Sunday School: Balance

Ah, the superbowl.  The most watched sporting event in the United States.  So much work has gone into making the party great.  Tortilla chips?  Check.  Guacamole?  Check.  Cheese dip?  Check.  Spinach Artichoke dip?  Check.  Hummus?  Check.  Vegetables?  Check.  Beer cheese soup?  Check.  Veggie dog pigs in a blanket?  Check.  Wine?  Check.  Friends who don't care about football and resent the fact that you're making them watch a game?  Check.  Beer Analogy?  Coming right up!

Today I'd like to discuss the concept of balance.  In beer, this is generally between malt flavors and hop flavors.  We're going to picture these two on the field with each drive representing a different beer.  The hops will be defense because they're bitter about not having the ball.  Bitter people are mean and everything they do is simply to spite the other side, like congress.  The malt will be offense because it carries the core of the drink to the finish.  Also, hops already took defense.  In this analogy, a Tebow style eighty yard touchdown pass would be a doppelbock while an also Tebow style three and out would be a DIPA.  Man, that guy needs to work on consistency.  Depending on your tastes, you're cheering for one team or the other, but you'd still like your opponents to put up a fight.  Blow outs are boring.

Isn't that right, Maximus?

What we like to see is a close game, something that excites us and gets our blood pumping.  We don't like quarterbacks that just throw or just pass off to the running back, we want a healthy mix.  Maybe even toss in a couple laterals or no huddles to catch the other guys off guard.  Sometimes try faking a kick.  That would be like a beer you think is done, but then hits you with a complex finish.  Likewise, a defense that forces a punt mid field is less interesting than one that stops the ball at the five yard line and then blocks the field goal.  Interceptions evoke some of the most fervent shouts of joy or despair of the game.  Beers are the same way.  If it's going to be super hoppy, it needs some body to back it up.  If you're using fifteen pounds of malt for a five gallon batch, you better have some strong hops.

Another aspect of balance as a football drive is the concept's scalability.  Beer from mega breweries isn't bad necessarily because it's unbalanced.  It could be perfectly balanced and still just be too small, like an evenly matched JFL game.  Imperial stouts and barley wines would then be NFL post season games with most other beers falling in the season games or college leagues (which are much more popular to many people).  If you measured beer by volume, most of it would be bland, small brews, just like there are thousands of high school games but only one superbowl.  Who knew football was so beery?  Sorry Tebow.

You really should try the stuff.

Old Brown Dog Ale, Smuttynose Brewing Company

The first batch of beer I brewed without the convenience of a kit was a brown ale.  I measured out all my own ingredients and cracked all the grain (the first appearance of that wretched rolling pin).  Everything went well and I tucked it away in a corner of the dining room (the basement was too cold).  After a few a few days I realized that we had done something wrong.  The recipe called for grain and malt extract but the extract amounts were to be used in place of the grain.  We had just concocted an imperial brown ale.  Now, if you know beer, that sounds about as silly as a souped up Carola.  The beer was too much for most people who tried it.  This story has nothing to do with Smuttynose Brewery’s Old Brown Dog Ale, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Whenever you order fried eggs or steak in a restaurant and they ask you how you want it, you can’t be honest.  If you say over easy or medium rare, your food will be practically raw.  If you want over easy or medium rare, you have to order over hard or medium.  The same is true with American beer styles.  You can often find the hoppiness of a mild IPA in a pale ale and a craving for a brown ale’s maltiness might require you to go with a bock.  This is because Americanizing a style often means simply increasing the hops and/or alcohol content.  Kind of like adding cayenne pepper to a dish automatically makes it Cajun, adding extra hops to a beer makes it American.  Probably the only difference between “Cajun” food and American beer styles is that micro breweries in the U.S. consistently churn out good products. Today I try one such Americanization of an old English variety.

                             

This beer is a clear example of an “American” brown ale.  My initial reaction is, “Why is this so crisp?  It should be maltier.”  This however is an illusion.  The malts are there and they are wonderful.  Also, the IBUs come in at a mere 15.  Perhaps that crispness has more to do with the relatively high, for brown ale, ABV.  The grain bill for Old Brown Dog Ale includes three different specialty malts, imparting a certain level of complexity.  The chocolate notes in particular linger in the back of your mouth long after you take a drink.  Even if you don’t consciously take note of it, the interplay between the 80L crystal, chocolate and Munich malts intrigue you and pull you in.  I wonder what brown ale tasted like before the switch to pale base malts.  It must have been boring.

