In session: Beer style light on alcohol, big on drinkable flavor

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. St. Elias has a light-drinking Insidious XPA on tap.

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

America has always had a strange attitude toward drinking. Call it a legacy of our Puritan origins, call it a hangover from Prohibition, call it what you will, but as a nation we don’t have what I would consider to be a normal/healthy relationship with alcohol.

Having lived and traveled overseas, I can say unequivocally that other cultures out there have a much more mature view of alcohol. The typical European young person is introduced to drinking alcohol in a supervised and supportive environment, be it having a beer in an English pub or drinking wine with a meal at the French or Italian family table. Contrast this with the typical American experience — furtively consuming illegally obtained alcohol in a secluded location surrounded by other teenagers.

Is it any wonder that many Americans reach our legal drinking age of 21 (as compared to the typical European age of 18) without having developed the ability to properly handle alcohol consumption? In my opinion, drinking is like driving — you have to learn how to do it right. We would never think that simply hitting a certain age qualifies you to operate a car safely, yet we have a system that ostensibly prevents our young people from drinking a drop until they turn 21, at which point we give them all they want. How crazy is that?

Another concept that is popular overseas and which we here in the U.S. are only beginning to embrace is the idea of a session beer. Like many of our better beer style ideas, this one originated in Britain and refers to a beer that is designed to be consumed during a drinking session — i.e. a beer that is designed so that you can (safely) have several of them in succession.

What are the characteristics of a session beer? Well, to begin with, it cannot be overly strong. British Ordinary Bitter, which for many is the classic session beer style, has a typical alcohol by volume from 3.2 percent to a max of 3.8 percent. Compare this to Budweiser, with an ABV of 5.0 percent. Even Bud Light has an ABV of 4.2 percent, significantly greater than even the strongest Ordinary Bitter. This becomes even more significant when you remember that the British typically consume their beer in pint glasses, which are actually imperial pints, holding 20 ounces. That means a person can drink a pint of 3.2 percent bitter and consume the same amount of alcohol as a 12 oz. Budweiser.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Craft beer brewing booms economically

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. Devin Wagner, new brewer at Kenai River Brewing Co., stands with the brewery’s new fermenter.

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

The number of craft breweries in the U.S. continues to grow, as does their economic importance. According to a new analysis by the Brewers Association — the nonprofit trade association that represents the majority of U.S. breweries — small and independent American craft brewers contributed $33.9 billion to the U.S. economy in 2012.

During this time frame, craft brewers sold an estimated 13,235,917 barrels of beer, with a retail dollar value estimated at $11.9 billion. The industry also provided more than 360,000 jobs, with 108,440 jobs directly at breweries and brewpubs, including serving staff at brewpubs. There are now more than 2,400 craft breweries and brewpubs out there, spread across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, plus hundreds more in the planning stage.

If we narrow our focus and look just at Alaska, our local breweries and brewpubs have the equivalent of 1,288 full-time employees, pay over $52 million in wages and generate over $150 million in total impact to our state’s economy. This works out to $293.57 for every 21-and-older adult in the entire state. In this statistic Alaska ranks a very respectable sixth in the nation, behind only Oregon ($448.50), Colorado ($436.50), Vermont ($418.57), Maine ($324.36) and Montana ($315.37). Alaska’s beer economy is almost twice the national average of $149.56 per capita.

I have speculated in past columns as to why Alaska “punches above its weight” so consistently when it comes to craft beer, so I won’t revisit that. However, if anyone out there needs more data in addition to the economic numbers above to convince them that this is indeed the case, I would have invited them to attend Alaska Beer Week, which was held Jan. 9 through Jan. 19 this year.

While this 10-day celebration of craft beer is still primarily a local affair (and I hope it always remains so!), it is also attended by craft beer lovers from all across the U.S. The reputation of Alaska’s brewers is such that people think nothing of flying up to Anchorage in the dead of winter from places like North Carolina, Georgia, California and Colorado just to have a chance to meet them face to face and sample their beers.

