By Jenny Neyman
Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Bill Howell talks about a Duvel beer from Belgium he brought into his Art and History of Brewing class at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus on Feb. 16. Howell is competing for the title of Beerdrinker of the Year in Denver on Feb. 27.
Redoubt Reporter
This next statement is going to fall victim to the unfortunate stereotype beer has been saddled with by people who drink it for its alcohol, instead of all its other qualities: Bill Howell is a serious drinker.
But not in the if-one-is-good-a-six-pack-is-better vein. He’s probably about the last person to actually get drunk from drinking beer, because he knows its potency and his own tolerance. Why ruin a perfectly pleasant experience with a well-crafted brew by dulling your senses?
No, Howell, of Sterling, is a serious drinker in that he’s serious about beer. As in, he could drink it for any occasion — or lack thereof — from watching a football game on the couch to pairing it with a fine meal so fancy it’s hard to order without fluency in French. He brews it, studies it, writes about it, plans trips around it, teaches a class on it, picks out nuances in aroma, taste and style, talks about its “mouthfeel” and “chewiness,” and welcomes just about anybody into his home with open arms if they bring a bottle of something interesting to share.
Is that still not conveying his depths of beeriness? How about this: He credits beer with the founding of civilization.
“As an inveterate meat-eater myself, I can’t see the prospect of regular loaves of bread being enough to convince men to give up their hunting and start working a shovel and a plow. After all, it’s not like they knew it was going to lead to civilization and all its amenities. No, they would have had to see an immediate return for them to change their personal patterns of behavior. Discovering the joys of fermented beverages is just the sort of direct benefit which could coax early man into agriculture,” Howell wrote of his philosophy of beer.
Or this: He’s spending the weekend in Denver competing for the title of 2010 Beerdrinker of the Year.
It’s a competition held by Wynkoop Brewery in Denver every year, and is well-known and respected in the craft beer community nationwide, of which Howell is a participant. He makes his own home brew, and recently won gold with his Strong Scotch, silver with his American IPA and bronze with his Imperial Stout at the Great Northern Brewers Club’s 2009 Humpy’s Big Fish Homebrew Competition in December.
He writes a blog, Drinking on the Last Frontier, reviewing interesting brews he’s tried and sharing beer happenings locally, statewide and nationwide, when it piques his interest. Spring semester marks Howell’s third offering of his Art and History of Brewing class at Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus, discussing and sampling various styles of beers, touring local breweries and learning about the brewing process and history of beer. He also writes a monthly beer column for the Redoubt Reporter.
So he’s seen mention of the Wynkoop competition crop up over the years.
“I had heard about it in the past sort of floating around out there in the blogo- beero- Web-osphere. I’d see press releases or whatever —‘So-and-so wins Beer Drinker of the Year,’” Howell said.
Around the middle of December he saw a notice that the contest entry deadline was coming up. He mentioned it to a few friends and his wife, Elaine, who told him he should enter. He did, submitting a resume of his beer experience — breweries visited, beer festivals and tastings attended, home-brew competitions, teaching and writing credits and a description of his philosophy of beer. But he didn’t tell anyone, figuring there was no way he’d be selected as a finalist.
“You don’t know what the competition is. It’s like putting in for a job interview — you say, ‘Oh, I’ll write up this resume and make it look as nice as I can, but then when you get finished and read it over it’s like, ‘Well, that’ll never do.’ It’s the best I can do, but you always figure the other guy has more or better stuff,” Howell said.
Howell addresses his class on Feb. 16. He plans to compete for Beerdrinker honors by talking about the importance of supporting local breweries and distributors.
Yet he got a call from Wynkoop, asking if he could be in Denver on Feb. 27 to be one of three finalists. The trip is a bit of a budget buster for which Howell and Elaine had not planned, with little tangible reward. The winner gets free beer for life at Wynkoop, which doesn’t do Howell much good in Alaska, a T-shirt and a $250 tab at his home brewpub of choice.
But still, Beerdrinker of the Year? It’s too good to pass up, especially since Howell sees it as an opportunity to bring attention to Alaska’s craft brew community.
“My main goal is just to go down there, represent Alaska well, represent myself well and just have some fun. If the stars come into alignment and they ask the right questions and I can nail all the answers and the other guys don’t know what they’re talking about, that would be OK. I wouldn’t complain. I wouldn’t mind walking away with a free $250 tab at St. Elias. But as long as I can go down there and give them a bit of a fight and make them realize there is beer culture in Alaska, that would be very cool,” Howell said.
The contest is partly about beer knowledge, with a heavy dose of personality. It’s judged by a “robed and wigged” panel of national beer experts and former Beerdrinkers of the Year. According to the official schedule, the competition starts at 2 p.m. Feb. 27, with introductions and the “weighing in of the finalists.” There are two rounds of questions, followed by the “Beer Whispering” event, where finalists “will conduct a friendly, 60-second chat with a beer they bring to the Finals. The conversation should reveal important details about the candidate’s beeriness.”
