Living in Cambridge has its perks, including access to nearby Harvard University and its core of interesting programming. In between looking up the next Harvard hockey game and perusing the David Brooks lecture, I came across this unexpected and unusual gem that I have not seen elsewhere on the web.
“Man and microbe: Exotic ales since the birth of civilization.”
Hosted by the Microbial Sciences Initiative (somebody knows how to party), the event is free and open to the public but requires tickets, which go on sale today (1/19) at noon. The event will be held at 5pm on February 2 (the day before the Extreme Beer Festival here in Boston). Sadly, I cannot attend but I imagine it will be a good time. A beer tasting follows the seminar.
Sam’s event looks to be a touch more interesting than the next seminar, “Recent developments in extracellular electron transport and electromicrobiology”, but perhaps less interesting than “Dinosaurs, martians and mammals: Nihilistic thoughts on the origin of virulence.” Now that’s a title.
Available by phone (617-496-2222) and internet (http://www.boxoffice.harvard.edu) for a fee. Tickets can also be picked up in person at the Harvard Box Office (Holyoke Ctr.).
Ever wonder what it takes to piss off a monk? Try talking to him about eBay.
For nearly 175 years, the pious monks of Westvleteren in the western Belgian Poperinge hop region have quietly gone about brewing what have become some of the world’s most heralded and sought after beers. Without trying, the monks scored the twin crowns of world’s best beer on both BeerAdvocate and RateBeer. The monks now found themselves in an enviable situation, with adoring fans across the globe pining for their beers. Problem is the monks don’t make beer to maximize profits, instead producing only enough to support their religious order and charitable goals. As the public clamor for Westvleteren’s beers grew, the monks had to fight off an unauthorized global trade of their beers, including the highly desired Westvleteren 12, with bottles selling for hundreds of dollars on-line.
After years of fighting, the monks have finally given in and agreed to release a small amount of beer for foreign export. Pricing of the specialty two packs is not yet known but expect it won’t be cheap.
In Minneapolis, the Surly Brewing Company is dealing with its own scarcity value issues. Following the release of its popular Darkness Russian Imperial Stout, the brewery’s supply sold through in a near instant. When it hit the market, a local liquor store seized an opportunity to more than double the price of the 750-milliliter bottle to $37. One local Minnesota website likened this to scalping a concert ticket at an exorbitant price. The brewery expressed disappointment at the pricing, while the store’s owner cited capitalism and market demand as a justification for the price.
This pricing situation is hardly unique to Surly and Westvleteren and occurs with frequency across the country. So what is behind this insanity? Are retailers price gouging or just reacting to the fact that market demand far exceeds supply and are pricing accordingly? It seems everyone has a different view.
Now to be sure, the breweries themselves often court this sort of fanatical behavior. Surly hosts the popular Darkness Day at the brewery, a celebration and public release party where hard core beer geeks share hundreds of hard-to-find beers from around the world. The breweries enjoy the free PR they receive from such events, not to mention they often charge a hefty sum for their specialty beers ($18 for a bottle of Darkness at the brewery).
While new to the beer world, issues of scarcity value and pricing are nothing new to the wine industry, where Garagista winemakers produce tiny amounts of wine and charge massive premiums. The irony is that those who study wine economics know something beer drinkers have yet to appreciate: the hype and inflated prices don’t reflect the inherently superior quality of these scarce offerings. Wine scholars have demonstrated in blind tastings that people cannot tell the difference between expensive wines and less costly products and on the whole they actually prefer the characters of the cheaper wines but their views change when consumers know the bottle’s price.
The same principle inevitably applies to the beer world. While Surly Darkness and Westvleteren 12 are solid beers, when sampled in a blind test they are certainly not worth double or quadruple the price of Alesmith Speedway Stout or St. Bernardus Abt 12.
Cultism is giving beer a bad name and is driving a wedge between brewers, beer lovers, and a certain class of scarcity-seeking tickers. One bottle of 2007 Surly Darkness recently sold on eBay for $475. That must make the brewers simultaneously cringe and seethe with jealousy.
The unusual thing is that in contrast to antiques or rare stamps, the scarcity value of beer is artificial in nature as breweries can simply brew more of a particular beer or distribute it more widely. The fanaticism is not driven by marketing or empirical flavor but by the cult itself. But even monks benefit from the hype.
–Article appeared in Issue 59 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.
Oktoberfest is an unavoidable tourist trap of a beer drinking holiday in much of the world, with perhaps no greater faux revelry than in the United States. With no ties to any continental or European history or tradition, bars simply stock up on some half-liters (often plastic, ugh), some white and blue checked flags, and maybe even an oompah band, and they’ve got instant fest-in-a-box. Zum what?