                                     

I started the glass thinking I’d have to follow it with a bock to get my sweet fix but by the time it was gone I felt quite satisfied.  When your first impression of something is blatantly wrong, you enjoy it even more once you find its true character because it required a tiny act of mind over matter.  With mere thoughts you were able to triumph over the base senses.  This is why acquired tastes are often the best, or why we get so excited about clever puns.  Like the one near the end of Sufjan Steven’s “Decatur.” I bet you can't find it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpdL2DLshf4

You have all been challenged.

Doggie Style, Flying Dog Brewery

Pale ale is a term that encompasses multiple styles.  There’s bitter, best bitter, ESB, amber ale, red ale, IPA, etc.  But there’s also pale ale, kind of like how there’s a denomination of Christianity called Christian.  That style is all about keeping it real.  Well, real to someone else.

The water in Burton upon Trent is really hard because of large gypsum deposits in the area.  This is good because no matter how much a brand might tout its super fresh water, H2O in its theoretical purist form would be unsuitable for beer making.  That’s right, just like electrolysis, brewing needs a little gunk in the water.  Furthermore, the chemical signature of the water affects what styles work the best.  For example, as alkalinity rises, so does the darkness of the ideal beer style because more thoroughly roasted malts impart greater acidity to the brew.  The specific chemical composition of the water in Burton upon Trent is perfect for pale ales because the high level of sulfates allow for more hops to be added without causing astringency  This lead to the city dominating the market for several decades until a chemist isolated the helpful minerals so that anyone could “burtonise” their water.  Now you can treat your water to make whatever beer you’d like.

                             

Of course the United States is all about making its own version of everything so in the 80s microbreweries across the superpower began releasing American pale ales (APAs).  Really, the only thing they changed was to use American hops and more of them, taking the style right up to the door step of IPA.  American micros like to be ballsy.  This works for them well but can sometime bite them.  Today’s beer, Flying Dog Brewery’s Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale is a brew that looks ballsier than it really is, saving it from that bite.

                            

I have to say this beer reminded me of the old adage, “never judge a book by its cover.”  From the name and label, I was kind of expecting to be underwhelmed by an unbalanced frankenbeer.  So when it did in fact whelm me, it was a bit of a surprise.  The color is reminiscent of a Bass (the beer, not the fish, or the instrument, or the alternate term for vascular plant tissue) and bubbles are coming out of the woodwork (er... glasswork?).  The flavor is very crisp with with modest but clear citrus.  The mouthfeel makes me think I’m drinking pop but without the body-being-eaten-away-from-the-inside-out sensation.  I find myself very thankful to whoever decided to Americanise pale ale because hops are great and it’s nice to know you can get a little bite without having to go all in with an IPA.

I know I don’t use a scale for this blog but I feel one is in order for Doggie Style.  So on a scale from one to a TED conference after party, this is definitely a bucket of fresh picked strawberries.

So sweet!

Taddy Porter, Samuel Smith's Brewery

I'm babysitting my niece right now, so I've taken the show on the road. I packed up the next few beers and a glass and jumped onto the highway. Speaking of which, if you pass semis on the right, stop it. That is extremely dangerous. I see you.

I don't want to see you die.

Moving on to happy things, how about some beer history?  Porter emerged from the family of brown ales in the early to mid 18th century.  Some claim it was created to approximate a popular drink that was a mixture of three different beers, but there doesn’t seem to be definitive proof of that.  It was originally made with brown malts until the hydrometer was incorporated into brewing.  I should explain that.  Step into my office.

The hydrometer is a device that

measures the specific gravity, or density, of a liquid. The earliest accounts

of the device date back to the

early 5th century.  Common uses

are to measure the amount of

fermentable sugars in a batch of

beer, check the freezing point of

antifreeze and measure the

water to waste ratio in urine.  No

worries though, we each have our own. No sharing.

