Don't get fresh with me

Beer is a foodstuff. As with most foodstuffs, beer is perishable. It deteriorates as a result of the action of bacteria, light, and air. With some beers such as the big macrobrew companies this is important because their products do not have the higher alcohol or a higher hop level that many craft breweries have and will break down faster. Some imported beers and craft beers can actually age like wine if they have a higher alcohol or hop content since these act as preservatives. Even the biggest beer will eventually break down and become oxidized and develop a sherry type flavor and this is quite acceptable and is often looked for by beer aficionados. The Boston Beer Company was among the first to use freshness dating, as far back as 1985. Anheuser-Busch has followed suit with its much-publicized "born on" dates and I will say this for them, unlike some of the other big macrobreweries they do come in and check their products on a regular basis and they will pull any product that is getting close to it's expiration date.
Breweries have a couple of different ways that they can use to extend shelf life. The two primary forms of stabilization are sterile filtration, in which the beer is passed through a filter that will not let through anything larger than 0.5 microns; and pasteurization, where the beer is heated briefly to kill any microbial wildlife and yeast. Both approaches are widely used and both can change the flavor of the beer. A third, traditional option for preparing a beer for its journey which is a polar opposite of pasteurization is to bottle condition the beer by actually letting the yeast continue to grow in the bottle, the yeast eats up any remaining oxygen in the bottle and helps preserve it.

Imported beer can have a rough ride on its way to your glass. First, it must undergo a sea voyage, hopefully in temperature-controlled containers. After sitting in the customs warehouse, it must pass through an importer's warehouse and then sometimes passes on to a regional wholesaler before being to a local distributors warehouse before coming to the retailer. In the best case, the beer will have temperature-controlled storage all the way through and the place where you purchase the beer will also keep it cold. Buying a beer sitting out on a store floor means that the beer will not last as long or be as fresh as one that has been kept cold. Beers produced for consumption in European Union countries are required to have an expiration date on the packaging. In some cases where the beers will age over time some Belgian breweries have made a farce of this requirement by saying that their beer is best drank before 20 years out.

What, if any, difference does packaging make? Surprisingly, it can be quite a significant factor. If you have ever wondered why most beer bottles are brown or green, the answer is simple. The full spectrum of daylight can have undesirable effects on a beer in a rather short period of time. The ultraviolet portion of the spectrum is especially harmful; promoting chemical reactions that produce "off flavors" that will take the edge off the freshness of a beer. Dark glass greatly inhibits this photochemical effect, whereas clear glass leaves the beer within vulnerable to being light struck or has we all know what it does to Corona and become skunky.

So what can you do as a consumer to avoid being shortchanged with stale beer. Well, you can buy your beer at Papago but I know this isn't always possible or maybe for some unknown reason you need to buy beer someplace else. So try to purchase beer from reputable specialty stores with enthusiastic and knowledgeable staff. Check the bottle cap to see if there has been any seepage. And check the date if you have any question.

The following is a small list of some cellarable beers where you can ignore the best before date. First off, all Belgian lambics can be aged for 20 or more years. If a craft brewer has an anniversary beer, such as Stone does every year they can most likely be aged since they are usually higher in alcohol or hops. Anchor's Christmas beer also fits this mold. A couple of great imports to age are Chimay Grand Reserve Blue and Unibroue Quelquechose and one that just became available again in the state after a couple of year absence is Thomas Hardy Ale.

