I need some help here.

I’ve wanted to do a beer-related podcast since I started the blog. Now that I have my shiny new MacBook Pro, all the tools to do a good one are in place. So what the hell should the theme and style be? None of the beer podcasts I’ve found really do it for me. They either drone on for too long, take too elitist a tone, or remain so location-specific that I can’t relate to the beers and bars they talk about.

I want to ask my loyal readers, as well as the traitorous ones. What sort of beer stuff would you guys actually enjoy listening to? What type of content would actually motivate you to open iTunes and download a beer podcast? I guess this is market research.

-Mark

Guinness has always made sure to differentiate its draught stout in the marketplace. It begins with the myth they’ve built up around the beer itself: the special three-minute pour, the nitrogen carbonation, the notion that it somehow tastes better in Ireland. The Dublin-based brewer also always invested heavily in advertising, many of its mid-twentieth century print ads becoming iconic reprinted collectors’ items.Nowadays, it must becoming harder to ride that cutting edge.

I don’t know if the company’s marketing moves in recent years come from Guinness itself or from its parent company, Diageo, but the brewery has spent the early years of the new millennium dismantling the traditionalist image it used to work so hard to maintain.It all started with the nitro cans. These tall cans contained a “widget” which would agitate the beer upon a yank of the pull tab, creating a reasonable facsimile of a pub-poured pint of Guinness. Next came the draught bottle, which did a similar widget thing but allowed people to drink the beer straight from the bottle, thus eliminating all the visual pleasure from this most beautiful of beers.Still, Diageo wasn’t quite hitting the young, stupid, overly brand-conscious nightclubber market.

Enter Guinness Extra Cold. Remember all that stuff you heard about proper Guinness being served cool, but not overchilled? Well screw that.Guiness Extra Cold is draught Guinness pumped through a special underbar superchiller, instantly cooling the beer to a temperature 3 degrees Celsius colder than normal Guinness. For that cool, refreshing, quenching pint of inky black heavily roasted malt-based nitrogen-carbonated beer.

Next target for the Diageo Marketing Machine: bars without draft lines and people who shop at The Sharper Image. Ladies and Gentlemen, Guinness introduces: “The Surger.”I know, it sounds like something you’d do to a rugby opponent when the referee isn’t looking. “The Surger,” however, is a sleek, sculpted piece of bartop technology designed to “create the magic of Guinness Draught at the touch of a button.” It’s basically a metal plate upon which is placed a glass of special “Surger” Guiness. Upon activation, ultrasonic rays or lasers or something shoot into the glass, activating the beer’s carbonation.

It looks cool, and it really does work. The bar was out of the special “surger” Guinness upon our visit, but we forced the bartender to try it with a pint of Bass and the beer instantly foamed out and spilled all over the place.Perhaps this is the perfect home bar accessory for the uber-rich tech junkie who has everything and needs to find a new way to impress company. But since it does exactly what the pub cans and draught bottles do, it’s hard to really see the point, other than being a shiny little toy.

At least it doesn’t make your beer super cold.-Mark

Hoptical Illusion. Smooth Hoperator. Hop-A-Long Cascady. Hey brewers, give us a break already!

We get it. We know that beer is made with hops. And we know that you like to put lots and lots of hops in your beer, and you’re very proud when you can get 2 IBUs (international bitterness units) higher than the next guy, even if it’s so bitter that such a difference is undetectable. But enough with the corny names!

Plus, even if your beer is delicious and balanced, names like this make it sound like a one-trick pony.

For those continuing the trend, allow me to offer some naming suggestions:

-Bihopsy

-Myhopia

-Grand Ole Hopry

Does anyone else see why it’s ridiculous?

-Mark

In the classic tradition of the “Black and Tan,” the “Half-and-half,” the “Snakebite,” and the “Cleveland Steamer,” I’ve invented a new layered beer drink: the “World War II.”

Guinness and Spaten Bock.

The interesting thing about this combination is the stratification betwixt the layers. The border between the inky Guinness and russet Spaten undulates and seethes in ripples of pure disdain. It’s like international soccer in a glass. Surprisingly, the flavors meld well.

Stupid? yeah. But sometimes that’s the result of drinking beer.

Where have all the flowers gone?
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Your beer costs more now. Sorry about that.

There’s not much that brewers can do about it. The costs of producing beer have risen dramatically. The main problem is hops. We’re in the throes of a major hop shortage. This is the freakin’ Great Depression of hops. Prices for the precious flowers have risen over 300% across the board.

