TheBeerObserver

The gang from the beer show Brewdies dropped by a couple of weeks ago to talk with Tomme about beer and what makes Lost Abbey unique among craft breweries. Along the way they wandered into a discussion (and a taste or two) of Yellow Bus. The results made for an excellent episode (and the revelation [...]

Forty years ago, Miles Davis released the now iconic album “Bitches Brew,” an electric, rock-influenced jazz epic that gave him his first gold record. A few decades later— probably hovering over a homebrew kit in his cramped New York City apartment—future brewing star Sam Calagione spun the record while concocting his business plan for Dogfish Head.

It’s fitting then, that on the album’s 40th anniversary, Calagione unveils the brewery’s newest release, an ink-black, soulful Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. Brewed with honey and gesho, an African plant popular in Ethiopia for its hoplike qualities, Bitches Brew is simply a marvel. Part imperial stout, part Dogfish-brand improv this brew sinks into the taste buds with roasty thickness and an orange blossom honey sweetness that stretches far back into the swallow. And like the album’s ebb and flow, the beer’s mocha roast segues to honey dryness, leaving ghost-notes hovering in the mouth until the next sip brings it back to life.

“Bitches Brew”—the album—was a game-changer for jazz, and given the level of inspiration it still offers when played to the right ears, I wonder what other iconic albums could rouse new brewing ideas?

Unpack the homebrew kit:

The Beatles “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”—English pale ale spiked with strawberry, jasmine and lemon zest.

Velvet Underground “The Velvet Underground & Nico”—Schwarzbier with weizen yeast.

Otis Redding “Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul”—Rauchbier aged in cedar casks.

Neil Young “Harvest”—Wheat wine brewed with ripened apples and cinnamon.

What about you? What albums inspire beer recipes in your head, and what albums do you pair with your favorite beer?

This week, Monarch Beverage Co. released SUDSoku, a free iPhone app that merges the brainy Japanese puzzle game of Sudoku with our favorite beverage. Instead of filling in a nine-by-nine grid with digits, players drag beer bottle caps into squares. Sharpening your noggin with the help of beer: we always knew it was possible. Dowload the app from iTunes or learn more here.

Topic Origin: BeerAdvocate Beer Fests

As part of the run up to the Great American Beer Festival Denver’s Westword features the relatively new Cheeky Monk Belgian Beer Cafe. Co-owner James Pachorek comes across a little, well, cheeky.

One particular paragraph got me thinking.

In fact, Pachorek was amazed at how quickly craft brewers had been able to make beers that were as good at or better than what the Belgians have been doing for generations.

Given that each year at GABF I end up with less time for blogging than I expect a “question of the day” might be a bit much, but I’ll aim for that . . . and maybe settle for a “question of the festival.”

Wish me luck, since question No. 1 for brewers will be: Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than what the Belgians have been doing for generations? Make that: Do you brew beers that are as good at or better than the Europeans have for generations?

Here are some photos from our annual brunch held the morning of Stone Brewing’s 14th Anniversary Celebration on August 21, 2010. [Show as slideshow] [View with PicLens] 1234► Share This:

We’re still a long shot from the holidays, but we’re never lacking of things to celebrate: Football season’s back, the kids are at school during the day, GABF is just around the corner, Conan’s return to television is nigh. Beautiful, beautiful September. Tonight in celebration of August’s demise I’m uncorking a bottle of Infinium, the newest collaboration between Boston Beer Co. and Germany’s Weihenstephan Brewery.

Sure, it’s technically not on shelves until November, so consider this a head’s up to all of you when it’s time to score a bottle of bubbly. The two breweries teamed up over the past two years to develop this champagnelike brew—within the confines of the Reinheitsgebot, of course—so we’d have something other than grapes to toast with during the holidays. The result? This gorgeously bright, pale golden brew sports tiny white bubbles with an intriguing aroma not quite beer, and not quite champagne: Grainy sweetness and a dash of white sugar blend with soft fruity scents and just a faint spice kick. This effervescent brew lands on the tongue with a dose of sugary sweet malts, balanced by a flash of sharp, citrusy hops in the back. While not overtly winelike, a white grape character hides out deep beneath the crisp malts, lending the impression of champagne. With a dry finish, courtesy of its 10.3% ABV, Infinium’s a palate pleaser worth popping. Keep an eye out for this one come November. The holidays are always big for booze, and Infinium’s only available in limited quantities throughout the country.

