Ilja Croijmans | Photo by Irene Geurts

Ilja Croijmans is a psychologist by training and a homebrewer in his off time. He’s a researcher in the field of psycholinguistics, which combines psychology and linguistics, obtaining his PhD at the Centre for Language Studies in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

His work is currently focused on the ways people describe the flavor and aroma of food and beverages. In this vein, Croijmans coauthored a 2015 study titled “Odor Naming Is Difficult, Even For Wine And Coffee Experts,” which found that “both wine and coffee experts were no more accurate or consistent than novices when naming odors. ”

When I read of this study via Sprudge, a coffee publication, I naturally thought, “OK, but what about beer?”

Croijmans was kind enough to answer my questions about how his research into the language of flavor and aroma could impact beer judging as well as everyday beer enjoyment. Some of his responses have been edited for clarity and length:

Why has your research until now mostly focused on wine and coffee?
It has focused primarily on wine, actually. Wine is, like coffee, an incredibly rich source of aromas, and can be experienced by smelling it, and by tasting it. In both cases, the nose is involved. Wines differ along a few dimensions–grape type, country of origin or terroir, and yet, there is so much variety. There are many wine experts available in the Netherlands, in shops (vinologists), in restaurants (sommeliers), and we even have a few wine producers now (oenologists). Additionally, wine expertise is well defined. To become a sommelier or vinologist, you have to go through intensive training and get a degree. Wine experts are interesting, because they talk and write about the smell and flavor of wines frequently–in shops, in restaurants and in reviews on the internet.

Have you considered applying your research to beer rather than wine or coffee?
Beer is also incredibly interesting. Back when I started this project on flavor language, this whole “craft beer revolution” was just kicking off in the Netherlands, which is only four years ago. Back then, there were 200 breweries, already 40 more than in 2012. Right now, there are around 422 breweries in the Netherlands. While beer is an interesting and obvious choice right now, it wasn’t yet back then. There are beer expert communities in the Netherlands with incredible expertise, and at least 422 commercial brewers which I think are expert enough to participate in my studies, too. And I think beer is talked about a lot too. What you see for wines (wine menus, wine reviews online) you see for beers more often too. There now even is a Michelin-star restaurant in the Netherlands (de Librije in Zwolle) that has a beer menu to pair with their seven-course menu.

What implications could your research have in terms of how we understand and value beer judging?
What we found in wine experts is that it matters how much you talk about smells and flavors in order to become better at describing it. If these beer judges talk a lot about beer, in addition to tasting and judging it, the findings for wine experts might apply to beer judges too. I think judges (for wine and beer alike) are very useful. It is hard to judge from a bottle of beer how it will taste, and some beers are quite expensive, so these pose a risk. If a beer expert has described the flavor in a way I can understand, this helps me in my decision process. I see sometimes online that people really don’t like a well rated beer, for example a Berliner weisse or a lambic or a black IPA. And it turns out they just didn’t expect the flavors in those beers, for example, in case of the Berliner weisse, they expected more of a traditional German weisse or Belgian wit. If they would have had access to a short description of the flavor, they might have given it a second thought, or not spent money on it in the first place. Expert descriptions are very useful, especially when novices struggle with finding the right words for the flavors

How can casual beer drinkers become more adept at describing aroma and flavor?
With practice, people can become better at describing aromas and flavors. A guided tasting can help: Let an expert explain what flavors they taste in a beer, and see if the casual beer-drinker can spot these too. Or a beer flavor wheel might help, seeing particular flavors occur in a beer. This is speculative, but in the beginning, it seems it is important to just get acquainted with the words that are used in beer contexts, and these wheels can help. After a while, it is more about practicing using them and applying them to new beers.
There are apps in which you can choose a few flavor descriptors for each beer you drink. This is already easier than just coming up with your own, or type in your own description. Becoming an expert in any domain, like in music or in chess, takes time, on average around 10,000 hours, so it really just needs deliberate practice and time. But even practicing it a few hours can help. It is too bad we don’t teach our kids to talk about smells and flavors, but focus on what cows say (sound) and what color a sheep is (vision) instead. It’s speculative, but it might be possible people would be better at naming smells if they learned to pay attention to them when they were young.

Do you have a favorite beer style?
I don’t have a specific favorite. It depends too much on the context. But there are types of beers I like more than others. I am quite into the sour beers: gose, Berliner weisse, lambic, gueuze. Somehow the sourness keeps being interesting, while for example for with IPAs or stouts, these seem to become more similar to each other the more I try (although I also really like IPAs). I also like the crossover-type beers, in which multiple styles are combined, e.g., a sour stout, or experimental beers in which interesting ingredients are used.

Has your research changed the way you personally experience the act of drinking beer?
I don’t think my research has changed the way I am experiencing beer. Whether it changed what types of beers I drink, I think homebrewing is more to blame for that–if you know how something is made, you may find flaws and possible ways to improve it. But I am trying to be aware of the flavors and tastes in what beers I drink, and I try to at least write a few words on each beer I drink and rate it, even if I’ve had it more than once.

Responses have been edited for clarity and length. 

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On a trip earlier this year to Edmonton, Alberta, I had dinner at a brewpub just off the bustling Whyte Avenue thoroughfare in the Old Strathcona neighborhood. The brewery was a relatively new addition to the scene; young, stylishly dressed Edmontonians on date nights waited in line for tables. The tap lineup was varied: sour beers, classic pub styles, way-hoppy pale ales and more.

As we gave our beer orders to our server, my companion hemmed and hawed about whether she’d enjoy the brewery’s kettle sour.

“Just … how sour is it?” she asked the server.

“If you’re nervous about that, I could do a half-sour and half-saison mix for you,” the server readily replied. She took him up on the offer.

I don’t think my mouth fell open, but I was surprised. Mixing beer styles isn’t something servers suggest often here in the States, let alone at a brewery itself. As my friend contentedly sipped her half-saison, half-sour, I wondered whether American aversion to the practice had its roots in mere snobbery or whether other factors are at play.

To get to the way-back root of mixing beers, I turned to British beer historian and author Ron Pattinson, who said that the custom of combining beers began much before the Black and Tans and Snakebites we know.

