Bad Beer and Whether There Is Such A Thing

About a week ago I was in my basement pouring myself a fresh pint of hand-crafted beer when I noticed something odd.  My most recent five gallon batch of beer, a dark and chocolate-y stout, had an unnattractive scum formation on the top of it, what we brewers refer to as a pellicle.  This is the tell-tale sign of an infection by bacteria or wild yeast; in other words, not good.  My stout, I thought, is ruined, which was a huge bummer since I don’t have anything dark on tap right now.  A couple of days later I was describing this discovery to the co-owner of our local home brewing supply shop and his ears perked up.  He began trying to convince me that I was onto something, and went into some detail about the effects of particular bacteria and wild yeast on beer flavors.  His was an excitement born of a passion for sour beers, that unpredictable breed of beer rapidly growing in popularity among craft beer geeks.  Mine was simply a bewilderment that one could have use for soured beer.

Unrelated but related, just today I was thinking about American lagers.  Those who are familiar with the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) may also be aware that there is an entire style category devoted to light lagers (style category #1, as a matter of fact).  The first American lager style in this category: Lite American Lager.  Yes, that bane of every craft beer lover’s existence is style #1A in the list of beer styles maintained by the preeminent beer judging organization in the world.  But as bad as Lite American Lager is, the other American lagers in this category aren’t a whole lot better – at least not to me.  When the description for a beer states that “strong flavors are a fault,” I’ll pass on a sample, thank you very much.

These two experiences are related in that they got me to thinking about what constitutes bad beer.  When I talk to my craft beer friends about beer, we all tend to assume we share the same definition of bad.  Bad beer is beer make by Budweiser or Coors or Miller.  Bad beer is a skunky bottle of Corona, or a tasteless can of Coors Light.  Corporate beer is bad beer, especially anything that might find itself described by the first three styles listed under BJCP style category #1.

Interestingly sour beer – which has become the darling beer “category” in the booming craft beer industry – is by definition “bad beer.”  Sour beer is beer that has had microbial life other than cultivated brewer’s yeast introduced for the express purpose of producing unique, odd and potentially repulsive flavors, most of which are sour in nature.  What makes this so odd is that we brewers typically go through a tremendous amount of effort to keep these beer-souring critters out of our beer.  This is why most brewers offer up their first three tips of brewing as one and the same: sanitize, sanitize, sanitize.  This is why a majority of the effort involved in brewing beer is related to cleaning and sanitizing.  If you as a brewer do chance to get an infection of brettanomyces (wild yeast) or lactobacillus (souring bacteria) or something even “worse”, your oatmeal stout is going to taste like shit.

Or is it?  It just may be that the very beer you thought went “bad” actually went “good” in a completely unexpected and unpredictable way.  This is where the definition of bad beer gets tricky.  To craft beer lovers, corporate beer is bad because it’s low on taste, or big on tastes that we just don’t like (e.g. skunky, corn-like, etc.).  However, corporate beer is brewed by experts in the industry who posses amazingly sophisticated quality control programs and equipment.  If any beer can be said to be good, i.e. not contaminated, it’s the high volume American “lights.”  But hand a barrel-aged sour ale to a Bud Light fan and see if he doesn’t immediately identify that your beer has gone bad.  That $18.00 bottle you couldn’t wait to get your hands on may well be the worst beer he’s ever tasted.

So what is bad beer?  Intriguingly (and frustratingly) this is a truly subjective thing.  This should be obvious, I know.  In fact, the more I think about it the more obvious it is.  Of course taste is subjective; we don’t all eat or enjoy the same foods, and beer is no different in this regard.  What’s interesting about “good” and “bad” as it applies to beer, though, is that organizations like the BJCP exist for the primary purpose of helping us identify what’s good and what’s bad.  We’re not talking about a bunch of paunch-bellied drunks swilling beer saying, “Yep, this one’s good”.  We’re talking about serious research, both gustatory and historical, all condensed to a compendium of beer and flavor information and spread through a large network of beer enthusiasts and professionals, all dedicating their time to promoting “good” beer.  So given that all of this effort has gone into defining what makes beer good, it seems like some of the subjectivity would be removed from the process.  Granted, the BJCP also lists some sour beers (style category #17), but here again there are parameters of some sort, and a finite list of styles that are sour.  The craft beer industry is not, by and large, limiting its sour offerings to lambics, gueze and Flander’s Red.

