Bitter Days Ahead

Learning the Craft (beer that is)

Before I Begin...

I bitch a lot on this blog - particularly about things I can't stand, flaws prevalent in the human condition. I was going to start this entry (about something I L-O-V-E love) expressing hatred. I was going to start it off like this: "One thing I can't stand is bad beer." Instead, I'm going to feign cornucopian. Here we go.

A small assembly of the massive tap line at J.P. Henley's, St. Augustine, FL (photo: me)

Let Me Begin...

I love good beer. Even more than good beer, I love great beer. Beers. Pluralized. Don't get me wrong, piss-pour beers (pun intended) have their place in society, namely frat houses and NASCAR. But, finely crafted beers may be the salvation of America, or even the world, or even (omigosh, the idealistic prospect makes me tremble with anticipation) - the salvation of frat houses and NASCAR! Okay, admittedly that's pushing it; we'll just leave good beer to save America and the world.

And it is saving America. America (and Canada, and the world over), as is no surprise to anyone with open eyes, is undergoing what's been dubbed the Craft Beer Revolution. As California one-upped France in vinification in the mid-'70s, today, beer Davids are giving industry Goliaths a run for their money. Now, optimistic as I'm trying to be, I have little faith in any craft beer ever exceeding popularity and sales of the likes of Budweiser, Coors Lite, Miller, et al... And why not? Ignorance is bliss, crap is cheap, and water is good for you, anyway! (Okay, first and last slight at the general denizen. In this post. Promise.)  

But the variety of tastes, flavors, colors, hues, consistencies, textures, aromas, and ingredients accounted for by crafting intrepid brews can overwhelm and belittle the little you knew about brew. What the hell is a roggenbier? Do IPAs really come from India? If IPA stands for India Pale Ale, is an American IPA essentially a Native American Pale Ale? And what the hell's the difference between IPAs, Extra IPAs, 2X IPAs, Rye IPAs, and Black IPAs, anyway? When does a stout become an imperial stout? Does one drink a breakfast stout, uh, at breakfast? Is bitter good?

The bible

In his book (or rather, beer bible-alminac), Brewed Awakening, Joshua M. Bernstein does a fantastic job opening the minds of beer lovers, and doing a damn-fine job of educating readers. There's so much that goes into varieties of craft beer that it can certainly make a wine snob sound reserved. Bernstein doesn't answer many questions: what he does is peak your interest in aspects of beer brewing that you never knew about, and therefore couldn't ask questions to begin with. He does a fantastic job of making you feel like ass for assuming ("assume makes an ass out of u and me") that you don't like rye ales because you don't like rye bread, just as he does an incredible job of cultivating your enthusiasm over the chemical process of fermentation. He lets you feel like a happy know-it-all with his comprehensive overview of hop and malt varieties, and the intrinsic tastes born from different hop-malt communions, and you're friends will definitely think you're a know-it-all when you explain that exposure to UV light causes the isohumulones in beer to break down, "creating chemical compounds identical to those found in skunk spray."

You'll learn about different beers, well-known styles like IPAs and Ales and Lagers and Stouts. You'll learn what's used to make Gluten-Free beers, and how and why they taste different from regular beers - and if, technically, they're beers at all. (You'll learn of a world wherein "regular beers" don't exist.)  You'll learn. And that is perhaps why I love Brewed Awakening: it educates as much as it influences. Oh, and it's incredibly well-written. Burnstien's composition is as crisp, clean and refreshing as a pilsner on a hot day.

Favorite Thing I've Learned (So Far)

There are a bunch of hops out there, each employed to achieve different results. Nelson Sauvin, for instance, is a hop from New Zealand used for flavor, bittering, and aroma. Incidentally, the variety is similar to those of the American North West, but see little to no threat from pests or plagues of disease, and thus don't require pesticides. In addition to that health benefit, favorable exchange rates allow these hops to be imported for cheaper than home-grown varieties - even after taxes. Perhaps we'll be seeing more financially accessible organic products after all, if only on beer shelves.