B&W: Blaze & ban make July a bummer

Black & White, an independent weekly newspaper in Birmingham, notes that July stunk for Alabama beer lovers who like their stuff brewed close to home. The story, published in the paper's Aug. 9 edition, cites the July 5 fire that destroyed Huntsville's Olde Towne Brewing Co., and the disappearance of Sweetwater IPA from store shelves in the state. Sweetwater changed its recipe for the IPA after Georgia raised it alcohol-by-volume limit from the 6-percent cap in 2005, according to the story. They kept distributing in Alabama, somehow flying under the radar in a state where the 6-percent rule was still in force. Someone snitched, though, and the state's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board brought down the hammer. So who was the snitch? Sweetwater's PR guy Steve Farris told the paper:

“I don’t think that it was just a consumer sitting at home saying, ‘Hey, I drank two of these and I feel funny.’”

Sweet, No. 2

Had ribs tonight with the Mrs. and a friend at Cooter Brown's Rib Shack, and was thrilled to see Sweetwater 420 joining that Atlanta brewery's Blue on the tap row. I had long wondered how Sweetwater's signature ale would pair with the Jacksonville joint's staple dish. (My former favorite to pair with their spicy smoked ribs was Bass, but it's been temporarily removed after a distributor shuffle for the venerable British brew) The answer to my question: Beautifully.

Again, I'm happy to see this great regional brewer popping up in our neck of the woods (see my post below). I was even more pleased to see the bartender fill two pitchers with Blue for a thirsty table, but a gentleman at the table next to us ordered a big jar of the 420. Not only is Sweetwater here, their secret's out, too.

Have you seen Sweetwater anywhere else around town? Or is there another unusual brew that's popped up recently as you quaffed a few?

A little help

Olde Towne Brewing Co. is getting a little help from its friends. The brewery, destroyed by fire July 5 (as discussed in this week's column, below), will be the focus of a benefit concert Aug. 16. The event is being organized by Free The Hops, a group of Alabama beer fans who are working to get the state's laws changed to allow higher-quality brews here. The Olde Towne Revival (info at www.oldetownerevival.com) will feature live music , raffles and , naturally, beer. It's at Crossroads in Huntsville.

Olde Towne looking for new home

Here's this week's column.

Pitcher This: Olde Towne looking for new home

08-01-2007

An entire industry nearly vanished from the state of Alabama last month.

The state’s only commercial brewery, Huntsville’s Olde Towne Brewing Co., was destroyed by fire July 5.

Despite the name, Olde Towne’s not been around all that long. And despite the fire, founder and brewmaster Don Alan Hankins says the brewery will be back.

When Olde Towne opened in 2004, the microbrewer became the state’s only commercial beer bottling operation. The fire came just as the company was starting to taste success.

“We had just started to turn the corner,” Hankins said recently from the temporary office where he’s spent the last month pressing insurance claims and scouting property for a new brewery.

Olde Towne’s profile was growing to the point where Alabama beer lovers made a point to look for its products. The company brews a modest range of styles, including a pale ale and an amber that were available in Calhoun County. The amber is the biggest seller, according to Hankins, its “not too malty, not too bitter” flavor appealing to a broad range of tastes.

Hankins’s favorite is Olde Towne’s hefeweizen, the German style of unfiltered wheat beer.

“I’d put our hefeweizen up against anybody’s” he said.

If it’s not already, all the Olde Towne that was brewed by July 5 soon will be gone from store shelves. The company has identified a few sites around Huntsville and Madison County that might become its new home. Hankins hopes to close on one soon and be brewing again by December.

Until then, the only way to get Olde Towne in drinkers’ hands would be contract brewing – turning the recipe and a big chunk of revenue – over to a larger brewery. The company’s not decided yet whether to do it; while it would keep the brand in front of customers, it wouldn’t help financially.

“Contract brewing for us is not a money-making venture,” he said.

His tenure at Olde Towne isn’t the first time Hankins has worked for Alabama’s only brewer.

After graduating from the University of Alabama with a business degree and learning to hate sitting at a desk, he turned a hobby into a profession. He’d been a homebrewer since his youth and college days, and decided to hone his skills at a brewing school in London.