“As far as you go back, people have always mixed beer,” he says. “It’s normally for reasons of economy, really. They had a beer they really liked but couldn’t afford to drink all the time.”

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first citation of “Black and Tan” to describe a beer that’s half darker beer, half lighter beer in a slang dictionary from 1889. Beer mixes predates World War I, though the practice is best documented from the 19th century on. Some motivations were economic, as with the mixing of half a bottle of beer with half a draft beer during World War I, when draft beer quality was middling at best but bottled beer was still expensive to drink exclusively … hence, the fifty-fifty split.

But flavor considerations were also a factor. Mixing an old ale with a bitter (called a Mother-In-Law, zing!) wouldn’t have been a price-based decision, since both styles would have been nearly equal in cost. Drinkers just liked the way it tasted.

These days, though, Pattinson said the beer-combination custom is on the wane in Britain, as the styles used to make the classics (mild, bitter, porter, etc.) are becoming less common on draft. The rise of more American styles in the British beer world and the development of a younger craft beer culture have created something of a disdain for the practice.

“The young people with beards who drink craft beer, they don’t mind drinking a beer that looks like orange juice but they’d never dream of mixing their beers,” he says.

Mixing beer isn’t super common in the States these days, though a few taprooms and bars encourage the practice. Among them is Broken Compass Brewing Co. in Breckenridge, Colorado, where “mix tapes,” as the brewery’s dubbed them, are a common order from regulars. Before the brewery had even opened, owner/brewer David “Ax” Axelrod was interested in making a mole stout, so he began roughly mixing his chili pepper pale ale and his coffee chocolate stout in various ratios until he nailed the right level of chili pepper kick. From there, a tradition was born.

Now, taproom staff and customers are in on it, too, requesting their own combinations and tinkering with the tap list. Recent favorites include a half coconut porter, half chocolate coffee stout mix invented by Axelrod’s girlfriend, Kristin, and the “chill-pah”: chile pepper pale with just a dash of IPA.

So though he’s proud of how his beers taste as-is, Axelrod certainly doesn’t mind customers and staff playing around with his creations.

“There are certainly people that get all puritanical on beers but that’s what the Reinheitsgebot is for. If you want that, go to Germany,” he says. “I certainly respect someone’s expression of a style or their vision, but we wouldn’t have the craft movement if people didn’t start playing around with different recipes and designs.”

Pub Dog, a small pizza-and-brewpub chain with locations around Baltimore, Maryland, has gone a step further: All locations, since 2003, have served a menu of “Half Breeds,” or mixes of their house-brewed beers. Options include the Bloodhound (half Irish stout, half raspberry ale), the Smooth Dog (half IPA, half nut brown) and the Beagle (half peach ale, half nut brown). Customers often make their own, too, incorporating the two seasonal beers on draft.

“We’ve had great success with it. I think people enjoy being able to make their own beers. Our environment, as opposed to some other brewpubs, we find it fun and interesting,” says Pub Dog marketing manager Caitlin Fisher. “We’ve embraced mixing the whole beer thing.”

Not everyone has. I came across a seven-year-old blog post (“screed” could also be used here) written by Michael O’Connor, who at the time was the beer manager and buyer at Bailey’s Taproom in Portland, Oregon. (He’s since left that position to work on other projects, but still bartends at Bailey’s once a week.)

In the post, titled “The Sin of Mixing,” O’Connor writes: “Sometimes, when you’ve had a few drinks, you do something you really regret… something that will haunt you until your dying days. This happened to me yesterday when I… I… mixed beers!”

The Frankenstein he created was half a North Coast Old Rasputin on nitro with half Six Rivers Raspberry Lambic.

He goes on: “Every beer snob worth their cirrhosed liver knows that you don’t take a masterpiece beer and dilute it with another. That’s the act of a vandal, a scourge, a… an Englishman.”

After bemoaning the outcome—”The lambic and stout mixture was certainly not repulsive, but nowhere near as good as the beers by themselves”—he offers a warning to others never to follow down such a dark path.

I had to know: Did he still feel this way, seven years later?

“It’s like going into the restaurant and some chef does an incredible leg of lamb and you want ketchup with it or something. I kind of wince at it still,” O’Connor says. “I want people to experience that beer the way that the brewer intended it, and the brewer probably didn’t intend for you to take his IPA and blend it with a chocolate stout.”

Sure, he’ll serve you a mix of beers if you really want it, but he’ll give you a bit of a spiel first. Unless you’ve tried a certain combination before, it might not taste all that great.

“You open up a Pandora’s box. American styles are usually aggressive, and much more complex than traditional English styles,” he says. “They’re not as ubiquitous, because we have so many craft beers. There’s no American craft beer equivalent of Guinness or Harp.”

He raises a question that Ron Pattinson also mentioned: As the variety and flavor range of beer increases, is there any future for mixing beers?

“If you’re in an American beer bar, you can find a brown ale, a Belgian beer, an imperial stout with raspberries on nitro. You’re not bored by the options so much so that you need to start putting things together and hoping it tastes good,” O’Connor says. “The brewers are already five steps ahead of you.”

So, ultimately, yes, O’Connor would still rather you just ordered your beer and drank it the way the brewer intended it to be consumed. Seven years later, and he hasn’t budged on this position. It made me wonder whether there’s a middle ground, or whether mixing beers is that divisive of a practice. Broken Compass’s David Axelrod seems to shrug at the “debate.”

“There’s something to be said for purity of vision, and there’s also something to be said for throwing all the rules out the window.”

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On-demand beer delivery is the type of service every drinker, staring at an empty fridge, has wished for at one point. In an age of on-demand everything else—movies, grocery delivery, ride-sharing—alcohol is one of the final frontiers. But apps, websites and, naturally, Amazon have finally brought the dream of to-your-door-in-an-hour beer to life. What it means for the existing relationship between drinkers, retail stores and breweries, though, is still shaking out.

“The logistics are challenging and with alcohol you have some additional regulatory restraints,” says Keith Anderson, senior vice president of insights and marketing at Profitero, a leading global ecommerce analytics firm. “There’s a massive opportunity that you already see some services pursuing because, particularly in large-scale, high-density urban centers, there is a population of technology-enabled households that want and can afford to pay for convenience.”

