It's Rhizome Time Again

Hops growing wild in Northern Italy

For homebrewers, hop vines are the source of bitterness and aroma. For home brew-gardeners, they are also a source of a bit of horticultural wonder. The hop bines (not vines) grow up to 40 feet (13 m) in the course of a summer and, if strategically planted, can provide shade in the hottest weather. The bines die back in the fall and allow the sun to add some heat when you need it.

Hops are grown from underground stems called rhizomes. You establish your hop garden by planting bits of these stems an inch or two below the ground level -in a spot that gets at least six hours of sun a day- and then providing a place for the bines to climb. (you’ll need at least 16 feet- figure the better part of a two story house) Since the harvest is continuous, it’s worthwhile to provide a framework that can be lowered for periodic harvests and then raised again. If that’s inconvenient, be prepared to get used to very tall ladders.

Once established, hop plants are generous providers: look for between one and two pounds of hop flower cones per vines. Try to establish a balance between bittering and aroma hops that reflects your homebrewing style, but don’t neglect to plant some extras to trade with your brewing friends.

The good news is that the hops rhizomes extend themselves as the plants are established. The bad news is that to keep your hop garden tidy and productive, you’ll need to regularly unearth the rhizomes and cut them back. The really good news is that all the extra growth that you trim away can be given to friends who can start their own hop gardens. The rhizome, by its very nature, encourages you to spread the wealth and promote homebrewing as you do.

Plant your garden in well-drained, fertile soil. Don’t be afraid to load on the water and the compost. Hops grow like crazy and they need moisture, sun and nutrients to sustain that growth.

When you select varieties, remember that there are fashions in hops just like there are fashions in counter-insurgency, tatoos and family therapy. Don’t overplant a single variety whose charm may wear off in a year or two. Remember too, that hops are a culinary herb and some varieties make soothing teas and contribute to tangy soups.

If you have an established hop garden, autumn is the time to trim back your rhizomes and refrigerate the cuttings as gifts for friends. If you are just beginning, now is the time to either beg rhizomes from your brewing buddies or place your order with one of the horticultural hop growers.

For complete growing instructions and suppliers of hops rhizomes, check out:

www.freshhops.com

www.thymegarden.com

www.hopsdirect.com

www.keystonehomebrew.com

Beer at Chez Panisse

You'll find Chez Panisse on a pleasant, food-oriented street in
Berkeley, California's 'gourmet ghetto'. Or maybe you won't. The
restaurant is as inconspicuous on the street as it is prominent in the
gourmet guides. We navigated by counting the street numbers; when it
looks like you're at 1517 Shattuck Avenue, stop. That camouflaged
store front with the wisteria? That's it.
We ate upstairs in the Café: the second-label restaurant. My general
feeling is that second-labels have all of what I value most in a
restaurant-delicious food and drink-without making me pay for the
atmospherics which I value a lot less.
For an right-coaster, the atmosphere in the dining room is both
comforting and a bit unsettling. It's comforting because the staff has
that perfect left-coast balance of informality and competence: smiling
pretty people who know what they're talking about. The unsettling part
is that we've become used to the best restaurants having a certain
attitude that suggests that, while they're glad we're there, they are
not entirely sure we're worthy of the experience.

We passed up the $24. tasting menu of Garden Lettuce Salad, Hand-cut
pasta with tomatoes, basil and Bellwether Farm ricotta and a meyer
lemon sherbet with candied mint. The apps were loaded toward the
seafood and garden side. I had Monterey Bay squid roasted in the wood
oven with cherry tomato salad, ($12.) mostly because I've never had
roasted squid or even thought about roasting it and this seemed like
the place to give it a try.
The squid hit the sweet spot between tender and firm in a way that
I've never even imagined, much less tasted. The wood-oven taste was an
excellent stand-in for the usual grill flavor and the salsa was more
like a roast cherry tomato in (blended?) olive oil. The flavor of the
tomato skin had migrated to the oil and the result was lightly herbed.
My companion, a serious non-foody with a professed squid aversion ate
about half and fought me for bread dipping rights.

Of course, the realities of profit margins and modern dining customs

mean that there's a lot more wine than beer on Chez Panisse's drink

list. There were four local drafts and six bottles-half Belgian, half local.

I ordered a pint of Drake's Amber Ale ($6.) and the service of this
otherwise tasty beer was the only low point in the lunch. The beer
was served in the near-frozen zone in a frosted glass. This amber is
yummy, but lightly built; light fruit, light roast, light malt and all
that lightness was subdued, no, beaten into submission by the low
temperature.
My cousin-companion ordered grilled Hudson Ranch guinea hen breast
with green beans. We weren't surprised to find out that these folks
know how to roast a bird. What was surprising was the ribbons of fried
potato done up in a neutral cooking oil that tasted more like potatoes
than the deep frier.
I had Half Moon Bay sand dabs with pepper salad and herb mayonnaise.
The dabs, which are flatfish like flounder were plump, lightly breaded
and perfectly, suck-the-bones, succulent. I ordered a bottle of La
Chouffe, (33 cl, $$7.75) the spicy, bready, velvety belgian ale and
asked for a room temperature glass. The beer may have been a bit too
big for the fish, but when you put the mayonnaise in the pan, the
scale balanced out very nicely indeed.
For dessert, cuz had Almond Ice Cream with bittersweet chocolate
sauce, ($8.75). There are scarcely words for the nutty complexity that
they teased out into that ice cream-enough to make you believe in ice
cream again if you ever had doubts. I had the interesting, but less
overwhelming Black Mission Fig tart with a Sauternes zabaglione. ($9.25)
The puff pastry was well-fatted and the figs moderately interesting.
Sauternes sabayon however, turns out to be one of the great ideas of
West Coast cooking, the grapey, concentrated flavor surviving and
starring in the middle of the eggy sauce.

