By Jay Brooks
The NBWA has a fun little website up asking people to vote for which of the presidential hopefuls they’d most like to have a beer with. The voting is irrespective of parties, and so far Barack Obama is leading the pack with 26%, followed by Ron Paul with 14% and John McCain with 12%. Cast your vote now to have your beer preference heard.
By Jay Brooks
It’s time once again for our eleventh Session, and this time around we’re highlighting Doppelbocks courtesy of this month’s host, Wilson at Brewvana. I recently spent two weeks in the home of Doppelbocks — Germany — when many breweries I visited were just debuting their winter seasonal, which more often than not was a doppelbock.
| Their history is, of course, reasonably well settled, with the Pauline Monks of Munich making the first example of the style around 1780. By the Napoleonic Era, the brewery had become secular and brewmaster Franz-Xaver Zacherl began selling his strongest beer around Easter-time each year, calling it “savior,” which in German is “Salvator.” Other breweries began adopting the name and it was in danger of becoming generic when, in 1894, trademark law made Paulaner the only brewer legally allowed use the name. As a result, countless other doppelbocks renamed their beers but continued using the suffix “-ator,” possibly to denote strength, but more likely to continue associating themselves with Salvator. The traditional reason for brewing this beer at this time of the year was for the forty days — not counting Sundays — of fasting just prior to Easter, known as Lent. The monks wanted something heartier to drink while they weren’t able to eat. This period also became known as “strong beer season.” This year, strong beer season will begin February 6. |
As fate would have it, last night was the bimonthly blind panel tasting at the Celebrator Beer News and one of the two styles we tasted was doppelbocks. Of the seven we sampled, I decided to write about three common German examples, the original Paulaner Salvator, Spaten’s Optimator and Aying’s Celebrator.
So let’s drink some doppelbock, shall we?
| Paulaner’s Salvator bright amber in color with a tan head. It has sweet, toffee aromas with alcohol quite evident in the nose. The alcohol — at 7.9% abv — carries over into the taste profile and bites tartly against the malt backbone, which has a hint of candied sweetness. The finish lingers and continues to bite back long after it’s left. |
| Ayinger’s Celebrator Doppelbock was a very dark brown, almost black, with a rich tan head. The nose was predominantly sweet malt with touches of earthy, herbal aromas. Creamy and chewy, with a gritty effervescence that dances on the tongue, the flavor is a big wallop of malt with a restrained smokiness hiding underneath. The finish is clean with a touch of tartness. |
| Spaten’s Optimator was dark brown with a thick ivory head. The nose was dry with aromas of lightly sweet malt with just a touch of smoke or roasted toffee. The flavors were likewise sweetly malty. At only 7.2% abv, the alcohol was somewhat less evident in the taste and there was a little astringency, possibly from the hops. Overall it was full-bodied and rich and the finish clean. |
By Jay Brooks
My friend and colleague Rick Sellers from Pacific Brew News sent me this photo, which originated, as far as we can tell, from either Should I Drink That? or Home Brew Talk. I thought it was funny enough to share. I’m not sure if it was taken in Germany or not, but people do clink their mugs pretty hard there. More than a few times I was actually worried something like this might happen. Apparently it does. And as an amateur photographer, this is the kind of shot that luck brings you maybe once in a lifetime. How excited must the photographer have been to get this shot? Prosit indeed.
For the original (and much larger) photo, click on the picture.
By Jay Brooks
I got the word today that The Lost Abbey will finally be releasing their Red Poppy Ale on January 19.
From the press release:
The Lost Abbey will issue its long-awaited first release of Red Poppy Ale on January 19, 2008. A Flanders-style red ale made with sour cherries and aged in French Oak barrels for one year, the 60 case limited edition release will only be available directly from the brewery.
A medium-bodied ale, Red Poppy has a reddish-brown hue, rich fruit aroma, and a complex mélange sour cherry, plum and red wine flavors accented with notes of chocolate and vanilla. The beer’s name was inspired by head brewer Tomme Arthur’s annual springtime sojourns to Flanders, a time when fields of the Northern Belgian province are covered with the fiery red flowers.