Firestone Walker Brewing Co. will soon offer its Proprietor’s Reserve Series outside of the brewery’s West Coast home. The series will be distributed, when available, in 22-ounce bottles as well as a very limited release of kegs.

The Proprietor’s Reserve Series includes Double Jack, a double IPA based off of Firestone’s award winning Union Jack IPA; Walker’s Reserve, a bottle-conditioned robust porter; Parabola, a barrel-aged Russian Imperial Stout; and Abacus, a barrel-aged barleywine, as well as their anniversary blend.

“Every brewer relishes testing the outer limits of their creativity and equipment,” FW brewmaster Matt Brynildson said for a press release. “We have been honing these beers for a while, but I wasn’t sure that we would ever produce them at any appreciable level. The brew team is fired up!”

This year’s anniversary beer, “14″, will be released in November, kicking off the Reserve Series. Double Jack and Walker’s Reserve will be released in January and be available year-round, while Parabola and Abacus are one-time limited releases for later in 2011.

Firestone Walker Brewing, based in Paso Robles, Calif., will also be sending its Proprietor’s Reserve Series east, said John Bryan, “Export” Director at Firestone Walker.

“The Reserve Series will be in States where we currently distribute (which includes New York, New Jersey and Virginia) and we are perusing other markets along the East Coast as beer becomes available,” he said.

Topic Origin: Beer Talk & Questions

Topic Origin: US - Great Lakes

NPR’s Science Friday had a show last week devoted to The Science of Smell. If you’ve ever taken tasting beer seriously, you know how important smell is to the flavor of beer (and everything else). Host Ira Flatow discussed Olfaction with research scientists Stuart Firestein and Donald Wilson. The show’s only a little under 18 minutes but is pretty interesting.

For example, twenty years ago [the field of olfaction] made the most important discovery in the modern era of olfaction, which “was the identification and cloning of a large family of receptors in our noses that mediate the sense of smell that act like a lock. If you think of it, odor is a key, and when they fit together, the brain is clued in to the fact that this odor is out there somehow. And this identification of this large, large family of genes, a thousand of them in many animals, as many as 450 in us, mediates this smell.

This turns out to be “the largest gene family in the mammalian genome. The mammalian genome, typically, we think consists of about 25,000 genes. So in a mouse, it’s about 5 percent of the genes and even in us, it’s almost 2 percent. About one out of every 50 genes in your genome was devoted to your nose.”

And here’s a later revealing exchange, from the transcript:

Dr. FIRESTEIN: I think we use our nose a lot more than most people believe. The biggest problem with our sense of smell or the feeling that we don’t have a good sense of smell is actually our bipedalism, the fact that we walk on two legs. And we have our noses stuck up here five or six feet in the air, when all the good odors are about eight or 10 inches off the ground. Or for example, as the case with other animals, they’re more willing to put their nose where the odors are, shall we say, delicately.

FLATOW: And well, we’ve always heard that animals like let’s pick out dogs, bloodhounds and things like that, that dogs are able to smell so much more sensitively than us in all different kinds of smells. Is that true?

Dr. FIRESTEIN: Well, it’s a good question. I mean, I often say to people who ask me that question, if they have such a good sense of smell, why do they think they do that greeting thing that they do?

Dr. FIRESTEIN: You think you could do that from 10 feet away, you know?

FLATOW: Well, that’s true. They get right up there and sniff you.

Dr. FIRESTEIN: Boy, they sure do.

FLATOW: So why do they need to be so close if they smell…

Dr. FIRESTEIN: Yes, well so some of this is behavioral, and a part of it, the another way to show that, I think, for humans, is that we actually have very sophisticated palate, for example, for food, much more than many other animals and we know that most of flavor is really olfaction.

And here’s another interesting exchange about the specifics of our sense of smell, insert “beer” in the place of “coffee” and the process of judging beer critically works the same way.

