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Category Archives: Accounting For Taste

Beer and Food Basics: Hops and the Marshall Stack

June 2, 2013 5:32 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

One of the things that frustrates me when I’m reading a bottle of beer is when there are food pairing suggestions that don’t tell you anything. “Try this with spicy foods,” the label proudly exclaims, as though that conveys any useful information.

Usually, when the bottle says something like that you can be pretty much guaranteed that you’re looking at a hoppy beer. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you knew why you were supposed to drink something with some kind of food?

Here’s the thing: Hops create a significant amount of flavour in beer, but the level of bitterness in the particular beer you’re looking at tells you comparatively little. IBUs have ramped up steadily since I started writing about beer, but where a beer ranks in terms of IBUs on a scale of 1-100 doesn’t really convey useful sensory information except “hope you didn’t like your tooth enamel, Skeezix.”

There are all these different varieties of hops. If you’re a music fan, you could think of them as guitarists. All of the hop varieties impart different flavours and nuances to a beer, so it’s a little like the pantheon of guitar players. You might have something like Robert Johnson with his soulful playing. It might be like Bo Diddley, thrumming away. It might be a picker like Chet Atkins or Mark Knopfler. If might be some kind of technically virtuousic thing like Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen. All of these players have their own distinctive sounds.

What the focus on IBUs has done is to distract us from the character of the hops being used in various kinds of beer. Focusing on IBUs is a little like focusing on the size of the amplifier. It’s like asking someone whether the concert was any good and being told that the Marshall Stack was the size of a house. All you can deduce from that is that the concert was loud and that someone’s probably going to develop tinnitus.

If you’re thinking about beer and food, the hop variety is almost certainly more important than whether something is a 25 or a 45 or a 70 on the IBU scale. You need to think about what makes that hop distinctive.

If you look at the hop profile listed on a grower’s website, it tends to impart information like Alpha Acids and Beta Acids. Alpha Acids are what make a beer bitter. If you read a little further down the list, you get into essential oil content, and that’s the really important thing to consider in terms of food.

For the most part, these are called terpenes. Wikipedia is telling me that they’re primary constituents of a number of plants and flowers and that they’re responsible in large part for why organic things smell the way they do. This means that these are in hops, certainly, but they’re also in just about all the other plants you’d eat. This includes vegetables and fruits and spices (and grapes. To be fair, there’s some writing about why monoterpenes are important in wine, but comparatively little about why they’re important in beer.)

Rather than come up with some comprehensive list, let’s take a look at three hop varieties and how the essential oils from those hops create flavours. You don’t need to remember their names, but I want you to understand that if you notice a commonality in flavour between your beer and something you’re eating, it’s not by chance: The number of permutations of flavour in nature is finite. You’re not imagining similarity. Everything is made of the same stuff.

FUGGLES

Using this link as a guide, we can see that the hop oils in Fuggles is dominated by humulene, followed by myrcene, caryophyllene and farnesene. If you’ve smelled Fuggle hops, you probably know them to have a woody, herbal, practically minty kind of aroma. That’s because the humulene dominates the list of essential oils. Humulene is a sesquiterpene and it tends not to break down during the boil. Myrcene, on the other hand, is pretty volatile. What myrcene there is contained in a Fuggle is going to dissipate during the boil and you’re going to be left with other aromatic compounds including menthol, citral, linalool, nerol, geraniol and limonene.

In terms of pairing with food, what does this tell us? Well, it’s going to be woody and slighty herbal with some spice notes dominating. You might, if they’re used as an aroma hop, get mint or citrus or floral notes. They’re usually used as an aroma hop because of the low alpha acid content.

The important thing to remember is that just about all the plants in the world smell and taste the way they do because of the terpenes. You might want a beer dry-hopped with Fuggles if you’re having lamb with mint sauce since the commonality is menthol. Or maybe you want to try it with a light thai dish containing lemongrass since the common elements are citral and nerol. The important thing to remember is that these are accents over top of the underlying woody character.

SAAZ

Saaz is similarly used primarily as an aroma hop because of its low alpha acid. If you’ve ever had a Czech Pilsner, you’re probably pretty familiar with the variety. It’s herbal and spicy and I would usually use peppery as a descriptor for the aroma. Saaz hops usually contain about equal amounts of myrcene and humulene. What it contains in larger proportion than just about everything else is farnesene, which is giving it that herbal, vegetation, spice character. Typically, farnesene is much higher in noble hops than in the new world varieties.

You might think of Saaz as being sort of gentle because of the varieties of beers that it usually finds itself in. Think a bit about what it can do for food. The possibility of interplay of spices is pretty impressive, with black or white pepper complimenting a dish. With something like a jagerschnitzel, you’re suddenly playing the farnesene in the aroma of the pilsner off the earthiness of the mushrooms in the sauce. The great thing is that you didn’t know you were doing that, but that’s one of the reasons that pairing works.

CASCADE

I’m using Cascade here to make a point about new world hops. It’s a great deal higher in myrcene than noble hop varieties, as are the majority of new world hops. You’re not going to get much woody character from the humulene because there’s very little of it. It can be used for bittering or aroma because of the alpha acid content. The reason you get citrus and grapefruit out of it in a dominant way is because the myrcene breaks down into other compounds that commonly occur in citrus like citral and citronellol and citronellal.

I think that the preference for big citrusy American hops has a lot to do with California and the cuisine that grew up there. If you have the ability to grow citrus in quantity (try doing that in England or Germany) you’re going to want to mirror that flavour in whatever you’re drinking. Picture a fish taco without that bright spritz of lemon acidity. It’s just not the same.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

If you’re going to think about pairing hops with food, you probably want to think of them not as a main component of your pairing but as an accent. Rather than bitterness the thing to focus on is the aroma and flavour that they’re imparting to the gustatory experience. Since the terpenes that make up the flavours that hops impart occur naturally in spices and vegetables, that’s where you should be looking for commonality or contrast in your pairing.

For instance, if you’re thinking about a steak, the hops really aren’t going to have any interplay with the meat. However, if you’ve seasoned the steak with pepper or you’ve got a chimichurri or mole sauce or you’ve marinated in citrus, you’ve got an element to play with. If you know a little bit about the hops that went into the beers in your fridge, you’ve suddenly got a playground to explore.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, Beer and Food ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Hoppy Beers and Monoculture in Ontario

May 2, 2013 2:50 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

I want to suggest something to you, and it may be something that has crossed your mind if you’re a brewer in Ontario. I think that we’re all aware that large brewers are, if not faltering, then experiencing a period of contraction. This is probably as the result of the ascendance of craft beer in some small part, but it also has to do with shifting preference in packaging and with the economic recession from 2008 to the present. So craft beer is taking off. Why not buy a few bottles of really interesting beer instead of a 24 of lager that might be indistinguishable from its competition?

That’s the important bit: many mass produced lagers are as like their competition as it is realistically possible to be. It’s (and I borrow a term from Jason Tremblay who posted about this on Bartowel.com) a monoculture.

Tremblay went on to suggest that the current growth of craft beer is on the back of hoppy pale ales and IPAs. This seemed somewhat suspect to me, so I decided to crunch some numbers. I like a bit of data-centric research periodically, so what I’ve done is taken two snapshots of LCBO product lists based on their API data and broken down those snapshots into stylistic preference. The first is the earliest record I have access to: January 1, 2011. The second is from April 19th, 2013.

I have included only beers produced in North America. I have not delineated between macro and micro. I have included only one SKU per product, which is to say that while there might be different available formats of something like Budweiser, I have listed only the Budweiser brand as a coverall for those SKUs. If a product has listed itself as a Pilsner, I have simply taken the listing at its word. I hear you say “but Lakeport Pilsner isn’t really a Pilsner.”

