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Oly Pancakes

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olympia
Oakland Tribune staff food writer Steve Dulas did a fun piece on food for camping last week. He included baked apple, chili and, naturally, camp-style bean soup. But what caught my attention was a recipe for beer pancakes. Basically, the recipe calls for using a mix and substituting beer for the water, also including some oil or grease. But the author insists that Olympia beer must be used and that no other beer may be substituted. Hmm. They claim to have tried using a different beer that didn’t work as well, but neglected to tell us which beer they tried. As long as you use a beer similar to Oly, I really can’t see it making much of a difference.

Even Olympia beer, of course, hasn’t really been Olympia beer for at least four years, when SABMiller closed the old Tumwater, Washington brewery on July 1, 2003. Since that time it’s been made at any number of Miller breweries dotted throughout the west. Before that Olympia bought Hamm’s and Lone Star, but business continued to decline and the family (the Schmidt’s) decided in 1982 to sell to G. Heilemann, then one of the largest brewery businesses in the U.S. The following year, Pabst bought Heilemann, who later sold it to Stroh’s, which itself was eventually bought by Miller Brewing. Union politics probably led Miller to close Olympia, who by then was also brewing many other regional brands such as Hamm’s, Lucky Lager, Henry Weinhard and Rainier.

Olympia beer — than and now — is one of dozens of regional American-style light lagers that are all but interchangeable. What makes any of them unique has more to do with marketing and perception than reality. People don’t buy Olympia because it’s good, they buy it because it’s cheap. As pointed out by The Snitch (a blog at SF Weekly) Olympia beer is the “Offical Beer of 18-year-olds Walking Through the Door, Hoisting a 12-Pack Overhead and Shouting ‘Woo-Hoo!'” The Snitch tried Dulas’ recipe, both with Oly and Henry Weinhard’s Blue Boar Ale, perhaps not realizing the Henry Weinhard is an “ale” and Oly is a “lager,” concluding that the Oly was discernibly better. I’m still willing to bet any cheap lager will make the pancakes taste exactly the same.

The Snitch also wonders aloud (a-print just didn’t sound right) what the pancakes might taste like if made with “Pyramid Apricot Ale or Bass Peach Ale?” I’m not sure there’s enough apricot flavor in the Pyramid to give the pancakes any sweetness. The Bass suggestion is a complete bust, of course, because there is no such beer. The Snitch also ruminates over “Cranberry Lambic,” by which I presume he means Samuel Adams’ version of a lambic. And lastly, he believes Arthur Guinness would “come back from the dead and stop you” if you tried using his stout. I’m not sure why he feels so strongly about Guinness given that it has been used successfully in cooking for centuries. Despite being dark in color, it’s quite light-bodied and thus might work quite well in pancakes.

Certainly, the notion of taking the idea from the campground into the kitchen is an intriguing one, as is using different beers. For that to work best, I think, you’d have to throw out the mix and make the batter from scratch, however, and use richer beers to have them actually affect the taste of the pancakes beyond fluffiness and texture. Would the yeast in a bottle-conditioned beer contribute anything? [Lucy, Bruce, Sean – anyone know?] It could be fun to use something like Marin’s Blueberry Ale or a syrupy wood-aged beer.

Perhaps it was because I was hungry when I first read the article, but I think I’ll be giving it a try the next time I make pancakes. If you try it, too, let me know the results. Post a comment with the beer you used and how the pancakes tasted. Let’s build a beer pancake database.
 

Steve Dulas’ World’s Best Pancakes

oly-cakes
(Photo by Mike Lucia – Tribune Staff)

The preferred beer is Olympia. Any other American beer will likely mess this up — seriously. The morning we ran out of Oly and used another brand, the pancakes were not as tasty.

1 2-pound package Krusteaz Buttermilk Pancake Mix
4 to 6 12-ounce cans Olympia beer
1/4 cup vegetable oil or bacon grease

While the grill is heating to medium, pour pancake mix into a large bowl. Add beer, one can at a time, until the batter reaches a smooth consistency. When a few drops of water dance and sizzle on the grill, it’s ready. Wipe the grill with a thin coating of oil or grease on a paper towel, then drop batter onto the grill, about a half-cup per pancake. Cook about 2 minutes, and flip each cake when the top is covered with air bubbles. Cook another minute then serve. Makes 40-50 4-inch pancakes.

Note: If you’ve got a lot of campers you might want to graduate to the 5-pound package of Krusteaz and use more beer, up to a full 12-pack.

Olympia Brewery Finds a Buyer

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Olympia Brewery in Tumwater, Washington has been fallow since 2003, when Miller Brewing shut it down. The following year they sold it to a startup who planning on bottling water at the former brewery. But they ran into financial trouble and were forced into an involuntary bankruptcy. A deal has now been submitted for approval by the bankruptcy court for a Seattle company, the Benaroya Company, to purchase the brewery for $45 million. A hearing will be held July 5 at which time motions will be heard and a decision made. So far, there’s no word as to Benaroya’s intentions for the property, whether they want to refurbish and open the brewery or raze the 120-acres and develop it. It would be nice to see open again as a brewery, but I doubt that’s what will happen. It’s possible that Benaroya could break up the land into pieces and someone could buy the brewery grounds while they develop the rest into something else, it just doesn’t seem likely that buyer will step forward with the resources to bring the brewery back into shape. I’d certainly like to see it saved, for no better reason than the last time I was there was on my honeymoon.

