When I started working on finally getting Mystery off the ground, I really wanted to try to keep things fairly transparent. I wanted to be able to share the startup experience with people via Top Fermented, because it’s really living every homebrewer’s dream.

I’ve been having a difficult time doing that, because when progress is slow or when there doesn’t feel like there’s progress you don’t really feel like you want to share that. One of my least favorite questions that people ask me on almost a daily basis is, “So, how’s the brewery coming along?” The reason that I hate it is that it’s such a complicated answer. Nobody wants to sit down and hear me pontificate for 45 minutes in response to that question, so my normal answer is, “Good!” and then they invariably ask, “So, when can I buy beer?” Which is just as complicated a question. It’s hard to share that nothing is moving, or that you’re waiting for phone calls or that you’re frustrated with a lack of response from a bank or something. You want to share good news and not seem like you’re complaining or – worse – like you don’t know what you’re doing. But I’m in a place now where I feel like there’s been a significant amount of movement and I’m happy to throw the curtain back a little.

So, now, here’s the story behind the startup of Mystery Brewing Company … so far. This is going to be a long post. This is by no means a “how to start a brewery” post. Hell, in a lot of ways it’s a “how not to start a brewery” post. But I think it’s interesting and worth reading.

So, let me start from the start and bring you to present day:

Like a lot of homebrewers I’ve entertained the thought of opening my own brewery for some time. I started brewing about 11 years ago, now. As I’ve said in many forums: my mother bought me a kit for Christmas one year. It was one of those crappy 2 bucket systems with an IPA kit. You know, a fermentation bucket and a bottling bucket that, if you’re some sort of wizard, you could make some decent beer with. I did not do that. I made some crappy – nay – intensely crappy beer with it. But a few reasonable successes kept me going until I could upgrade my equipment here and there and started having more good beer than bad. I’ve never won an award for homebrew. In fact, more often than not, homebrewing competitions kinda irritate me. They’re incredibly subjective, the feedback sucks more often than not (and if I’ve ever judged your homebrew, I’ll tell you now: my feedback sucks – sorry) and there are only a few that I’ve been involved in that I felt were really well organized. So, the decision to start a brewery wasn’t because I was rolling in gold medals or anything like that. The decision to start a brewery was really based on the fact that I find making beer to be fun – way more fun than anything else that I’ve spent days and days and days of my life focused on.

I think somewhere on some “about” page somewhere I talk about the heady mix of art and science that is making beer and I’ll stick to that. There’s this one thing that I’ve decided will live on everything that Mystery puts out:

Making a great recipe is an art. Making it over and over again for a consistently great product is a science, and the blend of those things are what I like about the brewing industry. My entire background is balanced between art – I have a degree in performance art – and science – I’ve been working in IT and programming, much of it in a Medical School, for the past 15 years. Brewing is the perfect synthesis of both sides of my personality. Plus, I get to be a nerd about business and finance and be my own boss. It’s a win-win-win-win-win.

So, anyway, that’s the why. I think it gives you a little bit of a background about where I’m coming from. Now, let’s get into the how and what.

As you might know, when I launched, I decided to use the website Kickstarter as a basis for seed money. If you want, you can watch the original video and read the whole idea there, but I’ll give you the quick and dirty, so I don’t have to think about somebody watching it again (I’ve only ever watched it once, I find it unbearably embarrassing to watch myself on video). After going to the Craft Brewers Conference for the second time in a row – the first as a beer-interested blogger, the second as a panelist talking about social media – I came home feeling ridiculously inspired (it’s hard not to at the CBC) and decided, with my lovely wife, that it was time to launch the brewery. At the time, my wife was still in graduate school so the idea was to launch using Alternate Proprietorship (AP) to create a mobile brand.