Well, true. The data isn’t concrete. What it does is paint a picture of the last 28 months.

For January 1, 2011 there are 10837 existing SKUs of which about a thousand are categorized as beer, 571 of which are produced in Canada and 55 were American imports.

There are, by my count, 45 brands of Lager, craft or otherwise, that don’t differentiate themselves into stylistic subcategories. Basic Light beers count for 20 SKUs. Pale Ales count for 18 SKUs. There were only 5 Canadian produced IPAs. From the USA, the numbers are 9/0/2/4 in those same categories.

It should be noted that this does not mean that they were all on the shelves at the same time. Some were seasonals. Realistically, there were as few as three IPAs on the shelf at any one time.

If you fast forward to the present (or near as dammit) There are 20939 SKUs represented on the LCBO Product list (which goes some way to explaining why people aren’t grumbling about selection as much anymore). Of these 1427 are beer, 856 are produced in Canada and 95 are imports from the USA.

The number of undifferentiated lagers has actually decreased by one over the last couple of years: 44. There are now 22 light beers on offer. Pale Ales have grown to 27 SKUs. Canadian produced IPAs have grown to 22. (This is not to say there are this many on the shelves. Some of them were seasonals). From the USA, the numbers are 13/0/4/7.

Just for the sake of argument, I’ll point out that in January 2011, there had been one Double IPA: Garrison. As of April 19th, 2013, there had been nine from Canada and the USA.

So, this tells us that interest in Lager has waned very slightly and that there is almost no growth in light beer. If you’re a craft brewer, this is a good thing. It also tells us that the Pale Ale category has grown by a factor of 1.5 and that IPA as a category has grown by a factor of 4.4. If you include the American SKUs for those categories, there’s comparatively little change in lager. The growth of Pale Ale rises slightly to a factor of 1.55. The growth factor of IPA shrinks slightly to 3.2.

Now, I’ll point out that one of the nice things about the large brewers is that they tend not to brew a great deal for consumption that excludes mainstream sales channels. That is to say that there aren’t a lot of lagers that are sold exclusively outside the LCBO and The Beer Store.

You may wish to consider, however, the total number of small brewers not represented in the LCBO and the likelihood that basically every single one of those brewers has a pale ale. I don’t have a figure for that, but you have to realize that of the now 112 Ontario breweries reported on Mom and Hops’ directory it is probable that 7/10 of them have a pale ale as a continuing brand. Some will also have IPAs.

There are some pretty significant downsides to this. First of all, it’s just massively unsustainable. Secondly, it means that craft brewers are largely competing for the market segment that defines their expansion. Thirdly, the problem isn’t going away. I can think of at least three new pale ales and IPAs hitting the market next month. As smaller breweries attempt to get into the LCBO it’s more vendors competing for approximately the same slice of the pie.

What I guess I’m saying to you is this: If you ever had a good idea for a beer that you thought would work, now would be the time to diversify. Just because everyone else is making a hoppy ale doesn’t mean that you have to. Plus, the increasing number of American craft beer products coming to the LCBO is probably going to make competition even tougher.

If you’re going to launch a new brewery, you’d do well to do something to differentiate yourself stylistically and find something accessible for drinkers that provides value for money and has a novelty factor. It provides craft beer some genetic diversity and might just put some money in your pocket. Launching a non-descript Pale Ale or IPA that can’t compete against objectively better beers is more or less a recipe for bankruptcy.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

Keith’s Hop Series

March 11, 2013 3:36 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

If you’ll recall, I wrote a column early in January about the Hop Mason beer that Keith’s are brewing for pubs in the Prime chain across Canada. The conclusion that I came to was that it was objectively good and that the specs for the beer put it squarely in the realm of English IPA. In addition to this it bore some of the hallmarks of a beer produced by a very large company. It was comparatively accessible and it was aggressively filtered resulting in a much clearer beer than you’d usually see in a craft IPA. It wasn’t exactly a world beater, but it could be said objectively to be a good beer.

On Thursday last week, I received a package from Keith’s with the beers from their new Hop Series. They’re not really IPAs. My understanding is that the BU’s come in way under specification for even an English style.

Here’s the really interesting part: They’re not being marketed as IPAs. Not really.

Rather than going for overwhelming bitterness, they’ve opted to showcase the flavour and aroma of a single hop in each Iteration of the Hop Series. The first two are Hallertauer and Cascade, which would be pretty approachable for the drinkers that they’re trying to reach. Rather than going for bittering, they’ve opted to dry hop the beers pretty aggressively. You get aroma without the sting of bitterness. Furthermore, it’s an all malt product.

You’ll read a lot of reviews if you follow beer blogs where the subject is approached with the intent of suggesting to you that the author is developing a begrudging respect for the product. I’m not going to bother with the pretense. The Keith’s Hop Series beers were pretty good. If offered one, I would not turn it down.

The reason I’m not bothering with the pretense (aside from the fact I knew they were going to do this two months ago) is that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that large brewers can make flavourful beers if they want to. It’s just that they’ve never seemed to want to before, or at the very least, haven’t quite understood how to approach the problem.

It’s unusual that two separate topics flow into each other this well. You’ll remember my conclusion about Discount Beer February: That in 1993, President’s Choice getting 3% of the beer market in Ontario was a large enough threshold to force large brewers to play their game and that this situation might be relevant to Craft Beer in Ontario 20 years later, given that Craft has about 5-6% of the market depending on who you include.

Usually it takes months for the other shoe to drop.

The thing about the Alexander Keith’s Hop Series is that it’s not simply a beer release. This is going to be an event. There’s going to be mobile sampling across the country through April and early May. They’re actually interested in doing education on the product and on how hops work in beer. They’re taking it to the streets.

Shed your cynicism about large brewers for a moment and look at what just happened. Forget that it’s Keith’s. If I were to exclude the company name and say to you that a brewery with a budget for marketing and education were making a push to introduce the public to single hop beers as an attempt to make flavour the focus of their product, what would you say?

The problem, for Keith’s at least, is that there are likely unforeseen consequences. I suspect that most of your dyed in the wool craft beer drinkers, if they’re reasonable, will admit that the Hop Series beers are pretty good. I don’t believe for a second that they’ll purchase them in quantity. This means that the success of the Hop Series beers depends on drinkers from other segments of the market. I’m talking generally about people who drink stuff like regular Keith’s or Canadian or Budweiser.

If you’re a Keith’s drinker and you see a new product with the Keith’s logo on it, you’ll probably give it a shot. If the marketing convinces you that the flavour that you’re now enjoying is hops and the educational aspect is enough to display to you that there is a causal effect between ingredients and flavour, what is preventing you, the average Keith’s drinker, from making the small leap to drinking more hoppy beer on a regular basis?

Nothing. That’s what.

If it goes the way I think it’s going to go, this is going to lead to a steady trickle of beer drinkers discovering and purchasing craft products instead of big name beers. I can see no reason that the Hop Series won’t be as successful for AB InBev in Ontario as Creemore and Granville have been for Molson. Hop City is doing the same for Moosehead. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miller wants out of their distribution contract in Ontario so that they can push their Leinenkugel stuff.

So, to sum up: Large brewers are now spending very large amounts of money on making all-malt beers and ensuring through education that they are conceptually accessible to the public. I have to suppose that they’re doing this to take advantage of the fastest growing segment of the Canadian beer market. They know going in, if they’ve done their research, that there is not a huge amount of brand loyalty in the craft market segment. People don’t identify as a Cameron’s drinker or as a Muskoka drinker. They identify as Craft Beer drinkers (an interesting side effect of which is that small brewery imports are now defacto “craft beer”).