Suggestions for Beer Haters

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There’s a post today on the Seattlest with the provocative title “Do You Hate Beer?” It begins:

Do you just absolutely hate beer? Have you ever been amazed that people would actually prefer to drink beer with their nice dinner, rather than the typical bottle of expensive red wine? If you are set in your beer-hating ways, try these libations. They may change your mind.

The author then lists five beers: Manny’s Pale Ale, Rochefort Trappistes 10, Lindemans Framboise, Duchesse De Bourgogne and Rogue Chocolate Stout. For each there is an explanation of the beer, what food to pair with it and even where in Seattle you can find it. I may not agree with every suggestion, but it’s a great idea to simply challenge people who believe they don’t care for beer to explore the diversity in beer that they probably aren’t even aware exists.

It might be a worthwhile project for some of us to put together a list of beers in a variety of styles to suggest for the person who doesn’t like beer to try, with this same sort of basic information. I like the idea of being able to give someone a list or give them a link to a ready-made list of suggested beers they might try. Who’s with me?

For trivia’s sake, the Seattlest is part of the Gothamist, a network of fifteen city blogs that do a good job of covering each city using local bloggers. Here on the left coast, in addition to Seattle, there’s also one for San Francisco and Los Angeles.

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?

Holy Beer Blunder: Call the Commissioner

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A friend in Portland sent me John Foyston’s piece in today’s Oregonian concerning what’s written in a visitor’s guide to Seattle. If you click on the link, dont panic, it’s the last item near the bottom entitled “Wrong on So Many Levels.” It’s a good thing I didn’t have any liquids in my mouth when I read it, because I would have spit them out across the room the way they do in cheesy sitcoms and movies. My first reaction after reading it was envisioning the spinning graphics when they cut to a new scene in the old ’60s Batman series and a costumed Adam West yelling “get me the Commissioner on the ‘Beer Phone'” to no one in particular, complete with cheeseball music that so perfectly complemented the action making it seem like things were moving fast. Perhaps a giant spotlight shining the image of a pint of beer into the night sky. I admit I should lay off the caffeine, but I have toddlers. I need caffeine.

But this is the sort of thing that cries out for some fast action. And the newly appointed Washington Beer Commisioners are just the folks to mete out some justice and get this thing changed. Okay, enough suspense. Here it is in a nutshell. The Summer/Fall 2006 edition of the Seattle Quick Guide, published by Guest Informant, says the following about Seattle’s beer scene, arguably one of the top two or three cities for beer in the country. Just be sure not to take a drink just before reading it. You have been warned.

“Beer Buzz: Beer may be the beverage of choice for sports addicts, couch potatoes and those with substantial midsections, but consumed in moderation it shares some of the healthful effects of red wine. A 12-ounce glass of beer has about half the alcohol of a glass of wine, which means you can drink more of it. Beer isn’t the ideal before-dinner drink due to the full feeling you get after quaffing a few cold ones, but that bloated sensation is a result of carbonation more than calories.”

“The microbrew craze peaked in the mid-’90s, when it seemed as if everyone and his mother was brewing up a batch of homemade lager in the basement and yuppifying it with exotic flavors in designer bottles. But classic imported beers have many characteristics of microbrews, so why mess with tradition?”

How could so few words manage to be so wrong? Is it possible it was written around 1996 when things were looking bleak for craft beer and they simply never updated it for ten years? But don’t they put out new editions of these hotel guides every year precisely to keep up with the changes in the cities in which they publish their guides? Even so, “designer bottles,” “exotic flavors,” “homemade lager in the basement?” What exactly are the folks at Guest Informant smoking?

It’s baffling. And it’s a grave injustice to the thousands of visitors Seattle gets every year who might believe what they read and assume craft beer is dead, ordering a Heineken instead. Not to mention all the great local beers and breweries that will be ignored. Wouldn’t they want to promote local “traditions” rather than imported ones? Again, whoever wrote this obviously didn’t do a great amount of — or let’s face it, any — research.

As my Oregonian friend (thanks Jim) so aptly wrote, “it is both sad and funny.”

Widmer & Redhook Discuss Possible Merger

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The Oregonian is reporting today that merger talks between Portland’s Widmer Bros. Brewing, the largest craft brewer in Oregon, and Seattle’s Redhook Ale Brewery were disclosed on Wednesday through a mandatory regulatory filing by both Redhook and Anheuser-Busch — who owns almost 40% of Widmer and just over one-third of Redhook.