If you’re not familiar with AP, it’s sort of like contract brewing – you’re using somebody else’s facility to make your beer, but instead of hiring somebody to do this work for you, you do it all yourself. You are in legal possession of the brewery for, say, a day. You are technically renting the entire place and it is your brewery for that time span. It was originally designed for the wine industry. Since wine spends so much time aging, there is a lot of time in any given winery where equipment is not in use. AP allows multiple wineries to use the same space for startup, and allows a winery to capitalize its assets a little easier, since they can get money off of the equipment even while they are not using it themselves. The trick is that in order to be licensed for AP, you need to show the TTB a business plan that states that you are working toward creating a brick-and-mortar brewery at some point. Incidentally, the two most well-known AP breweries out there that you might have heard of: Pretty Things and Stillwater.

So, that was my plan. Knowing that my wife would soon be graduating with her Ph.D. and not knowing where the job market would lead her, I decided that starting an AP brewery would be a really interesting project. If it launched and did well, I could probably move myself and keep the brand with me while still staying in my current market because, at absolute worst, I could always make the beer somewhere else and ship the beer down OR I could just go back to my original location on a regular basis and brew some more. I spoke to a bunch of breweries in North Carolina and got a fairly good response that, yes, we might be able to make room for you, get everything put together and let’s talk. That’s when the Kickstarter campaign launched.

As you can see from the little widget above, the Kickstarter campaign was successful. Asking for $40,000 was a bit of a gamble – it was a pretty high goal for Kickstarter at the time (still is one of the higher ones) and there had not, at that point, ever been a brewery successfully funded on Kickstarter. A few had tried before me. One had failed well short of its goal and one never even got a pledge. Not one. I think that a lot of my success with Kickstarter was just being in the right place at the right time. I was able to market myself on the crest of a wave of social media interest in the craft beer world, and it worked really well to spread the idea wide. On top of that, I have incredibly generous friends and family who were able to help boost my dream to the edge of reality. That said, I personally know less than half of the 243 people that backed me (though I’ve met many since then, and they’re really awesome people).

On top of the Kickstarter campaign, as I was working up a business plan, it became increasingly obvious to me that $40,000 was not going to be anywhere near enough to start an AP brewery, or even a contract brand. $40,000 will probably buy kegs and a cold room. So, I also worked at putting together some larger investors. This is where generous friends really come in to play. I’ve been lucky enough to assemble a team of five investors that I’ve known for years. They are excellent friends from college, old roommates, and drinking buddies who, for some reason, believe in me enough to help me see this through to reality and allow me to retain creative control over the company. In return, I have given them one of the best pickup lines ever (“I own a brewery”) and will hopefully give them a return investment that will be worthy of their trust in my vision.

The Kickstarter campaign ended in July, and the investors were all wrapped up in September 2010. We had an Operating Agreement in place, we had a company formed, we had money in the bank, recipes, and a plan. I gave notice at my job so that I could focus on getting the company off the ground. That happened at the end of October 2010. The only thing we needed, then, was a brewery to brew in. And so I started going back to people that I had conversations with and that’s when I hit my first hurdle:

The craft beer industry in North Carolina is doing great. At first blush this doesn’t seem like it should be a problem, but that’s when I discovered the problem with AP in the brewing industry: it really requires a brewery that isn’t doing well or, at the very least, is not growing. By the time I put everything together, every brewery in North Carolina was operating at capacity. It stopped me in my tracks.

In retrospect, I really should have seen that coming. It seems like such an obvious problem and I can’t figure out why I didn’t realize that it would happen. We switched gears quickly and started looking at doing just regular contracting – the idea being that if I could just get some beer on the market and start making a little bit of income it would give me time to get AP going. Or, that by getting myself on the market and showing proof of concept, it might be easier to get a larger chunk of money together to get a brick-and-mortar brewery going. So, in November 2010, we officially switched gears to getting contracting off of the ground.

Let me take a moment with an aside to tell you that I’m not really a big fan of contract brewing. I’m a little bit of a control freak, and I want to be able to be in charge of every aspect of my product and company. To basically send my recipe off to someone else and trust them to make it right is a pretty big leap for me. I’ve always been a believer in “if you want something done right, do it yourself.” It’s probably the only-child in me. But, I wanted my company to work, so I started looking at contracting.

