Boulder Bend Dunkelweizen (Fish Brewing Company)

Here is a representation of a traditional style from Fish Brewing Company of Olympia, Washington. They dub their Leavenworth Biers line as "the Northwest's original German-style craft biers." This will be the first beer I have tasted from this brewery. (Props to Mr. Wade Malcolm for contributing it to the Beer Club.)

I don't have a proper wheat beer glass to try this in, so my trusty Spark pint tumbler will have to do. The beer pours the deepest brown in color, only letting though a bit of light around the edges. It produces one finger or so of light brown head.

The aroma is of roasted malt, mainly. Very little hop presence is detectable, but sweetness is suggested.

The beer has a fairly straightforward roast malt flavor. The carbonation hits right up front, after which the roastiness opens a bit to hints of hazelnut, with just a touch of black pepper on the back end. The strongest impression after my first sip was the beer's creamy, mouth-coating texture. Clearly a wheat thing.

Only toward the bottom of the glass did I start noticing the pure yeast flavor I would expect in a weizen -- probably because more of the yeast had sunk to the bottom. At 4.7% ABV, this beer would be highly sessionable, if you're so inclined. There is no intense sweetness or bitterness to wear your taste buds out.

Overall, not a knockout, but not at all objectionable.

From the bottle's label:

Alpine-style dark wheat ale

Featured beer:
Boulder Bend Dunkelweizen

Bass IPA (Anheuser-Busch InBev)

Well, here it is, the new face of Bass. As described previously, the grand old Bass brewery was taken over by A-B InBev in the year 2000, and its products are now being produced at the Anheuser-Busch plant at Baldwinsville, New York. The label would clearly like us to believe that this beer is made in the traditional English style, despite its remove from the distinctive calcium-rich Burton waters and the even more distinctive Burton Union system in which it was traditionally fermented.

So what might a person expect a "traditional" Bass IPA to taste like, if they were to permit themselves to be persuaded by the marketing? I can do no better than to reproduce this quote from Martyn Cornell's excellent Zythophile blog:

North American IPAs – excellent though many of them are – use hop types completely unknown to 18th and 19th century British brewers, and major on floral, citrussy flavours and aromas in their IPAs, which are designed to be drunk comparatively young. Early British IPAs were designed to be drunk aged anything up to nine months or more, and while they were certainly bitter, they would have lost most of any hop aroma that they originally had. In addition it is becoming increasingly clear that early British IPAs would have showed at least some Brettanomyces character, from their long ageing in cask. Apart from both containing lots of hops, and being similar colours (except for the black ones) modern North American IPAs and early British IPAs could not be much more different.

Okay, so what is this one really like? In my pint glass, it shows a medium amber color -- strangely thin, though. Doesn't seem dense enough. The pour produces half an inch of clumpy, off-white foam.

There is a rather subdued, delicate, flowery, cotton candy aroma. Quite nice actually, and I will give points for foiling the expectation set up by the aroma of American IPAs.

At first sip, the beer does have some of that trademark Bass malt flavor, sweet and dense, but it drops of very quickly into a finishing bitterness that has very little nuance -- no citrus, no sap, no flowers, grass or herbs. In this sense, too, it does stand out from an American-style IPA. The body is of medium weight -- not as flimsy as the thinnish appearance might lead you to expect. Just a bit of grain flavor lingers after the bitterness lets up.

There is actually a fair amount of flavor here, but not much complexity. When tasting it blind, my wife said "tastes like a fairly well-made American beer." That's about right. It does stand apart from the predominant contemporary West Coast IPA style, but whether it is because of an authentic English character, I'm not so sure. There is certainly no Brettanomyces character (because there is no cask aging), nor any sulphurous “Burton snatch.”

Overall I would rate aroma this beer's best quality. That aspect of it really is rather nice.

From the bottle's label:

[front] Brewed in the tradition of William Bass Brewers Limited, Burton-on-Trent, England. This fine India pale ale has been brewed in the great British tradition using traditional English Fuggle hops.

[back] ICONOGRAPHY. From the makers of the original pale ale comes Bass India Pale Ale. Make with all malt and a blend of imported and domestic hops, including the traditional English Fuggle. Bass IPA is then dry-hopped in aging tanks for a remarkable aroma. Perfect for anytime you want to enjoy an intensely satisfying beer.

