When Beer Cultures Collide...

What is Beer Culture? That gets asked a lot around the beer blogosphere. Some people assert it's part of national identity. I tend to think that, when beer drinkers in countries with a beer tradition  are consuming the same globally-available brands, framing the question in national terms is nonsense, while outdated stereotypes persist in the face of amorphous, evolving attitudes to beer. Still, Boggle doesn't waste too many brain cells on the matter. Make Boggle's head hurt. Boggle smash!

This made me grin, though. Taken this weekend at a bar somewhere north of San Francisco...

Blind Pig would be some of That Craft. Guinness wouldn't. Maybe that's where the fault line in beer culture is, nowadays. Whoever came up with this abomination deserves a swift Cockney Throat Punch. I love the 'No Crap On Tap' sticker at the bottom of the pic. Ironic, no?


Notes: pic courtesy of my local contact, Biff Boggle. I have no idea who first coined the term, cockney throat punch, but I've nicked it off an acquaintance called Daniel O'Sullivan

Growlers: The Session No. 60 - Rappy Beeryhood

This is my first go at The Session. When the subject was announced, I posted on Stan Hieronymous' blog that I thought the subject was a bit too US-centric. However, being an occasionally contrary sort, I have had some dealings with them so thought I'd break my Session cherry.

That pic below first appeared on here in February 2010, the last year Russian River Brewing Co. made the contents available for sale in growlers. A friend was heading to London for a trip, and thoughtfully brought the beer here for us to suck up. At the brewpub the beer sold out in a day, after hordes mobbed the place, with queues the length of 4th St in Santa Rosa.

The beer was Pliny The Younger, and 2010 was the last year is was available to take away from the pub. The vile secondary market in this beer (and others) prompted RRBC to make the beer brewery-only, which didn't stop some idiots from trying to smuggle it out to sell on eBay.

The pic was taken at Victoria Station, on the balcony outside the Wetherspoons above the station concourse. We drank it at The Rake in London, friends sharing a great beer, which is the way it should be.

I wonder what happened to the growler?

(I've only ever bought growlers myself one time, at Bierkraft in NYC, in 2006. I think that was the first time I bought a Captain Lawrence beer. This post is sub-titled Rappy Beeryhood in honour of the friend who got us the Pliny the Younger)

Keep 'Em Peeled...

Where's Shaw Taylor when you need him?

Brodie's had their brewery van stolen a few days back. It was loaded with some draught beer and almost 100 cases of their new Black IPA. Over 1,000 unlabelled 500ml bottles went west. I tried one of the bottles still in captivity, and it'll be a lost classic, assuming the van and beer don't turn up. I don't suppose the thieves knew or cared what was in the van, but if you're offered any bottles or cases of unlabelled dark beer, bear in mind it might be Brodie's. I assume the thieving bastards will try and sell the casks/kegs for scrap.

On the other side of the world (sort of), Russian River are gearing up for their annual Breast Cancer Month campaign, Hopped Up For The Cure, with raffles and schwag and events and beer. They've brewed 'Framboise For A Cure' again this year, but it won't be released on a single day. To combat the tickers, traders and hoarders, they'll release a number of cases a day to their brewpub, with sales limited to 2 per person per day. They've raised the price to $20 a bottle, with all proceeds going to a local Breast Cancer project.

So far one or two people on Beer Advocate are seeking to trade the beer before it's even launched tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if the brewpub in Santa Rosa gets mobbed over the next 2 weeks. Natalie says

As our family and friends of the brewery, I just need to ask you 2 favors: 1. Please enjoy this beer with friends and family or give it as a gift to someone you love! 2. Please help us monitor illegal sales of it and if/when you see someone doing it (i.e. Ebay), turn them in and/or contact the seller directly. Thank you for your help and supporting a great cause!

Evenin' All!

'Beer's Black Market'

The estimable Washington Post has shone its investigative light on the sordid secondary market for spooge beer. Read the whole thing here. Woodward and Bernstein would be proud.

