Professor Good Ales

Written for Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Close your eyes for a moment and think about what the ideal job might entail. If it involves tasting wine or beer while working, read on.

Meet Gavin Sacks, Associate Professor in Food Science in Cornell University’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS), a person who spends plenty of time with a glass in one hand and a pen in the other. Sacks teaches courses that comprise part of Cornell’s interdisciplinary major in enology and viticulture, including Wine and Grapes: Analysis and Composition, and Wine and Grape Flavor Chemistry. With the teaching day done, Sacks gets down to the business of analyzing the flavour and aroma components of grapes and wine.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s never been a better time to be a beer drinker in America. The skillful innovation of American craft brewers over the past decade has pushed beer in delicious new directions. It wouldn’t be hard to argue that the craft beer renaissance is the most exciting development in the country’s culinary world right now.

But this explosion in quality comes at a price. Literally. With few exceptions, prices for good craft beer are far higher than for mainstream macrobrews from brewing conglomerates such as MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch. A six-pack of beer from breweries like Dogfish Head, Ballast Point or Cigar City almost always costs more than $10 — and routinely exceeds the $15 mark. You could easily get a 12-pack of Bud Light for that much.

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Plastics are everywhere: on the street, in our refrigerators, all over the oceans — you name it. But now they’re hitting us where it really hurts. Authors of a new study published in the latest edition of Food Additives and Contaminants found traces of plastic particles (and other debris … we’ll get to this later) in beer.

This is how the study worked: Researchers lab-tested samples of 24 varieties of German beers, including 10 of the nation’s most popular brands. Through their superpowers of microscopic analysis, the team discovered plastic microfibers in 100 percent of the tested beer samples.

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Profiled by Maria Devan for PGA

This pours out the paragon of virtue. Completely opaque. Black walnut. If you only pour a bit like I did you will not see too much of the mocha colored head but it does refresh even though I did not pour one. It created a ring as I swirled it and left spot of lace and alcohol legs. In the natural light the beer showed a deep chestnut brown with engaging clarity. ( In the photo you can see my face in the beer)

Deep rich, sweet chocolate and hearty roasted malt combine on the nose. Subtle blushing cherries, bold bourbon and a bit of espresso coffee. The bourbon is like a flower that opens on the nose. It is fragrant and seductive. There is a scent of toasted coconut that is light and accented by a bit of vanilla. Dark fruits dance gayly in the background. Molasses rounds out the nose and the scent of sweetened nuts.

The palate is alive at once with earthy and full roast. This malt has been brought to the edge of blackness and yet it stays mellow and tempered with sweetness that collapses inward on all it’s sides. The blushing cherry, the dry date, the light and airy oak, the creamy coconut and vanilla. The malt is dry and firm but just bitter enough to come up to the brink of char and stop short. Nothing burnt here. Smooth, creamy, chewy, full mouthfeel. Exceptional smoothness. The molasses takes over the palate as this finishes with bourbon getting lighter and the dark fruits getting stronger.

A slightly boozy finish takes hold at the very last moment of the swallow not with a big taste of alcohol but with a warmth like a smile from a gracious host who is sincerely happy to have set all this before you. The alcohol leaves a bit dry and allows a bit of thinner mouthfeel to fully engage the senses one more time before it’s done.

Drinking this beer is like doing something you know is wrong and loving every minute of it.

4.3

Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is frequent reviewer of beer and a beer lover deluxe.

Hops – one of the four foundational ingredients in beer – are important to creating a beer’s overall flavor, aroma and bitterness. The female Humulus lupulus plants create hop cones or flowers that contain the chemicals that provide its pungent flavoring. Depending on the brewery’s size, brewers can use just a few ounces of any of the over eighty varieties of hops, or can utilize pounds at a time.

In Maine, and most of the Northeast, it has been much easier for commercial brewers to obtain hops that have been grown in Europe or the Pacific Northwest, where long-standing traditions of hop growing have thrived, and large quantities are produced annually.

In the Pacific Northwest, for example, there are hundreds of beers produced each fall made with freshly harvested hops – those that have been harvested and put directly into the beer within a few days of being picked. This can only be accomplished if the hop farms are in close proximity to their brewers – long distance transportation of fresh hops isn’t possible. The preservation of hops usually involves drying and pelletizing the hops (making them into small, compact pellets resembling hamster food in appearance). Fortunately, importing these pellets are what allow brewers across the country to create strongly-flavored hoppy beers year-round. The taste of fresh hops is significantly different than those of the pellets and their guaranteed freshness (hard to go stale if there’s less than 24 hours from bine to kettle) and strong character makes them desirable to brewers.

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