Month: June 2009

The Shaker Pint Must Die…

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The Twitterization of the blogosphere (two terrible words), mixed with a great deal of travel and paying work, have indirectly led to a dearth of postings here (1 in a month). So while I consider my love of lager beer, my interest in the Midwest, and take stock of my recent travels to Wisconsin, Illinois, and DC, I thought I’d simply drop this thought.

In the next issue of BeerAdvocate Magazine I call for the death of the Shaker pint. And while I’ll leave the details of that particular rant to the next issue, I’ve come up with an additional reason that brewers, and more specifically bars and tavern owners, should consider dumping their boring collections of stackable drinking vessel widgets. They cheat the bar owner out of profits. I wrote in BA about how the Shaker cheats consumers out of as much as 2-4 ounces of beer, depending upon the pour. And while this serves to put extra money in the pockets of bar owners, many aren’t trying to use the ubiquitous pint glass to knowingly cheat their customers. But we’ve all seen the problem with the Shaker pint, where even the most careful bartender experiences some beer spillage while pouring pints. Various industry sources suggest that beer spillage results in somewhere between 5 to 20-percent loss per keg, a huge cost loss for the bar owner. Often the loss is due to inexperienced or poorly trained staff who simply leave the tap open until enough beer has spilled out of the pint to leave it filled. Other times the system’s temperature or gas system isn’t properly calibrated. Other times still, bartenders are busy or distracted. Many of these problems could be alleviated or at least reduced with the death of the pint glass, especially where bar owners and beer pourers actually attempt to serve a 15 or (gasp) 16-ounce pint, with the introduction of differently sized glassware. Take for example the Belgians, those merry brewers and bar owners who embrace oversized (and often diverse) glassware that usually allow ample room for a full pour and (gasp again) an actual head on the beer. German beer glasses also often have the half or full liter marker several inches below the rim of the glass, allowing for a full pour and head. And while these glasses may not stack particularly well, you don’t see a lot of beer (and profits) going to waste either.

And while I understand this to be an oversimplification of the issues involved (space, free glassware, dish washing, etc), it’s something that is not often discussed as we sling Shaker after boring Shaker across the bar. That should change.

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American Craft Beer Hegemony

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Walk into a bar in Copenhagen’s trendy Nørrebro neighborhood and one expects to find the occasional Danish craft beer alongside the standard Carlsberg and Tuborg offerings. In Tokyo, Kirin and Asahi mainly go over the bar, while Shanghai bars offer only Tsingtao and Snow. So no one would blame a visitor for double-taking at bottles and taps of Brooklyn Lager and Great Divide’s Oak Aged Yeti.

For a country that has never possessed much of a discernible brewing heritage, America has taken a leading role in exporting its nascent beer culture around the world. With the help of brewing trade groups, the federal government, and a band of curious American and foreign brewers, American-style craft beer can now be enjoyed in bars from Stockholm to Manila. And while this growing sphere of influence is good news for small American brewers, its expansion has created an unexpected identity crisis in the world’s richest brewing cultures.

The efforts of the Brewers Association, financially supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, has been at the heart of the confluence of events leading to the expanding global reach of craft beer. Begun in 2004, the Export Development Program helps American craft brewers educate international markets about their products and aids in distribution efforts abroad. Having completed its fifth year, the EDP assists Americans in exporting more than 30,000 barrels of beer to more than a dozen countries in Europe and Asia.

Beyond the official export efforts, a quiet confluence of events has helped expose the world to the new American way of beer. American brewers started plying their trades abroad, in Denmark, Italy, Japan, and beyond, further expanding the reach of the new U.S. brewing approach. Craft beer inspired a new generation of foreign brewers, in places such as Scotland, Italy, Scandinavia, and Australia, to start their own breweries based on American models. Add in a new generation of global beer geeks, including some influential and rabid Scandinavian raters, and a modest but expanding international market for big-flavored American beers developed.

These events have resulted in some unexpected and fundamental changes in the traditional beer world. While the growth of new American-style craft breweries in places such as Denmark and Italy, with their relatively prosaic lager brewing histories, was welcomed news, the movement’s reverberations have been particularly acute in countries with deeper brewing traditions. Reeling from the effects of globalization, small brewers across Belgium, Britain, and Germany began to see their market shares shrink as bigger players consolidated and swallowed their customers then their breweries. Younger drinkers abandoned traditional beers for the safety of bland pints of lager. In these difficult times, the success of better beer in America caught the eye of some distressed European brewers.

Faced with possible extinction, a pionerring group of Belgian brewers in particular looked to America for help. Brewers including Cantillon, De Proef, and Fantome, struck deals with American importers and suddenly saw pallets of their handcrafted beers leaving for long trips abroad. In return, hoards of American beer tourists started showing up at their favorite brewery’s doorsteps. In an unanticipated turn, Belgian brewers also realized there was money to be made in playing to the radical American palate. Importer B.United convinced the Brasserie d’Achouffe to make an unusual hybrid beer, called Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel, for the American market. Other breweries followed, resulting in joint efforts with their U.S. counterparts and the birth of the collaboration beer era. Completing the circle of America’s expanding beer influence, the next wave has seen the rise of extreme breweries in Belgium, such as Picobrouwerij Alvinne and De Struise Brouwers.

Small European brewers today find themselves in a tenuous position in a quickly changing marketplace. As guardians of deep and honored brewing heritages, the task of protecting historic styles from the encroaching American beer geek palate will grow increasingly difficult. To date, these breweries have managed well the task of delicately balancing adaptation and innovation with the traditions that built their brewing reputations. In maintaining this equilibrium, we can only hope they can defend their valuable beer cultures and brewing traditions against the forces of dilution.

–Article appeared in Issue 28 of BeerAdvocate Magazine.

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