Riffing on the models of meal-delivery apps like GrubHub and Postmates, the past few years have seen an explosion of on-demand alcohol-delivery apps and websites including Drizly, GoPuff, Minibar Delivery and many others. Most guarantee beer (or wine or spirits) in your hands less than an hour after you place your order. Even Amazon’s in on the game, with alcohol delivery available via PrimeNow in select cities—and who knows what the company’s recent $14.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods could mean for its beer offerings. People can currently summon some cold beers with a mere “Alexa, I need a six-pack” command to Amazon’s assistant device.

There are two ways this beer gets from the brewery to your lazy, thirsty self. The first and most prevalent model is that apps or services partner with existing retail liquor stores, who supply the beer and whose staff makes the deliveries. The app is just a go-between; MiniBar Delivery co-founder and co-CEO Lara Crystal calls it a “marketing technology platform.” A liquor store pays the app company to buy in to its online platform, essentially outsourcing its ecommerce to a third party. The second, less common model is dominated by Amazon. Amazon, unlike other services, actually owns its own warehouses and inventory; it also employs its own drivers to make deliveries. Currently, Amazon PrimeNow delivery of alcohol is only available in a handful of cities including Cincinnati, Columbus and Seattle.

Many such services are based in just a few cities so that the company can closely monitor logistics and work with multiple retail stores to offer a wide selection. Profitero’s Keith Anderson says that, like ride-sharing apps, supply and demand have to synch up for these services to work. Too many liquor stores and too few customers using the app means stores will lose interest in being on the platform; too many customers and not enough selection and drinkers will become frustrated with the lame options.

Minibar Delivery’s app interface

There are also logistical challenges. To prevent underage (but, of course, tech-savvy) kids from purchasing alcohol, store staff members or Amazon employees who make the delivery must check IDs before handing over the goods at the door. Furthermore, beer is not like printer cartridges or paper towels, which is why some beer-delivery customers have found that delivery services can come up short. When he was living in Sacramento, Jon Uhruh, a 35-year old services coordinator who now lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, noticed that Amazon PrimeNow offered beer for delivery. He and his wife wanted to order something out of curiosity. They settled on one of their standbys, a six-pack of Lagunitas IPA.

“The beers arrived warm; they were very malty. I’ve had Lagunitas many times, they were no one near where the beer should be,” Uhruh says. “I reached out to Amazon and they did give us a credit to try again, and they promised it would be fresher and colder. The second time, it actually was an older dated bottle, over six months old, but it was colder. I knew it wasn’t what I know the brewery intended it to be, though. It’s going to be hard for Amazon to get the higher-quality craft brewers to sign onto this because a lot of the smaller guys are really worried about the quality of the product getting to the consumer.”

Search most of the on-demand alcohol delivery platforms, and you’ll find predominantly nationally distributed breweries and larger regional players, the kinds that you’d find in most corner stores. This isn’t to say there aren’t options that would pique a beer nerd’s fancy; Drizly in particular offers a database of beer searchable by style and country of origin that includes a notable number of locally made beers like Grimm, Transmitter and Ommegang in New York; and Half Acre, Pipeworks and Revolution in Illinois.

Because, except in the case of Amazon, local retailers enter their merchandise to the platform, beer selection (and freshness) should theoretically match what’s in that store’s coolers. Services like Drizly and Minibar Delivery might be best known for coordinating alcohol delivery, but they’re really just matchmakers bringing drinkers and stores together. They’re acting sort of like a Priceline for beer instead of hotels: Here’s what’s available in your area, here are the prices.

“Most important is the marketplace concept, that we’re pulling from as many retailers as we can in a market. You’re not constrained by the four walls of the store; you’re able to shop across stores, across prices, across inventory depth,” says Drizly co-founder Justin Robinson. “Look at any other industry: airline, restaurants, hotels. Alcohol is sort of the last frontier for that transparency, giving the power to the customer.”

On top of the retail price, the consumer will pay a nominal delivery fee, usually around $5 for the entire delivery, no matter its size. That’s not true of Amazon PrimeNow, though, whose membership-based service charges an annual cost, making deliveries free. Yes, someone just delivered that six-pack to you for the same price you’d pay at the store.

But what customers gain by not going to the liquor store (convenience), they lose by not going to the liquor store (advice from friendly sales staff). If you have a favorite liquor store, the staff there might recognize you as a longtime customer, know your preferences or be able to answer questions about what’s new and what’s tasty.

“In a store, a friendly staff member’s going to be able to say ‘Try this beer’ or ‘This is a new wine we found.’ We need to replicate that experience online,” says Robinson. “Some of the editorial is created in-house, but also we have retail partners with phenomenal wine or beer buyers and we leverage those relationships to get that content online. If you’re in Boston, you’re going to see a different piece from the local beer buyer than you might see in Phoenix. We want to work hand-in-hand so that their local expertise shows through.”

Are these delivery and online services a challenge to traditional liquor stores? Not necessarily, says David Christman, senior vice president of state affairs for the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which represents beer distributors. He is also the chief of staff for NBWA’s Beer Industry Electronic Commerce Coalition.

“Big picture, we like that [services] come into this not using the buzzword ‘disruptor’ but as an enhancer to the system that’s in place, working with locally licensed retailers,” he says. “It’s adding to consumer convenience but it’s not tipping over the apple cart in the meantime.”

But this relative harmony doesn’t mean there aren’t a few sticking points where online delivery and ecommerce services put traditional distributors or retailers on edge.

“If they’re not holding a retail license, but they are interfacing with the consumer, we’re pretty much of the belief that they should be subject to the same trade practice rules as a retailer,” Christman says. For example, a liquor store isn’t allowed to give certain alcohol brands more prominent shelf space or exclude that brand’s competitors in exchange for money; Christman says the same should apply to websites or apps. Theoretically, the liquor store could lose its liquor license, while there’s no such recourse for the website or app. “These laws are a big reason why we have so much variety in the beer aisle, so even if the aisle is a virtual one, the rules should not change.”

Christman says that a few years’ time will tell whether these services are a net gain for retailers, wholesales and breweries.

“Everybody wants to be online and be as convenient as possible. Structured right, there’s a lot of opportunity,” he says. “I’m anxious to see in a year or so if this is resulting in new beer sales.”