One of the breweries whose beers are so sought after by these visitors from Outside is Soldotna’s very own Kenai River Brewing Co. Doug Hogue and the rest of his merry band have established a real reputation for excellence, especially for some of their more unusual offerings, such as their infamous Gummi Bear Tripel.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Brew reviews — Take note of standard reviewing procedure

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. Brew review do: Keep a notebook handy to record observations.

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

In almost every human activity, there are two groups of people, separated by an invisible boundary line. On the one side dwell the amateurs, dilettantes and hobbyists. On the other you will find the professionals, fanatics and obsessed. The distribution between each camp varies according to the subject matter, but it’s always there.

In my opinion, when we are talking about craft beer, one of the easiest ways to tell if someone has crossed that line is to ask if they have started keeping records of the beers they have tasted. Perhaps they just record the mere fact that they have tasted a particular brew, like a birdwatcher who adds a species of bird to their Life List. Beer lovers of this sort are known as “tickers,” since they are all about “ticking” another beer off their list.

Then there are the beer chasers who are less interested in quantity than they are in quality. These are the sort of folks who seek out beers, taste them and then write up impressions or tasting notes or reviews, either on paper or online. Once you start writing down notes about how a particular beer tastes and smells to you, even if it’s only on a bar napkin, you have crossed the line. As someone who took that particular fall many years ago, let me be the first to welcome you and offer a few pointers.

If there’s any sort of standard for reviewing beers, it’s one based on the Style Guidelines produced by the Beer Judge Certification Program, or BJCP. The BJCP was created several years ago as a way to train and recognize qualified beer judges for homebrew competitions. As part of this effort, they created descriptive guidelines for the various recognized beer styles in order to give these judges an objective standard to evaluate beers against.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Good clean beer gifts ‘Beyond the Pale’

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Well, it’s now December, and we all know what that means — it’s time to start shopping for Christmas gifts, if you haven’t done so already. Personally, I love getting gifts that are beer-related, so let’s take a look at what’s new out there for the craft beer lover on your shopping list.

These days, craft beer gets incorporated into an ever-growing list of food products. For example, you can find numerous mustards that are made with beer. The Moosetard Company out of Fairbanks offers several excellent mustards that utilize different Silver Gulch Brewing and Bottling Co. beers in their ingredients. There are also excellent mustards out there made from Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. beers.

If pickles are more your style, how about Hop Pickles, produced by Brooklyn Brine. These are pickles made with 60-Minute IPA from Dogfish Head Brewing and essential oils from Cascade hops. For the hopheads out there, these are da bomb!

There are other ways to include beer without using it in food. Denali Dreams Soap Company in Anchorage offers two different beer soaps, one incorporating India Pale Ale and the other a lager. I’ve used them both, and they are great. There are also numerous shampoos on the market that include beer, though I’ve found you can get great results just using an old can of Miller Lite … .

If you don’t want to give food or personal hygiene products, you can always fall back on books. Each year we seem to have more and more interesting beer books printed. Here are some excellent options from amongst the many such books published in 2013.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Revived to imbibe — Extinct ale style gets new life at local brewery

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell

For the vast majority of human history, long-distance travel was something only experienced by a tiny minority. Most people lived and died without ever traveling more than a day’s walk from where they were born. This sort of isolation produces dialects in languages, regional cuisines in food and unique styles of beer.

While this regionalism had begun to slowly break down in the 18th century with the advent of long-distance oceanic trade, it wasn’t until the mid-19th century, due to the combination of railroads, steamship travel and the mass migration of people that they made possible, that we really see a significant shift in beer-drinking tastes.

From 1842 when it was created through the next century and a half, the story of beer is the story of one particular style — the pilsner and its evolutionary descendants, coming to dominate the brewing world.

Like a new and better-adapted species, pilsners over this time period slowly killed off their older rivals. Of course, some old beer styles manage to survive in isolated pockets, like a flightless bird on a Pacific island, but their very exceptional nature shows just how dominant this beer monoculture became, at least until the American craft beer renaissance. Then porters and IPAs, dubbels and tripels, wit beers and weizens could emerge from their sanctuaries to again grapple with their golden lager nemesis on the world stage.

