Beer Chic

The truly discriminating drinker, who is no stranger to champagne for breakfast, a midmorning gin fizz or an aperitif before lunch, has a natural affinity with beer. He is eclectic and cosmopolitan, and so is beer. Only now are its secrets and its diversity being revealed. Having been overshadowed far too long by the strutting Latin and Gallic hauteur afforded to wine, beer has escaped from its own Teutonic dourness to proclaim its eclecticism and its cosmopolitanism on the world's stage. The new blossoming of beer is a phenomenon in many Western countries, including such traditional homelands as Germany, Holland and Great Britain. Even in the United States, the established malty favorites (continued on page 164)Beer Chic(continued from page 91) suddenly have a lot of company. Heineken, the original import, paved the way for its Dutch compatriot Grolsch. From France (albeit the German-speaking part), Kronenbourg and Fischer have made their entrance. Beck's and St. Pauli Girl, from the north of Germany, meet Dortmunder Kronen and D.A.B. from the west and Würzburger from the south. There are imports from more distant places, too, such as Kirin (Japan), Foster's (Australia) and Steinlager (New Zealand). Nor is all the action among the imports. There was a time when Miller High Life was thought by some to have too haughty an image. No longer. Now Budweiser's smart sister, Michelob, Schlitz's Erlanger and Stroh's Signature make grander claims.

Throughout the Western world, the beer phenomenon has taken unexpected forms: expensive imports being shipped as top-of-the-line beers by major domestic brewers; revivals of traditional products that had long been forgotten; the reawakening of sleepy, small-town breweries that are suddenly marketing their products farther afield; and, perhaps most remarkable of all, the emergence of boutique breweries.

Fear not: The machismo of the American brewing business is still powerful enough for the label boutique to be resisted. Yet what the boutique wineries of the West did for the grape, the new, tiny breweries are doing for the grain. Where in the United States are they found? There is a new boutique brewery in Albany, New York, once famous as America's greatest ale-producing city. The first boutique in the United States was in Sonoma, California, in the heart of the wine-producing country. One of the most recent, producing a widely admired beer, is in Yakima, Washington, center of the American hop-growing district.

The boutiques are a new generation of ma-and-pa breweries. Some are run by one man and a boy; others by one man and a girl; others by two or three men. There are seven or eight boutique breweries currently operating in the United States and at least as many are planned. Each sells its beers in only one or two states, but that is how things were before Prohibition.

Monty Python actor Terry Jones invested some of his profits from the TV series in a boutique brewery in England, one of more than 100 that have sprung up there in less than ten years. There, the latest development is a return to the pub with its own back-yard brewery, the type of business commonly found before World War One. The first such pub brewery in North America was opened last year in British Columbia, and similar establishments are being planned in several cities in the United States where local laws will permit.

Such fancies are no competition for Milwaukee or St. Louis, but in 1982, there began a remarkable collaboration between boutiques and mainstream breweries when a beer festival was held in Boulder, Colorado. The first Great American Beer Festival was unique in that it was the first time anyone can remember that rival American breweries--about 20 of them--had cooperated to offer their products side by side. It was also unique in that it was not a corny Germanic steins-and-sausages gut buster but an opportunity for comparative tasting. Beers from Upstate New York, the Midwest and California, none of them generally available throughout the country, were sampled in an enthusiastic degustation by guests from equally far afield.

The Great American Beer Festival was inspired by similar events in Great Britain and Holland that have themselves been spawned only in recent years. They are yet another manifestation of the new beer phenomenon. The American event now seems set to take place annually.

Today, in restaurants, some imported beers go for six or seven dollars a bottle. Serving a beer that costs that much takes the kind of restaurant that presents its selection on something akin to a wine list. Such beer lists, documenting the place of origin of each brew and, if the diner is lucky, its characteristics, are increasingly to be seen.

There are, of course, classic beers that also happen to be household names, but the new beer chic does not restrict itself to them. There are great and original beers that are taken for granted in their own countries but are unrecognized elsewhere. There are once-famous names that, like fading celebrities, live in quiet obscurity, thought by even their admirers to be long dead. There are brews of some profundity that, especially if they are produced on a relatively local scale, suffer the fate of the prophet without honor in his own country.

If those names are so noble, why aren't they, so to speak, on everyone's lips? The answer is simple. It has long been understood in the wine world that a best-selling label does not necessarily have the same ambitions as those enjoyed by one produced in far smaller quantities and at greater expense. In the matter of beer, that awareness has taken an unconscionably long time to dawn.

What most people (except the British and the Irish) mean by beer is just one style: a golden-colored, dryish, cooling brew. That style was first brewed in the town of Pilsen, in the state of Bohemia, which is now a part of Czechoslovakia. The original, labeled Pilsner Urquell, is increasingly available as an import. So are German counterparts with such names as Herforder, Königsbacher and Krombacher. European Pilsners are very hoppy; American ones are milder. You can, though, find a fair degree of dry, hoppy bitterness in a Midwestern Pilsner (from Monroe, Wisconsin) under the Augsburger label. If you prefer to snort the hop, you can enjoy the bouquet of Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve (from Portland, Oregon). Serve these beers at 45 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit to taste them at their best.

