The Session #122: Imported Hazards

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For this month's Session, Christopher Barnes at "I Think About Beer" asks American bloggers: "What place do imported beers (traditional European) have in a craft beer market?"

Hmmmm....I'm not quite sure what this Session is supposed to be about. There are plenty of imported beers that aren't from Europe, and a decent number of imported beers from Europe really can't be described as "traditional European". And of course, we could be here all night just debating what the "craft beer market" is.

Anyway, I like imported beers. Mexican food is better with Pacifico Classico. Sapporo is meant for sushi. Imported beers add an extra note to authenticate these cultural experiences. Unfortunately for beer importers, this often creates a rather limited market. Sapporo released their Premium Black Lager last fall in part to extend their reach in the United States beyond sushi bars, going so far as to tout their beer as "well suited for pairing with a variety of hearty and spicy dishes from around the world, including traditional German, Asian, Cajun and Latin cuisines."  I learned about Sapporo Premium Black recently from a Sapporo representative pitching Sapporo Premium Black as an alternative to drinking Stout on St. Patrick's day. Marketing a Japanese beer to celebrate St. Patrick's Day or to enjoy with Wienerschnitzel seems incredibly desperate. You'd think they'd have a lot more success saying "Sapporo tastes great with burgers" and leaving it there.

As he tends to do with all things these days, President Trump threatens to turn this whole imported beer thing upside down as he contemplates import tariffs. I would not want to be the Director of US Sales for say, a Chinese or Mexican brewery right now. It's probably not easy being a European importer either.

As for traditional European imports our host wants us to talk about, my opinion is they provide a great avenue to learn beer's long European history. I just wish they weren't so damn expensive. Which underlies another problem with imports. Beer is relatively heavy and often sold in breakable glass bottles, neither of which make the product cost effective to ship long distances. Living in Northern California, I can find lots of great beers from local breweries at lower prices. Why buy imports?  

Well, I learned to appreciate how America transformed English Ales by sampling a few English imports. I also learned to appreciate English Ale by taking a short drive to Freewheel Brewing in Redwood City, CA which specializes in cask-conditioned English-style Ales. I've sampled imports from other European countries and think I understand how they taste in their homeland.  I use the word "think" because I often wonder how fresh the product is, travelling all that way and sitting on the shelf until the day I buy it. More than I few times I've been intrigued enough to consider buying an import, only to look closer, notice dust all over the bottle and move on. No point in spending a lot of money on what might be old stale beer.

Our Session host is an import beer manager at a speciality beer distributor. He has a hard job.

The Session #121: A Brief Ode to Bocks, Past and Present

This month's Session, host by John Abernathy over at The Brew Site is on Bock styles, which seems appropriate for March when Bock beers had traditionally rolled out.

In fact, Bock is the very first beer style I became aware of back when I grew up in the small Ohio town of Bowling Green in the 70's. When March rolled around, my dad would eagerly bring home a six-pack of Rolling Rock Bock, a departure his usual Rolling Rock's flagship Lager. Except back then, it wasn't called a Lager, it was just "beer". One time I asked him "What's Bock beer?" Dad went into this explanation about breweries traditionally cleaning their tanks in the spring and brewing Bock beer to celebrate the occasion. I suspect Rolling Rock Bock was basically the flagship Lager with the grain bill tweaked a bit and some caramel coloring added. That was Bock beer in America just before the brewing revolution started taking off in the 80's.

A Vintage Rolling Rock Bock Neon Sign

Thirty years later, I discovered craft beer. One of my favorite spring seasonals was Anchor Brewing's Bock.  Maybe I liked the deep roasted chocolate and caramel flavors, or maybe it reminded me of those simpler times in the 70's, learning about the mysterious Rolling Rock Bock. Then, in 2014, Anchor decided it would no longer release their Bock each spring, instead focusing on the more popular IPA's and Saisson styles. A year later after that announcement, I caught up with long-time Anchor Brewmaster Mark Carpenter at a brewery event and we reminisced about Anchor Bock. I jokingly tried to talk him into bringing back the Bock. I got the distinct feeling Carpenter didn't miss it all that much. At any rate, it was clear I shouldn't get my hopes up that Anchor Bock was coming back.  And it hasn't.

Anchor Brewmaster Mark Carpenter

I guess Bock beers are pretty old school these days. In an era where "craft beer" and "IPA's" are becoming synonymous the way "beer" and "light Lager" once was, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm from most breweries to brew Bocks. Maybe that's why one of my favorite go-to beers is Blonde Bock from Gordon-Biersch, a brewery that's been a long time rock in an ever changing beer landscape. Brewmaster Dan Gordon learned to brew at the Technical University in Munich in the 80's and the brewery focuses solely on Germanic styles. Their Blonde Bock is one of those highly underrated beers, a light thirst-quenching brew with some character to it, with it's bready, yeasty character with very faint citrus notes and a good dose of sweetness. No, this isn't my father's Bock Beer. But thankfully, it should be around for a good long time.

Stacks and stacks of Gordon-Biersch Blonde Bock, ready to ship

The Session #120 : Intersections with Brown Ales

For this month's Session, Joe Tindall over at The Fatal Glass of Beer admits Brown Ale has a bit of an image problem. While the color brown often conveys comfort and relaxed earthiness, it also signals something worn, tired, and faded. There are also brown things that....well, you probably don't want to think about while drinking beer. So it's not too surprising that Brown Ales are some of the least sexy styles of beer. That's too bad, since I like a good Brown and when I look back on my relationship with Brown Ales, they've been there along the way as I've made new discoveries in beer.









Such as the time back in my graduate school days at The Ohio State University in the early 90's, roaming the aisles at the Big Bear grocery store, I spied bottles of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale high up on the beer shelf. Back then, my experience with any beer that wasn't a straw yellow Lager was pretty much limited to Michelob Dark. I couldn't help notice that one bottle of Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale cost about as much as a six-pack of Bud and was imported from some historic looking brewery from the UK, so I figured it must be good. In that time of great exploration in my life, I picked up a bottle. Trying it later one night in my dorm room, I found it, well, different. It was not some secret ambrosia and with my palate molded by light Lagers, it took effort to finish. Later on, I'd take a bottle or two to poker games to look cool and sophisticated as my friends sucked down cans of Natty Light. I was a bit of twit back then, and probably only grudgingly shared my Nut Brown Ale with anyone who asked to try it. Another Samuel, Samuel Adams, started showing up on beer shelves, which had a distinct advantage over Samuel Smith in that it was significantly cheaper, very important in those days when instant ramen noodles with frozen vegetables was my usual dinner.

