Friday, February 18, 2011

Q:What's the number one selling Craft Beer style?


A: Seasonal

A former brewer friend is fond of saying, “You guys way over think this thing, the only beers you need to offer are the basics: a light, a malty, a hoppy, a dark, and a weird. Then you spice it up with styles that rotate. Because the first question every guest asks now is, ‘What’s your Seasonal?’”

Simple yet sage advice that guides us as we strive to provide a line-up of beers that is both reliable, and reliably unique. Our main beer menu has examples of:

1. The Light: A golden thirst quencher or refreshing “lawnmower” beer: Light Lager, Export and Kolsch.

2. The Malty: Copper to dark amber or brown styles that accentuate the sweet and caramel characters of malted barley. Red Ale, Marzen/Vienna Lagers, and Brown Ale,

3. The Hoppy: For those who prefer more bitterness as well the spicy, herbal, piney or citrus quality of the Hop flowers: Pale Ale (IPA) and Pilsner Lager.

4. The Dark: Don’t be afraid; though deep mahogany to pitch black they can be relatively light bodied and low in alcohol, or not : Porter, Stout, Schwarzbier.

5. The Weird: The favorite of those who say, “It doesn’t taste like beer.” The weird signature flavors tend to come from the yeast, spices and fruit, or changes in the processing procedures. Hefeweizen, Wit Beer, Belgian Beers, Barrel Aged and Sour Beers. (These might not be full time everywhere.)

We like to think there are suds to satiate every palate on the main menu but, as “Variety is the spice of life,” some crave more. We call them Seasonals, Specialties, or Brewer’s Select (just don’t call them Gap Beers, that was a truly unfortunate moniker.) Be they traditional styles or “extreme beers” with amplified examples of beer’s classic flavor characteristics.

On the Scoville scale for heat in peppers and hot sauce you might equate our regular line-up and Seasonals such as the Maibock and Fire Chief Ale to a Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, clocking in at 450 Scoville Units (SU). While fine for some, this is not enough heat for those who prefer Cholula at 3,600 (SU) on their tacos, washed down by Imperial versions of IPA or Pilsner with hop bitterness of 60 to 100 BU or Bittering Units (Budweiser is 12 BU.)

But making “extreme beer” can be like driving on the freeway, where no matter how fast you are going there is someone who wants to go faster riding your rear. It is a contest that usually ends with someone on the median or the morgue. There is a powerful “more is better” trend in Craft Brewing these days: more malt (alcohol), more hops, more weird.

It can get to the point, as it has with hot sauce, where one wonders what the point actually is. There are hot sauces out there with catchy names like, “Crazy Mother Pucker’s Liquid Lava” that are several million Scoville Units, more than one thousand times hotter than a Jalapeño, on the level with police approved pepper spray. Similarly there is a beer called, “Thermonuclear Penguin” with 32% alcohol by volume! What happened to beer being the beverage of moderation? Although, our Brewers can concoct these more interesting beers, and have recently won GABF and World Cup Medals for esoteric styles such as Rauch or Smoked Beer, Belgian Sour Lambic, Bourbon Barrel Aged Beer, and Eisbock, as well as the finest lagers and ales made with coffee and rye.

So with the health of our prized patron’s, and their GI tracts, in mind we will continue to push the envelope with our Seasonal/Specialty or Brewer’s Select offerings. Yet we can never lose sight of perpetually providing the best light, malty, hoppy, dark, and weird beers in the world. Remember the lesson of Christina Aguilera at the Super Bowl: just because you can sing in every octave, does not mean you should.

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