They are actually converting their customers to craft beer drinkers. I can’t even pretend to know what the endgame is here. I will make a prediction though: One of the results of this activity is that the craft beer segment is going to expand faster this year than we’ve ever seen before in Ontario.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Discount Beer February – What Did We Learn?

March 7, 2013 12:32 pm ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

One of the things that has defined the Discount Beer experience for me is the increasingly obvious point that there is a large segment of the market that isn’t drinking beer for flavour. You would think that given 60 products of varying quality that all cost the same amount of money at a 24 bottle volume, that there would be a handful that would rise to the top based on their merits and the decision of rational actors as consumers. You would be entirely justified in thinking that and every fibre of your being would call out for this supposition to be proven correct, but you’d be wrong.

There are some odd things at play in the Discount sector of the market. It seems to me that many of the brands in the category wouldn’t exist without a significant amount of brand loyalty. It has proven to be  a sort of island of misfit brands from Canadian history. Take Old Vienna, for example. I would have assumed that no one would be up in arms about its continued existence, but if you look at the comment section on The Beer Store’s website you get:

“It has a reputation of its own. It’s that old man beer that strikes a conversation every time you’re at a bar. It’s the “I learned how to drink beer stealing these from my dads beer fridge” OV is in a league of its own, its a great old man beer that doesn’t get enough respect. LONG LIVE OV!”

I have, while looking through the comments on The Beer Store’s website, wondered if there are brewery representatives splashing the pot in the comments section. I have concluded that there are probably just people who feel this strongly about cheap beer. (For a laugh, try picking out which comment about Boxer Lager I think is supplied by a brewery representative.)

So there’s a Canadiana element to the sector. People are protective of brands they grew up with. Just yesterday a reader pointed out that I really shouldn’t call Upper Canada Lager a discount brand. He didn’t think it fit in the category. Maybe it doesn’t fit conceptually, but it sits on the same shelves and costs the same amount.

There are some all malt products in the discount section, and they tend to be objectively more flavourful. Look at something like Trailhead, brewed by Wellington. It would, I think, be completely acceptable to just about anyone. It’s a well made Vienna Lager that happens to cost a very small amount of money. You’d think they’d have a stranglehold on the market.

It makes no sense to me, but I suspect that it has to do with the amount of choice. If you’re faced with 60 brands, you can hardly taste test all of them without spending a lot of time doing it. They all cost approximately the same amount of money (I don’t believe anyone is debating this seriously on the basis of a nickel per 24) and they all contain approximately the same amount of alcohol (I do believe some people are opting for the 6.0% option on that basis).

This rules out selection being explicatory on the basis of flavour, price and alcohol content. I think that what we’re looking at is the dying vestiges of brand loyalty. You’ve got to admit, even as a craft beer drinker, that there’s a certain joy in being able to choose a product, being able to know that it will always be the same and that it will always be available. You’ve just removed one decision from your life.

As it stands now, craft beer is always focused on the new thing. New Style! New Ingredient! New Format! New Brewery! It’s an entirely different market segment with more adventurous and better informed consumers. You’d be amazed at the dearth of information available online for some of the Discount brands, whereas a quick google will usually get you a clone recipe for a famous craft beer. You want to torture a craft beer drinker? Make them choose one beer to drink for a year to the exclusion of all others and then make them actually do it.

That said, here are some takeaways from the month:

1)      Even if they’re drinking beer that you think is terrible, the people buying Discount Beer are human beings and not some kind of hideous morlocks. I don’t think that you can afford to give up on people just because they drink cheap beer. If the craft beer market is going to continue to grow, those consumers need to come from somewhere. Don’t evangelize to them. Don’t condescend  to them. They probably like beer just as much as you do. They just haven’t tried the stuff you have. Might want to focus on the younger folks who just don’t know any better.

2)      There are actually some quite decent things in the Discount Beer Section. Trailhead is good. Upper Canada Lager is good. I’d be reasonably happy to be served  a Trailhead anywhere.

3)      There is some really horrible dreck in the Discount Beer Section. I’m not naming names, but I certainly dry heaved while drain pouring a couple of these.

4)      Some people drink those beers by choice, which leads me to remind everyone that the primary reason that we drink beer isn’t flavour. We all like alcohol. That’s fine.  We’re adults. Flavour is wonderful. Flavour is fabulous. I’m a believer. I’m doing research into Monoterpenes and Maillard reactions for food pairing knowledge, for God’s sake. It’s just disingenuous to claim that it is the main reason it’s enjoyed.

5)      If you drink very simple lagers for a month and then come back to craft beer, things you thought were mild will knock you on your ass.

Finally, I have an observation about the next few years:

Lakeport started in 1993 with about 3% of the market and the big guys felt obligated to compete on their terms. Over the next several years, the discount section of the market grew significantly. The competition was a powerful force for growth and by the time Labatt bought Lakeport out in 2007, they had something like 15% of the market in Ontario.

Craft brewers in Ontario reportedly have between 5-8% of the market. I think the figure depends on who you include based on production and taxation levels as specified by the ministry of finance. I would probably discount Brick, who are small enough to be considered craft but seem to make up most of their volume on Laker products. That’s not a slight against them, incidentally. Let’s call it about 5% and rising relatively quickly. All of the major brewers are now competing on the terms of the craft brewers. Keith’s Hop Series IPAs is taking a stab at the market in a very serious way. Creemore is expanding.

The Discount Section is the only historical model we have in Ontario for this kind of competition. If the model holds, I think the competition from Molson and Labatt is going to cause market segment expansion above anyone’s predictions for the next two years.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, DISCOUNT BEER FEBRUARY

Craft Brewing in Alberta – An Outsider’s Perspective

March 2, 2013 10:38 pm ⋅ 10 Comments ⋅

I don’t pretend to understand the Alberta beer scene completely. After all, I was only there for about five days, and there’s only so much information you can process. Fortunately, brewers like to talk.

While the column this week is about the unique beer hall scene that Alberta has developed over the last two or three years, one of the things that you have to understand is the conditions that have made that possible. Ontario, because of its thoroughly unique set of laws, has just reached the point where there are 100 microbreweries (although, some of those are in planning.) British Columbia is going through a similar spurt of growth. Both Ontario and British Columbia have long and storied histories with craft brewing, dating back essentially to the advent of the craft beer movement. Alberta’s history is less storied.

The beer hall scene in Alberta exists mostly because of privatization in the early 1990’s, which means that there are any number of beers available on tap that would be impossible to get in Ontario. You might be tempted to leap to the conclusion that the demand for local beer doesn’t exist because of this available variety. Over the course of 48 hours, I got to sample things from Brooklyn, Deschutes, Ducato, Mikkeller, Evil Twin and Tamarack (which I had never tried before and which was a pleasant surprise.)

It seems to me that any scene that can support 60 or 72 or 120 taps is always going to be hungry for more variety, and that will play into the hands of anyone that can set up local breweries. The question is therefore “where are the local breweries?” Near as I can tell there are approximately 11 for the entire province, with three more in the offing.

