Too Much Beer, You Say? Pshaw!

Don’t sound the craft beer saturation alarm bells quiet yet, says Brooklyn Beer Bitch.

Brooklyn Beer Bitch

We interrupt today’s regularly scheduled blog post about the Beer Bloggers Conference ’13 for some breaking news. Splashed all over my newsfeed today is a report written by Ken Christensen in Crain’s New York Business sounding the alarm that there is over-saturation in the New York City craft beer market and the bubble is about to burst!

Quick, hide your kegs hide your BCS… craft beer is hitting a saturation point!

Whoa, there, Bessie! Let’s just take a little looksie, shall we, at the claims that portend such devastating news for local beer drinkers.

The article quotes Manhattan Beer’s Robert Mitchell, who harkens back to the 1990s shake-out of the craft beer industry, and claims “there’s clearly not enough room at the table…”

Interestingly, Ray Daniels, Founder of the Cicerone Certification Program, refuted this very thought a mere 24 hours ago at the BBC. During his keynote address, he…

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Eastern Shore Brewing: St. Michael’s, Maryland

St. Michael’s, on Maryland’s Eastern shore near the Atlantic mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, is a respectable, upscale, clean-and-tidy town.

Luckily, when you’re done gawking at churches, spending all of your cash at the antique stores, and stomaching as much crab as you can pierce, you can go to Eastern Shore Brewing.

I had a chance to do this on a brain-melting Sunday in July, when even the shade was too hot to stand in. It’s housed in a neat “mill complex” that also holds St. Michael’s Winery, and offers high ceilings and a sturdy brick interior. The process for enjoyment was simple: step in through a barn-like entrance, turn right, sit down at the cozy bar, and drink up.

Pouring away was Jay Hudson, whose title, he said, was “eye candy.” As a journalist, I needed verification, so he showed me his card. It checked out.

Jay Hudson's cool card
Jay Hudson’s cool card

It was a crowded bar area so my fiancee and I carried our sampler to a section marked by its oddly Victorian furniture; it just didn’t seem to fit the laid-back atmosphere. Each of the beers was light, fairly quenching, and bouncing with citrus.

My favorite was Tighty Whitey, a 6% ABV witbier made with lemongrass. Drinking it was like putting ointment on a burn: it just cut through the muck and sweat of the day and left me refreshed.

My fiancee loved the Magic Hefeweizen, praising its mellow orange flavor. The unfiltered wheat beer was kind of creamy in the mouthfeel, with nary a zing of bitterness. Smooth.

Others including a Summer Fling, which had a pleasant malty balance; their flagship St. Michael’s Ale, and a sweet-berry-in-the-background Knot So Pale Ale.

“We always wanted to have sessionable [low-alcohol] beers so you could enjoy them in any setting,” Hudson said. “If you’re eating and you’re full, we want sessionable beers to go with it.”

With Grateful Dead played overhead, we slipped back into the sun assault. We missed our little oasis the second our flesh seared on my car’s black interior.

INFO
Eastern Shore Brewing
605 S. Talbot St.
St. Michaels, MD 21663
(410) 745-8010
www.easternshorebrewing.com

ANOTHER FINE POST: Sampling: Relic Brewing

Among the beer geeks part 2

Beer bloggers descend upon Harpoon Brewing
Beer bloggers descend upon Harpoon Brewing

You can talk about beer and beer writing for only so long, right? Think again.

On day two of the Beer Bloggers Conference ’13 in Boston, I got myself educated about how best to reach… you! Yes, you, whoever you are. Part of my new mission was to find out who you are, what you want, and how you want it.

And later on, I drank like a fish.

We were assembled at the beautiful Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Presenters in a big room at with inconvenient poles and round tables with power strips on them used PowerPoint slides to demonstrate the state of the beer blogging industry (such as it is). They analyzed a bunch of nifty charts created from research by Zephyr Adventures (who organized the conference) and we found out that for the most part beer bloggers are married American dudes in their late 20s to early 40s with no kids and employed full time.

Yes, this does sound creepily familiar…

Beer bloggers apparently measure success with “personal satisfaction,” which far outpolled “revenues.” In other words, we’re psyched about beer and we’ll take pictures and write words about it, and if we have to spend our own cash to keep up the nifty lifestyle… yes, please.

