Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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The Next Big Little Niche

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Well I’ve known it’s been coming for a while now and have been sitting on it, because I’ve been researching a story about gluten-free beers. Today, Miller’s BrewBlog broke the story that Anheuser-Busch is readying a gluten-free beer for the market.

From the BrewBlog:

The brewer [A-B] on July 31 filed a brand label registration with the state of Missouri for a product called Red Bridge Sorghum beer. A-B previously had filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

A-B appears intent on jumping on a small bandwagon of brewers making beer with sorghum instead of barley. The dominant industry leader already has demonstrated its commitment to attacking tiny niches by rolling out organic beers.

Beers made with sorghum can be consumed by people with a condition called celiac disease. Exposure to gluten — a protein found in barley — triggers digestive problems in people with the disease.

Several craft brewers currently produce gluten-free beers. Unfortunately, because of ridiculously puritanical labeling restrictions that forbid any health claims on alcohol labels along with the fact the FDA has been criminally slow to adopt any standard of what gluten-free means (Europe by contrast has had a standard in place for years), they can’t really be labeled as gluten-free. Here’s a sample of gluten-free beers currently available from U.S. craft brewers:

In addition, brewers in Australia, Belgium, France, Italy and the United Kingdom are all producing gluten-free beers. The gluten-free seminar at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference was surprisingly well-attended. When I queried several brewers there, I got the same response from all of them. “We get a lot of customers asking about this.”

My interest in these beers comes originally from my son, Porter, who is autistic. In reading about Autism Spectrum Disorder, I’ve discovered that a common symptom among the constellation of autistic indicators is stomach problems and often times a gluten-free diet helps immensely. Like much about autism, scientists and doctors aren’t exactly sure why this happens but I’m glad so far Porter doesn’t show signs of having this problem. But there are also millions of Celiac sufferers worldwide, and the number is growing. People with celiac disease, likewise, must also abstain from gluten, a part of most grains like barley and wheat. One out of every 133 people in the U.S. has celiac disease.

Here’s a short description of celiac disease from the Celiac Disease Foundation:

A lifelong autoimmune intestinal disorder, found in individuals who are genetically susceptible. Damage to the mucosal surface of the small intestine is caused by an immunologically toxic reaction to the ingestion of gluten and interferes with the absorption of nutrients. Celiac Disease (CD) is unique in that a specific food component, gluten, has been identified as the trigger. Gluten is the common name for the offending proteins in specific cereal grains that are harmful to persons with CD. These proteins are found in all forms of wheat (including durum, semolina, spelt, kamut, einkorn, and faro), and related grains, rye, barley, and triticale and must be eliminated.

It seems obvious to me that this is the next big small niche beer. I know that last statement was oxymoronic, but hear me out. Gluten-free beers aren’t going to be as popular as light beer or even porters, but with 1-in-133 Americans with celiac disease combined with thousands, perhaps millions, of autistic kids on gluten-free diets who will begin reaching the age of majority in the coming years, and you’ve got a sizable little market that’s likely to emerge. Now that A-B is entering this market, more attention will surely be focused on it. And A-B, regardless of anything else you can say about them, doesn’t take any action without first having thoroughly researched, tested and studied the market. So look for many more gluten-free beers in the market soon.

Foster’s Closing Ranks Again

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Back in June, Foster’s announced it was pulling out of its last remaining brewery in China. Now they’re also leaving India and Vietnam. Reportedly, Foster’s wants to concentrate on their domestic beer market and on selling wine.
 

Vietnam

The Vietnam operations are being sold to Asia Pacific Breweries. According to their press release, APB “will be purchasing the Vietnam assets of the Foster’s Group for $105 million. This transaction includes the rights to brew, market and distribute Foster’s Lager, Biere Larue, BGI, Flag and Song Han, in Vietnam.” This acquisition brings APB’s total ownershio to 29 breweries in ten countries.
 

India

Foster’s India is being sold to SABMiller for $120 million.

From the SABMiller press release:

Foster’s India currently operates one brewery based in Aurangabad in the state of Maharashtra with a licenced annual capacity of 350,000 hectolitres. The company produces, distributes and supports Foster’s Lager, Amberro Mild and Amberro Strong beer brands in the Indian market. In the year ended 30 June 2006, total beer sales were 236,000 hectolitres (2005: 209,000 hl) with Foster’s Lager representing 88% of total production and sales (2005: 85%).

India is the third largest market for the Foster’s brand globally and it has achieved a CAGR of 13% since operations commenced in 1998. It has a presence in 19 Indian states and has a substantial share of the mild beer segment in the strategic state of Maharashtra.

SABMiller India will look to extend Foster’s Lager nationally through its network of ten breweries and seek significant cost benefits from brewing and distributing the brand locally. The Aurangabad brewery will also provide additional capacity for SABMiller’s presence in Maharashtra as well as a platform for access to the Mumbai market.

SABMiller India is the subcontinent’s second largest brewer. Its brand portfolio includes Royal Challenge, Haywards 5000, Castle and the recently launched Haywards Black, India’s first stout beer.

The Foster’s Brand

First brewed in 1888 by the Foster brothers in Melbourne, Australia, Foster’s Lager is one of the world’s best beers. As one of only a handful of truly global beer brands, Foster’s in now available in over 150 countries. Foster’s is one of the fastest growing international premium beer brands in the world and has enjoyed international growth of 40% since 1997. Foster’s is brewed in 12 countries, at 17 locations with over 100 million cases of Foster’s sold annually.