The problem is that the barrier to entry is simply too high for there to be a rush to very small micro breweries or nano breweries. The way that licensing works in Alberta is that a Class E license (the one that lets you make beer) has a certain number of requirements, which I’ll quote here from the Licensee Handbook:

A Class E licence may be issued to a qualified applicant to manufacturer liquor in Alberta. The manufacturer must meet the following production requirements, with production capacity minimums met within 18 months of start-up:

a) Brewery

i) 5,000 hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres) minimum annual production capacity;

ii) all beer manufactured on site;

iii) fermentation, maturation and storage tanks with a minimum capacity of 10 hectolitres each; and

iv) 50 hectolitres minimum weekly capacity for fermentation, maturation and storage, with space available for additional tanks to achieve minimum annual production capacity

Now, this is truly interesting and goes a long way to explaining why you only have eleven breweries.

5,000 hl of beer doesn’t seem like a huge amount of beer, until you realize that it’s 500,000 litres.
That is to say that you have to be able to make a million pints of beer a year within 18 months of starting up. Additionally, all of your fermenters have to contain at least a thousand litres and you need at least enough of them to make five thousand litres a week. Even given those conditions, five thousand litres a week puts you at about half of your minimum annual production capacity, so you’re really talking about much larger scale equipment.

There are breweries in Ontario that have been around for more than a decade that have never reached the theoretical minimum amount of beer you’d need in Alberta for the AGLC to consider you above board. In point of fact, I’d guess that some of our more interesting new breweries may never see 5000hl.

Consider being someone looking to start up a brewery in Alberta. Can you imagine the relative cost of meeting those standards? You probably need at least a 10hl brewhouse, five 20hl fermenters, storage vessels to keep the product moving and possibly multiple bright tanks for packaging. Not to mention the packaging lines, the packaging materials, labour, renovations to whatever structure you’re going to end up in and you’ll need a sales force to move all of the beer that you’re producing. Simply, the barrier to entry is Capital.

You’d need a significant amount of investment just to open your doors, and you’d better be damned sure that you’re brewing something the public wants. You’d need to be turning a profit fairly quickly in order to keep the doors open. As I toured around the breweries, there were some significant indications that this doesn’t always happen.

The Hog's Head Logo: Tastefully shaded, but slightly evil lookin'.

The Hog’s Head Logo: Tastefully shaded, but slightly evil lookin’.

Hog’s Head Brewing in St.Albert is Edmonton’s newest brewery, and I can tell you that they do not suffer from lack of expertise or talent or ambition. Their first beer was a year round spiced pumpkin beer, which should tell you all you need to know about their faith in their product. The Hopslayer IPA is probably their most objectively impressive brew, containing five hop varieties at somewhere near 80 IBU. Their beers are as hop forward and as assertive as anything being brewed in Canada, and they’ve only been at it for six months. Plus, their labeling is entertaining.

Hog's Head Baby Back IPA : "That'll do, beer. That'll do."

Hog’s Head Baby Back IPA : “That’ll do, beer. That’ll do.”

The brewery itself, if I may be forgiven for saying so, is held together by engineering skill and sheer force of will. It seemed to me that they were running flat out in an attempt to reach the amount of production the provincial government stipulates. I have no doubt that they’ll succeed, but as their brewer, Bruce, was showing me around the brewery, he would periodically point out which breweries their equipment had come from. The equipment was certainly well loved, with the occasional ding or scratch that years of vigorous use still don’t quite account for.

Sometimes I think to myself that a brewery logo doesn't really need a caption. This should probably have been one of those times.

Sometimes I think to myself that a brewery logo doesn’t really need a caption. This should probably have been one of those times.

Another example is the Yellowhead Brewery in Edmonton. It’s housed in a building that was specially designed for a brewery. In fact, it previously held Maverick Brewing. It’s a delightful space, and their brewer, Bryce, is clearly extremely able and talented. They currently brew Yellowhead Lager, which I would consider a Northern German Pilsner. It has that light grain and slight hint of grape, with a small hoppy bite. Eventually, they’re looking to expand to a second variety. For the time being, they would be content with becoming Edmonton’s beer in much the same way that you might claim Steam Whistle was Toronto’s beer. I would not claim that they are copying the model, but they are doing one thing well.

The brewhouse at Yellowhead is visible from the street, which is an excellent reason to break out your brewhouse polish and chamois.

The brewhouse at Yellowhead is visible from the street, which is an excellent reason to break out your brewhouse polish and chamois.

The space the brewery occupies at Yellowhead might be one of the nicest I've ever seen. There's such an airy feeling.

The space the brewery occupies at Yellowhead might be one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. There’s such an airy feeling.

The thing that struck me is that the space is full of the spectre of Maverick Brewing. From their white horizontal tanks which now sit disused in a corner of the brewery to the unused promotional materials housed elsewhere in the rambling warehouse, there are reminders that the previous tenants did not quite make it. Bryce was quick to point out how ludicrous some of those promos were. “Who gives out a knife in a case of beer?”

Sometimes, even with aggressive marketing, breweries don't make it out of their first few years in Alberta.

Sometimes, even with aggressive marketing, breweries don’t make it out of their first few years in Alberta.

I don’t know whether I would find the reminder that Maverick Brewing didn’t make it a source of motivation or a big dark cloud over the proceedings, but looking at the almost impossibly polished new stainless steel fermentors, I got the sense that it is ignored as much as possible while people get on with business. When you’ve got to brew 5,000hl in your second year, it is hard to afford time for reflection.

In some cases, because of the scale and capital needed, you end up with what is a beautifully engineered almost entirely new brewery. Village Brewery in Calgary fits the bill completely on this front and is probably one of the best looking breweries I’ve ever seen. I’m a bit of a duffer on the process front when it comes to brewing, but looking out from the tasting room balcony I think that even a layman could probably tell you how the entire process would flow from brewhouse to kegging at Village. It’s almost terrifyingly well appointed.

Village's entire brewery is just pristine. Great use of the space in terms of layout.

Village’s entire brewery is just pristine. Great use of the space in terms of layout.

They make three varieties at the moment and work in a seasonal periodically. There was a Chai Winter Porter earlier this year. During my visit they were refining a special project for the spring and debating the amount and type of spicing like brewers everywhere do. Of their regular lineup, I believe that the Witbier is probably their strongest offering, with the Black IPA running a close second.

The truly interesting thing about Village is the model that they’re using for promotion. The business card reads “It Takes A Village,” a sentiment that Jim Button has borrowed from Hillary Clinton. You could be forgiven for forgetting that Village is in the beer business. The concern seems to be with bringing people together within Calgary, whether through culture or music. 10% of the bottom line goes to promoting a sense of community. There are podcasts available through the website. They even have a radio truck. They support visual arts. Their t-shirts and other paraphernalia are designed by local artists who keep the profits from their sales.

Jim Button: Next Mayor of Calgary or Steve Beauchesne's Doppelganger?

Jim Button: Next Mayor of Calgary or Steve Beauchesne’s Doppelganger?

I’m normally as skeptical as hell when I see things like this. At the same time, having talked to Jim at some length, I know that he’s genuinely interested in expanding Calgary’s cultural scene. Clearly, one of the side effects is that the brewery appears to be hip and with it and sells an awful lot of beer into the bargain. Not only does it ensure sales for a startup brewery, the entire culture of the city benefits and Village Brewing becomes inseparable from the artistic scene as it develops over the next decade. Jim would make a good mayor.

The commonality in all of these approaches is that they are finding ways to deal with AGLC License E. This has resulted in a situation where Yellowhead and Hog’s Head simply want to be the beer of choice for Edmonton and Village wants to be Calgary’s craft beer. This, more or less, means that neither of these cities currently have a representative brew.  Given the state of craft brewing in the rest of North America in 2013, where many major cities have as many breweries as Alberta does in total, this is baffling to an outsider.