We needed to learn the art of blogging successfully by using social media. So representatives from Drink Craft Beer and RoundPeg taught us ways to maximize our potential. Unfortunately for me, what they said sounded something like we need to “cross-platform our SEO with our InstaTumblring with hashtag analytics to out-Klout the search dynamics.” All very Pinteresting, but it’ll take time for me to process. Continue reading “Among the beer geeks part 2”

Among the beer geeks part 1

Jim Koch addresses the beer bloggers
Jim Koch addresses the beer bloggers

Imagine a tightly packed bar filled with folks dressed up in random brewery apparel, many with foreheads alight in smartphone glare.

It’s not all tweets and Instagramation. There’s conversation, too. If you walk from one end to another, you can catch snippets: “been blogging for two years…” “gonna start a brewery…” “had their vanilla stout before and it’s amazing…”

Last night was like that, and for a person who makes a hobby of drinking beer and then writing about it in the fading light of isolation, congregating with unfamiliar colleagues is a rush.

A beer blogger conference is like a month of geek packed into a two-day squeeze. Part class with A-list professors, part schmooze-fest, part field trip, Beer Bloggers Conference ’13 in Boston has so far been welcome social outing after years of solitary sip-and-write.

It actually helped that I got to Boston Park Plaza Hotel – a big, high-class joint in the center of the city – late, thanks to poor GPS input. By arriving 90 minutes into the event, I missed the “trade show,” which was just a bunch of brewer reps hawking their wares. A few minutes later, with an ID wrapped around my neck I was on a Peter Pan bus.

The whale rocketed us through some tight streets to Jamaica Bay, home of Boston Beer Company. They make a little beer called Sam Adams. And so there we were, at least a hundred of us, seated in folding chairs with a can of Samuel Adams Lager for each of us.

A representative of The Brewers Association, Julia Herz, gave us some inspirational quotes that boiled down to, “Craft beer continues to be a growing force in U.S. society and YOU have a role to play in its success!” She gave some apt advice: if you want to be considered journalists, check your facts.

Beer Bloggers busWhen Jim Koch – the face of craft brewing for more than 20 years – held aloft a pint of Sam Adams lager and addressed the crowd, there was something positively iconic about it. Not to gush, but I will: Jim Koch was a thrill to listen to. He took us through some history of the brewery (did you know that he originally had to pay off a neighborhood gang with free beer? Neither did I).

After an intimate half an hour with Koch in the barrel room, learning about how vinegar sweetens to help create the Utopia strong ale that he passed around in healthy sip amounts, we had a chance to mingle in two rooms and eat pulled pork sandwiches, lightly breaded fish, and delicate vegetable rolls.

I met the head of an up-and-coming brewery, several independent bloggers like me, and a representative from Brooklyn Brewing. Oddly enough, there were reps from Anheuser Busch and Heineken (Krysten). And they were HUMAN and COOL!

After an aborted bottle share arrangement (instead of having a rager in my tiny hotel room, I ended up chatting with a single blogger from Florida), I got to sleep at 2. It’s 9 now and I’m ready to get into the meat of the conference. We’re talking presentations about the state and purpose of blogging, and live blogging practice with real, live brewery interviewees.

Shandy mixology

Genius at work.
Genius at work.

In preparation for my column about shandies, I decided to try and blend my own, using three Connecticut beers and a variety of lemon-based additives.

Who will the winner be? Will it be City Steam’s Innocence IPA mixed with pure lemon juice? Or Two Roads’ Worker’s Comp saison and San Pellegrino-Linonata? Or how about Cavalry’s Dog Soldier and Sparkling ICE Lemonade carbonated water?

Stay tuned to find out!

Tart combos!
Tart combos!

More beer belly-aching

www.crunkish.com
http://www.crunkish.com

As I wrote in an earlier post, I need to shed a few pounds for my wedding in September. Along with exercise and portion control, I’ll be cutting back on beer drinking. I drink craft beer, so I don’t need to pound cases to get a buzz; three or four will always do the trick.

But I don’t need a buzz when I drink beer (honestly!). I want some complexity in the flavor, and in the summer a large degree of crispness and citrus hops. If I could get this from a seltzer or juice, I would. But I can’t.

Since I posted, I’ve established a few rules to cut down on consumption. 1) Only drink socially. 2) Limit one beer per day. 3) For every beer consumed, drink two glasses of water.

