Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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California Threatening Barrel-Aged Beer

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Yesterday the California Board of Equalization made a troubling ruling that has the potential to threaten the production of all barrel-aged beer in the state. The changes were urged by neo-prohibitionists in their misguided attempt to have Alcopops taxed at the higher distilled spirits rate instead of as beer (or more technically malt-based beverages). But the language, perhaps unintentionally, makes it possible to be applied to any beer that’s been aged in a used wooden barrel. Here’s the relevant language from the ruling:

any alcoholic beverage, except wine, which contains 0.5 percent or more alcohol by volume from flavors or ingredients containing alcohol obtained from the distillation of fermented agricultural products will be classified as a distilled spirit for tax purposes.

Brewers will be “required” to “prove” their beer doesn’t meet that criteria, meaning they’ll have to submit a form for every current and new beer they produce, a ridiculous requirement at best. Effectively they’ll have to “prove” each beer they make is really a beer, and not something else. Guilty until they prove themselves innocent. And who better to monitor that than a tax organization, with little or no brewing knowledge? Since distilled spirits are taxed at a much higher rate, they’ll have no incentive whatsoever to act fairly. To me, this has disaster written all over it. In California, we’re facing a huge budget deficit and beer makes a convenient bogeyman to help pay for other people’s mistakes.

Also, under the ruling the Board of Equalization will give itself the authority to define and implement regulations applying to alcohol, a power previously reserved for the legislature (and enforced by the ABC). That, too, I find disturbing. Tax authorities regulating alcohol do not exactly have a good track record.

But let’s get back to calling a beer a distilled spirit just because it touched wood that used to have one in it. I can’t even fathom why, apart from economic greed, that makes any kind of sense. It’s just wrong on so many levels.

I may spend time abroad in a foreign land and be forever changed for the experience. Perhaps if I go for any length of time to … let’s say Canada, I might start paying closer attention to hockey, or even curling. Maybe I’ll start calling a case of beer a “two-four,” spelling colour with a “u,” hanging prints by one of the Gang of Seven in my home, or quoting Louis Riel, eh? But I’ll still be an American. The same is true for beer. A stout may spend years in a bourbon barrel, taking on rich vanilla character and other flavors from its time in the wood. But it will still be a 5% abv stout. To suggest it will turn into Maker’s Mark, even just for “tax purposes,” is an insult to common sense.

Aging beer in wooden barrels has, of course, become quite common and I’d say many, if not most, California craft brewers are making a beer of this type at least from time to time. And there are several that have made names for themselves with their barrel aged beers, such as Russian River and the Lost Abbey, to name two prominent ones. Their entire business will be under threat if the ABC decides to apply this ruling to these beers. The higher taxes will make them too expensive to produce.

The EU did something similar a year or so ago, when they tried to implement a requirement that all breweries meet a standard of cleanliness, inadvertently threatening all lambic breweries, whose wild yeast microcosms would have been destroyed under the proposed regulations. I’m pretty sure an exception was worked out, but the general public has a bit better appreciation for beer in Europe than on our shores.

Paranoid? Maybe, but I love these beers far too much to leave it to chance. Something needs to be done, but at this early stage I don’t even know what or who this can be appealed to. I’ll keep you posted. But I’m sure your local state representative will be involved. Find out who yours is now, and be ready to send him a letter or e-mail. Hopefully, I’ll have details soon on what we all can do.

 

Customer #9 Drinks #9

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I was forwarded this something like fourth-hand, but I’ve been assured it’s also on Magic Hat Brewing’s website (though I couldn’t find it) and was created by them as a goof. I think it’s pretty funny, but then I have a dark, twisted sense of humor. If you’ve been following the Hookergate scandal in the New York Governor’s office you know the former top dog was referred to as customer #9. But there’s already a beer by that name, but you probably already knew that ….

 

Black and Everything

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My friend and colleague, Greg Kitsock, had an article last week in the Washington Post that got me thinking. It was titled Another Layer of Enjoyment and tackled the issue of blending beer, especially with Guinness, as in beer cocktails. It was written to coincide, one presumes, with the then impending St. Patrick’s Day holiday. The two most common of these are a Black & Tan — which Guinness has long promoted as Guinness and Bass Ale (the two shared distribution for many years) — and a Half & Half, which is Guinness and Harp Lager, also a Guinness product. Obviously generic stout and a pale ale or lager may be substituted, but as Guinness has promoted the combinations for such a long time, they are well and truly most closely associated with those brands. I once got into a huge row with the copy editor that Beverages & more used to employ when she changed my text for our March newsletter and switched Black & Tan to Guinness and Harp, and vice versa, without consulting me, so the paper went out to thousands of Club Bev members (the company’s loyalty card) with the wrong information and my name on the item as the author. She was one of those insufferable people who felt they already knew everything and couldn’t conceive of ever being wrong. Surprisingly enough, many continue to spread confusion, with plenty of websites — even bartending websites — with conflicting definitions, including a few that contradict themselves. So perhaps the dilemma is not as well-settled as I believed.

