Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Two New Pelicans

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The award-winning Pelican Pub & Brewery, along Oregon’s coast in Pacific City, is releasing two new beers, a saison and a Grand Cru. Both are now on tap at the brewpub and also available bottle-conditioned.

The first, Saison du Pelican, is described as “a spicy, herbal aroma from the special Belgian yeast and Golding hops, and a snappy, refreshing finish, Saison du Pelican combines traditional flavors with excellent drinkability.”

The second is the Grand Cru de Pelican.

Grand Cru de Pelican is the result of inspiration, creativity, and imagination. With a nod to the great brewing traditions of Belgium, we have been inspired to create this dark, sensous brew. Grand Cru de Pelican entices with a rich, complex aroma, and satisfies with deep malty and caramel flavors. Spicy, aromatic flavors provide a harmonious counterpoint to the malty foundation of this robust beer. A snappy finish and medium-light body enhance the smooth drinkability of this beer.

From the press release:

“We’ve really had fun thinking out of the box in creating these beers. They are unlike anything we have brewed before,” said Headbrewer Darron Welch.

The brewers brought in a special Belgian yeast for the production of the beers. Each beer also utilizes unique ingredients. The Saison du Pelican includes spelt, an ancient grain, adding texture and dryness to the finish. The Grand Cru de Pélican includes 115 pounds of hand caramelized sugar. It took Brewery Manager Ben Love two days to carmelize the sugar, 15 pounds at a time. The complex caramel flavors in the beer prove that all the work was well worth it.

Once the initial fermentation finished, the brewers added more sugar and then hand-bottled and corked the beers. Inside the bottle, a second fermentation occurred, adding complexity and natural carbonation in the beers.

These bottle conditioned beers are available in limited edition 750 ml bottles. The bottles will be available at the Pelican Pub & Brewery and at selected bottle shops in Oregon. Beer fans outside Oregon can have the beer shipped to them through Belmont Station or Liquid Solutions.

This Here’s the Wattle …

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I confess I never really knew what exactly a wattle was, apart from some sort of Australian plant. But every time I hear the word — which admittedly doesn’t happen often — I think of the following declaration by the philosphy professors from the University of Woolamaloo in Australia. “This here’s the wattle — the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle or you can hold it in yer hand.” All of their names are Bruce, of course, because the reference is from an episode of the brilliant British television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

But I saw recently that an Australian brewer, Barons Brewing, is using black wattle in their beer. So I figured it was time to figure out what the heck a wattle is, after all.

It turns out that a wattle is essentially the Australian word for an Acacia. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about acacias:

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees of Gondwanian origin belonging to the Subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described from Africa by Linnaeus in 1773. Acacias are also known as thorntrees or wattles, including the yellow-fever acacia and umbrella acacias. There are roughly 1300 species of Acacia worldwide, about 950 of them native to Australia, with the remainder spread around the dry tropical to warm-temperate regions of both hemispheres, including Africa, southern Asia, and the Americas. The genus Acacia however is apparently not monophyletic. This discovery has led to the breaking up of Acacia into five new genera as discussed in list of Acacia species.

Black wattle, or Acacia mearnsii, is the variety being used by Barons Brewing.

Black wattle is a fast-growing leguminous nitrogen fixing tree. Native to Australia, A. mearnsii is often used as a commercial source of tannin or a source of fire wood for local communities. It threatens native habitats by competing with indigenous vegetation, replacing grass communities, reducing native biodiversity and increasing water loss from riparian zones. They are similar to Acacia dealbata. The species is named after E. A. Mearns who collected the type from a cultivated specimen in East Africa.

I’ve always been a fan of gruits and other beers made with herbs and spices. The complexity and range of flavors available by adding just a hint of one or more ingredients is astounding. And shrubs and trees, too, can work a similar magic on brewing. Beer made with spruce, for example, was quite common in colonial America where hops was in short supply. So I’m dying to try some of Baron’s new Black Wattle Superior, a Wattle Seed Ale.

Here’s what their website has to say about it:

In creating the Black Wattle range, we have used a combination of select malt and hops, brewed to traditional methods and standards. Black Wattle however, offers something special. All beers in the Black Wattle range feature a unique touch of Australia, incorporating native herbs and spices during the brewing process. The resulting beer delivers a wealth of flavours that have not been experienced in beer until today.