Myopic Cyclops

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In the last few days since I first saw the press release for Cyclops, the new system for categorizing the flavor of beer introduced by CAMRA (The Campaign or Real Ale), I’ve been wrestling with the question of whether this is a good idea or not. It’s generated a lot of initial press, especially throughout England, and it ranges from high praise to mild ridicule to being called “perhaps the worst idea ever.” I didn’t want to rush to judgment on this one so I’ve been taking my time trying to weigh the pros and cons.
 

A CAMRA promotional photo showing how coasters with the Cyclops system info might be used.

 
In general the goal of making beer more accessible seems like a positive step. I can only assume many people unfamiliar with the many different beer styles and nearly limitless potential flavors and aromas might feel pretty overwhelmed. Even many craft beer lovers don’t know all of the beer styles and this point was recently hammered home to me when several beer bloggers mistakenly identified Rock Bottom’s Ned Flanders Ale as defective when in fact it was an interpretation of a style — Flanders Red Ale — that was supposed to have sour flavors coupled with unusual Brettanomyces and lactobacillic elements. Sure it was an unusual style but these were people who claim some affinity for good beer and indeed have undertaken to write about it. So if they were confused, it sure suggests a real need for something like this.

 

The Official Position

CAMRA claims Cyclops is an “initiative that has been created to help and educate pub goers that are interested in giving real ale a try for the very first time, or have only tried a few pints and want to find out more!”

More from CAMRA:

Real ale can be a complicated subject as a lot of craft goes in to the brewing of our national alcoholic drink. Some beer experts in the past have used very ‘flowery’ language to describe a beer and some consumers have found this hard to understand.

The new ‘Cyclops’ campaign has been designed to inform new real ale drinkers of what style of beer they are drinking, what its alcohol content is, what the beer should look like, what it should smell like and of course, what it should taste like using very simple but informative language.

According to the press release, the goal of the Cyclops program is to “demystify real ale after research showed that 1 in 3 people would try more real ale if its characteristics were made easier to understand in pubs.” Apparently in designing the system, they took “lessons from the UK wine industry,” which I’m not sure was the best place to look for inspiration. Wine and beer are not the same, of course, so what works well in one may not translate to the other. There are similarities to be sure, but do they work in this instance? I’ll explore that question more fully below.

More from the press release:

Declining beer sales in the UK have brought beer consumers and brewers together to revitalise the market for real ale, Britain’s national pub drink. Following the success of the wine industry to make wine more accessible to all consumers through simple tasting notes Cyclops will use common language to explain what different real ales should look, smell and taste like. Sweetness and bitterness are the two dominant taste qualities of real ale and Cyclops using a scale of 1 to 5 for each enables drinkers to work out how sweet and bitter they like their beers.

The new scheme was the brainchild of David Bremner, Head of Marketing at Everards Brewery in Leicester. Everards pilot scheme aimed to promote its beers to new consumers who may have never tried real ale before or who had only tried a few pints in the past. By using attractive imagery and simplified language, real ales are described on promotional material such as beer mats, posters, tasting cards and pump-clip crowners to inform consumers of what they are buying. This information will also be placed on the back on beer handpulls to keep pub staff informed of what the real ale is like.

So far, only fourteen of Britain’s brewers have signed onto the program, but a few of them are big players and together a large number of pubs will likely see the new promotional material.

 

The System

Okay, let’s assume for now this is something that’s worth doing. Is the Cyclops system that CAMRA came up with a good method to educate consumers about individual beers? Not being a brewery member of CAMRA, I can only reverse engineer how the ratings are created.

Each beer has five essential pieces of information: See, Smell, Taste and then a five-point scale for bitter and sweet. Let’s look at one example to see how this would work. We’ll use Everard’s Tiger Beer.

  1. SEE: See is a rather awkward way to say the beer’s look, it’s color. Of course, it also seems to ignore other factors when looking at a beer like head retention, head color, Brussels lace, bubble size, cloudiness, etc., but I guess the goal is to keep things simple. In the case of Tiger, the SEE is listed as: “AUBURN, CHESTNUT BROWN.” And while that easily translate to give you an idea or impression of the beer’s color from what I can tell the color assigned is arbitrary and based on the individual brewery’s decision on what to call the beer’s color. To be truly useful, it seems like they should have been tied to one of the commonly used color scales. Beer color is represented using either the SRM (Standard Reference Method) or the EBC (European Brewing Convention) color measurement. There’s also an older one known as Lovibonds, but it’s essentially the same as SRM.

    Perhaps if every beer that was 9-11 Lovibonds was called “Copper” every time that would be useful and if brewers wanted to use a more romantic, evocative color descriptor then the second color name could be used for that. I can’t be 100% certain, but from a random sample of color names, it doesn’t appear to be standardized, which renders it somewhat subjective and less useful.

    To illustrate this now, here’s three brewer’s SEE descriptors for their entire portfolios:

    Badger Ales: dark amber, ruby brown / light amber, copper / tawny, light golden brown / pale gold
    Everards: amber / auburn, chestnut brown / tawny copper / gold straw
    Fuller’s: tan / light gold / tawny / auburn / deep ruby red / chestnut

    Just in these three, already there’s conflicts. Everards has one beer described as “auburn, chestnut brown” and Fuller’s has one they call “auburn” and another called “chestnut.” So are the two Fuller’s beers the same color as the one from Everards? It’s not exactly clear, is it? And if the goal is to make it more accesible, then I’m not sure this does the trick very well as it only leads to more confusion.

