Listen to their beer talk

by Ray Daniels

Basic Warning: The item you are about to read contains flattering remarks about beers made by Anheuser-Busch. Some people hold an unshakable belief that world- class, flavorful beer cannot be made by a large brewer. Others hate A-B for their marketing and PR tactics. If you are one of these people, be prepared to suffer in silence as you read and to hold your tongue afterwards. This article is about brewing skill and beer flavor, nothing else. The author fully intends to ignore any and all narrow-minded bellyaching about peripheral issues.

Advanced Warning: While researching this article, the author received from Anheuser-Busch complimentary travel, accommodations, food, drink and general camaraderie with his fellow beer writers. If you think this compromises objectivity, you may be right. If you think that beer writing pays enough for anyone to bring you this kind of information without brewer support then your perception of the beer world is twisted like some M.C. Escher block print. Either that or Mad Cow disease has finally become manifest in America. In either case, you need to have a beer, read the piece and then decide for yourself what you actually think. Jumps to conclusion, knee jerk reactions and other un-pondered perspectives need not apply.

Few things are more pathetic than a group of beer geeks giddy from power-tasting a stash of experimental beers trotted out by a world-class brewer. They grin. They giggle. They grab for leftovers.

Beer writers come in many shapes and sizes -- and many shades of expertise. But they all have a taste for great beer and a nose for great news. On this day, it's a double whammie.

So it was that giddiness ensued in the small Idaho town of Coeur d'Alene one Wednesday in August. While golf courses and para-sailing beckoned just outside the hotel, a platoon of beer writers filled their snoots with noble hops and tickled their tongues with rich malt-hued tones of masterfully crafted beers.

Marzens and pale ales came by the handful. For punctuation they threw in IPA, scotch ale, stout and speciality beers. For torture, they talked about a barley wine: "Brewed, but not ready to drink." Blissful beer-induced euphoria ensued.

The boys from St. Louis put on quite a show. Like good brewers everywhere, they didn't shout or brag. They didn't show off fancy artwork or labels. They didn't distribute their resumes or crow about awards. They just served their beer and let it do the talking for them.

And talk it did.

My favorite among the 20 beers they served us was the India Pale Ale. You have to understand where I am coming from on this: I'm an admitted hop head and something of an IPA fanatic. While there is never a time when my home is out of beer, if I'm out of IPA, it's time to make a trip to the store.

The A-B IPA expressed hops, hops and more hops at every phase of the sensory encounter. Big citrus/grapefruit nose. Huge hop flavor throughout the palate: mostly citrus, but also a fleeting flowery note. In short, it was a great beer -- one that I could easily substitute for the Anchor Liberty Ale that is always near the top of my favorites list.

While most craft brewers can only guess at the actual IBUs in their beers, A-B measures them at many steps during the process. This IPA had 98 IBUs in the wort prior to fermentation and a wonderful 70 IBUs in the finished product. The hops used in this 6.3% ABV beer included Columbus and Centennial -- both of which are similar to Cascade. Dry-hopping was done at a rate of 0.8 pound per barrel with a 50/50 mix of Columbus and Crystal. Crystal is derived from Hallertau, so this explains the flowery hop note.

By all measures, this beer reflects the current American beer geek's understanding of the India pale ale style. With any luck, you'll be able to purchase this beer some day. For now however, it is just an experimental beer -- one of many that may never see the light of day, no matter how sublime.

A-B has already introduced a number of "craft" beers using two brand banners: American Originals and Michelob. The bottled versions are available in the Northwest, with draft versions of the Michelob products available nationwide. One or two additional products have only a very limited regional distribution at present, some under alternative brand names such as Pacific Ridge.

Bearing names like "Michelob Hefeweizen" and "American Originals Black & Tan" the new brands show how A-B has already begun to close the gap between their traditional rice-fed brands and the flavorful craft beers that have taken the country by storm during the past ten years.

Only one or two of the currently marketed A-B specialty beers might be mistaken for classic examples of the styles they represent. Still, they are good beers. Worth trying when you get a chance and worth buying whenever you are faced with a dirth of tasty options.