The first beer released is the Wattle Seed Ale, which starts with a blend of Australian and European malts, creating a rich flavour base of caramel with a hint of chocolate. The smooth malt flavours are lightly hopped and then infused with roasted Wattle Seed, bringing a unique and authentic Australian flavour to this fine red ale. The result is an outstanding ale that boasts a smooth taste profile balancing its robust character, an ultimately rewarding yet distinctive beer.

At 5.8% ABV and offering a long and lasting flavour, the Wattle Seed Ale is best enjoyed with or after a meal, complimenting a juicy steak, rack of lamb, or a prosciutto and rockmelon starter. Alternatively, this select ale will be enjoyed at almost any occasion by those who enjoy something special in a beer.

But I can’t bring up the Bruces from the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo without mentioning their “Philosophy Song.” I saw it performed live at the City Center in New York when my parents let me take my first unchaperoned trip to the Big Apple in 1976, when I was 17. It’s still one of my favorite Monty Python bits and I remain a huge fan of the show and much of the individual members’ later work, as well. The lyrics are reprinted below.

Bruces’ Philosophers Song

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [later versions have ‘Schopenhauer and Hegel’]

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away—
Half a crate of whisky every day.

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,

And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
‘I drink, therefore I am.’

Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.

Glass Bottle Workshop for Brewers

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On March 1, the California Small Brewers Association, in conjunction ProBrewer.com, will be leading a half-day seminar focusing on the “resources, equipment and financial requirements of transitioning from pre-pack to bulk purchasing and the supply of glass to the beer industry. Suppliers of glass bottles and other vendors will be in attendance. This forum will be an opportunity for both brewers and suppliers to discuss needs and issues in a positive and constructive conversation.”

The Glass Bottle Workshop will be held at the Lagunitas Brewery located at 1280 N. McDowell Blvd. in Petaluma, California. The seminar is free to CSBA members and registered ProBrewer.com users. The course fee is $50.00 for all others. A beer social will follow. To attend, you must pre-register by calling 530.265.0422.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

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A Seattle friend sent me a link to this (thanks Craig), and, unfortunately I think the piece is more indicative of many wine drinkers’ feelings toward beer than I wish were the case. This is perhaps the most annoying and personally sad feature of the wine vs. beer debate. In my experience, most beer people (defined by me loosely as people who claim beer as their primary drink of choice) also love wine and spirits, too. But many — perhaps even a majority? — of wine people seem to think, as Mike Myers might put it, “if it ain’t wine, it’s crap.” Now this isn’t true of winemakers, who generally love beer and spirits, at least all the ones I know. But wine snobs, many of whom are wine writers, definitely seem to project a worldview in which wine is the only beverage worthy of reverence and respect.

It feels a little like the democrats vs. republicans. Republicans are the minority with all the money and power and consequently get to decide what is sophisticated (meaning whatever they like), usually wine. They are “above” the people. Many with naked ambition want to be them and so act like them and, when polled, vote with them. Then pollsters declare wine is the preferred drink, while beer still outsells it four to one. Democrats, by contrast, are “of” the people, prefer the people’s drink, beer, but are too unfocused and like so many different things that their message — if indeed there even is one beyond “enjoy all of life’s pleasures” — never gets any traction. Now for those of you with opposite tastes, simmer down, I’m only making an analogy based on gross generalizations and very broad stereotypes.

But this leads us to today’s screed, “Climbing the Liquor Ladder: Going from Beer to Wine,” by wine and cigar writer Jennifer Jordan. The piece appears on BlogCritics, subtitled “a sinister cabal of superior writers.” Jordan also is the senior editor of a website about wine, Savor Each Glass, and about cigars, What’s Knot to Love.

She begins by detailing her early, not so pleasant, experiences with beer drinking from the time she was a child through college, after which time she then trades “up” to wine and … well I’ll let her tell it.

That is why, after college, where beer was just short of flowing from dorm room faucets, I decided to climb the corporate ladder of liquor consumption, with the next rung up being wine.

Initially I made this choice because of the health benefits of wine. Unlike beer, with each pint providing more belly fat in alcohol’s version of 8-minute abs, wine possesses several things beneficial to a person’s health, with particular concern to the heart. But, health benefits aside, I took this plunge because wine is so much more than alcohol.