And despite being one of the most popular seasonal beer drinking occasions, American brewers sure do make some shitty Oktoberfests. While giving a required nod towards the tradition of Germany, many so-called American versions of this historic style, their resulting beers fall so wide of the mark as to be unrecognizable. Often cast as ales, the trademark smoothness imparted by extended cold conditioning is replaced for a ubiquitous and yawn inducing fruit character. For many U.S. crafts, Oktoberfest beers also just mean a lightly red-hued beer, with no toasted or bready malt character, and little to no soft and subtle beauty. Often brewed without the addition of German or Euro malts or noble hops, the beers offer little if anything beyond the chance to slap an Oktoberfest label on the bottle and score some easy seasonal sales.
In the last decade, Americans have grown quite adept at celebrating if not quite replicating Belgian beer culture, with pubs and restaurants dedicated to all things Flemish and Wallonian. With classy and well-appointed gastropubs popping up in cities throughout America, the future of the Belgian beer bar seems undeniable. These upscale, Belgian themed establishments offer dozens of characterful and diverse styles, distinctive and well-presented glassware, and rough approximations of traditional pub fare. Belgian brewers often marvel at how well-established their nation’s beer culture is here. Between these dedicated pubs and the wide varieties of Lambics, Tripels, and Witbiers available at even your corner packie, Belgian beer culture is arguably more popular now in the United States than in its home country.
The same cannot be said of poor old Deutschland. While the development of the United States market has saved many traditional Belgian beers from extinction, German imports into the country have stagnated. Sure, we’ve got a handful of Hofbrauhaus knock-offs popping up around the country, but few bars let alone American craft breweries look to Germany for inspiration and great beers.
That brings us back to the saddest German beer story of them all: Oktoberfest. Perhaps the world’s quintessential and most iconic beer event, the original beer festival now largely masquerades as a beer selling bonanza for massive, foreign owned corporate behemoths. While some glorious, rich, toasted and malty beers still exist in Germany, they are increasingly difficult to find, having been replaced at the fest either by lighter colored facsimiles or just plain Helles beer.
Oktoberfest is undoubtedly one of the most enticing and saleable beer drinking occasions on the global beer calendar and its charms are appreciated across the world. Despite its obvious appeal, brewers, bar owners, and consumers often just treat it as a German Cinco de Mayo, an excuse to eat vaguely foreign food and get trashed, with a little polka mixed in. German beer culture deserves better and it’s time to start treating traditional German brewing styles with respect and not just as novelty.
That leaves us here in the states with a task ahead of us. As a beer loving nation dedicated to preserving and promoting great and classic beer styles from around the globe, however obscure (Gose anyone?), we need to step up and help resurrect Oktoberfest beer. To date, we’ve sufficed with the production of bland, traditionless Autumn or Harvest Ales posing as Oktoberfests.
-Article appeared in Issue 57 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.
We have a language problem in the world of beer. I’m not talking about our over-use of four-letter words or an inability to speak after too many pints. Instead, we lack a cohesive and agreed upon central terms for discussing our shared are of passion.
Let’s start with the term whose popularity continues to grow every day, namely craft beer. Brewers, distributors, writers, and industry insiders have been engaged in a long-standing battle over what to call the flavorful, colorful, characterful beers we all enjoy. As with defining pornography, we know it when we see it, or in the case of beer, also taste it. But we still don’t quite know what to call it. Do we define what constitutes a craft beer or just a craft brewer? Can a big brewer (macro? Behemoth? International conglomerate?) make a craft beer? In terms of flavor, is Blue Moon by Coors so different from dozens of other average witbiers made by smaller brewers? Should we instead use the term better beer, and if so, better than what? Anything brewed by the big brewers? Nowadays, even the Boston Beer Company is derided by many beer geeks as being too big, so that hardly seems appropriate.
Having grown up with the term microbrew, many seem loathe to let go of this iconic word and the related imagery of beer made in tiny, handcrafted batches. While many small breweries still operate at least in part by hand, the days of handcrafted beer belong to a different, quickly disappearing era, having been supplanted by much welcomed automation and greater control. And with many once small breweries now producing tens or hundreds of thousands of barrels per year and distributing beer from Denmark to Japan, the micro designation is an anachronism if not a myth.
