Pic(k) of the Week: Sunset at Navy Pier

Taken with a cell-phone camera, and yet I like the (inadvertent?) capture of a gull close-by in flight, adding a sense of motion to the setting.

It's sunset on Lake Michigan at the Navy Pier, in Chicago, Illinois, on 12 July 2016.

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Pilsner as beer's Mozart

Beer Blogging Friday: The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.

On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.

For The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #114, Alistair Reece, aka Velky Ale — blogger at Fuggled— is the host. His theme is one word, with emphasis: "Pilsners!"

What I want folks to do is put down their IPAs, their Belgians, their sours, their barrel aged stuff, and hunt out a few pilsners to compare and contrast, whether they be Czech, German, Belgian, American, etc, etc. Try to get examples of Czech and German in particular to see the differences. Most of all though I just want people to re-discover what I consider the pinnacle of the brewing craft, so off hunting you go!

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Pilsner as beer's Mozart

In 2013, a columnist for the Washington Post wrote these seven dirty words:

Pilseners tend to be simple, straightforward beers.

In retort, I wrote these two-hundred eleven righteous words.

No, no, no, and no!

At best, the statement is dismissive praise, like saying that Mozart's String Quartet No. 19 —the Dissonance Quartet— is 'simple' music because the notes have been written down.

At worst, his comment finds common cause with the major brewing companies in doing harm to their distant legacies of Czech and German lagers —and SAB/Miller Brewing, in particular, with its apostasy "true Pilsner" campaign: if we repeat something enough, it will be believed to be true.

I'm going to avoid quoting formalistic delineations of OG/ABV/IBU and other alphabetic parameters. But I know a pilsner when I taste one: firm, slightly sweet, deep golden-hued malt; spicy, floral hops; crisp character, with a whiff of yeasty sulfur; gentle enough alcohol at about 5% to allow another sip, yet strong enough to make a statement; a long, dry, dare I say, bitter finish. And, above all, a clear, joyful declaration of the four ingredients of beer —malt, hops, yeast, and water— unencumbered by ale's zig-zag riot of dank hop, fruited yeast, and, nowadays, back-of-the-cupboard oddities.

Bob Tupper —the past host of renowned beer tastings at Washington D.C.'s Brickskeller— is fond of a music analogy for beer.

Ales are like jazz quartets. Each member goes his own way, but all finish together.

Lagers are like string quartets. Hops, malt, water, and yeast play together in seamless performance.

I would add to that: pilsners (lagers) are like Mozart string quartets.

Jazz as an analogy predates Millenials, Gen X-ers, and even many baby boomers. If that's the rub, substitute your musical experience and you'll (hopefully) get to the nub.

California's (and now also North Carolina's) Sierra Nevada Brewing —well-known for its American 'craft' beer iconic Pale Ale— also brews lagers. One, its Nooner Pilsner, it describes like this:

German-style pilsners are the original session beers. Nooner is our version of this classic style, loaded with floral and spicy whole-cone hop flavor and balanced by a crisp and dry finish.

• Yeast: Lager yeast.
• Bittering hops: German Perle.
• Finishing hops: Saphir, Tettnanger, Strisselspalt.
• Malts: Two-row Pale, Pilsner, Munich, Acidulated.
• Alcohol-by-volume (abv): 5.2%.
• International Bittering Units (IBUs): 32.

Get past the silly name, the less-than-expected clarity, and the higher-than-'session' alcohol level. What one is left with is a lovely beer: scents of a meadow field (not barnyard muck!), shortbread cookie malt in the background, candied lemon, and an ever-so-slightly sour-sweet finish. An American pilsner.*

It's a fascinating juxtaposition that today's The Session on pilsners follows on the heels of yesterday's #IPADay. Or maybe not.

This month's host of The Session, Alistair Reece, is a beer polyglot: an advocate for Czech lagers, American mild ales, British/Scottish real ales, and an imbiber of American 'craft' ales. Maybe, more 'craft'-ers should be so.

In coda, I wrote:

No disrespect is meant to the world of ales. But if one fancies her or himself a beer lover, and 'simply' dismisses lagers out-of-hand, she or he leaves undiscovered an entire hemisphere of delicious choices.

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Why I WON'T be celebrating #IPADay

Generally speaking, I save rants for the Facebook page; and I don't wish to toss cold beer on the celebration, but ...

...I WON'T be celebrating Eee-Puh Day today.

That's IPA Day, celebrating a beer style that floats the American 'craft' beer boat, in which the word "India" has lost any meaning as a tag for the second most populous nation on Earth but has transmogrified into a stand-in synonym for hops, not of Indian agronomy but of new-form American hops.

Of a light ale with peach extract added, a bartender recently said this to me: "It's a Kölsch because that's what the brewery tells us it is." And so it is with IPA today: it is whatever an American 'craft' brewery decides it should be, convention or historical recipe monads be damned.

There are latter-day Eeh-Puhs that taste only of hops, sneering at the inconvenient necessity of malt.

There are those that take pride in the visually repugnant.

And there are those —you're forgiven if confused— in which the mere presence of hops is no longer a sine qua non. Take, for example, the fruited IPAs that taste of Hawaiian Punch rather than hops. If disliking these childish, sweet alco-pops puts me in the category of IPA haters who inform everyone that they can’t stand IPAs, then I stand guilty.

