While we’re off looking for cowboy neon signs hanging on old bars (maybe even old saloons) here are a few links I’ve been meaning to pass along. (The photo on the left is was taken in front of The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson, Wyoming. A place your really should visit before dropping by Snake River Brewing for excellent beer.)

“Artisanal America: How Handmade and Homegrown Became the New Consumer Religion.” The story itself is even online. Sure enough, the cute timeline that runs above the story has a picture of beers from Anchor Brewing and a note that in 1965 the brewery helped “kickoff the microbrew craze.”

(See, not everybody uses the term craft beer.)

What’s troubling, and a reminder why I’m not part of Details’ target audience, is that most of the items mentioned in the story turn out to be expensive. (It’s hard to continue reading after the reporter asks this question: “Does the phrase ‘Horween Tracker bone suede upper’ mean anything to you?”)

This story equates artisanal with luxury and exclusivity. Which is not the way to build a better beer culture.

From The Gourmet Guide to Beer by Howard Hillman (1983).

Hamm’s (U.S.A.) 2 mugs (out of five)

“Born in the land of sky blues waters,” says the motto. Pale yellow color. Innocent nose and palate.

How’s that for concise?

“The Lagunitas Brewing Company of Petaluma CA commissioned Dr’s Petchutnik and Splam of the Nagorno-Karabackh Institute for Brewing Research to develop a radically new design of glassware for enjoying fine American Craft Beer.

“The revolutionary design abandons conventional wisdom regarding the characteristics of traditional post-20th century Ale-ware. Lagunitas and the research team drew inspiration from homestead fine cuisine influences of the early 1930′s.

“Focusing on southeastern US regional imbibement traditions, Dr’s Petchutnik ans Splam and Lagunitas have re-evolved the Jarre du le Mason, or colloquially: The Mason Jar.

“This container’s utilitarian design and multi-purpose functionality eschews the new pretense and geekery in favor of glassware that:
1. Fills and empties easily and,
2. Washes quickly.

“According to Lagunitas Brewmaster Emil Kerputchinikikik, ‘We felt that in the new post-private-sedtor world this was a statement of solidarity and expression of our own pese que de dunche por ce est as well as acknowledgment of this 21st century imperative.’

“In addition to vastly improve functionality the glassware is also decorated with distinct Lagunitas Brewing Company iconography and should be considered for immediate use by all brewers across the country.

“The Lagunitas Brewing company, founded in 1372, brews iconoclastic American-style ales in Petaluma, CA. Earth.”

We went last week.

Not because we have anything against cocktails, but because that’s when the birthdays fall. In fact, we drank hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s and cocktails at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone. We also had pretty good wine with dinner at Irene’s Cuisine.

But mostly we drank beer. Finding flavorful beer in New Orleans has been relatively easily for a long time. Thank the students at Tulane for supporting places like Cooter Brown’s and The Bulldog. However the city was, and is, the poster child for BMC (Bud Miller Coors) markets. “When we opened a year and a half ago (they) accounted for 95 percent of beer sales,” said NOLA Brewing founder Kirk Coco. “I don’t mean all light lagers. Just beers from Bud, Miller and Coors.”

NOLA (New Orleans Lager and Ale) hasn’t even begun to approach the status of Abita, but the fact that Crescent Pie & Sausage, located in Mid-City and one of the city’s hip new dining spots, offers three NOLA beers on tap signals that change is at hand.

We built our itinerary around eating, and there was much to be said to finding Abita or NOLA beers available at almost every turn. Beer and food should go together in New Orleans, Coco said. “We have the right attitude. We’re not afraid of calories.”

He pointed out New Orleans’ shortage of diet po-boy shops and promised, “You’ll never see a NOLA Light, not as long as I’m alive.”

These are not necessarily “Big Ass Beers” (as seen on signs throughout the French Quarter). NOLA Blonde, 4.9% abv, outsells all the others three-to-one. Coco’s favorite is NOLA Brown, at 3.9% abv tame but rich. A beer some would surely describe as quaffable.

Hopitulous IPA — the brewery is located on historically important Tchoupitoulas Street; Tipitina’s is at the corner of Tchoupitoulas and Napoleon and if I need to explain Tip’s please just Google Professor Longhair — was supposed to be a seasonal, but proved too popular not to keep brewing. It’s more about hop flavor than bitterness (60 IBU, calculated). Brewmaster Peter Caddoo, a veteran of Dixie Brewing, adds Nugget hops while running wort into the kettle. He uses Warrior for bittering, Columbus and Cascade for flavor, Simcoe late in the kettle, then more Simcoe in the whirlpool. He dry hops it with Simcoe and Amarillo.

It’s a fine food beer. I might just mail in “eating the Mixed Grill (a plate of house-made sausages) at Crescent Pie and Sausage served Hopitulous” as my entry for The Session #42. Each made the other better.

