While most of my beery pals are off enjoying beery things in San Diego at the National Homebrewers Conference, I'm stuck here in rainy St. Paul. On the up side, I'm enjoying the fact that a horrible schedule and a limit to entry numbers meant that I have absolutely nothing invested in the AHA competition this year. Instead, I'm enjoying my still really insanely good brown porter, my really awfully good English cider, and my pretty good if not quite perfect IPA in relative peace. And looking forward to that open-fermented Helles, which is now kegged, carbonated and ready to go on tap next, along with a nice schwartzbier. A lagery July is in order then!
Meanwhile, Mark Garrison has written a nice love letter to Japanese craft beer. A few interesting points deserve mention, though the full article is definitely worth a read. First, it's early days yet for the craft beer scene in Japan. Despite the back and forth in the US over whether the term "craft beer" really means anything anymore, it clearly did in an earlier era when the scene was getting off the ground. So it does in Japan, where beer lovers complain in similar terms about the "big 4" of Asahi, Kirin, Suntory and Sapporo. Moreover, while craft beer bars are popping up, Garrison reports that a shocking 40% of all craft beer gets to customers through mail order. That's dedication!
Second, the Japanese craft brewers tend to be also sake-makers (as is true with Hitachino Nest, widely available in the US), so despite the fact that it's still early days in the movement, the quality is quite high. And the brewers tend toward a very Belgian-like relationship with spices and flavorings such as ginger. My only reference point for this is Hitachino Nest, but if half the brewers are doing this half as well as they are, Japanese drinkers don't know how good they've got it.
Showing posts with label For the love of it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label For the love of it. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Saturday, May 21, 2011
An interesting parallel
I don't know much about wine, really. I do like reading some of the discussions about wine, and I've even posted about it too. The wine writing for Slate I particularly like because Mike Steinberger often right to the heart of debates in the wine world.
The most recent article is here. I love it because it's so very parallel to debates in the beer world, but it gives me a bit of perspective since I have no particular axes to grind about wine. His newest article is about the debate over ever-increasing alcohol and fruit-bombiness in wines. Steinberger's preferences are pretty plain -- enough is enough. But in the end, his call is for variety instead of limits. Sure, let the high-alcohol fruit bombs fly, just so long as there are other choices available.
It's a great point and one that is definitely germane in the beer world, where people like me are always carping that "special" beer is often equated with "high alcohol and over the top flavor". So I end up championing the more subtle, if no less wonderful, beers that I think get overlooked. But the point should really be about variety -- let's get a range of different flavors on the bar there!
A couple of points:
The most recent article is here. I love it because it's so very parallel to debates in the beer world, but it gives me a bit of perspective since I have no particular axes to grind about wine. His newest article is about the debate over ever-increasing alcohol and fruit-bombiness in wines. Steinberger's preferences are pretty plain -- enough is enough. But in the end, his call is for variety instead of limits. Sure, let the high-alcohol fruit bombs fly, just so long as there are other choices available.
It's a great point and one that is definitely germane in the beer world, where people like me are always carping that "special" beer is often equated with "high alcohol and over the top flavor". So I end up championing the more subtle, if no less wonderful, beers that I think get overlooked. But the point should really be about variety -- let's get a range of different flavors on the bar there!
A couple of points:
- It's very clear in the wine world that the preference for bigger, bolder, more alcoholic has been driven by the Robert Parker palate, and the ratings systems that tend to favor the wines he likes (and thus the bigger, jammier wines). It's less clear in the beer world, where just don't have any one central voice or palate driving preferences. It does seem clear that even more democratic, mass-rating sites like Beer Advocate and Rate Beer tend to reward the bigger, bolder beers in the same way though.
- Steinberg makes the very good point that actually even in blind tastings, even people who think they prefer more restrained wines actually prefer the bigger ones! That is, wine makers go big because they are rewarded for it in the market. Again to the beer world: clearly people do go for bigger and bolder.
