Microbrewed Adventures - Charles Papazian [97]
FORTUNATELY, all the other beers I’ve ever encountered have been proudly hosted by the pride of a brewer and their country. Here are a few more adventures to thirst over. Pour yourself another and read on.
The Hope of Global Warming
Lessons from the Baltic Sea
Little beer, oh brother you are stronger than me
You could make strong men fall down
You could blow the taps free of big barrels
Beer, old brother you are older than me
You were there when I was born
And you will be there when I’m gone
Where will you bury me after I die?
Bury me under the table in the pub
So I can hear what the men say
So I should know whether they love girls or remember me
Yes they love girls, but they don’t remember me
—LATVIAN BEER SONG
IN LATE OCTOBER 1995 I took a two-week journey, leading a People-to-People Program delegation of brewers to St. Petersburg and overland through Estonia to Latvia. This ongoing program is sponsored by a 50-plus-year-old organization established by President Eisenhower to promote goodwill between nations through the interactions of ordinary citizens. We were a group of ten adventurers from the United States, Canada and Belgium observing the beer culture and brewing community. Ours was a mission of informational exchange. For me, it was a visitation to the roots of beer culture and the challenges every brewer confronts.
“Why Russia and the Baltic countries?” was an often asked question. The very question begs the quest, at least for nine others and me.
Latvian farmhouse brewer
We landed in St. Petersburg, a city of 6 million harbored at the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska, greeted by October’s gray skies. As we boarded our tour bus we noted a ragged group of six or seven men bundled against the cold, their tattered luggage by their side. As if by magic, horns and drums emerged, and then there was music. Jet-lagged and awed, we all stared through the bus windows. Somehow they knew. The first notes of their refrain were unmistakable as they completed a rousing version of The Star Spangled Banner. We were in Russia for 20 minutes, and something told me that this trip was going to be different. Or was it?
By order of the Russian Empress, Catherine II, the Stephan Razin Brewery was founded in St. Petersburg in 1795. Many breweries throughout Eastern Europe and Russia similarly enjoyed several eras of a proud and productive history. But now this brewery, on their 200th anniversary, was struggling to continue in a country where economic reform was burdened with unbearable taxation and other difficulties. The Soviet system had not been kind to breweries interested in quality.
Perhaps the most devastating blow to the brewing industry in the 20th century was what many refer to as Gorbachev’s “June Revolution.” To all beer drinkers in the former Soviet Union, Gorbachev will not be remembered for glasnost or perestroika, but rather for the low-alcohol decree he instituted on June 1, 1980. Overnight, the brewing industry was in ruins. A form of prohibition had been installed. Gorbachev destroyed so many economic infrastructures and so many lives without coming close to solving the real problems of alcoholism. This was the beginning of the end for any respect he had developed among many Russians.
But times have changed. The Baltic Republics are now sovereign nations, and Russia is struggling with its transition. We observed varying degrees of progress across the former Soviet Union. We also learned of more than 150 microbreweries built in the last three years—built for reasons other than what Americans might assume.
It was interesting for me to observe here what I had seen in other developing lands: the health of the brewing industry and the quality of their products seem to have a direct correlation with the economic health of a country. Severe excise taxes are often an indication of naive government repression of business and/or foolishness within a government. Surely they