Forget the question of whether styles are real and essential. Forget the question of whether beer styles have been accurately described and traced historically. The real issue is that the names of beer styles are a mess and cause consumer confusion. Andy raises the question of the name of one black hoppy brew and seeks resolution for this very good reason:
Well, I believe that styles are important, if for no other reason than consumers can have some reasonable understanding of what they might be getting when they select a certain beer. It is in the hopes of creating some logical détente that I humbly offer the following suggestions for resolving this seemingly intractable debate.
He then goes on to ask us to choose from a number of choices that have been bouncing around beer nerd circles like Black IPA, India Black Ale, and Cascadian Dark Ale. There is only one problem. They all suck as names. Let's be clear. They aren't related to India and they aren't pale, as Andy notes, but also no one outside of the Pacific NW actually knows what "Cascadian" really means. Plus, while the picture of me from 1992 shows I have a great long love of the Vermont Pub and Brewery and the work of the late Greg Noonan, the idea of calling it "Noonan Black Ale" suffers from the same problem, needing to know some sort of back story. Also, there is a minor sort of beer - perhaps not a style at all - that you see from time to time called Dark Ale. What's it taste like? Dark? That's like something tasting ice cold.
We can do better. We can make sense. If the point of the name of the style is to inform let's get to the point. The beer is black and it is bitter. Keep it simple. So call it Black Bitter. I might even try the stuff if it was called a name as swell as that.¹
¹Plus it already comes with its own 70s rock tune for the ad campaign. Just have to change the words a bit: "Whoa-oh Black Bitter! Bam-a-lam!!!" And, yes, I want credit.
I came across this reference to the malting of wheat in a 1869 series of essays and reports called The Annals of Albany. Apparently one Peter Kalm, a professor from a Swedish university, visited North America from 1748 to 1750 making some sort of economic and natural resources survey. He made these notes on 15 June 1749:
They sow wheat in the neighborhood of Albany, with great advantage. From one bushel they get twelve sometimes : if the soil be good, they get twenty bushels. If their crop amounts only to ten bushels from one, they think it very trifling. The inhabitants of the country round Albany are Dutch and Germans. The Germans live in several great villages, and sow great quantities of wheat, which is brought to Albany : and from thence they send many yachts laden with flour to New York. The wheat flour from Albany is reckoned the best in all North America, except that from Sopus or Kingston, a place between Albany and New York. All the bread in Albany is made of wheat. At New York they pay the Albany flour with several shillings more per hundred weight, than that from other places. Rye is likewise sown here, but not so generally as wheat. They do not sow much barley here, because they do not reckon the profits very great. Wheat is so plentiful that they make malt of it. In the neighborhood of New York, I saw great fields sown with barley. They do not sow more oats than are necessary for their horses.
This passage was referenced in an earlier quotation I included in an Albany ale post back in April and cropped in June but it has me thinking. If they aren't even growing barley and are malting wheat in 1749, then it is likely the strong ale that Sir William Johnson of the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany, was drinking from 1750 maybe to his death in 1774 was a wheat beer. But by 1835, the brewers of the area responding to a set of questions posed by the New York State Senate all respond by saying that they use pure ingredients including barley malt. I don't catch any reference to wheat malt. The use of barley by this point is corroborated by this quotation from 1827.
So - am I slowly, clumsily chasing two Albany Ales? A strong wheat ale made by the Dutch up to the latter 1700s and then a strong barley ale in the early 1800s?
I am curious about something. I don't know that I am personally all that evangelical about beer. When I have the beer I like and the people I like together it is as much about exploring or, rather, explaining my good beer obsession as it is about recruiting new members. Nope, the day I actually believe in that beer community thing is the day I find myself preparing pamphlets for a meeting: "maybe you might like to come to our rally? Here. Have some literature."
But I do give things away. I don't seem to be able to keep a copy of Hops and Glory, for example. I think that Pete's book justifies a lot for me and neatly converts what otherwise can be considered my wee problem into something interesting, even brainy. Other than books, I seem to push Beau's Lug Tread and Pretty Things Jack D'or on people new to good beer and dubbels on the next steppers. Notice the spicy yeast, I say. The bread crustiness in the malt.
Do you do this? Why and how? What is your favorite small gift or sharing beer? What makes it work for you?
Some days the only beer news is stuff that you really don't care a bit about. Today is that sort of day. Consider these gems:
Maybe there'll be a day soon when I will have something more than bullet points to post. Then again - maybe bullet points are the future of beer blogging.
