Sunday, 18 December. The golden years. I met Rich Thatcher at the Tap & Barrel Friday evening. The Tap & Barrel is in Smithtown (in a little stripmall at the intersection of 347 and 111). Rich and I, together with Mike Voigt, started a social club about four years ago, the Long Island Beer and Malt Enthusiasts. (The origin myth is recorded in my book A Year in Beer.) Rich has been serving as President of the organization for three years now.
“How are things going with the club?” I asked. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been able to attend a meeting.
“You should get out to a meeting sometime,” said Rich.
“Your right,” I said. “But I’m doing the soccer dad thing. Christina’s in a foot skills class every Tuesday evening; Erica’s doing the goalkeeping class on Wednesday. Then we have practice every Thursday evening. Scrimmages on Saturday. Matches on Sunday. We’ve got Patrick in the Peewee league.”
“These are the golden years, Donavan,” said Rich.
“Soccer is golden,” I said.
“We’ve got five hundred members now,” said Rich.
“Five hundred!”
“Yeah, things have really taken off this last year,” said Rich.
“These really are the golden years.”
Real craft beer bars. A few weeks ago, Alice and I went to the Long Island Ale House for dinner and a couple of pints. While these outings are fun, there’s an element of work involved: expanding my beer guide.
I wrote an article about the Long Island Ale House for the New York Cork Report. One of the comments elicited by my review of this multi-tap sports bar in Medford expressed confusion about why I wouldn’t be satisfied with what the Long Island Ale House had to offer. The real reason why places like the Long Island Ale House don’t impress me is they are not really craft beer places. They are sports bars that serve craft beer. Obviously, when I walk into a sports bar I want them to offer locally brewed craft beer. But I’ll never mistake a mere sport bar for a craft beer bar. (That doesn’t rule out the possibility that a craft beer bar cannot also be a real sports bar. The two focuses are not a priori incompatible.)
To illustrate what I’m getting at, let’s introduce a real life example. The Tap & Barrel in Smithtown is a craft beer bar. The characteristics of a craft beer bar are (1) a curated selection of quality craft beer on tap and in the bottle (or can), (2) a knowledgeable bartender and wait staff who can field questions about the beers available with accurate answers, and (3) well-kept and dispensed beer in appropriate glassware. Simply put, a craft beer bar is a place that showcases craft beer.
The Tap & Barrel has 52 taps. I won’t list the entire beer menu (you can see for yourself), but I’ll point out that there was not a single questionable beer on tap. What are questionable beers, you ask? Basically, a true craft beer bar will not reserve taps for industrially produced beer.
Defining what exactly “industrially produced beer” is a sore point in the craft beer community. It’s pretty obvious that Bud-Miller-Coors falls into the industrially produced category. But what about breweries like Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, and Dogfish Head? Aren’t they industrially produced? We could spill oceans of ink arguing this point.
Small. The “definition” offered by the Brewers Association is less than satisfying (see “Craft Brewer Defined”). At first the BA’s definition looks harmless: “An American craft brewer is small, independent, and traditional.” But then the wheels come off. The BA thinks “small” means 6 million barrels (or less) of annual production. 6 million barrels!!! Small!? I don’t think so. Any operation pumping out 6 million barrels of beer a year is most emphatically not craft beer. Six million barrels annually is industrial production, plain and simple.
You want to know what small is? Check out Blind Bat or Barrier. Both of these Long Island breweries are one or few man operations with annual production measured in the hundreds of barrels. When my own brewery (Rocky Point Artisan Brewers) comes online, we plan to make about 30 barrels of beer a year (a volume less than the average brewpub manufactures in one week). Eventually, we plan to scale up our production to a couple of hundred barrels a year at which point the brewery will be able to pay a full-time brewer a living a wage.
I’d like to define small this way: A small brewer has an annual production of 6 thousand barrels or less. And, those 6000 barrels are brewed by a few people in a brewery that is within twenty-five miles of where they live. The brewer has to make the beer themselves. If the brewer isn’t making the beer, then they are just a craft beer salesman.
Independent. The BA allows “craft brewers” to be owned (in part, up to 25%) by large industrial producers. This is wimpy loop-hole so that large corporations can claim ownership of the term “craft beer.” Any brewer that has to answer to a multi-national corporation (even at the 25% level) is not independent.
Independent means that the brewer-owner doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.
Traditional. The only part of the BA’s definition of “craft brewer” that I don’t have major problems with is the concept of beer outlined under the heading “traditional.” Craft beer is real beer made from barley malt. If anything else (adjuncts) is added to the beer, then those ingredients must “enhance rather than lighten flavor.” Amen.