That’s followed by “The Bribing of the Judges: Appreciated but ignored.” Howell said he’s bringing hats and logo schwag from the Kenai Peninsula breweries — Homer, Kassik’s Kenai River and St. Elias. He’d like to bring local beer or his home brew for the judges, but that would be tricky and expensive to pack. Instead, he may give them all IOUs for drinks and fishing trips when they decided to visit Alaska, the future craft beer capital of the world.
“Growing up in Louisiana, I picked up a bit of wisdom at an early age: ‘Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?’” Howell wrote in his blog.
After an intermission, there’s another couple rounds of questions and a “Beer Listening” round, where finalists attempt to identify the style and brand of three glasses of beer. After closing statements, the judges will retire to deliberate, leaving the audience and finalists to “wait and sip.” Upon the esteemed judges’ return, finalists will be reweighed and the winner will be announced.
The schedule alone makes it clear the competition is not a totally serious endeavor, Howell said, but he knows he’s up against serious competition. The other two competitors are prior Beerdrinker of the Year finalists, so they know what they’re getting into, and both have impressive resumes of trips taken and beers sampled all around the world. With a limited vacation budget, a home base in Alaska and a wife who, while tolerant, doesn’t want to plan every trip Outside based on Howell’s beer interests, he can’t compete in the personal beer achievement race.
Nor does he want to, Howell said. He’s more about building up his own local craft brew community than he is advancing his list of accolades. That’s why he writes the blog and column, teaches the class and will support whatever local beer tasting or brewery events he can with his attendance or donations of home brews.
“I want to bring out that beer drinking is less about collecting beers in the sense of, ‘Look at the huge list of beers I’ve had and all the beer reviews I’ve written and all this stuff,’ because, to me, the key sentence in all that is ‘I, I, I,’” Howell said. “It’s all, ‘What have I done, look at my trophies, I’ve got 5,000 beers that I’ve tasted in all these places.’ That’s all great, but to me, the real building of a beer community is, what are you doing for the local community where you are? What are you doing for the bigger world of beer? How many people are you bringing into the world of craft beer who wouldn’t otherwise engage in it? What are you doing to support your local beer community?
“I’m in Alaska and I can’t afford to fly all over the world. The local beer community is what I’ve got, so it’s in my interest to make it as good as I possibly can.”
He said he’s been brushing up on his beer knowledge in anticipation of the event, studying the development of different styles and the significant role beer has played in culture and society.
“Beer has always been a cornerstone of civilization. From the workers who built the pyramids to the Roman legions to the monks of the Middle Ages to the porter breweries of early Industrial Revolution England to the beer barons of 19th-century America, the brewing of beer has been one of the driving economic forces,” Howell wrote in his beer philosophy.
But he doesn’t want to fancify the beverage too much.
“I think beer has done a lot for the world. But a lot of things have done a lot for the world. Fire has done a lot for the world. Indoor plumbing has done a lot for the world. In the end, it’s still — you strike a match or you flush a toilet. It doesn’t have to be put on an exalted pedestal,” he said.
That’s his big gripe about wine — the snobbery that often goes with it. He wants to avoid that in the craft brew world.
“They exalt it so much people don’t feel like they can enjoy it because they’re so worried about doing it right and serving it right and talking about it right and everything,” Howell said. “Why can’t you just say, ‘Hey, it’s wine. I like it. It tastes good. I like this one better than that one.’ If you really want to delve into the history of it, that’s nice. Make your own? Hey, that’s great, you’ll understand it better. But in the end, it’s just some grapes that somebody stomped on and they put in a barrel and they waited awhile and said, ‘Look! Hey, it’s wine.’”
What he likes most about beer is its accessibility to anyone, anywhere, no matter the drinker’s taste preferences.
“I can go down to the Soldotna Safeway and there’s a beer sitting there that was brewed by Trappist monks in Belgium halfway around the world and I can say, ‘I would like to drink that beer. Here, take my nine bucks.’ Flip it around and I can walk into Kenai River (Brewing) and have a beer that was brewed right here. Those are two sides of the same coin — the spectrum of beer. There’s these wonderful beers around the world that we can get, and there’s these wonderful beers brewed right here in Soldotna or Nikiski or Homer. In the bigger scheme of things, as long as they’re both good, honest beers, you don’t say that because one is brewed by monks in Belgium somehow it’s better than one that was brewed by Doug and Wendell and Joe at Kenai River. They’re both good beers and we should be able to revel in them both and enjoy them both,” Howell said.
“That’s kind of what I would like to do with beer, to educate people about beer so they understand what it has been in history and recognize its significance, but at the same time recognize it’s an everyday thing that we should enjoy,” he said.
That’s the attitude Howell is taking to Wynkoop. It’s a competition and he will take it seriously, but it’s difficult to take anything too seriously with a fine, frosty brew in your hand.
“Us Alaskans, we’re used to being the underdog. Those two have already been through the process,” Howell said. “On the one hand, I’m a little apprehensive, but like I tell people in my beer class, at the end of the day, it’s not the Super Bowl. It’s not rocket science. It’s not curing cancer or anything like that. In the end, it’s just beer.”