Okay, so if taste is subjective and therefore bad beer is in the tongue of the beholder, what’s the point of writing a blog post about it?  I guess that for my part I think it’s important for craft beer lovers to recognize a couple of things.  The first is that, just because you don’t like a beer doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s place.  When you get past the obnoxious marketing and the fact that light beer is essentially tasteless, you realize that there are some damn fine brewers making this stuff.  It’s not an easy feat to produce millions of barrels of lager with such flavor consistency; it’s actually damn complicated.  And on a hot summer’s day when the lawn work nearly sucked your body dry you sweat so much, the Champagne of Beers may be the best beverage you’ve ever tasted.  Alternatively sour beers are not always good.  Frankly some of them are nasty, unless you love the taste of straight vinegar.  However, for people who like that sort of thing, $18 is not too much to pay for a beer gone “bad.”  In the end you should just drink what you like, support good breweries and don’t be afraid to waste a little time debating what makes beer good or bad.  Just don’t expect to be right.

 

Industry Implosion: How the IPA Could Kill Craft Beer (Or At Least Injure It)

On a recent trip to a local restaurant that specializes in craft beer, I was struck by their draft offerings.  The bartender offered me several samples of India Pale Ales; of the dozen or so taps they sported at least half were IPAs.  I lined up three samples side by side, trying to discern which was which based on appearance, aroma and finally taste.  Was the one on the left the Rebel IPA?  Or was that one the Happy Camper IPA?  And which one was the third IPA this guy gave me?  Aside from the senselessness of offering three or four beers that, while different, are not really discernible from one another, the time has come to move beyond the IPA.

The IPA is hands down the most popular beer style in the craft beer industry.  As consumers grow to like the flavors and aromas that come from hops, especially new and distinct American varieties, they demand hoppier beers and more of them.  As large corporate brewing companies see this trend and covet the market share they’re losing to the craft industry, they begin developing hoppier beers, or protecting their supplies through contracting arrangements that only well-funded companies can make.  The consequence?  Hop prices soar and supplies begin to dwindle.

First I’m going to play out the nightmare scenario for the industry.  Craft brewers lose access to (or can’t afford) their preferred hops, the ones that got their IPA to the top of the national “best beer” lists.  Supplies of these great craft beers stall or dip.  The craft beer industry growth slows as the growth of its most popular style slows, and the biggest brewers who still have the cash or the hop contracts start making up the slack.  Who wins in this scenario?  Hop growers and distributors, for one.  Also the large breweries win because they have the hops and/or the cash.  Bearing in mind that the likes of MillerCoors and ABinBev are buying up popular regional breweries (Goose island, for example), these brands and their hoppy beers are the least likely to suffer.  The most likely to suffer?  The newest breweries; the breweries in planning; the small, lightly funded local guy who could make great beer in your backyard if only he could get his hands on some (affordable) hops.

It takes, on average, fifteen years to get a new variety of hops to market.  This includes the intensive labors of developing new varieties, growing them to maturity, testing their characteristics for desirability (oil content, hardiness, aroma and flavor, etc.), and getting them into the hands of commercial growers to plant and cultivate to maturity.  So new varieties are not going to alleviate the dearth of hops in the current market.  Then the savior of our industry must be existing varieties, and increased acreage, right?  That’s probably the best route; but, according the USDA, the only major hop growing regions of the country are in Washington, Oregon and Idaho, and from the 2013 harvest, only about 10% more hops have been strung for harvest this year.  With the craft beer industry growing in volume by double digits for the last few years, the writing may well be on the wall for the IPA.