But I would stipulate that I do indeed like IPAs — firm and bracing, and, yes, hoppy and bright— just not those made with fruit flavorings and extracts, or those infused with other gratuitous ingredients, or those that are made ugly beyond measure, or those that are redolent only of tropically-fruity hops or devoid of any malt character, or those that are hailed as if never-before-seen hoppy pale ales re-branded as "session", or others that are simply something else — stouts, wheats, Belgianesques— but with a lotta hops: each, in various measure, guilty of one-dimensional trickery and pandering, the antithesis of any reasonable measure of 'craft.'

If that's IPA Day, thank you, but I'll pass.

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Help Ellicott City: its citizens, homeowners, businesses, and its brewery.

Bars, restaurants, breweries, and other businesses throughout the greater Baltimore area and Maryland are hosting special events to assist with Ellicott City's recovery after the flood on Saturday evening that devastated the Maryland town's Main Street and took the lives of two people.

The flooding was so rapid and dramatic and deadly that the National Weather Service declared it a once-in-one-thousand-year flood. Read of the danger and damage at one business, among many, the city's long-time brewery: "Ellicott Mills Brewing Owner: Flash Flood Was “Longest Hour” of His Life."

How you can help

• Fundraisers
  • Flying Dog Brewing and Oliver Brewing: here.
  • At Heavy Seas Brewing: here.
  • At Jailbreak Brewing: here.
  • More of the many businesses and breweries assisting and fundraising: here.
• Financial donations can be given to the Ellicott City Partnership, at HelpEllicottCity.com, to assist merchants and residents with flood recovery.
• More ways to help: here.
• A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money for employees of Ellicott Mills Brewing, who will be losing pay and tips while the restaurant/brewery remains closed.

YFGF may no longer reside in the area, but my heart is with the city and its brewery.

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Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 27/28, 2016.

A bi-weekly, non-comprehensive roundup
of news of beer and other things.

Weeks 25/26
3 - 16 July 2016

• 14 July 2016
  Death toll climbs to 84 after Tunisian-born terrorist careens truck through Bastille Day revelers in Nice, France.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 14 July 2016
  Private equity firm VMG invests $89.5 million in a recently formed limited partnership with California's Stone Brewing called VMG Stone Brewing Coinvestment.
  —Via Brewbound.


• 14 July 2016
  Even 'craft' breweries have become Pokémon Go 'gyms'.
  —Via All About Beer.


• 14 July 2016
  Changes in Massachusetts beer franchise laws might be early warning for wholesalers throughout the nation.

  The [distribution] beer market is in flux and there could be seismic changes coming.

  —Via Beervana.


• 13 July 2016
  Ninety percent of the alfalfa, cotton, corn, soy, papaya, sugar beet, zucchini, and summer squash crop in the United States is genetically-modified.
  —Via Bloomberg.



• 12 July 2016
  Beer industry leaders including Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors, HeinekenUSA, Constellation Brands Beer Division, North American Breweries and Craft Brew Alliance —which account for more than 81% of the volume of beer sold in the United States— have agreed to voluntary disclosure of calorie, carbohydrate, protein, fat, ABV/W, ingredients, AND freshness on beer bottles, cans, and packages.
  —Via Beer Institute.


• 8 July 2016
  He was manning the ramparts when the craftbeer revolution began. Steve Dresler, thirty-year-plus brewmaster for Sierra Nevada Brewing, to retire.
  —Via All About Beer.


• 8 July 2016
  After four decades in the beer business, a 'craft' beer distributor retires in northern Virginia.
  —Via YFGF.


• 8 July 2016
  California's Stone Brewing release its first east coast-brewed beers, at its Richmond, Virginia plant.
  —Via Richmond Times-Dispatch.



• 6 July 2016
  The 100 best beer bars in America.

  A [beer] bar can have thousands of white whales in a building as glorious as the Taj Mahal, but shitty service is a deal breaker.

  —Via Draft Magazine.


• 6 July 2016
  The United States is now the world's largest hop producer, at 21,556 hectares, up 16.7 percent over 2015.
  —Via hop broker Barth-Haas, at Appellation Beer.


• 4 July 2016
  By Jove! NASA's Juno probe achieves orbit around the planet Jupiter, after a five-year, 1.7 billion mile voyage from Earth, only the second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter and the first solar powered craft to do so.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 3 July 2016
  

  Craft brewing growth slowed from 18 percent to 13 percent from 2014 to 2015, but that wasn’t a huge concern for the industry since the absolute growth of the industry was still very large. It’s only natural that as craft gets a larger and larger base, growth rates will slow.

  —Via economist Bart Watson, at [U.S.] Brewers Association.


• 4 July 2016
  Pittsburgh ranks number one among "15 best American beer cities for beer lovers," according to real estate brokerage firm Redfin.
  —Via YFGF.


• 4 July 2016
  Freedom House reports that the number of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year —72— was the largest since the 10-year slide began. Just 43 countries made gains.
  —Via Marginal Revolution.



• 3 July 2016
  
  • A 'craft' brewster returns to work after recovering from second and third-degree burns over thirty percent of her body.
    —Via Idaho Statesman.
  • Reports to the government of injuries suffered during brewing have increased from 160 in 2011 to 530 in 2014.
    —Via All About Beer.

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