That’s the million-dollar question for breweries, retailers and for these delivery services: Is a customer more likely to buy more beer (or wine or spirits) because of an app or delivery website? If you’re the type of beer drinker who’s already hunting down the newest release at your favorite bottle shop or buying growlers from breweries directly, these services might not change the way you discover and buy beer. That is, of course, until you find yourself with an empty fridge and a car that’s at the mechanic’s shop.

Courtesy of Craft Alley

Craft Alley: Denver’s crowler delivery service

A few years ago, Bryce Forester was drinking with a friend at a brewery, remarking on how good fresh-from-the-tank beer tastes. He wondered if there was a way to legally deliver brewery-fresh crowlers to customers who don’t have time to visit the brewery. Turns out, it was legal, and he and his brother Bret built a business on the idea: Craft Alley. Craft Alley, less than a year old, also operates a small retail store in Denver, thus it carries a retail license. Customers can come in and purchase just-filled crowlers, or they can order as many as they’d like from different Denver-area breweries online. The customer selects a delivery time window, and Craft Alley staff delivers the crowlers for a $5 fee (it’s waived if the customer orders three or more crowlers). The business only works with small, self-distributing breweries who consider Craft Alley just another retail account. Forester estimates he orders about a barrel per week in crowlers from each brewery partner, and an Alley Pass program also offers crowler buyers discounts and incentives to actual visit the taprooms. “Convenience is a big part of it, and then we also do a lot of education for people that don’t necessarily know about the breweries. Not everybody has that beer friend who can guide them through everything. We do a lot of upgrading as far as people’s beer experiences, getting them out of some of the bigger national brands and get them into something local and fresh.”

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HopTown Pizza

Unleashed on dishes from pizza to cheese, hops deliver aromatics, flavor and sometimes, bitterness. Here’s how to chow down.

Buddha Teas Hop Tea
Certified organic Cascade hop flowers from Clearlake, California, grower Hops-Meister flavor this caffeine-free tea. Steep it as you would any herbal tea for a grapefruity, floral cup. $7.99 for a box of 18 tea bags, buddhateas.com

B-Hoppy Hop Candy
What started as a crossover between homebrewing and confectionary-making has become a niche business for hop candy creator Bob Bero. Choose from a bag of varietal-specific candies (Saaz, Cascade, Motueka and more) or find your favorite among the mixed selections in the variety pack. $4.95 for a 4-ounce bag, hop-head-farms.myshopify.com

Hop Pop Soda
All the flavor you love, without the alcohol. That’s the promise of Hop Pops, a caffeine-free, carbonated soda flavored and bittered with Galaxy and Citra hops. Drink it on its own or use it as a cocktail mixer; you’ll find recipes for vodka-, gin-, whiskey- and rum-based concoctions on the website. $12 for a 4-pack of bottles, drinkhoppop.com

Corvus Cold-Brew Hopped Coffee
Finally, someone’s found a way to justify hops at the breakfast table: Whole-cone Cascade hops add a floral and citrusy layer to this bright Rwandan cold-brew coffee. Find the coffee on draft as well as in bottles at Whole Foods and specialty markets in the Denver area. $4, corvuscoffee.com/pages/cold-brew-coffees

Charles Martell & Sons Hereford Hop Cheese
This full-fat, cow’s milk hard cheese is coated with a layer of toasted Hallertau Hersbrucker hops from Herefordshire, an English county near the cheese maker’s farm. Charles Martell & Sons has produced this distinctly citrusy-buttery cheese since 1990; find it stateside at specialty cheese shops. Prices vary, charlesmartell.com

Dillon’s Hops Bitters

Dillon’s Hops Bitters
Alpha Aroma, Cascade and Mount Hood hops make these small-batch cocktail bitters, well, bitter, but also add a touch of spice and citrus. The Ontario-based distillery recommends trying them in pineapple- or orange-juice based warm-weather cocktails. $14.95 for a 100mL bottle, dillons.ca

Hoptown Pizza
Yakima, Washington-area food truck-turned-brick-and-mortar Hoptown Pizza sprinkles its pies with a dash of Cascade hops after they emerge from a 900-degree wood-fired oven for a whiff of locally grown herbaceousness. Pie flavors include Pep Pep Peroni pesto-and-pepperoni; Angry Za hot sauce-and four-cheese; HopTown Harvest veggie and more. Locations at hoptownpizza.com/where

Living The Dream Brewing Co.’s Hop Oil
Carrie Knose, owner of Denver-based Living The Dream brewery, tinkers with hop-flavored oil for home cooking; she says hops can add a savory quality to salad dressings and dipping oils. Recreate her basic dressing recipe by whisking together hop-steeped canola oil (she’s used Chinook and Cascade varieties), minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, salt and pepper, adjusting to your flavor preferences.

Want to DIY?

Recipe developer and author Marie Porter has published an entire cookbook devoted to cooking with hops called “Hedonistic Hops.” Inside, find instructions for whipping up everything from Hoppy Citrus IPA-Glazed Wings to Honey Hop Dipping Sauce. $19.99, celebrationgeneration.com

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Guinness exists in the realm of Kleenex, BandAid and Xerox—brand names we’ve extrapolated to refer to their entire product category. When you’re in the mood for “a Guinness,” people assume you’re referring to a dark, roasty, dry and finely carbonated stout that’s been the standard bearer for its style for decades.

But that could soon change.

Guinness announced earlier this year that the iconic Irish beer brand, now owned by Diageo, would build a $50 million brewery called Guinness Open Gate Brewery & Barrel House in the Baltimore County town of Relay, Maryland. That facility will be the U.S. brewing and tourism headquarters for the brand, and will focus on brewing Guinness Blonde American Lager as well as other innovation beers. One thing they won’t be brewing: the flagship Guinness Draught, which will continue to be brewed at St. James’s Gate in Dublin. All other stouts, including Extra Stout and Foreign Extra Stout, will also be brewed at St. James’s Gate.

“I get that most people think of Guinness Draught when they hear ‘Guinness.’ That beer is so legendary, how could you blame them?” says Guinness Open Gate Brewery & Barrel House brewmaster Peter Wiens, who most recently was a force behind Stone Brewing’s Richmond, Virginia, expansion. “It’s only been around for about fifty or sixty years, though, so the true beginnings of Guinness that led to it are actually rooted in innovation.”

