Professor Good Ales

A VISIT LONG OVERDUE
The stars finally aligned with bus schedules, opening times, weather, and my schedule for a trip out to the illustrious Brauerei Zehender, brewers of the highly regarded Mönchsambacher Lagerbier. I arrived an hour early, so I turned the outing into a short beer hike, because why not?

Up into the wooded hills I went to drink in the cool air of the forest, then wandered back down into the radiant heat of the valley. I arrived at Brauerei Zehender shortly after it opened its doors at 3:00 p.m. to a terrace already filling up with locals quaffing mugs of the house tipple.

A STERLING REPUTATION
Mönchsambacher Lagerbier’s reputation precedes it. Aficionados of Franconian beer speak about it in reverential tones. The beer has even found a following among Berlin’s craft beer devotees, with Mönchsambacher Lagerbier a fixture at Muted Horn in Neukölln and Biererei in Kreuzberg.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

The sun was already low in the autumn sky as I finished up my beer at the legendary Waldwirtschaft (WaWi) and headed north toward the equally legendary Gutshof Menterschwaige. I’d been to the WaWi several times over the years, but hadn’t yet made it to the Menterschwaige on the other side of the Isar River. The weather doesn’t always cooperate with the best laid beer garden plans. But today was the day.

The short walk from the WaWi to the Menterschwaige takes you down a path toward the foot bridge spanning the Isar, and then up to a wooded trail along the embankment high above the Isar. It’s this kind of walk that gives you a sense of how the topography of the Isar Valley favoured the sinking of beer cellars from Munich all the way up to Bad Tölz at the foot of the Alps. The cellars no longer store beer, but the stands of trees still cast their shade over the cellars for those of us who enjoy the respite of the beer garden.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Nestled amid leafy-green hills cradling the Neckar River, Tübingen is a mere thirty kilometers from Stuttgart but centuries closer to the Black Forest. Timber and stucco houses line the market squares where folks gather in cafes to while away the afternoon. Escher-esque lanes and stairs ascend to churches and descend to the Neckar, where punt-boats float languidly past people strolling along the plane-tree promenade. Over it all rises the turreted Schloss Hohentübingen, an erstwhile fortress with magnificent views over the russet rooftops of the Altstadt.

Tübingen is a venerable old university town steeped in literature and science. Johannes Kepler peered through telescopes to study planetary motions, and the poet Friedrich Hölderlin spent much of his life here. (If you’re into German literature, be sure to visit the Hölderlin Turm on the banks of the Neckar.)

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Craft beer in North America has stalled. That much is plain to see.

From the era of annual double-digit growth, which has lasted for an inordinately long period from craft’s naissance in the early 1980s until the late 2010s, the past few years have seen more-or-less stagnant sales, with the US seeing a 1% drop in production in 2023.

Craft beer’s overall annual market share inched up 0.2% last year but the less-than-buoyant figures have left most industry participants and many observers wondering what the future could hold and how (or even if) it might be possible to restore the sector to growth.

At the core of this quandary is the fact that, for most of craft beer’s existence, brewers, industry watchers, and even many drinkers have struggled to define precisely what makes craft beer ‘craft.’ Size was a good marker, until some breweries grew sufficiently large that it wasn’t, and using ingredients as a yardstick was always going to be a non-starter in an industry segment that from the outset has self-defined as iconoclastic.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

A TECTONIC SHIFT

At first blush, the Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute might look like a curious footnote in the annals of medieval history.[1] But it’s much more than that. Flaring up sporadically between 1481 and 1517, this inter-guild dispute is not only a colorful story, it also illuminates a momentous transformation in brewing history: the shift from top fermentation to bottom fermentation in Bavaria, and the emergence of what we now call lager. For when we zoom in and focus on what the decades-long dispute was all about, we notice something interesting: yeast.

