The Buffalo News Did a piece on the tribluations of Flying Bison Brewing. I really hope I’m not seeing the end times for one of my favorite New York State breweries. Since my first taste of their Oktoberfest in 1994, Flying Bison has had me hooked. Their take on traditional style has always been rock solid.
Some would say too traditional and too solid. I’ve read plenty of comments from beer afficianados that a lack of extreme beer, or beer made with exotic ingredients, or high-end beer marketing diminished FB’s ability to stand out, especially with Southern Tier, a brewery that’s all about adventurous beer, is right next door.
I’m not buying that. Buffalo has always been a blue-collar town, and its enclaves of craft beer are few and far between compared to my neighboring city. It seems like a straight financial matter, and it sucks that, although revenues were on the increase, FB wasn’t able to grow its sales quickly enough to outpace rising ingredient prices.
Many small brewers ride that line. People just assume you’re making liquid gold because of the craft beer category’s explosive growth. But the competition that growth brings, coupled with supply prices that rise with demand, means some guys ride razor-thin margins.
I wish Flying Bison the best, and hope F.X. Matt, or any other purchaser, does the right thing for their community, restructuring the brewery to stay and brew beer in Buffalo New York. I think there’s viable business there.
Buffalo’s a blue collar town. Tim Herzog understands that, and he’s one of the few brewers that’s not afraid to make craft beer as a blue collar beverage, geared more to sipping after a hard day’s work than pairing with your Chilean sea bass. That mentality reminds us all of what beer used to be, and what it still fundamentally is.
The Tap and Mallet is preparing to release the third in their McBane’s line of house seasonal beers in early February, and this one’s pretty exciting.
The as-yet unnamed IPA is brewed by Sly Fox of Phoenixville and Royersford, PA, makers of damn fine beers like Pikeland Pils and Rte 113 IPA. Fundamentally, it’ll be a west coast IPA, but with a twist. The addition of sorachi hops will lend the beer a fresh, lemony quality that offsets the piny bitterness for which West Coasters are known.
Tap and Mallet owner Joe McBane described his new beer as a stab at doing something different, and taking a classic American style in a different direction. “We wanted to do something that really hasn’t been done before.”
The new IPA should be lighter in hue than many examples of the style, and will come in around 6.5% ABV. Look for it around midmonth. Thanks Joe, for showing us that you don’t have to be a brewery to make your mark on the American craft beer scene.
Wow. 100 columns about beer. Who even knew there would be that much to say?
Well, it turns out there wasn’t but that never stopped us from making stuff up. And today’s piece will be no exception.
It’s taken several years of biweekly typing to come to our centenary, and over that time the beer scene has changed dramatically. Pubs have overcome ambivalence toward indie brewers and embraced craft beer as an attraction and a profit maker. Distribution companies devote more space for small-batch American beer on their enormous trucks, and even the rudest noob knows to expect an IPA to taste bitter.
In many ways, craft beer has come full circle and then some. There used to be hundreds of small breweries, the products of neighborhoods. After prohibition and consolidation, only a few giant breweries remained, until a group of mavericks entered the beer market like green seedlings poking through the coal of a burned-out forest.
Their beer inspired others, causing the nascent industry to grow at an incredible rate. Craft beer became the product of neighborhoods again, and kept right on going. Now, small breweries buy smaller breweries, Craft brew is everywhere, and the New Belgium Brewing Company is the eighth largest brewery in the country, producing more beer in 2009 than Genesee.
How lucky we are as beer lovers, or even just occasional beer drinkers, to live at what is undoubtedly the high point of American brewing. Fifteen years ago it was nearly unthinkable to walk into a pub with a choice of thirty brews, representing perhaps fifteen unique styles.
How easy, though, to take it all for granted.
For one thing, the tendency toward beer snobbery has not been erased. Some people (our buddy Daron, who writes the Cream Ale Drinker blog, calls them ‘hopsters’) still believe that the contents and price of the pint they hoist gives them a social and intellectual edge over those who’d be just as happy cracking a can of St. Louis’ finest. It does not.
There’s also the curse of the beer lover, driven compulsively to seek greater novelty. Each beer must stronger or bitterer; each sip must be somehow more awesome than the last. With so much variety and experimentation within the industry, it’s easy to turn a trip to the pub into some sort of Sisyphean quest for the ever more precious, choosing desperate intellectual exercise over a few good pints with friends.
Finally, there’s the seduction of revenue for brewers. This is a business, and it always was, and brewery owners should earn as much as they can.But a brewer who started skinny and struggled may well find herself operating a considerable profit engine these days. We hope folks in this position do not forget the loyalty of the local drinkers that gave them a boost, and do not resort to marketing and line extension gimmickry over the quality of their brew.