  2. SMELL: While perhaps less genteel than aroma, smell at least conveys exactly what this represents. But again, trying to encapsulate something so subjective and personal is all but impossible. There’s no real standards here to cling to so I’m not sure this information helps. There are a few beers that have specific signature aromas such as the coriander and orange peel in Wits or the clove and bananas in German-style hefeweizens. But for most beers, the positive aromas are not really universal. In any particular beer, some people may smell one thing, others another and no one is really wrong. Everyone’s olfactory sense is different and/or developed to a greater or lesser degree than another person’s sense. So looking again at our three brewery examples, they all read like someone’s tasting notes. And having been collating tasting notes for years, I can tell you everybody has their own method, style and personal terminology for taking notes.
  3. TASTE: See above. For the most part, what’s true for a beer’s nose is true for the flavors, as well.
  4. BITTER: Using a five-point scale, the idea here appears to be to give at least a range of the bitterness of a particular beer. Personally I like the International Bitterness Units (IBU) scale, but I realize it’s a little unwieldy for the general populace. It’s more useful if you know the IBU ranges of beer styles. It too, has limitations since the higher you go on the scale the less accurate the formula for figuring out IBUs becomes. But by and large, its served the industry well. I’m not sure that a bitterness scale with only a range of five (six if you use zero) gives enough information. It may be enough for the majority of English ales but if you try to go beyond that it may not work. But I suppose of all the Cyclops scales at least this one is easily understood and does give some information that may be meaningful.
  5. SWEET: The sweetness imparted by a beer from either the malt or alcohol (or esters) is like hops, a much broader range than a five-point scale can adequately capture. The problem is, as Stan from Beer Therapy puts so well, there’s “more to hops than bitterness. And there’s certainly more to malt than sweetness.” Stan hits upon perhaps the biggest hurdle to overcome in designing such a system to categorize beer, which is that a true appreciation of beer’s complexities cannot be distilled down into a simple series of numbers and universal descriptors.
  6. OTHER FACTORS: All of the examples of the Cyclops system in use also includes the beer style, percentage of alcohol and a short sentence or two description. This is generally the same information currently available for most beers, and it does add to the overall picture, but it doesn’t exactly simplify things.

Here is three ways in which Everard’s Tiger Beer Cyclops system data might be used:

In a festival program.

As a poster.

On a coaster.

 

The Name: Cyclops?

 According to CAMRA’s press release, the name Cyclops comes “due to the one eye, nose and mouth imagery used on the promotional material.” The Cyclops originates, of course, from Greek mythology and “is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead.”

But as Alan writing on A Good Beer Blog points out, the most “famous Cyclops, Homer’s Polyphemus [in The Odyssey], was blinded for life by drinking strong wine and ate people. This is hardly the making of a good brand. But even when he had one good eye he saw things … like he was born with one eye in the middle of his forehead — as in without [a] particularly strong ability to see things from other perspectives.”

At first I thought perhaps cyclops might be an acronym for something but when I found out it was simply named for the promotional materials, I threw up my hands. What a terribly unthoughtful way to choose a name for something you know will be controversial and which you want to succeed. So the name has absolutely nothing to do with the program itself or what it’s trying to accomplish. It’s likely to confuse most people even more plus a cyclops doesn’t exactly conjure up a warm and fuzzy image that could be exploited by marketing efforts.

 

What Others Are Saying

Roger Protz explained the goal a little better in a CNN report:

Cyclops is partly aimed at raising the respectability of a drink often miscast as the cause of Britain’s social ills, namely the notorious binge-drinking culture that sees city center bars, hospitals and police stations filled with inebriated youngsters.

“Wine is seen as respectable, but to many people beer means thugs. This is completely untrue. What we’re trying to do is elevate beer to a level equal with wine, where it becomes normal to drink beer at a dinner party.

“Brewers are responding to this. Some are even producing beer in elegant wine-shaped bottles, and as most wine writers agree, beer goes much better with food than wine.”

Says Protz, while he was once ridiculed for talking floridly about lowly bitters and stouts, more people are now appreciating the finer points of blending hops, barley and malts.

The London Telegraph, on the other hands, responds to the idea of a pub “where particular ales are suggested for particular dishes” by condescendingly suggesting that “the day of the beer snob cannot be long away.” Now that’s clueless reporting. Firstly, we beer snobs have been simmering in the underground for decades and secondly, food and beer pairings are not exactly a radical idea. If you can pair one beverage with food you can pair another. The author, the aptly named Neil Tweedie, is a wine writer, which doubtless explains his disparaging tone.

 

Conclusion

After writing this all out and thinking about how this might be used, the inescapable conclusion is that while I applaud the attempt it’s essentially an unworkable idea, especially if you try to broaden it to include all beer styles rather than just a narrow range of English ales. It’s a shame, too, because I’m pretty anal-retentive and detail-oriented so I would love a way to categorize all beers using a single, simple method. Unfortunately, I don’t think this is it. I’m not willing to call it the worst idea ever, because however flawed it is, at least it’s attempt. It’s more than you and I have tried. In the end, I think Cyclops might need some glasses, he’s a little myopic. Pint glasses?

