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The Craft Brewers Conference has struck again like lightning and has fled. This year at the Boston World Trade Center April 22-24, the event was huge, with speeches and beer and awards and beer and seminars and beer and the BeerExpo tradeshow with even more beer.
And since I covered the waterfront, here is a kaleidoscopic view of a covey of standout moments and frivolity. After the welcoming speeches and awards, the statistics of our still healthy industry (“recession resistant if not recession proof”) and Greg Koch’s beervangelical shenanigans, my first rule is: go to a seminar, and here are three beauties.
Success! The Draught Beer Quality Manual:
As promised last year, the Brewers Association Technical Committee has produced the premiere version of The Draught Beer Quality Manual. Within these 56 pages lies enough down-to-earth, easily readable guidance to suit anyone whose job it is to dispense clean, controlled, tasty product. Designed as a work continuously in progress, the Manual addresses draught system components (kegs, lines, faucets), system balance (pressure, gas), cold storage, dispense, system maintainance and cleaning.
Appendices address carbon dioxide, pressure and cask guidelines. Issues such as cleaning chemistry will follow. It is available online to read and download at http://draughtquality.org. This should be on hand in every bar, restaurant and hole-in-the-wall in the country. And in every AHA Homebrew group.
Oak Barrel Aging: Or as Tommѐ says, “In Illa Brettanomyces Nos Fides”: The redoubtable Master Arthur helmed this highly technical, historical and hugely attended session. When he asked who in the crowd was brewing in barrels, nearly all the hands went up. Tommѐ held forth on microbial flavor gain, tannins, vanillins, and gave a crash course on five kinds of oak; Minnesota American grows the fastest. It turns out cellulose is a nutrient for brettanomyces.
While things got arcane, the audience got well lubricated with year-old Lost Abbey Angel’s Share from either a bourbon or a brandy barrel, aged side by side. The difference was fascinating, with the bourbon-aged coming out with strong vanilla and, well, bourbon flavors and the brandy-aged subtler and sweeter flavors. Now Tommѐ’s looking for tequila barrels. “In Brett We Trust”, bravo!
Beer According to Women: Women are over 50 percent of the population, but they’re only drinking 25 percent of the beer. What’s going on here? Sebbie Buhler, face of Rogue Chocolate Stout (I am Sebbie — hear me roar!) hosted Beer Advocate’s Candace Alstrom, Pink Boots founder Teri Fahrendorf, and Brewer/2nd Generation daughter-in-law Jodi Stoudt, all of whom provided a sharp, youthful perspective. Does gender matter? Well, no (this from all three). Your most recent beer epiphany? For Candace it was Stone Ruination with “angels in the background”; Teri fell for Olfabrikken Porter; for Jodi, having just delivered her daughter Evelyn, it was the vision of Carol Stoudt arriving at her hospital bed with a six-pack of Munich Helles Gold.
It was generally agreed that women (brewers) are hopheads, that balance and intention transcend gender, and that more women ought to attend beer dinners. Beer pairings ought to be balanced with Sebbie’s proviso that choices should “break out of the usual pairings.” The question of male oriented ads came up. Candace and Jodi said they weren’t particularly offended since they move product. Teri maintained that there ought to be a genuine feminine face on advertising; she had problems with the Hallertauer Hop Queen not knowing anything about hops: “If you wear it, earn it!”
The seminars, 44 in all, are available on CD from www.allstartapes.com for all who wish to delve deeper into the year in beer.
Exhibit ABCE: The BrewExpo floor had a large emphasis on hops this year, which seem to be in full recovery mode. Add to this all that gleaming equipment, flashy glassware, canning machines, labels, t-shirts and neon, video.
The Perpetual Tailgate Party, a River Ran Through It: So I saved the best for last. The hallmark of the Craft Brewers Conference is what they brew and the regional food that goes with it. A Tuesday fillip was Hospitality with the German Hop Growers. All the German hops Victory Brewing has been favoring were present in huge bowls courtesy of German Hopgrowers: Saphir for pils and weiss, Herkules for IPA, fruity mellow and bright Taurus and Hallertauer Tradition for lagers, not to forget Spalter for alt.
The Welcome Reception followed at Harpoon, fortunately right down the street. It was the proverbial dark and stormy night, and a stream ran right through the center of the open, tented tasting area and back out again. We paid it no mind, with chowder, seafood cakes and specialty beers from northeast brewers holding us rapt on either side. The entire brewery (it was dry in there) was open to tour and taste, with each guest having its own station along the way. Notable were Harpoon Rauchfeisen (roasted weiss) and the Leviathan Series of big beers, Haverhill Bock, and my favorite Cisco Grey Lady, a Belgian wit blend from chardonnay and French oak barrels.
The following afternoon was the Pre-Savor Beer and Food Tasting, buckets of beers loosely matched with lobster chunks, raw bar, desserts, the beauty being we could make our own beer to food match. I was very content with barrel-aged Schlafly Barleywine.
That evening, Boston Beer hosted their Sam Adams Brewery Party, serving more styles than I thought they had in Sam’s ergonomic glass; kudos for barrel-aged lambic and gueuze and their big Doppelbock, Imperial Stout and Double White. These were important because out back lay a huge shore dinner with lobster, steamers, mussels et al. My bright red friend weighed two pounds.
Next evening, just to make sure New England kept their hand in, Harpoon Brewery hosted the Cask Night CBC 2009 showcasing 60 cask conditioned northeast beers. It’s not fair to pick standouts, but here are a few: American Flatbread London Calling (3.7%), a true English golden bitter; Cambridge Brewing’s The Colonel (6.5%) vatted porter 18 months in Buffalo Trace barrels; Cape Ann Fisherman’s Tea Party (9%) with three varieties of tea dumped during the Boston Tea Party; John Harvard’s Dark Bootlegger Ale (6.7%), a collab beer with Newport Storm which blends Brown Porter with rum barrel aged barley wine; Martha’s Exchange Dr. Hoppenstein’s Double IPA (9.1%); well, that’s only five. See ‘em all with notes at www.softspile.com. As the Conference was shutting down the next day, I cheerfully repaired to Cambridge Brewing for my own tailing out. But that, as Kipling says, is another story.
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