I’ve received further confirmation of my suspicions from professional brewers. It looks like ’sour’ is going to be the new ‘hoppy.’  I say good luck.

Sour flavors imparted by brettanomyces and other microflora have been a characteristic of numerous Belgian beers, many of which aren’t the least bit subtle about it.  Some Belgian sour beers are wonderful; Rodenbach Grand Cru is one of my all-time favorites, with a soft, fruity palate that subsumes into a tangy, tart burst on the back of the tongue, leaving the drinker eager for another sip. The subtle sourness is the hook that pulls the glass back to the lips. Other sour Belgian beers, like the much-ballyhooed Cantillon Lambics, put one more in the mind of salad dressing. You could color Easter eggs with that stuff.

Which brings me to my concern. People rave about Cantillon, and many will tell you how they consider it one of the true treasures of the beer world, even as their faces contort into grotesque puckers with every vinious sip. I really think many people fall into mass-mentality with Cantillon, worshipping it because other beer geeks do, like graphic designers worship Mac computers.

So now American brewers are breaking out the Brett like never before. Over the next year or so, we’re gonna be seeing some sour-ass beers from some pretty respected breweries. Will the beer intelligentsia get behind them? Will folks new to beer fall right into the party line, the way they did with extremely hopped beers? Will there be a subculture of beer enthusiasts that will snottily dismiss any beer not super sour as “bland crap” the way there was with extremely hopped beers?

I’m not calling out the breweries; those guys have proven they can brew excellent beers in any style. I’m just hoping for the best from beer lovers. I’m hoping we can try the new sour stuff, enjoy what we enjoy, and not turn the experimentation of the brewers into a full-blown fad just for conformity’s sake.  There are too many beers out there for that, and we’d only be shortchanging ourselves.

-Mark

In a couple of hours (11:30 am) I’ll be heading over to Swan Market to join my friends for our traditional Saturday, uh, sausagefest. Naturally, this event is lubricated with  fine German beer.

It’s funny. You tell an American that you’ll be drinking beer before the hour of noon and they start planning your intervention, whereas in Europe, responsible consumption of what is essentially a foodstuff is part of the routine and joy of daily life. The traditional Bavarian meal of Weisswurst and Hefeweizen is consumed before noon as a matter of course and pride, born of a time when the highly perishable sausage needed to be served quickly.

Some traditions are worth attending to. Zwei Weiss, bitte, und Ein Fransiskaner vom Fass! 

Second thought 

 I dunno, I kinda feel like I overly harshed the High Falls Brewery in my last post over what basically amounts to an ad. They do a lot for the community and I choose their beer over any other American light lager. Like many regional breweries, the company has had a rough go of it over the past 30 years or so, and it’s not fair to fault them for positioning themselves to remain viable.

I guess it just seems, sometimes, that our hometown brewery has kind of abandoned us as small fry, and the brewery-consumer relationship is so different than in other cities where regional breweries are headquartered. For example, go to southern PA and see how passionate people are about Yuengling. The beer is everywhere and residents are proud of it, even though in composition it’s not wildly different from Genny. In Rochester, we don’t have that same sort of pride in our big brewer. High Falls doesn’t culturally dominate that part of our dining table.

Maybe this ad is the first step in a broader campaign to reach out to the town that built the company through the purchase of its beers. If so, I’ll happily drink my words. Well see.

-Mark

Yep, it’s that time again: the time when another obscure holiday from some other country has been turned into a big, slobbery drunk-and-disorderly fest for American young adults, thanks to the marketing dollars of a large brewing conglomerate.

In honor of this grand occasion, Beer School will be featuring the Beers of Mexico, mostly because that’s what Monty’s Korner will have on tap. In addition to pisswater Corona, we’ll also be tasting other Mexican pisswater export lagers, as well as some of the beers for which the Mexican brewing industry should be known: Vienna-Style lagers and darker, complex brews that don’t require a friggin’ lime to be rendered barely palatable.

Did that whet your thirst buds? Good. We’ll see you tonight at 7:30, Monty’s Korner, Rochester, NY. Bring your own stupid hat.

-Mark

Readers of this blog will be all to familiar with our generic stance on beer extremity, but we prefer not to paint ourselves into corners. With this in mind, I bellied up to the The Old Toad’s weathered bar and ordered a Boulder Mojo Risin’ Double IPA.

