Telephone 28: Pucker Up, Buttercup

           Last weekend, I attended Upland’s Sour + Wild + Funk Beer Festival in Indianapolis. Normally, I’m not one for beer festivals; while the variety is wonderful, the crowds, lines, and drunkenness are not. Still, I can be beguiled when the conditions are right. And a beer festival that is small in size, has limited tickets, and focuses on sour beers is not to be missed, even by a curmudgeon like myself. Especially when many of the beers were made specifically for the festival! Sour beers have been growing exponentially in American craft beer over the last several years, thanks in part to perennial figures like New Belgium, Russian River, Allagash, and New Glarus, as well as more recent breweries like the Bruery, Jolly Pumpkin, Goose Island, and Crooked Stave. This growth means that many breweries are producing sour beers as special offerings or starting barrel programs intended to build their reserves of sour beer. Hence, as they might say, a festival of one’s own.
            Many of the usual suspects were at the festival. Upland, the host, has a well-established sour beer program, and had six of their fruit lambics available, along with a couple of other blended beers, although to be technical their lambics are neither spontaneously fermented nor are they from Belgium, so they are actually American wild ales. While they undoubtedly followed Belgian protocol—a lambic is a single, unblended batch of beer that is generally more aggressively sour and served uncarbonated, a gueuze is blend of one, two, and three year old lambic that is highly carbonated, and a fruit lambic is generally, like gueuze, a blend of multiple years and batches aged on fruit—a lambic, like champagne, is geographically (appellation) specific. I’m a critic, dear reader, so it is my job to point these things out to you. After all, if not me, then who? Anyway, many of the flavors in these beers were good, but they were sharp, young, and aggressive; they could have used more time in the bottle to come together. New Belgium, which is the biggest producer of sour beers in the United States, was also there. They age their sour beer in foeders—large wooden tuns—for multiple years before blending them to make their different individual beers. The two main beers that go into the foeders are Oscar, a darker ale, and Felix, a lighter colored ale. La Terrior, for example, is all Felix that is dry-hopped with Amarillo and Citra, while La Folie is mostly (but not all) Oscar. New Belgium also has the benefit of having Peter Bouckaert, who worked at Rodenbach before becoming NB’s Brewmaster. I was excited to try La Terrior, as I had never had it before, and it did not disappoint: it was fruity, dry, and earthy. Goose Island and Rodenbach were also in attendance, but since I am familiar with their offerings, I skipped over those tables. Sorry, but I was interested in the smaller breweries from Indiana that I hadn’t tried before. Thus, I thought it best to sup their wares.
            Amongst the Indiana breweries present, there were several that I had been to previously, but had not tried the specific beers they brought to the festival. Brugge brought Once In A Lifetime; if you are ever in Indianapolis, and would like some good Belgian beer, fries, and mussels, I can’t recommend them enough. Same with Flat 12; their Funk-A-File Dundee, which was the Walkabout Pale Ale fermented with Brettanomyces and aged in used Easley red wine barrels (made from Indiana oak!), was crisp and delicious. As well, there were a couple of breweries I had heard of but had not tried their beers. Foremost among these was DeStihl, which brought several selections from the Saint Dekkera Reserve collection, their spontaneously fermented unblended single barrel beer series. I tried the Kriek (cherry), which had good fruit flavor to balance the acidic, earthy flavors in the beer, and the Paw Paw, which was interesting but overly aggressive—it had a smoky enteric character that got in the way of other elements of the beer. Still, I’d he happy to try a few more of their beers to get a better sense of their offerings as a whole. After all, they are doing interesting things, and developing a good sour program takes years at best.