But there are some beer styles that did not survive, even in the smallest enclave. Like the dinosaurs, they went extinct. The roll of such obscure brews is long and — at least to a beer geek — fascinating. There’s the white beer of Devon and Cornwall, a sour British wheat beer. Or the Leipziger Gose, an ancient sour and salty wheat beer from Germany. The list goes on and on. One of the most interesting names on it is Burton ale.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Don’t sour on all beer bacteria

Graphic courtesy of Elaine Howell.

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

If there’s one thing we Americans can’t abide, it’s a lack of change. We’re always chasing after the next new gadget, “new and improved” brands, the next big thing. Even in the world of craft brewing, certain styles rise and fall in popularity as brewers and drinkers continuously push the boundaries. These days, one of the hottest segments of the craft beer world is also one of the oldest and strangest — sour beers.

A couple of centuries ago, a sour beer would not have been uncommon, though it would hardly have been a desired outcome. Without an understanding of precisely how fermentation works or modern sanitization techniques, all beers would have had some degree of bacterial contamination, which would frequently have led to sour flavors as those bacteria multiplied and the beer became spoiled.

Certain bacteria can even produce copious amounts of extracellular polysaccharide, which form a viscous precipitate, or “rope,” in beers. Take my word for it, ropy beer is as disgusting as it sounds. Given this history, learning what caused beers to sour and how to prevent it was a real step forward in the evolution of brewing science.

However, in the ages before this knowledge was gained, brewers had to learn how to deal with the reality that beers were likely going to sour if kept long enough. They learned by trial and error not to brew in the warm days of summer, when such bacterial infections were most likely. They learned to blend overly sour batches with fresher beer to achieve a tolerable level of sourness before selling them to the customer. Eventually, regional styles developed for which a degree of sourness was considered a feature, not a defect. These classic sour beer styles include the German Berliner Weisse, and the Belgian Oud Brown, Flanders Red, and lambic beers.

Today, we know that the flavors in a beer that our palates perceive as “sour” are the result of acidity produced by bacteria known as Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. Such a sour beer is not to be confused with “wild” beers, which are characterized by the presence of Brettanomyces yeast strains. You can have beers that are wild, beers that are sour or beers that are wild and sour, as the two properties are independent of each other. When a brewer deliberately adds one or both of those bacteria strains to acidify a brew, it should properly be called a sour beer.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Sweet sorrow — Homer’s Ring of Fire Meadery closing

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Usually in this column, I’ve got good news to report. Most of the time, I’m writing about new breweries opening, new beers being offered, upcoming beer events, etc. That’s not the case this week. This time around, it’s strictly bad news: The Ring of Fire Meadery in Homer will be closing this fall.

Rachel and Laurence Livingston opened Ring of Fire Meadery in 2004. Over the years, their meads earned many awards, especially at the prestigious Mazer Cup International. From 2009 (when the Mazer Cup was created) to 2012, Ring of Fire earned 10 gold medals, two silvers and two bronzes. In 2012 they earned a gold medal for their Tart Cherry Reserve (a semisweet dessert mead), their Raspberry Melomel (a dry melomel, or mead with fruit added), and their Kulani’s Big Island Mead (a semisweet mead). Obviously, Rachel and Laurence were brewing some excellent mead in Homer. So why close?

When I put that question to them, they said, “It has been a successful 10 years with the Ring of Fire Meadery and we really struggled with the decision on whether to expand our business or close the doors. As always, it takes money to make money and we just decided we did not want to go into substantial debt in order to expand the business. It was a risk we were just not willing to take. The business has been for sale for quite awhile but the right buyers have yet to come our way.”

Cheers to best fest — Beer festival bubbles with continued growth

Drinking on the Last Frontier, by Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. Gene Diamond from Specialty Imports in Anchorage discusses the beer choices available to Leah Swan and Josh Allison, both of Soldotna.

