Next Session: Getting SMaSHed

June 20, 2017 By Jay Brooks

For our 125th Session, our host will be Mark Lindner‏, who writes By the Barrel: Bend Beer Librarian. For his topic, he’s chosen SMaSH Beers, or single malt and single hop beers, which he was reminded of by his local Bend, Oregon, annual SMaSH Fest, part of Central Oregon Beer Week, which happened a few weekends ago. Between that, and brewing his first batch a beer — yes, it will be a SMaSH beer — he “jokingly asked [him]self if single malt and single hop beers can be considered a “thing” (trendy, etc.) until we have coffee-infused, barrel-aged, and fruit SMaSH beers. Maybe we do; [he has] not seen them yet though.”

2016-SMaSh-Fest

But here’s Mark’s full description of his topc:

Here are some potential directions you could consider:
Answer my question above. Are they trendy? When would they be considered to be trendy? Have you seen/had a variant (x-infused, fruit, …) single malt and single hop beer? More than one?
What purpose do SMaSH beers fill? For you, personally, and/or generally.
Do they fill a niche in any beer style space? One that matters to you? Are they a “style,” however you define that?
Have you ever had an excellent one? As a SMaSH beer or as a beer, period.
Do you brew them?
Are there any styles besides pale ale/IPA that can be achieved via a single malt and single hop beer? (How about achieved versus done quite well.)
Do they offer anything to drinkers, especially non-brewing drinkers?
I consider this to be wide open and am interested in your thoughts, whatever they are, regarding SMaSH beers. I sincerely hope this is not too limiting of a topic in the number of people who have tasted and/or brewed single malt and single hop beers.
Resources
Some resources–mostly brewing-focused, sorry–about single malt and single hop beers:
BREWING
Keeping it Simple with SMaSH Brewing [AHA]
Single-Malt Brewing [All About Beer]
Brew Your Own 20/4 Jul/Aug 2014 Single Malt and Single Hop 55-64
Zymurgy 40/2 Mar/Apr 2017 Uncommon Taste of Place SMaSH recipe 35
STYLE GUIDELINES
Neither BJCP 2015, NHC 2017, Brewers Association 2017, World Beer Cup 2016, or GABF 2017 have anything on them based on searches for “smash” and “single malt.”
FOR GENERAL BEER DRINKER (NON-BREWER)
I did try to find anything specifically directed more to the drinker/general consumer rather than the brewer but I could not find any. I would be interested in anything along that vein any of you have seen.
For instance, neither Mosher Tasting Beer, 2nd ed. or Alworth, The Beer Bible or Oliver, ed., The Oxford Companion to Beer have anything on SMaSH beer, although single-hopped does make an appearance in some of these.

hulk-smash

To participate in the July Session, on or before Friday, July 7, 2017, write a post and either leave a comment to the original announcement, e-mail your post’s link to mark . r . lindner @gmail . com or tweet him at @bythebbl.

Coza Powder, The Cure For Drunkenness

June 8, 2017 By Jay Brooks

The 19th and early 20th century is filled with accounts of quacks and patent medicines sold by snake oil salesman. All sorts of wild claims were made and almost without exception they were complete bunkum. I just came upon one I hadn’t seen before, something called Coza Powder, from the Coza Institute in London, England. Here’s the ad, from “The Strand Magazine,” published in 1907. I also found examples of the same ad as late as 1909, and even a couple in Spanish, so it appears to have been sold worldwide.

There’s a lot not to like about Coza Powder, but it’s an amazing ad. First, there’s that horrific image of the bottle man being squeezed, then there’s the idea that someone could put it in your drinks without you even being aware of it. That sure sounds like a great idea to promote. They try to sell it by explaining it has “the marvelous effect of producing a repugnance to alcohol in any shape or form.”

And it’s guaranteed to be safe? Of course it is. Thank goodness for that, it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder until they brought it up. And let’s all beware of imitations, only get genuine Coza powder from the Institute itself, the “only genuine powder for Drunkenness.”

Sounds reasonable, right? Not everybody thought so, even at the time. No less than The British Medical Journal took a look at what was in Coza powder, among other such remedies of the day and in 1909 published their findings in an article entitled “The Composition Of Certain Secret Remedies.” On the page concerning the cure for drunkenness, the first one they examined was Coza powder:
coza-jstor
Not surprisingly, the BMJ found that Coza powder was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda, cumin, and cinnamon. And essentially it’s 90% sodium bicarbonate and the remaining 10% is equal parts cumin and cinnamon. They put the cost — in 1909 — at 1/30th of a penny for 30 packages of the powder.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but in Portuguese, “coza” means “bake.”