            The most interesting beers were from breweries I had not heard of before the festival. While Indianapolis and Indiana are not that far away from Dayton, the rapid growth in the number of breweries out there does make it difficult to keep track of them all! My favorite beer of the day was Tin Man’s Zero Out of Fifty. Zero began as a Belgian Pale Ale brewed with Centennial hops and fermented with Ardennes yeast; once fermentation was complete, Brettanomyces bruxellensis was added in the secondary and it was warm-conditioned for five weeks. The results were fantastic: the nose was minty and herbal with hints of grass and hay. There was a slight citrus flavor in the body—most likely the remnants of the Centennial hops with a touch of the Ardennes yeast—and earthy and cracker-like components in the finish, while the bright carbonation gave the beer a dry, peppery bite. All in all, Zero was fresh, bright, and balanced. It was a study in harmony and subtlety that was both restrained yet complex, and slowly unpacking the harmonious flavors was an exercise in deliciousness. Sorry if that sound smarmy, but I did go back to sample and re-sample this beer multiple times, so waxing poetic is appropriate. And nothing makes me wax poetic like good beer.
            When I asked Keenan Zarling, the Brewhouse Operations Manager from Tin Man, about the name, he had this to say: “prior to pitching the Brett in the beer, this was a fantastic Belgian Pale Ale. However, the addition of Brett (and the warm conditioning) drastically reduced (or at least changed) the Belgian yeast profile as well as the hop character. Some of my own personal bitterness (pun intended) came through when I was thinking up a name; what had started as a great BPA was now something ‘else’ and totally not to style. A BJCP tasting score for beer is typically out of 50, with it being very hard to make less than 8/50 if you are in the correct style category and made something potable. So logically, a ‘contaminated,’ warm conditioned, and ‘old’ BPA would not score very high, something like Zero Out Of Fifty. And it was a little tongue-in-cheek fun, too. Most breweries put a lot of energy into telling people how great X beer is, and why it’s a unique and wonderful experience. We decided to go a different route with the description and just trash-talk this contaminated BPA and entice people at the festival to come check it out and maybe have a chuckle about it.” Zarling was correct—there wasn’t much of the original BPA left in the beer I sampled. Still, I find it hard to imagine that it was better than the final product, which was exquisite. I guess I’ll just have to take his word for it.
            My favorite overall lineup was the four beers brought by Daredevil; they included blended primary fermentation versions of their Lift Off IPA and Vacation Kolsch, a blended secondary version of their Carnival Saison, and a soured version of the Vacation Kolsch with Lactobacillus. The first two beers were blends of the regular version of the beer with one fermented only with Brett; as brewer Michael Pearson describes, “For me, these experiments were about seeing how I could utilize an accessible Brett strain in primary to create something interesting and different. I tasted both the straight Brett Lift Off and Brett Vacation and then blended them to a ratio that I thought would allow the base beer to have a presence where anyone who’d had either would recognize them.” The Carnival Saison added Brett and lemongrass in the secondary to build a more complex, rounded beer, while the Vacation Kolsch soured a portion of the wort with Lactobacillus before blending it with already fermenting beer. Of the four, the Brett Lift Off IPA was the most interesting; it was dry and earthy, but still had some residual body. While it was young—Pearson told me the beer was about three weeks old—there was certainly elements of both versions that went into the beer. Compared to other Brett IPAs I’ve tried, this one combined Brett flavors with body in the beer along with the hop characteristics you’d expect in an IPA. Taken as a whole, it was a well-balanced and delicious combination.
            The festival as a whole was a delight, enough so that I’m even considering attending next year. For those of you that would like to find out more about sour beers, I’d recommend picking up either Jeff Sparrow’s WildBrews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer’s Yeast, or Michael Tonsmeire’s soon to be released American Sour Beers. Both are geared more towards homebrewers, but there is a lot of pertinent information and history for the average beer drinker as well. Plus, reading about beer and brewing is always useful. Or you can let me know if you have any questions.
            Next time, some more beer.