Curated tap selection. Getting back to the Tap & Barrel, a quick glance at what they have on tap should satisfy you that they have adhered to the BA’s definition of craft beer when selecting beers to offer to their clientele. Beers not allowed in a craft beer bar are Guinness, Stella Artois, Blue Moon, etc. (to name only a few). This is the basic reason why a place like the Long Island Ale House is not a craft beer bar: they serve craft beer along side industrial beer.
To be clear: I don’t have any problem with multi-tap bars serving whatever they want on their taps. But to be called a “craft beer bar” and to be considered a real craft beer drinker’s destination, a bar will not be serving industrially produced beer. And, I do not object to multi-tap beer bars serving craft beer. In fact, I commend the sports bars of Long Island for giving me a craft beer option when I show up to watch the game.
Craft beer bars are distinguished by their curated tap selection. The owner-bartender will carefully select what’s on tap to reflect their tastes and preferences, or those of their customers. Unfortunately, the industrial distribution system limits choices available to the craft beer bar owner. For example, some distributors require that a bar dedicate a tap to a brewery’s flagship beer to be eligible to get the special and seasonal offerings from that brewery. While this might sound harmless enough (though that it’s probably an illegal practice), it means that some tap handles get tied up with less interesting flagship beers (typically pale ales and IPAs).
Of course, I accept that there will be limitations on the bar owner’s ability to choose. The flagship-anchor tap scheme just happens to annoy me. In Donavan’s world, every beer should stand on its own and not be on tap for any other reason than the bar owner really wants it there.
The fun of tap curation is in the limitations. The limits that I approve of and accept are those imposed by geographical proximity and availability. For example, a bar owner might be limited by what beers are produced in their local region, and at certain times of the year, certain beers might not be available simply because the brewer isn’t producing them at the time.
In the food movement, there’s an awareness that it’s important to know who is growing your food. As a committed locovore, you can be sure that I know the names of the people that grow my food. I know where they live. I’ve visited their house. My kids have play dates with their kids. The beer movement should adopt a similar principle. If you don’t know who brewed your beer, then why are you drinking it?
So a craft beer bar owner will know each of the brewers whose beer is on tap in their bar. Knowing the sales representative is not the same thing.
Tuesday, 20 December 2011. Zebra Stripes. Earlier this month I went with Alice and the kids into Manhattan to have dinner with the relatives. To avoid the evening traffic we left early in the afternoon, so we had some time to kill in the city before meeting up with my in-laws. The girls wanted to go to a bookstore. That was good for about an hour and then I suggested to Alice that she and the kids hang out in one of the Public Spaces while I dashed off to get a beer. “It’s research,” I said with a wink. “Sure it is,” said Alice. “Have fun.”
So with the girls busy reading, I walked a few blocks and popped into the first Irish pub that I came to. It was called Niall’s (218 E. 52nd St., between 2nd & 3rd Ave.). I wasn’t expecting much. Irish Pubs are where you go if you want Guinness and Harp, or perhaps Murphy’s or Beamish (if you’re lucky). I walked in. Up a short flight of stairs into the bar and I laid eyes on a row of taps. To my surprise they had some craft beer. I didn’t see anything from a true micobrewery, most of the taps were from the bigger, national “craft” brands. Alright, I thought. This is going to work.
I kept moving further along the bar. I was really just looking for a place to plant myself, an open stool. There was another row of taps on this far end of the bar. And right in the middle a Captain Lawrence tap handle. I grabbed an open stool and ordered up my Captain Lawrence Pale Ale from the bartender. The night turning out pretty nice.
Every December, I read through the Long Island Beer Guide making corrections, removing out-of-date information, adding new reviews and articles, etc. I had my worn and marked up copy of my beer guide with me that night at Niall’s. I took it out and went to work with the red pen. As I sipped my Captain Lawrence Pale Ale and read my beer guide I thought about the changes I’ve seen in the last ten years in local beer culture. Ten years ago, you had to work a little bit (even in the city) to find good craft beer. Now a guy can walk into a random Irish pub and order a Pale Ale brewed in New York. These are good times for craft beer.
Black Irish. The next morning, Mike and I drove out to Long Ireland’s brewery in Riverhead to return a keg. We parked in the back. The large garage doors were open and Irish heavy metal was blasting at top volume. Dan Burke was leaning over a steaming mash tun. “Hey!” Mike shouted.
After shouting a few introductory pleasantries, trying to make ourselves heard over the guitars and bagpipes, Dan came down from the catwalk, turned the music down (a little) and asked if we were thirsty. Of course we were.