Here’s the thing about contracting: Most places that contract aren’t really interested in doing a lot of really creative brewing. Most of my recipes involve rye, unmalted grains, or some sort of weird spice addition or other. I really like balancing flavors from all different parts of agriculture, and I think I make some really great beer. But go to a contract brewery and say, “I want you to make a beer with 60% rye in the grist and throw 15 lbs. of hibiscus flowers in” and most of them reply with something along the lines of, “You can use this pilsener malt, or you can go home.” The really big contractors require you to use the ingredients that they have on hand. I have my own proprietary yeast for my saison and a lot of people don’t want to even consider that. The smaller ones will do it, but want to charge you extra for weird shit, even if you’re willing to provide said weird shit. But in the end I ran into a more familiar problem:

All the contractors I contacted were full. I actually came within a few hours of signing contracts with two separate brewpubs in different parts of the country that had some extra space to rent and interest in helping me do the wacky stuff, but both contacted me at the last minute to say that they couldn’t do it because they just closed on distribution contracts that would – you guessed it – require them to operate at capacity. The only contract brewery that I was able to get solid response with was Lion Brewery who does contract brews for a bunch of people. You can use their ingredients… all 6 of them, or something like that. You can use their lager yeast or their ale yeast, and the minimum order is 300 bbls. Basically, it meant that if I contracted with them not only would I have to throw out all of my recipes, but I would be stuck with 600 1/2 bbl kegs of this beer to move before it went stale. There was no way it would work.

It took a few months of getting turned down by contractors to get me to decide that starting a regular brick-and-mortar brewery would probably be the best way to go. I spoke with my investors about it and gambled a little that my wife would be able to find a job somewhere nearby post-Ph.D. (She didn’t – so begins The Commute.) and made the plunge. The business plan officially changed over around January of 2011 and I started working on securing enough money to get a small brewery off the ground. I got my first quotes on equipment in and applied for an SBA loan to get everything going.

Thus starts the section in which I will, against everything I would like to do, not name any names.

What happened from January through April of 2011 is that I got dicked around, and dicked around hard, by a financial organization that will remain anonymous, but about whom I have written long and detailed letters to the North Carolina Attorney General. The long and the short of it is that after months of receiving nary a phone call or e-mail response back from anyone after literally hundreds of e-mails and messages, and not wanting to start down another path for fear of mucking up the first one, I finally got turned down for my loan (in reality, I am positive that they never once even looked at the paperwork). During those months I was pushing in every way I could. I kept moving marketing forward, I was paying rent, me, utilities, supplies, test batches, and everything. Basically, I was shedding money and seeing no possibility of income and for a while I was really thinking that I was going to be looking at returning money to my investors, taking a huge personal loss, apologizing to everybody that funded me via Kickstarter and calling it a year.

In May, though, things started to turn around a little. First, enter the awesome North Carolina craft beer industry. In my time working the the Brewer’s Guild, I’ve ended up becoming good friends with people at a few local breweries. Namely, LoneRider, Fullsteam, and Natty Greene’s, among others (I really, REALLY, like the Roth brothers). After lamenting about my problems to them over a few beers, they graciously put me in touch with a lot of their personal contacts and, wonderfully, they put me back on the road to bank funding. Soon afterwards, I found some good deals on used kegs and a used cold room, and I started to feel the tepid breeze of progress again buffet my sails. I can’t say enough about how amazingly generous and helpful the local industry has been to help a potential competitor open its doors. It’s astounding and humbling to have peers like this.

At around the same time, I started looking for new space around Hillsborough, NC where I wanted the brewery to be based. The space that I had been renting was perfect as a storage space when I was going to be doing AP or contracting, but it was small and required an enormous amount of upfit to make it a reasonable space for a real brewery. On a whim one day, I walked into the renovated Eno River Cotton Mill (now the Hillsborough Business Center) and found.. well.. I found a brewery.

I found a space three times larger than the one I was currently in. It already had trench drains, a loading dock, office space, ventilation, and a 3″ water main. Above all, it had a landlord who was excited at the prospect of a brewery moving in. We have been working together for a few months to make it work and I am happy to say that I signed a lease to move in this week. He’s giving me a great deal and in return, I’m hoping to help revitalize that corner of Hillsborough and make his business center a new center of commerce.