However, taking the plunge from beer to wine wasn’t easy. While beer is junior varsity, wine is varsity. With wine, you’re playing with the big boys and there are several rules to keep in mind for a smooth transition.

Okay, there’s plenty not to like here and enough that’s simply wrong that I could go on and on about (especially about the health benefits angle), but hang on, there’s more. She then lists her five rules for “trading up” to drinking wine and how it differs from beer drinking, to help us members of the great-unwashed mass of beer drinkers — the hop polloi? — move up the corporate drinks ladder. That’s a hoot. Sit down and strap in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

1. “Don’t Play Drinking Games.” In this, she suggests “beer was made for drinking competitions” and that “[w]ine, simply put, is not a toy.” I agree that you shouldn’t play drinking games, but that advice holds across all alcohol, no alcohol is a toy. The problem isn’t that it’s beer, as she believes, but with the age and immaturity of the people playing the games. It’s like blaming the gun for a game of Russian roulette.

2. “Wine should be sipped, not chugged.” Here she claims chugging is ideal for beer because if you hate the stuff, as she claims to do, then you’ll taste less of it. She should do marketing for the big breweries, because that is the idea behind their “ice cold” propaganda. The colder and quicker you drink, the less you’ll taste of the mass-produced beers. But she also writes that “[e]ach sip of wine should provide a new experience for your taste buds, making your beer bottles boil with increasing jealousy in the process.” Well I don’t think a bottle Rochefort Grand Cru or Westmalle Tripel would be terribly jealous of a bottle of Blue Nun or any Gallo box wine. The fact is there is crap beer and there is crap wine. But good beer is meant to be sipped every bit as much as fine wine.

3. “Enjoy the Variety.” Apparently there are only “several different types of beer” and most taste “relatively the same.” But with wine any two bottles of wine “can taste dramatically unalike.” Cork dorks are — I love this phrase, like it’s a gift from the gods — “granted with the ability to pick from a variety of years, types, and flavors.” Oh, thank you great and terrible Oz for granting me this privilege. She then says you can pick “red wine or white wine” from all over the world. Wow, red and white. That takes me back to the Blues Brothers movie. “We’ve got both kinds of music, country and western.” As I probably don’t even need to say, there are far more varieties of beer than wine and they only taste the same to someone who has an undeveloped palate. And there are, of course, several beers that are vintage dated and can be aged.

4. “Embrace the History and the Culture.” Wine is apparently “packed with culture and history.” Does she think beer-making just sprang up last Tuesday? It’s at least as old — and possibly older — than wine with an equally rich heritage. How is it possible she doesn’t know that? She later comments that she was “merely saying that wine drinkers should embrace the history of wine” but given that it is one of her “rules” for transitioning from beer to wine it seems quite reasonable to infer that she feels beer’s history is not worthy, or at least is not as worthy as wine’s saga.

5. “Behave Yourself.” According to Jordan, “wine demands a certain sophistication that beer refutes: when drinking beer, the more barbaric the behavior the better.” This is the most pernicious propaganda in the beer hater’s arsenal. And again it comes back to context. Of course there are many people who abuse beer. But there are also homeless winos swilling wine out of a paper bag. That wine is inherently more sophisticated than beer is merely a product of our culture. It’s certainly not the case in much of the rest of the civilized world, Belgium being perhaps the best example.

In the end, she concludes that “beer and wine are on different sides of the alcohol spectrum” with beer being merely the “sippy-cup that prepares you for the real thing” — wine. I guess that makes all of us beer drinkers babies, but it’s hard to imagine a more childish, mis-informed opinion than that of Ms. Jordan.

There are a plethora of comments already over the last week (it first appeared on the 9th) and Jordan responds initially by saying her piece was meant to be “tongue in cheek” and that it’s just “opinion.” But so much of what she’s written is simply not true, that it’s hard to take the “I was just trying to funny” thing at face value. To me, it sounds more like the backpedaling of someone who suddenly realized they may have been wrong. In a later comment responding to her critics, Jordan replies. “That’s the great thing about an opinion piece: it’s an opinion. You don’t have to agree with me. I think wine is better than beer, you don’t. Who cares?” And that would be fine except that opinion should at least be based on fact, but her conclusions — which she calls opinions — flow directly from misinformation, whether deliberate or ignorant. We could prepare a laundry list of facts she’s gotten wrong from the variety of beer to the inherent lack of sophistication of beer. They are not merely opinions if they’re based on lies, in that case they’re stereotypes. It’s no different really from racial or ethnic stereotypes. And I know I’m on the fringes of opinion here, but I also believe that “opinions” like Jordan’s perpetuate the bad image that beer has today and certainly does nothing to change people’s perceptions and misconceptions about what beer is and has the potential to be. But Jordan just keeps telling all of the offended beer drinkers to relax, it’s just her opinion. It just feels like she’s still talking down to us, like she’s called us the “N” word but doesn’t think we should be upset because she’s just expressing her opinion.

