Ron's plate o' meat

Ron's Spring '08 central European road trip with Andy has been fun to follow but today's installment has to be the best. In it he uncovers a local brewing tradition played out in one small German region, watches people eat a lot of meat, finds a new hop-based spirit to drink and decides to spend the night. But the traditions of brewing this one beer, Zoigl, is a little weird:

Back at our hotel, Andy has a chat with the landlord. Yes, he does have Zoigl on. Hooray! Even though the official Zoigl time ended on Sunday (it's Tuesday, if you've lost track). He has a little flyer with the Zoigl schedule for the year printed on it. They're very well organised. Each of the five brewing families in Neuhaus takes it in turns to sell Zoigl Thursday to Sunday. Like I said, it's Tuesday. Once a year (3rd of October in 2008), all five Zoigl families sell beer simultaneously. I'll mark that date in my calendar.

It's Zoigl-tastic! It's so Zoigl-tastic I suspect if this beer were called Neuhausbrau or, say, zblat or something else I would not be nearly as interested. But what really amazes me is that there isn't a TV crew following Ron around on these tours. Surely - if there is a golf channel and a world fishing network - there must be an appetite for a station that follows a group of eloquent middle aged beer hounds around rooting out the back woods beer traditions of small communities. And describing the local smoked meats that go with them. As they get snapped.

We need to put out nickels together and make this happen.

Some days are just slow for beer news but this photo caught my eye. What dramatic perspective...and a natty choice of slippers. A classic from the school of "nutty old guy in basement" art. Whippersnapper irony? Bah! To me, he's a sort of hero - but what would the caption be? Here are my best guesses:

• "...and I call this one the big can."
• "She said carpet but I said beer cans."
• "No, it's all the result of a misguided bladder health study I was in back in '68."

You got any?

So far with this Dutch brewer, I have liked Zatte more than Struis. Why must these things be? BAers, approvingly, tell me this is a Belgian pale ale and the bottle tells me it's a 9% brew. So far so good.

This beer pours an attractive orange amber with a huge fine cream head and a wicked case of the floaties. It gives off a very refined scent: floral, peach icing and oranges. In the mouth there is lots to love. A mouth feel that is more delicate than I would have thought at this strength. Marmalade, Irn Bru, cream, a reasonable dose of heat, some sub-astringent tea in the finish. Rich without being either cloying or heavy. Very nice stuff. Lekker even. $4.99 at Bella Vino last fall.

I just about flipped out when I saw this post over at 2 Beer Guys (from the April 16, 2008 issue of The Coloradoan) about the Odell Brewing Co. (with whom I am not familiar but which I am sure is nice and run by fine folk, and all) doing a limited run of a series of single cask beers - each brew never to be repeated and the cask retired:

...Each batch of the ale, which will have more vanilla and caramel tones, will make enough for only roughly 120 cases before the recipe is retired, creating an exclusivity factor not usually associated with beer. Each 750 mL bottle - hand-corked, hand-signed and numbered - will sell for $24.99. "It's a one-time kind of thing," John Bryant, Odell chief operating officer, said of the process they hope will put them at the forefront of the market.

Excellent. Because we all need another mechanism to raise prices through exclusivity. But am I being fair? Am I being a rogue consumer who is too tight with the wallet. I would encourage, first, that you consider two posts by Stan from last January in which he makes a number of points relating to overly limited runs of barrel-aged beer and the effect on price and popularity. And isn't that very last point, popularity counter-intuitive? Makes me wonder whether some of these high rated beers are a lot like the 60's - that many who claim to have experienced them were never really there.

But my point is more, I hope, to the point. What is the basis of a $24.99 price tag on these bottles of beer? Is anything else at that price point? I trust that each of you will consider your responsibilities as an active player in the market and avoid artificial inflationary events. And, sure, it will be a price that is paid but so is "jerk tax", that premium you pay whenever a vendor can get you for one reason or another. Why not $18.99 or $35.99? Using the math from the story, scrapping the barrel after only one use adds 450/1440 or 32 cents to each bottle or about a tenth that the corked bottle does (if what a US brewer told me last month is true.) Are you so out of control that you don't care? Are you the sort that will run to this, that will try to profiteer even? Or will you just say no? What do you fall back on to make this decision?

While I proudly hold on to the title of the last place you want to go for your brewing trade information, even my eye caught this bit of news from The Economic Times of India:

Pepsi enables farmers in Rajasthan to grow two-row barley as "it is the best variety to get good malting quality". India follows the six-row method, but two-row is the preferred choice world over. "We have been approached by brands like Heineken, Foster's and Carlsberg since they want quality barley for premium beer but our exclusivity with UB is coming in the way," says [PepsiCo India exports EVP] Mr Bose.