Two other bits I should probably save for future stories, but can’t resist passing on:

- When did Peter Caddoo begin homebrewing? “The day John Lennon died.” That was Dec. 8, 1980 and he was a student the the Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, N.Y. He and the other students made “Lennon Lager” and drank it on New Year’s Eve.

- Although Cooter Brown’s, The Bulldog and d.b.a. (in the Marigny/Bywater neighborhood) remain fine places to drink and have been joined by Bulldog Mid-City, The Avenue Pub on St. Charles has vaulted to the top of the class.

This joint has been around forever (maybe the nineteenth century). Story is that more recently celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse played pool in the back room after he go off work. When we first visited several years ago the beer was OK, and sitting beside one of the windows looking onto St. Charles was pretty terrific. However, a few years ago (not long before Katrina and on a Jazz & Heritage Festival weekend) somebody suggested it hard turned into a dive.

Not today. After her father died Polly Watts turned it into as good a beer place as any of us should need. For instance, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery is in town this week for Tales of the Cocktail so the pub is featuring special Brooklyn beers all week. Oliver will make an appearance Friday.

Perhaps he heard that Craig and Kim Giesecke of J’Anita’s took over the kitchen after their place on Magazine closed. They’re not afraid of calories.

Cottone — who today runs Sound Systems, a company that offers brewing equipment for sale as well as consulting services — answered the “who was first” question via email:

“I can’t swear I was the ‘first’ to use the term, but I also don’t remember any source I borrowed it from. Possibly CAMRA used it in the UK before me, and in fact I traveled there in 1984 and ’85. If they did use it their usage was probably very casual and I don’t think they made any attempt to define it or promote it as an something like an appellation. I know of no brewing company who used it prior to my book.”

When his book first appeared North America was home to scores of small breweries that opened only since 1980, not hundreds (or eventually more than 1,500). Consider that context. Also, that at the time Cottone wrote for many publications, both within beer trade and outside (such as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Washington Post).

I use the term Craft Brewery to describe a small brewery using traditional methods and ingredients to produce a handcrafted, uncompromised beer that is marketed locally. I refer to this beer as True Beer, a detailed definition and description of which appears in the following section.

The name Craft Brewery is used in lieu of several other terms which have been used recently to describe small breweries,: “boutique brewery,” used by Michael Jackson in his Pocket Guide to Beer; “cottage brewery,” favored in Canada; and “microbrewery,” the term adopted by most American small breweries. I chose Craft Brewery because it better describes the breweries we are discussing.

The term “microbrewery” has arbitrarily been defined as “a brewery” producing less than 10,000 barrels of beer annually.” But some, if not most, of the Northwest’s small breweries will eventually produced more than that amount. And, since it’s possible for a microbrewery to be other than a Craft Brewery and vice versa, the term is both more specific and more versatile than any of the others.”

In fact, 10,000 barrels provided to be an arbitrary enough figure it was not much later changed to 15,000 (where it remains today). As points of reference: Sierra Nevada and Redhook Ale Brewery both sold 10,000 barrels for the first time in 1987, and two years later Sierra Nevada sold 20,884 barrels and Redhook 15,000. Anchor Brewing, of course, was bigger, but was not a startup.

Cottone’s discussion of “True Beer” is rather complete. He discusses ingredients as well as process, explaining when adjuncts might be permitted, investigating finings, filtration and pasteurization. He didn’t pull any punches: “North American Industrial Brew does accomplish a few thing True Beer can’t: it is made to ship and store well. As such, it is technically as flawless as beer can be. It is unfortunate that beer must lack taste in order to survive time and travel, but that is an unalterable fact. If beer was judged by its stability alone, Industrial Brew would have to rate as the world’s finest.”

The basics are in the introduction, but his full definition made it easy to tap a glass (or a bottle) and say, “Yep, qualifies” or “nope, not this one.” Not as simple 25 years later.

The problem of defining the category of beers covered by this book was not easily solved. I’ve chosen to call our ideal brew True Beer in order to distinguish it from brews that I feel don’t measure up to the standards set for the ideal, uncompromised beer.

The choice of the term True Beer was partly by default. “Traditional” has been badly overused and misapplied to beer. “Authentic” has been used in promotional material by a major beer importer, and I don’t feel that most important beer, having usually been pasteurized before shipment, then transported great distance, qualifies as “uncompromised.” “Honest” is part of a trade name of a locally-produced lager. Finally, “real” was ruled out because I didn’t want to borrow too heavily from Britain’s Campaign for Real ale (CAMRA), protectors of the empires national tipple.

So I’ve chosen the term True Beer to describe the ideal, uncompromised beer, beer that’s hand-made locally in small batches using quality natural ingredients, served on draft fresh and unpasteurized.

He did not begin using these terms for marketing purposes. Sure, the words “craft beer” soon got used that way. And they certainly provoke debate that we don’t really need to revisit.

