Beer Soup
A Bitches Brew
Posted August 30, 2010 1 Comment | Post a Comment
There are people who feel at home referring to Miles Davis by his first name, but I am not one of them. When I was growing up, my parents played white people jazz at home—Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck—and it never really occurred to me that jazz wasn’t an indigenous white musical form.
Imagine, then, what I made of Bitches Brew on first hearing. Miles Davis’ breakout album came out the same year I went to college. Its discordant strains and rhythms poured out of a dorm room on the next floor, out of which also floated wisps of odd-smelling smoke from time to time.
Wouldn’t it be satisfying to say that I “got” that music when I heard it in the dormitory corridor, that my inner hipster revealed herself? But the uncool truth is that I thought it was absolutely dreadful. Even though Miles Davis’ earlier albums were revelations when I finally gave them a chance some time later, Bitches Brew set my teeth on edge 40 years ago and it still does.
So, can I dislike a landmark jazz recording, but still appreciate a beer it inspired? Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione has created a beer to mark the 40th anniversary of the release of Bitches Brew. Like the album, it is a fusion: but whereas the music blends elements of jazz with threads of rock and what would become funk, the beer is a literal fusion of two contrasting beers, an imperial stout and a honey beer.
Sam’s creation—and, unlike the case with Mr. Davis, I am on first name terms with Mr. Calagione—is avant garde, or “off-centered,” as he would put it, but it is not discordant in the manner of its namesake. This particular brew doesn’t hit an off note, and might just creep up on you in a silent way.
My Dark Side
Posted August 18, 2010 7 Comments | Post a Comment
Just when you think things can’t get any goofier, Texas comes through. Generous people, great food, a dynamite music culture, but the institutions of government beggar belief—and this is according to my Texas friends. The recent Texas Bored of Education’s rulings on science and history curricula win its majority members coveted spots in my personal Flat Earthers’ Hall of Fame.
And now the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has made my day, reviving my hopes that I can carve out a reputation as mad, bad and dangerous to know. They have banned the magazine I edit from all their prison systems.
This is not a first, and, frankly, Texas has a lot to live up to. Five years ago, an unfortunate subscriber to All About Beer Magazine got locked up in Florida. The laser-sharp team from the Florida Department of Corrections swooped on the poor fellow’s mail and barred the magazine on two grounds: “(2)(c) It depicts or describes procedures for the brewing of alcoholic beverages, or the manufacture of drugs or other intoxicants,” and “(2)(k) It otherwise presents a threat to the security, good order, or discipline of the correctional system or the safety of any person.”
The Department’s Literature Committee reviewed the magazine—possibly the only literary body that has ever done so—and gave their verdict in all caps: SECURITY THREAT.
And the letter was signed by Jeb Bush. Beat that, Texas!
The Lone Star State banned the mag for similar reasons, although without the benefit of a literature committee. An ‘x’ in a box identified our offense: “Publication contains information regarding the manufacture of explosives, weapons or drugs.” Yes, there we are, a magazine on beer, with our close pals: bombs, guns and crack.
Then, in the Remarks section, the specific concern read: “Page 82 contains detailed information on the manufacturing of alcohol.” Here is an excerpt from the incriminating page, written by our rabble-rousing homebrewer, K. Florian Klemp:
Steep 0.5# black patent or carafa I and 1.0# 60L or caramunich® III malt as you would for any extract brew, add water and 5.0# of Munich or amber malt extract to get 3.5 gallons of wort. Bring to a boil and add 1 oz of East Kent Goldings hops, boil for 20 minutes and add Irish moss. Boil for another 20 minutes and add 0.5 oz of Willamette hops and turn off the heat. Add 2 lbs of buckwheat honey and steep for 5 minutes. Chill, add to your fermenter and pitch English or American ale yeast.
If an inmate has never brewed beer, he will be no closer to doing so after reading this paragraph. And if he already understands brewing fundamentals, this will only make him long for a good supply of East Kent Goldings to spice up the little Cheerio-fueled fermentation project he already has going under his bunk.