Fast forward twenty years and 2,000 miles westward. I've been living in and around San Jose, California for ten years. By then, I'd discovered discovered so many great breweries in Northern California, although most of them are concentrated around the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, or bucolic places like Mendocino County or Santa Rosa. San Jose and it's Silicon Valley surroundings was considered a brewery backwater. Then one day, I discovered a new brewery in San Jose called Strike Brewing and one of their first beers was simply called "Brown".  (They now call it "Lumberbuster Brown").  Light, tight, and a little nutty, I found it to be a refreshing Brown from a brewery specializing in sessionable ales. Strike's no-nonsense straightforward style was equally refreshing at that time in Northern California, full of big booming IPA's and Imperial everythings. Strike Brewmaster Drew Ehrlich was a minor baseball pitcher before co-founding Strike and his beers suggest he threw batters nothing but a steady diet of solid fastballs. Strike was one of the earliest entrants into San Jose's small but growing brewing scene, a group of breweries which reflects Silicon Valley's tradition of both innovation and laser-focus on process. Being a Silicon Valley techie, it is with pride that I can now enjoy hometown brews from Strike and plenty of other new local breweries.

Five years later, late last summer, I'm chatting which Calicraft's Brewmaster Blaine Landberg in the back of his newly opened taproom. I'm interviewing him for an article in a local food magazine, and he's eagerly handing me sample after sample of each of his beers, telling me all about them like they're his kids. It was not wise to interview him on an empty stomach. He gets to Calicraft's Oaktown Brown which at 6.7% abv, 70 ibu, which is not your traditional Brown Ale, and tastes far more balanced and composed than those numbers suggest. We both lament that Brown Ales are underappreciated. Landberg's idea behind Oaktown Brown was to give the style the royal treatment, adding oak at fermentation and plenty of Cascade hops, creating a woody, vanilla, and slightly red wine character to the big roasty flavors. I don't know how he keeps all those big flavors at the right volumes but he does it this complex brew I find myself sipping effortlessly.

One could derisively call Brown Ales the cockroaches of beer, continuing to persist despite commercially eradicative indifference. The thing about Brown Ales are, whether in traditional form, modern renditions, or contemporary reworkings, they have their passionate believers.

The Session #119: Dealing with Discomfort

For this month's Session, Alec Latham at Mostly About Beer asks us to write about "discomfort beers", beers that took us out of our comfort zone and "beers you weren't sure whether you didn't like or whether you just needed to adjust to."

As a runner, I know a few things about discomfort. Runners purposely and willingly subject ourselves to all kinds of discomfort, and often have a good time doing it. Yes, runners are a little weird. Of course, it's the mental and physical development created in adapting to discomfort which runners seek. In the same way, going outside of our beery comfort zones develops both the palate and the mind to appreciate beer's full potential.

As for us brewing enthusiasts, we're often going about, trying new beers from different breweries. That's how we learn about beer, and it describes how I started my journey to discover beer ten years ago. I just started picking up six-packs from different breweries sitting there in the grocery store cooler, taking them home, and seeing if I liked them. Most of the time I did. I started venturing online to learn more about the different beers out there, creating this positive feedback loop, where I read what others were raving about and then confidently striding into bottle shops and bars seeking them out, repeating with increasing frequency.

Some beers took longer than others to get used to. I remember my first sips of Bear Republic's Racer 5 IPA, finding it to be completely unbearably bitter. It was like chewing on an old bicycle tire. Over time after sampling other hop driven beers, I cautiously came back to Racer 5. To my surprise, I liked it on the second go around, apparently developing a taste for IPAs.  Or perhaps I developed a taste for old bicycle tires.

One beer style I found discomforting early on were American Barleywines. The massive amount of sweet malt, supposedly balanced with lots of hops in the American style, tasted like a syrupy, chalky mess. As I've learned more about beer and expanded my palate, I've come back to try a few American Barleywines. They still taste like a syrupy chalky mess. I'm fine with Barleywines brewed in the English style. Somehow, American's have taken a perfectly good style and made of mess of it with too many hops.

There are other styles I often find discomforting.  Like our Session host, I wasn't a fan of my first Black IPA. Black IPA's require a careful and delicate balance of aggressive flavors, and not every brewer can pull off. Some Black IPA's are wonderful. A fair share of Black IPA's can be diplomatically described as out of control monstrosities. Session IPA's are sort of my anti-discomfort beer. I really liked the first few I tried, but now I've grown to sour a bit to the style. It's really tricky to balance the high hop content with a whisper of malt, and I'm afraid a few Session IPA's come across as little more than fizzy hop water.

Now if I were a beer industry professional, it would be my job to choke down these discomfort beers to do my best to appreciate the full scope of brewing. But beer is just my hobby. I see little point in forcing myself to appreciate beers I don't particularly like and probably never will. That doesn't mean it doesn't pay to explore areas that might not seem to be the most fruitful for discovery.

Like the past summer, when I made a point of seeking out Lagers and Pilsners from various breweries. I've never been a big fan of these much maligned styles associated with big multi-national corporations. Now sitting around, drinking Lagers isn't exactly my idea of discomfort.  But it was rather eye-opening discovering Lagers from small California brewers of subtle, satisfying depth in a thirst-quenching beverage. I also gained a new appreciation for Pilsners after sampling many examples of the style. To my surprise, some of my favorite California brewers whiffed on the Pilsner style, despite having a number of successful flavorful ales in their line-up. And wouldn't you know, some Pilsners from mega corporations aren't half bad. This summertime experiment went to show how just how challenging the Pilsner style is to brew.

I suppose if I were really hard-core about beer, I'd spend a summer drinking American Barleywines. Whether running, drinking beer, or anything else, how much discomfort you're willing to embrace says a lot.

The Session #118: Who's Coming to My Ultimate Fantasy Beer Dinner?

This month's Session topic from Stan Hieronymus is a fiendishly clever idea to get us to think about how beer relates to our personal lives through the simple question:

If you could invite four people dead or live to a beer dinner who would they be? What four beers would you serve?

Which four people would I invite to spend the evening over a beer dinner? Well, I could invite four very talented, accomplished brewers, but a couple hours into a wonkish evening devoted to the fine details brewing techniques, I'd start looking at my watch. Talking endlessly into the night with a bunch of beer writers and historians would be an evening well spent, but I could think of better ways. The four people who I'd  want to spend the evening mean a lot to me in some way, and all undeniably understood the power of beer. So without further ado, let me roll out the guest and beer list for my ultimate fantasy beer dinner.