You might want to compare what Cottone wrote to the official Brewers Association definition, but remember that reporters may choose not to be so specific when the write about “craft beer” and the person on the stool next to you is also entitled to his or her own opinion.

So what are you doing here? Go order some books. They don’t even have to be by me. Support a beer author. Support an independent beer-centric store.

Saint Arnold Brewing in Texas just announced a ‘Moveable Yeast’ series of beers, quarterly releases with the first in August.

From the press release: “The concept behind the Movable Yeast series is to focus on the flavor contribution of yeast. Each release will be created by brewing a regular batch of a Saint Arnold beer and then splitting the wort into two 60-barrel fermenters. One fermenter will be pitched with the yeast normally used in that beer and the second fermenter will be pitched with an alternative yeast and the beer given a different name.”

For the first release Saint Arnold’s brewers will create the base wort for the best-selling Fancy Lawnmower Beer, a 4.7 percent beer made with mostly pilsner malt and a little bit of malted wheat, light and thirst quenching in gawdawfulhot Houston. They’ll ferment half as they always do and half with a hefeweizen yeast sourced from Bavaria. That strain typically adds banana and clove character to a beer (see geeky details).

This beer will be called Weedwacker and won’t be filtered.

“People spend a lot of time talking about the malt and hops used in beers, but yeast is discussed little and probably understood even less. We thought this would be fun, tasty and educational,” Saint Arnold founder Brock Wagner said for the press release. “We’re hoping that bars and restaurants will offer both beers at the same time so that people can compare the flavor differences.”

The beers are scheduled to go on tap Aug. 16 in select restaurants and bars. A 60-barrel batch will yield about 20,000 12-ounces servings so don’t expect the beers to be around long.

Saint Arnold Weedwacker will be followed in mid-November by Saint Arnold Altared Amber, Amber Ale wort pitched with a yeast sourced from a Belgian Trappist brewery. In mid-February 2011, the brewery plans to release Saint Arnold Bitter Belgian, Saint Arnold Elissa IPA wort also pitched with a Trappist yeast. In mid-May 2011, Saint Arnold Brown Bitte is due, which will be Saint Arnold Brown Ale wort pitched with an altbier yeast.

Now, the geeky details

Feel free to stop reading now. Different yeast strains create different esters and phenols during fermentation that we perceive as flavor and aroma. Strains used by Bavarian brewers to make weizen beers and by some Belgian brewers (including those in Trappist monasteries) share certain characteristics.

Two key players are an ester called isoamyl acetate and a phenol known as 4-vinyl guaiacol. The former is responsible for banana and other fruit flavors and aromas, the latter for the clove character you expect in a hefeweizen or the spiciness in a Belgian tripel (or clove, which is not such a good thing in a tripel).

Although brewers long ago mastered delivering the clovelike aroma and flavors that help define German weizen beers, and to a lesser extent Belgian whites, not until the 1970s did they discover that weizen and other “Phenolic Off-Flavor” (POF+) yeasts convert ferulic acid to 4-vinyl guaiacol. These include weizen and wit yeasts in varying degrees, but also yeast used to ferment Belgian strong ales and even English ales.

A key, however, is shaking ferulic acid free of malted wheat, barley or oats. Different experiments have yielded various results but a rest (sensibly enough called a “ferulic acid rest”) during the mashing process somewhere in the range between 104 and 113° F seems to yield the best results. A longer rest, more clove. I’d be surprised if that rest was part of production at Saint Arnold. I’d sure like to be in Houston in August to taste the results.

My presentation at the recent National Homebrewers Conference included a little compare and contrast between weizen yeast strains and Belgian strong ale strains (such as those Saint Arnold will use in future beers in this series). Kristen England brewed four batches with varying combinations of grains, mashed them in different ways and fermented them with different yeast strains. Attendees rated them (it was a “blind” tasting) on how much wheat character they exhibited, overall fruit, banana, and clove/spice. When I have time to make sense of the results I’ll post that with the presentation at Brewing With Wheat.

And if you want to get really serious about yeast then start saving your pennies to buy “Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation” from Brewers Publications. It should be available in September. As I’ve mentioned before it is the first in a series of books about beer’s major ingredients. I’m writing the hops book.

And Derrick Peterman, who these days is calling his blog “Ramblings of a Beer Runner,” has issued marching orders for #42: “A Special Place, A Special Beer.”

I ask that you write about a special place in your life, and a beer or brewery that connects you to that place. It can be the beer from the childhood home, your current hometown, a memorable vacation you once took, or a place you’ve always wanted to go to but never had the chance. Please take a few moments to think about the how the beer connects you to this place, and share this with us. Of course, the definition of “place” is rather open ended, and in some cases, highly debatable, so it will be interesting to see the responses on what constitutes a place.

Seems one of the reason I started this blog is to discuss just that. As well as considering how a beer connects us to a place I’ll likely be writing about ways in which that beer and that place are themselves connected.

What place? What beer? I’ll try to make up my mind before Aug. 6.