Telephone 27: Putting the Craft in Craft Beer

          The term craft beer is a many-headed hydra. While I understand that most people want the definition of craft to be simple, clear, and easy, it is not. Even basic questions like “what makes a beer good?” are influenced by numerous considerations outside of the beer itself. For example, how does the producer influence your perception of the beer you are drinking? And how does the production process influence the final product that goes into your glass? The most obvious and oversimplified answers to these questions are that Big Beer is evil and craft beer is good, but this tautology ignores the shifting parameters of craft beer as an economic, political, and social entity over last thirty years.
          Before getting too far into these questions, I would like to take a moment to distinguish between quality and intensity. Often, beer geeks and new craft drinkers alike focus on intensity, allowing intensity to stand in as a marker of quality; this can be seen by the status accorded to massively-hopped imperial IPAs and Russian Imperial Stouts in most craft beer circles. In and of itself, however, intensity is not a marker of quality; there is not a pre-ordained hierarchy of beer styles marked by an increasing level of intensity—a Great Chain of Beer, if you will. Instead, quality refers to the beer itself, not the scale or intensity of it. Big does not always equal better. A lager can be as well-made as an IPA, heretical as that may sound. When the focus shifts to the beer itself—rather than the assumptions that consumers bring to beer as an overarching whole, like the admonition that adjuncts, like macrobreweries, are evil—we can ask different types of questions. 
          The Brewers Association—the trade group that represents craft brewers in the United States—defines a craft brewery as “small, independent, and traditional.” Their definition of “small” is “annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less (approximately 3 percent of U.S. annual sales).” 6,000,000 barrels. And a barrel of beer, in case you were wondering, equals 31 gallons. So that’s 186,000,000 gallons of beer. While I understand the increase of numbers regarding annual production in recent years to allow the Brewers Association to continue counting breweries like Boston Beer as a part of their yearly statistics, this number still goes beyond that which reasonably counts as small. After all, while 3 percent of U.S. sales is far less than, say Coors or Miller, it is still well beyond the numbers most craft breweries will ever approach. As a comparison, the only Dayton brewery with the current capacity to produce more than a 1,000 barrels of beer a year is Warped Wing. So in this scenario, as long as you are no more than 6,000 times bigger, you are still considered craft. As economies of scale go, that is a pretty large spectrum.
          Next comes independent. Redhook gets kicked to the curb by the Brewers Association for the 25% stake it sold to Anheuser-Busch in 1995, which provided Redhook with access to A-B’s national distribution chain and the money to open a second brewery in Portsmouth, NH. Widmer followed in 1997, selling A-B a 27% stake for distribution access; Redhook and Widmer themselves merged in 2007 to form the Craft Beer Alliance. While both have been vilified for their decisions, as has Goose Island in 2011, I’ve always had difficulty reconciling the differences between their actions and the similar brewery expansions pursued by Boston Beer in Cincinnati, OH and Breinigsville, PA, and more recently the second wave of these expansions by Sierra Nevada and New Belgium in Asheville, NC, and Lagunitas in Chicago, IL. Sure, these breweries have maintained their “independence,” but they are all moving towards the business model espoused by the supposed enemy, Big Beer, with multiple breweries across the country intended to maximize distribution, production, and profit. The notion of independent is further complicated in the case of Boston Beer; while initially critical of Redhook’s actions, it had its own IPO stock offering in the mid-90s, raising $60 million dollars in capital that allowed Boston Beer to finally built its own brewery—during its firstdecade as a brewery, the majority of its beer came from contract brewing. It is this type of duplicity that makes me wish for more craft breweries like New Glarus, which intentionally self-limits their distribution to Wisconsin. Sure, it makes getting their beer more difficult to obtain, but I’ll take less-often quality over more-frequent quantity. As it relates to craft, less is often more.