Terrible weather in both Europe and the USA decimated the hop crop, so we’re in a full worldwide shortage. The miserable 2007 harvest was a perfect storm of agricultural failure.

We can lay partial blame on the ethanol movement. You know, that huge government initiative that has resulted in exactly one ethanol pump within the Greater Rochester area? Due to government ethanol subsidies, an acre of corn is substantially more profitable for a farmer to plant than an acre of hops. So total hop acreage across the USA has been reduced.

Come to think of it, farm work is a pain in the butt anyway. The offspring of farming families often choose technical or office careers instead of lapping fields in big green machines. As family farms close, fewer hops are planted and grown.

And then there’s the horticulture of the hops themselves. From time of planting, it can take up to three years for the full hop crop to develop. That’s three years of no return on investment for the new hop farmer. And, since farmers, like producers in every other business, need to squeeze the maximum profit potential out of their crop, many concentrate on growing modified high alpha acid hops, which pack much more bang for the buck per hop flower, and thus consume less acreage, leaving field space to grow other crops.

And, to be frank, American craft beer producers have been going off the deep end with the hops over the past few years. In converting American palates toward comically bitter beer, they used hops as if they were going out of style.

Which, as it turns out, they were.

Naturally, the shortage is causing havoc among brewers. It’s the big conglomerates that buy up most of the crop, and most independent breweries have contracts with hop sellers, so their supplies still roll in, albeit at top-dollar pricing. Breweries without those contracts, however, face a much bigger challenge.

Strangely, it’s the Boston Beer Company to the rescue. The producer of Sam Adams actually has a hop surplus, putting them in an enviable position. Instead of hoarding their cones, they’re making the extra hops available to breweries without hop contracts, a gesture of good faith (and good PR) that seems almost anachronistic in the cutthroat world of modern business.

So, once again, Boston Beer Company founder and owner Jim Koch is riding to the rescue of the industry he was instrumental in founding. Koch’s move might be the thing that keeps peoples’ favorite small beer brands from going extinct.

Good to see he’s still minding the store.

In Other Beers
We’ve got some good news and we’ve got some bad news. This week is loaded with two big beer events. Unfortunately, they’re both on the same day at the same time: Wednesday, February 27th.

The Old Toad is hosting a high-end beer and cheese tasting, featuring six uncommon cheeses from Europe and Great Britain, each thoughtfully paired with a beer that compliments it well. This is a good chance to see first hand how harmoniously the flavors of beer and cheese meld.

Tickets cost $25 and seating is limited, so call the Toad, (585) 232-2626, if you’d like a seat at the tasting.

Competing for your attention will be the second of the Tap & Mallet’s ongoing Beer Social series, this time featuring the beers of Duvel Moortgat, Belgian parent company of Cooperstown’s Ommegang Brewery.

You’ll sample beers from Ommegang and, various Belgian breweries, interspersing your hurried gulping with delicious antipasti from the Tap’s own kitchen. Tickets for the 8pm event are on sale at the Tap. Seating is limited and the night WILL sell out, so get them now if you’re going.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

I talked about the startup Cortland Beer Company a couple of posts back. These guys were all set to go when the hop crop imploded. Because of the shortage, they couldn’t get a hop contract, so plans changed from launching their own facility to contract brewing through an established brewery.

This is an aspect of the hop shortage that I haven’t seen discussed at any length. How many awesome breweries… how many fantastic beers will we never get to taste because they couldn’t come to market? How is the dearth of hops curtailing overall growth of the industry in brick-and-mortar terms?

Maybe, in three years, we’ll know.

-Mark

Boredom is the enemy. Complacency its sword. When my friend John called from Boston, we jumped at the chance for an improptu road trip. What ensued was three nights of pub crawls, T rides and seafood binges. And of course a search for great beer.

There’s nothing like a weekend in a major metropolis to show you how good they have it.

From the moment we unpacked at our West End hotel, I was itching to get to the Publick House, a Belgian beer mecca legendary enough for its name to be known up and down the East Coast. But its distant Brookline location and our impending meetup with friends unconcerned about the nuances of craft brewing meant it would have to wait. Fortunately, in Boston, even the pubs without a devoted craft beer selection still have a great vibe, friendly people, and Harpoon IPA on draft. The Sevens, in Beacon Hill, down the street from our accommodation, also makes a kick-ass chili.

We’d have to wait for day two, Sunday, to really begin the beer trek. And we did so at the Boston Beer Works on Landsdowne Street, in uncomfortable proximity to that crumbling shithole, Fenway Park.