He cites nitro-carbonated beers and the stout style as innovations Guinness helped pioneer; in more recent years, the company has also released a Nitro IPA, Rye Pale Ale and 200th Anniversary Export Stout. But what could come from Guinness’ Maryland facility is potentially even more creative.

“All of the Guinness stouts that America has come to love will still come directly from Dublin. That’s not going to change, but the next time you see a new IPA, lager or maybe even a sour from Guinness, you’ll know that was us,” says Hollie Stephenson, head brewer at the new Maryland facility. “I’m particularly excited about seeing some IPAs come out of here. That’s a style that I learned a lot about when I was out west and had some success with at Highland, so I’m looking forward to seeing how I can do that in a way that you know is Guinness.”

Wiens and Stephenson will have multiple tools at their disposal to come up with new hits for the brewery. They’ll have the flexibility of three sizes of brewing systems (a four-keg pilot system; a ten-barrel system for taproom-only beers; and a 100-hectoliter system to brew beers for production), scaling what works up through the taproom into production.

“We’ll be measured by what we’re able to produce. At the end of the day, we’re expected to come up with some great beer. I think a few early hits in the tap room will feel like a success for me,” Wiens says.

The team will also benefit from Guinness’ parent company, Diageo, which owns brands like Johnnie Walker, Bulleit, Crown Royal, Don Julio and more. That opens up the possibility of a steady stream of barrels as diverse as rum, Scotch, tequila and bourbon bound for the Guinness brewery in Maryland.

From day one, the Guinness Open Gate Brewery & Barrel House’s taproom will be like a focus group for the new brewing team, allowing them to gauge customer preferences and reactions to the new, not-stout Guinness beers.

“The more people that stop by early on, the more chance we’ll have to get some feedback on our beers in the taproom,” says Stephenson. “Don’t be surprised if you see me in there asking people what they tried today and what they thought.”

SaveSave

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Conventional wisdom dictates that lagers are clean and crisp, nearly devoid of yeast-derived flavors. Beers fermented with Brettanomyces, on the other hand, are all about what the yeast can do: fruit and funk and farmhouse flavors.

So how could the two ever coexist? What seems like an oxymoron actually isn’t, nor is it anything new. Both of New Belgium’s base beers for its wood cellar program, Felix and Oscar, begin with lager yeast, and rumor has it that a lot of the saccharomyces (brewer’s yeast) strains present in Cantillon bottles are actually lager strains. So while this practice is nothing new, the resulting beers are more recently being labeled as Brett or farmhouse lagers.

Take three examples from the past year: GoodLife and Ale Apothecary’s collaboration Brett Lager; Arizona Wilderness’ Blanc Farmhouse Pilsner; and Creature Comforts and Jester King’s collaboration Mutualism Southern-style Farmhouse Lager.

All begin as one style or another of lager. Brett Lager was born as a Dortmunder; Blanc as a straight-forward pilsner; Mutualism as a pilsner brewed with locally grown wheat and grits. All three beers could have ended their fermentation journeys after the lagering process (in fact, Creature Comforts kegged off some of the base Mutualism pilsner and the staff of both Creature Comforts and Jester King drank through it as-is). Not stopping there, the brewers decided to add Brettanomyces, and in some cases additional wild/souring bacteria, to further ferment the beer.

“Who the heck Brett ages a lager? Let’s take a long beer and make it even longer,” jokes Ty Barnett, GoodLife’s owner.

The goal of initial lager fermentation, says Creature Comforts’ wood cellar and specialty brand manager Blake Tyers, is to create a neutral palette on which the Brett can express itself. Because lagers ferment cleanly, without an ale yeast’s phenol and ester by-products, flavors produced by the Brett really shine through.

“We looked at a paper from Chad Yakobson [founder of Crooked Stave and formerly the author of the Brettanomyces Project], his early stuff was theorizing on how if you had less esters and phenols, then the secondary fermentation, once the Brett got involved, it would show more mature flavors more quickly,” Tyers says. “That was originally our intent, that the Brett would show its own characteristics more clearly.”

Arizona Wilderness founder Jonathan Buford found a similar result with Blanc.

“Dosing the bottles with Brett was unique because this was an already dry beer,” he says. “We needed Brett to eat dextrins as there were very little sugars left from the initial fermentation. This stresses the Brett out and it funk-ified the beer rather quickly, which was the biggest surprise.”

If Brettanomyces flavors (and some acidity, in Mutualism and Brett Lager) dominate the three beers, why even use the word lagers to describe them at all?

“It was to initiate a conversation with the consumer so they can learn more about the process of these beers. [With our] mixed culture program, we only roll out a handful of bottles every year and each one is kind of a chance to talk to people about different processes,” Tyers says. “The name was basically to get a conversation started. And to show people that it’s not just some infected batch of beer that turned out this way.”

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Scratch’s brew kettle | Photo by Aaron Kleidon

It’s romantic, especially in autumn, to daydream about rustic, woods-dwelling breweries stoking fires in a forest clearing. Atop the conflagration sits a gleaming—well, for this reverie, let’s make it charmingly worn—copper kettle, boiling away like a witch’s cauldron. Flames heat the wort within, the snap of the wood punctuating the audible boiling noise. Perhaps, like Bob Ross and his happy trees, we can add the melody of a nuthatch or warbler song in the distance.

All very nice, quite picturesque. But the two American breweries who wood-fire these copper brewing kettles aren’t doing so for the provincial tableau; for them, it’s much more practical.

“We’re saving in efficiency, cost and time. Those are three huge factors in manufacturing,” says Van Carney of Pen Druid Brewing in Sperryville, Virginia, who uses a single-walled, custom-made copper kettle to boil wort that becomes the brewery’s beer. “And it’s cool because you get to build fires.”

Likewise at Scratch Brewing Company in Ava, Illinois, where Aaron Kleidon and his brewing team use a 300-gallon copper apple butter kettle to boil their wort over an insulated fire box.

“It’s kind of a combination of old technology with the fire and new technology with insulation around that fire box. The ceramic fiber wrapping pulls the heat in so every BTU from the wood we burn goes straight into the liquid in the beer,” Kleidon says. “It’s really efficient.”