Beer Attacks Continue

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Less than two weeks after the newest Gallup poll showed that beer is indeed the most popular alcoholic beverage reversing last year’s poll which suggested wine was more popular, another attack on beer took place. This despite the fact that beer outsells wine 4-to-1, and has for decades if not longer. Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a story in the business section entitled Beer sales falling flat as wine, other beverages grow in popularity. Business writer Len Boselovic begins by offering that if the term “Sophisticated Beer Drinker” “leaves an oxymoronic aftertaste on your palate, you have an idea of what beer makers are up against.” That’s his knee-slapping way of acknowledging that his paper along with almost every mainstream media source in the country have been doing an embarrassingly bad job of educating their readers about beer. For some reason his little joke just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s like he’s saying “ha ha, we suck at covering beer and now breweries are having trouble getting people to take beer seriously. Isn’t that funny?” Not when it’s partly your fault, you sanctimonious halfwit. Yeah, I know I lack perspective on this, but I’m just sick to death of the way the media treats beer so badly time and time again and then wonders why it has a poor image.

For support for the piece’s title, Boselovic offers the following:

U.S. beer shipments last year were flatter than a stale ale, falling 0.1 percent according to the Beer Institute. The industry group says shipments to the U.S. market — which accounted for about 86 percent of overall business — declined 2.2 percent to 178.8 million barrels. The drop was offset by a 7.2 percent increase in imports and an 8 percent increase in exports.

Meanwhile, the Wine Institute reports wine consumption grew 5.2 percent in 2005 while the Distilled Spirits Council says sales rose 2.9 percent based on the volume of alcohol sold.

But Boselovic barely mentions that craft beer has shown positive growth near 10% for the past two years and appears to be on track to threepeat this year.

The article also offers the following chart:

 

In it the author makes the blanket statement that “brewers have been losing customers in recent years,” by which he means the big brewers. Craft brewers have not only NOT been losing customers but have been slowly building their business over the last decade. But to mainstream media, especially the bigger outlets covering national or regional areas, the craft brewers are hardly ever on their radar at all. Fourteen hundred individual brewers in countless markets making 65+ different styles of beer and they hardly even rate a mention and are not even taken into account when discussing the beer business as a whole. But notice how every little boutique winery merits a full page profile as the next “it” business and it’s no wonder I’m pulling my hair out.

Apparently so-called “marketing experts” believe the cause of big beer’s decline is “changing consumer tastes” and they say “[d]rinkers are more sophisticated, willing to try something new, and looking for different beverages that are appropriate for different occasions.” Yet the craft beer segment of the industry is literally filled with complex, sophisticated beers in dozens of distinct styles perfect for the ideal circumstance, weather, food, event, holiday, etc. But the mainstream media repeatedly ignores this fact and turns instead to wine and spirits whenever the talk turns to sophistication. So it’s no wonder people can’t connect the two.

Auburn University professor Michael R. Solomon, who specializes in “consumer behavior” trots out this old saw. “When you drink a lot of wine, you’re refined. When you drink a lot of beer, you’re just a beer drinker.” And while he correctly points out that this problem is a perceptual one, he fails to notice that it was the media itself that helped to create this perception and continues to perpetuate it today.

While it’s certainly true that advertising by the major beer companies has done much of the damage to the perception of beer over many decades, the media has certainly been in collusion through the way they’ve ignored craft beer while embracing wine. So it’s really no surprise when this article does in fact suggest that it’s beer advertising that’s at fault and it’s only now that the big breweries are realizing what craft brewers have know for twenty-five years, that consumers “don’t want to be seen as a guzzler, a dumb guy, six-pack drinker. They want to be seen as a connoisseur.”

Jim Forrest, VP of Synovate, a market research firm, states that wine and distilled spirits producers have done a good job of fashioning strategies around occasions to consume their products.” He even mentions that “craft and import beer producers have done the same” yet neither he nor the article’s author mention that the media has all but ignored these “strategies around occasions to consume” with regard to beer while scarcely a holiday goes by without being inundated with stories on the right wine pairing or spirit needed to properly celebrate.

They all show remarkable restraint at ignoring their own role in the poor perception beer has after decades of neglect by everyone but a small, loyal cadre of connoisseurs.

Toward the end of the article, things turn decidedly rife with the unintentionally funny. To wit:

The industry hopes to capitalize on more discriminating palates through its Here’s To Beer campaign, an initiative spearheaded largely by Anheuser-Busch. Advertising features Spike Lee and other famous people describing who they’d like to share a beer with.

The Here’s to Beer campaign was, of course, solely created by Anheuser-Busch, not “spearheaded largely by” them as the article incorrectly claims. Originally, the trade organization The Beer Institute was involved but removed their support right after the initial ad ran on Super Bowl Sunday. The other brewers A-B approached about participating in the Here’s to Beer campaign all famously declined.

Judy Ramberg of Iconoculture has the following to say:

Anheuser-Busch realizes it has to grow by increasing its portfolio of specialty products, not by getting more people to drink its flagship brands. The danger is that the specialty brands will lose some of their appeal if drinkers realize who’s making them. “If beer drinkers find out they’re involved in some of these craft beers, they’ll lose all of their cachet,” says Ms. Ramberg, a Heineken drinker.