Mike Royko
(AP Photo/Charles Knoblock)

1) Mike Royko, Writer (1932-1997)
Every morning growing up in suburban Chicago, I'd start my day reading Mike Royko's column on page 2 of the newspaper. Sadly, writers like Royko no longer exist. His crusty, hard-boiled prose covered politics, sports, food, culture, music, and whatever else might be on his mind, an unthinkable breadth in today's modern hyper-segmented media. Some of his best columns captured the hopeful futility of Cubs fans, and with all the retrospective Cubs lore surrounding their run to capture their first World Series in 108 years, surprisingly Royko has been left out of that conversation.

What few realize what that Royko was one of the earliest American crusaders for better beer. Writing for the Chicago Daily News in 1973, Royko declared "America's beer tastes as if it were brewed through a horse". Backing up his assertion, he organized what was quite possibly the first blind beer tasting competition in the United States between twenty-two National brands, imports, and a smattering of small Midwestern regional breweries that existed at the time. Despite taking a lot of heat for slamming America's national breweries, the results supported Royko, as no national brewery finished in the top five. The winner was an imported West German Pilsner followed by England's Bass Ale. The leading American beer was Point Special from Point Brewery, a small brewery in nearby Steven's Point Wisconsin which you can still purchase today.

Royko never lived to see his beloved Cubs win the World Series and American brewing hadn't yet shifted into overdrive when he passed away in 1997. I can only imagine what he'd think about Cubs finally winning the World Series or how America's brewers have transformed beer. I suspect he might not a fan of uber-hoppy IPA's and he'd have plenty of snarky and deadly accurate things to say about craft beer's hipsters and pretentiousness. It's too bad we'll never get to read them.

The Beer: 2016 Goose Island Bourbon County Stout.  The antithesis of beers Royko railed against, yet old school enough to warrant his approval.

2) My wife
No one has shaped my appreciation for beer greater than my wife. People talk about their personal craft beer epiphany. My wife had a big hand in mine. We had only been dating a few months when we took a trek to California's Mendocino County. I was already familiar with a few small breweries, but it wasn't until we stopped at Anderson Valley Brewing and North Coast Brewing that I began to really appreciate the real possibilities and dimensions of beer. She also introduced me to some fine wines in Anderson Valley, but I don't hold that against her.

Together we've shared and discussed the contents of so many 22 ounce bottles. She's not only been a great reality check on my taste buds ("Are you tasting apricot?"), but picks up certain characters from a brews that I didn't quite get the first time around. While we've had our share of passionate arguments over stuff other than beer, sharing a good beer is often the best way to diffuse our stresses at the end of a difficult day.

Of course, there's a whole lot more to her than being my best drinking buddy. She helped me turn around my life ten years ago when it nearly went off the rails, restored a sense of family with my kids I lost with my first wife, still laughs at jokes I've told over a thousand times, and does an unbelievable job of putting up with my crap. I love her.

The Beer: Her favorite beers are Belgian Ales and IPA's, so a good Belgian IPA like Stone's Cali-Belgique is the choice.

Ken Grossman (photo credit)

3) Ken Grossman, Founder and CEO of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
When new brewers these days call themselves pioneers, I just have to laugh. While there's nothing simple about building a brewery, today's brewers can order ready made equipment from any number of suppliers. Grossman had no such luxury back in the day. He literally built his first brewery from discarded junk. New brewers talk about educating themselves to understand the nuances of how beer pairs with food, or how to use new hop varietals. Grossman took welding classes just so he could build a functioning brewery.

Fast forward from those meager scratch beginnings to today and there's simply no one more experienced or knowledgeable about all thing brewing in America, period.  Whether building a brewery, understanding the business of beer, using barley and hops, or finding more environmentally sustainable ways to brew, Grossman's the expert. He also knows a lot about pairing beer with stuff like fois gras and using fancy schmancy hops varietals. Oh yeah, he's also a self-made billionaire.

What I find most impressive about Grossman is that he's handled his transformation from a humble brewer to a brewing mogul with far great humility and grace than many of his contemporaries. Jim Koch's still irrationally clings to struggling Sam Adam's Boston Lager as the savior to his Boston Beer Company, while the company he built pointlessly churns out a steady stream of alcopops. Greg Koch's edgy aggression deteriorated into clumsy corporate punk posing once Stone Brewing became an international brand. Lagunitas's Tony Magee has become just like the corporate bullies he's long railed against. Yet Grossman has remained Grossman: smart, industrious, generous, and knowledgeable. Just like his flagship Pale Ale, even though he hails from craft beers dark ages, Grossman's arguably more relevant than ever. He's still ahead of everyone else on the marketing curve with things like Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp. There's always a seat at my house for Grossman anytime he wants to talk about all things beer.

The Beer: What else? Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

4) Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States
If you've studied how our nation's Presidents related to beer over the past 100 years, and I have, it's clear no President has come anywhere close to Barack Obama at elevating the status of beer in our country. Beer was brewed for the first time in the White House under his Presidency. But home brewing in the White House is pretty minor compared to Obama's Beer Summit, where beer was used for its power as a social lubricant to ease racial tensions. Obama's done a great job serving two terms as our President and it would be my privilege to buy him a beer as a thank you for everything he's done for our country.

Yes, I'm one of those damn liberals and I do my best to avoid politics on my blog, but in these turbulent times as we contemplate a Trump Presidency, I'm finding that difficult. Of the many wonderful things about beer, it's a welcome escape from the critical economic, social, and environmental challenges we face. I'd rather have a hobby writing about something as inconsequential as beer than the stuff that really matters. But given the deep divisions the recent election exposed in our country, often along racial lines, I'm finding it hard to concentrate on beer. They say "Politics divides, beer unites". For that reason alone, we need "beer" more than ever.

The Beer: I would be honored to brew an all grain version of Ale to the Chief  Honey Brown Ale or Porter to serve our outgoing President.

President Barack Obama using the power of beer to heal racial divisions in the Beer Summit

The Session #117: That barley malt IPA with Pacific Northwest hops is so 21st Century.

It's another crystal ball gazing Session, this time Csasaba Babek at Beer Means Business asking us to predict the one thing we will see more of in beer's future.

I'm going to resist the temptation to write about industry consolidation coupled with the proliferation of very small, neighborhood breweries. I do expect to see more of that, but at this point in my not very humble opinion, that's not really a prediction but an observation. The economic wheels of beer are turning firmly turning in this direction for all to see.

But that more competitive landscape will be a driver for a lot more diversity of beer ingredients, where breweries strive for innovation and distinctiveness to separate themselves in a crowded industry.