It strikes me as odd that Alberta, which is rather more American than the majority of provinces, should have strictures in place that effectively limit the amount of local competition in brewing. It’s especially confusing when you consider the drinking culture that has sprung up in Edmonton and Calgary over the course of the last few years. Clearly, this is a market that can support an almost endless amount of variety. Sherbrooke Liquor has 1400 beers on offer from day to day. Craft Beer Market is absolutely thrumming along with over a hundred taps. The demand is there, but the supply seems to come almost exclusively from outside the province of Alberta. It’s not without reason that breweries from British Columbia and Ontario view Alberta as an additional market for their products.

If ever there was a time to revisit the reasoning behind the laws as they exist, it is now. Craft brewing provides employment. It provides a source of revenue through taxation. It provides a sense of local pride. Limiting the expansion of the industry with an artificial minimum volume seems vaguely anti-capitalist.

Changing the laws would also display some significant forethought for the brewing program that’s going in at Olds College in Alberta. In Ontario, we’re starting to see graduates of the Niagara College brewing program opening their own breweries, albeit on a relatively small scale. Imagine going into the Olds College program under the misapprehension that you’ll be able to start your own brewery fresh out of school. Unless you’ve got an extremely wealthy silent partner, that’s a pipe dream in Alberta. As it stands, I imagine this would probably result in brain drain to British Columbia or the United States.

The truth is that with some minor changes to the laws as they exist, you could have a craft beer explosion in Alberta within the next five years. The demand is there, and from what I’ve seen, there’s certainly no lack of talent or ambition.

 

 

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , ,

Ramblin’ Road Brewery Farm

January 26, 2013 7:59 pm ⋅ 5 Comments ⋅


It’s hard to know exactly what to make of Ramblin’ Road Brewery Farm. They’re a new brewery in Norfolk County. Part of the issue here is that there really aren’t all that many farm breweries kicking around and there’s not really a concrete definition of what that might entail, at least in Ontario. Is it “we grow some of our own ingredients” or “we produce farmhouse style beers” or “this brewery is actually, physically located on a farm” or some or none of the above.

This image came from Canadian Beer News, partially because I made notes on the Pilsner so long ago that I don't even remember if I took pictures.

This image came from Canadian Beer News, partially because I made notes on the Pilsner so long ago that I don’t even remember if I took pictures.

The concept is a little sketchy. To give you an idea, there was a law passed in New York State in 2012 that suggests that it has less to do with whether the brewery grows its own ingredients and more to do with whether they come from that agricultural area. The percentage of material grown in New York State that must be included in a “farm brewery” beer will increase from 20% (currently) to 90% by 2024. The actual beer that is produced seems of comparatively little consequence in terms of designation. In Ontario, there’s no such guideline.

There is, I think, a mental association that people have developed with a few farm producers in the states that created a certain amount of excitement before the products coming out of Ramblin’ Road were announced. I know that I initially thought, “Oh, so what? Like Hill Farmstead? That’ll be great.”

Ramblin’ Road has sidestepped rusticity in their beers, preferring to start with some easily accessible beer styles. There’s a Pale Lager, a Cream Ale and a Pilsner. Of these, I’ve only tried the Pilsner. It’s not quite saazy enough to be a Czech jobbie and it doesn’t quite have the cracker grain character of a northern German Pilsner. By process of elimination, it’s sort of an American Pilsner and therefore a touch less exciting than I was hoping for, although still pleasingly floral in a mild way.

It is certainly well made. I can’t fault the brewers there. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at having it again in the future. I sat there staring at the glass for a while trying to figure out why you would start out with that range of beers if you were in Ontario of all places where there are now similarly named breweries launching with a shot across the bow like Canny Man.

Then I remembered two things:

1)      Ramblin’ Road is in La Salette and not Toronto.

2)      I’ve seen this work just across the lake in Chautauqua County, NY

I don’t know that if they had started with more interesting beers, people would have gone out of their way to visit Ramblin’ Road. In terms of drawing power, it’s probably better to brew solid popular mainstays and get people to visit from nearby than to bet the brewery farm that people will drive in for barrel aged thingummies. That works in Toronto, but we’ve got semi functioning public transit and something like five million people. La Salette has a post office and a general store and I would bet you that they are both closed on Sunday.

It’s actually a pretty clever idea. Unlike, say, Toronto, where you’ve got a number of craft brewery lagers competing for space on tap with every new thing that comes out, Southwestern Ontario is more or less Lager country and comparatively unchanging. This is kind of clever. If you draw a 150 km radius from the brewery (about two hours of country driving), you’re equidistant to Toronto and the Huron coast. You have the ability to sell all over the place (although making inroads within Labatt heavy London might be a bit of a bear.)

Combine this with the fact that the owner of the brewery, John Picard, has been distributing his fresh roasted, salty nuts all over the province for 30 years, and you probably take a lot of the guesswork out of sales and distribution. I would imagine that also highlights for the brewery the importance of food safety and sanitation, so you don’t get rookie mistakes. Also, consider the overhead on a brewery outside of Delhi. Peanuts.

Now, that’s a wide catchment area; a huge radius. You probably don’t have to go that far afield to sell a lot of well made accessible beer. Southern Tier in Lakewood, NY, makes a beer called Chautauqua Brew that does more or less the same thing: Provides a locally made accessible alternative to macro beers. If I remember the conversation with the brewers correctly, the only thing that outsells it locally is Busch Light.

They are actually growing a wide variety of hops at Ramblin’ Road. According to their representative in a thread on Bartowel, the farm that it’s located on has been growing them for five years. This suggests to me that by the time August rolls around you might start seeing some more esoteric products. Apparently, Norfolk County produces Ginger, Hazelnuts and Lavender. If it were me, I’d take advantage of that in addition to the hops. Plus, by that point, they’ll have had a brisk summer of sales.

The sales will come partly because the beer is solid and accessible, but mostly because they’ve invested wisely in social media and online presence. The logo and design are solid and that, combined with concept that this is a rural Ontario kind of farm thing makes for just a dynamite brand. Plus, whoever is manning their twitter account is doing a bang up job.

I don’t know that their beer will ever catch on with the craft beer wonks in Toronto, but the branding is strong enough that it might actually get on tap in more mainstream environments where tastes aren’t as rarified.  I think that they will probably do exceptionally well in smaller Ontario markets because there’s not a brewery that’s more conceptually representative of rural route, concession road Ontario.

Chances are, if you’re reading my blog, it’s probably not going to knock your socks off. That said, if you want a textbook brewery opening strategy, these guys are good. Hopefully, someday they’ll get around to using the hops they’ve been growing.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The Ontario Beer Revolution ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Craft Vs. Crafty

December 14, 2012 11:18 pm ⋅ 10 Comments ⋅

For a long time now, I’ve been thinking about the craft beer vs. crafty beer problem. While it has really only sprung up as a discourse over the last week, you would have to have been blind not to see the issue coming.

The problem here is that large breweries are putting together craft brands like Ten and Blake and Six Pints and they’re making beer that falls pretty solidly in the craft category. It puts people in an odd position where they have to ask questions about authenticity and it makes everyone involved in the discussion look like ridiculous scenesters quibbling over detail.

The problem is that this debate about whether something is a craft beer is more or less inevitable. Look at something like Goose Island or Granville Island. The people who founded the breweries wanted to go and do other things and they sold their companies. On some level it must have been heartbreaking to do. You put your entire career into building something and then at the end you have all of this capital and time sunk into something that has been helped along by a community that enjoys your product. You have to sell it in order to retire.

The odd part is semantic. Say it was a potato chip factory instead of a brewery. You’d never blame a potato chip magnate for selling out. Beer has taken on some kind of emotional significance to a portion of the population and this kind of thing feels enough like betrayal to promote angry messages on internet forums.