Within the past week, I have received great news from the bank that my good friends in the NC beer industry put me in touch with, and I hope to sign paperwork next week that will make it all a reality. I have met with manufacturers to talk about custom-building a brewhouse for me. I will be moving in to my final space as soon as the previous tenant finishes getting all of their stuff out, and I feel generally more positive about the state of Mystery Brewing Company than I have since I originally put the project together last year. I feel, with confidence, that I will be operating this year.

There’s still a long way to go. the equipment has to be built, shipped, and installed, there’s a lot of TTB licensing and processing to get through and that can take months (and months and months), and there will probably be another one of these book-length posts explicating all of the things that have been happening along the way, but it’s all moving forward.

So that’s “how the brewery is going.” It’s a long and complicated path to startup, but in the end I feel like it’s been worth it as everything has started to come together, and I can finally say that I look forward to sharing a pint of Mystery Brewing Company’s beer with you soon.

À votre santé,
Erik

I will admit to having the same thought while I was brewing. It was a novelty idea: “I want to have a dark beer that tastes like an IPA.”

For me, it was about trying to make something dark where the bitterness wasn’t contributed by the roasted grain, but by the hops. A nice malt backbone, a nice dark kind of chocolaty flavor, but a nice hop profile as well. It was a challenge to make something with a unique, balanced flavor from two essentially distinct flavor profiles and have them meet somewhere in a balanced, drinkable, middle ground.

I brewed it up for Fullsteam’s Backyard Brew Fest, and it got great reviews.

Later, I found out that I had actually been brewing in, what people are saying, is a new style. “Cascadian Dark” they call it. In fact, there are already proposed style guidelines for it. Here, let me show you where that style guidelines surprises, bold emphasis mine:

History: A style that came to prominence on the Northwest Coast of North America in the early 21st Century. Northwest hops play key flavor roles, balanced with malt, roast malts give color and flavor, but body should be reminiscent of an IPA, not heavy like a porter or stout. The style celebrates the hops of the Pacific Northwest, but is commonly brewed in other regions.

Really? That’s a lot of Northwestiness. No offense to ya’ll up in the north-left corner, but this is not only limiting, but a little cocky. You don’t think a Black IPA or an IBA or whatever can’t be made without using hops from the Pacific Northwest? I made mine with Goldings and Fuggles. Should that be a new style, too since I wasn’t celebrating the Pacific Northwest? English Cascadian Dark?

I hear the English Cascades are beautiful this time of year.

And, for the record, let me throw this article out there that puts the origin somewhere around the 1880′s. Also, this article which pegs the idea behind the “style” to Greg Noonan up in Vermont. So, nyeah.

I’ve got a healthy load of snark saved up for the name “Cascadian Dark”, too, but I’ll hold onto that because what all of this really got me thinking was this:

How does a new style come into being these days?

Most of the styles that we recognize have some basis in fairly recent history. Not many of our currently recognized styles go back farther than a few hundred years, and only a very few of them you see are from within the past few decades in which we’ve seen the rise of American Craft Beer: American Pale Ale, American India Pale Ale, American Brown Ale, Dark American Lager, American Wheat, American Stout, American Barleywine. You see a trend here?

In all of these cases, the new style is simply a regional style from elsewhere in the world, but with more hops. It’s very American; not just because of the hops, but because of the multicultural background, co-opting, and re-imagining of the concept.

It’s kind of what we’re seeing going on with Breakfast Stouts, as well, which (I’m told) is defined by the presence of oatmeal and coffee. Someone might have thrown coffee into their Oatmeal Stout because they thought that the flavors would work well together, but once many people start brewing them up at what point does it stop being an Oatmeal Stout with Coffee and start becoming Breakfast Stout? At what point is the critical mass upon which a new style is reached?

