Once again, it’s time for thirsty and curious beer fans to sit in a bar while Tom and I drone on about beer.Oh yeah, and pour you a bunch of it too.

This week’s Beer School brings a brewery that’s brand new to our area: Wisconsin’s Steven’s Point. We’ve never actually tried Steven’s Point before, but rest assured that won’t deter us from highlighting its nuances, flavors and features as if we apprenticed with the brewmaster himself.

$5 gets you in, and the show starts around 7:30. Come on down to Monty’s Korner and let’s all make a “point” of enjoying the tasting. Ha!

-Mark

A taste of what used to be: pre-prohibition lager

by Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

The history books overflow with terrible ideas, and up near the top of the list, right after ‘invading Russia in the winter,’ sits prohibition. The USA’s decade long attempt to combat drunkenness by outlawing liquor proved a colossal folly of social engineering, and obliterated American beer as folks knew it.

In a way, the American beer industry of the 19th and early 20th century resembled the craft beer industry of today. Many small brewers made beer with high-grade ingredients, selling primarily locally. A few larger players fenced with each other for market dominance. The majority of brewers in this time frame, however, were German immigrants or of recent German descent. So American lager bore much similarity to their venerable German counterparts.

Then bam! America got stupid.

The outlawing of alcohol in the USA spelled death for many brewers. Others hung on by producing non-alcoholic malt syrups and malt-based soft drinks. By the time the dark cloud of temperance was lifted, apart from a couple of the larger players, the American brewing industry was basically gone.

The legalization of beer, on April 7, 1933, opened a fire hose that drenched a nation. But things weren’t quite the same. Before full repeal of the 18th amendment, the new Roosevelt administration took advantage of a loophole. Taking a cue from Sweden’s classification of beer under 3.2% alcohol as “non intoxicating,” Congress passed legislature mandating that percentage as the maximum allowable for American beer.

So consumers got to taste beer again, and even if it was weak, nasty crap, it was still better than the illicit consumption of worse home and back-alley brews. At any rate, after over a decade of no beer at all, the new 3.2 beer must have seemed like ambrosia to thirsty Americans.

After World War II, the USA entered its boom era. Transportation improved and everyone got TV. Now it was possible not only to sell beer on a national level, but to effectively market on that scale as well. Most of the brewers still surviving after prohibition got enormous, buying out smaller competition and then each other. Meanwhile, the all-barley recipes of previous generations was increasingly adulterated with cheaper adjuncts like corn and rice, morphing into the mainstream beer we know today. American Lager had died, long live American Lager.

Fortunately, the first wave of craft brewers brought with it a resurgence of traditional American lager. The Boston Beer Company (Sam Adams) and Brooklyn Brewery both launched with lagers brewed from pre-prohibition recipes. Yuengling retained its connection to the lagers of the 19th century, and many indie brewers across the nation delved into history books and dusty brewing logs to craft versions of their own.

It’s impossible to tell how true these beers are to the originals, but modern American craft lagers proudly hearken back to the beers that made our country drunk enough to piss off the government, Roasty, hinting of honey sweetness, with a body fuller than that actress from ‘Precious,’ they go a long way to dispelling the unfortunate groupthink in the beer community that lager is fizzy, weak, yellow and generally nasty. May the new tradition continue!

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.

The Onion nails it again.

Craft beer is a wonderful thing, and it really improves my quality of life. I just don’t want my love of good, small-production American beer to become a fetish. It’s a good idea for every beer lover to check him or herself and make sure that we’re still talking about malt, yeast, hops and water and not the contents of the Ark of the Covenant.

-Mark

Wow, how the time flies. Once again, we’ll be holding our monthly tasting session tomorrow, March 11, at Monty’s Korner in exotic Rochester, New York.

This being March, and the weekend before the St. Patrick’s Day parade, you’re probably figuring the subject is stout. You’d be right, but since Guinness spends enough money buying exclusive rights to St. Pat’s, they don’t need our help plugging their Irish stout. Instead, we’re gonna taste a variety of stouts that share the common theme of not being Irish.

Oatmeal stout, imperial stout, maybe even an oyster stout if we’re lucky, and other styles show that this black beer has a far greater stylistic range than the homogenous stuff brewed on the Emerald Isle. Come join us at 7:30 pm and taste for yourself what stout can truly be.

Same old Honey Brown

By Mark Tichenor & Bruce Lish

Anyone who’s taken a Marketing 101 course can relate the stories of famous industry blunders: The Chevy Nova flopping in Mexico because the name means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish, or the phonetic pronunciation of “Coca Cola” translating to “bite the wax tadpole” in Mandarin.

Amusing as stories like these are, they make us laugh because they’re such colossally boneheaded obvious blunders that executives should have staved off with a little diligence.

Sometimes, the corporate decisions that damage a brand are subtler. On occasion, the effort to keep a brand fresh and updated in the consumer’s mind can backfire.

Such was the case for J.W. Dundee Honey Brown, a favorite on college campuses nationwide and a staple product of the Genesee Brewery since 1994. The first beer to bear the Dundee moniker, it’s success prompted the creation of the line of affordable super premium beers that dominate mixed craft pack sales in cities as distant as Phoenix, Arizona.