She later writes that she was just being “cheeky” and that it was done “for humor.” She then expresses surprise that her piece “seemed to offend every Beer Drinker in the world (which again was not [her] intention).” How could she read what she wrote and not think beer drinkers would be offended? How is possible to re-read what she wrote and not think it would be reasonable to conclude that would be their response? It’s just baffling. But I’m still not ready to let her of the hook because it was “opinion,” was meant to be “humorous” and it wasn’t her “intention” to offend anyone. Those claims were all made after the article was published and so seem like justifications for what she wrote. But perhaps her true motives were revealed later responding to yet another critic. “Relax..this is an opinion piece with intended controversy (it’s controversy that gets traffic).” So like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, stirring up the pot with misinformation and “satire” is good for business. Facts don’t matter, but ratings do. Now that’s integrity. Whatever happened to journalistic ethics? I guess they don’t count if you call what you’re writing “opinion.”

Her persistent reliance on the “opinion” defense continues to rankle me. Perhaps our society does view it this way, but opinion shouldn’t be merely saying whatever comes into your head with no basis in reality. When you base an opinion on misinformation or ignorance, the opinion generated is likewise flawed and may properly be called wrong. I realize there are some people who can look at a photograph of our planet and still maintain that the Earth is flat, saying they’re free to hold such an opinion. And while technically they do have that freedom, who can blame the rest of us who see that opinion as misguided, ignorant or just plain wrong. As many have done in the comments to Jordan’s article, we are just as free to disagree and try to educate that person on why her “opinions” may be wrong because of the misinformation they’re based on. It almost goes without saying that Jordan is free to prefer wine to beer, but to justify her preference by arguing that wine is superior to beer is no longer mere opinion, but advocacy and a kind of unquestioning belief.

To her credit, Jordan got the approval of her boss to do a beer tasting this Friday with several beers suggested by her dissenters and there was a great deal of back and forth in the comments section coming up with the list. She supposedly will be writing up the results shortly thereafter. I don’t have high hopes for her conversion or seeing the light since she characterizes herself as “stubborn, but not unyielding.” I may be wrong — I too, am trying to keep an open mind — but she appears so strongly predisposed to her opinion that I doubt that one tasting of a sample of beer’s amazing diversity will be enough to change her mind. As we all know, prejudice is very hard to overcome. I have no problem with her preference for wine, but I — and every other beer lover — should have a problem with her prejudice against beer. Not only is it not justifiable, there’s really no reason to attack beer. I’m sure I could come up with just as many similar reasons why beer is more sophisticated than wine, but unlike a healthy percentage of wine drinkers, I believe you can lift up all available alcoholic choices without resorting to name-calling, vilification or worse. There’s simply no need to put one type down to raise the status of another. In the end, none are in fact better or worse than any other. There is just as much good and bad in all of them. It’s frustrating that wine and spirits tend to get much more positive coverage by the media than beer does, and articles like this one by Jennifer Jordan don’t help the situation, however unintentional she claims it to be. Every time I read one of these anti-beer diatribes, I continue to wonder. Why can’t we all just get along?

Oregon Beer Up 16%

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An Oregonian Bulletin friend (thanks Jim) sent this in. Today’s Oregonian has a two-part piece by John Foyston, a veteran newspaperman and long-time advocate of good beer. The first part, Oregon beers grow by hops and bounds, details some great news about sales of Oregon beer in 2006, where again record growth ocurred for at least the third year in a row.

From the article:

Craft brewers in the state made 3.5 million gallons more beer last year than in 2005, a 16 percent increase and the third year in a row of double-digit gains. This at a time megabrewers such as Anheuser-Busch Cos. and Miller Brewing Co. have struggled to maintain their revenues and market share.