Well Judy, they’re taking your advice with many of their products, most notably their new organic beer, Wild Hop Lager, which fails to disclose it’s an A-B product on the label. But that’s also a problem for A-B since back in 1997 they stated publicly that “beer drinkers have the right to know who really brews their beer. We, along with many other traditional brewers and beer enthusiasts, object to those who mislead consumers by marketing their beers as ‘craft brewed,’ when in fact their beers are made in large breweries.” Oh, and Judy, Heineken is a terrible choice for a favorite beer. I don’t know why you volunteered that information or why the author included it, perhaps it was to show you were no shill for the domestic beer companies. People who like it generally — at least in my opinion — prefer the illusion of sophistication without going through the long, drawn-out process of actually being sophisticated enough to know how bad it is. So that’s at least in part why I have a hard time accepting your version of reality. But it’s interesting to note that their marketing campaign has worked on even a “marketing expert.”

On the other hand:

Mr. Forrest disagrees, arguing many drinkers don’t connect the dots. He says many people in the industry don’t realize Blue Moon Belgian White is made by Molson Coors, the world’s fifth-largest brewer. Protests from diehard Rolling Rock aficionados notwithstanding, the iconic brew should give Anheuser-Busch a buzz. “From a consumer standpoint, as long as they stay true to what that brand represents … they’ll still have the following,” Mr. Forrest says.

Jim, baby, I don’t know who you’re talking to but I don’t know anybody in the industry (including most beer connoisseurs) who isn’t aware that Blue Moon is a Coors product. It’s only been around for over ten years, so you must think the people in the beer industry are all pretty stupid. I’m surprised you’d condescend to speak to us lower forms of life. Oh, wait, you didn’t. You’re just sharing the results of having studied us mere mortals.

And please Jim, please, explain to me how from any point of view moving Rolling Rock’s production to New Jersey while continuing to say on the label “from the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe” yet listing the point of origin as St. Louis is staying “true to what that brand represents?” Perhaps that’s how things look in the ivory tower you’ve constructed for yourself, but here on Earth … not so much, Jimbo.

It’s pretty hard not to read these so-called “business experts” without feeling disgusted. I know market research is like the way sausage is made, the less you know the better. My skin crawls every time one of these yahoos claims some insight into the beer industry after floating a few polls or studying some data points they’ve collected. Time and time again the business press reports on beer as if they actually know what they’re talking about but, rarely, if ever, interviews actual people in the industry preferring instead to use analysts as their sources. And if this is how they report on an industry I have some familiarity with, why should I trust anything they have to say on ones I know nothing about? It’s enough to drive me to drink, if I wasn’t already sitting here with a pint of something yummy. Oh, and it’s not Blue Moon. Did you know Coors makes that?

Pete’s Joke of the Week

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I got another funny joke from my friend Pete Slosberg which I thought I’d share. I think I’d run across a joke similar to it years ago but this one has been updated in light recent examples of corporate malfeasance. Perhaps I can get Pete to do a joke of the week every week. C’mon, Pete, what do you say?
 

Joke of the Week #1: Investment Advice

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

With Lucent, you would have $3.50 left of the original $1000.00

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heartily and recycle.

It’s called the 401-Keg Plan.

Canadian Cans a Hit in Hamilton

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Not being a Canuck, I wasn’t too familiar with the Ontario-based Lakeport Brewing, whose full name is the scary-sounding Lakeport Brewing Income Fund. Based on what I’ve read today and from looking at their website, they appear to be a regional brewery that makes primarily industrial light lagers, in other words not a craft brewery. But what I found interesting is that they added canned beer to their portfolio this spring and, according to several stories today in the Canadian press, apparently it’s exceeding their wildest expectations. There are articles in today’s Toronto Star and the Hamilton Spectator. Three of their styles were made available in 355 ml cans — Pilsner, Honey Lager and Lakeport Light.

Judge Ponders: “What Is Beer?”

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maps-pa
This may be funny only to me since it happened in my hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania (BTW, it’s pronounced “redding”) — or near enough, I grew up in a small suburb adjacent to Reading.

Back in January, a 17-year old testified that an adult bought him a case of Miller Genuine Draft but Berks County Court Judge Jeffrey K. Sprecher (obviously no relation to the Sprecher Brewery in Wisconsin) dismissed the charges because “the prosecution had failed to provide the state Liquor Control Board’s list of beers to prove the beverage was beer.” Makes sense to me, I consider Miller Genuine Draft to be not really beer, but a highly-engineered industrial food product. The judge also stated that it was “equally plausible that the defendant purchased a nonalcoholic beverage with a flavor similar to beer.” Clearly, he’s never tasted a non-alcoholic beer.

An appeals court has now overturned that ruling, stating that the minor’s “testimony was more than enough to establish that the beverage he was drinking was a malt or brewed beverage.” Wow, they actually believed a minor would know whether or not he was drinking beer or not. Now that’s funny.

mgd

Is it or isn’t it?

The Beers of OBF

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While seeing friends in Portland is probably the best reason I love OBF, the beers there rank a close second. Seventy-two beers (73 including the Collaborator that the Oregon Brew Crew does) are poured at the festival and each brewery is allowed only one beer. Here are some interesting facts about the festival from the press kit I received:

  • 72 beers
  • 25 beer styles
  • 13 states represented
  • IPAs are the most popular style (12 IPAs, 7 Imperial IPAs)

Another unique feature of the OBF is that there is no judging. But that doesn’t mean some beers don’t stand out more than others. For example, at least among brewers and the people I talked to, there was no doubt about the buzz beer of the festival.