The weird thing is, a lot of my friends who are avid beer drinkers — as in 2-3 a day and 10 or so on a weekend — are trim and in good shape. I’m 40 and they’re a bit younger, but STILL. What I’ve concluded from that is that it’s not so much the beer that you drink, it’s the bad habits that come when you drink beer, as in consuming a bunch of salty snacks or chowing down on pizza.

In case you’re interested in the topic, read this piece from popsci.com by Victoria Hilbert that debunks beer bellies as myths.

To drink, or…

I have this dilemma.

You see, I write this here blog, and it’s a joy to research for it as well as my monthly column. However, I have an even more wonderful part of my life. I’m engaged to be married.

In fewer than three months, I’ll be standing before friends and family and declaring my love and fidelity. Unfortunately, they make you dress up for these things.

The verdict is in: I need to slim down. Not lose-50-pounds kind of slimming down; it’s more of a shed a few stubborn pounds in the belly kind of arrangement.

It’s July 5 today, and on August 1, I’ll be appearing in front of the judge: the tailor. I’ll appear before his honor two weeks before the wedding.

This would be more of a tough or welcome challenge to most people, but when your favorite past time is drinking high-calorie beverages and writing about them, the task becomes more onerous. I won’t be giving up drinking beer (I’m getting married, not entering a swimsuit competition!), but I’ll be cutting back and moving around more. Apparently my gym membership isn’t just a direct payment from my checking account.

I’ll get you updates on my fending off temptation. Until then, sip a few for me.

Thinking outside the carafe

Liz Pliska, with Nelson Veiga (left) and Jamie Webb
Liz Pliska, with Nelson Veiga (left) and Jamie Webb

The last place I’d expect locally crafted beers to gain a huge reception? A Waterbury, Conn., wine bar.

Well, I’d expect it even less at a nursery school, but still…

In yet another sign of Connecticut beer’s increasing popularity, 1249 Wine Bar recently opened its rechristened “CT Taproom,” and is already drawing drinkers to its six locals-only taps and expanding bottle list.

While the primarily Euro-centric restaurant is certainly a wine-drinker destination and has won awards for its wine and martini selection, the stretch into beer territory is a welcome move.

Much of the credit goes to one of the restaurant’s managers, Liz Pliska. The upbeat and personable redhead knows her beer and has made strong contacts with local brewers. Continue reading “Thinking outside the carafe”

Beer’s Debt to Jackson, 1976-1977: “The Audacity of Hops” review (part 3)

brewtallyinsane.wordpress.com
Michael Jackson.
Photo from brewtallyinsane.wordpress.com

So much of what I know about beer writing comes from two authors: Garrett Oliver and Michael Jackson.

Oliver, the head brewer at Brooklyn Brewery and author of “The Brewmaster’s Table,” changed my professional life. It was after poring through that book on beer history, style, and pairing  that nudged me in the direction of spreading the gospel of craft.

Jackson, however, was the godfather of modern beer writing. Indeed, as Tom Acitelli posits in his profile of Jackson in “The Audacity of Hops” (Chicago Review Press), Jackson was “perhaps the most influential food writer on any one subject of the twentieth century.” Jackson surely deserves his own biography, but Acitelli’s all-too-brief chapter on whom he calls “The Bard of Beer” serves as a welcome British diversion in a craft beer history book about the most influential American players. Continue reading “Beer’s Debt to Jackson, 1976-1977: “The Audacity of Hops” review (part 3)”

What’s Brewing: Cavalry Brewing

Cavalry Brewing card

Mike McCreary, the owner/brewer at Cavalry Brewing in Oxford, Conn.

What are the latest developments you’re excited about at your brewery?

We have recently started distributing through New Jersey and hope to start distributing in Putnam and West Chester Counties in New York this summer.

Have you added any new beers to your lineup?
The X-Limited Edition changes all the time. Recently it was an English ESB with 6% ABV and 32 IBU’s.

What trends are you excited about in the craft beer world in general?
The expanding market share and the overall awareness of the beer drinking population is a great trend.

Is there anything you’d like to promote?
Ask your favorite bartender or local package store for a Connecticut beer. Something brewed and bottled in the state!

Interested in having a profile of your own? Email me at beer.snob@yahoo.com.