According to figures released this month by the Oregon Brewers Guild, the state’s 79 breweries produced about 792,000 barrels of beer in 2006, or 24.5 million gallons. That’s up from 21.1 million gallons a year earlier, and makes Oregon one of the leaders in a craft beer segment growing faster than any other part of the U.S. alcoholic beverage market.

The second part is a nice profile of Portland’s Amnesia Brewing.

Sad News About The Beer King

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eames
Alan Eames, known to the beer world as “The Beer King” and “The Indiana Jones of Beer,” passed away Saturday, February 10. He was 59 years old. Eames was a cultural anthropologist, historian and writer by trade, and a tireless lecturer and advocate for beer. He will be deeply missed.

Here is a short biography of Alan Eames from Ohio Brew Week:

Dubbed the Indiana Jones of Beer and The Beer King by the world media, Vermont resident Alan Eames is an internationally recognized beer historian, author, consultant, and beer anthropologist.

Mr. Eames is author of A Beer Drinker’s Companion, Blood, Sweat and Beers, and The Oldenburg Beer Drinkers Bible. Eames has written about beer for a variety of publications, including All About Beer Magazine, Americas, Consumer Digest, Top Shelf; The Malt Advocate, Beer: The Magazine, Popular Science, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Eames provided entries spanning ancient times through the mid-19th century in his contributions to The Encyclopedia of Beer.

Mr. Eames was founding Director of the American Museum of Brewing History and Fine Arts in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky. Speaking of the ancient and valuable role of beer in human societies, Mr. Eames has lectured throughout the United States at such institutions as The New England College of Medicine, The Culinary Institute of America, the Departments of Anthropology at Brown University, University of Georgia, and The United States Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C.

As a beer historian, Mr. Eames has appeared internationally before an audience of millions on radio, television, and in the press. A veteran of more than 14 appearances on National Public Radio throughout the United States, include All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, and the Splendid Table. Among mainstream television and talk shows, Eames’ work has been showcased in such primetime fare as NBC’s Today Show and Good Morning America. As a globetrotting beer anthropologist, Eames’ career was highlighted in Nippon Television’s documentary The World Beer Traveller, for Tokyo Television. Recently the Indiana Jones of Beer was the subject of a segment in Canada’s beery documentary FoodEssence. Mr. Eames may be currently seen on The History Channel’s MODERN MARVELS – BREWING. Mr. Eames has consulted on a variety of Hollywood feature films lending historical expertise to beer and barroom related scenes.

His most famous book was The Secret Life of Beer!: Exposed: Legends, Lore & Little-Known Facts

Secret-Life-of-Beer-Eames-Alan

The book’s description:

Beer has inspired, influenced, and excited human beings for thousands of years and Alan D. Eames, the certified “king of beer,” has traveled the world uncovering The Secret Life of Beer. In this book, he reveals untold stories, lore, and references to beer in poetry, song, literature, and history. Readers will be astonished to learn the esoteric facts Eames has discovered, such as that in most ancient cultures only women were allowed to brew, and for much of history beer was considered a nourishing alternative to drinking water!

From its origins among early civilizations to a hallowed place in the history of mankind, the art, the history, the culture, and the mystery of fermented beverages is the subject of historical fact, mythological speculation, and philosophical enquiry. The Secret Life of Beer! shares bits and pieces of this intriguing cultural history, along with quotes from such diverse beer drinkers as Nietzsche and Charles Darwin, in an inviting, highly browseable format.

Here is an interview of Eames by Robert Lauriston. And here’s an article from Yankee Brew News (1993) entitled Beer, Women, and History.
 

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Alan Eames — April 16, 1947 – February 10, 2007

Celebrator Beer News Anniversary Party This Sunday

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This coming Sunday is the 19th anniversary party for the Celebrator Beer News, one of the magazines that I write for. It will be held at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley, California from 4 to 8 pm. This year will also feature a Mardi Gras theme, with three bands, craft beer from fifteen breweries and BBQ and Cajun/Creole food. Tickets are $40, and are available on-line from the Celebrator website. To get a flavor of what the party will be like, check out my photos from last year. I’ll be there, most likely working the door, so say hello when you check-in at the entrance.

 

From the press release:

The Celebrator Beer News will celebrate its 19th anniversary on February 18, 2007, with a Mardi Gras-themed party from 4 to 8 pm at the Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley, Calif.