I don't think I need to tell you that new hop varietals with unique and  unprecedented flavors are being cultivated each year.  But in my mind, a more interesting development are the nascent hop growing regions in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, California and Colorado taking root, establishing their own identities and quite possibly their own flavors and character. It's still an open question as to how successful these efforts will be, and if the average beer drinker will really tell the difference between Yakima Valley, Michigan, and New York Cascade hops. Will there be a day where bar patrons sip different IPAs from a series tiny glasses, comparing and contrasting the character of different regional hop varieties? This may be a dystopian future for certain people, but no longer seems far-fetched.

On the fermentables side, barley and wheat currently dominate in addition to corn and rice, which are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as cheap fillers. Rye and oats pop up here and there. Historically, it wasn't always that way. For centuries, beer has been brewed with fermentables like millet, sorghum, yams, buckwheat, grapes, apples, cranberries, molasses, honey and whatever else might be lying around. I've noticed breweries slowly re-discovering these other sources or starches and sugar, and the results have been unexpected pleasures. Brown rice added a light, nutty flavor to a light ale, while buckwheat imparted a rich heartiness to a brew roasted barley malt can't possibly replicate. Portland's Hopworks Urban Brewery is playing around with Kernza, a rare grain which most likely had never been cultivated for human consumption, which imparts a light spiciness to the brew. And is it just me, or are rye beers becoming more common, as brewers play around with the interplay of grain and hops. I'm just going more with my gut here, and say brewers moving forward are going to start throwing different stuff into their mash tuns.

Will our barley malt IPA's brewed with Pacific Northwest hops some day look as monochromatic as the industrial light lagers of the 20th Century?  Let's hope so!

The Session #116 Round-up

Despite only five participants in this month's Session on the Gose style, the discussion was lively. I led things off with a critique of sorts of what American brewers are doing to the Gose. While I've enjoyed a few modern examples of the style, I'm just not a fan of most of the untraditional fruit additions and extra hopping American brewers are injecting into their Goses.

It seems I've found a kindred spirit with Alan McCleod, who isn't a big fan of what brewers are doing with the Gose these days, either. With his typical biting wit, he decries the worst examples of the style as "Gatorade alcopop" or "salty SunnyD" and notes that what's called a "Gose" these days has little resemblance to the original examples of the style. But it's not all bad, as Alan states, "In the hands of a thoughtful brewer with a sense of tradition there is a memorable play of wheat, salt and herb that satisfies."

On the other side of the pond, Boak and Bailey largely disagree. While conceding "a few more straight Goses without fruit and other sprinkles would be nice", they prefer having a few non-traditional Goses to none at all. They particularly like "Salty Kiss" from UK Brewer Magic Rock, brewed with sea buckthorn, rosehips and English gooseberries.  Describing the contemporary Gose style, they declare, "...in general, what German Gose isn't in the 21st Century is a deeply profound, complex, challenging beer: it's a fun refresher, no more tangy than a can of Fanta, no saltier than a Jacob's cream cracker, and with coriander present but hardly obtrusive."

Josh Hubner over at Lost Lagers muses on the style's history and how modern brewers are experimenting with the Gose without taking any sides. He notes, "...there is something about a gose that makes it the perfect summer beer, and maybe that's why it's found a foothold here in the U.S. It is simultaneously tart, refreshing, light, and - hopefully - just a tad bit salty. Add some fruit to the mix, as is common among craft brewers, and also traditionally (mit schuss, as is also common with Berliner Weisse), and you have the perfect beer for a hot, sunny day."

Finally, the Beer Nut will have none of this debate.  He's just enjoying a "This Gose" brewed with lemongrass from Fyne Ales, which sent him a sample of along with a smoked salmon as a food pairing. The heavily smoked salad overpowered the Gose, so he found the pairing didn't work, though the Beer Nut seems to have enjoyed lemon grass addition, which created "...an out-of -character lemon flavour, like lemon meringue pie.....It sits rather oddly next to the other savoury elements of the flavour, but not at all unpleasantly."

That's a wrap. At this point, I'd normally direct everyone to the next host for the upcoming Session, but I don't find one listed. A year ago, Alan McCleod rescued the Session off life support, but with only five contributors this month and no host for next month, it looks like The Session is back in the emergency room. The Session's had great run, stimulating all sorts of great beer discussion and ideas for years from some of the best beer writers on the planet for years. If this is the end, it was a collective thing of beauty while it lasted.

The Session #116: What happened to the Gose?

When I first discovered the Gose style three years ago, its sour/salty yin-yang balance was a refreshing antidote to the glut of so many IPAs. I knocked back quite a few Anderson Valley's  "The Kimmie, The Yink, & the Holy Gose" and also became a pretty big fan of the slightly soapy tasting Golden Gate Gose from Almanac Beer. From near extinction in the last century, this quirky sour, salty wheat beer brewed often spiced with coriander, traditionally brewed in and around the German city of Leipzig quickly became an unexpected American brewing success story.

But then, American brewers started doing what they do, fiddling around with other country's styles. Anderson Valley added blood orange to their Gose.  "It gives the beer a cool name!", enthused Anderson Valley Brewmaster Fal Allen when I interviewed him about it. Sure enough, blood orange gives Anderson Valley's Gose an extra dimension, but I'm not sure it was needed or improves upon the original version.  Anderson Valley tried a number of other spice and fruit additions to their Gose. They rejected tamerind, as sour on sour is just too much sour, but in the past year released Briny Melon Gose. I can't say I'm a fan of it. There's not much sour, there's not much salt, with the slightest hint of melon. It's basically a very light fruit wheat beer.

Sierra Nevada made a big splash this year adding Otra Vez Gose to their year around line-up. Sierra Nevada takes the sour salty mix and adds cactus and then grapefruit, and I taste.....confusion.

Recently, I was talking to Calicraft's Blaine Landberg about his Citra Gose, brewed with significant and highly untraditional Citra hop additions. Landberg explained his thought process this way: "I asked myself “How do you make a great Margarita?” rather than “How do you make a great Gose?"" As much as I'm a fan of most of Calicraft's beers, I wish Landberg had simply tried to brew a Gose rather than a Margarita. The Citra hops just clash with everything else in his version.

Now Saint Archer released a Blackberry Gose which I wanted to hate, but couldn't. Saint Archer always seemed more like a marketing construct than an actual brewery, with their acquisition by MillerCoors not particularly surprising. This unfortunately overshadows the fact that Saint Archer makes some first rate brews. Their Blackberry Gose is one of them, the tartness of the blackberry effortlessly harmonizing with the underlying Gose.