- Is this an effect (see point 2) driven by those first getting into craft beer, as some have suggested, or is it a general preference? I'm not really sure. Another idea though is that it depends not just on palates but on how much. I see this all the time in judging at homebrew competitions. Judges too tend to go for bigger and bolder, even within a given style. I think that's often because they are taking small sips, rather than drinking the beer as they would in a bar. To me, a perfectly legitimate question is not just "which do I prefer" but "which would I want to have two of?"
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wine descriptors and BS and figuring out what I think
Should we really try to emulate the wine world in our descriptions of beer? It's an endless debate and I admit I go back and forth on this. The question was brought up for me again by an interesting article in Slate (here) which calls out the wine world for very clearly being influenced by price more than actual flavors in the descriptions.
The sharpest critics call the high falutin wine descriptions out as bullshit and I can't say I completely disagree.* It's also elitist -- it's a pose as much as a position; it's meant to signal the author's own refinement and sensitivity as well as to demarcate those who "get" such descriptors from those clods who don't or can't or never had the chance to compare "truffle" and "graphite" or "black currant" and "fig". And it's also funny and slightly ridiculous and everyone knows it. (Soupçon of asparagus anyone?)
Still, I'm not quite so sure beer folks should throw out the idea of building better descriptors. I also prefer the more technical definitions of a beer, at least at first -- I want to know if it's dry or sweet, bitter or malty, thick or thin on the tongue. But "bitter" doesn't say much about the actual character of the flavoring hops -- are they like blackberry or pine tar, or are they like a squirt of grapefruit up your nose? And what about the character of the malt? Sometimes "fig" actually is what it tastes like!
I guess when it comes down to it, I think problem in the wine world is the pretension rather than the actual descriptors. Most beer descriptors are pretty direct and unpretentious -- even when we are talking about the non-mainstream beers. Almost everyone know what grapefruit tastes and smells like, right? And pine tar? And more than once I've heard things at competitions along the lines of "this beer smells like apple Jolly Ranchers, doesn't it?"**
But sometimes the more exotic descriptions are actually apt and probably they are worth keeping. There is a difference between black currant and fig, and beers can sometimes have either of those flavors. And if you've never had either -- well, maybe it's time to live a little. Sometimes water character can lead a beer to taste "flinty" or even "gravelly". And no, I don't go around licking gravel, but your nose can and should pick up those "flavors" and sometimes you're sitting there trying to describe a beer and they seem right. And if someone describes an aroma in your beer as "sultana" instead of "raisin" or "white grape" or something, then maybe ridicule them for being obnoxious. But immediately after that, try your beer and see if just maybe they're on to something.
(I thought this was going to be a short post! By the way, Pete Brown has an interesting writeup of a wine/beer pairing comparison where he ends up favoring the wines, at least for some dishes. It's here if you haven't seen it.)
Notes:
* Personally, and this is just me, but I would prefer a different methodology for both of these. Instead of figuring by probability of a word for expensive or inexpensive, for example, why not use the data to build a vocabulary, and then cluster (or some similar relational method) by co-occurence? Then test for differences across the price? That way, you can talk about types of descriptor. And you can test whether the differences actually compare with differences in the taste of the wines.
** I've also myself described some beers as smelling "like banana Now-And-Laters," especially the American beers that try for a Belgian thing without really handling the yeast well. Actually the wikipedia list of Now-And-Later flavors is a good, non pretentious place to start with white wine descriptors too!
 |
| I'm getting cassis and flint. |
The sharpest critics call the high falutin wine descriptions out as bullshit and I can't say I completely disagree.* It's also elitist -- it's a pose as much as a position; it's meant to signal the author's own refinement and sensitivity as well as to demarcate those who "get" such descriptors from those clods who don't or can't or never had the chance to compare "truffle" and "graphite" or "black currant" and "fig". And it's also funny and slightly ridiculous and everyone knows it. (Soupçon of asparagus anyone?)
Still, I'm not quite so sure beer folks should throw out the idea of building better descriptors. I also prefer the more technical definitions of a beer, at least at first -- I want to know if it's dry or sweet, bitter or malty, thick or thin on the tongue. But "bitter" doesn't say much about the actual character of the flavoring hops -- are they like blackberry or pine tar, or are they like a squirt of grapefruit up your nose? And what about the character of the malt? Sometimes "fig" actually is what it tastes like!
