Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [19]
The next day I received a call. “Charlie, I know the source of that yeast you’ve been using. Are you sitting down?”
“Should I sit down?” I asked, puzzled.
“Well, I would suggest you do.” There was a pause, “that yeast was originally cultured from a keg of Budweiser.”
I was in shock. And then a huge homebrew inspired grin crossed my face and I began chuckling uncontrollably. All those barley wines, doppelbocks, India pale ales, brown ales, porters, pilseners, Oktoberfest beers, English ales and Irish stouts unknowingly made from a culture of Budweiser yeast!
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MASTERBREWERS DOPPELBOCK/MASTERBREWERS CELEBRATION LIGHT LAGER
Chestnut brown, full-flavored, malty and strong, Masterbrewers Doppelbock is an authentic-tasting German-style Doppelbock lager. Masterbrewers Celebration Light Lager, simply made with quality ingredients and a bit of finesse, is every bit as refreshing as a light lager created by a veteran brewer. Cascade hops added at the end contribute a character wonderfully reminiscent of microbrewing and homebrewing roots. These recipes can be found in About the Recipes.
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With a deep sense of satisfaction I finally realized what I had done. This colony of yeast and the generations that followed were perhaps the happiest Budweiser yeast in the world! And they made me happy too.
CHAPTER 3
In Quest of Fresh Beer
IF YOU didn’t make your own homebrew in the 1980s, the beer landscape was pretty damned bleak. Of course, if you were brewing at home or visiting with homebrewers, craft beers with flavor and soul abounded. But what happened when you went out for dinner? What were the choices? The meager choices almost always included Bud, Miller, Coors, Bud Light, Miller Light and Coors Light. If you wanted something different you might find a Corona, a Heineken or a Beck’s. Rarely would you find a microbrewed beer, even at better restaurants. I often made do with what was available. All that has changed, and today I won’t patronize a restaurant that doesn’t offer a real choice of beer character.
Why? I feel offended. I really do. It shows prejudice or ignorance on the part of a restaurant if customers are not offered a choice of beers. And as much as possible, that choice should include locally brewed options. If the food a restaurant is offering is worth paying good money for, then it is worth being complemented with the flavor of an appropriate beer. A good beer list offers true diversity, not by country of origin, but by flavor. If people will pay $20 to $40 for a good bottle of wine at dinner, why not offer a beer for which one might expect to pay 50 cents to a dollar, even two dollars, more per serving? Our world is a world of different foods and different cultures. Beer is an important contributor to life’s pleasures and when all restaurants realize this, not only will their customers be happier, but their profits will grow.
Drinking with Our Eyes
IN 1999, on a tour of breweries of the southwestern United States, I organized a series of beer tastings to make the point that we are all prejudiced. Whether we like to admit it or not, whether we know it or not, we are severely influenced by beer’s color, beer labels, beer commercials, the color of beer bottles and beer marketing. There is no way around it—our sense of taste is influenced by our environment and factors besides simply the taste of the beer.
The first stop on my 1999 microbrewery tour of the Southwest was Colorado Spring, where I visited several homebrew shops. Ending up at the Bristol Brewing Company, my wife, Sandra, and I enjoyed their craft microbrewed beers and set up a blind tasting among 50 homebrewers, beer enthusiasts and their guests. The crowd was a mix of avid and casual beer drinkers out for a good time. We presented three pairs of beers. All the tasters were told was to choose the beers they would prefer to continue to