FLATOW: Don Wilson, tell us what happens what is connected to our noses in the sensory? What goes on in the brain when we smell something?

Dr. WILSON: Well, it’s actually really exciting because – so these you mentioned the ABCs of olfaction. I think that’s a good analogy because these hundreds of different receptors that Stuart just mentioned essentially are recognizing different features of a molecule. You don’t have — for most of odors, you don’t have a receptor for that particular odor. You don’t have a coffee receptor or a vanilla or a strawberry receptor. You have receptors that are recognizing small pieces of the molecules that you’re inhaling, and the aroma of coffee, for example, is made up of hundreds of different molecules.

So what the brain then has to do is make sense of this pattern of input that’s coming in: I’ve got receptors A, B and C activated when I smell this odor, and I’ve got receptors B, C, D and E activated when I smell this other odor. And what we’ve found is that what the brain is really doing with the olfactory cortex and the early parts of the olfactory system are doing is letting those features into what we and others would consider something like an odor object, so that you perceive now a coffee aroma from all of these individual features that you’ve inhaled. And, in fact, once you’ve perceived that coffee aroma, you really can’t pick out that, you know, there’s a really good ethyl ester in my Starbucks today or something – you really have an object that you can’t break down into different components. So that’s what the brain is doing.

And we know that part of that building of the object, that synthetic processing of all these features, is heavily dependent on memory. So you learn to put these features together and experience this odor the first time. So it’s really a – in some ways, olfaction seems really simple. They suck a molecule up my nose and it binds to a receptor and so I must know what I’ve just inhaled. But, in fact, it’s a fairly complex process where it’s akin to object perception and other sensory systems.

FLATOW: Does the fact that it elicits such strong memories — you know, so you can a smell from 40 years ago or something. Is it because — are they close together, the centers for smell and memory in the brain?

Dr. WILSON: Well, in humans, it’s — in some ways, the olfactory cortex is really enveloped by — embraced by parts of the brain that are important for emotion and memory. There are direct reciprocal connections between the olfactory system and the amygdala and hippocampus, these parts that are important for emotion and memory. So – and we think that as you’re putting these features together to make this perceptual object, the brain and the cortex is also sort of listening to the context of which I’m smelling it, maybe the emotions that I’m having as I’m smelling it. And those can, in fact, we think can become an integral part of the percept itself. So it not only becomes difficult to say what the molecules were within that coffee aroma, but it also becomes difficult to isolate the emotional responses you’re having with that same odor.

After that they go on about memory and aromas, and then take calls from listeners. You can also hear the entire discussion below or at Science Friday’s website (or download it below or at NPR) and also see the full transcript.

download mp3:

Crossfit is known for its brutal, usual workouts that leave your muscles screaming at the end.

Now here’s another novel exercise to add to the Crossfit database, courtesy of the Milwaukee chapter: The one-armed beer push-up.

“It’s debatable if drinking a beer while in a one-handed handstand is as difficult as drinking while doing a pull-up,” said Crossfit trainer Ryan Atkins.

This is not the first time Crossfit has ventured into beer exercise territory. On Crossfit message boards You can find talk of the Pull-up Century Club Drinking Game, beer and burpees, and beer as recovery drink.

And of course, others find creative uses for kegs.

During a recent episode of the television series “Mad Men” newcomer Faye Miller told the iconic Don Draper, “I don’t know how people drink the way you do around here. I’d fall asleep.”

Miller serves as a proxy for those of us in the twenty-first century who are astonished at the amount of alcohol consumed during working hours on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. But why would we be? After all, as Daniel Okrent explains in Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition president James Madison drank an entire pint of whiskey daily. America and booze have always been on a first name basis, even during Prohibition.

Prohibition books come along quite regularly, but Okrent combines the sense of a historian with a great eye for detail and and ability to to entertain. For instance, one story about a sequence of events in the remote upper Michigan mining town of Iron River ultimately makes it clear why many hard working, middle class Americans would never obey the laws of Prohibition. It’s a little long to recount in detail here, so one paragraph from page 123:

Mostly, though, the press contingent got indoor pictures of Dalrymple staring down the thrity-four-year-old Mcdonough in the lobby of the Iron Inn or exterior shots of him out in the frigid February weather, sledgehammer in hand, smashing open the barrels of wine his men had managed to intercept. As vivid gouts of Dago Red saturated a nhearby snowbank, turning it a deep, grapy purple, a camerman from Pathé News gave a local man called “Necktie” Sensiba fifty cents to drop to his knees and eat the snow. The high school kids who joined him didn’t have to be paid.

