Property and Ownership: The Discourse of Craft Brewing

"'Property,' Welsh muttered to himself too softly for anyone else to hear. 'All for property.'"
- First Sergeant Edward Welsh, in James Jones's The Thin Red Line

"But to me, you’re not legit until you’ve got skin in the game, which means capital at risk."
- Hugh Sisson, founder and Chief Executive Officer, Heavy Seas Brewing Company

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."
- Don Draper, Season 3, Episode 2, "Love Among the Ruins," Mad Men

In an increasingly crowded craft beer marketplace (2,347 breweries, 1,254 in planning, 409 opened in 2012), competition increases as well. Everything in craft beer becomes elastic: brewing equipment and space, hop contracts, and shelf space, among other goods and services. Enterprising brewers and companies have found two market inefficiencies in this environment. The first is termed, somewhat pejoratively, "gypsy brewing." The second is a marketing tactic called "craft versus crafty."

Gypsy brewers do not own brewing facilities. Instead they find breweries with excess capacity and travel, sometimes between continents, to these places to make beer. Though some of these itinerant, wandering brewers have taken out second mortgages, maxed out credit cards, and gone into debt to pursue careers in brewing, they are deemed as being lesser by some, like Sisson above, because they do not own property. For a vocal, but probably minority, group of brewers, craft beer is "all for property."

When Sisson voiced his opinion in Beer Advocate Magazine, there was a minor uproar (please do read the comments on the article), and Sisson quickly backtracked (again, please read the comments), but by then the discursive damage was done, and it is clear that some elements of craft beer do not understand the increasingly "postmodern, transnational craft beer scene." Will Myers, head brewer of Cambridge Brewing Company, reignited this discussion earlier this month, writing that

By making Craft Beer welcoming to all by design, we’ve made it a desirable industry in which people want to play a part. This includes the inevitable number of beer marketing companies, aka contract brewers [definition: a brewery that writes recipes for beers that are then produced by other people at a facility not owned by that brewery] (a few of whom call themselves “gypsy brewers”), who either feel that there’s money to be made in this fad or who genuinely love craft beer but don’t want to invest the capital in their own brick and mortar breweries. This lack of skin in the game shows me that they value short term gains over long term personal investment and hard work. (Source)

Note the similar discursive formations of these critiques of gypsy brewing. It has become a meme in the original sense of that word that craft beer, in addition to having high quality ingredients and independence from multinational corporations, must also be associated with a place.

The “property” line of attack on gypsy brewing is telling because it hits these brewers with something they do not have by definition, though ownership of a facility does not necessarily enhance the quality of the beer. The language about property from critics is the velvet glove surrounding the iron fist that is these critics’ annoyance that gypsy brewers are running successful operations and brands without capital, or at least sufficient capital, and without facilities that one can walk in or around or sell or mortgage. The argument about property being a requisite to brewing resonates with both the norms and American dream of business ownership and the image of small businesses as job creators (searching that phrase results in 22.4 million Google hits), and as the lifeblood of the economy (2.7 million hits). These gypsy brewers, according to Myers, are tied to a piece of paper, a contract, not to land, not to a facility, not to property. They have no roots. They are hardly brewers. They are marketing companies. They don't make anything, whereas true craft brewers do. This argument places gypsy brewers outside of an industry. They are instead part of the nebulous service sector.

Perhaps the most eloquent defense of renting, of not owning, functions as a defense of both gypsy brewing and contract brewing, comes from Jeff Leiter of Somerville Brewing Company, also known as Slumbrew. Leiter points out that a great many more "traditional" craft brewers, including Brooklyn Brewery and Sam Adams, began as contract brewers and that he aspires to own and operate a brewing facility. Property? More skin than he already has in the game? Leiter wants that. He wants to become "more craft," in the traditional, normative sense of the term as formulated by Sisson. "With this endeavor, we will surely sign more promissory notes and personal guarantees that are so highly acclaimed as a badge of honor to some brewers," writes Leiter, who goes on to describe in great detail the kind of skin he has in this game, which proves Sisson's point, by following the discursive norms mentioned above, that this is the battlefield on which the argument will be fought.

