Much Ado Over Sierra Nevada

If you are a follower of the beer blogosphere, or the Twitosphere, I suppose, you’ll know by now that California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, the second largest craft brewery in the United States, has chosen a location just outside of Asheville, North Carolina, as the site of their new east coast brewery. This has some people cheering and others worrying about the chilling effect the arrival of a large capacity brewery could have on the craft brewers of the east. It is to that second group that I direct the following:

• Sierra is adding capacity, much as they have been doing for the last dozen or more years. They are not declaring war on eastern craft breweries;
• If Sierra had chosen instead to add capacity to their existing brewery, it would not have had any significantly different effect and you would not be worrying about it. Sierra is already a national brand and having the brewery in NC merely helps co-ordinate distribution;
• As I wrote last year in Ale Street News, one million new barrels of craft beer is the minimum the U.S. will require within the next year if the current pace of market expansion is maintained, and I can find no reason to doubt it will. Sierra’s new brewery won’t even be operational until early in 2014, much less running at its 300,000 barrell capacity.

So relax. The fact that Sierra has chosen a new home — and we think New Belgium and Stone might soon follow suit — is a very good thing, not just because it signals the very good health of craft brewing in the U.S., but also because it will bring much national media attention to the craft beer market and thus expand it even further. These are the glory days. Enjoy them!

 

 

Sh*t Beer Marketers Do (But Shouldn’t)

1. “Smooth drinkability”

2. “Pairs with foods of all sorts”

3. “Fresh, crisp flavor”

4. “Uniquely refreshing”

5. “Cold”

Sh*t Bartenders Do (But Shouldn’t), Pt. 2

1. Give a knowledgeable customer a hard time about returning a beer. It slays me how waiters will take back hundred dollar bottles of wine without comment, but tell some bartenders that a $6 beer is skunked or oxidized or riddled with diacetyl and you’re in for the fight of your life. Key words: “I know this beer and it’s really not supposed to taste like this.”

2. Pour a draught to overflowing and then set it down in front of the customer without a coaster or cocktail napkin (or three). My shirt may not be fancy, but it’s usually clean and I like to keep it that way.

3. Ignore a customer who just sat at your bar so that you can finish chatting with the waiter at the service bar. Gaz Regan calls it “mindful bartending,” and the man has a point. Pay attention, and if you can’t get to someone right away, at the very least make eye contact.

4. Garnish a beer without asking first. I know that some places like putting lemon wedges on hefeweizens and orange slices on Belgian-style wheats, but that doesn’t mean every customer wants it. Particularly when fulfilling at order at the bar, it takes no time at all to ask if i want fruit or not.

5. Serve a bottle of beer and then walk away without even asking if the customer might like a glass. Because, you know, not everyone wants to swig from the bottle all the time. Or ever.

Sh*t Online Beer Raters Do (But Shouldn’t)

C’mon, admit it, you know it happens…

1. Split a 12 ounce bottle of beer with eight or nine other people and make a rating out of it. If there isn’t more than one bottle to go around, it’s great that you share and your mother would be proud, but beer is not meant to be assessed by the ounce. And speaking of which…

2. Emerge from the GABF or any other festival that limits you to tiny servings with a notebook full of ratings. That’s compounding the sin of the small pour rating with the added issue of making reasonable tasting notes while being jostled on all sides by crowds of merry drinkers.

3. Rate a barley wine at a beer fest on a July afternoon. Beer is contextual, as much or likely more so than any other food or drink, and a monster brew meant for cold nights in front of the fireplace just isn’t going to translate to a stinking hot summer’s day.

4. Expect local bars and breweries to treat you specially because you’re a top rater. Really, get over yourself.

5. Wax poetic over the latest barrel-aged and woefully out-of-balance limited edition alcoholic mess while trashing a beautifully executed take on a kölsch or pilsner simply because it’s golden and people might be able to drink more than one at a time.

Sh*t Drinks Writers Do (But Shouldn’t)

In fairness…

1. Take a knowledge of one beverage and assume it automatically makes you qualified to write about another. Being an authority on wine doesn’t qualify you to offer “expert” opinions on single malt whisky, UNLESS you’ve done one hell of a lot of research and tasting.

2. Judge a release negatively on the basis of one or two sips. Everyone and everything deserves a second chance, so try it again before you lambaste it, or say nothing.

3. Get all attitudinal when someone calls you on a mistake or error of judgement. We all screw up from time to time. Take your lashes and move along.

