I spend a lot of time at beer tastings and festivals these days, making a show of myself in a way that encourages people to engage in conversation. People are eager to discuss their discoveries and passions for beer, which are extreme and kaleidoscopic. In these halcyon times, a huge variety of amazing beer experiences are there for the taking, and people want to partake.
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The Red Derby is a homey, unpretentious hole-in-the-wall bar in Washington, DC’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. Inside you’ll find a pile of board games like Risk and Operation, a poolroom in the back, and a chalkboard listing about 30 brands of beer. A bonanza for beer connoisseurs?
Here is the paradox of water as it relates to brewing beer: it is, by volume, the dominant ingredient, yet it’s the one that you hear the least about. Hops, with the myriad of exotically named varieties—Fuggles, Tettnanger, Crystal, Nugget, et al.—is the attention-getter that has become the sexy ingredient du jour. Malt, beer’s backbone used to both color and flavor, as well as pump up the specific gravity on the burgeoning array of high-ABV brews out there, get its fair share of the glory. And don’t get a brewmaster started on the thousands of cultured yeasts—some proprietary—that can be used to create vastly different flavor profiles in recipes using the exact same malts and hops.
There once was a time in America, not that long ago, when we had brewers, winemakers and distillers. It was a simple, orderly era. Each group existed among its own kind, occasionally venturing to sample the wares of another group, but never straying.
I used to cleave to the old Groucho Marx adage, “I’d never join a club that would have someone like me as a member.” But that was before I found out about homebrew clubs, which are, by and large, the most welcoming organizations on earth.
There’s a section of the craft beer business that flies beneath the radar. Well, almost beneath. In their home markets, these breweries are well known and selling a great deal of beer—good beer. Despite that, they are still “lurking in the shadows; almost invisible,” as described by Gary Bogoff of Berkshire Brewing (South Deerfield, MA), one of the companies that makes up this challenging segment of the market.