It pains me to admit how much I liked this beer, mostly because the name references a Doors song and I hate The Doors. All through high school I was subjected to their uninspired, organ-heavy boring, flat-voiced singsong pop. And everyone’s always like “Oh! Jim Morrison is such a great poet!” He was not a poet; he was a hack. ee cummings was a great poet. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great poet. The guy who wrote “There once was a girl from Nantucket” was a better poet than Morrison, who once penned the line “If they say I never loved you/You know they are a liar.”  Jim Morrison can kiss my ass.

But I digress.

I was expecting a raw, bitter, overwhelmingly hoppy beer with a back end composed of harsh alcohol heat, but Mojo Risin’ is much more subtle than that. It’s buttery smooth without being cloying, and the intense bitterness is complemented by a malt smoothness that rounds off and effectively subdues the taste of the alcohol. This is a dangerous beer; it would be easy to absent-mindedly consume several pints while forgetting that it’s 10.5% ABV.

I’ve had this experience with a couple “extreme” beers lately. Could it be that the brewers who make them are growing a bit self-conscious about their single-minded pursuit of strength and bitterness above all else? If extreme beer turns into good beer, the American brewing community will realy have made its mark in the world of beer.

-Mark

It’s amazing what some people will do for fun. Some run marathons, some get shot with stingy little paintballs, some even suspend themselves from sharp hooks pushed through the bleeding flesh of their own backs.Bruce and I dispense beer at beer festivals.

This weekend found us in the teeming metropolis of Hunter, New York, for Tap NY, the state’s premier beer festival, and due to its proximity to the Tri-State area, one of the most attended. Dozens of breweries from all over New York, New Jersey and Canada offered up their finest for the sampling pleasure of the masses.

For the first day, the masses didn’t seem overly interested in the finest. Maybe the most alcoholically strong, but subtle flavor and aroma characteristics did not seem to be a top priority for many. One poor kid (I’m guessing he was about 21 by the way he couldn’t stand up) managed to get himself literally covered in a complex, hoppy yet smokey carmel-tinged Ithaca Ten, which dripped sadly off the brim of his baseball cap onto the back of his right shoulder as a big brown stain spread across his Abercrombie logo. Even with the younger crowd though, drink-addled outbursts seemed to be kept to a minimum. I saw no violence, no vomit. Oh well, you can’t have everything.

Give me your huddled masses waiting to be drunk

No, seriously, it’s a tribute to the festival organizers and the Hunter Mountain staff that things went so smoothly. This is a long-standing and well-run festival, and every effort is made to accommodate the brewers. Festival Co-Founder Nat Collins stood on his head to make sure that every exhibitor had a problem-free festival. The guy did laps the whole time; it looked exhausting.

 Festival co-founder Nat Collins

We basically poured nonstop for four hours, running out of the Rohrbach Bluebeary ale on the first day, and growing concerned that we didn’t bring enough beer to last the entirety of the two-day event. You can only fit four kegs in the back of a Honda Element.

The night was spent dodging creepy twin toddlers in the hallway at an anachronistic borscht-belt era resort called the Villa Vosilla, and drinking the neighboring O’Neil’s Pub, which had the common decency to feature one of our favorite beers, Roosterfish Nut Brown Ale, on draft. This went over particularly well considering we were drinking with Jordan Sunseri, one of the Roosterfish brewers.

The outside breweries prep for Sunday

As is the norm at these festivals, the Sunday crowd was thinner in number, older, and generally more interested in the beer.

The day kicked of with the chick from the Ale Street News booth apologizing profusely for how she acted while partying the previous night, which must have been terrible because we never laid eyes on her. But being magnanimous, I offered my forgiveness with a stern admonishment not to let it happen again.

We cruised through the Sunday crowd with relative ease, with plenty of sampling opportunities for the two of us. My favorites: Sixpoint Gorilla Warfare, Southampton Secret Ale, and Chelsea Cream Stout. We also met a bunch of cool brewing guys from Sixpoint, Keegan and others. This is the part I like best about working beer festivals: making new friends, talking beer and coming away a bit envious that I don’t work among the big tanks myself.

Lake Placid Maibock: a malty standout 

After the last gasp of foam spurted from our final keg, we packed up and hauled ass through the backest of central New York State roads, to the Thruway and over to Rochester’s Tap and Mallet, where we shared a couple pints with Rochester radio dj Dem Jones. A great end to a great festival.

Jeff from Ithaca Brewing with his prize, apparently some subs. 

Congratulations to all the breweries that won prizes. And a special shout-out to Jeff and the guys from the Ithaca Brewing Company who won Best New York State Craft Brewery. We’ll see you at Hunter Mountain next year.

