What Is A Brewer?

This is a question that's been whirring round in my head for a while. It was sort of kickstarted a year or so ago when I stumbled across the PDTNC blog. Adrian is a brewer, and I was particularly taken with his slant on homebrewing - he built a lot of his own homebrew gear, and has also helped others with various bits of kit.

This made me realise that a good (home)brewer wasn't just someone who had a good idea about what might make a good beer, but that they also had a good understanding of the processes that will get you there. A good beer isn't just a good recipe - it's also about the execution of it, and the ability of the brewer to manipulate all the variables in that process, from set-up, through brewing, to clean-up, from the ingredients arriving, to the beer leaving in small or large pack. It's not just about the recipe - its about every step of the way, all the way back to the set-up and purchase of the brewery.

And what of the brewer's job itself? Should that just be confined to the brewhouse? Is it important that brewers are able to talk eloquently about their wares, not just to their peers in the industry, but also to the end consumer? Should brewers be white-coated scientists, or should they be rock stars? Is it necessary, or even desirable, for a brewer to have a microscopic understanding of everything that is going on in the brewing process, so that every batch of beer is the same as the last, or are we prepared to tolerate a few bad batches of usually very good beer, even if those bad batches are brought about by sloppy practice?

When you drink a beer, the way it tastes is the result of a very deliberate set of decisions and precise actions by a brewer. Each bottle of beer you buy in shop, each pint of beer you buy over a bar is a little essay, a story of flavour, aroma, taste and texture, from a brewer to you. Is that liquid love-note enough, or do you want more from your brewers?

What, to you, is a brewer?

The Taste of Beer

I recently wrote a piece for the journal of the Brewery History Society. It's a special Michael Jackson memorial issue, and features some of the great and the good of beer writing (and myself, obviously). The roll call of other writers is: Pete Brown, Roger Protz, Martyn Cornell, Jeff Evans, Mark Dredge, Carolyn Smagalski, Tim Webb and John Richards. It should be out soon (I think it's the winter edition), so why don't you visit their website, have a look around, and perhaps even join.

But that wasn't what I was going to write about today - the title reminded me, as it's also the title of the piece I wrote for the journal. What I was going to write about, or more specifically ask about, is how people feel about flavour additions to their beers.

I've been mucking about with a bit of homebrewing recently, and have just made a creamy oatmeal porter. I tried to make a chocolate orange porter by adding tangerine peel to the brew kettle, but the flavour hasn't carried through. It's still a tasty beer, but it doesn't quite have the citrussy lift I was after.

Then I thought, hang on, maybe I can just dry hop this beer with a load of citrussy hops (Amarillo, maybe). Looking around a few homebrew forums, I saw that people were adding actual Terry's Chocolate Orange to get the desired effect, or even adding a shot of Cointreau at bottling. PAH! I sneered, PAH!, that's cheating. And then I realised that I was putting tangerine peel in the beer in the first place, so maybe I was cheating too.

So the question is, when does a flavour ingredient in beer become 'cheating'? Belgian witbier is customarily spiced with coriander and dried orange peel, so we all accept that. Does the point where the ingredient is added make a difference to your perception of it being acceptable? Do you like a little shot of espresso in your stout? Is hibiscus flower an interesting addition, or annoying frippery? If hops make a beer grapefruity, why not just add grapefruit juice? Barrel-ageing is becoming an accepted practice, so why not just add a shot of whisk(e)y to the beer at bottling?

Or do you not care a jot, and think as long as it tastes good, why would anyone care?

.