Holy shit a gypsy brewer actually working... #noskinbutalittlesweatinthegame twitter.com/EvilTwinBrewin…— Evil Twin Brewing (@EvilTwinBrewing) April 21, 2013

However, Leiter also, perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, undermines the Brewers Association's attempt to differentiate craft beer, a definition from a trade association, and "crafty" beer, the second market inefficiency, which is the attempt to obscure the macro origins of beers like Blue Moon (owned by SABMiller) and Shock Top (owned by InBev), among others.

In the end, do the actual people that like our beer and buy our bottles or draught make their decision to support us by whether I checked the gravity on the 2nd day of fermentation at 10:30am? If I am personally not present to transfer our Flagraiser IPA from primary fermentation to a brite tank, will it taste less genuine?

A craft brewery, according to the Brewers Association is

• Small : at or under 6 million barrels produced per year, (a number that has been raised twice for Sam Adams), 
• Independent: a brewery must have no more than 25 percent ownership by a non-craft brewer, and 
• Traditional: in that the flagship beer is a product of malted barley, and not other adjuncts like corn and rice, though those can be used to enhance as opposed to lighten the flavor of less than half the beers brewed (never mind that corn is a tradition brewing grain in the United States; just ask Dick Yuenling or August Schell).

To the Brewers Association, crafty beer hides its ownership, uses the capital of said hidden ownership, and may brew with adjuncts.

In Leiter's offset quote above the battle is not between ownership versus contracting or craft versus crafty, both of which share a discursive formation focused on ownership and property, be it physical or intellectual, but between beer that tastes good and beer that does not. It is an argument that ignores process, that negates it. Ownership does not matter.

Publicly held (Sam Adams and AB-InBev), privately held (Sierra Nevada), or employee-owned (New Belgium and Full Sail)? It does not matter. A scrappy small business (how every craft brewery views its operation) or a multinational corporation (Bud, Miller, Coors)? It does not matter. Who brewed the beer, and who developed the recipe? Are they the same people? That does not matter. What about output and volume and scope and scale? In five months in 2012, Budweiser sold one million barrels of Platinum (thanks, Pitbull!), more than the yearly output of every craft brewery except for Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada. These elements also do not matter here.

For this reason, the idea that taste trumps all may be too simplistic. Purchasing patterns and consumer behavior tell us this isn’t true. Questions like who and where and how and why beer is brewed are as important to many beer drinkers as how the beer tastes. There is a role for process, but what? Were flavoring extracts uses as opposed to original source ingredients? Does it matter that supporting a local brewery keeps money local? That doing so supports neighbors and communities? That the beer will be fresher? That is where this much more nuanced debate will take place once craft brewers stop fighting multiple fronts against crafty, contract, and gypsy brewers.

So let's change the conversation by having a dialogue about these issues rather than counterproductive and distracting arguments over what it means to be a brewer, over what it is to make beer, over a definition of craft beer coined by a craft beer trade association. Gypsy brewers make good beers. Breweries with properties make good beer. Crafty breweries make good beer (and if you’ve had something from Goose Island recently, you’d be hard pressed to deny it.)

Enter Brian Strumke, a gypsy brewer last seen in this space in 2012, claiming that one of his beers, Stillwater Premium, was a "reconstruction" of macro American adjunct lagers, like Budweiser, Miller High Life, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Strumke takes the ingredients of these beers, deconstructs them, and turns them into craft beer, a "postmodern joke" that is deadly serious, uniting the end result of taste with a focus on the process, even if he is not present to oversee all aspects of brewing. Over at DCBeer.com he graciously agreed to answer some questions, and to announce that a new "deconstructed" beer, Classique, is coming to cans. Here is an excerpt.