Of course, readers of my own estimable (?) e-organ would have picked up on this dark and unseemly activity in posts past. The Post's article is interesting in including views from such tickerific brewers as Lost Abbey, The Bruery and Stone. Greg Koch offers an interesting view, which I tend to agree with, that it isn't necessarily drinkability that drives this market, it's rarity. Hence RRBC's Framboise For The Cure going at $400 a bottle, and not a penny of that profit finding its way to the charity intended to benefit from its sale. Yet, if RRBC had offered it at double its original $12 price, they'd have been slaughtered by the same tickers for hyping the price.

I've been monstered for criticising the beer fanboy websites which offer trading forums driving some of this secondary market. Many of their members believe that it would all stop if these brewers bucked their ideas up and geared up to meet all demand. It doesn't seem to occur to them that not all brewers are in it for reasons other than global market domination. They simply can't accept they might miss a beer, and move on. I've been there and, trust me, it's not a happy place.

It will be interesting to see how ebay responds to this. Will they stop sales of 'collectible containers' (wink wink)? Police the listings looking for newly-released beers? I imagine their present ambivalence is partly driven by the easy money they rake off from this spooge. I expect the traders will find other ways to knock their spooge out - I believe Craigslist is used for this market, including to recruit mules for people who can't get to launch events. I'll be watching the reaction to this with interest...

(By the way, anybody interested in a 2005 Dark Lord?)

Boggle Goes West: Russian River etc.

Take a look at the pic above. One of these is from a Sonoma County winery, the other is from Russian River. Which is which?

As mentioned in an earlier post, local provenance is big here. Sonoma is one of the largest agriculturally-active counties in the US, but the most obvious activity is wine-making, with around 300 wineries producing in a dozen American Viticultural Areas. But beer is here, too, with Moonlight, Bear Republic and Lagunitas well-known alongside Russian River, who take wine barrels for ageing of their highly-regarded sour beers from local wineries. Evidence of this part of California's past links to be beer can be found from the tasting rooms of the Russian Hill winery, where three hop kilns sit amidst the rows of vines.

My mate Rap, as well as being an oenophile, loves his beer, and he's friends with Natalie & Vinnie at RRBC, so it's off to sunday brunch then a quick look around the production brewery.

Vinnie Cilurzo, King Of Beers; wine at Bottle Barn - they spelt my name wrong; is THIS Sid Boggle?

I visited the production brewery in late 2008, and it's changed a lot since then. There's extra fermenters in the main part of the brewhouse, while the separate area for the sour beers has an extra tank too. Huge pallet racks line the walls near the loading area, and cages define the interior much more than a few years back. They've taken extra space to set up climate-controlled barrel and bottle storage, as well.

We get to look inside the Aladdin's cave of the vintage bottle store, and there's some planning for the future. A beautifully-appointed tasting room is being created, with all the timber for shelves and the bar coming from a salvaged wine tun. That future requires some change to Californian law, so nothing will happen anytime soon, according to Vinnie, but they want to be prepared.Aladdin's Cave; funky kegs - look away Kevin...; hullo, hullo...

Soon we're heading back to the Bay Area, dodging heavy rain showers which freshen the air and leave it full of eucalyptus as we drive past small groves of the trees. A quick stop at Marin Brewing for a so-so pint of Mt. Tam Pale Ale (too sweet), then back to Oakland where Mr & Mrs Snake join us for a vertical tasting of RRBC Supplication. Batch 1 is past it now, says Vinnie, so we have 2,3, 4 and 6 to sample. The latter two are fermented slightly differently to earlier vintages, and are a bit too young to be developing any funky notes, but the 2 and 3 are full-on. Fantastic in the mouth, still retaining their sour cherry fruit notes. Supremely drinkable. I wonder whether the beers would experience the sort of 'sine wave' John Keeling at Fuller's sometimes describes to demonstrate how his Vintage Ale changes from year to year...