Featured beer:
Bass IPA

Caveat Emptor (or: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

I evangelize a lot about craft beer. After all, it has more or less rescued the American drinking public from the homogeneity of dull, mass-produced light lagers. But of course the craft movement did not invent flavor in beer; it merely restored what the mass producers had stripped out. And prior to the 1990s, imported beer was always there to remind us, by contrast, of the wan quality of our domestics.

Back then, whenever I had the chance I drank beers from England and Germany -- motherlands of the brewing traditions that immigrated to the United States and thrived prior to Prohibition. It seemed to me that these countries still treated beer as a flavorful, traditional beverage, not a commodity to be produced at as high a volume and as low a cost as could be worked out by a planning committee.

But it's a good thing the craft beer movement did take hold here in the U.S., because the inexorable expansion of a few multinational beverage corporations seems to be overtaking every great and venerable European label we once knew. Among the dozens of formerly independent brands that have been gobbled up by the world's largest beer concern, Anheuser-Busch InBev: Bass, Becks, Boddingtons, Franziskaner, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Löwenbräu, St.Pauli Girl, Spaten, and Stella Artois.

A few of those really sting for me. Sure, the original brewing arrangements remain intact in some of these cases, but the bottom line is that A-B InBev controls the brands and can do with them as it pleases. And they have already made some changes that clearly do not benefit the beer as much as they do the parent corporation.

Take for example the Bass Brewery, founded in 1777 by William Bass in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, and one of the most important players in England's storied history of brewing. The brewery was purchased by Molson Coors in 2000, and the Bass brand was later sold to the mega-conglomerate A-B InBev. Beers bearing the Bass imprint are now brewed for the American market at the Anheuser-Busch plant in Baldwinsville, NY. (The facility has an annual production capacity of 7.6 million barrels.)

The Bass label now says "Brewed in the tradition of William Bass Brewers Limited." Not sure exactly what that is intended to mean, but it can't possibly be true beyond a very superficial point, since the Burton Union fermentation system originally used by Bass survives to this day at only one brewery in the world, and it is not in Baldwinsville, New York.

This is the essence of what can happen when a juggernaut corporation buys up historic breweries for their "brand cachet." After the acquisition, decisions are based on the balance sheet, not the quality of the beer, but consumers are expected to hold the products in the same fond regard.

Selling out to a global beverage corporation may, unfortunately, hold an allure for some American craft breweries, too. Many have rapidly grown to the limits of their production capacity, and they'd love to have more fermenting tanks or wider distribution than they can afford on their own.

In a move that generated lots of conversation in the craft beer community, Chicago-based independent Goose Island sold itself to A-B InBev in 2011, and its flagship beer, 312 Urban Wheat, is now brewed in -- you guessed it -- Baldwinsville, NY.  A-B InBev also holds non-controlling stakes in, among other breweries, Georgia's Terrapin Beer Company and Delaware's tiny Coastal Brewing Company, which produces the Fordham and Old Dominion brands.

The multinationals are also using their distribution leverage to steal precious shelf space from legitimate craft breweries. Under the guise of independent and ostensibly "crafty" companies, MillerCoors makes Blue Moon and A-B InBev markets the Shock Top and the less-known Blue Dawg brands. These are but a few examples from what is likely to become a pernicious trend.

It's all bad for the beer drinker, in my opinion. But in the big picture, the most insidious practice of all is to cash in on brand loyalty built through decades (sometimes centuries) of conscientious craftsmanship by selling the hollowed-out husks of formerly great beers. What is lost can never be replaced.

*****
Recommended reading:

• The Plot to Destroy America's Beer
• Big Beer dresses up in craft brewers' clothing

Recommended viewing:

• Beer Wars

Beer Club (November 30, 2012)

Even though only five of us chipped in this week, we still came up with three breweries that are new to the list. Good stuff!