For hopheads, no doubt, this is a terrible idea, but the truth is the IPA style is not going away.  In fact, it may not even begin to fade.  As long as craft beer consumers are willing to shell out more money each year for their favorite lupulin-laced ale, they can have all that they want.  No, what the rise in hop prices and the reduction in supplies most likely means is that the IPA will almost disappear from the lineup of any and every new brewery.  And this is probably more significant than the potential implosion of the IPA style, because it could equal the slowing of the growth of the industry – if not in terms of total industry share of the market, than in the quantity of breweries nationally.  Think about it.  If the most popular style in craft beer is the IPA, the most probable new beer to introduce for a new brewery is a hoppy one.  But if hops are either too expensive or too hard to come by, this option may not be feasible, which leaves new brewers with a problem: do I enter the market with a less popular style and risk fewer sales, or do I hold off on opening my brewery?

These could be the first notes of an implosion of the industry, and it’s all our fault.  As craft beer lovers demanding ever hoppier beers, we’ve brought this problem on ourselves.  Imagine it: no more Pliny the Elder.  No more Heady Topper.  No more Two-Hearted Ale.  Imagine a world where a Double IPA costs you an arm, a leg and your firstborn child.  Hey you, put that kid down, you’re not getting my Pliny!

I’m obviously being dramatic, but the real consequences of our hop binge are going to come home to roost and they’re going to roost over and shit on the smallest and newest breweries.  And this is both a damn shame and a tremendous opportunity.  For my part, as a lover of maltier styles and session beers, I hope it spurs craft brewers on to more creative heights, and, for the love of Ninkasi, to beer styles other than the IPA.  I hope it changes the landscape of craft beer to include neglected styles, historical or antiquated styles, and styles unheard of up to now.  Maybe in turn we consumers will broaden our horizons and learn that there is a lot more to beer than hops, and a lot more to craft beer than the IPA.

The Death of Style

Shared Post: The Death of Style.

via oconnoblog.com.

The Cooperative Beer Movement

In 2013, after discussing some ideas for opening a brewery in Amarillo, my friend Grant James and I had an epiphany that we would soon learn was not entirely original.  Our sudden inspirational idea was to try to build a co-op brewery of some kind.  We did not know exactly what this meant, nor had we researched it, so the idea was truly inspired if not entirely complete.  I remember that we batted around some other ideas before we settled on the cooperative model, and even though we didn’t know what the implications of a cooperative brewery would be, we both felt it was just the right framework for our dream.  And that’s when the research began; or just sort of happened is more like it.  While reviewing some quotes for brewery equipment I came across Black Star Co-op Pub & Brewery on a list of references from a manufacturer.  After visiting their website and reading about their history, Grant and I knew that we had stumbled onto the perfect format for our new venture.

And apparently we are not the only ones.  In fact, Yellow City Co-op Brewpub, the cooperative association that Grant and I (and several others eventually) started, is either the 5th or 6th cooperative brewery to pop into existence after Black Star, which bills itself as “the world’s first cooperatively owned brewery.”  As we began to research the ins and outs of the co-op business model, we stumbled upon 5th Street Brewpub in Dayton, OH; Los Alamos Beer Co-op in New Mexico; Miami-Erie in Middletown, OH; High Five Co-op Brewery in Grand Rapids, MI; 4th Tap Co-op in Austin (yes, two in Austin!); and many others that seem to appear out of thin air all over the country.  As of my last count (a very unofficial Google search on June 4th) there are at least 11 cooperative breweries or brewpubs in some stage of planning or opening in the country, a count which undoubtedly excludes many which are still in “concept” stage.

In this age of explosive growth in the craft beer industry it should probably come as no surprise that cooperative breweries are growing explosively, too.  The growth of this segment of the craft beer industry strikes me as particularly unique and exciting.  However, before I get into just why I’m so excited about the cooperative beer movement, let me explain what a cooperative is and is not.

