Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [20]
After we tallied the votes, the audience was quite amazed. New Belgium Blue Paddle Pilsener easily won over Corona. Sam Adams Boston Lager creamed Heineken, and Boulder Stout was overwhelmingly preferred to Guinness Stout. The point that interested everyone was that American microbrewed craft beers were preferred over brand names. What astounded many in the audience was that several regular Corona, Heineken and Guinness drinkers had made the American choice.
Encountering thunder in Taos, we rolled on through New Mexico, visiting the Second Street Brewery/Pub in Santa Fe, moving on to Albuquerque to visit the Wolf Canyon Brewpub and Il Vicinos brewpub, and finally rendezvousing with the Santa Fe Homebrewers at the Rio Grand Brewery on the evening of the third day of the tour.
We once again had a blind tasting, among 40 homebrewers and their invited friends. Grolsch Lager tied with Grand Desert Pils, Sam Adams Boston Lager had twice as many votes as Heineken and in-house-brewed Cabezon Stout garnered more than twice as many votes as Guinness Stout. There was the same astonishment among beer drinkers who had voted against their preferred brands.
We wound our way through the Southwest, on to Tucson, Arizona, visiting Brew Your Own homebrew shop and being welcomed by more than 100 beer enthusiasts and their spouses at the Pusch Ridge Brewing Company and Pub. Another beer tasting was held, and the results were Sam Adams 42 versus Corona 3; bottled Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 27 versus Bass Ale on draft 19; Guinness on Draft 1 (that is correct: 1) versus Pusch Ridge Old Pueblo Stout 47.
The beers were all served in glasses without any indication of origin. Brand-loyal, die-hard Guinness drinkers were stunned. Bass Ale aficionados could not believe their vote. After that evening, a few Corona drinkers were Corona drinkers no more.
The point has been made over and over again in other tastings. Freshly made local craft beers are preferred to imports when taste is the only factor. But the fact is we do enjoy certain beers simply because of the mystique created by their brand and advertising. That is not necessarily a bad thing if you truly enjoy what you are drinking.
If beer is really all about taste, then a real effort must be made to educate that taste—to allow us to recognize what our taste buds really do enjoy. It is my premise that if you can tune in to what you taste and learn to enjoy beer because of taste, the pleasure of beer is magnified.
THERE IS one more point I would like to discuss regarding how we taste beer: the controversy surrounding adjuncts.
The very word adjunct will cause many a homebrewer to cringe. In the name of purity, malt, hops, water and the Holy Ghost (yeast was known as godisgood in former times), homebrewers yearning for the full flavor of beer forsake everything else in favor of all-malt beer. But with the skill of an open-minded brewer, it is possible to maintain the full flavor of malted barley while adding the character of grain adjuncts. Grain adjuncts can add desirable character to beers, producing full-flavored beer with warm-weather drinkability. Now don’t get me wrong: I do enjoy a cold all-malt porter on the warmest of summer days. My beer-drinking moods are as diverse as there is diversity among homebrewers and microbrewers.
Let’s look at this from a fair perspective. If we label any ingredient other than hops and malt as an adjunct, then we’ve got to include the ripe, flavorful red cherries and raspberries of Belgian lambics and American wheat beers. The roasted barley of stouts. The coriander and orange peel of some Belgian ales. The cinnamon in your holiday brew. The honey in your honey pils and Weizen. The chili pepper and chocolate in your Goat Scrotum Ale. And you know all the other secrets that have been used to create the wonderful experience we have come to know as homebrewed and microbrewed in the U.S.A.
So why is it we have a reaction to rice and corn? I think I