I could go on, but I think you're getting the idea. Breweries used to brew light wheat beers with fruit additions, often as "gateway" beers for those more comfortable with mass market lagers.  Now, they seem to be brewing the same beers with a whisper of salt, some sourness, a pinch of coriander and viola', a tired wheat fruit beer becomes a hip and happening Gose. Instead of embracing the sour-salty balance of the Gose, brewing seem to be running away from it. Dead German brewmasters have every right to be spinning in their graves.

Is it too much to ask for breweries to make a good Gose and stop right there?

The Session #116 Announcement : Anything Gose

As the host for the 116th Beer Blogger Session, I'm asking everyone to write about the Gose style, mostly unknown for much of the The Session's nearly ten year history. In just the past 2-3 years, the Gose has become one of the fastest growing beer styles despite its unusual blend of sour and saltiness. Heady times for the Gose style that not all that long ago was nearly extinct.

Speaking of extinction, I notice there are no volunteers listed to host future Session topics. So if you want to keep this Session thing going, consider hosting one. You can find out how to host a future Session at the bottom of this link.

Back to this month's Session, I choose the Gose style in particular since it can be approached in so many different ways. Want to talk about the history of the Gose?  How about how American breweries are taking this style and running wild with it with different spice and fruit additions?  How else has the Gose manifested itself outside its German homeland?  Is the Gose here to stay or will it go the way of the Black IPA, once the hot style but slowly becoming a largely irrelevant curiosity?  (OK, that might not be your opinion of the Black IPA, but you get the idea.) Of course, we're all on the look-out for a good Gose, so if there are any you particularly like, we'd love to hear about them.

Just post you contribution the first Friday of October, the 7th and leave a link in this post's comments section. Or you can e-mail the link to me at photon.dpeterman[at]gmail(dot)com.  A few days later, I'll post the round-up of everyone's contribution.

And make sure you pronounce "Gose" correctly.

The Session #115 : A brief ode to "Red, White and Brew" by Brian Yaeger

For this month's Beer Blogging Session, Joan Birraire asks us to write about influential beer books. While, I've read a fair number of books on beer, one of the most memorable was one of the first I encountered, Red, White and Brew by Brian Yaeger.  The book's premise is simple enough. Brian Yaeger goes on a road trip roughly tracking the perimeter of the United States visiting breweries, talking with the brewers, and sharing the history and stories behind each one. While most of his stops were at small craft breweries like Dogfish Head, Anchor Brewing, and Bell's Brewery, his travels also took him Yuengling, Leinenkugel and Spoetzl Brewing, which might not be considered craft but had long histories in the United States.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this book is that it was basically Brian's Master's thesis at the University of Southern California. That's right, while most people earn their Master's degree after long hours in the library or down in some basement lab, Brian got his Master's driving around and drinking beer. But as you read the book, you'll realize Brian is a skilled interviewer who writes with an effortless conversational style on beer that's both informative and entertaining.

I read his book in 2008 when I was beginning to discover craft beer. People talk about having their craft beer epiphany. I didn't have so much of an epiphany, but a fast moving mind expansion on beer over the course of two or three years. It started when I visited a couple breweries. Then I started sampling more and different beers, began posting reviews on RateBeer and it all sort of snowballed from there.It was about a year down that path when I read Brian's book in 2008 which helped solidify my new found brewing awareness.

I actually got to know Brian a couple years later organizing three "beer runs" during SF Beer Week from 2010-2012 where we'd regularly attract over a hundred runners who'd all go for a 3-5 mile run and then hang around for a beer or two afterwards at a San Francisco brewery. (Bryan Kolesar was also involved.) For the first beer run, Brian and I communicated totally by e-mail so I never met him until just a few minutes before the start. I was standing outside San Francisco's Magnolia Pub and Brewery in San Francisco's Upper Haight neighborhood looking around for him when I see this guy bounding down the street who looked a lot like Yaeger's photo on the jacket of his book. As he got closer, I noticed he was wearing a green T-shirt from some Japanese brewery, baggy shorts, and these enormous tube socks with "BEER" written on them. There was no doubt it was him.

Yaeger's Beer Socks
(Bryan Kolesar photo)

As for the beer runs, we made a unique partnership. Brian admitted to hating running, yet found running down the streets of San Francisco with over a hundred other beer runners exhilarating. I loved running, but was paranoid each year we were going to be arrested or sued for not having the required permits or insurance to hold such an event. It's amazing the thing lasted as long as three years.

Today Red White and Brew comes across as a product of a much earlier time. But how could it not? So much has happened with beer in America over the last eight years. The essential thing I first learned from Yaeger's book was that every brewery is tied to a place and has it's own unique story and people behind it. With roughly five times the number of breweries in the US compared to 2008, that's arguably even more true today than it was back then.  And it's this central feature of Yaeger's book that drives both my writing and appreciation of beer as I continue to seek out the places, people, and stories behind each brewery.

The Session #114 : Parsing the Pilsners

It's been a hot summer in the San Francisco Bay and many scorching afternoons, I don't even want to look at an IPA. So for the past couple months my fridge has been full of the yellow stuff as I've made a point this summer to explore various Lagers, Pilsners, and Hefeweizens brewed by California breweries. It's been an interesting exercise delving into to these sometimes maligned styles. To explore these beer's unique character takes more concentration than with California's IPAs, which mostly slap you in the face with and say "here I am".

So for this month's Session, where Alistair Reece asks us to crack open a few Pilsners to compare and contrast what he considers "the pinnacle of the brewing craft", I was already on board. I'll start with Pilsner Urquell, which was once considered the text book example of the style, but many feel has declined with the onset of higher volume production. I won't enter into that debate, but it's a crisp, clean Pilsner with light cracker like malt and a comforting grassy hop character.  It looks gorgeous in the glass with the classic white head leaving rings around the glass to signify each sip. Pilsner Urquell may have lost a step, but it's a fine beer in my book.

Let's move on to one of my long time go-to summer beers, Lagunitas Pils. Most of the time, I've enjoyed this beer without too much thought and concentration, which is probably the way it ought to be. Taking a moment recently to focus on its flavors, I noticed a rather bready malt for the style. The hops are more earthy, a little grassy, and if I patiently waited for it, a nice little spicy kick would sneak in at the end.