According to the International Co-operative Alliance, a non-governmental association representing co-ops globally, cooperatives are essentially business run by and for their members.  What this means in practical terms is that co-ops are owned by their members and operate primarily to benefit those members.  In the case of a worker-owned co-op, the workers are also the owners and their primary benefit is having direct input into the operations of the business.  Most cooperative breweries are not run in this way, but are a variation where the members are the owners, but the brewery (or brewpub) is run by a hired staff who are not necessarily members.  The key difference here is that the membership is often much larger (several hundred or thousand instead of only a dozen or fewer), and the benefit to the membership is the brewery or brewpub itself.  The members invest and become owners of the brewery in order to A) ensure it moves from idea to reality in their community, and B) realize some other tangible benefit, usually patronage dividends, which is cash back to the member for money spent at the brewery or brewpub.

The key here is that co-op breweries are inherently local ventures, since they are made up of a collection of like-minded community members pursuing a common good.  If the co-op brewery provides patronage dividends based on your total annual expenditure in their tasting room, or a weekly happy hour for members, or some other benefit that requires your presence at the brewery or brewpub, then being a member two states over is of lesser benefit.  Because of this local nature of cooperative breweries, their promotional efforts, their style and presentation, and their impacts are also local, and this is, to me, the most exciting thing about the cooperative beer movement; namely the growth of the Local Brewery.

I am like most craft beer lovers in that I love a variety of beers from a variety of breweries.  Not only do I like to drink many different beers, I like to try new beers, I like to talk about beer and breweries, I like to read about the craft beer industry and new beers and breweries – basically I appreciate all aspects of the burgeoning craft beer scene.  I have watched as this quiet market has grown in capacity and influence nationally (and internationally!), to a large extent owing to the growth of social media online, beer apps and publications, and the sheer whimsy, creativity and fun that craft brewers bring to consumers.  And while I’m impressed and heartened by this growth; while my heart goes pitter patter when I hear about the market share Big Beer brands are losing to craft beer; and while I love-love-love the increasing variety I’m presented with on the beer aisle, I can’t help but cross my fingers that the impact of all of this growth will be a return to what this country once knew and loved: a pub in every town and breweries in every city.  I can’t help but hope for the rise of the Local Brewery, and it appears that we have the pinnacle of this experience in the cooperative beer movement.

Some cities and regions are already experiencing the Local Brewery effect.  Recently in Portland, OR sales of all other beers besides BMC (a belittling acronym for “Bud Miller Coors” meant to represent the Big Beer corporations, not craft brewers) were the majority.  In a city with 54 breweries (74 in the metro area), just about any neighborhood has a brewery nearby.  This is, in my mind, the greatest achievement of the rise of craft beer: that everyone in America could eventually have a brewery around the corner.

This abundance of breweries describes the rise of the cooperative beer movement in another way, too.  If you were a budding brewer in a city like Portland, your hope of opening a craft brewery would become slimmer with each new entrant into the market.  With so many “conventional” breweries, how does one differentiate oneself?  Especially if all 54 breweries are making great beer?  One way to be different is to have a different business organization, and a different motivation.  Thus cooperative breweries fill a need for a new kind of business model, one with a motive and an appeal beyond the crass exigencies of dollars and cents.  Cooperative breweries appeal to sentiments of local pride, personal ownership and involvement.  They appeal to our need to carve out a niche of community in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world.  They appeal to what I like to call the “Cheers Craving” which is that desire in all of us to have a place where everyone knows our name and they’re always glad we came.

Whatever the reasons, the cooperative beer movement is real, but still young.  Black Star has proved that this business model can work, as are others across the country.  I hope that in five years there will be so many successful co-op breweries that they will no longer seem novel, and then the next cool thing in craft beer can swoop in and take the spotlight.