These measurements gave brewers their first look at the efficiencies of malts and the brown varieties did not do very well.  Producers switched to the more efficient pale malt and relied on burnt sugar to maintain the color until adjuncts were outlawed in Britain.  Thankfully, around that time Black Patent malt was invented, enabling brewers to darken their beers legally.  This basic grain bill is the one used for Porter to this very day.  That said, time to move on to today’s beer.  Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter.

                                     

Quite often the diminutive is used to express endearment.  Spanish makes this clear with names.  Take a name like Gustavo.  If I make it Gustavito, it means both “little Gustavo” or “love Gustavo.”  This connection is less evident in English, but still exists.  Calling this beer Taddy Porter, after its hometown of Tadcaster, is probably the best way to describe its flavor.  It strikes you as such a sweet, well adjusted beer that couldn’t hurt a fly.  With that head, so creamy and orderly.  The mouthfeel that reminds you all over again what smooth feels like.  The rich maltiness that just plain makes you happy. If beers wore clothes, Taddy Porter would sport an argyle sweater vest and glasses.  Girls would fawn over how “cute” it was.  But this beer isn’t an adorable little baby, it’s an adorable master of the craft.  Taddy Porter is a classic and knows it.  This beer doesn’t need to prove itself by adding extra hops or ramping up its alcohol content.  Samuel Smith sells this stuff by creating a brew with which everyone can identify.  This is truly the working man’s beer.

                                     
Maybe if you had a better tool, you wouldn't have to work so hard.

It is important to remember how closely porter is related to stout.  Stout actually started out as the stronger end of the porter spectrum.  So it is possible to think of porter as a mild stout, which is great considering the problem anyone ever has with a stout is that it’s too in-your-face.  The moral of the story is, you like this beer.

Snow Cap, Pyramid Breweries

The power of marketing is quite impressive.  How many among us say “klenex” instead of “tissue.”  Or “pop tart” instead of... what would that thing even be called?  A “toaster pastry?”  Adept marketers can make you think you need something you really don’t, are under a time limit you’re really not, are fed up with something you’ve actually never experienced, etc.  Today’s beer is an example of a style that seems to be made up.  The winter warmer.

What is a winter warmer?  Well it’s dark, usually strong, malt side balance but not always, and spiced, sometimes.  I’ve seen people describe beers labeled as winter warmers in terms of brown ales, amber ales, even a pale ale!  For the most part, it seems like the style is open for interpretation and gets thoroughly interpreted.  On top of that, the name itself is misleading.  The “warmer” in winter warmer refers to the way the usually higher alcohol content produces a sense of warmth, but that warm feeling is actually quite the opposite.  Alcohol increases the size of your blood vessels, most notably in your capillaries.  This increases the amount of blood right underneath the skin, where the nerves that tell you if you’re hot or cold happen to live.  The 98.6 degree blood warms those nerves but the whole process actually cools your body.  It’s like putting a lamp right next to your thermostat.  The lamp warms the thermostat, turning off the heat to the rest of the house.  Luckily, there’s no lamp next to my thermostat, so I should be toasty warm while tasting Pyramid Breweries’ Snow Cap.

                         

As you can see, the “snow cap” of this beer is not the pure white of a fresh fall, but that’s alright.  If it had a pure white head on top of that deep brownish red color, it would have a lot of esplainin’ to do.

                                            

The color comes a little from chocolate malts, but more from caramel malts at 80 degrees lovibond.  I’ll have to explain the lovibond scale for you non-brewers at some point, but basically, 80L is a pretty dark caramel.  Their sweetness is matched by the bitters of the hops, but they still make a good showing in the mouthfeel.  Kind of how you would imagine sweet feels like.  The big winner in this beer however, is the previously mentioned hops.  If winter warmers are often spiced, then Pyramid Breweries defines Nugget hops as a spice.  The alpha acids on that variety are 12-14% and impart a certain dryness along with their bite.  Some reviewers take issue with the hoppiness, saying it doesn’t fit the style.  But like I said, the “winter warmer” style has a pretty weak brand anyway.  Snow Cap does impart the faux warming sensation, but doesn’t feel like a beer with 7% ABV.  Maybe this defeats the purpose.  Maybe you should drink two.

                              
                                                            Suck it up, bro!

Or maybe it’s fine just how it is.