Even Wikipedia, which states that the term Black & Tan, in its meaning as a mixed beer drink, was first recorded in 1899. It’s not listed in my OED, so I can’t confirm that. But after beginning by claiming the two drinks are as I think they should be, they later in the article state that “[t]he two most common types of Black and Tan in the United States use Guinness Draught (not Extra Stout) and either Bass, or Harp Lager,” [my emphasis] which at best is contradictory. When you consider that Harp Lager was first launched in 1960, it’s seems hard to imagine that after 61 years of Black & Tan meaning one thing that it should suddenly make no difference what kind of beer is used, but then I presume the Wikipedia folks who wrote that entry were not on to the finer points of what makes a lager and an ale different. Perhaps they simply assumed a light colored beer is a light colored beer.

I know these drinks are just marketing gimmicks, and possibly not even worthy of discussion, but that ‘s the anal-retentive in me. Is there some confusion about what goes in a martini or a gin and tonic? I just think there should be some consensus, that’s all. Am I asking too much? Anyway, there are actually plenty more of these type of mixed beer drinks, many of which are black and something, like black and red or black and orange. Wikipedia has a huge list and a website, No Sheep, has a few more as well. Personally, my favorite thing to add to Guinness is just a few drops Crème de Cassis, which gives it just a touch of berry sweetness. But I’ve never had a name for it — I suppose I could call it a black & currant or a black & black.

 

Kirkland Beer Update

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I forgot to mention this earlier, but when I met with Dan Gordon a couple of weeks back he told me that the four beers he’ll be making for Costco will be sold in a loose variety pack, meaning there will be six bottles of each of the four styles in every 24-bottle case, with no carriers. That means their new private label beers will only create one additional sku, not four, as I had originally feared. Since this changes considerably the heated debate that ensued, I thought I’d pass it along.

 

Pride Goeth Before A Fall

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The full quote from Proverbs 16:18, at least in the King James’ version, is “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” but the more common shortened version says it all. Essentially, the modern meaning of this proverb is not to be overly confident, especially in yourself, or you’re likely to have something bad happen to put you back in your place. If you allow yourself to become full of pride, you will find yourself humiliated. Be modest, that’s good advice to remember. It’s what happened to me on Sunday, and I offer up my cautionary tale by way of illustration.

I’ve done my fair share of prolonged drinking over the years, and rarely have I not been able to muddle through to the end. We (and by we I mean those of us who have been regularly attending GABF for many years) generally say about the Great American Beer Festival—by way of advice—that it’s a marathon, not a sprint to suggest that pacing is very important to a full enjoyment of the week’s events. So when I was invited to the 4th annual Keene Tasting on Sunday, the day after the Hard Liver Barleywine Fest at Brouwer’s Cafe, it simply never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be still standing after twelve hours and 150 beers. Alas, my body had other plans for me.

At 11:00 a.m., with our first beer of the day. Things went fine through the first 50 beers or so, when suddenly and quite unexpectedly I felt cold shivers shoot through my body. Initially undaunted, I assumed that the open windows letting in the fresh Seattle air had simply chilled the room so I put on my jacket and resumed tasting. But after another half-hour of involuntarily shivering it became obvious that all was not well and my body had decided to pitch a fit. I felt fine, apart from the chills, and struggled through until we almost reached the half-way point, 75 beers, and it was time for another break. I hunkered down in a comfy chair during the break and tried to will myself to warm up, but it did no good. When tasting resumed, I stayed put figuring I should not ignore my body’s tantrum, and still hoped it was just a temporary thing and my recovery was minutes away. A few kind souls asked if I was okay (perhaps I looked as bad as I felt) and I nodded and muttered that I was fine. But as more time passed and I was feeling worse, I decided to spare myself further humiliation and called in the evacuation troops — my wife — to come and collect me. About an hour later I was standing out front shivering in the cold and waiting for her arrival to whisk me to safety and nurse me back to health. This proved trickier than I might have imagined. Whether my weekend drinking had finally lowered my immune system to the point where I got the flu that’s been circulating in my friends and family for weeks or I simply drank too much, too fast, I can’t really say. All I know is that my chills turned to heat as I burned off a fever so bright that my wife said my skin was hot to the touch like an old-fashioned radiator and that she couldn’t even lie near me because I was radiating so much heat. By morning I only felt lousy, a distinct improvement. But that was nothing compared to the disappointment at not finishing the tasting. Perhaps I was at least a source of amusement for those I left behind, as I heard Bonney calling my name from the window above me as I waited for my ride. I called up, but I don’t think he heard me. C’est la vie. There’s always next year.