Release Details:
60 cases
375ml cork-finished bottles
Four bottle maximum per person
5% ABV
$15 per bottle
And from the website:
Perhaps no country embraces the use of fruit in beers more so than Belgium. Numerous traditional as well as regional specialty ales are infused with every sort of fruit imaginable. In this way, the flavor of the fruit becomes especially prominent. Red Poppy Ale is a veritable celebration of Sour Cherries in an explosion of aromas and tastes. Brewed from a brown ale base and aged in our oak barrels for over 6 months, this beer is not for the faint of heart. The Golden Poppy is the state flower of California and the Red Poppy is found in Flanders Fields where our inspiration for this beer comes from.
By Jay Brooks
Next week begins the eight annual Big Beers Festival in Vail, Colorado. There are quite a variety of different events going throughout the three-day festival. TO see for yourself, check out the schedule online. Tickets can also be purchased online.
From the website:
Imagine a World Class Winter Wonderland of fun activities in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado…and then top off your trip with a World Class International Beer Festival, complete with Brewmasters’ Dinners and Seminars by some of the world’s most innovative Brewers…
Join us for the Eighth Annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival Weekend! Come up to Vail to experience the event that beer connoisseurs are raving about. Homebrewers, Professional Brewers and Industry Gurus alike speak highly with regard to the unique format, the unusual international collection of beers, the organization and the overall quality of the event. For those of you who are Big Beers Festival veterans, this Eighth Annual event promises to be exceptional, touting two new seminars and an additional beer dinner!
1.10-12
Big Beer Festival (8th annual)
Sponsored by High Point Brewing in Denver
Vail Marriott Mountain Resort & Spa, 715 West Lionshead Circle, Vail, Colorado
970.476.4444 (hotel) / 970.524.1092 (sponsor) [ website ] [ tickets ]
By Jay Brooks
Moylan’s Brewing of Novato, California has always had many, if not all, of their beers available in 22 oz. bottles. For the first time they’re debuting one of their beers, Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale, in six-packs of 12-oz. bottles.
From the press release:
Moylan’s Brewing Company will be sending six-pack bottles to the shelves come late January of 2008, just in time for the Superbowl in February. Moylan’s world-wide award winning Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale will be available in selected retail locations with suggested prices from $8.99-9.99. Denise Jones, Moylan’s Brewmaster, journeyed up to Sudwerk Brewing Company, in Davis CA, to work on expanding and perfecting the brewing of the ever popular Scotch Ale in a larger capacity; an agreement created partly out of owner Brendan Moylan’s respect for Sudwerk, it’s Brewmaster, and the quality of beer brewed onsite, and partly due to the desire to reach more customers with different packaging options. Moylan’s Brewing Company is excited about the reception of the new packaging and, if all goes well, plan on increasing the selection to include other award winning ales in smaller options. Curtis Cassidy, sales manager at Moylan’s Brewing Company states, “Starting off, we will be offering the new bottle size exclusively to California customers. After testing the waters with the Kilt Lifter six-packs, we plan on moving other Moylan’s beers into six-packs as well. We hope to be taking steps towards these goals by the end of 2008.”
The new Kilt Lifter in a 12 oz. bottle.
And the new Kilt Lifter six-pack carrier.
By Jay Brooks
An interesting blog called Modern Mechanix, which appears to consist largely of showing how in the past we used to view the future, at least in old science hobby magazines. The one I stumbled upon was from the August 1936 edition of Science and Mechanics and featured this table made entirely from beer cans.
According to the magazine article, it took 420 cans of Pabst to make the table and chairs, which were soldered together over ten days by a Bernard Dier of Chicago, Illinois. I imagine it was much sturdier than if we made it now since these cans would have been a thicker, sturdier metal than the all-aluminum cans of today.
By Jay Brooks
A UPI story originating from Germany is indicating that a new German study found that xanthohumol, which is in hops, is good at fighting cancer. Specifcially, xanthohumol “inhibits a family of enzymes that can trigger the cancer process, as well as help the body detoxify carcinogens.” It appears that this new study confirms the results of a study at Oregon State University, which I covered last year. Research indicates xanthohumol has more and stronger antioxidants then vitamin E and it may even help in the fight against bad cholesterol.
“It’s very healthy. I think the ingredients in the beer are very good,” Werner Back of Brewing Technology at the Technical University of Munich.
The average beer doesn’t contain enough xanthohumol to make drinking beer an effective method for fighting cancer, though there are German beers with higher levels of xanthohumol. Though perhaps hop research could be directed toward increasing the amount of xanthohumol in hop varieties?
