Oh, how I wish I had been videotaped (can you still say “tape”?) uttering these words. This short video is both hysterically funny and spot on correct. I love Gigantic Brewing beers and this makes me love them even more.
Yes, these sentiments come from a Pacific NW perspective but I believe the same could be said for San Diego or Austin or Asheville and sometime soon, Los Angeles.
The Firkin for December 2012
Now that we have almost finished 2012 without the Mayan Apocalypse destroying us all, it is time to mentally prepare for our 2013 beer year but first I want to lay down some ground rules to remember before popping the cap or tab on your first beer of the new year.
1. Be adventurous – The name of this very blog is part of my beer mission statement. Search out new beer! It doesn’t mean you don’t go back to old favorites from time to time but don’t just stagnate. For example, I am not a fan of Black or Cascadian IPA’s. But I will try some in 2013 nonetheless. Why? Because I may find my new favorite beer.
2. Be Constructive – If you don’t like a beer, don’t just slam it like some crazed Yelp reviewer. If it is to minerally for your taste then say that. If it is a host of reasons, then list them. At the very least, give an example of a beer you like in the style and why it is and this beer isn’t. At least express your opinion without being opinionated.
3. Make a beer trip – OK this is more for me than maybe others. But set out for a weekend beer excursion. From L.A., you could hit Temecula and their new breweries or head to the San Diego area and hit 400 or so breweries. Whichever direction the winds take you, do it.
Lastly, remember that beer is fun. Don’t get too uptight about it.
Happy New Year!
The Firkin for October 2012
I have grown weary of writing this when I go to review a beer on the Ratebeer website: “I don’t know why this pilsner has such a low score.” or “Typical low score for a pilsner.”
I would have thought by now that pilsners, Kolsch’s, Helles’ and the like would have finally earned some love from the beer geeks in the world but as with session beers, it appears that the love still firmly focuses on high ABV monsters.
So my rant this month is a mini-Call to Arms for those who love the simple pleasure of a well-made lawnmower beer. Go out and buy some! Have some in your ‘fridge. These are the gateway beers for the large percentage of people who are still (amazingly) not into craft beer yet. So why are they dissed and skipped over? They should be held in esteem or at least acknowledged for their place in the craft beer eco-system.
And don’t stop with just buying and enjoying.
Post it on Untappd and rate it fairly. Don’t automatically give it one less start simply because it pours a light yellow hue. And do the same with the big beers, don’t give it 5 stars for being boozy. You don’t tell friends to see a movie that you haven’t seen so why do the same for beer? Dig a little deeper. When you go on Ratebeer or Beer Advocate, talk about the beer without bias.
I have said it before and I will say it again, if we do not appreciate all beer styles then some of those styles may fall by the wayside and that would be the exact opposite of what the beer revolution was and is about. We all wanted choice, not just Imperial Stouts or Triple IPA’s. This world needs Vienna lagers and blonde ales too.
These lighter beers take skill and time and must be appreciated for how hard they are to make. You certainly can’t hide flaws in these beers. And yet we treat them like the Brady’s treated Cousin Oliver, as a nuisance at the far end of the taster tray.
Let there be light!
The Firkin for September 2012
Pete Brown author of the upcoming Shakespeare’s Local amongst other great beer books posed the question, “How Many Beer Bloggers Does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?” It was good for some laughs. My favorite one-liner was “Is it an artisan produced bulb, or mass produced yellow fizz of light?”
Despite the fact that tongue was firmly in cheek for many responses it got me to pondering why beer blogging has a less than stellar reputation. I know that blogging in general is considered less noble pursuit and more navel gazing. But why is everyone who blogs about beer painted with the same brush of disdain?
Granted, since I blog about beer and have gone to two of three beer blogger conventions and am part of the Los Angeles blogger group makes me a little touchy on the subject because I am being stereotyped along with everyone else. I have the mentality of a newspaper that publishes something slightly anti-Republican and gets slapped with the “lamestream” media tag.
