More Near Beer-Menabrea 150 Anniversario Ambrata

I guess it's inevitable. An explosion in beer creativity is bound to lead to a lot of people stretching the boundaries. We can expect:

• good beer from places where beer was never good before
• beer that doesn't taste like the beer we're used to tasting
• a lot of questions about what beer is

Sudden shifts in definition have been around before. There was a moment in American history when beer containing less than .5% alcohol were the only legal game around. They were called 'near beer'(although whoever called it that was widely thought to be a poor judge of distance). For more on this aberration, may I refer you to  http://bit.ly/shortbeer.

I'm proposing reviving the term in a gentler, less judgmental way to refer to experiments that look like beer, and are marketed as beer but lack the sense of balance that we've come to associate with beer. Being both old and inclined to snobbery, I may never actually enjoy any of these drinks, but the world is moving so let's taste it as it goes.


Yesterday, at the pleasant In Riva in Philadelphia, we got to try Menabrea 150 Anniversario Ambrata from Biella in Piemonte. The bronzed, maple-syrupy color is completely congruent with this malt-heavy medium-bodied near beer. There's barely a trace of bitterness or acidity and the effect in the mouth is like a sophisticated soft drink: charming and sustaining. As far as we could tell, there was no food that would be a suitable companion.

So what's going on here? From the producers' point of view, there's a craft beer explosion in Italy right now and Italian creativity is getting an airing at breweries throughout the country. Tastes are changing, laws are being defied and rewritten. Brewers are using chamomile, spelt, peach jam, chestnuts, green pepper, pomegranates and hazelnuts.
For us consumers, it means that smart beerlist-makers are going to be using all this variation to bring interesting new beer to the table. There's a chance that our country, with its oversupply of Italian-themed restaurants will soon be seeing a flood of Italian-made beers, some carefully picked. It also means there will be a lot of amusing dead ends.

Small Triumphs/the post-hops age of beer?

Triumph Brewing in Princeton, NJ is a pleasant, ivyish sort of place, industrial brick with two-story stainless steel tanks for a back bar. There's a nice, predictable brewpub menu- bruschette, po' boys, grilled this'n'that- and friendly, post-graduate service.
We found seven beers on tap. Most of them were unsurprising, brewpubby and easy-drinking, but there were two that piqued our interest.
The first was the Honey Blonde (5%ABV). Normally, I'd read that name as a synonym for 'inoffensive light-weight' and pass it by, but it came with the sampler and so we got a pleasant surprise.  The Good Doctor grabbed it first: "nicely malty" she said, "with a little floral kick at the end." Even though I've never been kicked by a flower, I had to agree. Tasting more closely, the kick seemed to be from honey-from that meady thump in the mouth that honey leaves behind when its sugar is all fermented out. Let's think of it as an intriguing suggestion about what beer might taste like when this hops fad* fades.
The second was an intriguing Witbier.  Our waitress said it was modeled on Hoegaarden.
Now the Hoe (pronounced 'who') is a clean, silky beer with citrus and green apple notes. At just under 5% ABV it's that thirst-relieving, spirit-refreshing beer that people really want when they order one of the widely advertised taste-free fizzy drinks. I love the Hoe and we wouldn't get through summer without it. But this was a different Wit. Slightly stronger (5.9%), a little doughy with a just-detectable sourness at the finish. Another harbinger of a post-hop world? Stay tuned.

"I will definitely require more beer." she said.

*hops has only been around for four or five hundred years. In the history of beer it's a mere parvenu, a johnny-hopped-lately. Hopped beers, you could say, are a nouveau niche.

Beer is Serious Stuff

Beer is, at its best, a philosophers’ drink: it stimulates sensitive souls to ask questions without arousing the arrogance that might lead them to easy answers. 

Although we seem to have forgotten it, beer is worth your attention because it can be delightful, but it's also worth a moment's thought because it's been  important in the daily lives of many people and cultures for centuries.

For instance: outside of the wine growing countries of the Mediterranean, most adults in Europe drank beer all day and every day. Both water and milk were potentially dangerous. Beer and wine were both purified as they were made. So up until the seventeenth century, people-men, women and children drank some alcoholic beverage: wine, cider or beer. They woke up with it and they went to bed with it. These drinks didn’t contain as much alcohol as modern wines and beers, but everyone, mom, dad, the kids, the priest and the king were consuming alcohol all the time. Consider that life spans were short and that society was patriarchal. That meant that most of the world’s business was run by relatively young men who had a bit of a buzz on. In that light, does European history start to make a bit more sense? Does it help you understand bizarre events like the Crusades or the Hundred Years War? If the crew of folks who surrounded you at the pub last night had been in charge, would things have been any different?

Press the rewind button, more questions. When the first agriculturalists settled down to tend and harvest cereals, were they interested in baking bread or in brewing beer? Did the shift from home-brewing to industrial production of beer diminish the economic rôle of women in European society? 

It turns out that this beer is pretty serious stuff and for further confirmation, see the video below:






Still thirsty? Check out the Short Course in Beer at http://bit.ly/shortbeer

Hunting Saison

It's Chicago again, six days of book-signing, beer-tasting and carrying on in front of small groups of people who bought The Short Course in Beer ,  maybe to get in out of the rain.

Farmhouse (Saison) is usually described with the words spice, grass and barnyard, an earthy, elegant beer derived from a Belgian style that was brewed in the winter to be enjoyed in the summer. The essence of the style is in the flavors created by its particular yeast. There is a fair amount of fakelore about the style, but it’s fair to say that sometime in the 1880’s, the Dupont brewery in Belgium's  Wallonia brewed and bottled a Saison that became the standard. Dupont now provides the yeast to most of its neighboring breweries.

• The dean of farmhouse ales―in fact the very definition―is Saison Dupont (Vielle Provision). It has all the characteristics of the style plus a bit of new-mown hay. It has a spectacularly long and lovely finish.

• A bit more aromatic and alcoholic, Dupont also makes La Biere de Beloeil. It’s hard not to compare it to red Burgundy.

• Lost Abbey Brouwers Imagination Series Saison is a stronger version of the style with a hint of sweetness, a suggestion of honey and a fair amount of yeast and grassiness. (Note the word "brouwers." It’s the Flemish word for brewer and part of the tribute that American craft brewing is paying to its Belgian roots.)

• Fantôme Saison is a high ABV (8%) farmhouse, fruity and acidic with a Riesling-like finish: hard to find and definitely worth the hunt.

• Smuttynose Farmhouse from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is the best American example: earthy and peppery with a hint of sweetness. A work of genius that’s only available seasonally.
• Two Brothers Domaine DuPage is a malt-centered saison with bits of spice and citrus and a slightly woody aroma. Drink it for the chance to wallow in luxurious maltiness with just enough hops to keep things in balance.