A couple of years ago, faced with increasing competition for fickle consumer attention in every market, the Dundee line got a makeover, with a consistent brand image across the product range, soft, muted colors and whimsical graphics that evoked both tradition and modernity. The update also repositioned Dundee as a serious competitor for the dollars of drinkers thirsty for something out of the mainstream.

Problem was, people suddenly had a hard time finding Honey Brown in stores, not because it was out of stock but because they’d grown familiar with the original packaging design. The new look confused people. Was this the same Dundee Honey Brown?

“We’ve been brewing Honey Brown the same way since 1994. That’s never changed,” says Jason Drewniak, Brand Manager for Dundee “The new look should be familiar to customers from the past.”

Drewniak can state that with confidence, since Honey brown’s new packaging is, well, the old packaging. Instead of commissioning an additional redesign, Genesee has simply reverted back to the beer’s old look.

The other key decision was to lower the price point. Honey Brown may be a favorite alternative to megabrewed American lagers, but it was never intended to be the type of artisan brew that, 16 years after its introduction, we would call a craft beer.

The new price better reflects Honey Brown’s market niche as an affordable beer that offers a unique flavor alternative to drinkers without the premium cost.

So expect to see a lot more of Honey Brown in the future. Genesee committed to growing the brand with on-premise support promotions in markets where it does really well, like Cleveland and Atlanta.

As Drewniak says, “It’s a diamond in the rough, so we’re very excited to get it back in front of customers.”

In other beers

The newest brewery to open in the Rochester area is truly a step backward, at least 200 years backward.

The Genesee Country Museum will open a replica 19^th century brewery this June. Museum visitors will see firsthand the traditional methods and equipment used to make beer in America before the Women’s Temperance Movement ruined it for all of us.

The museum teamed up with Custom Brewcrafters to develop a beer, which presumably will be brewed repeatedly. And, like any other beer this one needs a name. So the museum is holding a naming contest with cool prizes. You can enter online at www.gcv.org

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.

I attended a food and scotch pairing last night. Know what I found out? Scotch does not pair nearly as well with food as beer.

Don’t get me wrong, the meal was excellent, and so was the scotch, but even the lightest Highland dew overpowered most of the meal. Fortunately, I had a fine, cask-conditioned Tröegs Nugget Nectar to keep me company during most bites.

I think I’ll save my single malts for an after-dinner treat.

-Mark

Here’s a new one for your monthly calendar: The Rohrbach Brewing Company, long known for their beer-pairing dinners, will be hosting Brewtopia, an educationally minded tour through beer and its variety of styles and flavors.

The first one is tomorrow night at 6:30 at their Ogden location, and it’s hosted by beer guru Steve Hodos, a man who definitely deserves recognition as Western New York’s version of Michael Jackson (no, the other one).

This premier event is sold out, so if you want to go I’d suggest asking nicely at the door. At any rate, the series is ongoing, and will be held the last Thursday of every month. More info can be found at www.rohrbachs.com

-Mark

Here we are at Rochester’s Tap and Mallet, where we shall experience the exquisite marriage of oyster and oyster stout. Harpoon Oyster Stout, to be exact. Dry, medium-bodied, with explosive flavor and just a touch of maritime, mineral flavor, this exploration of an underappreciated style demonstrates why sometimes it’s worth studying your brewing history.

Traditional oyster stout, you see, is made with oysters. A quantity of the labiesque little mollusks (or whatever they are) get thrown into the barrel to suffuse the beer with their essence. The result is, well, pretty much what I just described above, and it goes extremely well with a quantity of those little buggers on the half shell.

In a sec, they’re gonna whip some out and shuck them. Let’s see how greedy I can be.

Whoa, hang onto your tech, boys and girls. This afternoon at 4pm, Beercraft will blog LIVE and in synchronous real time from the Rochester debut of Harpoon Oyster Stout at the Tap and Mallet.

Well, actually this sounds more techie than it is. There won’t be any audio or video. Really I’ll just be doing a blog entry while sipping this highly anticipated beer and scarfing free oysters, looking like a complete dork in the process.Anyway, the Tap and Mallet’s event pairs the brand new  Harpoon Oyster Stout with a bunch of delicious yummy oysters. I love oysters. And what better place to consume an aphrodisiac food then while getting tipsy in the company of a bunch of rotund, hygene-challenged beer lovers?

I know, that’s just a stereotype. Tune in at 4pm for more of them.

-Mark

We’re gonna be talking about Lagers. You know, the style you immediately blew off as typical of mainstream American beer the second you tried your first IPA? Well it’s time you got reacquainted with the other half of the good beer spectrum.

Lager can be clean and crisp or dark and complex. It can be as bitter as IPA or as sweet as dessert.And we, my friends, are gonna run the Gamut.

Corey from Sly Fox Brewingof Phoenixville, PA will be on hand to do some guest presenting. Show starts at 7:30 at Monty’s Korner in Rochester, NY. $5 gets you a fun evening.

-Mark