At least 15 other breweries will pour favorite brews. Meet Celebrator writers and beer industry luminaries, including pioneer figures in the craft beer movement. Cajun/Creole food, music from three bands and beer are included!

Breweries pouring include Anchor Brewery, Anderson Valley, Pacific Coast, Deschutes, Ommegang, BridgePort, Russian River, Sierra Nevada, Triple Rock, Trumer Pils, Valley Brewing, Widmer/Redhook and more.

Music includes a Dixieland Jazz Band and an industry Battle of the Bands with performances by the Hysters (Anchor Brewery) and the industry-staffed Rolling Boil Blues Band!

Tickets are on sale now: $40 per person, including BBQ and Cajun/Creole food, beer and music. Discount rooms will be available at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco ($79 per night). Call 800-622-0855 and ask for the Celebrator rate. If you want to stay in Berkeley after the event, there is a deal at the Hotel Durant. Call 510-845-8981 and ask for the Manager’s rate. This event takes place one day after the start of the Barleywine Festival at the Toronado!

For more information, call 510-538-2739. Ticket sales by Visa/MC, phone 800-430-BEER or buy tickets here through PayPal.

Bistro Double IPA Festival 2007

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The 7th annual Double IPA Festival was held yesterday at the Bistro in Hayward, California. There were 42 beers that we judged, narrowing it down to four. All four were terrific beers and any one of them could have ended up in first place, though ultimately Ballast Point Point Brewing‘s Dorado was the one we picked. Judging when pretty smoothly and we had a great group this time, including three Brits in town working on a CAMRA book on the west coast.

Judging in the cellar, trying to take the final ten beers and pick three winners.

Ben McFarland, this year’s British Beer Writer of the Year, and Tom Sandham. The pair are in town along with my friend Glenn Payne (who helped start Meantime Brewing) to work on a CAMRA guidebook for British and European tourists coming to the west coast.

The other end of the judging table, with me flanked by Pete Slosberg and Dave Keene.

While upstairs it was raining something firece.

Darn, I forget the woman on the left’s name, but the rest are Dave Keene (owner of the Toronado), Melissa Myers (with Drake’s Brewing) and Ed Chainey (with Anderson Valley Brewing).

Vinnie Cilurzo (from Russian River Brewing), Shaun O’Sullivan (from 21st Amendment) and Pete Slosberg share a Falstaff.

Nano Breweries

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Last week in the northwestern Washington Tri-City Herald there was a nice profile of a small Washington brewery, Laht Neppur Brewing, which is the last name backwards of the owners, Court and Katie Ruppenthal. The brewery is located in Waitsburg, Washington, which is in the southeastern part of the state, a little bit north of Walla Walla. The Ruppenthal’s brewery has been open a little over six months, having sold their first beer last June.

According to the article, they first thought most of their sales would be to local bars and restaurants but the brewery in their converted workshop has become a popular local hangout in its own right. Several of their popular beers sell out before they can be delivered outside the tiny brewery. But the Ruppenthal’s brewery is very laid back, with customers able to cook their own food on the grill. It’s become a community center of sorts.

Given the recent discussions about children at beer places, this passage lept out at me.

Children are welcome and even have their own toy boxes and a tiny broom to push around the broken peanut shells that litter the concrete floors. “We have a cement floor and metal furniture,” Katie said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, they’re going to break something.”

But earlier in the article, co-owner and brewer Court Ruppenthal muses that his brewery is more like a “nano brewery” than a microbrewery, which started me thinking. A microbrewery is defined as a brewery that “produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year.” There are a few other bits to the definition, but that’s the main distinction. Above that are regional breweries (up to 2 million barrels) and then, simply, breweries (or big or national ones, with over 2 million barrels). There are only four breweries making more than 2 million barrels per year, and 53 that produce between 15,000 and 2 million (according to the 2006 figures from Modern Brewery Age). So out of roughly 1400 U.S. breweries, only 57 are large, leaving around 1,343 microbreweries (including brewpubs, whose definition has to do with their percentage of packaged beer sold).

So it seems to me on a practical basis, the term microbrewery doesn’t seem as useful anymore, or at least seems to need some modification. The various sizes of the remaining breweries and some patterns there seem to suggest some changes to the definitions. For example, below 15,000 annual barrels there are only five that brew more than 10,000 each year. Looking at the next 5,000 barrels down shows another big drop off, with only 19 breweries producing between 5,000 and 10,000 barrels per annum. So that means there are still a whopping 1,319 breweries that make less than 5,000 barrels per year.