The previous week Long Ireland had released their first bottled offering, Black Friday Imperial Stout. “We’ve got the Black Friday on tap,” Dan said. When we stepped into the tasting room, Greg Martin was there trying to get things in the tasting room ready for opening. “You wanna try the Black Friday?” he asked.
“I do actually,” I said. But I spotted a tap handle next to it that read “Winter Ale”. “Hey, could I start with the Winter Ale though? To work my way up to the Imperial strength.” Things have their proper order after all.
Greg poured me a taster of the Winter Ale. Dan had gone back out into the brewery while we were chatting with Greg. I was evaluating the Winter Ale when Dan came back and said, “I’m working on a stuck mash.” Mike and I immediately expressed our condolences. “There’s a thousand pounds of grain in the mash tun right now,” said Dan. Ouch! A stuck mash is when you can’t get liquid to flow through the grain bed. Sometimes the grain gets so thick and gluey that you can’t get anything to flow through the bed. “How do you unstick a mash tun with a thousand pounds of grain in it?”
“It’s the oats,” said Greg. “We use a lot of oats in our beer.” Oats are a good Irish ingredient, hardy, thick, and glutenous. Oats are tough to brew with because they are so sticky. Mike and I exchanged practical knowledge with Greg about brewing with oats. Each of us had our own preferred method of dealing with gooey grain. Greg: “We’ve tried all sorts of things. Now we just put the oats on top of the grain bed. That seems to work. Well, most of the time.”
Instead of standing around listening to us reminisce about past oaty brews, Dan went back out into the brewery to deal with his stuck mash. I asked Greg to tell me about the Winter Ale. He listed off five or six different grains, “and ginger,” he said. Ginger! Yes, that’s what I was tasting. Of course. The beer itself was rich and mild, but had this subtle spicy bite from the ginger.
Ginger is a spice that works well in beer; it complements the hop flavor and bitterness. But maybe my palate is biased in favor or ginger. I do like a sharp ginger ale, the hotter the better. And as “holiday spices” go, ginger is the one I prefer. Cinnamon is great in a gooey roll with sugar all over it, but I’ve never liked the effect that cinnamon gives to beer. Cinnamon doesn’t play nicely with the other flavors; it stands aloof from the other flavors, imparting a harshness that just seems out of place in a beer.
Dan burst back into the tasting room, sweat dripping from his brow. “It’s stuck,” he said. He had that intense look of someone whose about to go into armed battle. He reached over the bar and poured himself a taster cup of the Winter Ale and knocked it back. “I’m warming up to this one,” he said. “A few days ago, I wasn’t so sure, but the flavors are developing nicely.”
Beer is alive. Well, it is until a brewer pasteurizes it. But, of course, most craft beer isn’t pasteurized, so that it has a life cycle, a slow, but constant development of flavor. To truly know a beer, the drinker must experience it at different stages of its life cycle. Of course, not all beers change very much. Very hoppy beers will loose their hop flavor over time. Roasty, chocolaty flavors tend to mellow. And beers which derive much of the character from their yeast will go through different flavor-stages depending on fluctuations in temperature. Bottle-conditioned beers (the ones with a bit of yeast still in the bottle) continue to change with time, the balances of flavor shifting during cellaring. Many Belgian-style beers are cellared by the brewer for months or years before the bottle is released to the drinking public to ensure that the beer reaches its full potential.
I finished off my own taster of Winter Ale and asked Greg for a taste of the Black Friday. Out of the tap, the beer was cold, too cold really for the style. I cradled the cup in my hand in an attempt to warm it a little to bring out more of the flavor. I took my first sip. The liquid was still too cold, but so thick and velvety. Dark, rich, coffee and chocolate flavors. “This is very nice,” I said to Greg. He beamed like I had just complemented the good looks of his child. “I’d like to buy a bottle,” I said. “I’ll do a review for Lenn.”
Cottage Industry. Each Thursday evening, I meet my friends (and business partners) at our brewery to discuss our plans for the future. At the moment we are in the application process. The State Liquor Authority of New York has our brewery’s paperwork. Evidently, it’s an interminable process. “Any word yet?” I asked Mike. He shook his head.
“Let’s pretend,” I said. “Let’s imagine that we have our license by July. What do we need to have in place to start production?”
“More kegs,” said Mike.
True. We only have about ten 50 liter kegs. That’s not enough. But how many do we need? That depends on how much beer we plan on making and how many bars want to put our beer on tap.
“We’ll need all ten of those kegs just to hold our monthly production. I’m thinking we’ll need twice that, at least, given that some kegs will be out in bars and half-full and then some will need cleaning and we’ll need empty and clean kegs at the brewery to fill when the beer’s ready.”