4. Write your blog as if you are a ten year old because it makes it more “real.” You’re supposed to be a professional writer, even when doing something you’re not paid for. Typos are one thing, but frequent errors in grammar, punctuation and structure just reflect badly on you and your craft.

5. Use descriptive words no one is likely to understand. Noting underlying hints of some obscure Amazonian fruit doesn’t help North Americans to understand the flavours you’re describing; it just makes you look like an ass.

(I hope I’m not guilty of any of the above, but let’s face it, I probably am.)    

Sh*t Bar Patrons Do (But Shouldn’t)

Yesterday’s post highlighted a few common bartender sins – and yes, there are still more to come – so in the interest of fairness, and in answer to Couzin Ed’s request from the Comments section, here are a few examples of equally lamentable behaviour by customers.

1. By all means, when business is slow, chat with the bartender. Part of the job description is socializing with the patrons, and assuming that you’re both reasonable people, it’s likely that some common conversational ground can be reached. But remember that when things get busy, your ongoing chat comes in a distant second to the task of getting other people drinks, and when it’s three deep at the bar, well, that may not be the best time to start up a debate over the relative worth of an American versus a British style IPA or the best gin for a barrel-aged Negroni.

2. When you have a specific way you would like a drink mixed and/or served, tell it to the bartender. Do not wait until she serves it to you one way to declare that you’d prefer it differently.

3. Never, ever click your fingers/wave your bills/yell “Hey buddy!” to get the bartender’s attention. Wait your turn, catch his eye, and be pleasant. You’ll get your drink faster.

4. Know what you’re ordering. As per another comment on the previous post, do not order a drink simply because you heard it in a song or saw it on a television show and then try to return it because you don’t like it. You bought it, you’re stuck with it.

5. Treating the bartender like your personal servant is not cool. “Please” and “thank you” go a long way.

Sh*t Bartenders Do (But Shouldn’t), Pt. 1

1. It’s a given, I think, that martinis should be stirred and not shaken, but I understand that some easily influenced souls actually prefer a diluted, cloudy mess in their martini glass. Still, when I specifically ask you to stir rather than shake my martini, please ONLY stir it. Don’t give it a stir and then plop it into one of those precious tiny shakers for a good shaking up at the table.

2. A Manhattan contains sweet vermouth, and a sizable amount of it, at that. Please do not mix my Manhattan as if it were a very dry martini.

3. I accept that you may be a very clean-minded individual who washes their hands regularly, but I don’t know that as fact. So please don’t hold my beer glass by the lip when you’re pouring my draft beer. I have to drink from that thing.

4. And speaking of draft beer, when the foam you have poured off one pint settles in a separate glass, it becomes flat beer, NOT beer that is suitable for using to top up my pint.

5. If I ask for a call brand of booze that I can plainly see on your back bar, please believe me that it’s there and what I want. Do not stare at me as if I’m some sort of idiot because you don’t have enough professionalism to actually know the brands your bar stocks.

Looking Back Post #8: European Brewery of the Year

(This is the sixth and final post detailing what I found to be the breweries of the year for 2011 in various regions. Note that there is no science to the choices I have made, just my own highly subjective reasoning as detailed in each post. You can find my pick of the Brewery of the Year for Ontario here, Brewery of the Year for Canada here, U.S. Brewery of the Year here,  Latin American Brewery of the Year here and Australasian Brewery of the Year here.)

I had some tough decisions to make before arriving at my choice of European Brewery of the Year for 2011. First was, should I separate out the U.K. for its own Brewery of the Year award, as I did Ontario from Canada and Canada and the U.S. from North America? In my head, I made a good argument for so doing, since my experiences in Britain last year left me quite impressed and very optimistic about the future of brewing there. But then I stared down the prospect of also separating out the Benelux, Scandinavia and Germany-Austria, just for starters, and the whole thing grew rather daunting. So Europe alone it remains.

Next up, I had to decide whether to make my focus experimentation and innovation, of the type at which the Italians and the Danes, in particular, excel, or stick to the kind of solid, ultra-reliable brewing seen across Germany and amongst the old school breweries of Belgium. And should I reward persistence within undeveloped beer nations, taking me back to Italy and parts of Scandinavia, even a bit in France, or reliability and character within developed nations?

Ultimately, I swept all those questions aside and asked myself this: “What European brewery has had the most focused, forceful and practical presence both within their home market and beyond?”

My answer, and my choice of European Brewery of the Year, is Brouwerij de Molen of the Netherlands.

