Distill my beating heart: A whiskey odyssey

Boston Beer Co., makers of Samuel Adams, announced today a partnership with Berkshire Mountain Distillers--their in-state brethren purveying adult beverages--to create two whiskies literally made from two different Sam Adams beers including the flagship Boston Lager.

The story was picked up by several news outlets including the Wall Street Journal. It's a new frontier for craft brewers and distillers to be sure. But the press release chose its words carefully to insinuate, but not state, that Jim Koch is the Christopher Columbus discovering this new world (though maybe that's an apt comparison since Chris gets the credit but hardly "discovered" an already inhabited frontier).

As I'd reported in a Draft Magazine story in 2010, "Whiskey is a distillate made from 'low wash' or 'distiller’s beer,' meaning it contains the same malted grain, water and yeast that all beer has. The difference is that the beer we drink is bittered, usually with hops." The story was about Charbay, a winemaker and distiller in the San Francisco Bay Area using various beers, predominantly from local Bear Republic Brewing, to turn into whisky whereby master distiller Marko Karakasevic uses " a copper alembic pot (to make) cuts to the distillate to ensure only the hearts—the most desirable liquid—and not the heads or tails, remain." (That other stuff is the reason moonshine has a reputation for making you go blind.)

Oddly, the WSJ story also notes that Boston Beer isn't the first brewing company to get into the microdistilling biz. (Those who've tasted Utopias, first introduced in 2002 and clocking in usually at 27% alcohol but more like 54-proof, would say they're already selling cognac or something close to it.) It says that Rogue from Oregon, "for example," started distilling in 2003. Other breweries-cum-distilleries include Dogfish Head and Ballast Point. But I'm curious why they didn't just point to Anchor. Established in 1896, it famously launched the craft/micro brewing revolution in 1965 when Fritz Maytag salvaged the brewery. The microbrewing renaissance didn't begin until over a decade later. Maytag did the same with whiskey and craft distillation in 1993 when Anchor Distilling was born.

The first time I'd interviewed Fritz, he said, “In the eighties when all the competition came in the brewing world, some of the fun went out of it. Then I found out that no commercial American whiskies were made in a traditional manner. When I heard that, I realized, we’re going to make an all-malt, pot-distilled rye whisky aged in uncharred barrels. You don’t put hops in it, but whisky is really distilled beer.”

The Boston Beer Co. deserves a tremendous amount of credit as an early pioneer in the good ol' days of better beer. Starting in 1984, Koch put a better product in front of millions of Americans and had the gumption (and advertising moolah) to convince them they could be drinking a better tasting beer. They now release 40-some-odd active beers a year. And while they were the company behind Hard Core Ciders, they've things up quite a bit with Angry Orchards brand ciders. Can their foray into the world of winemaking be far behind?

Perhaps they're waiting until 2015ish to see how the whiskies do.

Beer scoops

A little over two years ago, right before I started doing the beer writer thing full time, I blogged about my first visit to Creekside Brewing in San Luis Obispo. It was a brewpub I'd been waiting to open for months, having regularly driven down Hwy 101 through Central California and happened to discover while pulling off the highway for a bite to eat. So when Half Pint & I were visiting friends nearby, we popped in for a bite and pint during its grand opening. I used to be better about writing up each new brewpub I hit; I blogged about visiting Creekside. As an aside to my thoughts on the beer and the food, I casually mentioned that the brewing system was behind NSA-mandated terrorist-proof glass, which, when you think about it, is ridiculous.

Jay Brooks evidently agreed and wrote about it on his infinitely more popular blog. So imagine my amusement when, a month later, Don "Joe Sixpack" Russell also covered it and credited me for being the "first (to) report" on it. I didn't think I "reported" on it. I thought I merely blogged it, shared my experience and observation. I've never considered myself a reporter. I never went to journalism school. But that's just semantics, so I guess I am. I did get a master's in writing if you can believe that. My thesis was on beer and the personal stories within the industry.

Anyway, the Creekside incident was the first time I recall breaking a beer story and the few other times I've done it since were mostly incidental. Being the first with a scoop in this day and age is highly unlikely. (You have to be the only one in the right place at the right time with the right person and then tweet like the wind.) Equally so in the beer world, what with the 1,000 or so beer blogs out there. Even just right here in Portland, OR, there are well over a dozen.

I love including myself in the community. I suppose for some there's an element of competitiveness in breaking a piece of news, but that's kinda silly given the poor odds. Personally, I don't distinguish between beer "writers" and "bloggers." There are huge benefits to both. One thing we all share is a love of beer and the industry. One of the things we love writing about are all the collaboration beers. Far be it for us to not bring that same sense of fraternity into the reporting side as we respect on the actual creation side.

All of this is to say, Adam Nason, whose BeerPulse is the most comprehensive site for disseminating brewery news from coast to coast, chimed in on the issue of breaking beer news and whether or not it's any particular writer/publisher's duty to rapidly be the first to report on an item or honor the request of a brewing concern to withhold it until given the thumb's-up. His post, it appears, was at least partially inspired a tweet of my own mentioning (OK, yes, "humblebragging" in good fun, self-aware that I'm not a traditional source for you-heard-it-here-first) that I'd learned the name of a brewery in Bend, OR heretofore known as Yet to Be Named Brewery. The name, as I'd hinted at by tweeting it was "central to their mission," is Crux. Hardly earth-shattering stuff, but inquiring beer minds wanted to know.