Unlike other winter crops, barley needs less water and is more tolerant to salinity and alkaline conditions than other crops. It is, therefore, of significance in areas where it is impossible to grow wheat crop, owing to unsuitable soil and insufficient irrigation. Geographically, Pepsi's chosen area, Rajasthan, complements the conditions. In Pepsi-speak, "Yeh Hi Hai Right Choice, Baby (Hic)"!

I had no idea there was "Pepsi-speak" out there, let alone Indian subcontinent Pepsi-speak.

But in non-Pepsi speak, the is interesting stuff as it is said to be Pepsi's first foray globally into the brewing supply industry. Barley's glory is its hardy nature and preference for marginal growing conditions. With the hike in the price of malt, there will be areas like parts of India which may move to start or increase production of top-quality malting barley to take advantage of the current windfall. For the rest of us this may mean a retraction on price in the nearish term as this new supply comes on line but also greater price stability as more sources of supply diversify buffers buyers from a drought here or a locust plaque there.

Hooray for the Indian farmers who partner with Pepsi so that we may have modestly priced craft beer.

Well, I am now coming up to half way through Amy Mittelman's book Brewing Battles and I have to tell you that as far as I am concerned this is the best book on US beer history I have had my hands on. That being said, I admit I have not got a copy of 1962's Brewed in America The level of research and detail is simply richer that found in Ambitious Brew and, unlike Beer In America: The Early Years, it's not just about the early years.

There are details about the relative standard of living of brewery workers, attention to the implications of the labour movement as well as little reliance on court documents, which I recognize as a lawyer as something of a wonky class of record to rely upon given its purpose. Many of the citations relating to contemporaneous articles, many from the brewing trade journals of the day. There is a good explanation of the role of taxation and beer from the Civil War when it became a prime source of Federal Revenue to WWI when income tax replaced it, thus assisting in the freeing up beer to be part of prohibition. While not as dry as Tremblay and Tremblay, there is an academic tone to the book but once you are rolling along with the text, it's not an issue.

It is true that the quality of the publication's layout, something of a sore spot apparently and really only a matter of pocket depth, but that should be overcome with the quality of the footnoting which, combined with internet news archiving and Google Books, allows the reader to corroborate much of the detail on the go if that is what you are into.

Buy it.

I want to say one thing. Where the heck did the days of whatchure fayvrit bock go? All these questions like who's your beer friend, what's your best beer place? I wish we'd get back to beer and a lot less about me...or you if you are another beer blogger. But at least this one is about me and beer.

There. Done. Off chest.

So, I was trying to thing of auspicious moments on my early years with good beer. I am a lucky guy who, at 45, started in my university years interest in beer in early 80's Halifax, a seaport town, that was interested in beer and drink and donairs and whether Keith's or Moosehead was better house draught. A place where one could say "it's a drinker" on a lovely day and know by midnight you;d be amongst 50 pals in the taverns, pubs and beverage rooms of our fair city's waterfront. I've written about the 1980s Halifax pub scene then in an earlier edition of The Session, but here are some notes:

In frosh week of 1982, my second year of undergrad, I decided unfortunately to drink a large amount of MacEwans Scotch Ale much to my later distress. Twice that night I noticed that it went down with the consistency of HP sauce and was quite different from the local Nova Scotian lagale I had been drinking.

The next year, 1983, the college bar had a "beers of world" weekend and we all drank Dortmunder Union which came in in very thin glassed bottles with light grey labels. Not too long after, Maxwell’s Plum, an imports bar opened in Halifax.

Soon after that on Christmas Eve 1985, I ran into my high school pal, Pete, at his new gig bartending at The Thirsty Duck put on a new keg of the recent novelty arrival Guinness. We went through a fair bit of that at that pub, too.

In 1986, the Halifax scene takes another jump with the Granite Brewery (now also of Toronto) at the old Gingers location on Lower Barrington, started up its experimental brewing with a variety of levels of success. About that time, the New Brunswick micro Hans Haus or Hanshaus started in Moncton and, according to Brewed in Canada, lasted five years. They brewed a lighter lager but also a beer that I recall as being like a marzen, darker and flavourful.

In 1985 I am in Holland working and traveling in France and the UK will college pals and, again at the end of 1986, I am to be found backpacking in the UK, in the pubs trying what's ever going. The latter time I visit the Pitfield Beer Shop which Knut visited in 2005 and buy two homebrewing books, one by Dave Line and the other by Tayleur as well as some basic equipment I expect I can't get back in Canada like polypins. I still use some of that stuff as well as those authors' more basic brewing techniques.