Yes, their beers are multitudinous, often fleeting and frequently next to impossible to find, but my experience has been that there are enough of them that something is usually available at the better beer shops in the Netherlands, and sometimes elsewhere, and even if it’s not precisely what you’re looking for, it’s usually pretty damn good anyway. And besides, how many European breweries have the tenacity and sheer brewing prowess to list on their website the beers they produce by national inspiration, ie: “Belgian-Style,” German-Style,” etc.?

But as good as the above reasons are, they are not why de Molen is receiving this particular nod. No, the reasoning behind this pick is rather the way in which De Molen has brought forward Dutch brewing, encouraging other breweries to shed their conservative ways and embrace the diversity of beer, and then introducing that emerging face of Dutch beer to the world via tireless travels to beer fests all over Europe. For that leadership, De Molen, I salute you, and recognize you as my choice for European Brewery of the Year.

Looking Back Post #7: Australasian Brewery of the Year

(This is the fifth of several posts detailing what I found to be the breweries of the year for 2011 in various regions. Note that there is no science to the choices I have made, just my own highly subjective reasoning as detailed in each post. You can find my pick of the Brewery of the Year for Ontario here, Brewery of the Year for Canada here, U.S. Brewery of the Year here and Latin American Brewery of the Year here.)

I’ll be the first to admit that my exposure to breweries in Asia, Australia and New Zealand is limited, and something I intend to remedy this and next year. But since I did make the acquaintance of a previously unheard of (to me) number of such operations in 2011, I thought I should in fairness include Australasia in my Brewery of the Year picks, even if the selection process is a little more unfair than it is for the rest of my year-end awards.

So my Brewery of the Year for Australasia is Renaissance Brewing.

Renaissance came to my attention early in 2010 and continued to impress through 2011. Their Stonecutter Scotch Ale has been a treat from the get-go, and their Elemental Porter is reminiscent of one of the finest porters I’ve ever tasted, that of London’s Meantime Brewing. In 2011, reports out of New Zealand and Australia indicate that the brewery has continued its winning ways with American-inspired ales and what I understand is a re-imagining of their Craftsman Oatmeal Chocolate Stout. They may not be as RateBeer and BeerAdvocate lauded as other New Zealand breweries, but they are richly deserving of much praise.

In a broader sense, I see this as an award for New Zealand craft brewing in general, about which I expect the world will be hearing much, much more in the very near future.

Looking Back Post #6: Latin American Brewery of the Year

(This is the fourth of several posts detailing what I found to be the breweries of the year for 2011 in various regions. Note that there is no science to the choices I have made, just my own highly subjective reasoning as detailed in each post. You can find my pick of the Brewery of the Year for Ontario here, Brewery of the Year for Canada here and U.S. Brewery of the Year here.)

The year past was one in which I had the privilege of acquainting myself with many breweries from Brazil, Argentina, Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, which makes deciding on this honouree all the more difficult. No doubt there are several worthy candidates brewing up great things in difficult market conditions, such as Cervejaria Colorado, Cervejaria Bamberg and Bodebrown Cervejaria & Escola in Brazil; Cerveza Jerome, Cerveza Zeppelin and Cerveza Artesanal Antares in Argentina; Cerveceria Kross, Szot Microbrewery and Tübinger Microbrews in Chile; Costa Rica’s Craft Brewing Company in, well, Costa Rica; and Cerveceria Minerva and Cerveceria Primus in Mexico. But as I looked back on my notes and impressions, one brewery stood out.

My choice for Latin American Brewery of the Year for 2011 is Falke Bier.

Brewer and owner Marco Falcone’s beers caught my attention the moment I first tasted his Estrada Real IPA, which I thought more akin to an ESB, but nonetheless enjoyed tremendously. Then I  had a chance to linger over lunch with Falcone and sample many of his other brews, including the Ouro Preto, a schwarzbier for which he toasts the grain himself in a coffee-style roaster, the stylish Falke Bier Pilsen and Falcone’s attempt at a tripel, the somewhat variable Monasterium, which is spicy-fruity treat that in my opinion falls short of the stylistic mark, but remains a most appealing tipple.

What sealed the deal, however, was sampling his Vivre pour Vivre in Buenos Aires a number of months later. Lightly tart and quenching, this fruit ale undergoes lengthy barrel aging, exposure to lactobacillus culture and a final fermentation with native jabuticaba fruit, resulting in a beer of appetizing and spicy fruitiness and great character. I have read that it was the original product of a mistake in the brewhouse, which I have yet to confirm with Falcone, but even it it was, it remains a marvelous correction, and ample reason to push Falke over the top as my Brewery of the Year pick for Latin America..