That's the final part of this series. Not enough days, too much beer for somebody who only drinks for a few hours a week, and the joy of enjoying good beer with good company. Let's do this again, soon.

A Confederacy Of Dunces

I'm looking at you, HateBeer and TwatAdvocate. Natalie Cilurzo of Russian River relates the latest sorry episode of spoogebeerian gaming the system...

Pliny The Younger on EBAY - Seriously?

I've seen comments in threads on your pages where members who couldn't get to the brewpub were offering fervent wishes that maybe some of the 2011 batch of Pliny The Younger might be smuggled out and passed along to those less fortunate. And lo! it came to pass that one arsehole managed to do just that, and he putteth it on eBay.

You can sense the exasperation in Natalie's blog post. She saw their breast cancer beer hoovered up by these locusts, some of whom are now reaping $400 prices on eBay - there's one up there now. The point, however, is that Russian River asked beer lovers to respect their efforts to get this year's PtY to a wider audience, yet they're catching out visitors trying to get the beer out of the pub by hook or by crook. eBay seem to have removed the offending beer, and I hope they've banned the prick who tried to sell it.

Really, if these beer fanboy sites are to actually "respect beer" (the rallying call of TwatAdvocate), they should be jumping on this kind of thing - lock down threads, ban members, send a message they won't tolerate idiots who ignore the pleas of the brewers and try and feed this disgusting secondary market for their own profit.

I don't believe that brewers, by and large, generate hype for these beers (notable exception: Three Floyds). It all comes from what I've seen described as the Pokémon effect ("gotta tick 'em all!") generated by these fanboy sites.

Clean up your act, before its too late. These people don't have any business being anywhere near beer.

Ho Ho Ho! Russian River Upsets Spoogebeerians For Xmas

Highly-regarded Californian brewer Russian River has upset members of the beer trading community by announcing their programme for sales of seasonal Double IPA Pliny The Elder in 2011.

If you were reading back in the Spring, you'd have seen that a 'growler' (64 US fl. oz. container) of the stuff made it here. RRBC launch the beer each year saying it should last "longer than a day, but less than a week". In 2010, it didn't even last a day, as queues round the block exhausted the batch in record tine. Much of it ended up being traded by the vile spoogebeerians who infest a dark corner of the beer-drinking community. RRBC was also targeted when it released a special beer for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and spoogebeerians bought up the lot.

For the 2011 Pliny The Younger release, RRBC has taken steps to ensure Pliny The Younger is available in the pub for 2 weeks, and that means they won't be filling any growlers. As Natalie Cilurzo says in the RRBC blog,

kegs will be allocated to last for exactly 2 weeks. Therefore, we may run out at the pub each day, but will have more the following day for 2 weeks. It will be available in 10 oz. glasses only- no growlers or bottles to go. This will allow more beer enthusiasts like you, as well as our regular customers, to enjoy some Younger this year! And we won't see it on Ebay!

Predictably, this has exercised some of the BeerAdvocate 'community', who've have taken their heads out of their backsides arguing over whether a hefeweizen is an ale (see Ron Pattinson's post, but be prepared to lose your will to live) for long enough to notice what RRBC are doing.

Never mind a brewer is plugged in to the local community and wants to ensure regulars and locals can drink their beer, this isn't good enough. Some BAs think that the brewery needs to consider massive expansion so they can sell into all 50 US states. One thought that RRBC needed the trading market driven by these selfish buggers to build business. Yeah, right. Like a hole in the head. A few voices of reason surfaced, but the sense of entitlement that comes off some of these people is nauseating.

So, a craft brewer strikes a blow against the Grinches of the spoogebeer trading collective. Hopefully they won't be the last.

Joy on earth, peace and goodwill to all men*, ho ho ho and buy the Frank Sidebottom box set! Merry Christmas!

*but not spoogebeerians.

The Curious Case Of The Beer That Never Was...