Beer is Bread

Beer is bread and bread is beer.  One is solid and the other is liquid, and herein lies the only real distinction.  Both are similar not only in the ingredients from which they are crafted, but also in the sense of their importance in human culture.  Beer and bread serve as archetypes of the human experience, transcending borders and eras, linking the ancient to the contemporary by way of timeless biological and chemical processes.  From simple beginnings – grain and water and yeast – come two of the most important accomplishments of human ingenuity and society, two of the simplest and yet most elegant contributions we have made to the world of human artifice and accomplishment.  In these two we find the spark for our deepest human experiences.  In these two we find symbols of those experiences too – of friends and family, of tables and taverns, of hardship and plenty.

Bread and beer represent for us our agricultural inheritance.  They represent to us the transcendence of mankind over an animal state, a movement away from the life of survival to the life of abundance.  In the training of the land and the cultivation of grain, humans declared their yearning for peace and prosperity and place.  By becoming farmers and building civilizations around steady food supplies we freed up our time for higher passions and callings: for art and writing and music and philosophy.  And at the tables of the artists and writers and composers and philosophers one has always found either bread or beer or, more often, both.

Beer is bread because it is as essential as bread.  Both are necessary for sustenance and for pleasure.  They are linked together from the atom up.  From bread one could make beer, and from beer one could make bread.  Beer is often referred to as liquid bread, and bread is only an internet meme away from being referred to as solid beer.

What I love about these two things is that the mention of each brings something distinct to mind.  Both have at various times been saviors or social pariahs.  They make us fat and they make us fit; they fuel our worst tendencies and our greatest passions.  We carbo load before a race and we tank up before a night out; or we sit over a crusty loaf at the table with a date and sip thoughtfully at a well-crafted glass of ale.  In spite of their real or perceived negative effects on people, beer and bread are persistent parts of our lives, and all indications are that they are not going away.  In fact, we grow more grain on this little green planet of ours now than we ever have in agricultural history, and most of it that is not corn goes into bread or beer (or that dangerous cousin of the two, spirits).

Myth and legend abound on the subjects of bread and beer; from Ninkasi and Demeter to Arthur Guiness and Mrs. Bairds.  The fact that the ancients even had a goddess of beer in an age when they knew next to nothing about how beer was made testifies to the importance of this beverage.  The fact that ale was rationed during the first and second World Wars also testifies to the significance of beer.  That we love it so much we would rather restrict our consumption than go without is, I think, a compliment unequaled.

To bread belongs the image of necessity, but this is most likely due to the wider appeal of bread in terms of taste.  Over the course of human history beer also served as a way to preserve the nutritional abundance of grain, but no doubt it wasn’t always that tasty.  Only in the last two hundred years or so have we really tamed the process to the point where we can reproduce beers of high quality.  Whether tasty or not, humans have been consuming some kind of beer for several thousand years, so it must have been important to them, and fairly widely consumed, in order to have lasted this long.  So these two things come down to us through the ages as almost inseparable phenomena.  We may as well admit that, for all intents and purposes, beer is bread.

What I mean to suggest with the title of this blog is all that can be suggested when we talk about beer and bread.  I mean to suggest both the serious and the silly; both the unifying and the divisive; the essential and the extraneous.  I mean to suggest all that makes us social creatures, all that inspires us to build relationships and cities, all that brings us together around a table or a town square or a cause.  And particularly I plan to discuss my little part of the world, which is the topmost square portion of the most identifiably shaped state in the USA, known variously as the Texas Panhandle, the High Plains, the Golden Spread, the Caprock and the Great American Desert, once upon a time home to a thriving ecosystem of shortgrass prairies but now consisting mostly of irrigated wheat and milo.  What I want for this American Crossroads is for it to become an important place for regional beer.  Halfway between Denver and Dallas, there is every expectation that Amarillo could be an oasis in the Great American Beer Desert.  With such prime real estate on I-40, why couldn’t we become a tri-state (or even a quad-state!) craft beer Mecca?  Who knows, maybe someday we’ll even have a few decent breweries here.  When we do, I plan to be writing about them.