I guess when it comes down to it, I think problem in the wine world is the pretension rather than the actual descriptors. Most beer descriptors are pretty direct and unpretentious -- even when we are talking about the non-mainstream beers. Almost everyone know what grapefruit tastes and smells like, right? And pine tar? And more than once I've heard things at competitions along the lines of "this beer smells like apple Jolly Ranchers, doesn't it?"**
But sometimes the more exotic descriptions are actually apt and probably they are worth keeping. There is a difference between black currant and fig, and beers can sometimes have either of those flavors. And if you've never had either -- well, maybe it's time to live a little. Sometimes water character can lead a beer to taste "flinty" or even "gravelly". And no, I don't go around licking gravel, but your nose can and should pick up those "flavors" and sometimes you're sitting there trying to describe a beer and they seem right. And if someone describes an aroma in your beer as "sultana" instead of "raisin" or "white grape" or something, then maybe ridicule them for being obnoxious. But immediately after that, try your beer and see if just maybe they're on to something.
(I thought this was going to be a short post! By the way, Pete Brown has an interesting writeup of a wine/beer pairing comparison where he ends up favoring the wines, at least for some dishes. It's here if you haven't seen it.)
Notes:
* Personally, and this is just me, but I would prefer a different methodology for both of these. Instead of figuring by probability of a word for expensive or inexpensive, for example, why not use the data to build a vocabulary, and then cluster (or some similar relational method) by co-occurence? Then test for differences across the price? That way, you can talk about types of descriptor. And you can test whether the differences actually compare with differences in the taste of the wines.
** I've also myself described some beers as smelling "like banana Now-And-Laters," especially the American beers that try for a Belgian thing without really handling the yeast well. Actually the wikipedia list of Now-And-Later flavors is a good, non pretentious place to start with white wine descriptors too!
Friday, February 18, 2011
Beer for thought
What can you say when someone gets it so right?
Friend-of-the-little-beers Stan Hieronymus takes on the ranking mentality of Beer Advocate and Rate beer. The beauty of what he's writing comes in using a recent piece by Malcolm Gladwell (on the stupidly one-size-fits-all way of doing college rankings) to make a similar case for beer. It's a different take on the whole "style" debate.
(Stan's post is here.)
What's less clear is how one could do a better job. Pandora's music algorithm is one model Stan thinks about. But that's a pretty formal way of going about it! I think a more "wiki" way that is more tied to description than rating might work too. Think of the difference between book reviews and the star ratings of books on Amazon. Star ratings (even with short opinions attached) are kind of dumb for products like books--or beers--which people can approach in different ways and for different reasons.*
As Stan says, how do you compare a pils to an Imperial stout? Well, one way is to have knowledgeable people approach both on their own terms. Read and decide for yourself. Some movies and beers are objectively bad and people will likely agree. Some are good in different ways and will appeal to different people. My own model for thinking about this is Roger Ebert, who likes some movies I hate, and hates some movies I like. But I always like reading his opinions and get something out of it.
This is something he has written on, though I can't find it now. But a good example is his passionate takedown of 3D. Whether you agree or not, you know exactly what he thinks and why. By the way, I think his is also a good model for "best of" lists, which I think have their place. Yes, they are idiosyncratic, and that's a good thing. Make a passionate case, let others make their own passionate case for their own choices. If only more beer reviews were like that!**
Whatever you think on this, be sure to check out Stan's blog and the discussion underway there.
Friend-of-the-little-beers Stan Hieronymus takes on the ranking mentality of Beer Advocate and Rate beer. The beauty of what he's writing comes in using a recent piece by Malcolm Gladwell (on the stupidly one-size-fits-all way of doing college rankings) to make a similar case for beer. It's a different take on the whole "style" debate.
(Stan's post is here.)