In winter or spring, try the sweeter, fuller-bodied, more sustaining beers from Munich, home of the original Löwenbräu. Munich-style, or Münchner, beers come in a variety of types and strengths. Such Munich breweries as Augustiner, Hofbräuhaus (HB), Paulaner and Spaten produce a wide range of beers and export a good many of them. They may be golden-colored (announcing themselves, in that case, with the expletive-sounding German adjective hell) or dark (dunkel) and may contain about three and one half to four percent alcohol. Or they may be of an amber hue for Oktoberfest, perhaps at four and one half percent alcohol. Then, whether golden-colored or tawny, there are the billy-goat beers announced as bock and doppelbock, at five and six percent alcohol, respectively. Inspired by Paulaner's original, called Salvator, the others have such names as Maximator and Celebrator. An unusually strong example is the aptly named Kulminator 28, with an alcohol content of nearly 11 percent. In Germany, double bocks are served in February and March and single ones in May. Devotees of the rich Bavarian beers may also enjoy such Champagne-bottled French specialties as St. Léonard and Bière de Paris--or Dos Equis amber from Mexico or San Miguel Dark from the Philippines. The nearest American equivalent is the Bavarian Dark from the tiny Geyer brewery (in Frankenmuth, Michigan). Again, serve these beers at 45 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. The gentler the chilling, the fuller the flavor.

Before a meal, sharpen the palate with just one glass of an acidic Trappist-monastery beer from Belgium. These are claret-colored, almost murky, and should be decanted carefully into the glass so that the yeasty sediment is left behind. Until recently, they were hard to find outside Belgium, but they are increasingly working their way into export markets. Start with Orval and graduate to vintage-dated Chimay Blue and potent St. Sixtus (almost eight percent alcohol). These beers are normally served quite warm, at about 66 degrees Fahrenheit, but the secular Duvel (a corruption of the Flemish word for devil), also from Belgium, should be well chilled.

With shellfish, there is an impenetrable magic to the tangy accompaniment of roasty, black porters and stouts. Guinness, from Ireland, is the most bitter; Mackeson, from England, is markedly sweeter. Between the two are such resurgent American favorites as the celebrated Pottsville Porter, from the Deer Hunter country of Pennsylvania. Most of the new boutique breweries produce excellent sedimented dry porters and fuller-bodied stouts.

With meat, go for the reddish, British-style ales. Their fruitiness and their full flavor are the ideal accompaniment to grills and roasts. Serve them, like red wines, at a natural-cellar temperature--ideally, 56 degrees Fahrenheit. From England, Bass is the classic, but London Pride and Samuel Smith's seem to travel better. The provocatively named Stingo, a specialty of the house of Watney, is a stronger English ale of the type known as barley wine. From Scotland, there are Belhaven and Lorimer's. From Adelaide, Australia, Cooper's is a wonderful sedimented ale. Most of the new boutique breweries produce excellent sedimented ales, and the hybrid Anchor Steam Beer, from San Francisco, is gaining a cult following. The characteristic fruitiness--but with a lighter body and a paler color--is found in such Canadian ales as Molson, Labatt's, O'Keefe's and Moosehead. (These four companies, of course, also make lager beer.)

As a summer refresher, the Germans favor wheat beers: a type of brew that's sharp yet light in body and alcohol content. These beers are increasingly being exported to the United States, where they were produced by many breweries before Prohibition. A dash of raspberry is added to the quenching, sedimented Berliner Weisse, from the Kindl and Schultheiss breweries. Napoleon's troops called it "the champagne of the North." Pink champagne, presumably. A slice of lemon soothes the more intense south German sister brew called Weizenbier, from such breweries as Tucher and the splendidly named Faust. (You also need lemon, not to mention salt, with the Mexican brand Tecate.) The wild-fermented Belgian type of wheat beer known as gueuze is matured in hogsheads and is exported to the U.S. by the Lindemans farmhouse brewery. In its winy character, it bears a passing resemblance to white vermouth, and its exotic cousin kriek, containing bitter cherries, might intrigue a devotee of kir.

The protagonist of beer chic pauses before the first sip to catch the aroma. In most beers, it's a light, uncloying, malty sweetness because it is dried by the bitterness of the hop, which has its own flowery, sometimes herbal scent. Then there is the fruitiness created by the yeast, the life force that ferments the beer, creating also the sparkle and the head. A good beer has what brewers call a rocky head, and each sip leaves "Brussels lace" draped down the sides of the glass. Above all, it has its own balancing act, depending upon its style but also upon the ambition and the skill of the brewmaster.

There are easy tastes and difficult ones. What comes easily can quickly begin to disappoint. Many of the best things in life are acquired tastes: oysters, steak tartare, marrons glacés. Like sex, good beer is a pleasure that can better be appreciated with experience, in which variety is both endless and mandatory. The pleasure lies, too, in gaining the experience: the encounters with the unexpected, the possibility of triumph or disaster, the pursuit of the elusive, the constant lessons, the bittersweet memories that linger. Cheers!