Although Widmer is probably the healthier company, Redhook (because it is traded on NASDAQ) will likely be the buyer in the deal. Rob Widmer reportedly has said that because it involves a public company that much more will be in the open due to regulatory disclosure requirements. He also stated that it is much too early in the negotiations to say when or even if anything will come of the talks.

The Seattle Times also has a more in-depth article on the talks.

Costco Appeal Date Confirmed

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I have now been able to confirm that the date for the Costco appeal has been moved up and will take place the week of March 5-9, 2007. I got a copy of Judges Edward Leavy and Richard R. Clifton’s order from the Washington State Liquor Control Board. The order is dated November 30 and appears to resolve several motions. Most of them are procedural, but the Appellant (Washington state and distributors) did move for partial dissmisal of the appeal, presumably a part of the original appeal they now feel they cannot win. Unfortunately the order doesn’t specify which. The biggest pieces of the order are the court denying Appellant’s motion for a stay pending appeal and the court expiditing the schedule for the appeal to be heard in March instead of waiting until May. Curiously, that change was on the court’s own motion, meaning neither side requested it. But it greatly changes the dynamics of the state legislature’s involvement.

Costco Appeal Moved Up to March?

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Miller’s BrewBlog is reporting that the Washington State Liquor Board appeal of Judge Marsha Pechman’s ruling in favor of Costco earlier this year in the Costco Case has been moved up and will take place March 3-9, 2007. But a stay she imposed was supposed to give state lawmakers until May 1, 2007 to change Washington’s beer and wine laws through new legislation, so I don’t know what that will mean to those efforts.

I can’t find the order changing the schedule at the Ninth Circuit’s website, so I can’t confirm that’s what is happening. I have a call into the state’s Liquor Board to see if I can confirm the news from them and will update this post when I hear back from them.

Baron Brewing’s Jeff Smiley Elected Beer Commissioner

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The Seattle Times reported that Jeff Smiley of Baron Brewing was recently elected Commissioner of Washington State’s newly created “Beer Commission.”

According to the Brewers Association’s Director, Paul Gatza, he believes Washington’s “commission may be the first state-sanctioned promotional group for craft brewers.”

Gatza continued:

“That it’s part of the state government system, that it’s recognized as a pretty important agricultural product to the state, makes it exciting,” he said. “When you’re dealing with an alcoholic beverage industry, it’s hard to get the state to get anywhere near it except to regulate it. But to promote the quality of the state’s beers is just a wonderful direction.”

It’s certainly great to see a state take an active interest in promoting craft beer. It implies they recognize the importance of small, local businesses and want to help support them.

I’ve met Jeff on many occasions and he seems like a great person for the job. I hope he does a terrific job and other states use Washington state as a model to do their own similar beer commissions.

The new Beer Commissioner, Jeff Smiley (at far right), along with beer writer Fred Eckhardt, “Crazy Dave” Heist, owner of HopTown Brewing Co. in Pleasanton, California (in back), and Jeff’s wife, homebrewing enthusiast Kate Gaiser. This was taken at GABF in 2005.

Elysian Pumpkin Beer Festivals Announced

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All throughout the Seattle area, Elysian Brewing will be doing more to promote pumpkin beer than any other brewery in history, or as they put it, “where [they] boldly go where no other brewery has gone before.” At the 2nd Annual Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, they will have ten pumpkin beers available at each of their three locations, some of which sound positively spooky.
 

THE BEER LINEUP:

From Elysian:

  • Night Owl Pumpkin Ale
  • The Great Pumpkin Imperial Ale
  • Dark o’ the Moon Pumpkin Stout
  • Purple Pumpkineater Lavender Saison
  • Kürbitinus-Pumpkindunkelhefeweizenbock
  • Portergeist-Smoked porter with pumpkin
  • Steamy Hollow California Common Pumpkin Beer

Guest Beers:

  • Dogfish Head Punkin
  • Rock Bottom Seattle Punk’in (Cap. Hill & Fields only)
  • Big Time Hop Goblin
  • Snoqualmie Extra Special Butternut (Elysian-Cap. Hill only)

Here are the details for each event:

Elysian: Capitol Hill
1221 E Pike 206-860-1920
Saturday, October 21st, 12 noon – 10pm

Elysian Fields
542 1st Ave S 206-382-4498
Saturday, October 28th, 12 noon – 10 pm

Elysian: TangleTown
2106 N 55th 206-547-5929
Monday, October 23rd through Friday, October 27th

Here is more information from the press release:

Sampler Trays, Pumpkin Carving and (drum roll please), the tapping of the pumpkin conditioned pumpkin beer (at 4pm).

Once again we have filled pumpkins with beer (this year it is the Portergeist) to go through a secondary fermentation in the pumpkin. We will tap the pumpkins with traditional English cask taps at 4pm on Saturday Oct 21st & Saturday Oct 28th

Pumpkin Carving starting at Noon.
Pumpkins will be available on a first come/first serve basis. There will be awards for the best pumpkin carving.