Part of the problem lies with people who think that beer snobs and beer bloggers are one in the same. Whereas in my interactions with bloggers most are of the geeky Comic-Con variety and not the beer whale hunting, non pilsner drinking up turned nose stripe. So that is an issue that beer bloggers are going to have to tackle in the future. How to tell the origin story of beer bloggers and show that we are a fun lot to have a beer with.
Another part of the puzzle is an inherited problem from doing blogs. They are not a business. They are a passion. And usually a one person passion at that. Imagine writing a newspaper article or magazine piece without any editorial assistance. Of course errors are going to happen. There are probably enough grammatical issues on my blog alone to raise E.B. White from the dead and then put him back in his coffin. Until there is a HuffPost of craft beer, this will remain. Again, we bloggers need to either ‘fess up to our literary shortcomings or sell it as what makes our blog a personal and honest stop on the ale trail.
The one thing that I think will really break the logjam is that if a really wide variety of people start, continue or change the focus of their blogs to topics dear to their heart. Be it beer cocktails, women and beer, beer in out of way spots in the U.S., sports and beer or writing just about Belgian beers. This will break the mold and force readers and commenters to re-think what a beer blog is supposed to be.
Even if nothing changed, there are a wide variety of beer blogs out there today that need to be critiqued on a blog by blog basis and not just rejected out of hand. You wouldn’t review a movie you hadn’t seen and the same applies to craft beer blogs.
The Firkin for August 2012
Earlier this month tickets went on sale for this year’s edition of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). It did not go 100% well, to put it mildly. Many people did not get tickets and scalping seems to have become more prevalent. Now that the furor and anger has been vented and died down, it is time to figure out how to make this ticketing for GABF work better. This will mean that all sides of the equation learn to accept and compromise and make changes accordingly. Not something that Americans are really known for but here goes….
1. Festival Organizers – You need to manage expectations and get your story across. I know that sounds political but you need to play offense and defense in the world of PR. That is how you win games. You can’t play one and forget the other. You need to let the entire craft beer world know that tickets are becoming a more and more valuable commodity with each passing year and that despite best efforts (and you better be making a best effort) there is only so much space that you can cram beer lovers into and have an enjoyable festival. This needs to be talked about ALL YEAR LONG.
Then if something goes wrong make a good faith effort to fix it and let people know that you are trying. Staying silent only allows for the weirdo conspiracy theories to race around the internet unchecked like a Higgs-Bosun in Switzerland. Most people who go to GABF simply do not understand the logistical complexity of running this event. The world needs to know how many man (and woman) hours it takes to make GABF a reality. Let them know what you do well and what you are trying to fix.
Next, you have to change the month tickets are sold or accept that people will buy plane tickets and secure hotel accommodations before tickets go on sale and you have to provide easy access to options for those people who cannot get into the festival. The first step would be two or three page PDF of everything else craft beer related you can do in Denver that weekend, which is A LOT. Some customers are too thick or too lazy to do research. Provide it and they might not fire off an angry Facebook post. Don’t leave it to me or other Facebook posters to tell people to go to Denver anyway. You have the reach and knowledge of the area to promote craft beer culture in Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder to all those without festival tickets. Use that opportunity. Don’t just say “Sorry” and leave it at that.
DO NOT SIDE WITH TICKETMASTER either by not saying anything or being positive about them. No one in America likes Ticketmaster. They may have to be used for such big events because no one else has the bandwidth to handle such large ticket sales but you need to tell the craft beer geeks that you are grudgingly using them. Ticketmaster doesn’t care what anyone says or they would have changed their onerous pricing and become a better corporate citizen by now. Seriously, they will not pass up the opportunity to gouge more fees. You can feel free to call them every name in the book. I would say (again, all year long) that “unfortunately Ticketmaster is the only company that can provide ticketing services for such a large gathering and as you can see with what happened in 2012 they screwed up and will probably screw up again in 2013. But we have no viable option, imagine a smaller company (even with the best intentions) trying to handle this load if Ticketmaster can’t”
Now that everyone is venting at Ticketmaster you need to use that consumer voice and wring some changes from Ticketmaster and sites like E-Bay and StubHub where these tickets can be tracked. The best way is to do what airlines do. No transfer of tickets. You have to put down the name(s) of those attending and make changing that name too difficult either mechanically or financially to stop people from doing it. Keep the (4) ticket maximum and match ID’s to tickets at the door. The amount of people who will be pissed off about this will be smaller than the ones who can’t get tickets because of scalpers.