Beyond these big picture terms, the creativity of brewers also continues to create new issues and areas of confusion. In the last two years, beer geeks and brewers from coast to coast have waged a nerdy battle over what to call dark beers that display strong hop characters without the bite and flavor of roasted malts. Depending upon which viewpoint you subscribe to, you might tend to call such beers Black IPA, India Black Ale, or Cascadian Dark Ale. With a somewhat murky history, either having first been made by the late Greg Noonan at the Vermont Pub & Brewery or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest or Britain, there is no agreement over what such beers should be called. It does, however, seem a bit ridiculous to call a dark beer with no connection to the sub-continent an India or pale ale.
Perhaps the most troubling and recent example of our parlance problems comes with the American use of the British-based session beer moniker. As discussed in a recent issue, beer cultures are largely not transferable between countries and that’s a good thing. You shouldn’t expect to find a vibrant Belgian beer culture in Cleveland just as San Diego’s thriving beer scene can’t be recreated in Tokyo. While pursuing the goal of lower alcohol yet flavorful beers is a very worthy goal, trying to cross-apply the session label just doesn’t work in the states.
Even the otherwise appropriately named nano-breweries have come under some scrutiny. Just how small does a brewery have to be to qualify as a nano? I’ve recently started seeing the term pico-brewery pop up, denoting something even smaller than a nano, if that was possible. I’m not sure if this involves beer made by boiling the mash in a microwave but it boggles the mind.
As a beer writer, I’ve been struggling with these language issues for a long time, usually with little to no results to show for it. While we generally agree on what we’re discussing, defining these beer-related concepts remains a difficult task. Maybe you’ll figure out the whole craft beer language debate over your next pint.
Then we can get started on gastropubs.
-Article appeared in Issue 55 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.
There have been a flurry of blog posts this week decrying the recent release of the Oxford Beer Companion, edited by Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery. As part of this near-encyclopedic series, the publication is being touted as “[t]he first major reference work to investigate the history and vast scope of beer. The Oxford Companion to Beer features more than 1,100 A-Z entries written by 166 of the world’s most prominent beer experts.”
While much of the initial press has been duly positive, wider distribution of the book has led to a number of grumbles from some influential and consequential circles, including Ron Pattinson, Jeff Alworth, and Martyn Cornell, the latter of which called the book a “dreadful disaster.” Even Alan at A Good Beer Blog has gotten into the criticism game, having gone so far as to set up a wiki to catalog the Oxford Beer Companion’s mistakes. I wonder if he has seen that the Oxford University press is selectively pulling quotes from his website in order to make it seem as if he has positively reviewed the book. It’s also more than a little embarrassing that the Oxford University Press runs a long review quote from one of the contributing authors, which of course, breathlessly praises the book as “[t]he most essential beer book you can buy.”
I haven’t seen the book but for a quick peek at the Great American Beer Festival’s bookstore and am not rushing to dump $65 on the time anytime soon, but the growing criticism of the text is sort of a fascinating old versus new versus old world publishing debate. The criticisms are not insubstantial in their merits, including the continued and unfortunate repetition of pernicious beer myths ranging from the origins of porter to the alcohol levels in IPA’s and several more. Editing a 1100 entry book is certainly no easy task. But some of these cited mistakes would’ve been easy to spot (I tried to avoid them myself in Great American Craft Beer). And the Press really has to stop using that damned fake Ben Franklin beer quote to promote a book that says it likely never happened, except where the book suggests he may have said it.
Putting aside the specific criticisms (as I haven’t read the book), I am left with a thought that has often kicked around in my head in recent years: American beer writers do a terrible job of writing beer history and perhaps have no business doing it. Frankly, nearly every beer writer does a terrible job of writing about the history of the beverage, whether it be generally speaking, the origins and provenance of a style or brand, or even about the development of craft beer in recent years. Because writing about history requires research, not the mere repetition of questionable nuggets from Wikipedia or other beer writers. If you haven’t logged hours digging through dusty newspapers in a library or scoured archives at a brewing academy, it’s probably best to avoid writing about history. As a young beer writer, I certainly participated in my fair share of the reiterative beer writer dark arts. But we didn’t know better and just took the work of our writing elders at face value. Writers such as Ron, Martyn, and others showed us the folly of such poor work.
So while I likely won’t comment much on the Oxford Beer Companion, I wonder what its contributors were thinking in crafting some of these errant passages and whether they thought the book was a good idea in the first place. If the errors keep coming at the quick clip of this week, it’s a question someone clearly didn’t bother to ask along the way. As purveyors of communications about beer, we should strive to do much better in the future.
Tags: Ben Franklin and Beer
Give and Take…