The WELL: inkwell.vue.353: Brian Yaeger, Red, White, and Brew

#93: Andrew Alden (alden) Thu 28 May 09 11:16

Thu, 28 May 2009 11:16:00 PDT

I've had a blast both reading your book and having this conversation, Brian. Long may you wave. [Read entire topic]

#92: Brian Yaeger (brianyaeger) Thu 28 May 09 02:28

Thu, 28 May 2009 02:28:00 PDT

Thank you Andrew, Gail, Dana, and everyone who chimed in with great questions and comments. This really has been the next best thing to sitting in a pub with all of you, and considering the remote locations some of you chimers hail from (New Zealand...Texas...Chico, CA) that would've been a logistical nightmare.

However, if you're local to the Bay and free/thirsty this Friday, you'll definitely find me here ( examiner.com/examiner/x-11696-SF-Craft-Beer-Examiner~y2009m5d27-Singleminded-Hop-over-to-this-Mikkeller-tasting ). I just started a series of homebrews using only one hop per batch so I'm curious how our Danish friends succeeded.

While I know it's time to move on to the next discussion, that I'm gonna go poke my head into, if anyone has anything else they'd like to say or ask, please continue to post here and at any point in the future, feel free to email me at brian@beerodyssey.com. [Read entire topic]

#91: (dana) Wed 27 May 09 11:41

Wed, 27 May 2009 11:41:00 PDT

Thanks, Brian and Andrew, for a fun (and educational!) conversation. We're turning the spotlight to a new discussion today, but everyone is welcome to continue here as long as you all like.

Viva la beer! [Read entire topic]

#90: Gail Williams (gail) Wed 27 May 09 11:38

Wed, 27 May 2009 11:38:00 PDT

I notice the next discussion has launched. Thanks for visiting us here, Brian! This has been a lot of fun.

I hope some of these themes can carry over to the ongoing beer discussion in <drinks.167> for example, or perhaps places in <writers.> or <cooking.> or <chow.ind.> too.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with the syndicated Beer Examiner gig at http://www.examiner.com/x-11696-SF-Craft-Beer-Examiner -- you're off to a good start!

I may see you at the Santa Rosa beerfest http://www.f2f.org/beerfest.html and select pre-conference events for the National Hombrewers Conference http://www.beertown.org/events/hbc/pre_conference.html

Also, for anybody in the SF area, there's a really interesting beer on now at Magnolia's on Haight Street. It's brewed with really excellent Maris Otter malt from a specific farm in England, Branthill, arranged via a friend of the pub, and the flavor is indescribable. (For me, anyway!) I'd love to hear what other people think of flavor in the nice beers they are brewing with it. I hear tell that the grains themselves look plumper and prettier than usual British malted barley! [Read entire topic]

#89: Ed Ward (captward) Wed 27 May 09 03:08

Wed, 27 May 2009 03:08:00 PDT

(I don't want to derail this discussion with the hemp issue, but the way it works is quite simple. As has been noted, hemp and hops are biologically quite close, and I made the connection when I was at a beergarden in northern California somewhere that had hops growing all around. My friend pinched off a flower, crushed it, and held it out for me to smell. "Smell familiar?" Yup: first-rate bud. And hemp flowers, or whatever you call the structures that either do or do not -- sensimilla -- have the seeds, that's what you hemp beer with.) [Read entire topic]

#88: Brian Yaeger (brianyaeger) Tue 26 May 09 16:11

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:11:00 PDT

In reverse order this time, Andrew, that's a great question, one I don't know the answer to. I always understood hemp beers to be brewed with the flavor but not the THC of hemp. Not that a beer that could get you drunk and stoned simultaneously wouldn't be popular in some circles. But when you put it in terms of tasting like bongwater, that's not exactly a selling point.

As for Gail's comment, there's a reason I hold most of my events at good beer venues. They attract bigger crowds than authors. And at the very least, why sit through some guy talking about his book about beer unless you can drink beer while doing so. This is also why, when I actually do events at bookstores, I've always managed to get beer from a local brewery, since nothing lures in shoppers like free beer.

As for which passages I read from during events, I highlighted sections in every chapter as I was heading to Colorado for my first of about 25 book tour events, so that no matter where I went, I was able to read about the closest brewer.

Having said that, there is certainly one passage that has become a staple. It's the one on page 158 that begins: After he told me the probation-officer story, I asked, 'So your coke dealer became your probation officer?"

With the larger-than-life stories I heard (and witnessed), that was the easiest and hardest chapter to write. And the biggest compliment I got from my interviewees was that they usually hate doing interviews, and in Electric Dave's case, flat-out doesn't do them, but some of them told me they enjoyed mine.

Another popular passage is the one from the Anchor chapter where we discover how and why Fritz Maytag came to own Anchor Steam. But that's probably because I've done so many local events around from SF to Santa Cruz to Pleasanton. As for upcoming ones, nothing is on the books right now. I attended the book signing by Tom Robbins who, in addition to writing some of my favorite novels, just published "B is for Beer" (a children's book!!) I'd love to do my first North Bay event at Book Passage in Corte Madera where Tom Robbins was.

I've also been invited do one at my local homebrew supply shop, BrewCraft, which'll probably be in June around the National Homebrew Conference.

But if anyone on here is an indie bookseller or wants to talk to their local bookstore, brewpub, or beer bar about having me, please drop me a line. [Read entire topic]

#87: Linda Castellani (castle) Tue 26 May 09 15:04

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:04:00 PDT

Indeed. [Read entire topic]

#86: Andrew Alden (alden) Tue 26 May 09 12:39

Tue, 26 May 2009 12:39:00 PDT

I was wondering that too.