Prost, Ron

Bitter beer face

often get asked about different beer styles. Recently I was asked about what a Double IPA is. Basically Double IPA's, sometimes also called Imperial IPA's are really big, really bitter, really hoppy IPA's. By big, I mean high gravity, high alcohol beers. Double is used here kind of in the tradition of say, a doppelbock in Germany. It loosely means a lot more body and alcohol. It doesn't mean that it has double the alcohol or hops of a regular IPA although it sometimes can, it just means more. An extremely rich hop aroma is mandatory in a Double IPA. Typical Double IPA's use American hops and have aromas such as pine, citrus, and floral. Due to the large quantities of hops used in a Double IPA, you may find some of these beers to be cloudy due to the large portion of hop protein left in the beer. The hop flavor should be strong, but still clean. Intensely fruity hop flavors should be layered throughout the beer. The entire beer should be all about hops from the beginning to the end. The beer should be medium to full body. You may get a slight warming from the higher level of alcohol, but it should not remind you of a barley wine. The aftertaste should be dry and lingering as the beer passes down your throat. After a good Double IPA you should need a glass of water to rehydrate your mouth.
Many microbreweries have come out with very big IPA's to push the envelope. Now some places are even going farther and producing triple or quadruple IPA's. Our Double IPA is called Hopfather. BJ's in Chandler makes a quadruple IPA called Imperor which pushes the top of the hop envelope to an insane level at about 145 IBU's. Hop bitterness is measured on a scale called International Bittering Units or IBU's. The calculations are based on the percent of alpha acids in the hops, the amount of hops and the amount of time that they are boiled in the beer being brewed. Some people say that you really can't taste more bitterness than say 70 or 80 IBU's but I think they are wrong. Our Hopfather weighs in at 100 IBU's. I don't think we'll hit a limit on bitterness for some time. Back in Boston at the extreme beerfest I had a quadruple IPA that was supposed to be about 180 IBU's. I, for one, would very much like to push the hop level envelope and try to see just where the limit is. Sadly, I'll have to wait until I get back from Europe next month before I can do some experiments but maybe I'll have something cooked up in time for the Hopfest at the end of April.
I think IPA's became popular because they were the fullest flavored beers available. People simply got tired of the same ordinary beers all the time. Whatever you call it, Double, Triple or Quadruple IPA's are new craze in brewing, and there is something very special and unique about it. This is not a beer for the average beer drinker. It is definitely an acquired taste. If you have acquired that taste some of the Double IPA's we carry that you may want to try are Stone's Ruination (which will be available on draft this Sunday), Alesmith's Yulesmith, Bear Republic Racer X, Great Divide Hercules, Lagunitas Maximus, Moylan's Double IPA, Oskar Blues Gordon, and Reaper Sleighor,
Prost, Ron

Bread or Beer

After the Super Bowl I was watching the history channel and they had a story about who wrote the first bible, well don't ask me why, but it started me thinking about who made the first beer and an even better question of who first drank the first beer. Whomever it was their names are forever lost to us in antiquity.

The people who have really researched the topic have focused on Mesopotamia as the birthplace of beer since it is apparently the birthplace of grain domestication. Clay tablets thousands of years old indicate that the earliest beer was Sumerian. The thirst quenching beverage apparently played an important role in Sumer; the word for beer turns up in texts relating to medicine, ritual, myth and law. Wine coolers came along later and killed off Sumer.
Of course people can only hypothesize that nature made the first beer. If hunter-gatherers stored wild barley seeds in a container, eventually moisture would get in and the barley would sprout. Sprouted barley is more tender and sweeter than the hard grains; in sprouting, barley produces an enzyme that converts its starch to sugar. Sprouted barley would have become the preferred kind. Doubtless someone dried the sprouts for eating later. Wild yeasts are everywhere, and they would have found enough sugar in the sprouted barley to grow as soon as more water appeared. And sometime, people were hungry enough to try ingesting the "spoiled" fermenting barley. They would have received a fairly nutritious meal, since yeast reduces some indigestible and unpleasant substances in barley and increases B vitamins and amino acids. They probably gained a mellow buzz as well. Bonus. No grinding or baking necessary. And, it makes sense because it is hard to imagine that someone would have the gumption with precious food stuffs to experiment and make beer without it being done naturally first.
Anyway, about 50 years ago a University of Chicago researcher suggested a cause-effect relation between making bread and domesticating grain. He based his argument on evidence from archaeological excavations in what is now Iraq. A counter suggestion quickly came from a University of Wisconsin botanist. Wow, Someone from Wisconsin and Chicago arguing about beer. Go Figure. Anyway, the guy from Wisconsin said beer was the more likely reason. A symposium was quickly organized, given the shocking title "Did man once live by beer alone?" and the debate about why people became farmers began. Did they grow grain first to eat or to drink? I am firmly in the 'to drink' camp. When you think about it, it is really simple. In ancient times people could eat just about anything and survive, but bad water could kill you, so beer was eminently safer and more healthy to drink in order to survive.
To support the beer first theory is that one of the earliest beer-making recipes now known dates from about 1800 BC. The researchers found it encoded within a poem about Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing. Cereal grains were domesticated thousands of years earlier, so the Sumerian text only offers what the researchers called a "time platform" from which to look back, making inferences about earlier procedures. Superficially, a first inference would favor bread: the beer described in the Ninkasi poem was made from bread. So now we have the old chicken or the egg debate but the specific bread was prepared not so much for edibility as for long shelf life---it kept a long while without spoiling. It was eaten only during food shortages. How long did that last loaf of bread you bought last? The bread of that time was nothing like the bread of today. Basically from their research it appears that man made bread in order to store ingredients later used to make beer.
That, at least, is how the cheeseheads and me see it.
Prost, Ron