Similarly, we’ve got a handful of breweries making Black IPAs. Are they now a presence in the marketplace? Sure. But how many are there? 13? 15? 20? 50? Out of 1500 breweries in the country, is 3% enough to declare a new style? Are we just jumping the gun on this because beer geeks (and especially Americans) tend to be rabid classifiers? Or are we jumping the gun because whoever writes out a definition first has the best possibility of getting that definition followed? I’m looking at you Oregon.

Finally, if someone is jumping the gun and pre-defining style, how does that limit creativity in the evolution of that style? It took decades or longer for some of the styles that we brew to develop into how we recognize them today. Isn’t it a little premature to say that something that’s been marketed for a year or two is a new style? What if it hasn’t finished evolving yet?

I don’t have a good answer.

These questions certainly seem to fly in the face of my previous stance on style guidelines and what they mean for the industry, but I’m not sure they do. Part of me would like to see us hang out with these hybrid styles for a little while to see if they stick around before we rush to put labels on them. Brew them, drink them, enjoy them, and play with them in the creative forum that is the craft beer industry because we label them for posterity. I’m pretty certain people will know what you mean when you say a “Black IPA” for now, the silliness of the name notwithstanding.

What do you think? When is the time to declare a new style vs. a creative trend vs. “I put some new stuff in my beer”?

The sentiment is right, but the quote is wrong. I know it’s popular, and I’m really trying to inform rather than criticize, but:

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. — Ben Franklin

He never said it. I’m sorry. I know that this flies in the face of half of the t-shirts you’re going to walk by at the next beer festival you’re at, and even disagrees with the myriad of posters, signs, banners, inscriptions, murals, and frescoes you’ll see at breweries across the country, but it’s just not right.

What he said is basically the same sentiment, but Ben Franklin, as near as I can tell, wasn’t much of a beer drinker (not that I’m much of a historian). You can go read it for yourself, if you need to, but here’s the correct quote, in full:

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain, which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.

See? No beer. I mean, sure.. you can put “grain” in there instead of “grapes”, “fields” instead of “vineyards” and change “wine” to “beer”, but if you’re really looking for heavenly beer miracles, the wedding at Cana ain’t it. Instead, look for St. Brigid of Ireland who turned her bathwater into beer to nourish a leper colony. Fun, if disgusting.

Here’s another interesting excerpt from Ben Franklin’s autobiography (in fact, one of the only spots in his autobiography that mentions beer at all, thank you Google Books), in which he’s discussing working at a printing house in London:

At my first Admission into this Printing House, I took to working at the Press, imagining I felt a Want of Bodily Exercise I had been us’d to in America, where Presswork is mix’d with Composing. I drank only Water; the other Workmen, near 50 in number, were great Guzzlers of Beer. On occasion I carried up & down Stairs a large Form of Types in each hand, when others carried but one in both Hands. They wonder’d to see from this & several Instances that the water-American as they call’d me was stronger than themsleves who drank strong Beer. We had an Alehouse Boy who attended always in the House to supply the Workmen. My Companion at the Press, drank every day a Pint before Breakfast, a Pint at Breakfast with his Bread and Cheese; a Pint between Breakfast and Dinner, a Pint at Dinner, a Pint in the Afternoon about Six o’Clock, and another when he had done his Day’s-Work. I thought it a detestable Custom.

Not to say that ol’ Ben was a teetotaler by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t get the impression that he was necessarily waxing eloquent about beer in any great length. Given the time that he spent in France, wine certainly seems much more his speed.

So, there. Now you can live in the joy of the sentiment (God provides rain which naturally turns into wonderful fermented beverages for us), without living in ignorance (Ben was a CHUGGAH! It’s all about the Benjamin’s bayy-beeeee!). You’re welcome.

Hey! Happy Oktoberfest! Prost! It started on Saturday. I’m sure you know that.

I’m not here to talk about Oktoberfest, but every year Oktoberfest brings the same thing to mind for me: Reinheitsgebot

If you know me in person, and have talked to me about beer, you have probably heard me rail on about Reinheitsgebot at least once. A little story a friend of mine likes to tell involves me ranting on in the kitchen to him over a beer. My wife enters the room a few minutes into the conversation – barely hears any of it – and says:

“Are you ranting about the Reinheitsgebot, again?”