OK, sure there are 700 wines at the subtitled restaurant dp, An American Brasserie - but they have Blue Point Lager, Dogfish 60 and Ommegang's Hennepin and others on tap as well as ten or twelve well selected bottles. The stash in the back of van might be better today at the end of our trip but I had an Aventinus with my NY strip loin. How many places can I do that?
Why were we there? Well, I got tired of hitting the highway hotels on my family trips and picked the moderately priced Hampton Inn in downtown Albany. How downtown? It sits behind the 1640s First Church of Albany. Is there an older continuous congregation in North America? A Catholic institution in Quebec perhaps? Is this now a Good Ecclesiastical Blog? No.
Anyway, the food was great and, after a surprisingly active drive through highway 2 across northern Massachusetts, taking on hairpins and deep gorges, it hit the spot. The kids were well mannered and the staff were good enough to jack up the background jazz a tad and give us a buffer of three tables or so. We do have a loud little one after all. Owner Yono Purnomo took time to say hello and was interested in the beery feedback.
This is the sort of thing we need to encourage. Not an island but a tide. A little good beer everywhere rather than a lot of good beer in a few places. After driving down the cliff east of North Adams, good beer and fine food was just the thing. Does it matter that they didn't have twice the taps or four times the bottles?
An odd beer story out of Canada's province with the best track record for coming up with odd beer stories. Apparently, the young are just not drinking enough macro-bleck:
Joel Levesque, Moosehead's vice-president, said the demographic that drinks the most beer, New Brunswickers aged 19 to 25, is shrinking and despite sunny weather, summer sales are down. He said that had sparked a fierce competition among the big brewers. "You entice people to take your brand by offering something that they can't get from their brand regularly, for example a T-shirt in the box or in this case, it's $5 coupons," he said. Levesque said there would be more discounts as major labels try to clear shelves by Labour Day.
Interesting to note that the province's craft brewers have no such worries - not competition at all as they are selling every drop they brew. And the government booze monopoly notes that there has been no overall drop in beer sales this summer. So, does this mean that people there are content to use their market power to force decision making in the brew economy? In that respect, demanding discount coupons for industrial beer or supporting craft brewers in this sense is a similar consumer response. And remember, too, that this is a border province where people are happy to slip over to Maine or Quebec for a better beer selection.
Isn't it the new generation of drinkers just following its own sense of good taste and good value? Wouldn't it be nice it was actually an example of the consumer getting its way even in a monopolist overly regulated marketplace?
Happy to have gotten the chance to have supper at The Portsmouth Brewery this evening here where Maine meets New Hampshire on the Atlantic shore. It's still cloudy and damp but at least the sheets of rain from earlier in the week are gone. Piling into a pub was just the thing.
I got the hefeweizen and a milk stout was ordered across the table. The hefe was rich and pineappled and the milk stout creamy chocolate. I had wanted to extend my relationship with the stout but the growler wasn't available. First, I was told oddly that milk stout can't handle being in a growler due to its low carbonation level. I gave my assurance that I was familiar with the style and a growler would be fine taking their caution into account. Then, coming back from checking, I was told there just weren't any growlers anyway. That made more sense.
We had their pulled pork, a veggie burger as well as chowders and a hummus dip. All were tasty and the service was friendly and fast. Best of all, the place was full of families like us with young kids and no one batted an eye. Prices were good with meals coming in at under ten bucks and the pints costing $4.50. I am consoling myself with the Red Sox and a Port Brewing Wipe Out IPA that I picked up the other day but a growler of the milk stout would have been pretty swell back here at the hotel.
There are summer beers for cooling you off in the sunshine. There are Octoberfest beers. There are imperial stouts for sipping as the winter weather howls beyond the doors. But what beer to have when the holiday is awash with rain?
I had a Mayflower porter last night which made a reasonable claim to filling that gap. No sour tang that I noticed but plenty of those dusty roasty things going on in the glass. Bought a six for $8.99 at Murphy's in Falmouth - an extraordinarily good value - and purchased within 35 miles of where it was made giving me that wholesome new age feeling of goodness that complying with 100 mile consumption edicts provide.
The BAers give it the love it deserves... but aren't porters a bit September? I know that' next week but you want to be certain about these things, right?
Bought this at Kappy's last week for $6.99 for the bomber. There was some statement that this beer blew away last year's Nugget Nectar in terms of hops and lavished the discerning palate with a face filling bunch of other flavours. I was sold at the $6.99 myself given the sad lack of Troegs beer in my life.