DCBeer: Premium was phrased as a "reconstruction." Are these beers, Premium and Classique, yin and yang? Or, to use more postmodern terminology, are they mutually constitutive, in that one cannot exist independent of the other? I don't mean that physically, but these beers strike me as two sides of the same coin.
Stillwater: I would say they are kind of mutually constitutive... perhaps Classique should have came first, but I suppose it was created out of necessity... so I would have to say that Classique would not exist without Premium.
DCBeer: Another heady question: I wonder if you're familiar with the term "simulacrum," which I'm using to tie the macro lager question and answer to the postmodern one. Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, uses simulacrum to describe an alternate presentation or representation that can challenge the current, hegemonic, dominant order, which in this case would be macro lager, while Classique is the upstart. Is that a fair analysis?
Stillwater: Sure, although I was thinking more on the lines of Jacques Derrida's approach to Deconstruction, that is associated “with the attempt to expose and undermine the oppositions, hierarchies, and paradoxes on which particular texts, philosophical and otherwise, are founded.”
DCBeer: Of course neither Classique nor Premium would exist without American-style adjunct lagers. It’s an interesting relationship. Your thoughts on why Bud/Miller/Coors can't also "fix" this process?
Stillwater: Macro lagers are now a style, and one that appeals and is targeted to a mass market. They were created to emulate pilsners and have now grown to be the American standard for “beer.” While I cheekily joke about “fixing” the process, I am actually just taking a different approach and using the building blocks within that style to make something new, but with a familiar foundation, hence the “deconstruction” aspect of the project.

The key here is that beer must move beyond the broad strokes. If you’ve had something from Stillwater, you know that not having a location all his own isn’t hamstringing the beer. You’ve no doubt had beer that’s disappointing from a brewery with a lease on a property. The nuances are what’s key here. The discourse is valuable but we must be critical of it for the overall product’s sake, and isn’t that what we’re all here for, to advance beer as a product? We hope you’ll talk about these issues below. How much does the process matter to you? Taste uber alles? How important is locality and freshness to you? Cheers.

* The author is indebted to Bill DeBaun for his help with this article. A version of this post appears on DCBeer.com.

Music & Beer, Beer & Music: 2013 edition

Every year, this guy and I trade top ten, or fifteen, or whatever lists, and then make fun of each other. My top fifteen albums of 2012 post is up. You like music, so I assume you know what to do. Here's a taste:

9) Swans - The Seer: The second-best psych freakout of the year actually works as something like the flip side to Lonerism. A demanding two hour-long bad trip that is somehow disturbing, uplifting, and revelatory. 

8) Passion Pit - Gossamer: Pop music! With the help of Nico Mulhy you get something like Jonsi, the Polyphonic Spree, and ABBA in a blender. The lead singer is mentally ill, and the lyrics reflect that. I don’t know how much longer he’ll last. Better get in while the getting’s good.  

7) The Amazing - Gentle Stream: Sax solos! Really. So pretty, so fragile... Did you know that this was released in Sweden in 2011, so it was in last year’s top 15, too? Well, now it’s a 2012 US release, and I like it more.  

6) Frank Ocean - Channel Orange: I believe this is a first for a top ten list (since I wasn't doing these in the 1970s), an actual R&B album, and perhaps the most interesting one since Shuggie Otis’ Inspiration Information at that. 

More here.

Guilty Simpson, murdering a Radiohead-driven horn section:

2012 was an okay year for music. I thought there was much "good," but little "great," and I wonder how many of these albums I'll be listening to a few years from now. I also worry that when it comes to music I'm becoming a grumpy old man. However, it was a great year for beer, as DC saw another brewery open, one that I put a bit of elbow grease into. Three Stars Brewing's coffee porter, dubbed the Pandemic (as in "two for $5!") is a keeper, and I'm a fan of the rest of their output as well. About 15 minutes away, DC Brau continues to impress, resurrecting grätzer; a hoppy, smoked wheat ale native to what was once Prussia, then part of Germany, and now part of Poland.

However, my favorite new beer of 2012 came from Baltimore, via a brewery in South Carolina: Stillwater's Premium, a post-modern joke of a beer designed using the ingredients of Bud, Miller, and Coors. Instead of lagering, Premium is an ale, and it's fermented with three strains of yeast, two of which are brettanomyces, which add a pleasing dryness and a bit of funk that's reminiscent of both a barn and a tropical plantation. At 4.5% alcohol by volume, it's easy-drinking, and I look forward to later this year, when we'll see it in cans.