          Finally, the Brewers Association’s third term: traditional. The ill-conceived “Craft versus Crafty” statement from BA in December 2012 was intended to call out “phantom craft” brewers like Blue Moon and Shock Top—breweries actually owned by Big Beer—in order to provide clarity and transparency for craft beer consumers. At the same time, it managed to alienate several of America’s older independent breweries by labeling them as “crafty” for their use of adjuncts, most notably corn. As Jace Marti of August Schell Brewing Company told the Brewer’s Association on BeerPulse, “Shame on you.” This hewing to “traditional” brewing ingredients on the part of the Brewer’s Association—yeast, water, barley, and hops—stems more from a false need on the part of BA to adhere to the German Reinheitsgebot than it does to the actual history of brewing in America. In this sense, the stigma connected to adjuncts has been created via their association with Big Beer: it is a product of those producer’s reputations more than anything to do with adjuncts per se. While this reaction may be understandable given the particular history of beer in this country, the backlash against adjuncts is more a manifestation of our own personal discomfort with American’s brewing legacy. In a discussion we had regarding the American Weissbier recipe from Wahl’s and Henius’s American Handy-Book of American Brewing, Malting, and Auxiliary Trades (1902), a recipe that features 30% corn in the grain bill, beer writer Jeff Alworth aptly observes that “corn is so hated now we forget that it’s our claim to indigenous fame. We call it ‘cheap’ but if the Belgians had had corn, we’d call it ‘rustic.’ Time to reclaim it from the beer geek trashbin.” His point, that we look down on our own history in the same manner that we tend to valorize the brewing history of other countries, hits the proverbial nail on the head. I couldn’t agree more.
          So where does this leave us? I’d like to close with a question, one intended to expand traditional discussion regarding the definition of beer at a local level: if a brewery—let’s call it Brewery X—produces 2-3 million barrels of beer annually and distributes in all 50 states, is it still a craft brewery? After all, at that point, Brewery X would seem to have more in common with Big Beer breweries like Budweiser than a brewery producing 500 barrels a year, even though the scale of comparison between Budweiser and Brewery X is roughly comparable to the one between Brewery X and a brewery producing 500 barrels a year. Pretending that the giants of craft beer share the same concerns with those on the lower echelons of production is both foolish and asinine. And even a little bit insulting. Still, the desire to continue to count breweries like Brewery X, to acknowledge their role in the history of craft beer while also relying upon their successes to document the growth of craft, is important as well as understandable. It would just be nice of that history was based upon, well, history, and was a little more even-handed and based less upon marketing. Even so, craft beer, much like Dayton’s burgeoning craft scene, is at a crossroads.
          Next time, let’s try some beer.

Telephone 26: Why Style Matters

          Stripped of its history and pedigree, style is a contract between producer and consumer. Style tells consumers that this beer is hoppy or this beer is malty or this beer is sour so that they can judge whether or not they want to purchase a given producer’s beer. Style thus indicates a set of characteristics connected to a particular type of beer, characteristics that should reciprocally inform consumer expectations. If I order an American IPA and it is more malt-forward than hop-forward, I am annoyed. Why? Because hops are the defining characteristic of an American IPA—hop aroma, hop flavor and hop bitterness—so there should be citrus, resin, and evergreen in the nose and body, along with a fair share of bitterness in the body and lingering bitterness in the finish. Malt may be present to provide balance and backbone, but everything in this beer is in the service of showcasing hops. Similarly, if I order an English Brown, the emphasis should be on the malt and not the hops—my expectations are that the beer will have a rich malt character with toffee, caramel, biscuit, and bread crust, along with hints of dark fruit and coffee. Chocolate and/or hop flavors would make this an American Brown, not an English one; a small claim to difference, certainly, but still one that matters. These expectations extend well beyond those connected to just flavor: a saison, for example, should have a dry body, while a Russian Imperial Stout should have a chewy, thick body. Clarity, color, carbonation level: they all connect back to style. This is the language of beer. It is the nomenclature we use to communicate regarding beer. To not attempt to educate yourself—to willfully disregard the established language of beer and pretend that it doesn’t matter—pretty much means that your interest in beer is insincere.