Beantown adventures

This past weekend I went back east to a chilly Boston along with Johnny to go to the second annual extreme beer festival. The weekend started out with us arriving in Boston Friday night and going out to a number of small local bars that Johnny used to hang out at when he was stationed in the Coast Guard there. I knew we were in trouble when at one of the bars which was named Sullivan's they were cleaning out the bathroom with a garden hose. Johnny made the mistake of trying to keep up with one of his old Coast Guard buddies and paid the price for it later that night. The next morning he didn't remember me kicking his butt on a new test version of Golden Tee that was in the Beantown Pub by 30 strokes. His new nickname is weeble wobble junior. Most of the bars there that we went to served pretty much the same beers. I found the Harpoon IPA to be to my liking and to be a nice clean IPA. Boston has more than their share of local pubs and following the Coast Guard rules we were supposed to not go past a bar without going in and we held tru to that rule.

The Extreme beer fest is put on by the guys who run beeradvocate.com, if you haven't checked out their website I encourage you to. So what is considered extreme beer? Extreme beer are beers that push the boundaries of brewing and are either high in alcohol, high in hops, aged in oak barrels or made with exotic spices or herbs. Pretty much like most of our Papago beers. Some of the different ingredients I saw included gingerbread, seaweed, wild rice, licorice root, saffron, dates, figs, imported chocolate, coffee beans, caraway seeds, jalapeno's, white pepper, plums, pine shoots and peanut butter. Pretty wild stuff and for the most part the different ingredients did work well in most of the beers including the peanut butter which was a peanut butter porter from Boston Beer Works.

The fest was on Saturday and consisted of both an afternoon and a separate evening session. In order to have beer at the fest the brewery had to be licensed in the state of Massachusetts so most of the beers were from the east coast. There were a few beers from out west, Avery, Stone, Grants, Rogue, Anchor and Lagunitas. The fest had a number of guest speakers, like Adam Avery who did a vertical tasting of 4 different vintages of the Reverend which gave people a chance to see the difference in flavors as a beer ages. Jim Koch of Sam Adams gave a talk on his triple bock and later he and I shared a "belt" of his Utopias together. Utopias is a 25% beer that is aged in oak barrels and made with a hefty dose of maple sugar. It tastes more like a cognac or sherry than a beer. They had a cask of it there and I ended the evening by helping to drain it. The current batch is in the oak barrels now and will be out later this year. Last year I think they made 8000 bottles and if I remember right I think Jim told me that they are going to make 10000 bottles this year. In my opinion it is worth the $130 or so for a bottle of it. Start saving your beer money now.