Speaking of which, three other canned beers caught my eye in 2012. Two are lagers. New Belgium's Shift is a pale lager hopped with one of my favorites, Nelson Sauvin, from New Zealand, while just up the road in Fredrick, MD, Flying Dog came out with Underdog, another hoppy, pale offering. Like Premium, all lend themselves to sessioning. Both Shift and Underdog use hops in the same way, delivering fruit flavors, gooseberries and apricots, respectively, as opposed to piney or pithy bitterness. The third canned beer that is Brewery Vivant's Escoffier. It is, to my knowledge, the first canned beer to use brettanomyces, obtained via New Belgium. It's a wonderful red ale that uses brett for tropical funk as opposed to dryness, and I'd love to see more of it in our area.

Other standouts include New Glarus' Serendipity, an accidental fruit ale born out of a shortage of cherries in the midwest. New Glarus wisely added apples and cranberries to this beer to compensate, oaked it, and then used their house brett strain (sense a trend?). For the hop-heads, Williamsburg Alewerk's Bitter Valentine was a crushing blast of tropical fruit flavors, pine, and grapefruit pith. One of the better double IPAs I've had.

Beyond that aforementioned canned Premium, 2013 should bring us more options in terms of growler fills, and hopefully a few new breweries as well. Though we'll no doubt miss SAVOR, I'm also looking forward to the Craft Brewers Conference and the surrounding hoopla that's planned.

Cheers!

(The Beer of) Small States in World Markets

In 1985, Cornell political scientist Peter Katzenstein wrote a book with an interesting argument. Katzenstein posited that small states, size referring to a measurement of a domestic economy, need open borders for trade due to small domestic markets and economies. One way to get open borders is to promote free trade. Of course, free trade also means that other countries, and their companies, will have access to the domestic markets of the smaller states, and odds are good, thanks to comparative advantage, that other states and their companies will be able to produce some goods and services more efficiently than the smaller states and their companies. To wit, a large company in a large country makes widgets more efficiently than a company in the smaller country. If these countries trade freely, the company in the smaller country may not survive. The larger company from the larger country will put it out of business. Katzenstein's central argument is that, given this, smaller states need robust social welfare safety nets, which commonly include robust unemployment benefits, health care, and free or low cost education, among others. Safety nets are needed because free trade under capitalism is inherently destabilizing. However, safety nets are expensive, which require not only high taxes, but also a grand bargain between labor, the state, and companies, with levels of economic cooperation and coordination that much of this audience (e.g., Americans) is not used to and suspicious of. This political and economic arrangement is called democratic corporatism, and if the above sounds somewhat familiar, it is because I have just described the oft-maligned social democracies of Europe; in particular, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the Scandinavian countries. And somehow, this brings us to craft beer.


If you have been following the rise of craft beer, you may have noticed an increasing international bent to tap and bottle lists, from breweries like Nogne O (Norway), Mikkeller (Denmark), De Molen (The Netherlands), and Baladin (Italy), among others. These breweries have created what Joe Stange terms a "postmodern, transnational craft beer scene," and they've done it in large part thanks to the principles that Katzenstein has written about. These, and other, breweries make beer for export markets, often collaborating with brewers from the US (Stillwater fits into this category as well), which is where the "trans-" suffix comes from. In order to get their beers noticed abroad, these brewers need to stand out, and by and large they have done so by making some unusual beers, with a healthy disrespect for traditional beer styles, or at least the styles dominant in the small domestic market.


For example, in 2009 Nogne O shipped 65% of its 8,000 barrels of beer to markets outside Norway, across twenty countries. In Washington, DC one can find a bottle of Nogne O for about $10. That same bottle will cost upwards of $20 in Norway, where it is made (source). Nogne O's founders explicitly looked to the US for guidance on craft beer trends, and looked down on what was available in Norway. It seems that Norwegians noticed good beer leaving their shores, because in 2011 only 25% of Nogne O's output was exported, a dramatic decrease (same source).