Lastly, yell at StubHub and E-Bay for selling scalper prices. Do it a lot and then do it more. Call them worse things than I saw being directed towards you on your Facebook page. Join the rabble in calling for their heads. Then bar scalpers from the convention center. That may cost money in security but if you toss one scalper out and one person sees it then you have re-established your street cred.
2. The Festival Goer. First and foremost, you have to realize that craft beer is huge. And adjust accordingly. Stop talking about the “good old days” when you just happened to walk in to the convention center and talked with Sam Calagione and Garret Oliver and Tomme Arthur for an hour over Wesvletern 12 and had your choice of whatever beer you wanted with no lines at all. Now get in the time machine and come back to the present day. Things are different now. Should I say it again? There is limited space and more and more craft beer drinkers. The trend each year has been faster sell out times. You may not be able to attend every year.
Secondly, do not buy from the scalpers. I see the protests on the interwebs but you know most of the scalped tickets will probably sell. If the scalpers have to take a loss, they won’t scalp. You think that craft beer consumers would understand this concept by now what with Black Tuesday and Kate the Great and other Dark Lord being problems every year. But apparently the lesson those uber rare beers has taught hasn’t taken hold. Oh, and you need to protest StubHub and E-Bay too.
Lastly, don’t behave like asshats once in the festival. Cut the yelling if someone drops a glass. You should learn something from the fact that plastic glasses are the norm. You are telling the organizers how to treat you. And then you get angry when they treat you bad. How about showing the organizers of GABF that you are a classy, craft beer loving crowd that doesn’t take to service fees and giant corporations and not some obscenity spewing yokel who should have a sippy cup and a bib. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have fun but if the great beer isn’t fun enough, then why are you in Denver? You can get hammered for a much smaller amount of money. Buy a case of Natty Light and go crazy at home.
These suggestions may be harsh but I think it is high time some tweaks and major changes are made to keep this great festival going strong in the future.
The Firkin for March 2012
Let’s talk economics. Specifically, supply & demand. And lets start with the supply side before trickling down to demand. I fear (from comments on blogs) that craft beer consumers and bloggers tend to think that this is an easily solved problem. If only there was more of Beer A brewed, then an equilibrium will be reached. And the craziness that surrounds some of these special release beers would diminish.
But supply cannot be magically increased to demand. There are no Keebler beer elves. It requires capital expenditures for mash tuns and ingredients and more brewing space. And it also requires more time. Either from the brewer already there or from new employees. Or you could stop brewing the other beers in the line-up and just pump out gallon after gallon of the famous beer. Option 1 is a hard business choice to make and Option 2 is, in my opinion, incredibly stupid because our whole craft beer revolution is based on choice from a wide selection. And both options will probably make the beer snobs feel that the beer isn’t special anymore because it now comes from a “large” (read:evil) brewery and it is now being drunk by the masses which lowers the “cool” factor.
And I am not even going to go into the issue of whether or not a brewery is looking for that special release exposure and wouldn’t make more if they could because again I do not dare care to stifle the creative impulse because that is what got us into this fine (and delicious) mess.
But since supply is perpetually intertwined with demand, is there a way to dim the fervor and acquisitional frenzy without damaging the brand name? I think that would be even harder to accomplish then brewing around the clock. You can’t tell someone not to want to have Special Beer B or C. They are great beers and beer lovers everywhere should be free to be fans of whatever beers they want to be. (Short of buying illegally on E-Bay. Justify it all you want, it is doubly illegal)
So really, the only solution that I see and I am hopeful that it can happen, is to have more and more breweries, brewing more and more beers. So that people in any city will be so awash in craft beer that the special releases will have cachet but there will be so many choices that if you miss one this week, the next week(s) will bring another fantastic beer. Maybe we can get to a point where there are hundreds of uber-special, BeerAdvocate praised, Beer snob desired beers.
