Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [2]
To “capture the imagination” is to capture our five senses. This is why we buy beer, isn’t it? It’s not just that India pale ale has pleasurable hop-infested, lupulin-drenched bitterness. Not just that stout is black velvet with a full-bodied, creamy texture. Not only that pale ale is graced with the floral lupulin bouquet of Cascade, Goldings or Fuggles hops. Not just that barley wine ale or Doppelbock has a tantalizing 9.14 percent alcohol, nor that a Hefeweizen is accented with spice and fruity themes. Nor do the finest hops, malt, water and yeast really make a huge difference. No, I don’t really believe this is ultimately what we beer drinkers seek. We see a label, we hear the name, we see a designer glass full of beer and tantalizing foam, we smell, we taste, we observe…our mind takes us on a journey with first contact.
The moment lasts less than a second, but we connect with our lifelong experiences. Will it be a good experience? Yes? I’ll have one. I’ll have another. I will remember the moment, perhaps more than the beer, but I will remember the beer.
The beer drinker walks out of a store, package of beer playfully swinging at arm’s length. The door closes behind and you know for sure that if that beer has been well made, it will transform all those beery characteristics into an experience fully influenced by imagination.
If you still can’t quite picture what it is I’m talking about, then sit down quietly with a beer and see where it really takes you.
MICROBREWED ADVENTURES is essentially a book about imagination. I have been fortunate in being able to meet many of the world’s great brewers and to travel across the United States and the world tasting thousands of amazing beers. My jobs as the founding president of the American Homebrewers Association (1978) and the Brewers Association, founder of the Great American Beer Festival and author of the paradigmatic Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1984) have brought me beer opportunities of which I could never have dreamed. Sometimes I realize I am living the ultimate beer fairy tale, with every new beer a happy ending.
I have collected many of these adventures and tastings to share with you. Each story inspired a homebrew recipe that can be found in the back of the book. In many cases it’s a recipe from a brewery that I have visited; in others, the recipe captures the flavor of the experience.
My microbrewed adventure begins in 1980 with the pioneers of microbrewing. These were a small collection of homebrewers who were making beer with the flavor and character of a time past. As their friends cheered them on to their next batch, their beer improved. They were tiring of their jobs and began to dream of life as a brewer. Their enthusiasm and confidence grew. At the time, ours was a world of mass-produced light lager, with virtually no options. Velveeta ruled the world of cheese. Wonder bread sandwiched our lunch.
The world of beer was about to embark on a new path. New Albion (Sonoma, CA), Sierra Nevada (Chico, CA), Boulder Beer (Boulder, CO), River City (Sacramento, CA), DeBakker (Novato, CA), Cartwright (Portland, OR) and Wm. S. Newman (Albany, NY) were among the handful of small breweries that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We called them “small breweries” until one day Zymurgy magazine small-brewery news editor Stuart Harris suggested that these tiny breweries were like “these new small computers called ‘micro-computers’” he used in his day job. The term “microbrewery” was born.
The half-dozen microbrewers in 1981 were afloat in a sea of light lager when the American Homebrewers Association, founded in 1978, began to gain some momentum. A champion of beer styles, beer flavor and diversity, the AHA was the only beacon microbrewers, homebrewers and beer lovers had to turn to. I don’t recall whether we discovered them or they discovered us, but the relationship became one of mutual support.