“Third time’s the charm” may be an old adage, but it was certainly proved true Saturday, when the Soldotna Rotary Club sponsored its third annual Kenai Peninsula Beer Festival in the parking lot of the Soldotna Sports Center. From 5 to 10 p.m., a sold-out crowd of more than 1,000 sampled beers and enjoyed food from local vendors while listening to live music from three different music groups. Best of all, the proceeds from the event went to benefit local community projects supported by Soldotna Rotary.

After several days of rain, Saturday dawned overcast, prompting worry on the part of Matt Pyhala, one of the principals behind organizing the festival. With some 600 tickets already presold, he was worried that inclement weather might put a damper on attendance at the event.

“We were standing by with lots of umbrellas, just in case,” Pyhala said.

Photo courtesy of Joe Kashi. Colorful chalk art beckons the way to the festival area at the Soldotna Sports Center.

Fortunately, it seems the weather gods approve of drinking good beer — by the time the festival started, the clouds had parted, leaving behind blue skies and sunshine for the duration of the event.

Of course it’s not surprising that Pyhala and his fellow Rotarians were well-prepared for rain, shine or any eventuality in between. As mentioned above, this was the third such event they have hosted, and their experience and organizational skills were immediately evident, especially to the visiting brewers, who attend similar events all across the state.

“This is always a well-run event and lots of fun to attend,” said Shane Kingry, of King Street Brewing Co. in Anchorage.

Local brewer Doug Hogue, of Kenai River Brewing Co., echoed that sentiment.

“This festival is wonderfully organized. I know I can come in and get set up with no problems, and be ready to start pouring beer in no time,” he said.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Pop top on beer gadgets

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell

It might be a guy thing, but I love gadgets, and the cooler the better. And as much as I love any gadget, I really love a cool beer gadget. There are more cool beer gadgets around than you might think, so let’s cover a few of the better ones out there.

Now, I’m not going to write about glassware. No matter how fancy it is, it’s not a gadget. Nor am I going to write about fancy stainless-steel growlers, even though these days some of them are sophisticated enough to be considered gadgets. I already covered that topic a few columns ago.

First off, let’s talk bottle openers. You might think them too simple, but there are two out there that I’d say qualify as gadgets, even if they have no moving parts. Start with the Sears Craftsman Model No. 44500 Cap Wrench Bottle Opener. Yep, you heard that right — a bottle opener made by Craftsman, just like your socket and box-end wrenches. This is the sort of gadget any manly beer drinker will love, and it’s only $14.99. I received one as a gift from a good friend, and I love using it. It also doubles as a club during bar fights. …

Not as useful as a club, but just as nifty is the German-made Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer. The resealing function is what sets this gadget apart and can also be used for a wide range of pop-cap bottles, in addition to beers. One simply flips over the implement and, using the metal guides to grip the rim at the top of the bottle, slides a rubbery panel over the opening to ensure a tight seal over the beverage — preventing the contents from going flat or spilling even when turned on its side. It’s only $8.95 for this clever little gadget.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Beer plus cheese? Please!

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

When looking back into the history of beer and brewing, one thing that you notice almost immediately is the strong monastic connection. For centuries, monks in Western Europe were famous for their skill as brewers, thanks to the rule of St. Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, which called for monks to live by the fruits of their own labor.

Even today, in our essentially secularized world, the beers produced by the Trappist monks of Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria are still considered some of the finest beers in existence.

However, there is another type of food besides beer that also has a long monastic tradition — cheese. Some of the same monasteries that are famous for their beers are also celebrated for the excellent artisanal cheeses they produce. Just as craft beer, brewed in small batches using traditional ingredients and methods, has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years at the expense of the insipid macrobrews, so, too, has artisanal cheese made a comeback, as consumers looked for some relief from the bland, pasteurized, mass-market brands of cheese flooding our supermarkets.

Given the fact that their production has been intertwined throughout so much of history, it should come as no surprise that artisanal cheese and craft beer taste wonderful together. Yes, I know that, traditionally, it is wine, rather than beer, paired with cheese, but in actual fact beer typically pairs better with cheese than wine for several reasons.