-Mark

Oak ‘em if you got ‘em

Looks like Bruce got his hot little hands on an oaken barrel– a tool which can only be used for evil once the Buffalo Road Rohrbach Brewery is set up. Let’s just hope he doesn’t go all overboard and brew an “oaky-weizen” or something. You never know with that freak. Anyway, the location is coming along, but it’ll still be a few more weeks before any brewing resumes at Buffalo Road.

A beer journey

Bruce and I are doing another beer trip this weekend. We’re heading down to Tap NY to pour for the Rohrbach Brewing Company. It’s a long drive with four kegs in a Honda Element, but epic journeys are our thing. We live for the danger, baby. The excitement. That’s how we roll.

Tap NY is one of the premier events for New York State breweries, and this will be the first time in six years that Rohrbach has a booth. It’s held a picturesque Hunter Mountain in picturesque Hunter, New York, in a picturesque ski lodge. It’s my understanding that action has been taken this year to reduce the heavy crowding that was becoming a turn-off to many festival attendees.

High Falls

No specifics yet, but I’ve heard the sad news that Dave Schlosser has moved on from the High Falls brewing Company. That’s a loss not only to the brewery, but also to the entire beer lover’s community in the Northeast. Details are nonexistent, but my gut tells me High Falls might be prepping for a sellout to the majors. Of course, folks have been speculating about that for 20 years.

Custom Brewcrafters

Brewing has commenced in Custom Brewcrafters’ monolithic new Honeoye Falls brewery, but the brewing area is not quite ready for tours so don’t go rushing down there and bothering Jason, Greg and John. The retail area of the brand-new, custom built brewery is open to the public; I’ve heard it has the feel of a Finger Lakes winery tasting room: inviting, warm and spacious. I’ll be checking it out over the next few days. With a designated driver.

-Mark

This one’s back by popular demand. From women.

Beer has been brewed with fruit since a time long ago, the specifics of which I don’t feel like looking up, and that tradition continues today, through the classic lambics of Belgium to inventive new concoctions on the cutting edge of American brewing.

Join Mark, Bruce and Pat at 7:30pm on Thursday, April 17, to taste for yourself how harmonious these combinations can be. As always, we’re at Monty’s Korner, on the corner of East Avenue and Alexander Street, in scenic Rochester, New York.

Voting with our taste buds
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

You almost take it for granted now, don’t you?

It’s become a matter of routine to see locally, or at least regionally brewed beers in almost any establishment. You know that, whether you’re walking into the slimiest dive bar or swankiest cocktail lounge, there’s likely to be at least a passing nod to a craft beer style, a pale ale maybe, or a wheat beer.

We are in the midst of a full-on craft beer supernova. According to the Brewers’ Association, craft beer sales grew 12% in volume, and 16% in dollars during 2007. This is the third straight year of double-digit growth for this category of beer.

In a recent press release, Brewers Association Director Paul Gatze has been quoted (most likely by himself) as saying “Since 2004, dollar sales by craft brewers have increased by 58 percent. The strength of this correlates with the American trend of buying local products and a preference for more flavorful foods and beers.”

It’s true. You are the ones who have demonstrated a thirst for the products of entrepreneurial beer lovers. In a rare example of the market economy actually working for the benefit of and by the choice of the people, you’ve voted with your taste buds.

And you won. In 1978, within the millions of square miles that comprise America, there were only 41 brewing companies remaining, with a total of 89 breweries between them. Today, the number of American breweries has mushroomed to 1,449. And that number is still growing.

Craft breweries have turned the concept of American business on its ear. They thrive in some of the smallest, most out-of-the-way locations, as well as in run-down industrial districts. While several have morphed in to full-on national chain operations, most are content to operate regionally, secure in the knowledge that the beer market need not be dominated, or cornered, for everyone to share in the wealth.

That has a lot to do with the quaffing habits of the craft beer drinker, one of the least loyal customers on earth. According to a bunch of stuff we found on the internet, the typical craft beer lover is 30-39 years old, affluent, consumes a smaller quantity of beer than younger drinkers, but is willing to pay more for quality, and takes advantage of the variety of beers on offer instead of sticking to one brand or style.

While large national brewers can focus their tremendous advertising power to generate loyalty to their brands, craft brewers are unable to spend the money necessary to do the same, and, more telling, it wouldn’t work on their core customers.

