Have We Been Here Before?

Yes, sir- the Fighting Scots!

 

Right on. Was right up the road at Allegheny. WAY before Voodoo, though.

 

I'll respond with a Michael Jackson anecdote (I think!) that says (I think!) a lot about Belgian attitudes:

Per Michael, the difference between German brewers and Belgian brewers, and excuse my poor paraphrase, he is a far better storyteller than I will ever be:

"So in Bavaria I have a pilsner at Friedrich's brewery and I say to him, Friedrich, this is an excellent pils, but it tastes exactly like Dieter's, down the road! And Friedrich says, Ja, because that is how one brews a pilsner.

A couple weeks later in the Ardennes, I have a saison at Jean Louis's brewery and I say Jean Louis, this is an excellent saison, but it tastes nothing like Jacques's saison, down the road! And Jean Louis says, Oui, because that is his saison and this is my saison."

It is my belief that this latter attitude has been the increasingly dominant attitude in American craft brewing over the last 3-4 years. Also the joy of tossing in new and different--unique-- adjuncts...that ain't really a German or an English thing, to me.

Not to mention the increasing prevalence of Belgian, especially farmhouse, styles. from all the cool kids, from Crooked Stave to Prairie to Jester King and ad infinitum

Even the "crafty" fake craft beers from the big guys--Shock Top and Blue Moon--purport to be Belgian Wits for crying' out loud.

 

Fantastic anecdote.

I would certainly agree that the US craft brewing tradition is far more "Belgian" in its affectations than it is "German".

The horribly unfortunate part about all these breweries making lovely saisons is the lack of well made Trappist and Abbey style beers.

 

Let's just say I read it one time, 20-25 years ago, and it has stuck with me. It also was one of the triggers to me getting interested in Belgian beer. I can't remember the publication, but I remember the story. He really was something special, no?

 

Indeed he was. To me, it still feels like something's missing because he's not here any more even though it's been over 10 years since his death.

 

right, but my original point, to which you replied "How so? was that this is a more recent development, and that back in the day we were fawning imitators of principally English and German styles.

As to both of these brewing tradition we policed ourselves pretty rabidly, as to compliance with things like the BJCP style guidelines and argued strenuously about minutiae and overlap. My perception is that very little of that, other than freedom from technical laws like diacetyl or DMS or unintended infection, is very important around here or other places where beer geeks hang out and talk beer.

ergo my belief that American brewers have been more "belgianized" than Belgian brewers have been "americanized" in recent years.

 

I would certainly agree. I also think that many Belgian brewers (and European brewers, as a whole), have certain ideologies that aren't shared by a great many of their American counterparts. Yvan de Baets of De La Senne stands out as having said ideology/sensibility.

 

You will not be disappointed.

 

While there you'll probably visit the Castle.

I'd recommend you also allocate some time to visiting The Scotch Whisky Experience which is just down the Royal Mile a wee bit from the entrance to the Castle. You might even want to have a dram or two and share a meal there...

https://www.scotchwhiskyexperience.co.uk

The visit would give you a chance to explore/learn about the national beverage of Scotland and, for my money, it is well-worth the price of admission.

 

To me there are a couple of ways to relate to the idea of keeping old things alive so that the technology isn't lost on the new folks coming in to the industry. There are examples in other things that can point to the value of this philosophy, or the lack thereof.

No one says gee, I hope horse drawn carts don't disappear, car manufacturers today can benefit greatly from understanding them, or gee, if car makers today don't get a chance to see horse drawn carts in action, how will they be able to make cars?

There also is the true example of gee, if that painter never gets a chance to see the works of the ancient masters he may never be able to realize fully the possibilities of his art.

Hard to say which way brewing beer best can be looked at.

 

I find the history of beer interesting, even fascinating, and yes, a bit romantic. Having said that I don't care if Bitburger is made in some super uber modern factory by computer driven robots so long as the taste doesn't change.

 

What is your reference point for "doesn't change"? Do you think that the Bitburger of 2018 tastes like the Bitburger of 1985?

Cheers!

 

My point being I find beer fascinating from an historical perspective and am also unperturbed by modern innovation in brewing technology. As for current Bitburger compared to 30 years ago all I can say is I liked it then and still like it now.

 

On a trip to Ireland a few years ago, I was struck by the fact that most of the (tourist) pubs carried coors light and bud on tap. There were other Brewers represented, of course, but AALs were ubiquitous. And, of course, Guinness, Smithwicks, etc. It just supports the statement in the article that we Americans tend to seek out that which is familiar rather than exploring cultural differences.

 

Fair enough but over the past few decades that beer (and other industrial produced German Pilsners) have notably changed in character. It has been mostly a slow evolution but the changes in German beer tax laws in 1993 was an 'acceleration point' in the changes.

Cheers!

P.S. More information here for the interested reader:

http://refreshingbeer.blogspot.no/2014/11/narziss-slams-state-of-german-brewing.html

 

Maybe not "today," when many of us are so far removed from that, but how do you know that this wasn't the case in the past? It's not hard to imagine a point in time when a horse was considered far more reliable than a car by many. I can personally relate with technology today. Why would I want a touch screen on my refrigerator or a car that doesn't need a key if they're just adding in more points of potential failure? Stuck in the past. Apologies for perhaps taking your metaphor too literally. I can't tell if I'm even off topic because these articles are always so skimpy that they often feel like little more than a long forum post.

 

I gave two examples, I guess you think of beer more as an art?

And no, once an engine is added to the carriage itself there is no benefit to car drivers and car manufacturers of having horse pulled devices extant. But to your example of that small amount of time when the two technologies coexisted as equals, I am willing to bet there were traditionalists equivalent to beer traditionalists who bemoaned the crazy idea of not having the engine separate from the buggy and pulling it along like a buggy, and likely predicted the crazy idea of engine and buggy all in the same device would fail. And we all know there were those traditionalists yelling at cars they ought to get a horse, like there are folks who "yell" that beer drinkers ought to get a real traditional beer.

 

I'll put it this way, I don't view beer as art or brewers as artists... (unless it's the sort of day when I'm in the mindset that everything produced is art, in which case I wouldn't single out brewers as anything particularly special anyway).

I definitely wouldn't take your bet about traditionalists... I think your hypothesis is a given. Connecting this with the thread topic directly, I'm easily annoyed by phrases or expressions that get endless repeated on this site. One current one is "get off my lawn" - aimed at anyone who doesn't want change. Seems like it's hard to get through a day on BeerAdvocate without seeing this a few times.

Although it's often used self deprecatingly, it's not really a positive characterization. So, let's keep in mind, that without the "get off my lawn" attitude, we probably wouldn't have CAMRA. If we didn't have CAMRA, I don't know if the craft era in the US would even exist as it does. Perhaps I'm overstating and under-thinking things. Seems like "get off my lawn" was fundamental to the birth of US craft regardless. And yet, the scene today doesn't completely resemble what it once was. Is it possible to cleanly splinter things by and for traditionalists vs visionaries (for lack of a better word)? For everything gained is something always lost?

 

If all the benefits that folks once received from a thing are also received by future generations with a different thing in a way that is just as beneficial to them, nothing is lost from the transition from old to new. Nothing wrong with nostalgia, it certainly makes folks who deal in it a tidy living, but notstalgic sense sort of makes it obvious that it has no other benefit than tweaking memories from ages past that make us feel pleasant.