Buzz Beer: Ned Flanders (Rock Bottom — Portland)

Portland’s Rock Bottom brewer, Van Havig, wanted to create something very different went he set out over a year ago to make this year’s buzz beer of the festival. Ned Flanders Ale is, like its namesake, quite sour and has been aged in five different kinds of wooden barrels including oak wine barrels, a barrel with marionberries, one with Brettanomyces, one with lactobacillic and a Jack Daniels barrel. After aging for one year, the various barrels were then blended back together to create one amazingly complex Belgian-inspired sour ale. I don’t think it was very popular with the general attendees, but for those of us in the minority that love sour beers it was a rare treat, with some of the most extreme, complex flavors I’ve tasted in a beer outside Belgium. At least one prominent blog I read called it the worst beer of the festival and thought the sour flavors meant the beer was defective. They must not have read the program notes or been very familiar with this type of beer, but I wish they wouldn’t have been so quick to judge something they clearly didn’t understand. Sour beers, especially the ones that embrace Brettanomyces and lactobacillic elements, are undoubtedly an acquired taste. The word play should have offered a clue, since it’s a Flanders Red Ale and the Flanders area of Belgium is where this type of beer originated. Some prominent examples of the style include Rodenbach Red, Duchesse De Bourgogne and New Belgium’s La Folie. The number of attendees to the festival with blogs who simply dismissed this beer without doing any follow up or research into it is quite surprising. But it was an excellent beer and I suspect with further aging will even continue to improve. I ran into Van at the BridgePort brunch Saturday morning, and he told me that it’s not even on draft at his brewpub because he hasn’t figured out how to deal with cleaning the draft lines of Brettanomyces. So the festival was really the only way you could taste this fantastic beer.
 

Other Stand-Out Beers:

Every year I tend to ignore the California and other beers that I’ve already tried and concentrate on the unique beers made just for the festival and the other ones that I haven’t had an opportunity to taste. So my list of favorites is necessarily skewed and doesn’t include beers I’ve tried and liked before. My notes were a bit scattered and hard to read, but here goes.

Bell’s Hell Hath No Fury Ale

Larry Bell’s Hell Hath No Fury Ale is a dark Belgian strong ale at 8% abv. Deep mahogany in color with a rich yeasty nose with hints of raisins and herbs. With complex flavors of fruit and spices, and chewy chocolate notes, this is delightfully rich beer. It changes with every sip and there’s a lot going on in this beer. The finish is clean and a little sweet.

Big Time Powderfinger Rye

I have a thing for rye beers. I’ve always liked the character that a little rye adds to beer. To me, it’s what it does to the mouthfeel that I like. In Big Time’s case, an English-style pale ale was given just a hint of spiciness that was not from the hops. It was quite refreshing and although the floral hopping was evident, it was very much in balance.

Flying Fish 10th Anniversary Farmhouse Summer Ale

Saisons are another style that I gravitate toward because the tend to all be so different. No two Saisons are alike, because it’s the individual spice and yeast ingredients that can be used are all over the map. There were two of this style at the festival, the other being the delightful Jack Russell Farmhouse Ale. The Flying Fish example was also very refreshing with restrained spicing with hints of herbs and fruity esters. It wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but it wasn’t bad, either.

Full Sail Vesuvius

John Harris has created another excellet beer with Vesuvius. This one, at 8.5% abv, is a strong Belgian-style golden ale. It boasts a signature yeasty Belgian nose with fruity notes and a bright golden color. Big strong flavors erupt in your mouth — sorry — with rich, complex notes. The finish is tarty dry and lingers pleasantly.

Laurelwood Organic Green Mammoth

Mammoth is certainly the right name for this big Imperial IPA, which weighs in at 8.5% abv. The IBUs are listed at an impressive 100, but once you get above a certain amount it’s very hard to predict the actual number so in reality it’s anybody’s guess. It is a huge hop monster though mostly in balance. I presume this is one of Chad’s beers, since Christian has been gone now for a couple of months. If so, I’d say he’s off to a good start. If it is organic, it certainly doesn’t have that telltale something that is often evident in many organic beers which make it easy to identify that they are in fact organic. And that’s a good thing, too.

Standing Stone Double IPA

A great Imperial IPA, and quite well-balanced. The finish is extremely long and very bitter, though pleasantly so — at least if you love hops.

Walking Man Knuckle Dragger

This strong pale ale — at 6.5% abv — is a nice variation on pale ales. A pale ale on steroids? The Barry Bonds of pale ales? So far I’ve liked everything I’ve had from this small brewery, even the beer they were pouring on Hole 1 at the Brew Am was delightful. Big exagerated flavors but always in balance made this a fun beer to experience. This would be excellent with the right food rather than as a quaffing beer on a hot day.

Widmer Hooligan Pale Ale

This beer I mention primarily because it’s a gluten-free beer, and I’ve been researching these beers for an upcoming story I’m doing. My interest in these beers comes originally from my son, Porter, who is autistic. In reading about Autism Spectrum Disorder, I’ve discovered that a common symptom among the constellation of autistic indicators is stomach problems and often times a gluten-free diet helps immensely. Like much about autism, scientists and doctors aren’t exactly sure why this happens but I’m glad so far Porter doesn’t show signs of having this problem. But there are also millions of Celiac sufferers worldwide, and the number is growing. People with celiac, likewise, must also abstain from gluten, a part of most grains like barley and wheat. When Widmer Brothers discovered an employee had celiac, they set about to make a gluten-free beer, a Hooligan is the result. It’s probably the best-tasting gluten-free beer I’ve had, but to be fair I’ve only sampled two or three others. The flavor is very sweet, undoubtedly from he sorghum and tapioca that was substituted for barley. They also used the new Summit hop and the grapefruit tang from that hop is definitely present. You can tell this beer has been made with slightly different ingredients but all in all if it was this or nothing, I think I could make do.
 