“Yes, dear.”

Fact is this: I respect what people are trying to get at with the Reinheitsgebot. I do. But sometimes I feel like we have some sort of weird misguided loyalty to it. It’s a trade restriction, for crissakes, not a holy writ.

Here’s a translation of it, taken from brewery.org:

“We hereby proclaim and decree, by Authority of our Province, that henceforth in the Duchy of Bavaria, in the country as well as in the cities and marketplaces, the following rules apply to the sale of beer:

“From Michaelmas to Georgi, the price for one Mass [Bavarian Liter 1,069] or one Kopf [bowl-shaped container for fluids, not quite one Mass], is not to exceed one Pfennig Munich value, and

“From Georgi to Michaelmas, the Mass shall not be sold for more than two Pfennig of the same value, the Kopf not more than three Heller [Heller usually one-half Pfennig].

“If this not be adhered to, the punishment stated below shall be administered.

“Should any person brew, or otherwise have, other beer than March beer, it is not to be sold any higher than one Pfennig per Mass.

“Furthermore, we wish to emphasize that in future in all cities, markets and in the country, the only ingredients used for the brewing of beer must be Barley, Hops and Water. Whosoever knowingly disregards or transgresses upon this ordinance, shall be punished by the Court authorities’ confiscating such barrels of beer, without fail.

“Should, however, an innkeeper in the country, city or markets buy two or three pails of beer (containing 60 Mass) and sell it again to the common peasantry, he alone shall be permitted to charge one Heller more for the Mass of the Kopf, than mentioned above. Furthermore, should there arise a scarcity and subsequent price increase of the barley (also considering that the times of harvest differ, due to location), WE, the Bavarian Duchy, shall have the right to order curtailments for the good of all concerned.”

So, mostly it’s price fixing. It’s “don’t charge more than X amount per Mass.” It’s also a grain restriction. It’s not a law decreeing the all-holy purity of beer, it’s a law saying “don’t use wheat or rye.” You’ll also note that it only applies to “all cities, markets and in the country” the Duchy could make beer out of whatever the hell they wanted. They’re restricting commercial breweries.

Why? Well, probably to stop the price of wheat and rye from going up to keep the cost of making bread reasonable. Fair, right? Okay. Fine. In 1871, when Bavaria joined Germany, they insisted on the Reinheitsgebot as a precondition in order to prevent competition from beers made with a wider range of ingredients. In fact, it was even written into Germany’s beer taxation laws in the 1950s, at first only to lagers, but eventually to all ales as well.

Fortunately, the EU had the wisdom to suspend the Reinheitsgebot, saying that it was unfair for trade (because it is) and that anything allowed in other foods may be allowed in beer. However, beer brewed under Reinheitsgebot is still protected as a “traditional food” which seems a little ridiculous. I’ll get back to that.

As it happens, the British had an Ale Purity law, as well. They outlawed the “doctoring of ale, with hops” because of its “psycho-active properties” in 1484, just a few short years before the Reinheitsgebot was proposed in 1487 (it was put into law in 1516). You don’t see people clamoring to stick by that one, do you? Maybe that’s because hops are such a perfect addition to beer… but you know? A lot of other things are good additions to beer, as well. Imagine a summer without wheat beers. Sad.

Myself? I believe, firmly, that the Reinheitsgebot heralded the rise of the bland commercial crap that currently dominates our marketplace. You see, when Reinheitsgebot was enforced in Germany it put an end to a good chunk of old brewing traditions. I’ve read references of spiced ales and cherry ales, and of course even wheat beers don’t jive under Reinheitsgebot, either. In my imagination, Ye Olde Westerne Germanye has a brewing tradition a lot like that of Belgium (which it borders) until somebody slapped this trade restriction in place.

In fact, the rise of Pilsener is directly related to folks in other places mimicking the brewing traditions of Bavaria – it’s even noted in the company timeline of Plzensky Prazdroj, maker of the most famous Pilsener Urquell.