Next Session: Looking For Late, Lamented Loves

June 1, 2017 By Jay Brooks

For our 124th Session, our host will be David Bardallis‏, who writes All the Brews Fit to Pint, which focuses on Ann Arbor, and Michigan more generally. For his topic, he’s chosen Late, Lamented Loves, and while he confesses that the “late” part of that title is, at least in part, due to accidentally forgetting to post his announcement sooner (though to be fair, I forgot to remind him, which I usually try to do, so it’s not all on him) the result is that we all have one day to come up with a topic for tomorrow’s Session. Think of this month’s Session as a “speed session,” and shoot from the hip. And for his topic, that actually works. So what’s the topic? What’s a beer that’s no longer being brewed that you really miss, and wish was still available? Quick, top of your head? I can think of a few beers no longer around that I’d happily crack open if I could. I bet you can think of some, too, off the top of your head. “So… what are your late, lamented beer loves?” But here’s David’s full description:

Nevertheless, I think the chosen subject, “Late, Lamented Loves,” is still worth talking about. I mean a beer you remember fondly but which is no longer in production.
It needn’t be an objectively “great” beer, though it could be. It could also be a nostalgic or youthful memory. It could be a “go-to” you still reflexively want to reach for. It could be all of these things.
Maybe the brewery and the beer are both long gone. Maybe the brewery is still around but just decided for whatever reason not to continue producing the glorious nectar you still pine for.
Whatever the case, there’s probably at least one beer that’s already leapt to your mind that fits into this description. Maybe even more than one, and, if so, feel free to go there.

sorry-im-late
To participate in the June Session, on or before Friday, June 2, 2017 — which is tomorrow — write a post as soon as you can and either e-mail your post’s link to annarborbeer@gmail.com or tweet him at @allthebrews. If that’s not quite enough time, don’t worry, if you “need more time than a day, hit [him] up anyway. [he]’ll continuously update in the days and weeks ahead as necessary.” Get cracking.

IRISH_TREX_BLACK

Jean Verdenal’s Letter To T.S. Eliot

May 11, 2017 By Jay Brooks

reading-book
This will probably only be of interest to the most hardcore literati among you, but if you like poetry, literature or weird history, read on McDuff. According to Wikipedia, Jean Jules Verdenal “(May 11, 1890–May 2, 1915) was a French medical officer who served, and was killed, during the First World War. Verdenal and his life remain cloaked in obscurity; the little we do know comes mainly from interviews with family members and several surviving letters.”

Verdenal was born in Pau, France, the son of Paul Verdenal, a medical doctor. He had a talent for foreign languages. He was athletically inclined. Verdenal as a student was interested in literature and poetry and possessed copies of Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poésies and of Jules Laforgue’s Poésies and Moralités Légendaires. It was perhaps Verdenal’s literary inclinations that led him to become friends with American poet T.S. Eliot, whom he met in 1910 at the Sorbonne. After they parted ways, Verdenal and Eliot corresponded through letters. Verdenal was killed on May 2, 1915, while treating a wounded man on the battlefield. This was just a week into the Gallipoli Campaign and a few days shy of his twenty-fifth birthday.”

ts-eliot

T.S. Eliot, of course, was an American-born poet, who most people know of because his 1939 collection of poems, “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” was later adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber into the popular musical, “Cats,” which debuted in 1981. But here’s the basics, again from Wikipedia:

Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and “one of the twentieth century’s major poets”. He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He eventually became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship.
Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), “The Hollow Men” (1925), “Ash Wednesday” (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”

There is also speculation that Verdenal was the inspiration for the character “Phlebas the Phoenician” in Eliot’s long-form poem “The Wasteland,” which he published in 1922. Eliot certainly dedicated some of his works to Verdenal, including “his first volume of poetry, ‘Prufrock and Other Observations,’ which was published two years after Verdenal’s death, in 1917.

Here’s another account of their meeting and friendship:

In 1910 T.S. Eliot, then a graduate student studying philosophy at Harvard University, went to Paris to study a year at the Sorbonne. He took a room at a pension where he met and befriended Jean Verdenal, a French medical student who had another room there.
Eliot returned to Harvard in the autumn of 1911 to continue his work toward a doctorate.
Eliot and Verdenal carried on a correspondence at least through 1912. Seven letters from Verdenal to Eliot (written in French) are archived at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. The Verdenal letters have also been published in The Letters of T.S. Eliot: 1898-1922 (Vol 1). Apparently no copies of Eliot’s letters to Verdenal survive.

So why I bring this is up is the following passage, from a letter that Verdenal wrote to T.S. Eliot in July of 1911.

“My dear friend, I am waiting impatiently to hear that you have found some notepaper in Bavaria, and to receive an example of it covered with your beautiful handwriting, before German beer has dulled your wits. As a matter of fact, it would have some difficulty in doing so, and we see that even few natives of the country escaped its effects; history tells us that the formidable Schopenhauer was a great beer-lover. He also played the clarinet, but perhaps that was just to annoy his neighbours. Such things are quite enough to make us cling to life. The will to live is evil, a source of desires and sufferings, but beer is not to be despised — and so we carry on. O Reason!”