A brew kettle serves two purposes: It boils wort, which kills unwanted bugs in the liquid and extracts hop bitterness. It can also, when direct-fired, caramelize the sugars present in wort to create deep, rich malt flavors.

It’s the allure of caramelization (and the limited technology of the time) that led European brewers to direct-fire their kettles. Some still do today, including Zoigl breweries in Neuhaus and Windischeschenbach in Germany; and the vaunted Dupont in Belgium. But American brewers who do it with wood are few—perhaps as few as two.

“I couldn’t really find an example of what we wanted to do exactly, so a lot of the [plans for building our wood-fired kettle] lived in my head from building a lot of wood-fired ovens and smokers,” Scratch’s Kleidon says.

Van Carney brews at Pen Druid with the copper kettle visible in the background | Photo by Lain Carney

Buying wood also has the benefit of being relatively cheap compared to buying propane or natural gas. Scratch estimates its brewers use a wheelbarrow and a half of wood to boil the kettle for two hours.

But what the fires offer in efficiency and cost, they lack in control. Modern kettles boast dials and displays to help brewers control the temperature of the wort; playing with fire is sometimes … like playing with fire.

“It takes a little bit of learning, like when to throw a log on and when not to. You can have pretty epic boil overs if you’re not conscious of that,” Kleidon says.

He has the method down pat now, and Pen Druid does as well.

“People were like ‘Really? You don’t want to do that. Where’s the control, bro?’” Carney says. “It was a mental thing for them, like, ‘This is how you do things.’ And I was like ‘No, this is what we want to do.’”

Though their decisions are practical, Pen Druid and Scratch admit there’s a bit of sentiment attached to the wood-fired method as well.

Both breweries use copper kettles made by hand by Caldwell Mountain Copper in Fincastle, Virginia, a family-owned company with just a few employees. Kleidon had the idea to use an apple butter kettle as a brew kettle because he’d seen them around his grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ homes. The first one that Scratch used was borrowed from Kleidon’s neighbor, an auctioneer, and dated to the 1860s.

The simple copper vessel manages to combine time-honored traditions with modern efficiency, and not least of all, a bit of that wooded romanticism.

“Obviously we’re looking for that caramelization, but also there’s kind of a sense of self-reliance here. Wood’s here, we can cut it and burn it to generate all the heat we need to make our beer. There’s always brush that needs to be cleared or limbs that fall during a storm,” Kleidon says. “It’s here, and that’s why we use it.”

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A community event at Mystery Brewing | Photo by Dtown Perspective

You don’t need me to alert you to the divisive nature of politics in 2017. Just open any news site—or, heaven forbid, Twitter—to see the level of kindness and civility marking the current state of civic dialogue. Amid this fracas, what role should politics play for breweries?

Some breweries have become increasingly vocal about their stance on issues, either by donating money or hosting events championing certain social and political causes. Some deliberately try to avoid the scrum, keeping their heads down with a neutral stance that they hope won’t alienate customers. Still others toe an increasingly thin line, hosting nonpartisan political-social events that aim to present multiple viewpoints. “Keep your politics out of my beer”? Good luck with that in 2017.

Businesses and livelihoods hang in the balance, but collectively there’s even more in play. At stake is whether breweries can hold on to their role as community centers at a time when Americans on opposite sides of a political issue can hardly stand to sit atop barstools next to each other.

Bars and taprooms have historically been called “public houses,” spaces for communities to gather, consider and debate the issues of the day. Beer was common ground, and bars could be a neutral turf for such discussion. Some breweries still hold out hope for this vision.

“I think what we’ve shown is that you can be responsibly having a craft beer and engage with the world in a positive way at the same time,” says Robert Rivers, cofounder of Missoula, Montana’s Imagine Nation Brewing. “This has been happening for 9,000 years. We’re just trying to in some ways continue those conversations. Our role is really continuing this legacy.”

At times it can feel as though that’s more difficult than it used to be. Rivers and his wife, Fernanda Menna Barreto Krum, founded Imagine Nation two and a half years ago as not just a brewery, but equal parts a brewery and education center. After 12 years of working in war zone conflict resolution in places like Romania and Sri Lanka, the duo opened the brewery to support their goal of community training, dialogue and progressive social change. It’s not always easy in Missoula, a university town whose majority voted for Hillary Clinton but whose home state voted 56.2 percent in favor of Trump.

“To have a viable project in a war zone, you need to have a viable relationship with all the stakeholders in the community. To translate that to running a business and trying to run a progressive agenda in let’s say a ‘purple’ community, I think it’s the same. Your physical security is not at risk but the security of your business is,” Rivers says.

Planned Parenthood holds a meeting at Imagine Nation | Photo by Alex Wolfe

A chalkboard sign at Imagine Nation says that the brewery has been open for 130 weeks and has hosted an impressive 1,499 community events, including speakers on tough topics like immigration, healthcare and public lands. The taproom is plastered with flyers promoting various causes: One urges HIV testing; another announces that the Missoula Area Resistance Collective hosts regular meetings at the taproom; a piece of art promotes something called Ecological Civilization; another urges action on climate change. The wifi password is Bethechange.

Not all of this progressivism has gone over smoothly; Rivers and Krum have had to cancel or reschedule a few speaking events and workshops that were just too sensitive. While they make efforts to keep their programming nonpartisan, civil and constructive, they’ve found that some topics are still off-limits.

“Sometimes you get pushback and you say, yes, that’s to be understood, and we change our strategy ever so slightly and move forward. And then sometimes the pushback is so severe that maybe you’ve put your finger too deep into the cultural wound and you have to say, let’s wait a little bit on this,” Rivers says.

Ultimately though, the couple says their two-plus years in business prove that standing for social change can not only support a business, but help it grow.

“We came into this with the idea that if we built a brewery on a community and not just by ourselves for ourselves, that it could succeed in the United States of America,” Rivers says. “One thing we learned is, it can.”

A beer being poured at The Koelschip | Photo by Jes Nijjer, courtesy of Central State Brewing

In Indianapolis, the team behind The Koelschip beer bar and Central State Brewing Co. have also found it possible to push social issues in the taproom.

