All About Beer Magazine

Mirror and Sam

Posted May 7, 2009 by Daniel Bradford 2 Comments | Post a Comment

After a ridiculously silly hour or so at the gym, I hadn’t earned a trip to the pub, and, instead, went home for leftovers and whatever was in the fridge.

I lucked out!  Not with the leftovers; that was my curry from the night before.  Not bad, but not memorable.  No, I had forgotten that I’d brought home a two six packs, one of Boston Beer’s Samuel Adams Boston Lager and the other of Deschutes Brewery’s Mirror Pond Pale Ale.  Sweet!

Frankly, these are two world class beers, which seem to have a lot in common. They rely on balance and character at the same time.  Each is a stand alone evening.  No need to wander far from either over the course of a few hours of beer.  

They also reflect some basic beer loving tendencies, which is what intrigued me.  I think it came down to similar standards of excellence, but moving in slightly different directions, members of the same family with their own variations. These two beers are of a piece in quality, attention to detail, what they are bringing to their consumer.  

Words like classic come to mind.  Steve here at the office was playing around with the idea of direction: they are just solid beers not pushing in any particular or peculiar direction. Any other ideas, here, readers?

I had a difficult time chasing down good specs on both beers. However, all of the data suggests that Mirror Pond may be a tad lighter in body and alcohol than Sam Adams, a tad.  The information also suggested a slight color variations. However, they remained steeped in their respective traditions with Sam Adams honoring the German hops and Mirror Pond redolent in the Pacific Northwest Cascade profile.

As for the actual sensory appreciation, well it depends on how much you love hockey.  I’m a New Englander by birth and heritage and a Southerner by choice and affection.  Last night the Carolina Hurricanes slapped the Boston Bruins, taking game three.  I had a hard time staying with the beer research.

I used a couple of New Belgium’s glasses because I like the lightness of the walls and the inward curve of the shape. Again a bit more rich color in the Sam Adams.  The aroma of the pair had a distinction I couldn’t articulate. Mirror Pond might have been more fruity, citrusy and Sam Adams more piney, herbal.  They both started with slight hints of sweetness in the beginning and Mirror Pond seemed more toasty while Sam Adams more nutty. Both finished with drama, lots of drama.  I’m not even going to try to differentiate their hop finishes.

It would be great to do something like this with Garrett Oliver or Steve Beaumont and do it blind.  This is both fun and frustrating.  What great beers.

America’s Craft Brewers Pondering the Future

Posted May 5, 2009 by Daniel Bradford 0 Comments | Post a Comment

Two weeks ago America’s craft brewers gathered under one roof for the Brewers’ Association, their trade association’s, annual confab. Attendance crested 3,000 while exhibitors packed the hall. And the buzz was all about the nature of the future for this vulnerable industry segment. The industry still posted growth, but less so than past years.  

The presentations that opened the conference were rife with passion, integrity, audacity, community, brotherhood. These are not words often associated with the beer industry as a whole but rule the craft community. Trade association lawyers squirmed as speaker after speaker talked about collaboration among the small brewers. These people have more in common with an extended family than a bunch of competitive businesses.

Still it is a business and one of the consistent refrains from the young industry was the limits of capacity. So many breweries simply couldn’t make any more beer. They’d hit their equipment wall. Furthermore, with the freeze on credit, financing expansion was off the table.  

However, there was very little hand wringing over this seeming paralysis. Because as speaker after speaker intoned, the key to the category is in the glass. In fact, many, like Benj Steinman, are predicting, in the face of the proliferation of such flavorful beers, the permanent implosion of the the expensive imported light lager.

The cache of the import is giving way to flavor price value. Consumers just can’t justify spending the same amount on a light lager as they are on an imperial IPA. One just has so much more taste to then the other, which may explain the first year of no growth for imported beers. Still there are powerful imported brands with a lot of romance, heritage and mystique to them. They aren’t going away.

I did have to think if all of this could suggests an important shift in the shelf space set!  I thought one of the most enlightening legacies of Beer Wars was the introduction of shelf space set and category captains into common parlance for beer drinkers. This was the must discussed subject in the lobby at the end of the film. Could some of these major brands with declining numbers leave some shelf space for craft beers?

Here’s another tidbit for enquiring minds;  the plethora of wholesalers at the craftbrewers conference. They were there to find the latest trends in the industry, look for new emerging brands and learn how to hand sell beer. Any wholesaler who didn’t get all three was spending too much time at bars and not at the conference. In days of yore, small brewers decried the limits on market access imposed by an intransigent wholesaler network. Now the network is flying open, although there are still numerous closed markets and wholesalers with too many brands to handle well.

A subtext that continued to ripple through the conference was the ubiquitous presence of the domestic specialty brands, derisively called faux craft by the more vituperative members of the audience. These are craft type beers originating from major breweries. Blue Moon comes to mind. These beers, some are quite good actually, beg the fundamental question of the world of craft brewers and craft beer. If it’s really all about what’s in the glass, what’s the problem here. However, if it’s all about the crushing logic of capitalism, a preemptive strike by filling wholesalers’ warehouse and vital shelf space with another brand from a major brewery instead of a local craft, well then that’s an ale of a different hop.

So, my dear readers, start lining the pieces up and tell me what the future holds.  Wholesalers opening up but maybe overwhelmed.  Retail still very tight with shelf space directed by majors. Imports falling off and opening up more space. Major breweries rushing in with their domestic specialty.  

Are we looking at an upside down funnel that is increasingly constricting as we leave the brewery and head to the consumer? Will the consumer’s insatiable thirst for flavor, adventure, romance, magic, keep the pull pressure up forcing channels to continue to expand and allow more variety to squeek through?