Verdenal has an interesting take on German beer. ANd the clarinet, which I used to play, too.

And this is passage from “The Wasteland,” about which some scholars believe Verdenal was the inspiration for Phlebas the Phoenician. You can read more about why at this page about T.S. Eliot and Jean Verdenal.

          IV. Death by Water
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                 A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                               Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Next Session: Pros & Cons Of Beer Online

May 1, 2017 By Jay Brooks

For our 123rd Session, our host will be Josh Weikert, who writes Beer Simple. For his topic, he’s chosen CyberBrew — Is the Internet Helping or Hurting Craft Beer? Thankfully, he elaborates on his thinking:

This month, we’re taking on the internet and craft beer: is it a help, a hinderance, an annoyance, or all of the above? How is beer drinking/brewing different in the internet age, and how is the internet changing the way brewers and craft beer drinkers do business?
Topics might include:
Marketing beer in the internet age
The astounding influence of beer bloggers to make or break breweries (just kidding, but seriously, what’s the effect of all of this quasi-journalistic beer commentary on the drinking and brewing public?)
How are beer reviews (expert and mass-market) affecting what gets brewed and drank?
Are beer apps for tracking and rating overly-“gamifying” beer (or does that make drinkers more adventurous)?
Just how fast do aleholes on message boards and elsewhere turn off prospective craft beer enthusiasts?
And, of course, I’m sure that you’re all more creative than me and there’s a lot I’m missing.

beer-from-laptop

To participate in the May Session, on or before Friday, May 5, 2017 — which is this Friday, just a few days away — write a post about your views about beer online, what Josh refers to as CyberBrew. “Leave a comment with a link to your post in the comment section” of the original post, “preferably by May 5th (the first Friday of the month, also known as ‘next Friday’). Even if you’re running a little late, leave your comment and I’ll catch it. The roundup will publish in mid-late May (I’d say that the 15th is a likely target), and we’ll see what everyone came up with.” Easy as 1-2-3.

internet communication

Ballantine’s Literary Ads: Anita Loos

April 26, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Between 1951 and 1953, P. Ballantine and Sons Brewing Company, or simply Ballentine Beer, created a series of ads with at least thirteen different writers. They asked each one “How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?” Each author wrote a page that included reference to their beer, and in most cases not subtly. One of them was Anita Loos, who was an American author, best known for her popular book “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” was she adapted into a successful film, along with several other well-known screenplays.

Today is the birthday of Anita Loos (April 26, 1889–August 18, 1981), who was “was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She wrote film scripts from 1912, and became arguably the first-ever staff scriptwriter, when D.W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She went on to write many of the Douglas Fairbanks films, as well as the stage adaptation of Colette’s Gigi.”

ballantine-1953-Loos

Her 1953 piece for Ballantine was done in the form of a short story about dropping a bottle of beer out her hotel window, somewhere with a cold climate:

It took an elevator man and a snowbank to show me how much I really appreciate Ballantine Ale.
One wintry evening I set a bottle of Ballantine on my hotel window ledge to chill. My only bottle — wouldn’t you know it? — toppled off into a snowbank on the rood next door. Immediately the thought occurred to me that the elevator man could climb out of a downstairs window and retrieve it.
But would he wade through the snow for a bottle of ale? My maid, Gladys, who evidently shares Lorelei Lee’s belief that diamonds are indeed a girl’s best friend, solved the problem by telling him I dropped a diamond bracelet, and he never learned the truth until he was standing in the snowbank with the bottle. At that, he seemed to think more of the ale than a bracelet!
I might add that I like Ballantine Ale because it refreshes me. And because it’s so light, it never takes the edge off my appetite. But most of all I like it because it has a flavor all its own that’s beyond anything else I have ever tasted.

ballantine-1953-Loos-text

“Beer” By Humorist Josh Billings

April 21, 2017 By Jay Brooks

book
You’ve probably never heard of Josh Billing, the pen name of 19th-century American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw (April 21, 1818 – October 14, 1885). But in his day — the latter half of the 19th century — he was a pretty famous humorist and lectured throughout the United States. In terms of his fame, he was “perhaps second only to Mark Twain,” though his legacy has not endured nearly as well as Twain’s.