But I think the real break came when I got the November 1987 issue of The Atlantic and read the article "A Glass of Handmade" - an article that gave me a sense there was something happening in North American outside of Halifax, that was maybe like the UK, that was maybe something to look forward to. I wrote about that back here and even sorted a copy of the article for posterity in my bloggy archives. Go read it again - it's a great snapshot of where craft brewing was in 21 years ago and reminds me of what I was thinking about when I was first learning about what beer could be.

Why not? Why can't I have two new-to-me brews by Weihenstephaner in one week? The last one was a bit of a puzzle as I figured I knew what a weizenbock was but then realized I was off. Now I face a label that says "doppelbock and "dunkles starkbier" - maybe this is the replicant of Aventinus...though it's only 7.4%...hmmm. The brewery says:

A double bock beer that has what it takes. Not just for lovers of strong beer. With a malty aroma and great taste, our Korbinian is a true beer speciality. It goes well with smoked meat and fish as well as wild roasts and fowl.

Hey, that is great as I go well with smoked meat and fish as well as wild roasts and fowl, too. The beer pours a deep reddish chestnut with a fine mocha cream head. It gives off rich pumpernickel and cherry. In the mouth, it is a malt bomb with a slight tea hoppiness offering a little cut to the cloy. I have no idea what fish this is supposed to have gone with. Soft water chalky and sticky with spiced brown sugar, a little dark cherry and maybe even a nod to cola or treacle. Nice. Kinda like Old Peculier in a way now that I think of it. BAers give their love.

PS: don't forget that The Session is tomorrow!

Have I ever told you my Finnish joke? I heard it years ago on a BBC World Service show on the cultural nature of Finns. The joke goes like this:

Two Finns go to a cabin in the woods for a week of drinking. On the second day one Finn says to the other "shouldn't we have something to eat?" to which he received the reply "did we come here to drink or to talk?"

Rimshot!!!

I've been fascinated by Finland ever since I read all those John Le Carre spy novels about people crossing, hiding near or being shot at the Soviet Finnish border. When I was a backpacking kid in the 1980s, my Parisian hotelier upon hearing we were disembarking for Luxembourg suggested we might as well go to Finland if we were intent on finding a true absence of anything interesting. Yet we learn today that it is "Vapunaatto" or "Walpurgis Night." I think I have heard of the latter but I have apparently been operating under the assumption that former was a Micronesian island state.

Well it turns out that I was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see as now I know that today in Finland as well as eastern Scandinavia and Germany, this is party night. Plenty more details are here and here and here and here but essentially you have to wear a student cap on your head (as illustrated), put on your old style spyfrack or "vomit frock" and head out into the pasty crowd for some good old gorging on sima, a homemade mead carbonated with yeast. The BBC reports:

The students use the festival as an opportunity to get blind drunk, and in the capital, Helsinki, tradition sees the "capping" of the statue of the mermaid Havis Amanda (the "darling of the sea") spraying her with champagne and adding soap to the fountain at her feet to signal start of the party!

What good fun! It appears to be May Eve or the beginning of spring...or the end of college...or the "hey is that sima!" festival.

Troy has the story today about who Weihenstephaner is coming to Ontario for a seasonal release. The importer, Beer Barons, is new on the scene but (t)he(y) was good enough at the end of last year allowing the panel here at A Good Beer Blog study both the weisse and the dunkel carefully. We were very pleased.

In celebration, I thought I would pop the brewer's weizenbock even though it says "Brewed Under The Purity Law Of 1516" as opposed to "Brewed Under The Purity Law Of 1516 As Amended Over And Over Thus Allowing Rather Than Banning Wheat Beer".¹ Other weizenbocks I have tried include Aventinus and...errr...that's about it. Though I've had the knock-out punch of the 12% Aventinus Eisbock as well.

This brew unexpectedly pours just a notch of gold darker than a hefeweizen, its weaker cousin. Nothing like the darker nutmeggy figgy pudding of a beer that is Aventinus, though I am still unclear on the gradations of these things...maybe Aventinus is a doppelweizenbock. Cloudy and actively carbonated, the white rocky head gives off loads of banana and clove. In the mouth it is very cream banana-ish with herbal notes as well as spice. A nice grainy profile with a biscuity or even sponge cake thing happening. I really like this 7.7% hefty brew. Great BAer respect.

¹ ...and a law which Unger at page 109 of Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance notes was more for tax efficiency than purity while Hornsey points out at pages 320-321 that it only applied to town or commercial brewers and was more about reserving other cereals for other purposes. And Ron says it's old bollocks. Now, back to what you were doing.