One of the things I like about many US brewers is their sense of place and their support for the communities they sell beer in. Not just by the act of brewing and selling beer, but by embedding themselves in the life of the community.

So it is that, each October, Russian River Brewing Co of Santa Rosa CA, supports Breast Cancer Awareness Month by raising money for a local womens' health centre in Santa Rosa. Parade floats, sales of special "All Hopped Up For The Cure" merchandise, raffles and sales of beer. Last year, they wrote a cheque for $12,000, and hope to beat that for 2010.

As it turns out, they already put $3,000 in the kitty, but nobody is jumping up and down too much. RRBC brewed a small batch of beer (supposedly based on their Beatification ale), oak-aged for 6 months with raspberries. "Framboise For The Cure" was released at their pub on Thursday, but before they could announce it officially, the Spooge Vampires got wind. The lovely and fragrant Natalie Cilurzo takes up the tale on RRBC's blog:

I will admit, I am a little bummed that someone posted it on Beer Advocate before lunch yesterday and all 23 cases were snatched up in less than 24 hours.

From Beer Advocate, I learned that people were frantically calling local contacts to help them obtain the beer. Seems like our friends the mules were also in evidence to help the greedy buggers get around the '2 bottles per person' limit RRBC set to ensure fair availability.

I'm happy that RRBC sold all that beer and put a nice wedge into the fundraising kitty. What annoys me is the behaviour of these sad gits every time a limited-edition beer is released, even when it's for a worthy cause. HateBeer and BA trading forums are now glowing with traffic generated by this, with some traders self-righteously patting themselves on the back for supporting such a good cause. No doubt some of this beer will wind up on eBay selling for multiples of the $12 retail price, and bottles will be traded back and forth. After all, with only 276 bottles brewed, it's uber-rare. I don't suppose any of the profiteers will think of making a donation to the cause.

I'll leave the final word to Natalie:

And to those who did get a couple bottles, please drink it humbly with friends and family in honor and memory of the survivors and especially the ones who lost the good fight.

Fat chance.

Pic above by Mario Rubio

Birthday Cake

I'm straying into Jay Brooks' territory, but I couldn't resist sharing this picture...


(pic courtesy of David Rapoport)

Vinnie Cilurzo, genius brewer at Russian River Brewing Company, happy birthday!

Clone Beers

A local spoogebeerian recently sidled up to me and asked if I'd been to Brew Wharf lately. Brew Wharf is/was a joint venture beer-themed restaurant near Vinopolis in Borough which opened in 2005 with its own 5-barrel plant inside the premises.

I hadn't, though I was aware that the brewing plant, which had suffered several false dawns since test brewing commenced in the Autumn of 2005, was now turning out some drinkable and well-regarded beers. The spoogebeerian told me that the current brewer, Phil Lowry, had brewed a clone of RRBC's Blind Pig IPA.

Spot the clone...

I chewed this over. Cloning of craft beer isn't unusual. The large number of homebrewing clubs in the USA are a vast repository of recipes belonging to commercial brewers, which they use to attempt their own versions. However, I believe it's rare for anybody to commercially brew clones. In the end I didn't make the trip, but Matt Wickham from the Evening Star did, pronouncing the beer as very good, and he would know since he spends a week a year drinking the real thing locally around SF and Sonoma County.

For me, I'm curious and a bit split down the middle. Not too many drinkers here would know Blind Pig, so they'll be judging Brew Wharf's on its own merits. But, is it right to use another commercial brewer's recipe in this way? The name of the beer, Hopfather, is also, I believe the name of a different RRBC beer. I'm pleased that somebody is at last making a go of the Brew Wharf plant. I can remember when they were test-brewing and sold (bloody SOLD!) some very sub-par batches. But part of me thinks that using the recipe in this way might be encroaching onto thin ice. Or is there no harm when the original Blind Pig isn't available outside the US?

Spooge Beer, And Ways & Means...

