Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [21]
How many times does the word cheap precede the use of the word adjuncts? Wait a minute: my flaked corn isn’t any cheaper than the malts I use. In some parts of the world, corn is a lot more expensive than barley malt. So have we been duped? The word cheap is really a reaction to a taste many of us simply don’t want any part of. But in this day and age as homebrewers are microbrewing craft beer, adjuncts are only figuratively cheap. Let’s focus on the qualities we desire and what we can achieve as homebrewers. Our personal indignation shouldn’t interfere with the possibilities of using ingredients to our advantage.
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KLIBBETY JIBBIT
Klibbety Jibbit Lager is a full-flavored, light-bodied beer brewed with corn and flavored adequately with hops that many a homebrewer would love. It’s alive, unfiltered, unpasteurized and refermented in the bottle for conditioning. Hey, all that does make a difference. Have you ever come across a commercial corn adjunct beer like this? I know not, not and double not. It’s a European-type lager with the added microbrewed character of flavor hops. Its fresh and unfiltered character is one you’ve learned to appreciate as beer enthusiasts. You must inhibit your prejudices. Don’t let marketing taint your brain. If you let that happen, you don’t get to create your own thing anymore.
So that’s the premise behind the formulation. This isn’t an apology or justification. It’s about, hey, brewing it and enjoying it and realizing what naturally made, fresh, unpasteurized homebrew and microbrew is always all about. The recipe can be found in About the Recipes.
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Have I heard microbrewers and homebrewers criticize large brewers for the grain adjuncts they use? Have I heard the large brewers poke fun at the weird (say “adjuncts,” please) ingredients small brewers and homebrewers use? Yes and yes. It’s all relative, and it’s really about what you do with the process. It’s about what YOU like. It’s about your perspective. And it’s about not being a victim of someone else’s mind-think.
America’s First Brewpubs
THE WHOLESOME QUALITIES of malt liquors greatly recommend themselves to general use as an important means of preserving the health of the citizens of this commonwealth,” concluded the Massachusetts legislature passing an act in 1789 “to encourage manufacture of strong beer, ale and other malt liquors.”
It was only 149 years earlier, in 1640, that the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a regulation that “no one should be allowed to brew beer unless he is a good brewer.” So it was with a great deal of anticipated pleasure that a group of microbrewery enthusiasts headed north into Massachusetts’s emerging beer country in 1987.
As we slept off the beers we’d had earlier in the day from the as-true-as-it-gets German-style Vernon Valley Brewery in northern New Jersey, the bus quietly dieseled through Connecticut. It was late in August and we were headed for the small Massachusetts town of Northampton, a town that had recently taken great pride in the opening of their own Northampton Brewery and Brewster Court Pub. The brewpub’s having opened only about six weeks before our arrival, we beer travelers were eager to see and experience a brewery restaurant that had been only a kitchen-table conversation 10 months earlier.
Arriving in the early evening, we checked into the venerable Hotel Northampton, and in true colonial fashion we wasted little time in hightailing it to the brewpub. Down a small hill off the main street we could see a brightly lit building as we approached our quarry