I find myself wondering whether the problem is essentially economic. Until the 1980’s there weren’t many small breweries. Since prohibition, large breweries had simply consolidated breweries that they purchased and reduced the number of brands available in order to become more profitable. Brewing is a business, never forget, and that model is a really good model. Not for beer drinkers, necessarily, but if you’re a huge corporation and you want to maximize profit, being the only game in town is a good way to go about it.

The craft breweries are a response as much to a global business model as they are a response to bland macro beer. In the face of huge multinational brands like Budweiser, which represent a global trend towards a single monolithic product, craft beers made locally are a response to unsated demand. Not only do they promote local business, provide employment and a sense of place, they reinforce the idea that manufacture is not dead within North America. If you look at the 2000 microbreweries in the US and the 150-200 in Canada, there is a lot of tertiary economic activity that surrounds them. You need equipment and chemicals and packaging and design and social media and advertising and…. Well, you get the idea.

There’s an economic theory that states that the health of an economy can be determined by the flow of capital through the marketplace. Given the pressures of the 2008 recession and peoples’ fondness for a refreshing beverage during hard times, this probably explains why the craft brewing industry has done relatively well during the last few years.  It’s very difficult to know where your money would end up if you bought a case of Budweiser. When you buy a craft beer, you know that you’re supporting a locally owned business. Craft beer supports local economies.

(It would be disingenuous to say that macro beer doesn’t support local economies. Imagine what would happen if the plant in Golden, Colorado shut down. If the Molson Downsview plant shut down there would be a lot of people out of work. What I’m suggesting is that not ALL of the purchase price of a macro brew goes to support local economies. There are huge parent companies to be considered.)

“Crafty” beer is the price that Craft Beer inevitably pays for its success. It is, however, at a significant disadvantage. It frequently does not have a sense of place associated with it. It almost never has a face associated with the brand.

The thing that I am continually baffled by is that people are drawing a line in the sand based on some aesthetic or intangible principle as to what craft beer is. This is an inefficient and, to be honest, downright silly way of going about the problem. Consider THIS letter from the August Schell brewery to the Brewers Association. I can certainly appreciate that the BA guidelines are fairly stringent when it comes to the use of adjunct in brewing. However, given the larger atmosphere at the moment, a situation in which “crafty” beers are going to continue coming down the pipe inexorably, there are other angles to be considered.

The problem here is that with multinationally owned brewers attempting to produce “crafty” beers that consumers may not be educated enough to differentiate from their Brewer’s Association approved “craft” counterparts, the delineation between the two products based on flavour ceases to be a reliable indicator of authenticity.

If you look at Yuengling or August Schell or say, Moosehead, these are all independently owned breweries that contribute massively to their local economies. They have a sense of place. They have representative faces and visibility and every single one of them is branching out into more interesting products. Aside from the adjunct issue, they fulfill basically every requirement for craft breweries. Perhaps most importantly, they contribute to the local or national economy in a nearly identical way to a craft brewery.

I would venture that the real battle here is not flavour based, but rather a struggle between economic forces and corporations that are globally relevant and locally relevant respectively. People like the idea that their beer is identifiably brewed by someone; that it supports the local economy in a demonstrable and tangible way.

The simple fact of the matter is that eventually, large multinational breweries and their subsidiaries will be able to produce beer that tastes like craft beer. They cannot, however, reproduce independent ownership. If this is the battle line that is currently being drawn, would the Brewer’s Association not re-examine their guidelines and allow large regional brewers like Yuengling a place within their ranks?

It seems to me that an alliance of independent brewers rather than craft brewers within a single nation has one very definite strength: We can discuss for hours the various nuances of what makes something craft. Ownership resides indelibly on a balance sheet.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste ⋅ Tagged: , , , ,

In Which I Tour The Sam Adams Brewery

November 12, 2012 2:06 am ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about over the course of the last week is exactly what to say about the tour of the Sam Adams Brewery I went on last Friday. It’s hard to know what to make of Sam Adams. They are so large in comparison to craft brewing generally that if they had not existed, you have to imagine that much of the rest of the craft brewing industry wouldn’t exist either.

There’s the fact people point to that the Brewer’s Association changed their upper limit for the volume a craft brewer could produce so that Sam Adams would remain a craft beer. They are currently the fifth largest brewer in North America. I don’t know what the precise annual volume is, but it’s something like a fifth of the craft beer brewed in the states. (They pretty much had to revise the limit upwards. Losing 20% of your overall volume is a narrative ruining media nightmare. Narrative is important to craft beer.)

That’s all well and good, but the cultural impact Sam Adams has had on us is impressive as well.

The Simpsons, which I think we can all agree on as a cultural touchstone, gave Homer Duff Beer to drink. This was in 1989, and the writers use Duff to parody huge, generic breweries. You’ve got the Duff Blimp and Duff Man and Duff Gardens. On the tour of the Duff brewery it’s made clear that the product is so generic that we see one pipe supplying the same beer to three different brands.

Family Guy, on the other hand, features Pawtucket Patriot Ale as Peter Griffin’s drink of choice. It’s pretty obviously a Sam Adams ripoff, right down to the label. Family Guy first aired in early 1999. Sam Adams normalized craft beer so completely to North American audiences between 1989 and 1999 that no viewers questioned that Peter Griffin would be drinking a regional craft beer.

That shift in consumer consciousness took slightly less than 15 years, given that Sam Adams was founded in 1984. Pretty good for a small group of people in an 800 square foot warehouse in Jamaica Plain.

The smokestack is shorter than it used to be. To be fair, it was cold out.

The current facility in Jamaica Plain is on the site of the Haffenreffer brewery, which was established in 1870. The smokestack is still there, bearing at least a portion of the original brewery’s branding.

It became pretty obvious that we weren’t going to get the regular tour. After a suitable amount of time standing amongst the display cases, viewing medals from various competitions, we were ushered into the private tasting room. After a certain amount of time trying samples of some beers in their lineup that I had never heard of (Black and Brew Coffee Stout, Whitewater IPA ) Jim Koch arrived and took us out for the deluxe tour.

I’m pretty sure that this was the least animated Jim Koch got during the tour.

I think that part of the success of Sam Adams has to do with the fact that it would be pretty hard to take a dislike to Jim Koch. He’s not a physically imposing man, but he’s quick on his feet and he’s wiry. If you had to guess his age, you almost certainly wouldn’t guess he was on the high side of 60. He’s been doing this for 28 years and he remains slight, which, having been to the Craft Brewers Conference, is not a quality that you see a whole heck of a lot in craft brewers generally. He’s animated when he talks about beer, and you can sense the mental quickness even before he opens his mouth. He reminds me a lot of Leo McGarry on The West Wing. As we toured, I’m pretty sure he was doing two things at once: Telling his story and doing QA on the IPA that had been on tap in the tasting room.

We had timed it so that there was a tour group ahead of us. Jim explained about the beginnings of the brewery, how he had managed to get started in 1984. He explained about the trouble that they had with gangs (and how you can buy gangs off with beer) and pointed out the order forms that they had used in the early days. He told the story about Boston Lager winning Best Beer in America at the 1985 GABF four months after starting up.

The couple who were waiting for the next tour to start were initially oblivious, playing the videos that explained the stories we were hearing first hand, clueing into the fact that something interesting was happening only when Jim was standing in front of a videoscreen that was playing his own image.

