What takes more skill?

The rest of the world doesn't even know what hops are.

 

Heh. Besides being about as far from an "authoritative" source as one can get... it's interesting how the second article linked notes that the BJCP style guidelines can be misleading at best. "Blind as well as clueless, whoever came up with that one".

I fully agree. As in, simply because a very hoppy beer was brewed in the past, we're going to dismiss any and all creative use of hops since then? Maybe that was the first beer to use a lot of hops, but it in no way compares to, nor invalidates, what many brewers since have done with hops.

Blind and clueless indeed.

 

Tops in hops! Tops in hops!

 

This might be a winner. Though lager yeast has not been around that long. You would have to do some research into the brewery and beer, but yes, Rauchbier is a throwback.

I was there last week. The Fastenbier was excellent.

 

Schlenkerla Fastenbier (as well as Weizen, Krauesenbier, and Eiche) were all developed within the last 10-15 years. How can it be any good if these traditional brewers just follow ancient recipes and lack creativity? Hmmm....

 

Ron always gets his digs in on the BJCP. I find it ironic that Kristen is a Grand Master Judge in the BJCP and helped write the last revision of the guidelines. Oh the humanity!

 

First off - I'm extremely jealous. The more I hear from some BA's recently, the more I wish I were back over in Bamberg

Getting an exact brewery down would be difficult, I would imagine - but theorizing that a similar beer to Schlenkerla's Krausen, or even Lentbeer existed way back when probably wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

While 'lager bier' doesn't really get much mention (with what we know about yeasts today) until the early 17th century - a number of historians have noted that early bottom-fermenting yeast was likely a hybrid. And it was becoming known (at this time) in-and-around Bavaria that beer brewed between October to March typically produced superior results.

Methinks Schlenkerla (and other traditional Rauchbier brewers) is serving up history in a glass

 

Just one more factor contributing to this brewery's status as the undisputed best in the universe.

 

I wanted to throw my comments in to maybe get the discussion back to the original topic.

I think you need to put it into a specific context: are you talking about a home-brewer or a commercial brewer? Because I think it makes a difference once you start introducing other variables such as budgets, profit margin, customer preference, freedom to experiment, ect.

I, myself, am a home-brewer, so I intend to answer the question from that context. And from my limited experience, my answer is that I think it takes equal skill (or skill development more accurately) to get great at a few different styles as it does to get mediocre at a wide variety. Equal skill, but different skill-sets.

On one hand, to perfect a few certain recipes requires a closed loop iterative process, where a recipe is made and sampled, notes are taken and adjustments made, and the process begins again until the desired outcome is reached. On the other hand, many different styles must be learned, which means lots of time and effort researching those styles, distilling the over-abundance of information and opinions available, and assimilating that into a usable recipe.

So you can see that both paths share some skill development such as learning all about the interactions of different ingredients, temperatures, mashing techniques, ect., since brewing is very much a "learn by doing" process, and each path requires many brew sessions.

If we're talking about commercial breweries, what makes or breaks this debate is who really has the last word on whether a beer is perfected or mediocre? Is it the brewery? The general public? Beer enthusiasts? Official judges? I think the reason why this debate is so hard to pin down is exactly because there is so much subjective input into whether or not a beer is good or bad. I think that if it's up to the general public, or a judge, or anyone besides the brewer to decide whether or not a beer is perfected or lackluster, it really comes down to getting lucky (or circumstance) more than it does skill.

/668 Neighbor of the Beast and tequila induced rant

 

Ron's work is carefully researched from contemporary records so it's difficult to consider him to be unauthoritative.Certainly he's dismissive of the BJCP as an authority on beer styles-a glance at some entries will show that's fully justified-and Kirsten is aware of these shortcomings.
Our forebears certainly used hops in vast quantities in some of their brews.They also brewed some very strong beers.They also brewed weak beers and low hopped ones and every combination of strength and hopping which can be imagined.
But fiddling with recipes or changing varieties isn't the same thing as creating a new style.Any more than an apple pie would be innovative because it contains more apples than most or because a new apple variety was used.Or because the crust is on the bottom insead of on top.
One thing which did require skill of the highest order was when breweries switched supplies.One year it might import Slovenian malt, next year Danish or Californian because we didn't grow enough of our own. But the brewers managed to provide consistency through rewriting the recipes to account for the differences.

 

Absolutely true, and since beer has been made for 10,000 years, and our respective cultures for small fraction of that, it is certainly fair to say that BOTH U.S. and British beer cultures have completely failed to be innovative. I am sure you agree with this. After all, as you have said repeatedly, all has been tried before, and that presumably means anything British brewers have tried in their less than 1000 year brewing tradition.