Service is included at 17% and the bill came to $116. Not so cheap for
lunch, but a great bargain for great theater

Why take A Short Course in Beer?

In the last few months, as I've been telling people about my next book, some of my more polite acquaintances seem puzzled by its very existence. (The less polite are amused.) Why would anyone want to take a course in beer? Isn't college really a four-year course in beer already? In a way, it's those attitudes that were part of the reason for this book

I wrote The Short Course in Beer because it’s time to learn what much of the world already knows: beer is complex, delightful and an interesting companion to good food. There are so many people who have discovered this lately that there’s a community of beer-lovers developing that’s devoted to and knowledgeable about good beer. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but this beer-loving community seems attached to some solid, earthy values that seem suddenly appropriate. Beer has become the drink of the energy-conscious, conservation-oriented, planet-sparing gourmet. You can raise a glass of something delicious and be on the side of the angels.
If you haven’t been paying attention, you might be surprised by all this: beer used to have a bad reputation in some places and it may have even earned that reputation once upon a time. How seriously could we take a drink associated with:
•• Drunken kegger parties,
•• lager-crazed soccer fans
•• freezing-cold tasteless liquid and
•• moronic TV commercials

But things have changed. Some of the most creative minds in the world of taste are brewing delicious beer and others are cooking food to complement it. Historic craft-beer traditions are being revived, and new ones are being created. Brewpubs are brewing their own beer and home brew enthusiasts are following suit. There are craft-beer festivals and beer tasting parties. For the competitive types, there are even competitions and medals and bragging rights. Most of all, there’s a lot of startlingly delicious, beautiful beer available for your pleasure. It’s time to get in on the fun.

When you finish this book, you will
• Know that beer is a truly complex and wonderful drink, worthy of your attention and a companion for the finest food.
• Be able to make sense of all those wonderful flavors.
• Know how beer is brewed and where its flavor comes from.
• Understand the difference between the beers that are worth your time and digestion and the ones that aren't.
• Have a few thoughts about the place of alcohol in life.
• Appreciate the intimate relationship between beer and civilization
• Know how to find and enjoy a good brew and have a laugh at the rest.
• Be able to speak knowledgeably about beer, whenever knowledgeable speaking is appropriate.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you about the book and about events in the world of beer.

Fermentation Gets its own Curator

Good beer seems to be everywhere in Philadelphia so you may not be surprised at the news news from one of America’s oldest landmarks. Cliveden is a national trust historic site in Philadelphia’s Germantown area. The site-officially known as Cliveden of the National Trust, consists of a mansion and its outbuildings set in a beautiful, breezy, tree-shaded park.
Cliveden earned its place on the National Trust Register as the site of the battle of Germantown in the American Revolution. Then it was home to seven generations of the aristocratic Chew family, but it’s worked its way into the affections and current life of the city as the host of innovative educational and cultural eventts. This place is a lot more than a landmark.


So it’s worth noting that Cliveden just appointed its first Curator of History and Fermentation. Curator of Fermentation? Yup. His name is Phillip Seitz and along with his historian’s duties he is liason to the site's growing calendar of beer activities and to the Cliveden Brewers-its on-site brewing club.- Seitz has had an important role in the development of new ideas and programs for years, but the new title recognizes the way Cliveden has become the unofficial Mother House of the good-beer movement in Philadelphia .

After eight years with Cliveden the time has come for this recognition, says Executive Director David Young, and this special recognition is especially timely. "Hey,” he adds “it's cheaper than giving him a raise, so why not?"
For more information on Ciiveden and brewing at Cliveden, call: 215-848-1777

To learn more about good beer, check out The Short Course in Beer.

Taxing beer to Death

If you can't outlaw beer, you might as well tax it to death.

Just when it looks like Prohibition was dead, with a stake firmly planted in its miserable little heart, you get a surprise. The evil impulse to spoil someone else’s fun has reappeared-this time in the form of a proposal for a twenty-fold increase in taxes on beer in the otherwise brew-friendly state of Oregon.
The arguments there are pretty familiar:
•Increasing the tax will reduce underage drinking. Will it? Studies show that most teenagers who drink are drinking wine and distilled spirits.
•Oregon’s low taxes and large number of breweries creates a climate that encourages adults to tolerate underage drinking. But Oregon, with taxes that are almost the lowest in the nation has a rate of underage drinking that’s about the same as the national average.
•Higher beer taxes can support more alcohol and drug education and treatment. Perhaps they can, but beer drinkers are not responsible for all the abuse of other substances that cause social problems. Is it time for a tax on previously illegal narcotics? Household cleaners? Aerosols? Prescription pain-relievers and other psychoactives?