Our hosts, Vern and Bonney, the two Matts, during a toast to Michael Jackson’s memory with the beer made by Pike Brewing for the Michael Jackson Tribute dinner held the night before in Philadelphia. The first half of the tasting I enjoyed immensely, right up to the point where I had to leave or die.

For many more photos from at least the first half of the Keene Tasting, including some bottle shots of the beers sampled, visit the photo gallery.

St. Patrick’s Day: Another Holiday Ruined By America

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone. Enjoy your pint of Guinness, or Murphy’s, or Beamish, or whatever. In Ireland, they’ll be sitting down to a traditional family dinner, which while it may include a dry Irish stout, is not all about the drinking. But here in the United States, the supposed melting pot, we take everybody’s holidays and run them through the cultural meat grinder. When they come out on the other end they’re invariably bigger, glossier, brighter and most people probably think more fun, if your idea of fun is to drink yourself silly every time you have an extra day off. But whatever solemn purpose or commemoration or event is being celebrated it is all but completely erased and what remains is fun, fun, fun. Now I like fun as much as the next guy. I’m a curmudgeon, certainly, but I still like to have fun. But we’re talking about days set aside so that we don’t forget our heritage, the often selfless sacrifices people have made on our behalf or the celebration of religious traditions. And how do we treat those days, almost without exception? We drink. And not just a toast. We drink to excess. We drink until the streets run pink or brown or yellow or whatever with vomit. Of course, we do this to our own holidays, too. Unfortunately, I see this as fairly recent trend. I remember when Memorial Day wasn’t just an excuse to have a picnic or barbecue and drink. I remember when Halloween was just for children and not the biggest keg sales weekend of the year (which it actually is now).

Now I enjoy a party, a picnic, a barbecue as much as the next guy. Any excuse to get together with friends and family is a welcome event. That’s not what I object to. My objection is twofold. First there’s the general over-commercialization of holidays. Second, there’s the way in which the big breweries, mass market imports along with the wine and spirits industries have seized upon each and every holiday as a way to sell more booze. And, of course, I’m not anti-alcohol. I hope that goes without saying but just in case, feel free to read more of what I’ve written before and you should quickly realize that I don’t like the neo-prohibitionists as much as they no doubt dislike me.

As to the first point, the over-commercialization of holidays, I’m going to take it for granted that most people will agree that this has happened. It’s hard to miss that whatever commercial aspects are inherent in a given holiday, they have been wildly exploited and expanded upon. A stroll through the average card shop should be more than enough to drive this home. If not, then how about that stores start decorating for Christmas in October now, sometimes even earlier. Anyway, I don’t want to belabor this point too much because I think most people will accept it and my second point is, I think, more novel.

Before I dive into this further, a little more background is probably in order. I’m also something of a calendar geek and have an almanac blog, too. I started collecting dates about thirty years ago when I picked up a book on mixed drink recipes that had an appendix with a reason to celebrate and have a drink each and every day of the year. That got me thinking and I started keeping a notebook where I’d write down new holidays, famous birthdays and historical events I happened upon. As a result, I may be more sensitive to holidays than the typical person, if such a thing is possible.

Anyway, it seems to me what was once a solemn religious holiday celebrating the patron saint of Ireland on the date he was believed to have died, March 17, 461 C.E., has been perverted into a way to sell more Guinness and all manner of other Irish doo-dads. Several years ago, Guinness gave away an actual pub in Ireland to a winner in America. They did this for a few years running. What happened to the pub and the pub owners once they were out of the spotlight wasn’t always pretty and I suspect that’s why they stopped. Then there was the yearly attempts to break the world’s record — from the Guinness Book of World Records, naturally — for the largest number of people simultaneously toasting, which was accomplished with some elaborate coordination. I’m not even sure what they’re doing these days, since the parent company Diageo has had them off in bizarre directions which have not done the beer itself any favors, and I’ve pretty much given up on them as a brewery. They still seem to enjoy a good reputation, even among beer geeks. Of course, the stuff available here is brewed in Canada. That’s done so they can still put “imported” on the label. It’s a common trick. Foster’s does the same thing, as do a few other larger import beers. There are around 19 or 20 different Guinness beers worldwide, of course, and at least four different ones are sold here. The beer in the widget can, widget bottle (an abomination in my opinion), regular bottle and in kegs are not the same beer; I mean they’re not even the same recipe. I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with that. They’re fairly up front about it though still, I doubt most people are actually aware of it. So when somebody says they like Guinness, I have to wonder which one? I think it says a lot about peoples’ palates that so few realize they’re drinking completely different beers when they order a can or bottle of Guinness.