Now Pilsner Urquell and Lagunitas are major international brands.  What about Pilsner from the smaller breweries local to my home in San Jose, CA? Well, there are a couple issues here. First, most small breweries in the area don't have any cold-fermenting equipment, so couldn't brew a Pilsner even if they wanted to. And I lot don't want to, because Lager styles have a bit of a bad reputation around here, undeservedly so, I might add. For decades, our country was saturated with a bunch of cheap lagered beers, brewed through a bunch of short cuts. Arguably, the most successful Pilsner in the United States was Miller Lite. I think things are changing for reasons I'll get into a little later. The good news is that I did find a couple good Pilsners from breweries just a short drive away.

Hermitage Brewing's Dry Hopped Pilsner
in the brewery's tap room

Such as the special release Dry Hopped  Pilsner I discovered at San Jose's Hermitage Brewing's taproom this summer. Dry hopping a Pilnser isn't very traditional and seems in the spirit of the American "anything goes" brewing culture.  The nice thing about our country's brewing mentality is that it created unexpected pleasures, in this case, the wonderful floral aromas that greeted my nose as the brew was set before me. There's a little sweetness from the touch of Munich malt they use, but it hits the crispy cracker malt note and finishes with a moderate floral spicy bitterness. I just hope Hermitage, which has made their claim to fame mostly on single hop IPAs and barrel-aged brews, decides to brew this simple pleasure year round.

Then there's Shimmer, an organically brewed Pilsner from Discretion Brewing located "over the hill" in the beach side town of Santa Cruz. Shimmer delivers an herbal hop wallop on top of its dry, bready malt base and light effervescence. A little hop resin is noticeable on the finish in this highly assertive Pilsner.

I'll finish a little theory on why we can expect to see more Pilsners in the United States from smaller breweries. They sell. People like to drink Pilsners.  The growth of craft beer has grown the point where it is no longer catering to the various niche's of specialized tastes but has become mass market itself. A funny thing small brewers are learning along the way as is that the general population does not necessarily thirst for hop monsters, big alcohol bombs, or super-duper complex barrel-aged brews. Most people just want something flavorful to drink. Pilsners also bridge a narrow gap between simple Lager refreshment and American hop experimentation. Now with American brewers penchant for playing around with traditions, we might see things like Pilsners brewed with Mosaic hops or Black Pilsners, which might I'm not so sure would be welcome innovations. But at any rate, I'm looking forward to drinking more American Pilsners as brewers in this country establish their own Pilsner tradition.

The Session #112: Virtually no beer has local terroir...will that ever change?

Let's face it, while we praise small breweries for being "local", left unspoken is that the ingredients they brew with aren't the slightest bit local. Virtually all breweries, whether small, regional, or national, source ingredients grown hundreds if not several thousands of miles away from where they are brewed. Often times, these ingredients are harvested on a completely different continent. Yes, a few breweries incorporate locally grown fruit, herbs, or spices into their brews, usually in a small limited release. While this is a great way to infuse a local terroir into beer, it still requires trucking in hops and grain over long distances to make it happen.

So when Carla Jean Lauter aka The Beer Babe asks us to contemplate what roles non-brewing, beer based businesses can play in the beer world, my hope is some how, some way, hop and barley farmers can work with breweries to create regions  where beer has genuine local and distinctive terroir. Is this even possible in the United States?

Well, barley is pretty accommodating to being grown in different locales. It's grown in 27 states, although the overwhelming majority is grown in North Dakota, Idaho, and Montana. Barley requires similar growing conditions to wheat. It's not too much of a stretch to think barley could be grown more extensively in places like California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Mid-Atlantic, and New England where plenty of the country's leading breweries operate.

But it's the hops that give beer its the most distinctive character, and hops are a far much more temperamental beast. They grow best where the temperatures are between 40-70 degrees F, meaning wide swaths of the United States are not good places to grow them. A new hop farm may require as much as three years of development so establishing new hop farms require considerable patience and investment. This explains why over 95% of the hops grown in the United States last year came from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  Sure, it's possible to grow hops in your backyard garden, but the larger scale production required to support an ecosystem of a small but thriving local breweries appears elusive.

It's also important to consider whether the marketplace will create the necessary financial incentives. Breweries in the US brag about sourcing rare and exotic hops from places like like New Zealand or South Africa, with beer geeks typically exclaiming "Cool!" when discovering their local brewery is sourcing some far flung ingredient. Will there ever come a point where instead, they respond with "Hey buddy, how about supporting your local hop farmer?"

It might happen. For example, there's been recent initiatives to support hop farming in Nebraska. If hops could take root in Nebraska, places like Kansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New England seem plausible. Will it happen in the foreseeable future?  We can only hope.

The Session #111: Surviving a Beer Midlife Crisis

For this month's Session, Oliver Gray asks us fellow beer hobbyists whether or not we're dealing with a beer mid life crisis. Certainly a navel gazing Session topic if there ever was one, but then, if we don't gaze at our navels once in awhile, what's the point of blogging?

I found Oliver's invitation for self-indulgence irresistible given that:

a) I actually went through a real mid-life crisis.
b) With my other hobby, running, I've gone through several different periods of varying enthusiasm over the 36 years I've been involved with the sport.

Let's talk about my mid-life crisis for a second. A little over ten years ago, I went through a divorce, started seeing a therapist, and nearly hit rock bottom. Unfortunately, my finances were got pretty messy so I couldn't afford the obligatory mid-life crisis sports car.
It wasn't until I could change certain perspectives and attitudes that I started turning things around. Sometimes, a change in enthusiasm is a good thing because it signals some sort of personal growth or evolution. But losing interest in something you once loved can also be a bad thing, indicating some sort of general discontentment or unresolved conflict. So it's wise to take notice of any change of enthusiasm over any subject or activity and ask yourself "Why?". OK, that's enough amateur psychology.

Now let's talk about running. When I was twelve, my dad and I trained for a local 10 kilometer (6.2 mile) race. From there, I kept running, dreaming about being an Olympic athlete in my teens. When it became clear by age 18 those Olympic dreams weren't going to work out, I still held out that some day with a lot of hard work, I could at least become one of the top 100 or so runners in the country. That didn't turn out either and by my early 30's, due to a whole bunch of things related to my mid-life crisis, I was barely running and sixty pounds heavier. One way out of those dark days was to get running again, albeit with a new outlook. Now, in my late 40's, I'll never be as fast or as strong as I ever was, but I still go out the door each morning and get a few miles in, and I still enjoy competing in a few races each year.

I must still love running, because there's no other explanation for continuing to do something that at my age, inevitability causes one or more parts of my body to become sore on a regular basis. When getting together with runners my age, the conversation invariably turns to all the nagging injuries we're dealing with. You may wonder what motivates me to continue to engage in this form of self abuse after all these years. Well, running keeps me fit, there's that nice buzz of endorphins that gets me through the day, and there's that sense of accomplishment thing. There other reasons that keep me running, but I'd like to keep those between me and my therapist.