Back to hemp beers for a moment, I'm not sure we're being clear. I always understood hemp beers to contain hemp SEED, as a source of fermentables, rather than hemp LEAF, as a source of aromatics. Because who in their right mind would want beer that tastes like bongwater, and bongwater from ditch weed at that? [Read entire topic]

#85: Gail Williams (gail) Tue 26 May 09 10:54

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:54:00 PDT

I have another question -- I've just missed being able to hear you read at several events, each convened at a very nice beer venue. I wondered what section(s) of the book you like to read live, and where else you plan to be? [Read entire topic]

#84: Brian Yaeger (brianyaeger) Tue 26 May 09 00:47

Tue, 26 May 2009 00:47:00 PDT

Happy belated Memorial Day everyone.

OK, from the top!

John, I'm the wrong person to explain "top fermented in stone Yorkshire squares," as I'm a writer not a zymurgist, but I do enjoy Samuel Smith beers and found this link that provides the answer: http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/5_breweries/samsmith_yorkshire.html

Bruce, hopefully now that I've put barrel-aging on your radar, you'll see it more. It's certainly not on supermarket shelves or on tap at regular old sports bars, but any better-beer bar or beer store will have something to offer. It's not even a regional thing! Once I saw an Oaked IPA on sale at Upstream Brewing in Omaha, Nebraska, I knew it had permeated brewing culture. During SF Beer Week, Triple Rock hosted an entire night devoted to only barrel-aged beers and it was my favorite night of sampling.

As for Witbiers, yes, Blue Moon deserves a good deal of credit for its current popularity. But Texas one you mentioned is most likely Celis White. For more on this, see #8 in this discussion, linked here: https://user.well.com/engaged.cgi?&c=inkwell.vue&t=353&r=8&f=3&W=y

As an aside to Texas White beers, I tried one from a brand new brewery in Austin called (512) Brewing (the parenthesis is in the brewery name as well as its area code). Their White, instead of being brewed with orange peel, uses grapefruit peel. As the grandson of a grapefruit rancher (well, citrus rancher) that really appealed to me and I intend to emulate that idea when I eventually brew a Witbier. FYI, White, Wit, Witbier, Blanche, and Weiss are all the same style, but breweries may do different things to them (like add grapefruit peel, or lavender, rose hips, ginger, crushed fennel, etc.)

Andrew, as Gail pointed out, Dogfish Head does indeed do maddening things with hops and I have also tried their 120 Minute IPA. My reaction to it, not to rehash the beer community's love of erroneously pitting Calagione against Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster Garret Oliver against each other, but to paraphrase Garret's quote about overly hopped beers, "It's like a chef boasting about having the saltiest dish."

While there are a great many IPAs I enjoy, I also enjoy being an opponent of beers with monstrous IBUs (International Bitterness Units, an actual measurement of how bitter a beer is. By way of comparison, DFH 120 Minute happens to clock in at 120 IBU. Russian River's Pliny the Elder Double IPA boasts 100 IBU. (I'm guessing their Pliny the Younger "Triple IPA" must have around 120). And at the low-end, Budweiser has 8.5 IBU and Bud Light has around 6.

I prefer my IBUs somewhere in the middle.

Now, onto your observation, which I love, about the book being bookended by Yuengling and Dogfish Head, that was both intentional and fortuitous, and I commented on that briefly at the start of the last chapter. It really does show where the industry started, where it went, where it is, and where it's going. As for the creating the arc, that was also half intention, half good fortune. As I've said, I chose each brewery for its ability to show a different aspect of the industry and a different family element. If I'd only written about breweries like Yuengling and Leinenkugels, it would've been awfully repetitive (even though those two chapters are quite different). If I'd only written about ones like Bell's and Dogfish Head, same thing. So it required a great deal of research before deciding on which breweries to visit and then sifting through the material to make sure I told unique stories. There are some themes, perhaps some chronological repetition, but I weeded out stories that too closely mirrored a previous chapter's ideas (I hope).

Ed, I again thank Gail for expertly answering the question about hemp beers. It's an issue that was lightly touched in the book in the chapter on the Lexington Brewing Co., which under a previous owner had brewed a hemp ale. It stands to reason that the 2 examples Gail listed are both brewed in California, which is the largest growing state of marijuana. Surprisingly, the second largest cultivator isn't Oregon or Hawaii but Kentucky! Hence the attempt at a hemp ale.

Other beers make allusions to being hemp ales. Lagunitas Censored began life as Lagunitas Kronic. Sweetwater Brewing in Atlanta brews a 420 Pale Ale and one of the reasons I skirted including them in the book is because they deny it is a hemp ale or caters to those who are "420-friendly." If they weren't going to be honest with me on the record, I had no interest in writing about them in a nonfiction book.

Not everyone knows that hemp (cannabis) and hops (humulus) are cousins! I blogged some thoughts on this just last week: http://beerodyssey.blogspot.com/2009/05/this-buds-for-15m-of-you.html

Because of their similarity, I think it's a perfectly fine adjunct to brew with, but not mind-blowingly delicious. Then again, I've yet to try one with the THC intact.

Also, here's a great story about homebrewers in Santa Cruz who cooked up an extra hoppy beer, er, make that poppy beer: http://www.scsextra.com/story.php?sid=79637

Phew. [Read entire topic]