Or we could all not get so worked up over one beer when there are SO MANY to drink.
The Firkin for October 2011
I was inspired by the home brew column of Beer Advocate (the magazine) written by Drew Beechum about keeping it simple in beer recipes and I have taken it a step further to the professional side of things.
(I apologize in advance if I sound like Andy Rooney in this post but the topic this month lends itself to that tone of voice.)
So what’s the deal with all these strange ingredients in craft beer? What happened to plain old malt, hops, yeast and water?
Hear me out. I am all for experimentation. Add lemongrass, put it into a wine barrel and use an heirloom hop. Cool. Let me have a glass. I certainly do not want to return to the days of monoculture beer. But recent Bruery beers have pushed past my level of disbelief. (Sorry to pick on you Bruery, if it is any consolation, Humulus Wet is one of the top three beers I have had this year)
I mentioned in an earlier post this month that Dogfish and The Bruery got together and added all level of new Japanese ingredients to their earthquake relief beer. Then the Bruery creates Birra Basta with roasted zucchini used in the mash, and fennel seeds, lemon peel, and Spanish cedar in the fermentor. This is on top of their Salt of the Earth gose(?) that had truffle oil in it.
I know that I don’t have to buy it if I don’t want to. And I know that by posting about it, I am bringing more attention to them. But…
There are three issues that arise for me when yet another oddball beer comes down the pike. And I will repeat, I do not want to discourage “goin’ crazy” but rather taking a deep breath before deciding to “go crazy” because which beer that I enjoy got pushed out of the schedule to make room for fenugreek or hatch peppers? Many craft breweries are running at maximum capacity so to produce these beers means another beer gets a smaller batch or brewed later.
Secondly, it stokes the obsessive collector disease that causes people to temporarily lose their sanity in pursuit of a rare beer. Need I say Founders and a certain stout?
Third, the unwashed heathens who still don’t drink craft beer are not gonna jump in at the deepest end. I appreciate that I am in a consumer minority and that I am reaping the benefit of some of these experimental beers but if we want to get more and more people excited about what we are excited about then we need more beers that allow entrance to our club and not scare them away.
Leave the running and screaming for Halloween movies.
Session # 56
Here is the topic for this month…from Tale of the Ale
Thanks to the big boys
“What I ‘m looking for is this. Most of us that write about beer do so with the small independent brewery in mind. Often it is along the lines of Micro brew = Good and Macro brew, anything brewed by the large multinationals is evil and should be destroyed. Well I don’t agree with that, though there may be some that are a little evil….
Anyway I want people to pick a large brewery or corporation that owns a lot of breweries. There are many to chose from. Give thanks to them for something they have done. Maybe they produce a beer you do actually like. Maybe they do great things for the cause of beer in general even if their beer is bland and tasteless but enjoyed by millions every day.
If you honestly have nothing good to say about a large brewer, then make something up. Some satire might be nice, It will be a Friday after all.
So remember, October 7th is a celebration of our big mega breweries for the work that they do.”
After reading the assignment, a song lyric (probably mis-remembered) popped into my head. “..what are they good for, absolutely nothing”. Then of course, “Say it again”.
Now on this very blog, I told people not to be scared of Goose Island being sold. I have defended the Quality Control of the watered down lager that the mega-corporations shill. And yes, the BMC do donate scads of money to charity.
But to me, the “big boys” are not part of the brewing community that I know. They are a large amorphous blob that could be in any industry. They could be making fire alarms or fig newtons. They long ago gave up crafting beer and now produce an industrial product.
So I might as well, say nice things about Wal-Mart or ConAgra or Bank of America in this session. They are as much “beer” as ABInBev or MillerCoors. Or I could talk about brewing’s actual big companies like Stone or Sierra Nevada.