Beer is not an explosive, a weapon or a drug. It’s just one of many things that inmates are not allowed to experience while they are guests of the state. It may cause the subscriber some sadness to read about something he cannot have behind bars, but I can’t help but suspect that beer gets singled out for special treatment. An understanding of aeronautics might conceivably contribute to a prison break, but I’ll bet you the powers that be don’t ban Hang Gliding Magazine.
Not Such a Long Shot
Posted July 15, 2010 1 Comment | Post a Comment
Earlier this month, I was fortunate to be invited back to Boston to judge the final round of this year’s LongShot contest. Starting in 1996, Boston Beer has sponsored this competition to select three homebrewed beers—two from the general public and one from Boston Beer employees. The winning brewers are announced at the Great American Beer Festival, and their beers are scaled up for production by the brewery and released as a special variety pack in the spring.
The number of public entries easily tops 1,000 each year. Earlier this year, several regional heats narrowed the 2010 candidates to nine beers. At 10 a.m. on the appointed day, seven beer scribes and Boston Beer founder Jim Koch met to determine the four finalists and, from those, the two winners.
This year, the competition organizers had encouraged entrants to submit beers that would fall into the BJCP Category 23, “explicitly a catch-all category for any beer that does not fit into an existing style category. No beer is ever ‘out of style’ in this category, unless it fits elsewhere.”
The homebrewing community rose to the challenge, as usual, submitting beers that were both novel and drinkable—and it’s hard to be both. Exotic fruits, strange infusions, twisted techniques, all in the service of producing enjoyable and exciting beer. The entries were so good that the judging took several hours.
The winners will be revealed in September. All I can report now is that we need our homebrewers as much as ever. Somehow, I thought that the growing availability of well-made, inventive commercial beers would thin the ranks of hobbyists, whereas just the opposite seems to be true. Their numbers grow, and they continue to push the brewing envelope. American beer wouldn’t be what it is today without them.
Sam on the Concourse
Posted May 12, 2010 8 Comments | Post a Comment
The soft spring evenings have returned, and baseball season. With the Durham Bulls back in the park, where white-hot lights shine against the deep purple evening sky, I’ve made my one visit of the year.
I’m not big on sports—no Annie Savoy, me—but I love the atmosphere of a Bulls game. Between the innings, Wool E. Bull, the mascot, runs the bases against a little kid who always wins by a whisker; and two spectators in padded costumes collide with each other in a fake sumo match. Vendors walk through the stands holding racks of cotton candy or lemonade over their heads, calling to the crowd.
And, on this one visit of the season, my perfect evening brought back a vivid beer memory from, maybe, 15 years ago.
That was a very hot night, later in the season, when the humidity was choking and the cicadas’ songs cut through the air. I made the trip to the concession area for beer for my party, and found the one booth that dispensed something besides Budweiser. I bought three pints of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in squishy plastic cups and pushed them together into a triangle between my hands to carry them back to the seats.
A few steps away from the booth, I knew I was going to spill beer (I’d been a lousy waitress, and I’ve never improved), so I hunched over the cups and sucked—no, hoovered—the top inch off all three in one huge draft. And, in that second, if this had been a movie, the choir would have hit a perfect, ethereal chord: a vibrant, sustained “Ahhhh!”
I had just inhaled a veritable aerosol of Saaz hops and gorgeous malt, soft perfume and fresh-cut meadows. The flavor was an explosion. I stood, stunned, in the packed concourse, spot-lit (film pretensions lingering—“Ahhhh!”) in a moment of revelation: this was a beer I had been close to taking for granted, and now I had been spared. There I was, set apart from the mass of humanity who walked by, unaware of the glorious blessing of that instant.
The crazy light faded. I made my way without spills back to my colleagues, and delivered the beers without explaining the missing inch, or mentioning the near-religious experience I’d just had with Sam on the concourse.
Wool E. Bull was shooting t-shirts into the crowd.
I Hate Meat and I Want to Attend Your Sausage Festival for Free
Posted March 12, 2010 3 Comments | Post a Comment
We’re between World Beer Festivals, and this is my chance to reflect on the calls that arrived before our Columbia event in January and that will resume before our Raleigh fest in April. They always do.
