Michelob has a geography problem.

Why, you ask, does Bruce look bemused in this picture? It’s because he’s reading the neck ring on a bottle of Michelob Pale Ale. The copy on this label reads as follows:
“This quintessential English-style ale is brewed with Pacific Northwest Hallertau and Saaz as well as Tettnang hops from southern Germany. Dry-hopping the ale during maturation with fresh Saaz hops creates a unique hop character.”

Now here’s a case where Anheuser-Busch could really show what its brewers are capable of by brewing a kick-ass pale ale with the marketing weight of the Michelob brand name behind it. And they could do it to style (which, according to their marketing copy, is their intent), or they could create their own signature pale ale. Instead, they made an unfocused mongrel beer that confuses English, German, American and Czech elements.

There is no “English Style Ale” that uses Hallertau, Tettnang, and Saaz hops. The former two originate in Germany, and as such their domain is German lagers, whereas Saaz is the quintessential Czech Pilsner hop. That’s not to say that these hops can’t be added to ale, but to do so and call it “English Style” is a jab at the intelligence of consumers, not to mention the pride of the English.

So what did Michelob do? Did they actually brew this ale with every hop in the microbrew toolbox, or did they make a more-or-less normal pale ale and drop these noble names for beer cred?

I know it sounds like I’m nitpicking on a triviality, but it kinda pisses me off. Maybe this sort of marketing spin would have been forgiveable ten years ago, when consumer familiarity with craft beer was considerably thinner, but to foist it on the market as it stands today demonstrates that A-B still doesn’t get it and probably never will.

I didn’t taste the Michelob Pale Ale, because it’s warm at the time of writing. I’ll bang out a review later. Beeradvocate.com, however, has plenty of takes on this beer from people who are better at reviewing than myself.

-Mark

Update on the Rohrbach move

Well, looks like the Holiday season will be a busy one for the Rohrbach Brewing Company.

The floor is poured and drainage is all set in their new Railroad Street facility, and they’ll be moving the brewing equipment over Christmas week. The move was supposed to take place sooner than that, but had been pushed back in order to head off any snags that would cause unforseen brewery downtime.

This is important, because Bruce needs every spare moment to keep the Tap and Mallet supplied with McBane’s Best Bitter. The new bar went through nine kegs of the stuff in it’s first two weeks of operation alone. Meanwhile, Rohrbach regulars are taking advantage of Bruce’s return and demanding the Stock Ale. If he doesn’t produce it quick they’re likely to come after his ass with pitchforks.

-Mark

By the way, let’s all welcome fellow Crapchesterian Creamaledrinker as he begins his adventures in beer blogging. his handle refers to Genesee Cream Ale, a source of gastric distress for many a college student over the decades. Check out his shit so he gets a good start and doesn’t get discouraged.

Repost: A shout-out to the Brewers

I posted this a couple of years ago in the old blog. It still holds true today. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the guys and gals that labor to make our beer

A shout out to the brewers

Not the Milwaukee baseball team.

Is there a more thankless job than Brewer at a microbrewery? You have to lug tons of heavy shit around all day, spend half your time up to the elbows in caustic as you sanitize, work around huge boiling vats even in the middle of summer, and deal with high waitstaff turnover that could give fuck-all about what you labor to create.

At the same time, the place where you work is always on the edge of closure, the owner only cares about maximizing profit so you’re working all hours of the night. The owner thinks he’s a brewmaster, so he’s fucking with your recipes and criticizing your procedures. You’re lucky to have the tiniest bit of health insurance, if any, and your place of employment could close down with no notice at any time.

Groupies? Yeah, you get them. 50 year old men with scraggly Jerry Garcia beards and graphing calculators peeking out of a shirt pocket, who always want a tour of the cramped dungeon you call a brewery, and go on for hours about every other beer they’ve ever swilled before pedalling away on their recumbent bicycles.

Yet you keep making beer.

Hey, brewers, thanks for loving beer and loving your craft. The job might be a pain sometimes, but some of us out there appreciate the way you guys do it.

-Mark

The curse of the Reinheitsgebot

Everybody knows the famous German Purity Law of 1516. It stated that beer could only be made using three ingredients: water, barley and hops (four, once yeast was discovered). This law, the Reinheitsgebot is to this day touted as a high pinnacle of brewing, and it has done wonders for German beer, forcing all brewers to use the best grain (instead of cheaper corn or rice) and otherwise cut corners for the sake of maximizing profit. The result: German beer is of universally high quality; I think it’s the best in the world.

But that universal excellence comes at a price, as modern German brewers are discovering.

On this side of the pond, we like to think of Germany as this quaint little patchwork of tiny breweries, each making beer exclusively for the villagers in their own town, while the burgermeister dances on the beer kegs. Maybe it actually was like this once. Maybe in Bavaria it still is. But, just like in England, large brewing conglomerates have been snapping small breweries up at an alarming rate, and those that remain are forced into direct cutthroat competition.

So how do you compete when everyone’s beer uses the same four ingredients and is equally excellent?

German brewers now have to differentiate their product, mostly through marketing, or buy their competition. The result? fewer choices for the drinker. Of course, what’s left is still awesome beer (thanks to the Reinheitsgebot), but the law inhibited development of diverse niche beers, such as those you see from Belgium, and prevented stratification of the market into lesser and premium beers. Now Germans’ treasured brewing culture is vanishing before their eyes, and that is a crying shame.

The Reinheitsgebot is no longer the law of the land, but its legacy lingers on. We American beer drinkers have benefited tremendously from its influence, as it set an example for great beer after prohibition and World War 2 left us with no friggin’ idea. And brewers are proud to say their beer complies.