5 October 1842 First brew of Bavarian type beer, bottom-fermented beer, so-called pale lager.

What they don’t mention there is that this happened after the recruitment of Bavarian brewer Josef Groll, the father of Pilsener, who would have been brewing under the restrictions of the Reinheitsgebot his entire life. Why change a good thing, eh?

Pilsener, we all know, is the cultural precursor to Milwaukee’s Best Light Ice. It’s enough to make a man weep.

So, aside from the Reinheitsgebot being the origin of everything that’s wrong with the world of macrobrewing, what else do I have against it?

It’s old and it’s over. It’s marketing talk, at this point. It reduces beer to three components, one of which is technically incorrect. A lot of people like to say that the Reinheitsgebot restricts beer to being made with water, malt, hops, and yeast. Take a gander up there. No malt, no yeast. Sure, yeah. Technicalities. They say “barley” which is then made into malt, yes. And yeast wouldn’t be isolated as an organism for another 2-300 years. Who cares?

I care.

Fact: water, malt, hops, and yeast are the essential ingredients for making beer. They are simply the most efficient ingredients (unless you apply Science to help convert starches into sugars in another, more artificial, “I’m adding a bucket of unrelated enzymes to my mash” way). MOST beers are made out of water, malt, hops, and yeast. Throwing up some fancy-pants label about how “This FINE beverage is made under the restrictions of the Bavarian Beer Purity Law” seems almost somewhat akin to saying that your beer is “Triple-Hops Brewed” or “Cold Filtered.” What you’re saying applies to many, many, many, MANY beers. Why don’t you tell me what makes your beer different, instead?

Giving weight to the Reinheitsgebot also seems to imply that beers made with adjuncts – like many Belgian beers and Abbey ales, for example – are somehow inferior. In fact, many of those adjunct-laced beers are recognized as some of the finest beers in the world. You’re saying they’re not “pure?” Whoop-dee-doo. They’re awesome. That’s what counts.

Finally, I sometimes feel that the weight of the Reinheitsgebot gives us pause when experimenting with German beer styles. Certainly, Americans have (wonderfully) bastardized wheat beers in almost every way imaginable, but for some reason when we talk about a lot of the traditional German beer styles there seems to be somewhat of an effort to get them as close to their Reinheitsgeboty heritage as possible.

By this point, I think that American Craft Brewers have shown that there’s still a lot of new ground to be covered in beer. Let’s not get tied down to this archaic trade restriction as some sort of arbitrary measure of quality. Let’s let the taste buds do the talking, break out of this 400-year-old box, leave the marketing lingo behind, and put the Reinheitsgebot to bed as a historical curiosity.

A little more history for you today, but this time with a poignant question. Behold this piece from Duke’s Digital Collections:

I don’t know about you, but the first thing I thought of after reading this was (click for a larger image, but I bet you know the ad):

I think all this begs the question: What is the soul of beer?

I’ll be honest. I’ve always been a little irked by the latter ad, here. Hops are not to beer what grapes are to wine, unless the analogy centers around “a thing that grows on a vine that is ultimately in the beverage.”

If you want to think about it as a soul, I think we can safely say that grapes are the soul of wine. They are the primary source of fermentables, the primary source of variability. I don’t think that’s true for beer. Granted, one of the main reasons that the analogy doesn’t work is because beer has a more complicated list of ingredients than wine. But, let’s face it, as much as I don’t really want to agree with Pabst here, the primary source of fermentables and the primary source of variability in beer – if that’s what you want to call its soul – is really malt. (I am really interested to know what Pabst did with their malting that they thought was so exceptionally different.)

Yes, I can absolutely make my pale ale taste widely different with hops. I can go from grassy to piney to citrusy to cat pee. I can accent the malt or I can completely bury it. I can’t, however, make my pale ale into a stout or a kolsch with hops. For that matter, I can’t even make beer without malt – but I can make beer without hops, even if it won’t necessarily taste like what you and I think of as beer. Hops have only been an addition in ales in the past 500 years…. out of 4000 or so. Has it been soulless for most of its existence?

What do you think? What’s the soul of beer?