His is a tale of politics — every beginning political science class should study how a collection of minorities managed to get a congressional amendment (nothing as simple as a law) passed that a clear majority clearly opposed — and thus politicians and other bigger than life characters. Grade schoolers today may not learn about Anti-Saloon League honcho Wayne B. Wheeler but Philip Seymour Hoffman would be mighty fine playing the part in a movie.

(The cover of the book says, “To be featured in a forthcoming Ken Burns documentary on PBS,” and that Okrent uses these characters to advance the plot surely appeals to Burns.)

Last Call is all encompassing — though it’s greatest strength is the chapters describing what happened during Prohibition itself — with plenty of before, during and after.

This seems almost like an aside, but although there’s plenty of beer inside it’s not really a beer book. Yet it fits quite neatly on the shelf next to Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew. Okrent doesn’t detail how beer changed because of Prohibition, since, as Ogle explained, it didn’t. The road toward consolidation and a beer monoculture (dramatically reversed in the 1970s and ’80s) was paved before Prohibition.

The Beer Belt

We all know that beer is scientifically better than water for running.

So why not replace your water hydration belts with one for beer?

Now you have the 6-Pack Drink Holster.

“You’ll never be out of reach of your next cold one!” the product promises. It retails $4.95 and comes in black, pink and camo colors.

Take one on your next long run, and you’ll be ready for beer the minute you’re finished - if not before.

You can also find a fancier “hops holster” from a really scary looking website.

Thanks to Frank and Mitch for the heads up.

How many of you think you’ve got the skills to perfectly pour a beer on tap? Various breweries claim their beer requires certain steps in order achieve maximum potential, Guinness probably being the most famous example, but a little research shows stouts don’t hold the monopoly on pouring science. Take for instance, Stella Artois. Tonight in Phoenix, Stella Artois will host one of several Draught Master competitions unfolding throughout the country to deem the most serious, skilled beer server. What does the lucky winner win? A trip to Boston to compete for a spot in the World Draught Masters competition held in London on October 28. There are nine steps to master, and if you’re good at computer simulations, you might just nail the online challenge. One person from the top 25 online scores will be randomly selected to compete in Boston for that coveted trip to London. Warm up your mouse, and let me know your score!

In This Issue From the Director’s Chair Christmas in July Wrap-up New Faces at The Lost Abbey Upcoming Events New Beer Releases From the Director’s Scribe’s ChairWhat we did on our summer vacation Editor’s Note: This spot is normally reserved for a few words from our director of brewery operations (DOBO), but Tomme’s off doing important DOBO things, so our Abbey Scribe, [...]

I am not saying that ‘petroleum-refinery-external-enzymefacilitated- platform-high gravity-brewed beers’ are bad, nor that it is an unethical way to brew them. All I’m asking is: can you still sell them as something entirely different? And can we still, as the globally united community of beer professionals and beer lovers, in honesty tell our consumers that [...]

Topic Origin: Beer News

A survey commissioned by Courage Beer suggests drinkers in Britain still consider the pub the best place outside of home for conversation.

From the press release:

Fifty percent of those quizzed have made new friends by talking to people in the pub, and the pub (43%) is also the place where you are most likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger, followed by long haul flights (38%) and nightclubs (27%).

Britain as a nation of chatterboxes with the average person having 27 conversations every day, lasting an average of 10 minutes each. That adds up to a massive 4.5 hours a day or nearly 100,000 hours or 68 days – every year.

The Courage Beer Conversations survey of 3,000 British adults for Courage Beer found that Geordies are the UK’s most gregarious with the North East weighing in with an average of 33 conversations per day – closely followed by the Welsh on 32, whilst the Northern Irish are least outgoing with an average of 22 conversations every day.