The brewhouse is decidedly old school

The Jamaica Plain brewery is more or less a showpiece at this point, the spiritual home of what can reasonably be called a small empire at this point. The majority of the brewing is done in Ohio. From what I gathered from the guy working the DE filter, the batch that he was working on was probably New World Tripel, a part of the barrel room series. Much of the production in this brewery seems to be one-offs or specialty batches, including a Colonial Ale for the Union Oyster House. An entire facility for R&D and special projects.

Clearly, there are parts of the tour that are there for the benefit of people who have never been on a brewery tour before. Standing in front of barrels of Boston Lager ingredients, Jim held forth on the virtues of the Hallertauer Mittelfruh hop variety.

See that barrel he’s standing in front of? You guessed it. Crystal 60.

The thing that I found most interesting, and tried to think about while rubbing a handful of hops and giggling quietly, was that a number of the Sam Adams beers that I tried contained Crystal 60 malt. I have a suspicion that the character of the Boston Lager and some of the main seasonal beers (Winter Lager, Octoberfest) share that as an ingredient, and that this is a rare case of a malt variety defining a brewer’s character (well, at least as much as the hops.) It’s that core grainy caramel sweetness that runs down the middle of those beers. It verges on molasses-y. I sort of have to be in the mood for that, but it suggests that when those beers were launched in 1989, it struck the brewer’s palate the right way. At the time, it would definitely have made those beers stand out from the competition.

Through a doorway, we skipped ahead 20 years to taste one of the main ingredients of the Barrel Room Series, which was launched in 2009.

There is still some Triple Bock. I’m pretty sure the last batch was 1997.

The barrel room is dominated by three huge vats of what they’re calling the Kosmic Mother Funk. It’s a mix of yeast and bacteria; sort of brettanomyces and pediococcus with an acetic kick. It’s a murky light reddish-brown and it’s not really the kind of thing that you’d want to drink by itself. It’s intended to be blended into other beers in the series.  By way of explaining the barrel aging process, Jim analogized sour beer to balsamic vinegar, explaining that if aged long enough the acetic pungency slowly transforms into a concentrated sweetness.

Jim explains the Kosmic Mother Funk. Mostly, I just like saying Kosmic Mother Funk.

“Don’t you find it worrisome having all that wild yeast kicking around with a production brewery on the other side of the wall?” I said.

“We manage a lot of different types of yeast strains in the brewery. We’ve gotten pretty good at it after 28 years,” he said. After a very brief pause, his arm snaked out and yanked the cord that closed the door to the rest of the facility. I suspect that he was humouring me.

The thing is that Jim Koch has gotten good at this after 28 years; extraordinarily so. Back in the tasting room, Crystal Luxmore asked him about beer and terroir. He gave a brilliant answer, which she had the foresight to catch on video.

Karmic Terroir. Karmic… Freaking… Terroir.

The answer is brilliant mainly for the reason that you can see the amount of thought that he has put into his profession over the years and for how eloquently he’s able to put the concept. Now, depending on your viewpoint, you might say that it was entirely justified; that a brewery occupies a position both in time, with all of the influences upon it of those things that have come before and have influenced both the trends of the moment and the tastes of the brewer that go into creating a beer, and in space, which is to say the ingredients and technology available. If you’re into the whole romance of brewing, the idea that, say, Boston Lager could only have been produced in Boston in 1984 is an earthquake of a concept. That Sam Adams could no more have produced Sierra Nevada Pale Ale than it could have produced a Zinfandel. That despite the fact that there is a tradition that all brewers share, each iteration of the process has so many extrinsic variables working upon it that the end result could not be other than a product of its place and time.

What can I say? The man gives good quote. Plus, it lent credence to my theory about the Crystal 60.

The thing that amazed me about Sam Adams generally was the drive to innovation. Currently they’re approximately the same size as Yuengling. Yuengling seems more or less content to rest on their laurels, sticking with a core lineup of brands. Sam Adams is currently working with something like 55 brands, some of which rely so heavily on concept as to beggar belief.

It’s my impression that they probably don’t actually need to be doing that. They could probably narrow it down and stick with a core lineup. They’re doing it because they’re having fun doing it. Jim Koch actually believes in this stuff. He’s excited about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone shift that quickly between talking eloquently about the basics of brewing and wild beers and overarching philosophic principle. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s been giving the tour for 28 years, after all.

Lunch at Doyle’s Cafe after the tour. You can’t turn down Knockwurst in Oktoberfest season.

Posted in: Accounting for Taste, The North American Tour ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Cents and Sensibility: A Junket Declaration Form

November 3, 2012 10:35 pm ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

This morning I was sitting in the lobby of the Park Plaza in Boston, smiling as effusively as the early hour permitted at a waitress in an attempt to get some coffee. Possibly it was because of the lack of caffeine in my system that a blog post from Alan McLeod was needling at me. In his October 31st blog post about press junkets, there was a tacit, albeit relatively lighthearted, accusation of impropriety on the part of the people taking part in the press junket that was allowing me to fail at flagging down a much needed cup of joe while listening to Tony Bennett in a prodigiously swank chandeliered environment.

Maybe it’s because of the reading that I did leading up to the trip to Boston (Robert B. Parker novels), but I feel that I should probably address the issue. Parker’s detective, Spenser, spends quite a bit of time sussing out exactly where his morals lie in relation to his occupation. It’s one of the defining qualities of the novels that he has things that he will and will not do in order to stay true to an internalized sense of self. There’s a sense of what can be referred to as honor in Spenser’s character; an imperfect analogy in this case because the stakes generally involve life and death.

I write about beer, so the stakes are not that high. There is still a curious morality at play, but comparatively little hangs in the balance. On a good day, I might be able to influence someone to try a certain beer. I recommend things that I like and tend to pan things that I don’t like. See this week’s column on Rickard’s Oakhouse and Creemore’s new offshoot Mad and Noisy. On my best day, I might be able to frame debate about craft beer and subtly influence the way people think about what they’re drinking. I think that’s about all anyone can do with this gig.

That said, Alan McLeod has posted a junket declaration form in his blog post, and I’ll play along. Initially, I was a little huffy and indignant about it, before realizing that if that was the emotional state, he probably had a point. I will fill it out to the best of my ability without attempting to justify too much and without staring too long into my navel.

♦ Name (optional)

Jordan St.John
♦ Destination and name of brewery or breweries.

Boston, Mass/ Sam Adams
♦ Price of junket and portion you paid.

I don’t want to break out the calculator to estimate the first part and I don’t need a calculator to tell you the second part is no dollars

♦ Who organized the junket?

The people at Elevator Communications, who handle PR for Sam Adams and Moosehead in Ontario. Also, Magner’s Pear Cider.

♦ Why were you selected to go on this junket?

I would like to think that it is because of my somewhat sardonic sense of humour and gentle bonhomie, but probably due to the fact that I have a large readership in Canadian Newspapers and a smaller, but high quality readership on the blog.

♦ Will you disclose the junket in any resulting articles?

Actually, yes. I sort of have to in order to write about it on the blog, since I’m aware of the potential for there to be some perception of malfeasance. I have already done so on social media. I’m also doing so as I write this sentence.

♦ Will you refer the junket as “research” in any resulting articles?

Almost certainly. I have never dealt with the strictures of academic citation. This is a blog where I make reference to Truckasaurus periodically. Also, I bought a bunch of craft beer from non Sam Adams breweries that actively constitutes research or, as some would put it “drinking stuff.” I also bought a copy of Norman Miller’s Beer Lover’s New England, which will almost certainly be useful at some point.

♦ Do you intend to call people on junket “friends” in any resulting articles?