If we keep going, only 10 make between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels annually, 16 between 3,000 and 4,000, and 17 between 2,000 and 3,000. This means 1,276 make less than 2,000 barrels of beer each year. Fully 67 breweries make more than 1,000 barrels so that’s still approximately 1,209 below a thousand barrels per year. The reason for doing all that math is to show that the overwhelming majority of breweries make a very small amount of beer each year. This is not to take anything away from their efforts, but in terms of what’s important to their interests, I have to believe they’re different from that of the larger concerns. There’s such a wide range of sizes within the definition of microbreweries that there must be a correspondingly varied set of issues they face, as well.

So I’m not quite sure where you’d draw the line, though at either 2,000 or 1,000 seems prudent. Those breweries, I think, we should define as nano breweries. Technically, the prefix “nano” means one billionth but more colloquially simply is used to denote the very small (as in nanotechnology). Fittingly, the Jargon File says the following about nano:

– pref. [SI: the next quantifier below micro-; meaning *10^(-9)] Smaller than micro-, and used in the same rather loose and connotative way. Thus, one has nanotechnology (coined by hacker K. Eric Drexler) by analogy with `microtechnology’; and a few machine architectures have a `nanocode’ level below `microcode’.

So in computer or math parlance, nano is directly below micro in terms of size. Next below nano is actually “pico,” technically meaning one-trillionth, but at some point it might also be useful to have microbreweries, nanobreweries and picobreweries.

But for now I’d argue for dividing the current definition of micros into two, with micros being breweries that produce between more than either 1,000 or 2,000 barrels per year and nanos being breweries that produce less than 1,000 or 2,000 each year, along with all of the other current parts of the definition. And since there are so few breweries between 10,000 and 15,000 barrles per year, perhaps the upper microbrewery/lower regional boundary should be changed to 10,000. The reason for doing this, I think, is in terms of not just size but the way in which these different size breweries function, are organized and approach the market, which I believe is radically different between all of the divisions. Thus it would make sense to start talking about them as separate parts of the beer industry, in much the same way we do now with the big breweries, regional breweries and microbreweries.

Anybody else have any thoughts or comments to add?

Shoo Fly Beer Pie

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I was surprised to come across a recipe for Shoo Fly Pie, especially in a Chicago area newspaper. I grew with Shoo Fly Pie, it was available at most restaurants and bakeries where I grew up. It’s essentially an Amish or Mennonite dessert, although there are versions of it in the deep south, too. It’s basically a pie made with molasses as the filling. Because it’s so sweet it was thought to attract flies which then have to be “shooed” away, and that’s supposedly how it got its name. When I was a little kid, I thought it was made with actual flies and refused to eat it. But now I love it, though it’s not the sort of thing you find here in California.

But the Northwest Herald has a recipe in their Saturday edition for Brown Ale Beer Shoofly Pie, courtesy of the NBWA. Authentic shoo fly pie, of course, doesn’t use beer and the Amish drink very little alcohol, and many drink none at all. But I can certainly see how adding some brown ale could work quite well, so I’m willing to give it a try. Here are a number of traditional recipes for Shoo Fly Pie at Berksweb, a tourist website for the county where I grew up in Pennsylvania.

Wet-Bottom Shoo Fly Pie.

Here’s the Brown Ale Beer Shoofly Pie recipe:

1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup light brown sugar (packed)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg
3/4 cup brown ale beer (porter beer may be substituted)
1 cup mild molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup boiling water
1 (9-inch) ready-to-use refrigerated pie crust (or frozen 9-inch pie shell, thawed)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In bowl of a food processor, combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt. Pulse to mix. Add butter; pulse until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Remove 1/2 cup of the crumb mixture and set aside.

In large bowl, beat egg until well blended. Add beer and molasses; stir until just combined. In small cup, dissolve baking soda in boiling water. Stir into molasses mixture; add crumb mixture from food processor bowl. Stir mixture until well blended.

Pour mixture into pie shell. Top with reserved 1/2 cup crumb mixture. Bake in oven 35 minutes, or until filling is puffed and just set, and crumb mixture is lightly golden. Cool completely.