To make beer for export one must cater to the American beer geek, who, in turn, has rewarded these breweries. Danish brewery Mikkeller is perhaps most well-known for a coffee-infused stout, in which the coffee beans used first passed through the digestive system of a civet, a southeast Asian cat-like creature. In 2008, Ratebeer's predominantly American users ranked Belgium's de Struise, famed for a series of barrel-aged stouts, as the top brewery in the world.
The rejections of adjunct-addled domestic lagers and absences of strong craft brewing traditions have allowed for a robust culture of experimentation in many of these states. Knowing that one will not move a large amount of beer domestically has been a boon to brewers in countries like Italy, where Birra Del Borgo cannot sell many bottles of Dodici 25, a barleywine-style ale scented with orange peels, to a populace weened on wine and amaro.


Belgium, with a rich, perhaps the richest, tradition of brewing, and ethnic cleavages between French- and Dutch-speaking populations that have lead to something like ethnic democratic corporatism, albeit with limited success, is not exempt from this discussion, as newer breweries like de Struise and Alvinne make beer for the US market, perhaps at the expense of a sense of place, of terroir. "There are a couple brewers in Belgium who are making beer for Americans. We’re interested in Belgium, we’re interested in their traditions," [importer Don] Feinberg says. "There are certain flavors that are true to a type of culture, and if you don’t believe that, you’re one step away from making soda."

Great beers in any style can now be made in any place. But to the extent that they don’t come from their own soils and land and brewed with love for their own people, they can only offer flavor plus the facsimile of a cultural experience. And while there is a lot of talk about an emerging global culture, I don’t know what it tastes like. I want to have as real a relationship as I can with as real a culture. And I will continue to seek out and fight for the beers of Terroir that represent cultures I do know, understand and love (source). 

Yet as the Nogne O example above shows, we may be moving past this discussion of place. Norwegians who want good beer now have more Nogne O on the shelves. As Stan Hieronymus has pointed out, and apologies while I hunt for his exact words, with some time a De Molen saison may impart a sense of place on the person drinking it, creating a Dutch saison as opposed to copying a Belgian one.


The likely audience of this post, much like the beers discussed above, is American. Beer is being made for us. Good beer, at that. Be flattered, as the tastes of the American beer geek are exported as well. We live in interesting times.


Civet pic via Wikipedia.
Katzentstein's book cover from Google Books, linked above.

An Interview with Stillwater Artisan Ales' Brian Strumke

Over on DCBeer.com I have a post up that's an interview with Brian Strumke, the brewer/owner/sole employee of Stillwater, a "gypsy" brewing outfit loosely based out of Baltimore. Every beer brewed by Stillwater is made with a farmhouse-style strain of yeast, commonly associated with saisons and biers de garde. Strumke, however, blurs and blends styles, to great effect. The end result is often a series of yeast-dominant beers, an interesting contrast with more common hop-forward styles, like Pale Ales, India and otherwise, and malt-forward ones like brown ales and bocks.

His most recent creation is Stillwater Premium, a beer that doubles as an inside joke since it's based on ingredients used in macro lagers like flaked rice and corn, and hops like Cluster, Northern Brewer, and Saaz. Instead of a lager, however, he's made an ale, and he's used two wild yeast strains in addition to a farmhouse strain to ferment the beer. The result is something like "dirty Bud," or Stella Artois if it was good and not skunked, as has been the case the last few times I've had that beer. Also, at 4.5% alcohol by volume, you can drink a lot of it, if, you know, you're into that sort of thing.

Also also, he used to be a DJ, and so of course I ask him about Skrillex. He's an interesting guy, and his thoughts on beer are worth a read.

I paired the beer with a semi-reasonable approximation of congee, a Chinese rice porridge. The flaked rice in the beer compliments the rice in the dish, and the dryness of the beer on the back end, due to two strains of wild yeast, or Brettanomycnes, kept me coming back for more broth. I also dropped an egg into that bowl, so the slight acidity of the beer plays against that richness.