What's less clear is how one could do a better job. Pandora's music algorithm is one model Stan thinks about. But that's a pretty formal way of going about it! I think a more "wiki" way that is more tied to description than rating might work too. Think of the difference between book reviews and the star ratings of books on Amazon. Star ratings (even with short opinions attached) are kind of dumb for products like books--or beers--which people can approach in different ways and for different reasons.*
As Stan says, how do you compare a pils to an Imperial stout? Well, one way is to have knowledgeable people approach both on their own terms. Read and decide for yourself. Some movies and beers are objectively bad and people will likely agree. Some are good in different ways and will appeal to different people. My own model for thinking about this is Roger Ebert, who likes some movies I hate, and hates some movies I like. But I always like reading his opinions and get something out of it.
This is something he has written on, though I can't find it now. But a good example is his passionate takedown of 3D. Whether you agree or not, you know exactly what he thinks and why. By the way, I think his is also a good model for "best of" lists, which I think have their place. Yes, they are idiosyncratic, and that's a good thing. Make a passionate case, let others make their own passionate case for their own choices. If only more beer reviews were like that!**
Whatever you think on this, be sure to check out Stan's blog and the discussion underway there.
Notes:
* I think about this a lot because in my real job I do a lot of book reviews for academic publications, and I am on the editorial board of a book review journal. In that capacity I worry a lot about the very anodyne, paint-by-numbers approach that most academic book reviewers use. There are reasons for this, but it absolutely kills actual, engaged intellectual debate. Which is the whole point.
** If only more book reviews were like that!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Bigger and friendlier?
This week I was thinking a lot about two stories that came up in the news. It got me wondering whether there might be an emerging "normal" trajectory for brash new startup breweries. Likely I'm full of it, but bear with me.
The first story was the news that local favorite Surly Brewing is planning and hoping to expand...a lot. Since starting up five years ago, they have grown quite a lot, and frankly part of their early marketing plan seemed to be to create huge word of mouth with big, brash, aggressive beers but rely on the scarcity of their supply to make them seem even rarer and more desirable.
The big, brask, aggressive part is easy to see -- call yourself "Surly Brewing" and label your beers things like "Furious" (their ridiculously hopped IPA)* or "Bender" (sort of a big porterish beer, my favorite of the lineup). While I don't know if scarcity was part of the plan or just a happy accident, it worked for them. They've had huge year-on-year growth, and a big expansion already, but the market is apparently nowhere near saturated with Surly beers.
So now comes the news that Surly is planning a new, $20m expansion which would include an entirely new brewery. Along with this, Surly is lobbying the Minnesota legislature for a legal change that would allow them to open a pub and restaurant in the complex, which they envision as a sort of destination spot along the lines of New Belgium or Stone I think.
The other story comes from the UK, where punk-rock themed brewing bad boys Brew Dog released a super-insanely high alcohol beer, clearly to compete with Utopias in the just-coz-we-can category. (It's 32% and they call it "Tactical Nuclear Penguin".)** But British beer blogger Mark Dredge this week also had a nice writeup about going up to Scotland and hanging out at the Brew Dog-run pub. ("Aberdeen is not as crap as I expected it to be") he begins.
But the story quickly runs to two points. Point one: despite the adolescent-with-attitude posturing that is clearly central to Brew Dog's brand image, the pub was nice. Not a punk rock hovel but "edgy" in the way that high-end hair salons are "edgy." And clearly a departure from the dim, dingy and depressing spots that make up most of Aberdeen's pubs, apparently.
Point two: their signature IPA (named "Punk" no less) has been reformulated. It was one of the beers Dredge championed before, but it now is slightly lower in alcohol, a touch sweeter, and definitely more approachable and quaffable. Dredge is impressed.
So there you have it. Two breweries that started up with great success and widespread acclaim, both trading on their edgy, brash attitude, outsider status, and focus on "extreme" beers. Both, in a matter of a relatively short time, becoming quite successful -- so much so that they are no longer really outsider beers but breweries catering to a relatively large and increasingly mainstream audience even as they do the occasional stunt beer.
Where exactly is the tipping point? And is it that the breweries have changed their attitude and approach or have the extreme brewers just dragged the mainstream over toward themselves? I don't know. But I will say that it's interesting to watch the bad boy brewers who start out screaming NO COMPROMISES start to mature into ... what? Semi-responsible semi-adults?