All cheeses have fat and salt, while all beers have alcohol and carbonation. The fat in cheese coats the mouth, giving the perception of richness, while the salt adds to that perception and heightens flavor. The alcohol in beer cuts through that fat, while the lively carbonation cleanses the palate, contrasting nicely with the perceived richness. Since almost all wines lack carbonation, they lack beer’s ability to cleanse the palate and ready it for further tasting.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Local wine paradigm — Bear Creek Winery uses local ingredients to wide appeal

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell. The Bear Creek Winery in Homer sees steady traffic to its tasting room.

If you’ve read this column for any length of time, it should be obvious that beer is my alcoholic beverage of choice, with the rare glass of single-malt scotch thrown in for variety. Despite my love affair with fermented barley, I recognize that there’s more to drinking in Alaska, and even on the Kenai Peninsula, than just beer. In past columns I’ve written about our award-winning local producers of mead and about a new distillery opening in Sterling, but I don’t think I’ve ever written about beer’s biggest competitor amongst alcoholic drinks — wine.

Since there are actually several wineries in Alaska, including one right here on the Kenai Peninsula, it seems only fair that I should give wine its day in the sun. So let’s talk about Bear Creek Winery, at 60203 Bear Creek Drive, about three miles out East End Road from downtown Homer.
Like so many craft breweries, Bear Creek started as a hobby. As Dorothy Fry told me, “The winery is my husband Bill’s hobby run amuck.”

Bill started making his own wine in the mid-1990s. As such things are wont to do, his hobby quickly grew from its inception as a few glass carboys on a kitchen counter to taking over their entire garage. After a few years, Bill’s wines were receiving rave reviews, with so many requests to purchase them coming in from family, friends and even complete strangers that he and Dorothy decided to make wine their business.

In 2003, Bill and Dorothy took the plunge and opened Bear Creek Winery and Lodging. For the first year they only offered lodging, as it took that long to complete all the paperwork and jump through all the hoops with both the state and federal governments to be allowed to produce wine commercially. They still offer lodging, in two suites, along with a hot tub, steam bath, horseshoe pits and fire pit, all of which are available for use by guests.

But let’s get back to the winery.

Drinking on the Last Frontier: Fruits of labor to savor — Lambics a much-lauded tradition

Photo courtesy of Elaine Howell

By Bill Howell, for the Redoubt Reporter

Now that we are finally seeing some real evidence of spring, it seems like it might be a good time to talk about beers made with fruit. Most fruit beers are better suited to the warmer days of summer, rather than the colder days of winter, so that’s when brewers tend to have them on offer.

The use of fruit in beer is an extremely ancient practice; it certainly dates to at least 7,000 B.C.E. We know this thanks to a remarkable archaeological find made at Jiahu, near the Yellow River in the central plains of China. Settled around 7,000 B.C.E. and then flooded and abandoned around 5,800 B.C.E., this Neolithic settlement was excavated in the 1980s. Among the many artifacts discovered were pottery jars. Chemical analysis of the jars showed they had been used for alcoholic fermentation.

Further detailed analysis of the residue in the jars allowed scientists to determine the ingredients used to make this ancient beverage — rice, honey, Muscat grapes and hawthorn berries. So at the same time that barley beers and grape wines were beginning to be made in the Middle East, the ancestors of today’s Chinese were brewing a sort of fruit-infused rice wine.

Fast-forward 63 centuries to Iron Age Asia Minor in 700 B.C.E. An extraordinarily wealthy king of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia is buried after an elaborate funerary feast. When his still-sealed tomb is opened by archaeologists in 1957, the riches it contained — including 157 bronze buckets, vats and drinking bowls — convinced them that they had found the inspiration for the mythical King Midas. Chemical analysis of the drinking vessels revealed that the mourners had been consuming a “Phrygian cocktail” made by fermenting a mixture of wine grapes, barley and honey.