Microbrewed Adventures (3 page)

Brewed with a significant proportion of wheat malt, Pyramid Wheaten Ale was a smooth, subtly caramel-like, light-bodied pale wheat ale balanced with a floral hop character that made it distinct from most other heavily hopped Pacific Northwest homebrewed and microbrewed ales.

Not only a microbrewery pioneer, Tom Baune pioneered diversity with creativity. Pyramid Wheaten Ale remains one of the best-selling beers of the successor to the Hart Brewing Company, Seattle-based Pyramid Brewing Company.

Michael Jackson
His World Is Beer

O
NE CANNOT EVEN BEGIN
to have a discussion about beer styles without mentioning the world's leading protagonist of flavor and diversity. Michael Jackson serves as an inspiration to all beer drinkers and brewers.

As a thirtieth-birthday gift in 1979, my girlfriend gave me Michael Jackson's
World Guide to Beer.
I had been homebrewing for nine years, and my beer world had yet to become global. This gift became a threshold for me. Michael opened up my world, and my life has never been the same.

Michael Jackson in his London office

In the early 1980s you could hear Michael on radio commercials describing the Cascade hops used in Henry Weinhard's Ale. Perhaps these were the first beer commercials in the twentieth century pontificating on the basis of varietal ingredients. Michael Jackson has always been a beer pioneer.

I tracked Michael down in 1981 and invited him to attend the American Homebrewers Association's third national homebrewers' conference in Boulder, Colorado. I did not have a clue what to expect, never having met him. Because of his radio presence in Henry's beer commercials, I originally thought he might have lived in America. I was surprised when I learned he was from London.

We've shared many pints and liters of beer at locations throughout the world since that time, but none so grounding as those enjoyed on his home turf, where he is most at ease. I don't recall whether our London discussion took place at Michael's flat or at his local pub, The Thatched House, then a classic, well-attended Young's pub in Hammersmith, but it has cemented our friendship that has remained strong for more than two decades.

I had been invited to judge at the Great British Beer Festival in 1981. As part of a panel of three, I helped decide the grand champion beers of England. Awed by my experiences at the festival, I stopped in London on my way home for a final two days and had a second visit with Michael. I asked him, “I was
quite impressed with the variety of beers at the festival. Do you think in America we could pull off a ‘Great American Beer Festival'?” Michael took a good swallow of his pint of Young's Ordinary and replied, “Yes of course, it would be a great start, but where would you find interesting beer?”

The beer was one of our biggest challenges. In 1982 there were very few breweries making anything other than light American lager. I was helped by Tom Burns, brewmaster at the Boulder Brewing Company, and homebrewers Stuart Harris and Frank Morris. The four of us connected with twenty of America's most flavorful and unique beers. The Great British Beer Festival provided the inspiration, and Michael encouraged and supported us. The rest is history. The Great American Beer Festival now brings together thousands of American's finest beers for the world to taste every autumn in Denver, Colorado.

Michael continues to travel the world in search of good beers. I do the same. Whenever our paths cross I make every effort to buy the beers, unless of course it's at his local in Hammersmith.

American Imperial Stout
Yakima Brewing Company

I
N
1984
the Great American Beer Festival moved from Boulder to Denver, Colorado. Begun in 1982 by the American Homebrewers Association, it had attracted hundreds of homebrewers and a passionate group of professional brewers and brewing professors from the United States, Germany and London. There were almost a dozen microbreweries in all of America. There must have been a spark of excitement in 1982 that had ignited a tinder-dry landscape in Boulder, Colorado, and spread. The smoke from the smoldering passions of homebrewers and knights of beer drifted with the winds eastward and westward, eventually reaching both shining seas.

This was to be the year of Yakima Brewing Company, its founder Bert Grant and his aggressively hoppy ales, and the birth of a new style of beer: “American-style” Russian imperial stout. There he was, founder and legendary hop guru Bert Grant turned brewer-owner of a tiny microbrewery in Washington's Yakima valley, where nearly all American hops are grown today. Bert was a self-induced hophead. “Hophead” was a name originally used in
the 1950s Beatnik era and associated with the lifestyle of the time. But this was 1984, and Bert Grant turned its meaning an about-face 180 degrees. Never would microbrewed beer be the same.

At the festival, the lines for previously popular microbrews paled in comparison to the excitement generated by Bert Grant's Russian Imperial Stout. Proudly dressed in his Scottish kilt and bonnet, Bert offered thousands of servings of the rich, dark, heavily hopped, robust Grant's Russian Imperial Stout. Conversion was rampant. It seemed almost evangelical. Lupulin and darkness ruled the festival. The world of beer would never be the same. Hop and stout groupies could not fulfill themselves. Bert was smiling. That year Grant's Russian Imperial Stout took top honors in the Consumer Preference Poll. A style was born.