“So you’re saying we’ll need twenty kegs? Where are we going to store these kegs while they are waiting to go out?”
“We’ll just have to start small,” said Mike. “And see how it goes.”
Saturday, 31 December 2011. Publications. I would have been publishing the sixth issue of the “new” Angler today, but #5 will serve as my final missive for 2011. I could blame it on my computer. My brand new iMac died after only two months in my possession leaving me without a way to post my magazine. My computer’s back in its proper place and in working order (for now). It irritates me that I’ve grown so dependent on technology for my writing, but computers and electronic publication are the norm these days.
Resolutions. Whenever the year end arrives and I envision what I’d like to accomplish in the coming year, my resolutions always take the form of lists of projects to complete. And for the past N years the titles of the projects to be finished are nearly the same. Optimistically, I’ll make another list for 2012.
Since I gave up my paying career to be a writer, I started way more projects than I have completed. And at any given moment I’m working on two or three books at once. It’s like trying to fight a war on multiple fronts. Sometimes I feel like I’m juggling, trying to keep all the projects going. But I have completed things.
2011 has been an extremely productive year for me. It’s been so productive that I think 2012 promises to be the year when I finish a dozen works-in-progress. My two large(-ish) fiction projects are all blocked out and I can see the finish line. All that stands between me and finishing them is hard work.
This last year I finally reached (I think) the age of maturity with respect to my new career as a writer. The last decade was my youthful stage. The stage without limits, where I felt like I could write every story that I could think of. The labors of 2011 led me to discover what sort of writer I am. I’m a confessional writer, an autofictionist, a pseudo-memoirist. Instead of fighting my natural tendencies, I see how I play to my strengths. The mode of the beer novel (for example) is ideally suited as a vehicle for my fiction. And, it pairs nicely with my real world interests: localism, slow living, and idling.
Looking forward. I have a list of projects to finish taped to the walk next to my computer. I won’t reproduce the list here since it won’t mean anything to you. Not yet. My goal is to finish the 16 projects on this list by September 30th, 2012. But “to finish” has many meanings.
Writing a book happens in stages. The rough draft comes first. I can finish a rough draft, but it could still be years before that rough draft becomes a book that is ready for publication. Sometimes (as was the case with my beer novel A Year in Beer) publication is the result of resignation --- declaring victory and moving on.
Publication (the ultimate form of finishing) is one aspect of my (new) mature phase of writing. From now on, I write for publication. I’ve developed my web site as publication platform. My blog, The American Idler (it’s now called), and my magazine, The Angler, are part of the work of publication. And there will be more ebooks in 2012. More beer fiction and more guidebooks.
Many hats. While I’m a writer, I’m also many other things. I’m a husband, a father, a son. I’m a brewery owner and craft beer drinker. I’m a youth soccer coach. I’m a film buff. I’m a dreamer, a reader, an idler. From all sides each of us are pressured into specialization, but we humans aren’t inclined to pick only one defining role. We are legion. What we do “for a living” doesn’t define us. Often, our paying career isn’t what we live for, though many (no doubt) feel the pressure of conforming to that expectation. Most of us become who we truly are outside the workplace. We become ourselves when we leave the office behind and choose what we really want to do with the rest of our day, the time that we can claim as our own, the time that we haven’t sold to “the man.”
When I started blogging, I felt incredible pressure to specialize. I didn’t think that anyone would read a blog that changed subject from day to day. My solution was to specialize in beer. But I couldn’t resist the urge to write about other subjects that interested me, so I started other blogs. I spread myself thin.
For 2012 I’m not going to worry about specialization. When I blog, I’ll blog about what interests me. And I’m not going to worry about whether blogging is dead. The blog is a public diary, the diary of a slacker, an idler, of a man more interested in playing than work. Since I’m playing around, I can’t be expect to focus on any one thing. What unifies the blog (as with this magazine and my books) is the narrator, a human being who pulls together many different interests into one and makes sense of them all. The narrator is a thinker and anything he does is an opportunity for examination, for asking questions, for exploration.
The Angler is a story. Some of it is fiction. Some of it is based on real life. The landscape is a composite. Long Neck is an amalgam made from bits and pieces of Long Island. Then there is Belleville, a French-ified neighborhood (possibly in Brooklyn). And there is Fisher’s Island, only an hour long ferry ride from Long Neck. This is the landscape across which my characters move and live out their fictional lives.
I’ve got a story in mind for 2012 which will unfold in these virtual pages. The story will be set in bars, in cafés, on beaches, in faraway places, and will tell the interlocking story of a host of characters (some of which have already been introduced). And it all starts in the next issue of The Angler. I hope you’ll join me for the adventure.