Notes:
* Surly refuses to call it simply a double IPA, as apparently that doesn't cover it. Nor have they seemed open to calling it a "triple" or something like that. Perhaps in deference to them we could call it a trans-dimensional IPA? Or is that too restrictive?
** Clearly, Surly is not alone when it comes to bombast.
The first story was the news that local favorite Surly Brewing is planning and hoping to expand...a lot. Since starting up five years ago, they have grown quite a lot, and frankly part of their early marketing plan seemed to be to create huge word of mouth with big, brash, aggressive beers but rely on the scarcity of their supply to make them seem even rarer and more desirable.
The big, brask, aggressive part is easy to see -- call yourself "Surly Brewing" and label your beers things like "Furious" (their ridiculously hopped IPA)* or "Bender" (sort of a big porterish beer, my favorite of the lineup). While I don't know if scarcity was part of the plan or just a happy accident, it worked for them. They've had huge year-on-year growth, and a big expansion already, but the market is apparently nowhere near saturated with Surly beers.
So now comes the news that Surly is planning a new, $20m expansion which would include an entirely new brewery. Along with this, Surly is lobbying the Minnesota legislature for a legal change that would allow them to open a pub and restaurant in the complex, which they envision as a sort of destination spot along the lines of New Belgium or Stone I think.
The other story comes from the UK, where punk-rock themed brewing bad boys Brew Dog released a super-insanely high alcohol beer, clearly to compete with Utopias in the just-coz-we-can category. (It's 32% and they call it "Tactical Nuclear Penguin".)** But British beer blogger Mark Dredge this week also had a nice writeup about going up to Scotland and hanging out at the Brew Dog-run pub. ("Aberdeen is not as crap as I expected it to be") he begins.
But the story quickly runs to two points. Point one: despite the adolescent-with-attitude posturing that is clearly central to Brew Dog's brand image, the pub was nice. Not a punk rock hovel but "edgy" in the way that high-end hair salons are "edgy." And clearly a departure from the dim, dingy and depressing spots that make up most of Aberdeen's pubs, apparently.
Point two: their signature IPA (named "Punk" no less) has been reformulated. It was one of the beers Dredge championed before, but it now is slightly lower in alcohol, a touch sweeter, and definitely more approachable and quaffable. Dredge is impressed.
So there you have it. Two breweries that started up with great success and widespread acclaim, both trading on their edgy, brash attitude, outsider status, and focus on "extreme" beers. Both, in a matter of a relatively short time, becoming quite successful -- so much so that they are no longer really outsider beers but breweries catering to a relatively large and increasingly mainstream audience even as they do the occasional stunt beer.
Where exactly is the tipping point? And is it that the breweries have changed their attitude and approach or have the extreme brewers just dragged the mainstream over toward themselves? I don't know. But I will say that it's interesting to watch the bad boy brewers who start out screaming NO COMPROMISES start to mature into ... what? Semi-responsible semi-adults?
Notes:
* Surly refuses to call it simply a double IPA, as apparently that doesn't cover it. Nor have they seemed open to calling it a "triple" or something like that. Perhaps in deference to them we could call it a trans-dimensional IPA? Or is that too restrictive?
** Clearly, Surly is not alone when it comes to bombast.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Pining for British Beer
Pete Brown's November v-blog is out and he's talking about new beers and breweries around London. It's always interesting to me to drop in on the discussions of British beer writers talking about beer and the beer renaissance in Britain. Maybe it's just my age -- I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't get craft beer in any bar more upscale than the Viking.
When I came-of-beer-age, England seemed like one of the world's beer heavens. The American craft beer movement seemed like a way to find our own path back to that beery tradition that we lost. So it's always with a bit of a shock that I remember that Britain is having its own beer renaissance. All of the debates about whether CAMRA's pushing the right strategy for this or not aside, the British renaissance is ... well, very British. It's mostly ale, and as this v-blog shows, there is a lot of interest in innovating, with a lot of it coming at session-beer strength.
