating just for being big.  Pick a more specific reason.  Budweiser offers so many individual reasons to hate them so it shouldn’t be that hard to find one.

 

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The Firkin for January 2013

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We start off 2013 with a thorny question. The Beer Festival idiots. I was spurred to write about this after reading a blog post on the Heretic Brewing website, which you can read HERE

The above post can’t really be argued with. There are many festivals (including the grand-daddy of them, GABF) that have a major component of people who just want to get hammered. Blotto. Whatever you want to call it. There is one beer fest in the L.A. area that I will not attend again because that percentage is so high and the beer knowledge so low that I fear that people will start keeling over from alcohol poisoning.

Now, I do not know if that is OK from the standpoint of the event organizer or not. But I do know that it is an atmosphere not conducive to learning about beer and it sure as hell doesn’t make it any fun at all for the brewer or brewery staff who man the booth and have to put up with it.

The only way to stop that behavior is to charge more for tickets ($45 at least, $90 for GABF) and to have a cap of 10 beer tickets max. I know that this means that I will pay more and get less but I will gain a lot of elbow room and I will feel safer getting home because the drunkards will be elsewhere. And hopefully, if the cost is higher then some of that extra money can go to reimburse the brewers (who usually don’t get paid) or send more to the charity that usually is part and parcel to a festival. Throw in a couple rare beers or a food ticket and if the breweries are good then the people (who love “tasting” beer) will flood through the doors.

And I think that there will be side benefits as well. Brewers will probably start to return to their place inside the booth and the grumpy beer snob folk who only want their beer served by the person who brewed it and absolutely no one else will be sated. Two sets of people happier right there! Smaller crowds mean less parking and security and bathroom needs as well. It means the lines will be smaller and the decibel volume will be less so you can talk without screaming.

It’s paradoxical but I would go to many more events if I knew that I didn’t have to put up with the louts and asshats who should stay home drinking bathtub gin instead of being out in public.