But the spirit of the topic is to play nice, so I say this to all the Omnicorp’s and MegaBig Companies of the world who cater to the lowest common denominator, “Thanks for not caring. Thanks for creating such a huge market for quality. Thanks for not responding to shifts in consumer taste by making something even remotely good. And to the BMC specifically, keep making your funny little commercials instead of beer.”
The Firkin for September 2011
Above is the third of three new logos designed for me by Charissa Santos. If you like the look of it, check out her site HEREstory on the black market for craft beer.
What caught my attention were the last two paragraphs, “Last September, Russian River released Framboise for a Cure, a raspberry-flavored beer that it sold for $12 per bottle to raise money for a local breast cancer treatment center. The beer sold out in a day, and soon somebody sold a bottle on eBay for $400. Then someone else put one up for sale. “We contacted that person,” Cilurzo says, “and we said, ‘This is absolutely ridiculous, because we donated 100 percent of this for charity.’”
The seller didn’t budge. “The guy said, ‘I have to support my habit somehow.’ ” Not heroin or cocaine. He meant craft beer.”
I do not think that I am going out on a limb to say that this guy will not be served good beer in the afterlife and that he forfeited ALL of his good karma as well.
Anyone who thinks that working the e-bay alcohol sale loophole to their benefit need to be stopped. And it shouldn’t fall onto a brewer to scour the listings and devise strategies to get a limited amount of beer to the maximum amount of people. E-Bay needs to forbid the selling of beer unless it is done by the brewery or the brewery’s distributor. Or if they wanted to go all “Leverage” on these sellers, they could allow the sale to go through but divert all but the original cost of the beer to the intended charity. Do that enough and people will stop.
But this wink-wink “collectible” rule would only benefit these sellers if there are people buying. So. Here is my plea to all those in the beer world who are dying to try the “it” beer of the moment. STOP! Get on the internet, befriend people in other parts of the country and trade with them if you cannot live without Pliny the Younger or Black Tuesday.
Yes, those are excellent beers but American in 2011 is filled with great beer everywhere and I will bet that the fresh beer at your local will be BETTER than a PtY of dubious provenance. And if that doesn’t halt your craving then fly out to California or to Indiana or Minnesota and get the beer there. If you are buying overpriced beer, then a plane ticket isn’t that much more expensive.
The upshot of this? I want the brewers brewing. Not playing police.
The Firkin for August 2011
In my internet beer travels I found this little nugget from the uniquely named Building International Coalitions Through Beer and Pavement:
“(T)en things geeks, nerds, snobs, and connoisseurs do that makes it hard to take their advice and opinions on beer and indie rock seriously.”
I won’t re-print the list here because what I want to speak about is the role of of the geek, nerd and snobs of the craft beer world and why they shouldn’t be lumped together. Follow the LINK for the clever list and a strong closer.
Now that you are back, not to go all Lion King here, but there is a Circle of Life. In almost every hobby and passion and business. And the craft beer industry is no different. You may despise the hyena (I’ll let you decide which beer people fit that bill) but they are a link in the chain.
So we are all important. Now what? What needs to be recognized by us devotees of the craft beer, is which category do we personally fall into? Because a beer geek needs to whip up excitement amongst those new to full flavored beer and a beer snob needs to stay as far away from the newbies as possible.
And I do not say that to demean the beer snobs. They have a purpose here on earth too. They critique with more barbed words and create an expectation that brewers and bars have to meet. They have the crucial ability to find faults that might be missed by others.
To switch movies and go to the High Fidelity analogy, we need the geeks outside getting people in the store, the connoisseurs inside the store guiding people to great choices and the snobs in the back finding the gems for the store to sell. We need all the different levels working in the roles where their individual skills are used the best.
So take a moment. Re-read the list. Are you a snob? Or are you a geek? Whatever “house” you belong to, remember that it’s about promoting craft beer to more people not scaring them away.