However, I suspect you only agree with the part that says U.S. brewers have failed to be innovative. If so, I am certain that by your definition of how British brewers innovate, an equally valid case can be made for American brewers. Let's settle this now, and done.

I say malt varieties and combinations, use of traditional ingredients prepared and added in innovative ways, new hop varieties developed through genetic techniques, and in soils, never able to be used before, yeast mutations guided with knowledge never had before, all make for innovation. You say they don't. Either British and U.S. brewers are incapable of true innovation, or both of them routinely can and do. Which is it?

 

It boils down perhaps to semantics. Was the setting up af the Wye College hop breeding and research facility an innovation or a development of what was already taking place in an unorganised way?Is genetic technology new or a continuation of such as this?Was the response of our brewers to brew differently through shortages and swingeing taxation an innovative move?
Regarding US vs UK innovation, the time when we innovated was a long time ago; manufacture of pale malt using indirect heat for example and all the experimantation done in the 18th and 19th century.I'm pretty sure other countries are in the same position and what followed was merely detail.
The last genuine innovation I can think of is nitro pour.Let's move on from this monstrosity.
I do get the feeling that many BAs regard American brewing in the same way as teenagers who think they invented sex.It begs the question as to how they got there.
American brewers have transformed the beer scene and produce a vast array of different styles and types.Some US beers are world class.But it's a big country with lots of people and should perhaps be compared with Europe as a whole if we are talking like with like.

 

This sidesteps the question posed by cavedave. Absent your clear definition of innovation it only boils down to semantics because there are convenient shifts in the discussion as to what constitutes innovation. So its time to clarify the semantics. Its time to stipulate a definiton of innovation so we can move this discussion ahead. Thanks.

Edit: I say this bcause you seem to be saying that the UK brewers have been innovative in the past and that the US brewers currently are but then go on to introduce the population size issue, when in the past you have routinely pointed out that there are more breweries per capita in the UK than in the US. So the shear population size isn't at issue.

 

I think you should look closer at Ron's work. If anything, the amazing lack of consistency is surprising. Part of it was the technology at the time and part was that I think they just didnt care that much about consistency. But the brewer's logs dont show anything like the consistency you suggest. When I first started reading him, I was surprised how much the same beer from the same brewer varied from batch to batch.

And I think semantics are coming into play. You seem to be very tight with the word innovation. Im more innovative with it , Im willing to use it loosely. But here is my question, related to one of your earlier posts: Which is more innovative, to be the first to make something and fail at it (the fact that you Brits havent continued to make "DIPAs") or to make it successfully?

I think both are innovative, but to succeed at something someone else failed at is highly innovative. Innovation in marketing? Maybe. Innovation in reading the public and understanding that tastes had changed? Maybe. Whatever. There is still a high degree of innovation. The American brewers did something different that made that style popular.

 

And this is how I see most US craft breweries - jack of all trades, master of little. I would rather see a brewery stick with one or two yeasts, and use them well, than a plethora of different yeasts and end up with mediocre product.

 

Curious - What breweries do you know of who use more than a couple yeasts regularly and put out mediocre products?

 

Regarding Ron's work I think that the brewing and recipes might have been very different from batch to batch but this begs the question as to whether it's true of the beers themselves.Certainly over long periods of time big changes did occur, but from year to year perhaps not.I am reminded of Dave Line's book which gave homebrew recipes to match commercial beers in which the ingredient lists bore little relation to what the brewers used but the end product was close.
Because a beer is no longer brewed doesn't mean it failed.Fashions and tastes change which is why 90% of the present world's beer is bland pseudo Pilsner.The range of UK beers before WW1 was staggering but the effects of shortages together with a teetotal Prime Minister put an end to that.By the time restrictions were eased (including massive taxation on beer by strength) the public had become accustomed to the new beers.So DIPAs didn't fail, people simply moved on from them.They had lost the taste for strong massively hopped brews and looked for easy drinking.

 

Classic example in my area would be Smuttynose. Hefeweizen discontinued due to not having the experience in keeping the yeast in good shape - hefeweizen yeasts are notoriously difficult to deal with after a couple of generations. And their belgian beers are all overly phenolic. Consistency of their IPA, DIPA, and flagships have been questionable in the past few years too ime.

 

Let's face it unless you are the first to notice the basic characteristics of malts and yeasts, the first to discover any of the spice additions in the wild and cultivate them, the first to brew in different temps and materials, there is no innovation possible for any of us. All true innovation was done before books were invented to describe.

The ancient tradition we embrace, arguably as ancient, or more, than any other of our civilized pleasures, is what is best about beer. I often think about the real folks to which my nickname refers, the cavemen, drinking the first beers through accident or divine guidance. We differ in how we carry tradition, especially we Americans, newly escaped from beer purgatory to heaven, but across the world, and in our own ways, it is done in our efforts to make that tradition what it ought be.