The phone rings. An earnest person makes a request. I fantasize absurd parallel requests. I suppress the smart-ass reply and deliver diplomatic answers.
Ring. “My friend wants me to come to your festival, but I can’t stand beer. Can I get in for free?”
(Absurd parallel: “My friend wants me to come to the Monet opening, but I hate the Impressionists. Can I get in for free?”)
No, it’s a beer festival. Don’t you find your request slightly insulting?
Ring. “My wife is pregnant, so she can’t drink. Can she come to the beer festival for free? She won’t drink anything.)
(Absurd parallel: “My wife has lost her sense of depth perception, so she can’t appreciate 3-D movies. Can she get into ‘Avatar’ for free? She won’t enjoy anything.”)
Will she be a virtual attendee, or does she plan to occupy physical space at the event?
Ring. “My buddies and I are coming to the beer festival. One guy we know doesn’t like alcohol, so he won’t drink. He’ll just drive us home. Can he get in for free?”
(Absurd parallel: “My buddies and I are going to a strip club. One guy we know doesn’t like pornography, so he won’t look. He’ll just stop us getting lap dances. Can he get in for free?”)
That’s great. He can meet you outside afterwards.
Let’s be blunt: a beer festival is an event meant for people who like beer. People who attend beer festivals are supposed to be adults who don’t need paid sitters to hold their hands, deliver them from temptation and take responsibility for their behavior. I’m just sayin’…
Next blog: the return of the nice Julie.
Meandering
Posted March 5, 2010 0 Comments | Post a Comment
My fourth blog post, and I’m already going to wander off-mission, at least a little. Last week our friends Shaun and Angie called to ask if they could drop by the office together with a visiting mead-maker they represent. And so, just after lunch, in came Brad Dahlhofer of Michigan’s B. Nektar Meadery, beautiful blue bottles in hand, for an impromptu tasting.
Brad’s meads ranged in style from a traditional Wildflower Mead, with the honey character very much in evidence; to a spicy Vanilla Cinnamon mead, which was a dessert in a glass; to a cutting-edge Bourbon Barrel mead, with layers of oak complexity. He also makes meads flavored with strawberry, raspberry and chipotle, cactus pear, chocolate, and chai tea, as well as “The D’s Bees,” made from contraband honey collected in Detroit, where bee-keeping is illegal.
In short, this ain’t your Renaissance Faire tipple.
Brad winced when we started cracking Viking jokes, as well he might: mead will never take hold as long as it is shackled to that rather twee, Olde Worlde image. Mead, like cider, has been poised to be the next hip beverage for years now, always falling short of predictions. To make that leap to broad acceptance, it will need promoters who are willing to be just as bold and experimental as their craft beer colleagues.
Brad fits that bill. Not surprisingly, he got his start as a homebrewer before specializing in mead, and he talks like a homebrewer when he describes how he formulates new mead recipes. He likened the choice of orange blossom and buckwheat honeys for the barrel-aged mead to building the grain bill for a new beer, with the orange blossom playing the role of a base malt and the potent buckwheat honey adding character as specialty malts would in beer. This can be mead for the 21st century.
And now, with a glass of the wildflower mead in hand, I’m inspired to muse further…
Mead is in a category all its own. Fermented grain beverages are termed “beer”: even sake, which is often called rice “wine” is technically a beer. Fermented fruit beverages are wine—and that definition extends to ciders, even though they are regulated separately. It’s grain versus grape.
And then we have mead, a rare alcohol beverage made from an animal product (and an insect product, at that). Human cultures have used fermentation (the action of micro-organisms) to transform mammalian milk in the making of cheese, yoghurt, kefir and so on. And, very rarely, milk can be dosed with yeast, and a slightly alcoholic beverage results: in Mongolia, mare’s milk is fermented into a low-alcohol beverage called “kumis.” I understand that fermented goat milk booze exists, as well.
But why are animal-based alcohol beverages so rare? To create alcohol, yeast needs simple sugars to ferment: are those not abundant enough in animal products? Not that we’d want to, perhaps, but could we ferment eggs or blood into alcoholic drinks? Homebrewers and biochemists, fill me in.
And, while we’re puzzling, do vegans drink mead?