Other Beers Worth Mentioning:

This is a list of a few of the beers that I didn’t focus on because I’ve had them before, but which I thought were excellent.
 

  • Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
  • Deschutes Inversion IPA
  • Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale
  • Great Divide Titan IPA
  • Green Flash West Coast IPA
  • Iron Springs Epiphany Ale
  • Jack Russell Farmhouse Ale
  • Lagunitas Sirius
  • Magnolia Proving Ground IPA
  • North Coast Old Rasputin
  • Pelican Pub Kiwanda Cream Ale
  • Pike IPA
  • Russian River Pliny the Elder
  • Silver City Whoop Ass Double IPA
  • Skagit River Scullers
  • 21st Amendment Watermelon Wheat

 

21st Amendment’s Watermelon Wheat was again the most popular beer of the festival. Despite having sent more kegs than any other brewery, the beer ran out at Noon on Sunday. But not everyone liked it, apparently. On the flight home to Oakland, Shaun O’Sullivan was in a seat in the row behind me. When we landed we were talking about the festival and he was telling me about the beer running out at Noon, when another passenger in my row (who had apparently been to the festival) asked Shaun which beer was his. When he told her it was the Watermelon Wheat, she replied matter of factly. “Oh, I didn’t like that one. I liked an IPA from some Stone brewery.” (I think she meant Standing Stone’s Double IPA.) It was all I could do not to laugh. The lack of tact was truly amazing. It was the equivalent of telling a mother to her face that her kid was ugly and she didn’t even seem to realize how insensitive and rude she was. Shaun took it all in stride, but it bugged me. C’est la vie.

New Glarus Brewing Woes

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Last January, when New Glarus Brewery was contemplating building a new brewery, the Village of New Glarus promised brewery owner Deb Carey that “they would chip in $2 million to pay for the utilities … things like water and a sewage treatment facility,” according to a story by local television station WMTV Channel 15 in Madison, Wisconsin. Business has been terrific for the small brewery in recent years, in part because they make some of the best beers in the world. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad beer Dan and Deb have brewed. As a result they’re at capacity and planning to build a new brewing facility on the south side of New Glarus over looking the village. The pricetag for the brewery is $19 million and they needed the village’s help to make it work.

But now the Village appears to be reneging on its earlier promise as the $2 million is suddenly subject to a further decision. The brewery’s fate hangs on a “closed meeting Thursday night at the New Glarus village hall, when village president Tom Myers says the council will discuss the plans for the brewery, and whether the two million dollars are worth keeping it.”

Myers claims to want the brewery to stay, because the brewery increases tourism and the bigger brewery will add 60 new jobs, too. But he’s also now claiming that if the $2 million is given to the brewery, then it will have to be taken from somewhere else in the village’s meager budget. So “Carey says they are looking at other options, including moving the brewery out of New Glarus.” And that would be a shame.

UPDATE 8.4: The Capital Times is reporting that an agreement has been reached between the Village and New Glarus Brewing, so the brewery will be staying in town.

California SB 1548: Free Beer for Everyone!

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Though it’s not been much reported, a bill before the California state senate, SB 1548 — and sponsored by Anheuser-Busch — will expand the laws regarding the tasting of alcohol to include beer. Specifically, a wholesaler, brewer or importer will be permitted to give up to 8 oz. of beer to sample in an on-premise retail setting and at no charge. No more than six tasting events per location per year can be held.

The original bill would have allowed a sample of 12 oz. in the original package unlimited times, meaning companies could have gone into bars and bought patrons a bottle or can of their beer as a promotional tool to increase business. Obviously, this would greatly benefit the larger companies with greater resources who could afford to “buy the world a drink.”

The California Small Brewers Association (CSBA) was successful in negotiating an amendment to the bill so that the amount was less than a full bottle or can and — perhaps most importantly — was not in the original packaging and could only be done six times per year in any one location. This makes it harder for companies to simply buy up the market by plying customers with a bottle of their product, but it still doesn’t really remove the impetus for abuse or the uneven way in which this would benefit the large company and further make doing business on a level playing field impossible for the small craft brewer.

The CSBA, who opposed the bill in its original form, is now taking a neutral position on the bill. If they had opposed it outright, they would not have been able to change it at all. In it’s amended form, it has now passed unanimously the first hurdle, the Assembly Government Organizational Committee, and is now on its way the Senate GO committee. After that it goes to the the House floor to be voted on, which should take place before the end of this month when their current session ends. If it passes there, then it’s over to the Governator for signature.

I certainly understand the CBSA’s removal of opposition to this bill, especially since the politics and issues make it such a complicated one. But I think there’s no doubt that their members will still be harmed when it is passed into law. The difficulty in opposing this law is that wine and spirits companies currently operate under essentially similar rules, and so do many other states. Rumor has it that A-B is, in fact, quite unhappy about opposition to this bill. Because in their mind, adding beer to the existing law for wine and spirits will simply — as they argue — “even the playing field.” There certainly are big wineries and small wineries and big spirits companies and small ones, too, so it would appear that inequities would exist there yet I know of no particular burden placed on the smaller producers with presumably smaller resources. Of course, that may be because I don’t follow those industries very closely. But my sense is that there is so much more profit built into wine and especially spirits that the difference between small and large producers — at least with respect to sampling resources — is not dramatic. Beer, on the other hand, is such a volume driven business with small per unit profits that the available resources difference between the big breweries and almost all the craft brewers is quite vast indeed. So at first blush, it may appear that this law will create a level playing field across all alcoholic beverages but I think the reality is that it will do just the opposite. I believe it will only deepen the divide between big and small breweries.