For a brew Pub, the Beer Works is a bit of an enigma. The enormity of the place, as well as the obvious huge amount of cash outlay on marketing and brand image collateral, evoke the many overblown, now long-extinct ventures of the first wave of the brewpub fad. But the place is buoyed by its location. It’s in the middle of everything. Boston University sprawls down one street, Northeastern down another. And, of course, there’s the hordes of baseball spectators that get vomited onto Landsdowne after every home game.

And, in fairness, the quality of Boston Beer Works’ beer makes it deserving of custom. The Buckeye Oatmeal Stout is smooth and silky, with a mellow, gently roasted character and an unexpected hoppy finish. While I enjoyed all the beers in the tasting flight, the Buckeye became the pint of choice.

Tasting flight at the Beer Works

We lingered at the Beer Works for quite a while, but I was getting a nasty rash from being this close to Fenway Park, so we hopped the “C” train to Washington Square for the real epicenter of our trip: The Publick House.

Most places that emphasize Belgian Beer get all cutesy with the name and image. You get oblique references to the Manneken Pis or Trappist brewing tradition. While the adjoining Monk’s Cell does fall slight victim to this, the main bar’s name, The Publick House, is more evocative of an 18th century New England Inn. It’s as if, while retaining full appreciation of Belgian Beer, the place refuses to be typecast.

Some people perceive an air of arrogance about the place. Signs above the bar shout “No Shots” and “No Pitchers.” There are “ground rules” printed on the menu restating the lack of liquor and softball team party containers, as well as a written policy against refunding money just because a patron doesn’t like his or her beer. I took this as more of a sad necessity in order for this pub to be what it is, since it’s located in the middle of a college town.

Anyway, all that stuff gets pushed to the side once you look at the beer list. We’re not exactly spoiled for choice in Rochester, but the selection here, full of old friends I’d encountered overseas and rare gems one must go seriously out of the way to buy, nailed my ass to the bench for several hours to come.

Belgian beer doesn’t lend itself to extended sampling; it’s too strong for that. So I gravitated to two of the best beers in the world, which will probably never cross the counters of our beer bars at home: Boon Kriek and Rodenbach Grand Cru.

The advantages for beer lovers of living on the big coastal cities become more glaring with every pilgrimage. More distributors. More choices. More people with a passion for beer and the scratch to open and run their own dedicated beer bars.

I hope that, as tastes are made and people migrate, more of that will find its way to the rest of us.

-Mark

We have a treat tomorrow. The Ithaca Brewing Company is coming up from Ithaca, NY (it’s gorges). We’ll be tasting some of the finest beer in the region, so bring your drinking smocks!

7:30pm, Monty’s Korner, Rochester.

-Mark

You want a Holy Grail of beer? Here you go. Westvleteren 12, brewed by reclusive Trappist monks, fits the bill in every sense of the word. As far as the beer world is concerned, W-12 is the ultimate. It’s also extremely difficult to obtain.

Unlike the other Trappist breweries, the monks of the St. Sixtus Abbey take a more hardline approach to the concept of selling beer to sustain their abbey. They make darn sure they only sell enough to keep themselves at sustenance level, regardless of very high worldwide demand. While Rochefort, Orval, and Chimay are widely exported to the USA, Westvleteren is only available at the abbey.

Basically, the brewery makes three beers. You call the phone number in the morning and find out which one is available that day. Then you drive to the abbey and wait in a queue. If the twelve is being sold, expect to wait a while. There’s a limit of one case per car.

Apparently, the W-12 is fantastic. I wouldn’t personally know because I’ve never had the opportunity to taste it, and I probably never will. Because of the artificially reduced supply, beer geeks go absolutely apeshit about the twelve, and that certainly affects tasters on a psychological level when they finally get some of it past their lips.

I say great for them. Great for the St. Siuxtus Abbey, and great for anyone who relishes the challenge of obtaining this beer. For my money and semi-valuable time, I’ll take a Rochefort-10, an astoundingly excellent strong Trappist ale which I can find here in the USA. At this level of monastic breweing, “best” is a subjective term, and the law of diminishing returns definitely applies in a situation where customers are held at bay to the obtuse notions of religious tradition. However, Westy does offer an important lesson for students of marketing: If you brew it, then don’t advertise it, then hardly allow any of it for sale, they will come.

Generally all over the bottle.

-Mark

Here’s something you don’t see everyday.

My friend Mike (KROC in this blog’s comment fields) is sick of reading about craft beer. He has started a blog defending and promoting the beer he grew up (and out) with, the beer he loves: American Big Three lager.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you for better or for, as I suspect, much worse… The People’s Beer Drinker. Let’s all give him a warm, warm welcome.