I Can, and I Do
Posted February 20, 2010 11 Comments | Post a Comment
Along with their greater safety for beach trips and golf courses, and lighter weight on backpacking trips, there’s another reason to value craft beers in cans. It’s one the breweries can’t extol—so I will.
A cold night, a dark cinema, and film in which there is lots of jolly eating and drinking. I have come to see “It’s Complicated” with a band of friends. The movie is laugh-out-loud funny. I reach into a largish purse, and pull out a plastic pint glass in which nestles a can of Oskar Blue’s Ten Fidy.
Position the beer, wait for a big laugh line, then psssst. I pour the inky stout into my glass—hey, I’ll bring it in a can, but I won’t drink it from a can. All around me, patrons are munching from barrels of bad-smelling popcorn and glugging down 64-ounce sodas. And there, in row M, I have a generous serving of a wonderfully satisfying imperial stout—from a can.
I’ve tried this trick before, with bad results. I brought a nice bottled IPA to “Lost in Translation,” then had to dig around in the dark for my bottle opener before I could open and pour it. I settle in to enjoy the beer and the film, only to knock the empty bottle over with my foot during a touching scene, and have to concentrate Very Hard on the screen as the bottle rolls gudda-gudda-gudda under every row of seats to the front of the theatre. Thus, my enthusiasm for the can.
I don’t sneak beer into theaters to protest the outrageous concession prices—though they are outrageous. It’s the selection that’s a problem—that, and the insult of having to pay $9.50 to see a grown-up film without the pleasure of grown-up beverages. At the local performing arts center, one can sip fairly decent wine or beer during “Mama Mia.” I’ve nursed a drinkable cabernet through the second half of “Swan Lake.” And the local independent movie venue offers a small but tasty range of craft beers, another reason they win my support.
The day the multiplex sells Bell’s Two Hearted next to the vats of Pepsi, I’ll patronize the concession stand. Until then, I’ll smuggle my contraband into the seven o’clock showing. See you at the movies.
The World’s Greatest Job
Posted February 11, 2010 12 Comments | Post a Comment
Last week, the staff of All About Beer Magazine had the kind of day that our readers think we have every day: before noon, we moved straight from our morning caffeine fix to drinking lots and lots of different beers. Here in the office, on the clock, we got paid for drinking beer.
The night before, our publisher had hosted a beer and chocolate tasting for a local non-profit, and there were leftovers from nearly every pairing. Wanting to share the evening’s bounty with the office, the Pub detained the staff at the close of our editorial meeting and spread out the selections.
There was some urgency concerning one of the beers. Having been tapped for the event, the sixtel of Sexual Chocolate, the once-a-year release from Foothills Brewing Co. in Winston-Salem, needed to be drained while the beer was still at its best. We made the effort. In fact, had it been possible to wring a metal keg dry of its last drop, we would have done so.
We tried munching cocoa nibs of the sort used to brew the beer, an experience I found more educational than enjoyable. Nibs are chocolate-in-the-making, not the finished product. Just drink the beer.
The dark horse hit with our group, as was the case with the formal fundraiser, was Charles Wells Banana Beer. Bananas in beer sound bizarre until you think of the dominant banana notes in a traditional hefeweizen. Combine with malted milk balls and, voila, banana split!
The Pub is writing up the charity tasting on his blog (Bradfordonbeer.com), but here are some impressions:
Young’s Double Chocolate Stout has its fanatic followers. I find it well made though very sweet, but when paired it with the same Cadbury milk chocolate that goes into the brew, the common profile is remarkable, and as English as chocolate digestives.
Chocolate Indulgence from Brewery Ommegang couldn’t have been more different. Even though there’s a lot of chocolate aroma, this is a very dry beer, very adult. The fact that I can’t recall its chocolate partner suggests it was better on its own.
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout was beer enough to marry with dark chocolate truffles from Whole Foods—delectable.
Duck Rabbit Märzen teamed with Lindt White Chocolate, but we also sipped it and sampled ad lib from the chocolate selection. Message: the automatic pairing of dark or very strong beer with sweets works, but we can go beyond that now-conventional pairing and experiment with other styles.