Too bad the sword cuts both ways.

A Tale of Two Hopfen-Weizens

Amarillo hops.

I don’t usually claim the ability to identify individual hop species by the taste or smell of my beer, but the citrus-pineapple essence of Amarillo hit my nose like a truck as I raised the glass of cloudy, soft orange beer to my lips. Absent prior knowledge, the unmistakeable banana-clove flavor of Hefeweizen would have come as a shock in a beer this hop-heavy. I knew what was coming; it was the reason we were there.

The fashion in American craft brewing for ever more ‘extreme’ beers traps brewers in a rut even as it spurs innovation. As they race for the pole position in alcoholic strength and bitterness, they reach a point of diminishing returns and even diminishing individual identity. After a while, it gets tough to discern the 11% imperial IPA of brewery “A” from the 11% imperial IPA of brewery “B.” The customer stops caring about the brand, and craft beer gets a little more commoditized.

Fortunately, Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and Hans-Peter Drexler of Munich’s Schneider-Weisse came up with a new twist on hop-heavy beer innovation. Oliver went to the 400-year-old, staunchly traditionalist Schneider Brewery, the first guest brewer in the firm’s history, to combine German hops and Hefeweizen in a whole new way. Likewise, Drexler packed his luggage for Brooklyn to brew his take on Hefeweizen combined with American hops.

Oliver presented the results in Rochester last night at The Old Toad, narrating a comparison tasting of both the Brooklyn and Munich Hopfen Weizens.

Old Toad owner John Roman, Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn VP Mike Vitale, Toad Cellar Manager Jules Suplicki, and beer columnist Matt Osburn swap war stories

The German Hallertauer-Saphir hops used in the Munich iteration blend harmoniously with the Hefeweizen that is Schneider-Weisse’s stock in trade. But Oliver makes the hops “pop” more, bringing their flavor to the front, which is typically a cardinal sin among the Helles and Hefe quaffers of Munich. The result is quite distinct, a surprisingly deep orange in color, with a less substantial head than is typical for the style.

Yours truly with my share of samples

Kira of Calico’s Alehouse lost in a world of hops

The beer produced by Drexler in Brooklyn is even more of a departure from the norm. He used the Amricn craft brewing technique of dry-hopping to impart an extremely fragrant aroma of Americn hops, Amarillo seemingly the main culprit. Unlike the German version which employs hops already used in traditional Hefeweizen, the Brooklyn Hopfen-Weizen offers an entirely new combination of flavor- a synthesis of two seemingly incongruous elements to create a new, well hell, a new beer style that, even without the titanic strength and bitterness, manages more ‘extremeness’ than all the imperial IPAs combined.

And it’s something your wife would enjoy drinking. Go figure.

Another work in progress

Rochester’s beer renaissance continues! The Rohrbach Brewing company has closed on their new building and begun the arduous process of moving their main brewery to the new Railroad Street location.

Rohrbach’s future main production facility, adjacent to the Public Market

The building is huge and old, requiring tons of renovation work. The main brewery will be located downstairs, and there are hopes for an upstairs tasting room somewhere down the line.

The new main brewing area, with disassembled cooler already moved in.

Upstairs- hopefully the site of a tasting room

Once the main system is moved over Rohrbach’s current brewpub, Bruce will set up the 7-barrel system from the former Gregory Street location at the Buffalo Road building. He’ll then take over specialty beers, freeing the main brewery to increase production of its principal brews.

-Mark

Hey Miller, here’s a chilly reception.

You know, things couldn’t be better for craft beer lovers right now. It’s the only segment of the brewing industry showing growth (double digit growth at that). The country is teeming with great breweries. Distribution is improving, and good American beer is starting to get some space on the menu at fine restaurants. Even wine lovers are having a difficult time turning up their noses at the “beverage of the unwashed rabble.”

Dare I say it? Craft beer is beginning to get respect

Fortunately, there’s the Miller Brewing Company to bring everything crashing to the ground. Advertising for their new “Miller Chill” has stormed the airways, reinforcing beer in the mind of the mainstream as nothing but a get-drunk party bev that tastes so bad it’s consumers have to add shit, just to swill it down without yakking up their Mexi-Melts.

Miller chill is “brewed with a hint of lime and salt,” the television tells me. WTF? How did that marketing meeting go down? Was the executive vp gnawing his way through a bag of extreme Doritos when the idea hit him? “Hey, (crunch crunch,) wait a SECOND!”

Apparently, Miller Chill is aimed at the segment of Corona drinkers for whom self-application of lime wedge to beer is just too much of a pain in the ass. And salt? This just mystifies me. Never have I had the urge to salt a beer. Apparently, adding lime and salt to watery lager creates something called a “chelada,” which is popular among the Hispanic population in Southwestern cities. There’s nothing quite as authentic as a huge national corporation getting all ethnic on us.

I haven’t tasted Miller Chill, and the chance of me doing so is virtually nil, so I’ll close with Beer Advocate’s review of this brand spanking new beer-flavored beverage product. If you like Miller Chill, get it while you can. Betcha it’s discontinued within nine months.

-Mark

Oh, by the way

I had a pleasant surprise at The Old Toad Thursday night- a brief coversation with Garrett Oliver, head brewer for Brooklyn Brewing and the author of The Brewmaster’s Table.

People were practically elbowing me out of the way to hang with the G-man, possibly the only “brewing celebrity” on the micro scene, but I was able to briefly discuss Brooklyn Blonde Bock, which is pretty darn good. Nice to see the guy makes it to the sticks every now and then.

-Mark