Stan Hieronymus
Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery sounds curiously like a Belgian-born brewer when he describes Brooklyn Local 1, the first bottle-conditioned beer that Brooklyn will package in 750 ml bottles finished with a cork and wire closure. Local 1 should be available by early March.
He says it has some of the same character as a tripel, but it’s not a tripel. A little like a strong golden ale, but not one. You might say it reminds you of a saison, but don’t call it a super saison.
By the way, it’s brewed with first-pressing raw sugar from the island of Mauritius and fermented with a yeast from Belgium. “And it’s rather hoppy,” Oliver said.
But the style, what’s the style? “It’s rather hard to put your finger on,” said Oliver, a man who generally appreciates the value of identifying style when it comes to beer education. “It is pretty much its own self.”
Somewhere in Belgium a brewer is smiling when he reads this. Belgians would rather not hear American-brewed beers described as Belgian, or even Belgian-style. Some of that is practical business sense, some of it national pride and some of it just plain aversion to sticking beers in style categories.
They wouldn’t be happy stepping into a well-stocked beer store these days, looking over the draft list at a taproom or perhaps visiting a brewpub. Hot a year ago, beers labeled Belgian are even hotter this year. Those beers are as likely to be brewed in America as Belgium, and many consumers are seeking them out for just that reason.
“Customers know the Belgian parameters and they figure the Belgians are more likely to stick to them,” said Dan Ratti, owner of Oak Tree Discount Wines & Spirits in South Plainfield, NJ. “Americans have the free rein to do what they want. When the Belgians do something different, like (Urthel) Hop-It then they (consumers) expect it will be more Americanized.”
Many micros have added Belgian-inspired beers as a seasonal, waiting to decide if they earn a spot in the regular lineup. “They make good line extensions because sometimes they may sell out fast,” Ratti said, “but if they don’t then it has a longer shelf life (because of higher alcohol levels).”
As a “destination” store Oak Tree attracts customers looking for the newest beers (“The diehards know before us.”) but not buying just those. Ratti sees them going back to beers already well established.
“Ommegang gets stronger every year,” he said. Struggling to keep up with demand as it adds capacity, Brewery Ommegang didn’t ship anything new in bottles in 2006. Allagash Brewing, on the other hand, continued to add to its barrel-aged line in 750ml bottles, most of them selling between $10 and $20.
Customers aren’t rushing back to buy a second or third bottle of everything called “extreme” and selling for double-digits — Belgian-influenced or otherwise — but Ratti doesn’t think sticker shock has been a problem for beers such as Allagash’s Interlude, Odyssey and Mussette. “They know Allagash makes great stuff,” he said. “They know what it’s worth.”
The Belgian-style beers that Ray Daniels of the Brewers Association refers to as craft beer’s “Third Wave” remain hot not so much because of new entries but because of established beers. So an Oak Tree customer might wheel out a cart with a beer that’s been around for a while, such as Weyerbacher Quad, the relatively new Sly Fox Saison and something even newer — Brother Thelonious from North Coast Brewing.
Of course what they’re also talking about is the beers they can’t put in the cart. At the top of the list for anybody east of Chicago are the beers from New Belgium Brewing in Colorado. New Belgium will finish installing a new bottling line this year and eventually double capacity, but plans to add distribution only in Iowa and Minnesota in 2007.
In contrast, 2006 newcomer Port Brewing has already sent its Lost Abbey beers east from San Marcos, CA. Saveur magazine recently singled out Lost Abbey for its Saveur 100, praising Lost & Found Abbey, Red Barn and Cuvee de Tomme. The beers are available in Massachusetts and the Philadelphia area (as well as California and Arizona).
Brewing director Tomme Arthur said Port could move into the Pacific Northwest and Colorado later this year.
And then there’s the fastest growing brand with “Belgian” on the label — Blue Moon White from Coors. The continued surge in sales — Coors hasn’t released figures but speculation is that production surpassed 400,000 barrels in 2006 — led Coors to add Blue Moon Winter Ale and plan for Blue Moon Spring Ale, an “amber wheat ale with kaffir lime leaves and lime peel.”
At Brooklyn, rolling out Local 1 was not simply a matter of Oliver writing another recipe. The beer itself is based on Fortitude, a draft-only special. He spent more than a year picking the right bottling line, getting it in place, designing a separate temperature-controlled warm room and running test batches. The whole project cost more than $300,000.
It’s the largest “still fill” bottler in the country, meaning sugar and yeast are added to beer that has virtually no C02 in it, then the beer is naturally carbonated in a warm room. Even in Belgium, most breweries add some C02 at bottling and before warm conditioning.
“We asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to do it old school or do it the modern way?’” Oliver said. “In the end, we thought we got more complexity (this way).”
With the release of Local 1 still two months away he didn’t like hearing questions about what the next beer bottled the same way might be.
“Right now there are no plans,” he said. “I tell people that every time I’m asked the question that I will delay the second beer by two months. I want to do this one thing for a year.”
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