Picking beer for a tax hike is easy because beer is easy to pick on. In 1990, Congress raised taxes on ‘luxuries’ like limos, fur coats, jewelry, yachts, and private ‘planes. The same legislation doubled the federal beer tax. This drastic increase is estimated to have cost more than 60,000 jobs in breweries and related industries. Lobbyists for special interests were able to get all of these taxes repealed-but the one on beer remains. The tax component of the cost of a glass of beer now averages 40%. Direct excise taxes amount to somewhat less, amounting to a national average of about 70 cents per gallon.

In case you haven’t noticed, that money hasn’t supported any particularly effective drug policies. What may be more to the point is that at a time when the Senate has just passed a law rolling back the taxes on inherited fortunes of over $3million dollars, posting a ‘luxury’ tax on beer is penalizing the wrong people.

A look at the Consumer Expenditure Survey shows that beer taxes are regressive, costing lower- and middle-income taxpayers many times more than those in the middle-income range. They are also pretty reliable job-killers.

(Legislation to return federal beer taxes to previous levels and provide a minor assist to medium-sized brewers has been introduced to Congress as S. 1995 by Senator Ken Salazar (D-Co) and H.R 1610 by Congressmen Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) and Phil English (R-Pa).)

So what’s behind the move in Oregon? Culturally, it’s a long story, but the tag line is the same: it used to be easy to pick on beer as the sinful pleasure of the least powerful people. Some people think it still is. If you’re one of the people who wants to make beer a better-defended target, this might be a good time to call your representative in Congress.

For more on Beer and Its Enemies, may I humbly suggest:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601641915

The Beer Bistro-Toronto

Most of the great beer bars in the world seem to exude patina. The décor- the wood, the leather, the mirrors, even the light itself tends to suggest that it’s all been there forever and that somehow, it wishes you could be too. In this respect as in several others, Toronto's Beer Bistro is radically different. It is a place that’s designed to challenge and change the way people think about beer
The main room is high-ceilinged with huge light-gathering windows and an air of shininess. In an architectural translation of the house style, the bar is separated from the dining room by no more than a line of banquettes.
The menu nods to some traditions, but it’s a brief nod indeed. Chef Brian Morin takes off on some inventions that explore the possibilities of beer as an ingredient in food as well as an accompaniment to it. The whole business is pulled off with exceedingly good humor and not a hint of pretension.
You can get the feel of the place by ordering the corn dog. For those of you who haven’t been to a state fair or a boardwalk lately, the corn dog is a hot dog dipped in corn meal batter, fried and then put on a stick to be eaten out of hand. At the Beer Bistro, the pair of corn dogs are made from molded duck leg confit and served with a pineapple mustard and a house-made cherry beer ketchup. Put aside the fact that pineapple is the lover that mustard has been waiting for all these years and that the ketchup begs to be eaten with a spoon. Concentrate on the richness of the duck and the crispness of the batter and the heightened sensitivity that these little condiments create in you mouth. Try to remember to breathe, sip your beer.
Salmon sliders are strips of salmon, house-cured in beer served on blinis with a capered cream cheese and micro-thin slices of red onion. The blinis are just firm enough to be a foil for the moist fish and the whole combination of taste and texture is just crying out for a beer to make it complete. The house suggests underchallenging them with a belgian wheat beer, you could just as easily confront the taste head-on with a pilsner.
Mussels are pretty much old-hat in a beer bar, but baked mussels florentine open up a whole new field. Without subverting the firm, oceanic character of the mussels, baking opens up a whole realm of possibility. In this case the shellfish are topped with cubes of beer-cured bacon, three cheeses, sauteed spinach, arugala, shallots, and garlic butter. The menu urges you to try Saison Dupont and that seems just about perfect.

You expect beer bar service to be friendly and casual-after all this is beer which even at its most elegant is somehow easy, effortless and available. At the Beer Bistro, you get that and a little more. Listen to manager Kathleen McGinn: “Our staff feels like teachers. We want customers to be confident that if they have questions, their server has answers.” The wait staff goes to regular on-premise beer school and they are more than just knowledgeable, they understand that the point of all that knowing is for you to end up drinking something wonderful.
Then there’s the matter of beer ice cream. (I'm having a hard time believing that I used those words together in a sentence.) You’ll just have to try the one made from Jamaican stout and chopped candy bar.
The owners of The Beer Bistro describe the place as worldly, casual and elegant, just like you and me. They also say that everything is made from scratch, no shortcuts, no premix. They bake their own bread, cure their own bacon and salmon, smoke their own short ribs. They are the first of their kind in this large, exciting city and unlike most pioneers, they seem to have found exactly the right path. It’s time for the rest of the city-and maybe the rest of the world- to play catch-up.

For more about beer, check out The Short Course in Beer at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601641915