Lion Stout, a big, strong, and sweet tropical stout from Sri Lanka, cosied up with milk chocolate kisses—but I long to try it with a fiery curry.
The moment of truth came after we’d worked our way through all the chocolate duos. The Pub called us to ragged order and gave us a choice: either we could return to our desks and resume work, or he would order pizza and we could keep drinking. Hmmm, tricky.
Out came the Good Stuff: the bottles that no one would dare take home from the office for private consumption. First up was Tactical Nuclear Penguin from BrewDog in Scotland, reputed to be the world’s strongest beer at 32% ABV. Since it gets its strength through a sort of cold-distillation, a la eisbock, I doubt it will show up on U.S. shelves, unless it is taxed as a spirit. (This also leaves Boston Beer as the holder of the “Strongest Beer” title for Utopias, which depends on standard fermentation for its 27% AVB.)
Penguin is not a subtle beer—it’s hot and syrupy, a brew to check off your life list, but I liked sipping it, so many thanks to the BrewDog guys for sending a precious bottle.
And so went the afternoon, with one remarkable bottle after another popped, and small pours all around. The mail lady passed through, followed by the FedEx and UPS guys, all doing their jobs; the phone calls rolled over to voice mail.
If every day went like this, there’d be no magazine and no festivals. But it was great to head home—later, sobered—and realize this is the kind of days our fans imagine when they ask wistfully if we need any volunteers at All About Beer. And, yes, every once in a while, we really do spend the whole day enjoying beer. What a great job.
Soup du Jour
Posted January 25, 2010 12 Comments | Post a Comment
Launching a blog has reminded me of the start-up bands I played in through high school. In the age of Led Zeppelin and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the first, most critical decision was, what would we be called? The first several practice sessions, meant for playing music, were spent instead with pen and paper, brainstorming and rejecting band names. The name had to be clever, memorable and (marginally) pertinent. And it couldn’t be a name that would embarrass us when we rocketed to stardom someday (though a silly name didn’t hurt the Beatles).
And so with a blog. A colleague introduced the idea: “There’s a space on the new website for you to start a blog.” As I wondered about ideas, writing schedules and timeliness, he followed up with the question that really counted: “What are you going to call it?” What? I have to name this thing? Out came the pen and paper, and suddenly I’m back at band practice.
Who am I, who do I want to reach out there in the ether, and can a name help? I work in the beer world pretty much 24/7, editing a magazine about beer and writing a newspaper column on same, so the name has to allude to the beverage. Despite being nearly marinated in the stuff, I didn’t want to christen myself as The Beer [insert female word]. The good ones are taken: there is already a Beer Chick, as well as a bitch, a goddess, a vixen, a slut, a wench and a queen of beer. That leaves the female names that promise more than I care to deliver—jade, strumpet, hussy and minx come to mind—or aren’t very inviting, along the lines of matron, scold or harridan.
“The Beer Matron.” I’ll pass.
Of course, there are words that link women spiritually to beer: Ninkasi and Tenenit, the beer goddesses of Sumeria and of Egypt; and Kalevatar, the maiden who discovers the magic of fermentation in the Finnish creation saga, the Kalevala. But these references are a little obscure; besides, the best-known translation of the Kalevala bears an irritating rhythmic resemblance to Hiawatha. There are also historic connections to the women who worked in beer, the brewsters and alewives who brewed or sold beer in past centuries. But after some work (and a beer), I dropped the female references from the list of nominated names.
From what remained, my favorite candidate was “Head Retention,” which kind of describes the way my brain works. Alternatively, I wanted to sign myself “Agatha Gristy.” But friends insisted that the first would attract attention of the Wrong Kind, the second showed a smart alecky fondness for puns, and that both implied that I know more about brewing than I actually know. Fair enough.
So, welcome to “Beer Soup,” a place where any ingredients can be considered. Somewhere between Duck Soup, a favorite film, and Stone Soup, my favorite fairy tale, where so much seems to come from so little, “Beer Soup” will stir together bits of whatever I have on hand, in hopes that something unexpectedly tasty results.
Still, I hope that someday, somebody picks up “Head Retention.” It would be a good band name.