But the important thing is, my approach to running has changed a lot over those 36 years since I've changed a lot myself. Running on the other hand, has remained static. Oh sure, there have been some incremental changes in nutrition, training techniques, running shoes, and you can buy a lot more fancy running gadgets today than you could 30 years ago. But the sport still retains it's simplicity of putting one foot in front of the other and repeating this over and over again to propel yourself as fast as you can over some distance.

While running hasn't changed much in the past 36 years, beer has changed plenty in just the last decade. There was a time when it seemed a reasonable goal to sample the  beers from all the different breweries throughout the country. Now, just attempting this in Northern California alone would involve basically quitting my job, leaving my family, and dying of alcohol poisoning three months later. A bar with 8-10 "craft" beers on tap was once considered a destination craft beer bar I would travel considerable distance to visit. Now this pretty much describes any bar in my neighborhood. I used to explain to my friends with an IPA or Saison was. Now, they're all coming up to me, recommending their favorites I ought to try.

I find these changes in the beery landscape liberating. No longer am I some evangelist, preaching my cause to the unresponsive masses. I no longer feel guilty missing a beer festival, since there's no way I could attend all of them, and there's plenty of new ways to discover new beers or reacquaint myself with the old favorites. With too many breweries to get to know all of them, I just pick and chose the ones I find the most interesting.

One thing I've discovered from this writing blog is how enjoyable it is simply talking with brewers about their beers and breweries. There's plenty more brewers to talk to now than there were 10 years ago, and thus, I'm having far more of these great conversations than I ever did. And yes, I do find the latest wave of corporate forays into craft beer fascinating. The story of craft beer used to be a tired cliche' of David vs. Goliath. Now, it's a nuanced story of complex characters with noble sounding motives but possibly hidden agendas, engaged in careful yet often dramatic maneuvers, creating both new apprehension and optimism. Good and evil is no longer clear cut. Some clearly find these new messier new realities troubling compared to a more simplified past. I can understand why many people find economically driven brewing business developments boring, or even threatening. As for myself, I can't get enough of it.

So these days, I'm no longer breathlessly posting about some new brewpub I've been to. That seems so 2012. There are far more stories about beer and breweries than there were just five years ago to discovering and writing about. This is one of most fascinating times in the history of beer, and if beer bloggers exist a hundred years from now, I expect they'll be writing about how our era dramatically transformed beer as we know it.

So I understand why lots of people, possibly including our host Oliver, might find themselves less committed to beer than they used too.  And that's OK.  But as for me, just like running, my relationship with beer is constantly changing, but has never been stronger.

The Session #110: Why tweet?

For this month's Session, Sean Inman of Beer Search Party asks us "to take one last crack at "original" Twitter." Why does he suggest reducing The Session to a bunch of tweets? Something to do with it being April Fool's Day, I think.

While I have a Twitter account, I debated whether or not to participate in this Session. I'm not a big fan of Twitter. It's so terse and technical looking. Call me old fashioned, but it's virtually impossible to have a real conversation on Twitter. I've tried a couple times, and basically gave up, as 140 characters never seemed anywhere near enough to capture what I wanted to say. In one case, we moved the stilted discussion to e-mail and things went swimmingly thereafter. Twitter works well for sharing links of content, clever one liners, and delivering electronic "pats on the back" in the form of retweets and "likes". Beyond that, I've found Twitter pretty hopeless. If Twitter went away, my life wouldn't change much, although I'd probably be a bit more productive with my time.

Yes, blogging is in a slow decline, but let's hope it never goes away. I enjoy writing about beer in long form posts and reading like-minded people on their blogs. Quiet mornings spent writing and reading about beer is a great way to start the day. Twitter is noisy distraction.

Ray Daniels may have used thirteen tweets to discuss the future of beer, but that's hardly the longest series of tweets anyone's broadcasted. Entire novels have been written on Twitter over a long series of consecutive tweets. While some may find these endeavors an interesting linguistic exercise, I don't see the point. Who would mow their lawn with a nail clipper?

Yes, the internet has changed writing as we once knew it. Today, we live in a short attention span world and blogging has been part of that transformation. I've learned if I don't keep blog posts brief and to the point, they are less likely to be read. The same holds true for the few articles I've written for print publications. While you see fewer comments on blog posts these days, Facebook pages have become places for spirited discussions on beer in ways that aren't possible on Twitter. And at least with Instagram, I can look at pretty pictures. Will things change if Twitter relaxes its 140 character limit and allows tweets as long as 10,000 characters? At this point, I don't care.

Why tweet when you can actually say something in a blog post?  (That last sentence was under 140 characters by the way.)

The Session #109: In search of Porter

The topic from Mark Lindner, the Bend Beer Librarian for this month's Session is simply Porters, one of my favorite styles.  Sipping the complex, sometimes intense, roasted malt flavors of a Porter is one of life's underrated pleasures.

Unfortunately, Porters are hard to find these days. I went to my local bottle shop last weekend in search of a few porters for this Session post. As you might expect, I had numerous of choices of different IPA's, Saisons, Stouts, Pale Ales, Belgian Ales, Farmhouse Ales, not to mention more than a few different Lagers and even Malt Liquors. I could only find three different Porters and took two of them home with me.

When I returned home, I searched for porters on the tap lists at some of my favorite local spots online. Out of approximately 80 taps to choose from, just three porters were to be found. Thankfully, one porter was no more than a block away at my neighborhood hangout, Little Lou's BBQ. So that night, I enjoyed a pint of Drake's Jolly Rodger Imperial Coffee Porter at Little Lou's. Rich, lightly sweet, and pleasantly coffee-lishious, slowly sipping away on this brew at the bar was a satisfying way to end a good weekend. By the way, what's the difference between an Imperial Porter and an Imperial Stout? I don't know, either.

Monday, I poured myself a Maui Brewing Coconut Porter I picked up at the bottle shop that weekend.  It's one of my all time favorite porters. Full of dark chocolate flavors accentuated by the toasted coconut, it tastes like a sophisticated version of a Mounds bar in a glass.

Tuesday was Super Tuesday, where Donald Trump took a commanding lead in the Republican Presidential Primaries.  A strong Porter seemed in order.  So I went with Heretic Chocolate Hazelnut Porter, which at 7.0% abv, provided the necessary numbing sensation required to remain calm while contemplating thoughts of Trump as President. What a remarkable porter it was. The nuanced roastiness balanced the buttery hazelnuts producing a restrained, sophisticated brew, with the different flavors harmonizing effortlessly. Call it the anti-Trump of Porters.

