MdV: Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Tuesday, September 19, 2006: Flavor

Seventeen years ago, most Americans had never heard of a Winter Warmer. This year, the seventeenth vintage of rich, deep Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome Ale is on the way to a store or bar near you. More:

http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/ss_ww_0607.pdf

It has arrived and is at your favorite beer spot now: Ayinger Oktober Fest-Marzen! More as a 689k .pdf:

http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/ay_ofm_06.pdf

Samuel Smith and Pinkus in the Dallas/Ft. Worth newspaper; MdV’s own John Staunton in the Cleveland Plain Dealer; a beer event in Omaha, NE, that should make you smile (go to our “events” page and click on Nebraska). Beer media coverage and great beer choices continue to grow! We keep a current media recap, a national beer event listing, and an archive of this e-newsletter at:

http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html

Beer Chat from the Beer Court Jester: Flavor

Fine beer is booming in the US lately – American craft beer sales are up over 10%; import beer sales also way up; restaurants are adding beer to menus . . . Why the boom? Could it be simple?

We suggest that there is a flavor revolution going on in the United States:

-Restaurants continue to grow – 46% of US food dollars are spent in restaurants, and we will have one million US restaurants by 2010 (National Restaurant Assoc).

-In the US, ethnic cuisine is dynamic and shows no sign of slowing. For example: lemon grass, fish sauce, green curry, galangal and lime juice – combined with kitchen techniques & skills – sustain the fantastic world of Thai cooking. Is Thai food popular? Well, a couple of short decades ago, there weren’t many Thai restaurants in the US. Look around now. Modern Americans have other exciting, tasty foods of different ethnic origin thriving all around them: Italian, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Indian, Japanese, Mexican, French . . . and have you looked at an American gourmet supermarket lately? It would be tough to prove, but it seems likely that a modern American living in a city has more great food options than any human in history.

-Flavor memories are a pleasure of life: why do we read restaurant reviews? Why do we get misty recalling our grandmother’s apple butter, last tasted 27 years ago? Why do folks pay $1,000 for a bottle of wine? How could our lives have been complete before we tried falafel, or mache salad, or Memphis-style baby back ribs? Sure, we could live and be healthy on a diet of five or six different items, if we picked the items based on their health value. But apart from boredom, we’d be missing the opportunity for the next food revelation – the apple butter we haven’t yet discovered.

So the search for flavors can be compelling, rewarding and a lot of fun. How does this apply to beer?

The style of beer to be found most commonly in the US today is pale golden, light-bodied, effervescent and quenching: American light lager. Large breweries produce it with excellent efficiencies, and it is certainly marketed, distributed, and sold effectively. But honestly, many of these well-made and worthwhile beers are very similar, whether made in the US or made in the “US style” and imported to the US.

Check it out for yourself: some bars may have 8 or 10 different beers. Frequently, all 8 or 10 may be pale golden, effervescent lagers – well-made; great graphics on the packaging; fun TV commercials all – but honestly, more similar in flavor than they are different.

When we look at all beer styles, we learn that there are as many flavors to be discovered as there are flavors of other foods. Ingredients and brewing techniques – as well as the myriad strains of our microscopic friends, yeast – lead to a lifetime’s worth of flavor exploration. The beers you can find right now in the US range from the most sublime (say, Samuel Smith’s Old Brewery Pale Ale or Pinkus Organic Hefe-Weizen) to the historical and traditional (Ayinger Brau-Weisse, Celebrator, Samuel Smith Taddy Porter) to the innovative (Melbourn Strawberry, Orval Trappist Ale) to the full-flavored (Lindemans Cuvee Rene, Rochefort Trappist 10).

Flavor is why you pay more when you buy fine beer: you are paying for a diversity of expensive ingredients, labor-intensive production in breweries that are sometimes small, and a dose of good old magic – the brewer’s art.

More Americans are reaching for fine beer, without TV commercials, without giant store displays, without broad media advertising. Yes, all these fine beers offer . . . is flavor.

As usual, we encourage you to make your own decision: Buy a wide variety of beers, including some American light lagers, and have an organized blind tasting. You might not like all the styles if they are new to you, especially the first taste, but chances are your eyebrows may go up on at least one of them. Wow, what if you had never tried that beer? Ask your local bar and store to carry these flavor marvels!

If you sell beer at a store, restaurant, or bar please consider offering a number of flavors to your customers. Bring in a variety of beer styles. Tell your customers to try before they decide whether they are worth the extra cost. They may just return again and again, paying the additional price cheerfully.

They may even pause one day to thank you for selling ‘em these enhancements to their life – great flavor, via great beer.

Merchant du Vin, America’s Premier Specialty Beer Importer Since 1978

http://www.merchantduvin.com