The bill’s language refers to the authorized tastings as “courses of instruction for consumers” which on its face would be a good thing except that I haven’t seen a high level of wine “instruction” in the tasting rooms of wineries across Napa and Sonoma to give me much cause for confidence that this is aimed at creating beer schools.

The idea of a large brewery sponsoring in effect a “free beer night” at bar after bar is a truly frightening one. Radical neo-prohibitionists would have a field day with that one but that could actually help in defeating this bill, along with possible opposition by law enforcement groups. And let’s not forget this is an election year.

It will probably do no good, but I think this bill should be opposed. Personally, I’d like to see a competing bill that would allow educational sampling along lines that make sense and don’t give a huge advantage to the big breweries. Why not 2 oz. samples? That’s enough for most educational purposes, especially if you’re tasting multiple beers. Most beer festivals and judging events don’t require much more than that to get enough of a sample to give you an idea of the beer.

The current bill allows for sampling “up to 8 oz.,” meaning you could give customers four samples of 2 oz. each. That’s probably what craft brewers would be likely to do, but I can’t see the big breweries taking that approach. And make it an 8 oz. sample and I can easily predict we’ll start seeing the big companies making 8 oz. logo tasting glasses for the bars who cooperate (and who wouldn’t?) to serve. Undoubtedly if the bars “buy” the glasses then they’ll be used instead of pint glasses for promotional “pint nights” where when you buy a beer, you keep the glass. If the brewery buys the customer the beer through this new law, and they also get a free tasting glass then you’ve got a system ripe for abuse.

It feels weird arguing that the status quo is adequate but in this case the current laws do provide something of a level playing field with regard to tasting. No one currently has any particular advantage, small, medium or large. This law will, of course, undo that and it’s hard to argue that it won’t give an advantage to the businesses with the most money. There has been a separation of the brewers and distributors from the retailer and this has mostly served the industry well to date. It has kept at least a semblance of distance between the two. If the curtain is occasionally parted by unsavory practices, at least it was there in the first place. Bringing it down now will only serve to move us closer to the end of the second act, by which I mean the rise of craft beer. Because anyone paying real attention to what’s been going on has to conclude that A-B — and perhaps all the big players — are doing their level best to eradicate craft beer and especially the regional breweries, as they did before several decades ago.

If you live in California, please consider contacting your elected officials and asking them to oppose SB 1548. It may sound alarmist, but the very future of craft beer may depend on it. Because if this passes, it will be the first of many legislative changes that will take us down a slippery slope back to the time when good beer was almost impossible to find. And I for one, don’t want to see that world ever again.

Here’s the current language of the bill:

25503.55. (a) A beer manufacturer, a licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may instruct consumers or conduct courses of instruction for consumers, on the subject of beer, including but not limited to, the history, nature, values, and characteristics of beer, and the methods of presenting and serving beer. A beer manufacturer, a beer importer general licensee or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may conduct such instructions at the premises of a retail on-sale licensee authorized to sell beer.
(b) The instruction of consumers regarding beer may include the furnishing of tastes of beer to an individual of legal drinking age. Beer tastes at any individual course of instruction shall not exceed 8 ounces of beer per person per day. The tasting portion of a course of instruction shall not exceed one hour at any individual licensed retail premises. Tastes of beer may not be served to a consumer in their original container but must be served in an individual glass or cup.
(c) All tastes of beer served to a consumer as authorized in subdivision (b) shall be served only as part of the course of instruction and shall be served to the consumer by an employee of the on-sale retail licensee.
(d) A beer manufacturer, licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler may not hold more than 6 courses of instruction per calendar year at any individual on-sale retail licensed premises if the course of instructions includes consumer tastes of beer.
(e) A representative of a beer manufacturer, licensed beer and wine importer general and/or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler must be present and authorize any tastes of beer conducted at an on-sale retail licensed premises pursuant to this section. The representative shall be responsible for paying the retailer for the tastes of beer served at any course of instruction. Such payment shall not exceed the retail price of the beer. For purposes of this section, a licensed beer and wine wholesaler cannot be the representative of a beer manufacturer or a licensed beer and wine importer general.
(f) No on-sale retail licensee shall require one or more courses of instruction pursuant to this section as a requirement to carry a brand or brands of any beer manufacturer or beer and wine wholesaler.
(g) No premium, gift, free goods, or other thing of value may be given away in connection with an authorized course of instruction which includes beer tastes except as authorized by this division. Failure to comply with the provisions of this section shall be presumed to be a violation of section 25500.
(h) A retail licensee may advertise the instructional tasting event using interior signs visible inside the establishment.
(i) A beer manufacturer, a licensed beer and wine importer general and a beer and wine wholesaler shall maintain an individual record of each course of instruction involving tastes of beer for three years. Records shall include the date of the tasting, the name and address of the retail licensee, and the brand, quantity and payments made for beer furnished by the beer manufacturer, the licensed beer and wine importer general or a licensed beer and wine wholesaler.