By Jay Brooks
First a little good news to ring in the new year. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, a thirst for alcohol may indeed be hardwired in our DNA. And perhaps more importantly, unlike some other mammals, we appear to be predisposed to drink it in moderation, in direct contradiction with claims of neo-prohibitionist propaganda. According to an article by Natalie Angier in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune (via the New York Times News Service), “[t]he holidays are a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray.”
From the Tribune article:
“As far back as we can look, humans have had a love affair with fermented beverages,” said Patrick McGovern, an archeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And it’s not just humans. From fruit flies to elephants, if you give them a source of alcohol and sugar, they love it.”
McGovern and other archeologists have unearthed extensive evidence of the antiquity and ubiquity of alcoholic beverages. One of the oldest known recipes, inscribed on a Sumerian clay tablet that dates to nearly 4,000 years, is for beer. Chemical traces inside 9,000-year-old pottery from northern China indicate that the citizens of Jiahu made a wine from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey.
Humans may have an added reason to be drawn to alcohol. Throughout antiquity, available water was likely to be polluted with cholera and other dangerous microbes, and the tavern may well have been the safest watering hole in town. Not only is alcohol a mild antiseptic, but the process of brewing alcoholic beverages often requires that the liquid be boiled or subjected to similarly sterilizing treatments. “It’s possible that people who drank fermented beverages tended to live longer and reproduce more” than did their teetotaling peers, McGovern said, “which may partly explain why people have a proclivity to drink alcohol.”
What I find most interesting about this is that for much of mankind’s history, because of poor sanitation, drinking alcoholic beverages was safer than water, which led to such labels as “liquid bread” for beer. Without understanding why, people discovered that they were better off with booze than bacteria. But even after drinking water became safe as our understanding of the world increased, people still enjoyed a pint from time to time. Of course, there’s the social lubricant aspect that remains prevalent today, which still may be an aid to reproduction. But as for promoting health, hardly a month goes by without another new claim that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol has a previously undiscovered health benefit. I find it reasonable and altogether ironic that these two reasons for or benefits from drinking, which have literally been around since the dawn of civilization, are not only still with us but are largely unchanged since we crawled out of the muck and first stood erect. As if the lessons of prohibition weren’t obvious enough, we are a species who drinks. And no amount of proselytizing or preaching can change that. To which I can only reply, cheers to that!
By Jay Brooks
To Beer or Not to Beer. As Strange Brew was a loose parody of Hamlet, I thought I’d again peer crazily into the skull of poor Yorick, and try to divine the future. Let’s see if anything that happened last year can be used to predict what might happen in the beer industry in 2007. Here are five things I think will happen this year. Let’s see how I do a year from now. What are your predictions?
The hops and malt shortages will continue to plague the industry throughout 2008 and may even grow worse. It seems to me that the malt problem can be solved more easily than the hops problem, not that either are particularly simple. But the hop one seems as resistant as a mutated spider mite. A Hop field or yard takes three years to produce a full yield and nobody is planting new vines so once most breweries’ current hop contacts run out, then what? I’ve been joking that we’ll see more gruits in 2008, but it is going to get harder and harder for big hoppy beers to remain economically viable as hop prices triple and quadruple, especially on the spot market. Will 2008 be the year of the session beer? Perhaps not, but it may not be a good idea for brewers to make fresh hop beers for a couple of years while hops are in such short supply.
Beer prices will go up, that’s a fact not a prediction. The real question is whether or not beer consumers will be willing to pay more and, if so, how much more? The big beer companies can more easily afford to absorb some margin losses to keep volume up, and so I don’t think they’ll raise their prices as much as the smaller breweries will be forced to. Whether or not, or to what extent, that will effect the continued growth of craft beer remains to be seen but I believe it will slow the growth of craft beer at least until hop prices come down and availability is up. I think craft beer will continue its upward movement, but it may be closer to 8-10% this year.
Distributor consolidation will increase and will continue to make things difficult for small brewers trying to bring their beer to market or increase their distribution to new areas.
Mergers among big multi-national beer companies will continue and at least one or two big such announcements will be made in 2008.
Neo-Prohibitionists will continue to step up attacks on alcohol generally and to specifically and inexplicably target beer.
