Hip Hops

Hip Hops

   An article caught my eye, and of all things, it was on scotch whiskey (note the spelling, for American and Irish favor the spelling with an extra "e," as in "whiskey," while other distillers will simply spell it as "whisky").  But here's the thing, these whiskeys were from places as far flung as Taiwan, India and Tasmania.  And here's what some of the comments were in the quick piece from Bloomberg Businessweek:  From France: It’s made by a third-generation cognac producer who borrowed production techniques from brandy: Aging in new Limousin oak and cognac barrels lends it a sweet fruitiness.  From England: The first whisky to be produced in England in a century is distilled by a Norfolk family with 600 years of experience in the grain business.  From Australia: It gets its molasses character from sitting in port casks for 12 to 14 years on the island of Tasmania, where it’s bottled.  From Taiwan: This recent release from the Asian island’s first whiskey distillery is known to contain juice from no fewer than eight different types of cask.  From Sweden: This gentle, honey-toned liquor is aged below ground in abandoned mines, in casks of oak originally intended for building 19th century Swedish warships.  And from India (India!): They move the whiskey from ex-bourbon barrels to sherry casks and then back, in an effort to integrate figgy sherry notes.

   This paralleled the almost literary description of ales I saw while in England, as noted in one of the menu of offerings at one of the festivals.  Directionless amber from Chesire:  A balanced and easy drinking session ale made with Amarillo and Centennial hops providing a subtle candied orange fruitiness.  Le Match Celt Experience from Caerphilly Wales: A collaboration with French Brewery Brasseries St. Germain.  A hoppy session Rye IPA, French hops in the brew, a biscuit palate and a resinous, floral aromatic finish.  Peaky Blinder  from Sadlers, Worcestershire: Black IPA brewed with five different malts and five hop varieties.  Dark and delicious yet refreshing and hoppy.  And this from Cornwall's One & Ale magazine on the popular Sharp's brewery (the magazine is entirely about the 620 pubs in Cornwall and what brews they serve):  Sharp's is the second largest user of whole-leaf hops in the world (after an American brewery).  One advantage of whole-leaf hops is that after the copper boil, the hops form a natural filter bed to remove trub (coagulated protein) from the wort.  Water is converted to brewer's liquor by a series of purification stages...salts are added to provide the most suitable liquor for different beer styles, e.g. magnesium, chloride or sulphate (Burtonisation).

   Phew, sounds pretty complicated despite all the glittery prose.  But have you noticed a common theme?  The rising creativity and experimentation in creating new flavors in beers and such has led to a hop shortage (which perhaps not so ironically is the name of a beer from Knee Deep Brewing in California).  And with so many new brewers entering the picture, the hop shortage appears to show no sign of slowing (the hops are a grain that add that pine/floral/aromatic/bitter taste to beer...major producers add just a hint of hops while craft brewers often add more than six times that amount).  Hops are hot, says the BBC News.  Their price in the US has doubled in 10 years.  Some even predict the equivalent of Armageddon for beer lovers - a hops shortage.  The reason is craft beer, which has come from nowhere to claim 8% of the US beer market.  Before everyone panics, the US situation is rather different to Europe's.  The price of hops in the UK and Germany has not surged in the same way as in America, says Alison Capper of the British Hops Association...

   The production of any liquor is tangled and finicky, but what's exciting is that there is so much individualized effort going on in a quest to reach our palates (in fact, the "craft" beer craze was  exported to the UK from the US, according to a report from the BBC).  Many, if not most of these brewers and distillers are small, but still much larger than your basement or garage experimenter;  these beers and liquors have made it into the pubs and bars and shelves of stores (well, most of them, anyway).  And the public is responding, so much so that the bigger corporations are grabbing not only the breweries, but also the pubs and bars serving them (so much so that some laws in England are meant only for those owners of 500 or more pubs).  Lower pricing on both food and beverages by the big mega-pubs are drawing away customers and forcing local pubs to close (at the rate of 31 each week in England).  On the other side of the coin, craft brewers are having a quick and easy chance to expose more of their product to customers as these corporate "pubs" are more than willing to both offer the mix of local brews in with their other taps, often providing a much larger selection of brews and ciders than a small pub could provide.

   When I first wrote about what seemed a growing movement in small batch beer (for a Northern California paper in 1980), there were a total of 4 microbreweries in the area (only an estimated 50 dotted the entire U.S. back then); it was a fun time, the trend small enough that at that time period, the owner of Mendocino Brewing Company (still going, by the way and now big enough to have their beers in Costco) walked me through his small operation.  I plunged my hand into a barrel of hops and picked up their fragrant, resinous and weed-y smell; the problem then was getting the hops in such a small quantity (a barrel), he said;  no one took them seriously and hops, after all, were only ordered by the railroad car-load and only by the huge beer conglomerates.  Now, an estimated 2000 micro (or "craft") breweries are up and running in the U.S. -- and the number is still growing!

   What's exciting, at least to me, is the dedication and passion being displayed by these newest of crafts-folk.  New tastes, new flavors, new combinations of ingredients.  It all takes quite a bit of time, and often quite a bit of money, so for many of these people, this is no small venture.  But the excitement is there, from the creating and making to the marketing and the final clink of the glasses.  And in many of the festivals and pubs I attended, the people behind the bar were just as excited about all the new arrivals.  Some will make it, and many will fail.  But this is a grand time to just step out of the normal aisles and browse the newly lined shelves (and often a dedicated refrigerated section with the specialty larger bottles).

   Long-time award-winning brewery, Sierra Nevada in Chico, CA. (U.S.) is now using hop oil: Working directly with growers, we've developed a revolutionary steam distilling technique to collect essential hop oils from wet hops minutes after harvest. The Lagunitas Brewery in Petaluma, CA. (U.S.) goes a step further by plastering their wild and sometimes wicked beliefs right onto their cartons: Have you been jonesing for something more primal and less evolved?  If so, then Fire is the element for you.  Air, Water, and Earth...are of no use.  There is a kind of freedom in burning down the house of fixed expectations and it confers an undeniable lightness to being.  Imagine your frozen vegetables or pizza carton featuring such wording.

   This is new period of growth, and surprisingly, among those leading the charge are beer and whiskey producers...and the big conglomerates are wondering how they missed the boat?  So quick, before all the little ones get bought out, take a walk down your store aisle (if you haven't already) and be pleasantly surprised.  As Lagunitas Brewery says on every single one of its bottles: Life Is Uncertain, Don't Sip!