These beers are not necessarily intended to grab the attention of full-time craft beer drinkers. A-B bought into Red Hook and had signed a letter of intent Widmer to address that segment of the market. Instead, these new beers should appeal to those who drink some craft beer while filling in with mass brands for the rest of their consumption. These split- camp beer drinkers account for the lion's share (77 percent) of all craft beer sales according to A-B's market research. And that kind of market potential is no doubt what A-B wants to see when they throw their weight behind a new brand introduction.

Despite this middle-of-the-road marketing focus, the brewers in charge of product development have been tasked with completing a catalog of classic style recipes -- and they are having fun doing it.

The Specialty Brewing Group's lead brewmaster is Mitch Steele. Steele is a veteran of the craft beer wars who brewed at the San Andreas Brewing Company in California for a number of years before joining A-B. Steele still homebrews, but much of his experimentation has been carried out at A-B's pilot brewery in St. Louis.

Dubbed the Research Pilot Brewery, or RPB, this 10-level, 10 barrel zymurgist's playground offers nearly every brewing and processing option that a brewer could want for the production of lagers and ales. In the hands of a knowledgeable brewer, it offers all the flexibility of homebrewing with all the control of multi-million dollar industrial technology.

Of course, most of the time it is used for brewing Budweiser. Eight different batches of Budweiser each made with a different lot of malt. Ten different batches each made using a single variety of hop. A new lot of rice, a new culture of yeast. Dozens of strange manifestations of Bud, each destined for little more than internal taste panel review.

But there are other tests too. Five batches with different maltsters' chocolate malt -- or roast barley or crystal malt. Dry hopping trials. Ale yeast evaluations.

While many of these tests have nothing to do with Budweiser, they have everything to do with the new beers that are beginning to issue from America's biggest brewer.

Through a combination of test brews and flavor panel tasting on current commercial craft and imported brews, A-B has collected an incredible catalog of data about craft beer and its ingredients. For brewers, this represents an fantastic resource -- the functional equivalent of navigating with a map rather than wandering aimlessly until you find what you are after.

It's no surprise then that so many of the test beers are tasty. Still, research brewing shares some things in common with homebrewing: occasional missed parameters, funky ferments and overdone effects.

For example, Steele served us a trio of Marzen beers whose actual IBU levels ranged from 26 to 32 when the goal had been 20 to 25. Everyone agreed with his assessment that they were too bitter for the style. Still, we enjoyed tasting them as each had been made with a different hop variety.

Another near miss was the nut brown ale. Nearly opaque, it looked more like a robust porter than a brown ale. It displayed a pleasant toasted note in the aroma, but the palate was ponderously chewy with unbalanced molasses and licorice notes.

Two upcoming seasonal beers seemed closer to the mark. The first was Michelob Maple Brown, set for release Sept. 29. It displayed a big maple flavor achieved through the use of both New England maple syrup and natural maple flavor. The second was the Spiced Winter Ale, an opaque black brew with an appealing spiciness and nice malt balance.

After plying the writers with beer for nearly two hours, the A-B folk asked us to indicate the three beers we most wanted them to bring to market. You can probably guess that my first vote went to the IPA. My second vote went to a nice dry stout: it showed a big roasty aroma that followed through with a dry, light bodied palate. A draft Guinness clone if there ever was one.

For my third beer, I tipped my hat to the multi-grain lager we sampled. This was an unfiltered product that still displayed the sulfury-yeasty nose of a freshly lagered beer. The flavor profile displayed a complex grain character without being astringent. In addition to pale and caramel malt, this recipe included wheat malt, rye, flaked barley, rice (of course), corn and flaked oats. The resulting brew was interesting and would make a nice contrast to the flavors offered by my first two selections.

Of course, A-B's distributors already handle more than 40 different brands. Thus each new product is viewed with some trepidation by the distributors and a proportionate amount of caution by their handlers in St. Louis. While many outsiders view A-B's field muscle as an irresistible force, the inertia of their system is not easily shifted toward the support of new, and in most cases radically different, products.

Clearly, the men and machines of Bud land can produce outstanding craft brews. But their organization and image are built around beers of a different type. Over the next few years, that established image will ride piggy-back on the new beers-of- flavor as they greet consumers in bars and liquor stores across the country. What's riding in the balance is a judgment about whether the King of Beers can also be the king of craft-brew-type flavor.