As Nason pointed out, I'd foolishly accepted the "embargo" on unveiling the name until I had the go-'head. Believing my column in Willy Week's Food & Drink blog would break the news later this week, Crux took it upon themselves to do so, and their release was quickly picked up by some of my friends in the beer writing realm. C'est la vie.

I agree with 99% of Nason's post about reporting--beer related or otherwise. He concludes by saying:

Your job, as a journalist, is to disseminate information to your audience. It is perfectly acceptable to be a little selfish, look out for your own interests and do everything it takes to report information first (and accurately).

What you report and whether you are first matters. A lot.

What you know and whether you know first matters very little.

On The Daily Show recently, Jon Stewart mocked CNN for humblebragging that they'd "bring you the results from (the contests in MS & AL) before anyone else," when in actuality their reporting coach turned into a giant pumpkin it arrived so late. Such a whole lot of fuss just to be first. I still think credibility matters most, but beyond that, do we turn to news sources to scoop other outlets by a matter of seconds or minutes, or do we read or tune in to sources that are merely local or in other ways germane to us? If I'm wrong in that belief, maybe that's why I'm really not a reporter.

Then again, stay tuned for a story "TK" that, according to the source who personally promised me the exclusive first-look at something that he guaranteed to be a "game changer" in the beer world...;-) Now I can't wait to find out who'll post the news before me.

Yet to be named named Crux

The beauty thing about blogs is that it allows bloggers to break news instantaneously. Reflexively, the bad thing about writing for someone else's print or online publication is that you have to wait for them to publish it. Hence, I've been scooped by my friends like Lisa Morrison, the Beer Goddess, and Jon Abernathy at The Brew Site, in regards to the official name of Larry Sidor's new brewery, crux Fermentation Project. The kicker is that while I didn't get the press release they evidently sent out, I was told I was the first to hear the new name and see the new logo by one of Sidor's partners, Dave Wilson, while at the new brewery. (I had been to the site--a former Aamco station--the day before but returned to retrieve a baby blanket I'd left there when taking pictures of my baby Izzy with the 3 owners, also including Paul Evers.

Dave asked me not to tell anyone yet, but that I could include it in my Mar 30 post for Willy Week. OK, so I kept my word and didn't break the story--fine--but I DID snap the first and only photo of, L-R above: Wilson, Sidor (former brewmaster at Deschutes), and Evers. Take that. Hence, this is now going on my blog instead of WWeek this week, where I hope to vaguely-somewhat break another OR brewery story. Anyway, here's what I'd written about cruz Fermentation Project based on my visit this past week:

...We’re looking at a yet to be named brewery going by the moniker Yet to Be Named and operating as 856 Brewing Co., LLC (see Dave's hat, left), also from a Deschutes alum. This time its brewmaster Larry Sidor, and one of his two partners—like a volcano overstuffed with magma or Diet Coke that’s had Mentos introduced—couldn’t contain the pressure to keep the official name a secret and spilled the secret name: crux Fermentation Project. Not Crux Brewing Co, mind you.

Sidor, Dave Wilson and Paul Evers provided a tour of the 10-hectolitre (8-point-something barrels; it’s really high time America goes metric) brewery still under construction but with a target opening date of “mid June.” Located at the very center of Bend near Arizona Ave and Hwy 97 (at the crux of town you could say), the pub will open with 10 taps—only three of which will be house beers (and even when they reach their goal of 20 taps, a variety of guest beers will always be available). As for those house beers, Sidor didn’t disclose exactly what they’ll be, but did proclaim his love of variety and experimentation. They will eschew rigid styles, but will approximate farmhouse saisons that espouse open fermentation, Northwest hoppy ales, and a cornucopia of barrel aged projects. Indoor seating will be limited (given that the brewpub is housed in a former Aamco station) but the outdoor area is spacious enough for the planned Bocce court. Fear not if you just can’t make it down to Bend, offerings will make their way to Portland via corked-and-caged 375-mL, 500-mL, and 750-mL bottles (again, very metricsexual). As for the name which succinctly captures the crucial core of what they believe a brewery should be about, crux also gets to what their offerings are all about: Primarily using the four basics of brewing (malt, hops, yeast, water), as well as exploring their possible directions (um, I believe they were gravity, color, flavor, and maybe IBUs). As for "Fermentation Project" over "Brewing Company," the partners want it to be an ongoing experiment creating unique art, more than a factory producing a never-changing unit.

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Can't wait to check 'em out later this summer. And another thing not contained in the official release but a topic of conversation I particularly enjoyed and also gets to the heart of what this project is all about, all three of the owners are devoted family men. All would love to see their kids grow up in the brewery, learn the ropes, develop a passion for the business, and lead it into a second generation company (far, far down the road). For Izzy's part, I vowed to return with him to crux on his 21st b-day and buy him his "first" beer.