After Trump introduced his “Muslim ban” immigration order, cofounder and head brewer Josh Hambright says he felt rattled, angry and compelled to do more to support causes through his tap lines. Since then, the two lines pouring Central State beers at The Koelschip have donated $1 per pour to causes including the Indiana American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Indy Pride Inc. and others. A few negative Facebook messages and Yelp reviews followed.

“I’m not worried if we lose a few customers, because we’re going to gain so many more,” Hambright says, adding that the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have held meetings at the bar or tweeted about their brewery. “But at the end of the day, that’s not why we’re doing it. [The bar] gives me a little bit of a megaphone; it amplifies my voice so I’m going to speak up for the stuff I believe in. If I’m silent because I’m going to offend customers, then that makes me a coward.”

To Hambright, local chapters of the ACLU or Planned Parenthood aren’t overtly political (“wanting health care and helping people avoid STDs or to not have unwanted pregnancies isn’t that liberal of a cause”) but he’s aware that some see them as enemy organizations.

“Those [charity] choices are deliberate. They’re timed on purpose to reflect what’s going on. We’ll have to see what horrible thing Trump screws up next and where we can give money to fix it,” he says.

Because Central State and The Koelschip are privately held companies without corporate shareholders to worry about, they’re free to run their business as they choose. Likewise, he says, customers who don’t want to buy their products because of their support of civil liberties, racial justice or LGBTQ initiatives are free not to.

“Everyone’s allowed to vote with their dollars,” he says. “If people don’t like that we take these stances, they’re more than welcome to not buy our beer. I’d rather Nazis not drink my beer, frankly.”

A flyer for Brews & Views at Half Moon Bay | Photo by Samaruddin Stewart

Half Moon Bay, California’s Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. has also used its tap lines to raise money for a nonprofit, though in a slightly different way. For past elections, including the bruising 2016 Presidential race, the brewery has created two versions of the same beer representing the two major-party candidates, dubbed its Alection series. Customers at the taproom can choose either beer, with a portion of proceeds benefiting Common Cause, a nonpartisan election watchdog group. (A note to amateur political pollsters: Cofounder Lenny Mendonca says the sales tallies for the beers usually end up mirroring the area’s election results.)

Half Moon Bay also hosts monthly Brews & Views speakers and documentary screenings, which draw anywhere from 50-100 people. Though they focus on serious topics from marijuana legalization to affordable housing to school board elections, cofounder Lenny Mendonca says they overwhelmingly remain civil and constructive.

“There’s a thirst for these forums where people can have real conversations,” he says. “You don’t often get a place where people are asking really good questions but don’t feel intimidated.”

Some of that civility may have to do with the demographics of Half Moon Bay’s surroundings, which are “about as Left Coast as it gets,” Mendonca says, meaning that most of the attendees probably hold lefty political views. Still, when the brewery brought in the former chair of the state’s Republican party who had just concluded his (unsuccessful) campaign for Senate, the forum was packed.

“I’m not saying this model is for everyone,” Mendonca cautions. “I wouldn’t suggest that people host extremely partisan views. The guy in Sacramento who ended up losing his business [when it was revealed that the brewery owner had posted anti-immigrant, anti-Women’s March posts on his personal Facebook page], that’s just not good business sense. What we’re doing is not controversial; if anything, it’s just being good citizens.”

Not all breweries have the luxury of hosting political events, though. Phil Wages, owner of Wages Brewing in West Plains, Missouri, says it’s a constant struggle to be apolitical while running his business.

“On Facebook, being in a small town, everyone sees all my opinions. I try to remain neutral but people read that,” he says. “When I’m standing behind the bar, I always try to remain neutral and not jump in the conversations unless I know everyone at the bar is of the same mindset.”

He’s learned to “compartmentalize” his political views and keep those as far from the brewery as possible. He tells his staff to be professional, even when they hear customers expressing opposing views. (He allows them an eye roll, out of view.)

“It’s totally because I wanted to get more people in the door,” he says. “It’s about making money but also people feeling like they can come here and not be assaulted by some left wing agenda. … We’d like to be honest about who we are and what we believe, but we have to think about the impact on our business if we speak our mind.”

Wages says that he has found a good listener in his state representative, a Republican, on issues related to his business, including raising the state’s ABV cap and potentially making it easier for breweries to self distribute. Areas related to business push even the most reluctant brewery owner into the political realm, no matter how averse or eager they are to take a stance.

Central State Brewing and The Koelschip team experienced the intersection of politics and business firsthand when Indiana passed the Mike Pence-championed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, in 2015. (The law has been widely criticized for allowing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.)

“RFRA opened our eyes to how important politics are to our business, especially as a business that does things out of state. We traveled to Chicago the next weekend [after it passed] and people were like ‘What the fuck is wrong with Indiana?’” Hambright says. “They were almost holding us responsible for that. It does reflect us.”

Beer then, if it’s your business, becomes by its nature a matter of politics.

“Business is inherently political. We’re one of the most, if not the most regulated industries out there,” says Erik Lars Myers, founder of Mystery Brewing Co. in Hillsborough, North Carolina. He’s also president of the North Carolina Craft Brewers Guild, where he interacts with politicians “all the time, all day.”

“A business is made up of employees who are people and have lives; politics affects our health care decisions and what we pay and our taxation and all of those things,” he says. “There’s no part of what we do at a business that isn’t affected by politics so why not just embrace it, I say.”

Embracing politics comes with its own payoff and peril for breweries, and only time and customers’ dollars will tell whether wading into those perilous waters pays off. Of course, if a brewery measures its success with a metric other than the bottom line, the risk/reward calculation is based on a different formula entirely.

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It’s not April 1st, so we have to assume this latest anti-“Big Beer” campaign from the Brewers Association is a real thing. The trade association, which represents small and independent craft breweries, today announced that it had launched #TakeBackCraft campaign, a crowdfunding appeal to raise $213 billion dollars (yes, billion) to buy Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Anheuser-Busch InBev has rankled the BA by purchasing formerly independent breweries such as Goose Island, Devil’s Backbone, Elysian, etc., over the past few years. The goal is ostensibly to take the craft breweries back by “making [AB] an offer they can’t refuse,” according to a press release. The BA goes on to say that this crowdfunding campaign will “take on the oppressive Big Beer machine before they can bleed the passion out of the independent craft brewing culture forever.” You can hear further rallying cries in this video the BA released to announce the launch.