Josh-Billings

Shaw was born in Lanesborough, Massachusetts on April 21, 1818. His father was Henry Shaw, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1817–21, and his grandfather Samuel Shaw who also served in the U.S. Congress from 1808–1813. His uncle was John Savage, yet another Congressman.
Shaw attended Hamilton College, but was expelled in his second year for removing the clapper of the campus bell. He married Zipha E. Bradford in 1845.
Shaw worked as a farmer, coal miner, explorer, and auctioneer before he began making a living as a journalist and writer in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1858. Under the pseudonym “Josh Billings” he wrote in an informal voice full of the slang of the day, with often eccentric phonetic spelling, dispensing wit and folksy common-sense wisdom. His books include Farmers’ Allminax, Josh Billings’ Sayings, Everybody’s Friend, Choice Bits of American Wit and Josh Billings’ Trump Kards. He toured, giving lectures of his writings, which were very popular with the audiences of the day. He was also reputed to be the eponymous author of the “Uncle Ezek’s Wisdom” column in the Century Magazine.

In addition to wise sayings, he wrote numerous short, humorous pieces, including this odd one, entitled …

BEER.

I HAV finally com tew the konclusion, that lager beer iz not intoxikatin.
I hav been told so bi a german, who sed he had drank it aul nite long, just tew tri the experiment, and was obliged tew go home entirely sober in the morning. I hav seen this same man drink sixteen glasses, and if he was drunk, he was drunk in german, and noboddy could understand it. It iz proper enuff tew state, that this man kept a lager-beer saloon, and could have no object in stating what want strictly thus.
I beleaved him tew the full extent ov mi ability. I never drank but 3 glasses ov lager beer in mi life, and that made my hed untwist, as tho it was hung on the end ov a string, but i was told that it was owing tew my bile being out ov place, and I guess that it was so, for I never biled over wuss than i did when I got home that nite. Mi wife was afrade i was agoing tew die, and i was almoste afrade i shouldn’t, for it did seem az tho evrything i had ever eaten in mi life, was cuming tew the surface, and i do really beleave, if mi wife hadn’t pulled oph mi boots, just az she did, they would have cum thundering up too.
Oh, how sick i was! it was 14 years ago, and i kan taste it now.
I never had so much experience, in so short a time.
If enny man should tell me that lager beer was not intoxikating, i should beleave him; but if he should tell me that i want drunk that nite, but that my stummuk was only out ov order, i should ask him tew state over, in a few words, just how a man felt and akted when he was well set up.
If i want drunk that nite, i had sum ov the moste natural simptoms a man ever had, and keep sober.
In the fust place, it was about 80 rods from whare i drank the lager, tew my house, and i was over 2 hours on the road, and had a hole busted thru each one ov mi pantaloon kneeze, and didn’t hav enny hat, and tried tew open the door by the bell-pull, and hickupped awfully, and saw evrything in the 417 room tryin tew git round onto the back side ov me, and in setting down onto a chair, i didn’t wait quite long enuff for it tew git exactly under me, when it was going round, and i sett down a little too soon, and missed the chair by about 12 inches, and couldn’t git up quick enuff tew take the next one when it cum, and that ain’t aul; mi wife sed i waz az drunk az a beast, and az i sed before, i begun tew spit up things freely.

Illustration possibly by Thomas Nast.

If lager beer iz not intoxikating, it used me almighty mean, that i kno.
Still i hardly think lager beer iz intoxikating, for i hav been told so, and i am probably the only man living, who ever drunk enny when hiz bile want plumb.
I don’t want tew say ennything against a harmless tempranse bevridge, but if i ever drink enny more it will be with mi hands tied behind me, and mi mouth pried open.
I don’t think lager beer iz intoxikating, but if i remember right, i think it tastes to me like a glass with a handle on one side ov it, full ov soap suds that a pickle had bin put tew soak in.

A photo of Billings with Mark Twain and political commentator Petroleum V. Nasby, photographed in Boston by G. M. Baker in November of 1869.

In another collection of his work, entitled “Josh Billings, Hiz Sayings: With Comic Illustrations,” published in 1865, Billings presents his definition of Lager:

Bistro IPA Festival Winners 2017

April 8, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Today was the 20th annual IPA Festival at the Bistro. The weather mostly cooperated and it ended up only a little wet in Hayward, with sun peeking out mid-afternoon. It was near perfect beer-drinking weather once we emerged from judging in the basement all morning. This year’s big winner was Revision IPA, from Revision Brewing, which was chosen best in show, out of 53 IPA offerings. It was an especially big win for Jeremy, as it’s one of the first batches from his new Revision Brewing, which even managed to beat his own IPA that he created at his previous brewery, Knee Deep. Revised, indeed. The full list of winners is below.

1st Place: Revision IPA (Revision Brewing)
2nd Place: Pulp Free (Fieldwork Brewing)
3rd Place: Breaking Bud (Knee Deep Brewing)
Honorable Mention: TropiCali Dank (Tap It Brewing)

People’s Choice: 3 Headed Hop Monster (Melvin Brewing)

jeremy-warren-bistro-ipa
Jeremy Warren and me at today’s Bistro IPA Festival.

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