Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [7]
Not only a microbrewery pioneer, Tom Baune pioneered diversity with creativity. Pyramid Wheaten Ale remains one of the best-selling beers of the successor to the Hart Brewing Company, Seattle-based Pyramid Brewing Company.
Michael Jackson
His World Is Beer
ONE CANNOT EVEN BEGIN to have a discussion about beer styles without mentioning the world’s leading protagonist of flavor and diversity. Michael Jackson serves as an inspiration to all beer drinkers and brewers.
As a thirtieth-birthday gift in 1979, my girlfriend gave me Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer. I had been homebrewing for nine years, and my beer world had yet to become global. This gift became a threshold for me. Michael opened up my world, and my life has never been the same.
Michael Jackson in his London office
In the early 1980s you could hear Michael on radio commercials describing the Cascade hops used in Henry Weinhard’s Ale. Perhaps these were the first beer commercials in the twentieth century pontificating on the basis of varietal ingredients. Michael Jackson has always been a beer pioneer.
I tracked Michael down in 1981 and invited him to attend the American Homebrewers Association’s third national homebrewers’ conference in Boulder, Colorado. I did not have a clue what to expect, never having met him. Because of his radio presence in Henry’s beer commercials, I originally thought he might have lived in America. I was surprised when I learned he was from London.
We’ve shared many pints and liters of beer at locations throughout the world since that time, but none so grounding as those enjoyed on his home turf, where he is most at ease. I don’t recall whether our London discussion took place at Michael’s flat or at his local pub, The Thatched House, then a classic, well-attended Young’s pub in Hammersmith, but it has cemented our friendship that has remained strong for more than two decades.
I had been invited to judge at the Great British Beer Festival in 1981. As part of a panel of three, I helped decide the grand champion beers of England. Awed by my experiences at the festival, I stopped in London on my way home for a final two days and had a second visit with Michael. I asked him, “I was quite impressed with the variety of beers at the festival. Do you think in America we could pull off a ‘Great American Beer Festival’?” Michael took a good swallow of his pint of Young’s Ordinary and replied, “Yes of course, it would be a great start, but where would you find interesting beer?”
The beer was one of our biggest challenges. In 1982 there were very few breweries making anything other than light American lager. I was helped by Tom Burns, brewmaster at the Boulder Brewing Company, and homebrewers Stuart Harris and Frank Morris. The four of us connected with twenty of America’s most flavorful and unique beers. The Great British Beer Festival provided the inspiration, and Michael encouraged and supported us. The rest is history. The Great American Beer Festival now brings together thousands of American’s finest beers for the world to taste every autumn in Denver, Colorado.
Michael continues to travel the world in search of good beers. I do the same. Whenever our paths cross I make every effort to buy the beers, unless of course it’s at his local in Hammersmith.
American Imperial Stout
Yakima Brewing Company
IN 1984 the Great American Beer Festival moved from Boulder to Denver, Colorado. Begun in 1982 by the American Homebrewers Association, it had attracted hundreds of homebrewers and a passionate group of professional brewers and brewing professors from the United States, Germany and London. There were almost a dozen microbreweries in all of America. There must have been a spark of excitement in 1982 that had ignited a tinder-dry landscape in Boulder, Colorado, and spread. The smoke from the smoldering passions