Sorry to get all misty-eyed about this. I can't help it. I spent two periods during my, um, formative years in England. Both were during what I'm sure Pete and others would call their own dark years of beer. But the look and the smell and the variety of the beers--and so many on handpump still! What really mists me up seeing this is the realization that the first time I was there I was too young to enjoy the beer, and the second time I was too poor.
Oh, and Peter Amor has another v-blog on fermentation.
When I came-of-beer-age, England seemed like one of the world's beer heavens. The American craft beer movement seemed like a way to find our own path back to that beery tradition that we lost. So it's always with a bit of a shock that I remember that Britain is having its own beer renaissance. All of the debates about whether CAMRA's pushing the right strategy for this or not aside, the British renaissance is ... well, very British. It's mostly ale, and as this v-blog shows, there is a lot of interest in innovating, with a lot of it coming at session-beer strength.
Sorry to get all misty-eyed about this. I can't help it. I spent two periods during my, um, formative years in England. Both were during what I'm sure Pete and others would call their own dark years of beer. But the look and the smell and the variety of the beers--and so many on handpump still! What really mists me up seeing this is the realization that the first time I was there I was too young to enjoy the beer, and the second time I was too poor.
Oh, and Peter Amor has another v-blog on fermentation.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Bringing it to the people
Apologies in advance for the double Anglophilia of these last posts. But it's now the end of October, and so it's time for the second set of video blogs from British beer writer Pete Brown, and the brewer Peter Amor. So I thought I would share, along with a few words about why I think what they are doing is a great idea.
First, Pete's video blog. (Sadly, I have to link to them since vimeo won't allow them to be embedded.) The idea is to go around to different regions of the UK, trying craft brews (and also cask ales) and talking about them. The idea is sort of two fold. It promotes regional and craft brews, as well as promoting cask ales. At the same time, it's meant to introduce people who may not have a lot of experience with these beers to their flavors and aromas. (Okay, maybe that'sthree four more than two goals.)
I was excited about the first entry, and very thirsty after. This second one is really good too. He's not always terribly smooth in front of the camera (who is?), but he does a good job I think of expressing some of the joys of drinking these beers, and I really like his attempts to talk about the actual flavors and aromas of the beers in a non-technical way, tied more to the drinker's experience than the ingredients or the brewer's perspective. This is amazingly hard to do -- ever tried to actually tell someone what the hop character in your favorite IPA is like? What do you say once you get past "piney" or "citrusy"?
But what I really wanted to mention in this post was the accompanying video blog by Peter Amor. These ones are different. They are not about any particular beers, but rather they are about the brewing process. The first entry seemed a bit stiff to me, but this one I think is great. It's a very concise overview of the brewing process that is aimed at the layperson, but is both technically right and informative, without getting into extraneous detail. Again, that's really hard to do! A bit of Google-ing shows that Amor got his start brewing for Guinness before starting the Wye Valley Brewery in 1985. Especially in this second video blog, I think Amor does a terrific job of showing the process and getting across the main technical details from a brewer's perspective, without making it seem like a lecture.
So great idea. Good for them for trying to bring the love of beer to a wider audience. And glad we are starting to see some of the same thing in the US; props to folks like Michael Agnew for helping to do a similar thing locally as well.
First, Pete's video blog. (Sadly, I have to link to them since vimeo won't allow them to be embedded.) The idea is to go around to different regions of the UK, trying craft brews (and also cask ales) and talking about them. The idea is sort of two fold. It promotes regional and craft brews, as well as promoting cask ales. At the same time, it's meant to introduce people who may not have a lot of experience with these beers to their flavors and aromas. (Okay, maybe that's
I was excited about the first entry, and very thirsty after. This second one is really good too. He's not always terribly smooth in front of the camera (who is?), but he does a good job I think of expressing some of the joys of drinking these beers, and I really like his attempts to talk about the actual flavors and aromas of the beers in a non-technical way, tied more to the drinker's experience than the ingredients or the brewer's perspective. This is amazingly hard to do -- ever tried to actually tell someone what the hop character in your favorite IPA is like? What do you say once you get past "piney" or "citrusy"?