However, whilst the survey illustrates our convivial nature, the survey also points to a worrying aspect of Britain’s sociability with 43% of our daily conversations deemed pointless.

Those questioned were split on whether modern technology has caused the art of conversation to wane in recent years with 52% believing people don’t talk face to face any more, whilst 48% think technology means we actually talk more, but through a different medium.

Only a third of people count the conversations they have on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook as ‘proper conversations’.

Over 63% of those asked think the younger generation has lost the art of conversation, either as a result of technology making young people lazy (30%) or making them less forthcoming when it comes to others (33%).

Other highlights of the survey include:

Humour and honesty were deemed the most important elements of a meaningful conversation to those questioned with a combined split of over 60% followed by ‘Getting a different point of view’ (26%) and ‘Learning new facts’ (12%).

Marriage & relationships (74%) head the list of conversation topics that Brits consider meaningful, closely followed by money (60%) and work/ job happiness (55%). Politics comes in fourth at 34%, followed by food & drink (27%) and religion and property prices on 22%.

Whilst Britain seems to a companionable nation it appears we don’t appear to be natural socialisers with 64% of Brits finding it hard to make conversations. Weekend plans are the main saviour of these faltering conversations (45%) followed by that trusty backstop, the weather (35%) and the news (30%).

Britain’s focus on work is reflected in the fact that we are just as likely to have a meaningful conversation on a daily basis with a friend (56%) as work colleague (57%) although reassuringly both trail behind partner or spouse on 74%.

Theodore Zeldin CBE, highly respected lecturer, historian, philosopher and author of ‘Conversation; How talk can change our lives’ and of An Intimate History of Humanity said “Conversation is a meeting of minds. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. The pub has had a unique role in British society as the incubator of talk of many kinds. Now that technology is encouraging less face to face interaction, the pub has the opportunity to develop new forms of conversation and of social interaction.”

Quite a bit there to talk about.

If you followed Ray Daniels’ tweets earlier today you know that a presentation by Symphony IRI to members of the Brewers Association confirmed that “craft beer” sales are kicking butt, that mainstream beer sales are in the dumps and that IPAs seem destined to rule the world.

You also know that Blue Moon Belgian White Ale from MillerCoors and AB InBev’s Shock Top Belgian White grew 27 percent and 34 percent respectively (Shock Top off a much smaller base). But because the numbers fly by rather fast during a 55-slide, one-hour presentation some things take a while to sink in. Like that Stella Artois outsells Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but not Blue Moon Belgian White.

Since I seem to be in numbers mode these days I assembled a chart that mashes up the top 15 selling craft (IRI does not include Blue Moon in that group, but does include beers from the Craft Brewers Alliance although those aren’t craft beers according to the BA definition), super premium and imported beers. These are all beers consumers pay more for.

The IRI figures are based on scans at grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, some liquor stores and a few other locations. Signature IRI does not capture every sale, or include draft sales, but more than enough to paint an accurate picture. They are for the first six months of 2010, and — just for fun — compared to the first six months of 2006. Sales are in millions of dollars.

   2010    2006 Corona Extra    $207.0 $224.5 Heineken    $129.7 $132.4 Michelob Ultra    $106.8 $106.7 Corona Light    $64.5 $60.1 Bud Light Lime    $61.3 *** Tecate    $44.5 $36.9 Blue Moon White    $40.2 $14.1 Modelo Especial    $32.3 $23.4 Stella Artois    $31.2 *** Sierra Nevada Pale Ale    $27.8 $24.8 Heineken Light    $27.7 $18.8 Newcastle Brown    $26.9 $21.1 Samuel Adams Boston Lager    $26.3 $21.8 Samuel Adams Seasonals    $25.7 $10.8 Guinness Draught    $23.9 $24.2

*** Bud Light Lime did not exist in 2006. Stella Artois was not among the top 15 selling imports (No. 15 on the list sold $12 million).

A couple of other notes: New Belgium Fat Tire sales are up more than 14 percent to $18.2 million (compared to $11.4 million for the first six months of 2006. Michelob Amber Bock outsold Blue Moon White in 2006 ($15 million to $14.1), and now it outsells Shock Top ($9.9 million to $8.5 million).