To be fair, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t the most egregious of these holidays by a long shot. At least dry Irish stout, which is what Guinness and most other Irish-made stouts are, is actually originally from Ireland. Many other non-Irish beer also advertise themselves for St. Patrick’s Day in about as shameless a fashion as one could imagine. Last weekend, while in Philadelphia, I witnessed part of their annual parade for St. Patrick’s Day. There were the requisite social organizations marching in their green colors, bands, floats for Irish bars and bagpipers. Oddly, one float was blasting the song 500 Miles by the Proclaimers. It’s a catchy little tune, but the band is Scottish, not Irish. To me, that’s a perfect illustration of how little we all know about our shared heritages. Nobody else seemed to notice they were celebrating Irish culture with a song from Scotland, least of all the people on the float who chose the music.

For most of its history, the holiday was a relatively quiet affair in Ireland, a time for family, church and reflection. There were shamrocks and other greenery, but it was mostly for the tourists who flocked to Dublin and other parts of the Emerald Isle.

Sadly, this may no longer be true in Ireland. In 1996, the government of Ireland began what has become a five-day celebration in Dublin known as the Official St. Patrick’s Festival, which this year began on the 13th and concludes today. The stated goal of the festival is the following.

 

  1. Offer a national festival that ranks amongst all of the greatest celebration in the world
  2. Create energy and excitement throughout Ireland via innovation, creativity, grassroots involvement, and marketing activity
  3. Provide the opportunity and motivation for people of Irish descent (and those who sometimes wish they were Irish) to attend and join in the imaginative and expressive celebrations
  4. Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal, as we approach the new Millennium.

 

That’s certainly a modern approach to raising revenues for the country through tourism but it feels a bit like a sell-out. Given that the Irish have been shedding their own blood over religion for centuries, it seems odd to me that they’d so cavalierly commercialize their national holiday. But perhaps the momentum was too great and they decided to go with it rather than fight a losing battle. America has a way of ruining almost everything it touches, remaking it our own image of bigger, glitzier and with an eye toward profit, always profit. But when profit is the prime motivator, the meaning of the traditions that binds a people become lost. No matter how rich we might become, nothing can rival the social connections that make us a society rather then a group of self-serving individuals who care nothing for their fellow man.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Enjoy it with friends and family.
 

Hard Liver Hard On Your Liver

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The 6th annual Hard Liver Barleywine Fest took place — as it has for the past four years — at Brouwer’s Cafe at the corner of 35th and Phinney in Seattle, Washington. There were 45 barley wines on tap and the place was packed from the time it opened at eleven until I left around five o’clock. With so many tasty treats, the Hard Liver was certainly hard on your own liver.

The packed crowd at Brouwer’s enjoying barley wines from the second-floor balcony.

Festivals hosts Matt Bonney and Matt Vandenberghe, co-owners of Brouwer’s Cafe.

 

For many more photos from this year’s Hard Liver Barleywine Fest, visit the photo gallery.
 

Dan’s Dunkleweizen

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Dan Gordon, of Gordon Biersch Brewing in San Jose, California, has just released their newest seasonal beer, an authentic unfiltered Dunkleweizen.

He stopped by the Celebrator offices the afternoon before we scheduled our most recent blind panel tasting for the April/May issue with beer in hand so we could taste the new beer.

It’s an unfiltered authentic Bavarian-style dunkleweizen, delightfully dark and murky. When first poured, it had that wonderful pillowy head that juts out above the top of the glass with a small dimple in the center. It tasted great and makes the case against too much filtering, because so much more of the flavors come through. It would be terrific with hearty dishes, say German cooking. This will be Gordon Biersch’s spring seasonal and will be the first of a program of four seasonal beers per year. It’s one of the best new beers they’ve made in a long time, though Gordon explains it’s been one of his favorites for a number of years. He used to make a draft-only version from time to time before deciding to package as Gordon Biersch transitions to four seasonals per year. It’s easy to see why he loves it. Having spent a little over a week in Bavaria last fall, I enjoyed this style in a variety of circumstances, and oftentimes dunkleweizens are filtered for bottling. That this delicious beer isn’t makes it one of the more exciting new releases in a while.

Triumph’s Philadelphia Brewpub

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After our historical walk through Philadelphia, we went to a decidedly more modern destination: Triumph Brewing’s Philadelphia brewpub location. Originally started in Princeton, New Jersey and named for the owner’s triumph over the state’s arcane laws prohibiting brewpubs that allowed them to begin brewing in the first place, their third location is the one we visited.

 

For more photos from my visit to the Triumph Brewpub in Philadelphia, visit the photo gallery.