          So when I hear a brewer proclaim “I can’t be bothered with style” or “style limits my creativity,” all I hear is “I am a lazy brewer who doesn’t care about my customers.” If you want to experiment, go for it. Experimentation is fantastic. But market it as such. As a homebrewer, I brew all kinds of esoteric things: I spent all last year brewing Brettanomyces-only beers. But I’m brewing for myself, not customers. When commercial brewers decide to brew a random creation and slap a style name on it because they assume consumers won’t know the difference, they become part of the problem. The phrase “you need to know the rules before you can break the rules” may be cliché, but in this situation it has merit. Impress me with your ability to produce quality American Pale Ales or Oktoberfests that reflect established categories before you expect me to embrace your cutting edge ways. Respect your craft. To put it another way, while passion is important, so are skill and knowledge. After all, if you don’t have passion for beer, quite honestly, then you shouldn’t be brewing. Thus, if everyone has passion, then what will set you apart as a brewer is the skill and knowledge you use to craft your product. And one of the central components of beer skill and knowledge is an awareness of and respect for style. I wouldn’t pay a random stranger off the street to fix my car, regardless of the level of her or his passion for cars. The same holds true for beer. Passion alone has limitations. Just because you love beer doesn’t mean you can produce good beer. To those of you reading this, I suggest using the same rules of logic you all apply to other consumer goods when it comes to considering beer.
          To return to style, and the contract it represents between producers and consumers: breweries that disregard or blatantly ignore style when marketing their beer perform a disservice to craft beer. This point is important, so let me repeat it, as I want it to sink in. Breweries that ignore style—intentionally or unintentionally, it doesn’t matter—are hurting consumers in general and craft beer writ large. I speak here both ethically and economically. If good beer is a civic responsibility—and it is—then it behooves producers to perform their actions in good faith towards the consumer. While expediency is often the excuse, it doesn’t make it acceptable. Similarly, consumers who reward beers with excessive scores on social media sites when that beer clearly doesn’t fit the style, or who provide degradingly low scores for well-made beers because they dislike the brewery, are also part of the problem. Yes, you, with the straight 5s on Untappd, including similar scores for beers that are clearly infected, are part of the problem. Like and dislike are perfectly acceptable when hanging with friends who share similar ideas about beer. But when you are providing information to other consumers online, your opinion alone outside the parameters of style is not enough. After all, viewers seeing your comments don’t know whether or not you love or hate certain types of beer. And that type of information matters. Thus, you owe it to others consumers to provide appropriate information and feedback. In other words, you owe it to other consumers to know what you are talking about. Again, these are the ethical and economic dimensions of beer referred to above. Get educated. Learn. Otherwise, you’re a bad beer citizen who disregards and disrespects craft beer. Which leads me to next week’s topic: putting the craft in craft beer.

Telephone 25: So You Like Craft Beer?

One of my many insights from the Lexington Craft Writing: Beer, the Digital, and Craft Culture conference was that I should be doing more to contribute to writing about craft beer in an interesting and thoughtful manner. After all, I hang my hat upon my ability with words. So upon my return to Dayton, I contacted Telephone Weekly, a local magazine about writing a craft beer column for them. These are the results:

          I think beer is important. For good or for ill, beer-related activities consume a fair share of my waking hours: reading, brewing, judging, writing, ruminating, or even just drinking. And while my personal sentiments regarding beer are neither novel nor ground-breaking, beer matters. To put it bluntly, good beer is a civic responsibility. Think of it like voting, only more fun.