But what I really wanted to mention in this post was the accompanying video blog by Peter Amor. These ones are different. They are not about any particular beers, but rather they are about the brewing process. The first entry seemed a bit stiff to me, but this one I think is great. It's a very concise overview of the brewing process that is aimed at the layperson, but is both technically right and informative, without getting into extraneous detail. Again, that's really hard to do! A bit of Google-ing shows that Amor got his start brewing for Guinness before starting the Wye Valley Brewery in 1985. Especially in this second video blog, I think Amor does a terrific job of showing the process and getting across the main technical details from a brewer's perspective, without making it seem like a lecture.
So great idea. Good for them for trying to bring the love of beer to a wider audience. And glad we are starting to see some of the same thing in the US; props to folks like Michael Agnew for helping to do a similar thing locally as well.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Beer Styles
There is an interesting discussion going on within British beer blogs about styles and whether they matter right now. The overview of where this discussion is coming from is on Pencil and Spoon, linked here, Pete Brown provides a more skeptical take here. As is often the case, the really interesting back and forth happens in the comments.
I'm a BJCP guy, but I don't read the style guidelines as gospel. (In part because I know many of the people responsible for putting the document together and I know the debates they have among themselves. And I know that someone like Gordon Strong is not dogmatic about the styles, even though he is an evangelist for them in a certain way. This gets theologically complex...) What I will say is that it's worth noting that a good portion of the discussion gets caught up with the Brewers' Association proliferation of styles, which has always struck me as stupid. I know it has a purpose in the industry, but it just reeks of "everyone gets a gold star!"
Regardless, I responded to the discussion on Pete Brown's blog, and I thought I would add the text of my comments here, since it sums up what I've been saying privately on the subject for some time.
I'm a BJCP guy, but I don't read the style guidelines as gospel. (In part because I know many of the people responsible for putting the document together and I know the debates they have among themselves. And I know that someone like Gordon Strong is not dogmatic about the styles, even though he is an evangelist for them in a certain way. This gets theologically complex...) What I will say is that it's worth noting that a good portion of the discussion gets caught up with the Brewers' Association proliferation of styles, which has always struck me as stupid. I know it has a purpose in the industry, but it just reeks of "everyone gets a gold star!"
Regardless, I responded to the discussion on Pete Brown's blog, and I thought I would add the text of my comments here, since it sums up what I've been saying privately on the subject for some time.
I really don't understand the way that a lot of the discussion tries to distinguish between creativity and styles. (And let me say right out front that I agree, it is stupid for the BA to have so many styles -- it seems designed for the sole purpose of handing out as many medals as possible.)
Styles are not the rigid things that they are made out to be. Sure, some styles (often German ones) are narrower -- proper German style pilsners have certain characteristics, fall into a narrow gravity range, and so forth. But they are evolving things, and for most of us there is no rule to say we have to or even should brew rigidly to style.
So why bother with the styles? Adrian Tierney-Jones was right to point to novels. I think painting is a better metaphor. There are certainly artistic styles that are recognized. Most artists want to make their own mark, and yet understanding the styles and how they evolved is important to most serious painters. Also note how even the innovators spend a lot of time mastering the tricks of different styles before they figure out how to make their own break from them. Picasso did a lot of copies of older masters. Rauchenberg and others have more recently done their own copies of Picasso!
To take Pete's example in a different direction, cooking is similar. Maybe the average cook can do seven (or whatever) recipes. But if you are aiming to be a chef -- that is, make a mark with your own twist on cooking, for example in your own restaurant, then knowing the tricks of given cooking styles and flavors (which themselves emerge in different regions as a result of different climates, crops, and cultures) is important. Admitting that there is a recognized style of Southern Italian cooking (or Thai, or Gujarati or whatever) is not the same as saying that nothing new can be done.
The point is, beer styles are a way to start a productive conversation with beer drinkers and brewers. It's hard to have a conversation without any common language or set of working concepts. No one has to brew "to style" but knowing some common points of reference is still a good thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)