Thus, we have sort of a national-level farmer’s market of beer, with customers going from stall to stall, finding new flavors, experiencing regional differences, truly appreciating goods produced on an artisan level. If we got to shop for furniture this way, the Amish would be all over the place and no one would be stuck buying those ridiculous disintegrating flakeboard Swedish bookcases unless they really liked the TV commercials.

Now bear in mind, dear reader, that although we’re talking about an enormous amount of craft beer, it’s still about 3% of the national beer market. And while that’s not a huge slice of the overall pie, it’s enough to make the big boys, whose sales have been stagnant, take notice.

Miller, Budweiser and Coors are not sitting idly back and letting craft brewers nibble away at the corners of their lunch. Each produces its own line of craft-oriented beers. But national-level companies lack the agility to compete well at the local level; the payoff is simply too small.

So the little guy has thrived in the shadow of (Macro Beer execs might say ‘under the refrigerator of’) the brewing giants. It seems the only way not to share the wealth is to make bad beer. As the American drinker grows more sophisticated and savvy, brewers of substandard micro-level beer teeter on a knife edge and quickly disappear.

And that’s fine. The craft beer industry is everything your eighth-grade social studies teacher taught you the capitalist system should be: Laissez-faire economics, survival of the fittest, and the resulting damn good product.

If only things worked this well in the insurance business.

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.

This edition of Beer School (7:30pm, Monty’s Korner) will focus on stout. Irish, English, American, whatever. There are dozens of interpretations of this onyx-colored opaque beer, and we’re gonna taste, like, 5 of ‘em.

-Mark

Editors note: I’ll add fascinating photos of this entire fiasco just as soon as Wordpress talks to freakin’ photobucket. This is really annoying.

So anyway, just before a crushing bout of influenza, I brewed my first batch of beer. This is probably a subject of tireless interest to the readers of this blog, so we’ll take this opportunity to go on at length about the brewing process that day.

Step 1: do research
I had a beer kit, purchased from a store that sells homebrewing and hydroponic growing equipment. Going there, I definitely got the impression that the whole homebrewing thing was mostly a sideline for the hydroponics business, if you know what I mean, but they did sell a kit for “English Pale Ale,” which, given its simplicity and high-temperature, quick fermentation seemed like a logical place to start my brewing endeavors.

The next step, after acquiring this all-in-one beer in a box, was to remind myself what beer tastes like.  So we went to Swan Market and sampled several pitchers of Spaten Helles, which tasted nothing like what my beer could ever possibly be. But it got me charged up and allowed me to overcome my fear of possible bacterial infection. Of the beer, not me.

Step 2: dump and stir.
It turns out there’s not much to brewing from a kit. It consists of about two fistfuls of grain, complete with steeping net, with which you teabag the heating water in the brew kettle, removing it before the boil so the tannins don’t leech into the beer. Of course you also get a can of malt extract syrup to add to the boiling water. Then you finish up with some dextrose for body, pelletized hops of dubious vintage, and a small bag of yeast that resembles the package of salty shit you add to ramen noodles. The essential instructions: combine kit in pot. Pour into three gallons of water in glass carboy. Add yeast. Wait freakin’ forever.

Of course, having Bruce around meant we were changing the procedure. Bruce, the brewer for the Rohrbach Brewing Company, decided I would “dry hop” the beer by him jamming two fistfuls of hops through the neck of the empty carboy. After vigorous tamping, the bottom of the glass vessel resembled a leafy garden paradise, and the aroma of lupulin was noticeable even through the steam of the boiling brew kettle. Something bitter was about to happen.

We used Bruce’s “special” yeast too.  I found the packet from the kit a couple of days later under a stack of unopened credit card solicitations.  I had his assurance that the yeast he brought in a little baby food jar would be quite vigorous, and more than adequate for the task at hand. I immediately put a plastic tray underneath the carboy.

And really, that was it. Heat. Dump. Stir. Cool. Transfer. Pitch. Brewing from a kit is simple as hell, easier than making dinner.  I have no idea how much of a difference the auxiliary ingredients we used would make over just using the kit hops and yeast, but I can’t imagine it being that huge.

If you’re thinking about brewing, but have been put off by the technical nature o the hobby, just get a kit and give it a try. Brewing can be as technical or facile as you want to make it, and many brewers stick with the extract stuff just because it adapts well to the ordinary kitchen environment.

Of course, listen to me talking before my beer’s ready. Maybe I should just STFU until I actually taste a bottle. We’ll go over that when the first cap is popped.

-Mark