          Undoubtedly, beer as a symbol for the social fabric of community and nation will strike many as odd. Still, that belief informs my interest in beer; it is, after all, what led me to this column. As an advocate for local craft beer, I think that enthusiasm for craft beer is important, but without the reciprocal knowledge to complement that enthusiasm, you might as well throw your vote away. Similarly, beer cannot be divorced from the social, political, and economic factors that go into its production. Ignoring the ethical dimensions of beer production is not that different than naïve enthusiasm: it ignores communal obligation by ignoring the less pleasant features of the social contract. It may be your right to be a bad citizen—it’s a privilege, actually, but that’s another matter—but as my mother repeatedly reminded me during my childhood, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. Thus, while I’d like to focus on providing readers with a greater context for local craft beer, I will not shy away from the thornier elements informing these issues at a local level: when appropriate, I’ll be critical of producers and consumers alike. Maybe I’ll burn some bridges along the way. Hopefully not, but who knows? I will say that craft beer—and here I am speaking of the philosophical idea of craft beer and not the actual nuts-and-bolts business side of the equation—matters more, specifically as it relates to the larger good of the community.
          Before getting to the job at hand, I’d like to offer a bit more regarding my personal background—the justificatory beer biography, so to speak. While I would like to pretend that my witty, clever repartee is more than enough to bring you all back for more, some divulgence of practical knowledge is no doubt also required. That, and as my editor will undoubtedly point out, journalistic integrity requires just such an accounting. I began homebrewing fifteen years ago; I moved to Dayton in 2006, and joined DRAFT, the local homebrew club. I’ve been blogging about beer since 2009. Additionally, I’ve been a beer judge through BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) for the last five years, and more recently, I’ve been involved with a couple of the new breweries that have opened: I volunteer at Yellow Springs Brewery when I can find the time, I’m on the Fifth Street Brewpub Co-op’s Beer Team, which tastes and troubleshoots pilot beer recipes with the head brewer (I’m also a co-op member), and I’m good friends with the new assistant brewer at Warped Wing. I initially met most of these people through DRAFT; as the Dayton beer community has expanded, so has my network of friends. Still, I am not paid by any of these entities—the University of Dayton pays my bills—so when I speak here, it is as a consumer advocate for local craft beer, not for any of these (or any other) specific institutions. From my perspective, smarter consumers means better beer: both producers and consumers have their part to play in developing Dayton’s beer scene.
          After all, it is an exciting time for beer in Dayton. When I first moved to Dayton, there wasn’t a brewery to be found; now, the greater Dayton metropolitan area is home to several breweries with more are on the way. However, while Dayton is now a beer town, it is not yet a good beer town. And it has a ways to go—quite a ways, in fact—to be considered a great beer town. I know that many people reading this will undoubtedly disagree. Vehemently, in fact. They’ll cite line and verse of all the great things Dayton breweries are doing, many of which I would undoubtedly agree with. At the same time, though, consumers have a responsibility to hold local breweries to a greater standard of quality—sure, local is great, but buying beer just because it is made locally regardless of quality is not: that’s called marketing. This tension between the enthusiasm for craft beer and the honest assessment of it as a commercial product is where the vast majority of productive conversation regarding local craft beer breaks down. When beer drinkers resort to parroting back marketing as self-evident truth, they choose to be cheerleaders for the economic interests of breweries and not consumers playing their part contributing to the development of local craft beer. Yes, breweries are businesses—they need to turn a profit to continue operating—but they should not turn that profit at the expense of the consumer. When I am served a beer from a local brewery that should have never been released to the public, I am left with one of two conclusions: either they don’t know enough about beer production to discern that there is a problem or they just don’t care about their customers. Neither prospect is flattering to the brewery, and yet this problem continues to happen—far more than I would care to admit, in fact. Given the enthusiasm surrounding craft beer in Dayton, we need a larger body of consumers willing to argue for quality, not just those willing to swallow the Kool Aid.
          To argue for quality requires treating beer as more than a fashion accessory—it means educating yourself as a consumer in order to take responsibility for helping to make things better. While I will talk more about this next week, part of the problem facing the Dayton beer community—whether intentionally or unintentionally—stems from a disregard or dismissal of beer style.