While I certainly enjoyed these Porters, all three were amped up in one way of another with coffee, nuts, or good old fashioned alcohol. Was there anyplace I could get "just" a Porter?

Well, my local Safeway always has Deschutes Black Butte Porter, one of my ten or so "go to" beers you'll often find in my fridge. It's the only porter they ever have at Safeway. Porters are definitely worth searching for. They're just too hard to find.

The Session #107: Breweries as Social Media Friends

There was a time breweries ventured into communities as outside interlopers. Breweries shipped their beer hundreds if not thousands of miles as they churned it out in factories before it finally arrived in our neighborhoods. Breweries inundated us with ads, blaring down from billboards or broadcasted into our living rooms through the TV.

Over the past couple decades in America, that's changed. Now, most people live a short drive from a brewery and can often easily see the beer being made and talk to the actual people who make it. Breweries are becoming the social gathering places they once were before Prohibition wiped that out. Money spent on locally brewed beer is more likely reinvested into the surrounding community rather than transferred into corporate bank accounts. America's brewing revolution has done a lot more than simply create better tasting beer. It's created a culture were breweries are members of their community, interacting with their surrounding populace.

Dan Conley's question "Are breweries your friends?"explores a dimension to this recent phenomena on how breweries can most effectively interact through social media. Most small breweries use social media as a cost effective marketing tol to interact with their customers and potential customers in the immediate area. Both social media's and craft brewing's growth have roughly the same trajectory and that's not entirely a coincidence, since social media has undeniably provided fuel for craft beers popularity.

I follow a few of my local breweries on Facebook and Twitter and my advice for any aspiring brewery hoping I'll follow them is pretty simple: Act like a good friend. It's nice to hear from you from time to time but blast out five or more posts a day and I'll hit the "unfollow" or "unfriend" button pretty quickly. Rather than always talk about yourself, tell about your employees, some of your vendors, or other partners you work with. You can brag a little, but describing every single beer you brew as "AMAZINGLY AWESOME" gets old real fast. Show the beer being brewed, talk about the ingredients, and let the brewer explain how it was made. That's far more engaging than just blaring out "HAVE WE GOT AN AWESOME NEW RELEASE FOR YOU!!!"

Take advantage of the full interactivity of the medium. People like getting brewery responses and "likes" to their comments or Tweets. You can learn a lot from a conversation with your customers, and learn to take criticism well and with a thick skin. You don't have to be selling your beer, just talk with people, ask questions, and listen to the answers. People are more likely to purchase beer from someone they've gotten to know.

If I decide to follow you on Social Media that means I'm interested in hearing your story and the beer you make. You can let me know about new releases or brew pub specials but don't turn me off with lots of hard selling. If I get to know you and your beer, in the not too distant future I will pay you for it.

The Session #106: Anchor Brewing's Mark Carpenter Talks about the Transformation of the Anchor Christmas Beer

This month's Session on Holiday Beers got me thinking about the early holiday beers in the United States. While plenty of pre-prohibition holiday ales existed in the United States, the first modern holiday beer is widely credited to Anchor Brewing's Christmas Ale, released in 1975. This beer was based heavily on Anchor's Liberty Ale, a hop-monster by 1970's standards that bears little resemblance to Anchor's Christmas Ale today. Arguably the next significant holiday beer release was Sierra Nevada's Celebration, an IPA Sierra Nevada still brews to this day.

Given the first two major modern holiday beer releases in the United State were IPA's, why aren't most American holiday beers hop-forward IPAs?  Why are dark, roasty, malt-dominated spiced ales largely dominate America's holiday beer landscape? And how did the iconic Anchor Christmas Ale transform from a ground breaking hop monster to the rich, roasty, spiced ale that in many ways has defined the modern version of this tradition?

Seeking answers to these questions, I recently spoke with Anchor Brewmaster Mark Carpenter, who's been brewing at Anchor at 1973 about the transformation of Anchor's Christmas Ale from a minor variation of the hoppy Libery Ale to it's current form today.

Recalling Anchor's initial Christmas beer in 1975, Mark explained, "Fritz (Maytag) though it would be fun to brew a Christmas beer. We're thinking, we're a tiny brewery, so we'll brew 400-500 cases, mostly for gifts. We were just trying something and see how it would work out."

Anchor Brewing's Mark Carpenter 

Then in 1983, things changed.  "We finally had enough ale brewing capacity to brew Liberty Ale all year around," explained Carpenter. (Anchor's flagship Steam Beer is cold fermented.) So with Liberty Ale added to the line-up, Anchor decided to brew something different for the holidays. "We asked ourselves what our Christmas beer would be," explained Carpenter. "We had all traveled to England to research breweries, so a few of us wanted to brew a brown ale since we really liked the brown ales we had there. So we brewed a brown ale for the Christmas Ale, and modified it each year for three years."

Then came that fateful Christmas of 1987 when Anchor's Christmas Ale transformed into what we recognize it today.  "That year, we decided to do a Wassail, a traditionally spiced beer for the holidays. Traditionally, the spices are added to the beer either at people's homes or in the pubs, but we added to the beer as it was brewed. I thought we'd do that for maybe a year or two."

Of course, that's not what happened.  "Once you start putting spices in beer, it opens up a whole new world and we never went back. We could do all kinds of things. Everyone had all kinds of ideas and it really gave us a lot of opportunities to do a lot of spiced ales." As it does to this day, Anchor changes up the spice mix and recipe for each year's Christmas Ale.

I asked Mark if he was surprised that many craft breweries holiday beers resemble the dark roasted spiced ales that Anchor's Christmas Ale became rather than the IPA's of Anchor's Liberty Ale and Sierra Nevada's Celebration which initially started the trend.  Laughing, he answered "It doesn't surprise me, and I don't mean to sound arrogant, but so many breweries just copied what we were doing."

Whether you believe Carpenter that Anchor's Christmas Ale of 1987 was widely copied, it's worth noting that two other influential Holiday Beers, Deschutes's Jubelale and Full Sail's Wassail, were first released within a couple years of the ground breaking 1987 Anchor version, and both are dark roasted spiced ales similar to Anchor's. So it seems fair to say that the transformation of Anchor's Christmas Beer through the 1980's still strongly reverberates today in craft breweries releases all over the United States.

Mark Carpenter wanted to include one final comment.  "Fritz always insisted having "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" on the labels. It shortens the selling time and our distributors wanted us to change it for that reason, but I think it's a great tradition.  The new owners of Anchor insist on this as well."