There were too many great beers at the fest to list here but of note I did really like a beer from Allagash from Portland Maine who had a beer called Curieux, which is a Belgian Tripel aged in Jim Beam oak barrels which gave it some great vanilla and coconut flavors. Smuttynose from Portsmouth New Hampshire had a wheatwine that was pretty close to our Churchill wheatwine. Of course Dogfish Head from Delaware was there with a couple of Randall's going. They had a 14% Raspberry beer called Forte that I didn't get to try because they ran out really fast that was served through a Randall full of Raspberry's. They did just get a couple of new fermenters that will help them increase their production and so they are saying we should have their beer by April or May. I did enjoy their 90 minute IPA and a fruit beer called Au Courant that had a great purple color. Lagunitas had an English style barleywine called Hairy Eyeball that was excellent. There was one brewery that really stood out as exceptional in my opinion called Founders from Grand Rapids Michigan. Sadly they are a pretty small operation so we won't see their beer out here. They had a number of good beers like their Breakfast Stout that was brewed with oats, chocolate and coffee and they had a second version called Kentucky Breakfast that was the same beer aged in an oak barrel. They also had a double IPA called Devil Dancer that was 13% alcohol and they said it had 175 IBU's which would make it even more bitter than BJ's Imperor. Their beer didn't taste that bitter though and I questioned them about it. They claim it didn't taste bitter because of the high malt and alcohol content. I might have to do some experiments at home to test out their reasoning. I know more malt will make a hoppy beer more balanced but I can't imagine how much malt it would take to balance out a beer that is supposedly that bitter.

I will admit that because these were extreme beers they did have a few beers at the fest that were even out there a little too far for me. Nashoba Brewing from Boston made a beer called Medieval ale that they brewed the week of the fest in which they didn't add any hops which made it undrinkable in my opinion. The Kelpie seaweed beer could have been left behind, not that it was bad, just nothing special. They were a couple of Finnish Sahti's there. Finnish Sahti is oldest and one of the last original beer styles in the world. They use Juniper instead of hops in it. The Sahti's I had were pretty sour tasting and tasted like a Belgian guerze and didn't really pair up with the other beers I was trying. Overall though the great beers far outnumbered those that weren't so good and I'll probably make this fest an annual event on my yearly beer tours.

Cheers, Ron

Ron 

Academy Awards

Sunday will be the 77th annual Academy awards where they give out the Oscars.
Beer has been a part of many movies and it is often portrayed as the drink of choice for working class stiffs and is viewed often as being somewhat low class and comical. Think about it, this year the movie "Sideways" gets nominated for an Academy award and it is about a couple of guys doing wine tasting. Why didn't they make a more realistic movie about guys going out beer tasting? Because if they did they wouldn't have been nominated for any awards. The movies almost never ever portray beer as the great tasting beverage that it really is.

If I had to hand out Oscars for beer and the movies I would have to give the Oscar for Best Actor to John Belushi for his portrayal of Bluto in Animal House. That movie wouldn't have been the same without John Belushi in that role. And yes, my top beer movie of all time would have to be Animal House. Can you think of any other movies that were responsible for creating a party trend around the country just by using two words? "Toga, Toga." Animal House is the pinnacle of beer drinking movies in my opinion but Strange Brew would have to be a close second. Any movie that can make jelly donuts and beer work together has to be a classic and who can forget such lines as "Take off Hoser." I can guarantee you that the movie "Sideways" won't ever have such an effect on our culture as those movies did.

The movies also always portray beer as a man's drink and not a woman's. That is just so sexist and false. Take Christian Slater in "Heathers", “This is Ohio. If you don’t have a brewski in your hand, you might as well be wearing a dress.” Beer itself has no gender and historically it was women who were predominately the brewers in ancient times.

The last movie to really portray beer in a positive light had to be a John Wayne film back in the 50's called "The Quiet Man". In one scene an Irishman is handed a glass of champagne at a wedding and promptly spits it out and looks sick until someone gets him a pint of beer. Classic. Oh, and if any Hollywood movie producers read this, "The Quiet Man" did win a couple of Academy awards.

Prost, Ron