Besides furnishing us with documentary evidence confirming that medieval brewers and bakers knew what yeast was, the dispute also reveals that brewers were beginning to practice a different kind of brewing.[2] Significantly, the yeast for this new process required more time and lower temperatures. What’s more, brewers discovered that more malt, higher hop rates, and long periods of cold storage resulted in a beer that was resistant to souring microbes during fermentation, kept longer, and, most importantly, tasted better.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard</h3>

In between evenings of losing myself in my annual “big book” (Don Quixote this year), I’ve been reading Terry Theise’s What Makes Wine Worth Drinking: In Praise of the Sublime. Theise makes a compelling case that people who write about wine or who sell wine for a living be forthcoming with their readers and customers about their tastes.

WHY ACCOUNT FOR TASTE?
It’s a simple premise: writers and critics should examine their taste proclivities so that their readers know where they stand. As Theise asserts, this is the first obligation of the critic, whether that person is writing about wine, beer, art, or music. It’s what buttresses our credibility. And, I’d add somewhat paradoxically, it’s what makes our judgments and pronouncements that much more “objective.” (More on that below.)

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(Thanks to Deb Evans for the link.)

New York is home to many great breweries, but there might be none that are more revered than Brewery Ommegang near Cooperstown.

Brewery Ommegang was established in 1997, which also makes it one of the state’s oldest breweries. Located on a 140-acre hop farm, they claim to have been the first farm brewery in the US in more than 100 years.

Unlike many of the breweries in Cooperstown, NY that focus on beers like IPAs, lagers, and stouts, Brewery Ommegang has always focused on Belgian-style beers. This focus has led them to create some of the country’s best beers in these styles. They do, however, also brew other types of beer for those that prefer something different.

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Before I retired I used to tour through Rhode Island in the 90’s and 2000’s as an entertainer and educational service provider. Of all the things I miss, I miss spinach pies the most. I was determined to find one if I ever came back. Millie was skeptical regarding how good they were, and how the pies in Rhode Island were quite different.

Millie and I missed this competition last year because of snow. It’s a long drive for us out of Eagle Bay, NY; a tiny, tiny town set deep in the southwestern Adirondacks. We almost missed it this year. The plan was to stay in Johnstown, NY, for the night then in the morning drive to Pawtucket for OSHC. We got there and Ellen (Millie’s sister.) and Bill Hunt warned us about an incoming storm. So we drove into Massachusetts and crashed in our Sequoia at a Turnpike rest area.

Over $200 for the hotel we had already booked, and expenses pending the next week, we thought it best.

We checked out the hotel on arrival in one hell of a rainstorm, then headed out to The Guild, location for OSHC… Ocean State Homebrew Competition. STILL one hell of a rainstorm.

They had needed Cider and Mead judges, and since I’m endorsed for both, that was my task for the day. Millie judged Mead and Irish.

Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Pawtucket!”

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

INTRODUCING DÜSSELDORF

Düsseldorf is only about forty-five minutes from Cologne by train — so close, yet in beer miles so far away. Düsseldorf and Cologne are unique: ale strongholds amid a sea of German lager. Yet these two “keepers of the ale faith” are rivals in all things beer. Order a beer in Cologne and you’ll get a golden-hued Kölsch. Do the same in Düsseldorf and you’ll get a copper-coloured Altbier. And woe to those who order the wrong beer in the wrong town.

Düsseldorf is the informal capital of German fashion and home to some of Germany’s most cutting-edge contemporary architecture. But forward-looking as the Düsseldorfers are, the very name of their beloved beer points in the direction of times past: Altbier, a beer made the way the Rhinelanders made beer before the tidal wave of lager swept the country.

And the city does love to drink. Locals call Düsseldorf’s Altstadt “the longest bar in the world.” You’ll find a bar in just about every building and on every street corner, mainly non-descript boozers catering to hordes of imbibers careening from one bar to the next. Fortunately, though, you’ll still find oases of Altbier amid this ocean of cheap suds and shots.

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