Some in the blogosphere (who may, perhaps, have been ennobled by BGBW) expand their beer experience by travelling to the source to try rare beers, such as... ooo, I dunno, Russian River Pliny the Younger.

Some, blessed with contacts, and calm of demeanour, wait for such beer to come to them... And lo, it cometh to pass that an growler of such spooge, for which an host did queue for two blocks around the brewpub lo for an day as the sun measureth time, and for those whom god did not smile upon, lo they did gnasheth their teeth and wail and proclaim, "now we'll have to pay over the odds on eBay!!"

This pic was taken at lunchtime at Victoria Station, away from the mortal host, and lo, it was drunketh in all its 11% glory at The Rake.

Its good to have friends.

My Name Is Sid, And I Just Drink Beer...

The Boy Dredge has used his latest HopPress article to announce to his readers that, in 2010, he will 'rate' beer. His blog also has a link and a cover piece. He is asking his HP readers when they stopped being "just beer drinkers" and started rating.

I did it the other way around, as I mention in my review of Phil Parkin's worthy and entertaining Beertickers: Beyond The Ale film, and, to respond to Mark's question, here is my further testimony...

When I first started to frequent real ale festivals in the early 90's, I made half-hearted attempts to keep track of the beers I'd tried, those I'd liked and those I'd prefer not to try again. I didn't have a formal system - just notes in the festival programme. Once I started to broaden my beer perspective and finally got online, I became aware that there were whole cyber-communities based around sharing beer reviews, experiences and news, and I took the plunge and signed up with BeerAdvocate. With a predominantly US-based membership, it seemed a good way to keep up to date with the fast-moving US craft scene, and I made some good friends.

However, after a year or so, I noticed that I was becoming less interested in the experience of beer, than the thrill of trying to track down the latest new release, or high-scoring tradeable bottle. I was emailing friends in NYC and asking them to go out of their way to track down this bottle or that, and I realised that there was an unsavoury, dick-waving aspect to these communities. The awarding of points or karma for the beers you rated, no matter how coherent your review, established ticker hierarchies and distorted perceptions of how knowledgeable a member might be. Worse, the main sites began to pander to the spin-off from this sort of thing, and set up trading forums. Now, beer hoarders and obsessive raters could use the site to facilitate trades. Worse, the new members seemed to be most excited around this aspect of the community. I finally ditched the BA account and now prefer to enjoy my beer without thinking about getting one-up on somebody in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas.

There will always be tickers, but my view is that there are different types. I have a general fondness for 'our' tickers. However, having worked GBBF and seen at close quarters the locust-like behaviour of the RateBeer crowd, you do have to wonder where the love and/or appreciation of beer comes into the equation as the hive seeks its 1 oz. of ale to rate. They attend every session during the entire week, and I would not be surprised if you told me that they try every beer. You can't fault the dedication, but what's driving them? Love of beer? Or those lovely rating points?

So. Am I "just a beer drinker" because I stopped rating beer? I still sample lots of lovely beer from different parts of the world, and I've spent time and money travelling to some wonderful and often beautiful places (Mark is off to Russian River soon as part of his West Coast travels, and I'm jealous because I know what's in store) to indulge my favourite pastime. But I can't be "just a drinker".

I may not be able to look back and statistically compare my first draught RRBC Consecration to the first time I had Supplication from the bottle. I can tell you that the first time I tried the latter, I was moved to describe it to my beery friends as the best beer I drank during the year of 2005 and that moment remains special to me as the time I discovered one of the finest beers ever brewed, whilst the former was supped with friends and the RRBC proprieters on a sunny Sunday November lunchtime while they entertained old friends from the legendary New Albion Brewing Co. Is that a less reliable way to recall a beer than to reduce it to a series of scores for clarity, mouthfeel and head retention? If there's a diminution, it's surely from being "just a drinker" to a rater, who must learn to reduce his experience to a group of numbers and a dry analysis.

Don't do it, Mark. You'll lose touch with a part of yourself if you stop feeling the beer.