A brief explanation is needed, for Russian imperial stout has had a long and royal history in continental Europe and Great Britain. Brewed for royalty in olden times and still brewed in parts of Europe and the United Kingdom, its original style was not characterized by massive hoppiness. Roasted malts and barley were added with gentle consideration for flavor balance with caramel-flavored malt. Often aged for several months to a year, European versions of Russian imperial stouts were characterized by nuttiness, high alcohol and sherrified flavors. These imperial stouts are an exquisite high point of the brewer's art and offer an experience that is rare but worth seeking. But Bert Grant's Russian Imperial Stout was something other than “Russian.”

Bert Grant at the Yakima Brewing and Malting Company, 1986

I would call it “American-style” imperial stout. Massive amounts of hops were added for bitterness, flavor and a
wondrous floral and citruslike aroma. Combined with loads of black malt and roasted barley, this pitch-black ale was supercharged with all-malt ingredients offering an alcohol level of 8.75 percent. At the time, Bert claimed, “This is probably the strongest draft beer in North America and possibly in the world.”

There are lots of microbrewed beers that have since surpassed Grant's original Russian imperial stout in alcohol, but no one has so successfully pioneered such a robust style of ale as profoundly as Bert Grant. In 1982 he founded his Yakima Brewing and Malting Company. In 1984 he took the world by storm. When Bert died in 2001, at age 74, beer maven Michael Jackson wrote, “To whom will we turn now when the world needs saving?”

Bert, you did us proud. Your legacy lives on with every imperial strength and imperially hoppy ale. There are many who continue to remember June first and second at the 1984 Great American Beer Festival.

Matters of Beer Style

I
T'S FIRST
and foremost all about the beer. This is why I first whet your appetite with a few classic brewery adventures and their legendary beers. But once you begin to enjoy the flavor and diversity of beer, there may be nothing more conversational among homebrewers and beer enthusiasts than the questions dealing with what defines beer style.

Some no doubt would prefer to enjoy or make “just beer,” and to hell with stylistic endeavors. After all “its the beer, stupid.” And then there are the royal guardians of beer styles and notaries of authenticity upholding the grand traditions of beer. I can appreciate both sides of the issue, having developed the
beer style guidelines for the Association of Brewers and various competition guidelines since 1979. What strikes me as most important is that beer styles evolve. New ones arrive; old ones fall by the wayside. Old ones help steer a course and uphold the pride and tradition of brewing. New ones give current generations of brewers the opportunity to develop their creative skills and perhaps one day “invent” a beer that 200 hundred years from now will be upheld as a classic.

 

I AM RELAXING
and having a homebrew, taking note of my thoughts and considering that the essence of style has a basis that is other than simply circumstantial. I consider styles based on one of eight principal characters:

1. Malt
   
2. Hops
   
3. Yeast
   
4. Water
   
5. Alcohol
   
6. Process
   
7. Packaging
   
8. Special ingredients
   

One may ask, where do color, head retention and mouthfeel fit in? They are considered, to be sure, but in my opinion are not the basis of style. They may help define styles and the variation within a tradition, but if there is an overriding basis, I'll stick to these essential eight.

Let's consider some examples of classic styles that might fit into these eight “boxes.”

Malt.
The predominant character of a bock beer, such as Heller bock, dark bock, Maibock, Doppelbock and Eisbock, is its maltiness. Malt more than any other character defines this style. The same might be true for English-style brown ale. Yes, hops, yeast, water, alcohol, processing and packaging all have a role in creating this style, but if you don't have a strong malt character you'll never have a bock or brown ale, whereas the other seven characters can vary while still achieving a variation of the true style of these two beers.

Hops.
The India pale ale style of beer is based on hops. The style is virtually defined by the audacious employment of this ingredient.

Yeast.
Bavarian-style wheat (Weiss or Weizen) beer is singularly defined by the special strains of yeast used in fermentation. No, I am not saying it is
the wheat or the lack of hops—these components can be varied. But without the special yeast you cannot authentically achieve this style of beer.

Water.
This is a tricky one. I hesitated to include it, but for the sake of discussion I beg the question: Does the peculiarly hard quality of water define the basis of classic Burton-type pale ales? I think it does, more than any other ingredient. The quality of the water affects the final perception of hops and malt, so important in British pale ales. There are dozens of malts, hops, yeasts and processes that can be integrated into the making of pale ale, but perhaps without the uniqueness of the water one cannot brew to tradition. I also contemplated pilseners on this basis. Soft water is essential for pilseners, but is it as essential as the process of lagering to evolve the smoothness of classic pilseners? Then there is the yeast, but with the proper processing ale yeast can achieve closeness to this style. Hops? Yes, the type does help define the classic pilsener. I haven't decided on this one yet. I need another homebrew.

Alcohol.
Barley wine and Belgian-style Tripels, for example, have got to have alcohol. Without it these styles do not exist in mind or matter. Hard water, soft water, noble hops, ale hops, American hops, cold or warm fermented, dark or lighter—the essence of this style is alcohol and all the resulting qualities that naturally occur.