So far, the campaign has raised more than $500,000; money will not actually be collected unless the campaign is fully funded … and we know what the odds are of that. Contributors will earn swag like T-shirts and koozies for donating at various levels, even if the campaign is not fully funded.

Here’s the hitch: The BA will not be able to raise $213 billion through crowdfunding (we will buy every American a beer if this prediction proves untrue). So, what is this campaign really about? It’s already successful in prompting American beer drinkers to discuss the ownership behind breweries, which is likely its true aim. When the BA announced its “certified independent craft” seal earlier this summer, it elicited mixed responses, but did serve to bring the topic of brewery ownership and independence to greater consciousness. The BA hopes that the more beer drinkers discuss brewery ownership, the more they’ll be choose small and independent producers. Of course, whether you want to put your hard-earned bills behind the campaign or just use them to buy more beer is your decision alone.

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Harvest season is the time of year when many brewers have just one thing on their mind: hops. The lucky ones get to travel to the farms themselves for the contemporary ritual of hop rubbing and sniffing and tasting. The goal is to return, lupulin dust-covered, with some exciting, high-quality hops with which to experiment and brew. Fall is just the right time to check in with brewers about what new hops they’ve used recently and which they look forward to testing out in the future. Here are a few of the less-familiar varieties we’ve seen more of lately.

Jaryllo
Origin: United States
What the brewer says: “It’s supposed to give notes of pear and banana. I personally pick up a lot of floral and apple (maybe apple plus flowers equals pear? I don’t know) and banana, almost to the point of being hefeweizen-ish, which lends itself to a really nice refreshing American pale ale,” says Mystery Brewing’s Erik Lars Myers. “It’s a beer that’s really designed to be a balance between the malt and the hops and in this case they compliment each other well.”
Where we’ve spotted it: Mystery The Golden Hind rotating hop pale ale, batch #791

Callista
Origin: Germany
What the brewer says: “Anton Lutz, the breeder of this hop who’s in the Hull-Hallertau area in Germany, is working on a bunch of new hops. It’s the same program that was responsible for Hull Melon and Hallertau Blanc and Mandarina Bavaria,” says Firestone Walker’s Matt Brynildson. “Callista has come after that wave; it’s got really cool peach notes and is kind of refined in the way that only German hops can be. I’m really excited about this hop and that they’re actually growing quite a bit of it.”
Where we’ll see it: Potentially in Firestone Walker small-batch releases in 2018

Grüngeist
Origin: United States
What the brewer says: “We wanted to offer a crisp, clean beer with the fresh, juicy flavor and aroma profile everyone loves,” says Genesee’s Dean Jones. “The guys from Hop Head Farms said they had a really interesting hop that they named Grüngeist. The specific attributes they said it had were peach and lemon with equally balanced passionfruit and floral. To me it needed that background of a little caramel malt that you’d find in a pale ale to round it out and make it a drinker, an almost sessionable pale ale.”
Where we’ve spotted it: Genesee Brew House Grungeist Pale Ale
Note: Grüngeist is a trademarked name for Hop Head Farms-grown Callista (see above)

Loral
Origin: United States
What the brewer says: “Loral was one of the hops we tried and liked at Craft Brewers Conference in 2016 so we bought some. We used it as a single hop in a beer called Sonic Bloom and it was good. I think what we’ve found is it’s a killer hop to blend with,” says Brew Gentlemen’s Matt Katase. “It’s got this ‘just right’ characteristic about it. Earthy, but not too earthy. Fruity, but not too fruity. Citrusy, but not too citrusy. Balanced and incredibly pleasant. While it was good on its own, we’ve really liked it as complimentary hop.”
Where we’ve spotted it: Brew Gentlemen Sonic Bloom; Reuben’s Brews Loral Crush IPA; Pike Wolf in the Woods pale ale

HBC 472
Origin: United States
What the brewer says: “This is an experimental one that’s new out there. It is the weirdest hop probably that we’ve ever experienced,” says Brynildson. “We tasted a couple of beers made with it while we were out here [in Yakima, Washington]; Bale Breaker made a cool beer with it. It smells like bourbon and coconut and almost makes the beer taste like it was barrel-aged. That’s one that all the brewers are buzzing about but also scratching their heads over.”
Where we’ll see it: Potentially in Firestone Walker pilot batch beers from the Venice, California, Propagator brewpub; upcoming darker beer styles from Bale Breaker

Enigma
Origin: Australia
What the brewer says: “Enigma formal tasting sessions have given interesting terms like pinot gris, raspberries and red currant, through to rock melon and light tropical fruit,” says Finback’s Kevin Stafford. “Enigma’s great fun to play with, a bit of a chameleon. Different aspects of her enigmatic character shine, depending on how you use her. Dry hop or add her late in the brew to maximize her flavor and aroma potential.”
Where we’ll see it: Upcoming Finback beers

XJA2/436
Origin: South Africa
What the brewer says: “Candied papaya stuck out, so we used those hops and fruited the beer with Hawaiian papaya puree. It had a pleasant pepperiness to it as well that tasted and smelled very reminiscent of a finished properly brewed wit, like that coriander, Belgian aromatics type of thing,” says Hop Butcher for the World’s Jeremiah Zimmer. “As the beer matured in cans, the papaya continued to shine brighter. Really great stuff.”
Where we’ve spotted it: Hop Butcher for the World’s Smoke-Filled Room IPA; Cerebral Brewing Letters & Numbers: XJA2/436 IPA

Pekko
Origin: United States
What the brewer says: “We have been doing trials for years and it’s been fun to brew our Stone Hop Revolver IPA series, which allows us to share our innovation process with our fans. Pekko is a hop we have designated for this series next year. … There are definitely the citrus and floral attributes that are commonly discussed but we also get a lot of red candy, especially cherry (and some strawberry), from this hop as well. This combo makes it really cool and unique,” says Stone Brewing’s Jeremy Moynier. “We highlighted Pekko along with Mosaic this year in our Stone 21st Anniversary Hail to the Hop Thief Double IPA. Pekko really jumps out in this beer and gets propped up by the layers of different aromas and flavors of Mosaic.”
Where we’ve spotted it: Stone 21st Anniversary Hail to the Hop Thief Double IPA

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