Probably not the PR people, given that this is a working relationship. It’s not a comment on them personally, since they seem like nice folks. I was already friends with one of the other Journalists going in. It would be asinine to refer to Jim Koch as a friend after meeting him for a couple of hours or so, but I can definitely say that I respect what he’s built and that the man gives good quote. Actually, I might keep in touch with Todd Bellomy, who is Sam Adam’s Consumer Relations Representative, but that’s mostly because he’s a huge beer nerd and I like the cut of his jib. I would not currently call him a friend, although I get the sense he’d be fun to hang out with.

♦ Will you disclose to your actual friends that you intend to call people on junket “friends” too?

Most of the people I know are in the beer industry or related to the beer industry currently and I have no qualms about that disclosure. I should probably diversify the ol’ friendship portfolio.

The simple fact of the matter is this: I think you have to take junkets like this on a case by case basis. If you look at say, articles that P.J. O’Rourke wrote while reviewing cars, he’s vehement about disclosure on who’s paying. I think that’s the right way to go. I tend to disclose the fact that people send me beer to review. I freely acknowledge, as anyone who expects to be respected while writing about beer must, that you can only review what is in front of you and that the research budget is not huge. Does the fact that you have been sent a beer (or, indeed, been invited on a spree like this one) mean that you will review it positively? If it always does, that might mean that you are in someone’s pocket, which you’d certainly want to avoid.

I find that in my case I will soundly thrash things I don’t like even if they are free. There is the larger argument to be made that you can only write from experience, and that by definition, the long term mental model is irrevocably influenced by experiences like this. To claim otherwise would be nonsensical. It’s a thing I’m aware of and fairly vigilant about. I suspect that the fact that Alan’s blog post needled at me at 6:30 AM in an environment where most people would be content to listen to a light jazz soundtrack and punish the continental breakfast buffet speaks to the fact that I have an active moral compass when it comes to representing my activities as they relate to writing about beer.

There is also the other fact, which some folks might not be willing to admit to. While I’m certainly compensated well for writing (be it books or newspaper columns), a trip like this would typically be beyond my financial means. Given the circumstance, if someone invites you to go to Boston, meet Jim Koch and eat a bunch of really good seafood while drinking a selection of beer on their dime, the response is predictable.

As Spenser would say, “We’d be fools not to.”

Posted in: Accounting for Taste ⋅ Tagged: , ,

Cask Days By The Numbers

October 24, 2012 7:44 am ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

It’s fairly easy to take an annual event like Cask Days for granted, but since this is the eighth anniversary, I thought I’d show you something pretty neat about the development of the festival. It’s mostly interesting because it mirrors the development of the Ontario beer scene almost directly.

2005:

Cask Days starts up. Initial online buzz suggests that there will be 12 casks. This rapidly expands to 21 as brewers realize that they can get in on the action. All of the beers are from Ontario, which is not surprising. Looking at the list, the most adventurous offerings are Scotch Irish Sgt Major and barrel aged versions of Black Oak Nut Brown and Granite Peculiar. There was also a Trafalgar Abbey Ale.

It was pretty representative of what was happening in Ontario at the time. This is to say that while there were some solid offerings from F&M and Wellington and a number of the usual suspects, no one was really breaking any ground, except for the fact that there were a lot of casks in one place. That was novel.

Timeframe: 2 days, 1 session each day

2006:

This is where things start to happen. Those shocking new upstarts from Beau’s are in attendance. It’s the first year that homebrewers are involved in the form of Biergotter. It’s also the first time that Dieu Du Ciel is available on cask in Ontario.

In terms of Ontario breweries, it gets slightly more interesting. George Eagleson made a Pear Ginger Oatmeal Stout I wish I had gotten to try (George makes some great stuff when he gets weird.) The event features an Imperial IPA from Scotch Irish and a couple of Imperial Stouts.

While it is getting more interesting, there are still only 25 casks. Clearly, it hasn’t quite caught on yet in the public imagination. You’d still be happy with the lineup today if it were at any other pub.

Timeframe:  1 day, split into 2 sessions

2007:

The year mirrors 2005 more closely than 2006. For the first time, a beer from another country is served in the form of Fuller’s ESB. There are 29 casks, but this is partially because there are now more breweries. Grand River makes its debut (worth mentioning because Mill Race Mild is a great cask beer). A solid event, but no one is crushing the ball.

Timeframe: 2 days, split into 4 sessions

2008:

Bigger than the previous year by half, we’re back into adventurous territory. Church Key has a Purple Loosestrife Mead, which hits like a hammer and a Tobacco Road version of their Holy Smoke that I remember swilling in some quantity. There are a number of breweries participating for the first time, including Amsterdam, Barley Days and others. Great Lakes is starting to produce a number of casks. Fuller’s remains a constant. 44 casks.

Timeframe: 3 days, split into 5 sessions

2009:

This is the first year that the branding takes on its now iconic look, which is due to the design expertise of Tomas Morana (seriously, go back and look at the event materials over the last five years and tell me the guy hasn’t developed a unique style.) No longer content with merely having some casks on a patio on the weekend, Cask Days stretches to a week. While the main event still takes place Friday-Sunday, there is a pregame event throughout the week with 22 casks and a Thursday night recap of the first IPA Challenge. This brings the total number of casks to 72.

The selection has grown to the point that it now has to be separated on the patio into Ontario regions. While there are many highlights from Ontario, the key feature is the addition of casks from Benelux, Dieu Du Ciel and Hopfenstark (with Fred in attendance, looking a bit swashbuckler-y.)

Timeframe: Oct 26-Nov 2

2010:

No longer content with a single week, Cask Days expands to a month long moveable feast which roams from Vankleek Hill to Cambridge. The pre-event features 19 casks in the English style. The Thursday features the two previous winners of the IPA challenge. The main event features 53 casks.

High on their success as a nanobrewery, Volo has 8 beers (this was before the House Ales branding) all of which are more interesting than anything offered in 2005. In addition, there are now five participating Quebec breweries. The highlight is Mike Lackey’s Triple IPA, which I seem to remember being called Tennish Anyone. My friend Vanessa threatens him with violence if he doesn’t brew it again.

Timeframe: Oct 1- Nov 1

2011:

No longer content with the space available at Bar Volo, Cask Days relocates to Hart House, which is a much larger venue, capable of holding something like 500 people. More breweries than ever before take part as a result of the increased space.

The pre-event lineup during the week has 19 casks and six Fuller’s beers are featured on the Friday night. The country is represented from coast to coast, making this the first truly national beer festival. Quebec ‘s section has expanded to include almost as many beers as the entirety of 2005’s entire festival. Fuller’s has a booth of their own, as does Niagara College.

The total number of beers available exceeds 100

2012:

No longer content with the space available at Hart House, Cask Days relocates to The Brickworks, which is a much larger venue, capable of holding a small army.

The pre-event lineup is legitimately the size of the 2005 version of cask days. Half Pints has its own event on Thursday night (Humulus Ludicrous, people. Go get it.) The main event features 110 casks from across the country including three gluten free options. There is an entire section for Pumpkin beers. There is an entire section for Collaboration beers. Authors will be signing books. There will be DJs. At this point, it’s a face-painting booth away from graduating from beer fest to carnival

Total number of casks is 132

Look at this graph:

Clearly, we should all be very, very afraid.

Cask Days has average growth of about a third (1.32011) since it started in 2005. This means, if I am extrapolating correctly, that by the year 2017 Cask Days will last the entire season of autumn, feature 544 casks including some from upstart brewers in Venezuela, and will take place in the newly annexed borough of Morana Downs (formerly East York).

I, for one, welcome our new Cask beer overlords. If you haven’t bought a ticket for this year’s event yet, you should. You want to stay on Ralph’s good side.

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