The globalized regionalization of beer
Zak Avery, who runs a bottle shop in Leeds, posts a beer-year in review and makes three claims for the British beer market:
* British beer is on the up
* Belgian beer is on the wane
* American beer is on the verge of going stellar
In his Best-Of categories, his Best UK Brewery is the Kernel (a small brewery in London) and Best UK Bottled Beer is Kernel Citra IPA. I got to taste that on my November trip, thanks to reverendjim, and it really was superb, managing to taste like passion fruit despite having no fruit additives. Jim was rather high on Kernel's porter as well. [Jim tells me below that I actually tasted the Pale Ale Nelson Sauvin, not the Citra.]
The comments on that post are also very interesting for the discussion of how American craft brewing is influencing British brewing and how Belgian brewing is also evolving in ways that aren't necessarily noticeable in the export market. Lots of interesting things are going on at a local level that hardly anybody sees, but under the influence of global trends. The Dutch and the Italians are given as examples.
I discovered the Zak Avery post via a Beervana post that also has some interesting comments regarding the retail market for beer in Oregon, where Belgian beer is apparently not waning yet. (I doubt it is in Seattle either.) One retailer breaks customers down into the categories of noobs (beginners), average craft drinkers, and beer geeks. I'd say I fall in between the latter two categories, with a taste for rare beers but an only haphazard interest in actually tracking them down.
Reading this discussion made me think again about how much the American scene is evolving right now as well. When the craft brewing phenomenon started out in the '80s, it mostly produced British-style ales: IPAs, ESBs, porters, and stouts. A German-style hefeweizen managed to stand out in that early market. In the past ten years there has been a huge Belgian influence on top of this British tradition. Nowadays there's a very eclectic pursuit of obscure styles such as gose and Berliner weisse and spontaneously fermented beer. There has been another explosion of small breweries, most of which seem to cater to a small, local clientele and a large, sprawling series of beer festivals where aspiring brewers compete with small batches of strange brew. I've taken to calling this a golden age of brewing, because there is just so much going on. It's impossible to keep up, especially if, like me, you don't care for the festival crowds.
Well, to paraphrase the Bottleworks motto: I don't drink to get drunk, I drink weird-ass foreign and American craft beer to get drunk. I'm certainly not complaining about my choices, and this year was a wonderful chance to investigate the British and Belgian scenes in person, as well as a taste of the East Coast and Toronto. If I don't watch out, I might topple (or tipple) myself right into the beer geek category.
* British beer is on the up
* Belgian beer is on the wane
* American beer is on the verge of going stellar
In his Best-Of categories, his Best UK Brewery is the Kernel (a small brewery in London) and Best UK Bottled Beer is Kernel Citra IPA. I got to taste that on my November trip, thanks to reverendjim, and it really was superb, managing to taste like passion fruit despite having no fruit additives. Jim was rather high on Kernel's porter as well. [Jim tells me below that I actually tasted the Pale Ale Nelson Sauvin, not the Citra.]
The comments on that post are also very interesting for the discussion of how American craft brewing is influencing British brewing and how Belgian brewing is also evolving in ways that aren't necessarily noticeable in the export market. Lots of interesting things are going on at a local level that hardly anybody sees, but under the influence of global trends. The Dutch and the Italians are given as examples.
I discovered the Zak Avery post via a Beervana post that also has some interesting comments regarding the retail market for beer in Oregon, where Belgian beer is apparently not waning yet. (I doubt it is in Seattle either.) One retailer breaks customers down into the categories of noobs (beginners), average craft drinkers, and beer geeks. I'd say I fall in between the latter two categories, with a taste for rare beers but an only haphazard interest in actually tracking them down.
Reading this discussion made me think again about how much the American scene is evolving right now as well. When the craft brewing phenomenon started out in the '80s, it mostly produced British-style ales: IPAs, ESBs, porters, and stouts. A German-style hefeweizen managed to stand out in that early market. In the past ten years there has been a huge Belgian influence on top of this British tradition. Nowadays there's a very eclectic pursuit of obscure styles such as gose and Berliner weisse and spontaneously fermented beer. There has been another explosion of small breweries, most of which seem to cater to a small, local clientele and a large, sprawling series of beer festivals where aspiring brewers compete with small batches of strange brew. I've taken to calling this a golden age of brewing, because there is just so much going on. It's impossible to keep up, especially if, like me, you don't care for the festival crowds.
Well, to paraphrase the Bottleworks motto: I don't drink to get drunk, I drink weird-ass foreign and American craft beer to get drunk. I'm certainly not complaining about my choices, and this year was a wonderful chance to investigate the British and Belgian scenes in person, as well as a taste of the East Coast and Toronto. If I don't watch out, I might topple (or tipple) myself right into the beer geek category.