The problem with a high point is the decline that inevitably follows. While it’s doubtful that American Brewing has reached the end of its golden age, it’s important for drinker, brewer and publican alike to reflect on the power of the beverage that has become such a strong part of regional and national culture.
Just as it is important to create and evolve, it is vital to remember beer’s roots and traditions, and think about what’s been shown to happen when the industry gets deeper into the boardroom than the brewkettle. We’d like to see a high point of American brewing for a long time to come.
After all, we have another hundred columns to write.
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. Find us on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.
It’s not only American brewers that riff on traditional European styles. Inspiration flows the other way across the pond as well. And with so many wildly diverse indigenous styles, it’s no surprise that the Belgians would have open minds.
Breweries like Achoufffe, nestled in the formerly shell-cratered forests of the Ardennes, are captivated by American IPA, and now produce hoppy West-Coast inspired, but distinctly Belgian ales. Now, just to confuse the shit out of drinkers, American brewers are creating their own versions of American-inspired Belgian IPA.
Case in point, Raging Bitch from Flying Dog, a brewery that simultaneously excites me with their consistently excellent beer and annoys me by constantly milking the memory of Hunter S. Thompson (one of the most overrated writers of the 20th century). The Bitch succesfully combines the aroma and spicy hop finish with a citrusy, prominent Belgian tang.
Although a tad syrupy, the flavors marry with surprising harmony, neither extreme overpowering the other, creating the kind of hybrid that deserves, over time, to become a style in its own right. At 8.3%, it’s a bit much for an everyday drinker, but Raging Bitch works great as a pleasant wake-up call for a palate that’s tasted it all before.
An idle comment by a wine writer helped me put my finger on it. Wine is so soil and climate dependent that the studied taster can identify, or at least somewhat plausibly claim to identfy, characteristics within a wine that connect it to a specific region. That sense of place, sometimes bundled up as the more romantic and mystical terroir, brings pleasure to the drinker and pride to the vintner, and connects both.
It’s also a concept impossible to divorce from beer. Every Brewing culture developed in their beer a set of parameters specific to their region, available crops,cultural density, whatever. The point is, when an Irishman thinks of beer, he thinks of a specific thing, most likely a dark dry stout. When a Belgian woman thinks of beer, she might picture one of the hundreds of funky, strongly palated brewsfrom her country. That is, when neither of these stereotypical examples are swilling the latest fashionable worldwide light lager they saw on TV.
And that time you went on vacation to Prague and sat on the square drinking fetchingly bitter Pilsner. You knew it as the beer ofthe Czech Republic, and any Czech who would bother to talk to a lowly tourist would gush with pride over the local specialty known far and wide as Czech beer.
And you knew it when you got home, when every sip of a Munich Helles brings visions of the Hofbräu Haus, if not from actual memory, from a sincere desire to see for yourself what promise a place like that might hold.
So what’s the beer of New York like? What song of travel and delight gets lullabyed into your gastronomical ear by the beers of the Midwest?
I’m not saying American indie brewers don’t produce some of the finest beer in the world, but I’m suggesting that, too often, that beer flows unchanneled by the earth on which its brewers stand. With the exception of the Pacific Northwest’s West Coast IPAs, now produced by pretty much everyone, what regionalism goes into American beer?
Right about now, there are two reasons you’re saying I’m full of shit (three if you’re of the mindset that, since I almost never make beer myself, I should STFU). Craft brewing in America is new, and as such hasn’t had the chance to develop the cultural connections for such a thing. Also, the ingredients for American beers are sourced from all over the place: Malt from Germany, hops from Washington, etcetera. The only thing truly regional is the water.
I’d encourage breweries to mine whatever local ingredients are possible, and, while brewing the luxurious variety of beers that we all love to enjoy today, brew with a sense that their beer represents something that is the best of their town, their state, their country, so that as things evolve, a Swedish dude who once visited Chicago can taste in his glass the sounds and smells of that amazing city (well, maybe not the smells).
Brew mania is catching on around the world. In Denmark, in Italy, in Scotland, fine brewers make delicious West Coast IPAs, Belgian style Tripels, and imperial stouts that rival the best American craft examples.
Right now, the USA is the king of brewing. Can we keep that crown without making beers that, in some sense, have an American terroir?
Well that only took a freakin’ month and a half. At any rate, beercaftsite.com is live again, thanks to the efforts of Patrick Hughes, our tech guy.
Look for exciting and introspective beer news, commentary and general curmudgeonliness semidaily here at beercraftsite.com.
My weekend beverages of choice turned out to be good ol’ Long Trail Pale Ale, but I also tried the Sam Adams Noble Pils. It’s grassy, more of a North German style (think Jever) than a pils with that sharply bitter Czech bite. It would be almost asking too much for this beer to offer thrills, but it’s solid and accessible, making it an easy entry point to craft beer for folks more used to American light lagers. The hops may be noble, but as far as flavor goes, t merits a minor dukedom at best.