• Bass India Pale Ale (Anheuser-Busch InBev)
• Sculpin India Pale Ale (Ballast Point Brewing Company)
• Sierra Nevada Porter (Sierra Nevada Brewing Company)
• Boulder Bend Dunkelweizen (Fish Brewing Company)
• Loch Down Scotch Ale (Arcadia Brewing Company)

Samuel Adams Utopias - 10th Anniversary Release (The Boston Beer Company)

What lies at the outer edges of the vast universe of beer, do you suppose? Let's assume we've all done our time at the low end of the spectrum and, without defaming specific brands, leave it at that. But what beer represents the limits of extravagance?

I could certainly make an argument for Samuel Adams Utopias, an annual release from The Boston Beer Company. This year's 10th anniversary incarnation packs 29% alcohol by volume, and carries a suggested retail price of $160 a bottle. Is this madness? Not really, when viewed in context.

Even within the craft beer industry, which is pretty innovative to begin with, there is the vanguard of "extreme brewing" -- brewers experimenting with unusual ingredients (chili peppers, peanuts, exotic fruits and berries, even seafood), novel yeast strains, and unconventional techniques to produce beers that probe the frontiers of flavor.

And within this specialty a handful of breweries, including BBC, have explored the upper limits of alcohol in beer production, using either pure fermentation (as in the case of Utopias) or a freeze distillation method which removes water from the beer and leaves concentrated alcohol behind.

While many of these extreme alcohol beers have been condemned as mere publicity stunts because of their harshness, Utopias has got this problem licked. Through a combination of painstaking barrel aging (in casks previously holding port, bourbon and rum) and blending, they have created a -- well, I'll call it an "elixir," since "beer" doesn't quite describe it -- an elixir that smooths out the intense alcohol kick and incorporates it into an incredibly rich palette of flavors.

I poured the Utopias from its opulent-looking black ceramic flask into a small snifter. It appears deep amber brown with a slight plum tinge. It has a slightly viscous consistency and absolutely no carbonation. When swirled in the glass, it leaves oily legs, much like a wine or distilled spirit.

The aroma is not at all like beer, but much more like port or sherry. There are amazing notes of wood, Fig Newton, and Concord grape, with a solid undertone of alcohol.

The flavor is, again, less like beer and more like fortified wine. This elixir is clearly designed to be sipped and savored, not gulped by the mouthful. My first impression is of dense fig, honey, Medjool dates, and leather. Then the astringent wood rises but does not completely dry out the flavor, which finishes with the dark fruit essences receding into gentle oak, reminiscent of bourbon. Sipped in this way, there is some warmth, but no offensive ravage of alcohol.

In a video on their website, BBC founder Jim Koch says: "As a brewer, I believe Sam Adams' Utopias stands alongside the very best ports, the very best cognacs and brandies and sherries. To me, this is a beautiful example of the maker's art, just as those beverages are."

I agree that Utopias is a unique beverage that demonstrates superlative craftsmanship. Not sure I could work up the nerve to shell out $160 for a bottle of it, but it's nice to know what beer tastes like at the heavenly edge.

Beer Club (November 16, 2012)

Another great and varied assortment, introducing three breweries -- Boulevard of Kansas City, MO, Evil Genius (contract brewed through Cooperstown Brewing Company of Milford, NY), and Starr Hill of Charlottesville, VA -- that have not appeared in the lineup before.

• Fireside Chat (21st Amendment Brewery)
• Dark Starr Stout (Starr Hill Brewery)
• Evil Eye PA (Evil Genius Beer Company)
• Claymore Scotch Ale (Great Divide Brewing Company)
• Single-Wide IPA (Boulevard Brewing)
• Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce (Yards Brewing Company)

Beer Club (November 2, 2012)

Only five beers this week, but a great batch -- mostly dark beauties.

• Baba Black Lager (Uinta Brewing Company)
• Bristlecone Brown Ale (Uinta Brewing Company)
• Heart of Darkness Stout (Magic Hat Brewing Company)
• Old Rasputin RIS (North Coast Brewing Company)
• Red Fish (Flying Fish Brewing Company)

One bonus did come to me via Deputy Features Editor Patty Talorico: an elaborately packaged sample of the 10th anniversary release of Samuel Adams Utopias. A review of that will be forthcoming in a future "Quench" column in The News Journal.