When he returned to the States, he went to work for Birmingham Brewing Co., then the state’s only beer bottler. By the time it closed in the late 1990s, Hankins was gone, working for a company opening a chain of brewpubs around the Southeast. The he got out of the beer business to sell medical implants. But eventually the craft lured him back. He moved back to his native Huntsville, hatched a plan and met his business partner Howard Miller. They opened Olde Towne in 2004.

Now he’ll get to open it again this December, hopefully picking up right where the company left off.

“It was really catching on, he said. “I never knew how many people knew about the brewery until this happened.”

While I was out

Faithful readers may have noticed I skipped a week in the column's publication schedule earlier this month. I had a good excuse: I was on vacation ... drinking beer. Well, I didn't drink the entire time. I attended a family reunion in upstate New York. Since there's a brewer in the family who happens to run a brewpub & brewery near where the reunion was held, it was proper to have a pint. Or two. Or three.

I don't feel there's a professional conflict of interest in telling you about my second cousin's business. For one thing, few of my readers in Alabama are likely to trek to New York state to try his stuff. And for another, while I know who he is, I don't think Peter knows who I am, and I wouldn't expect him too. It's a big family and I'd guess he's not as interested in newspapers as I am in beer.

Ellicottville Brewing Co. is the place, and they make some tasty stuff. One of the most interesting offerings is their blueberry. It's got a lot more heft to it than the other blueberry I'm familiar with, Sweetwater Blue. Order EBC Blueberry off the tap in any local establishment, and it comes with a heap of blueberries in the bottom of the glass. You can probably just make them out in my glass in the photo at right. I'm not ordinarily a proponent of actual fruit in beer, but this was nice. Gave me something sweet to chew on while I waited for the next pint. Or two. Or three.

Sweet

The Vault Deli & Pub, now open on Jacksonville's historic Public Square (see Matt Kasper's story from Friday's Star) is the latest Calhoun County establishment to offer selections from Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing Co. I was happy to see their 420 Extra Pale Ale on tap when I first ventured in a week ago. I've now had Sweetwater beers from the tap at Mellow Mushroom in Oxford (420 & Blue), Cooter Brown's Rib Shack in Jacksonville (Blue) and seen it advertised at Milestone Mill in Anniston (Blue). It's great to see this nearby microbrewer starting to make inroads here.

The Vault appears to have made a commitment to offering one of the best quality beer selections in the area. In addition to the Sweetwater, I saw taps for Guinness, Newcastle and Coors' Blue Moon (plus the obligatory Bud Light). The bottle menu includes a good selection of micros and and imports. For Jacksonville, that's pretty good. Here's a toast to a new business that caters to good taste.

Raising a glass

Since we're going digital as much as we can here at The Anniston Star, and since I don't have room for all I want to say about beer in my twice-monthly column, Pitcher This, I figure a blog is the natural way to provide my readers all the beer news they can stomach, with no last call.

It's also a way for you readers to fire back at me. Got your own thoughts on a brew I've mentioned? Think I've had a few too many after reading my thoughts on your favorite ale? Add your own comments after any of my posts. And feel free to e-mail at bcunningham@annistonstar.com, anytime.

For starters, here's my most recent column, published on Independence Day, about the Founding Fathers' love of a good pint. Cheers!

Pitcher This: Red, white and brew

Published: July 4, 2007

It is illustrative of the depths of genius possessed by the founders of our great republic to know that many of those great men thought as much about what they drank as they did about the foundations of government. Now to be fair, not everyone who signed the Declaration of Independence was a master brewer. But the man who wrote it certainly knew more than a little about that "pursuit of happiness," as did many of his compatriots.

Stanley Baron's 1962 book Brewed in America: A History of Beer and Ale in the United States contains exhaustive chapters on the founders and their relationship with beer. It's deeper than you might expect.

Thomas Jefferson, for instance, after penning the words that formed our nation, then serving as its president and retiring to his estate, Monticello, turned his mind to establishing a stronger domestic brewing industry.

Baron details Jefferson's dealings with Captain Joseph Miller, who helped him start a brewery using native malted corn.

Jefferson's aim in brewing beer, Baron says, was to wean Americans off the hard stuff. "I wish to see this beverage [beer] become common," Jefferson wrote to a friend, "instead of the whiskey which kills one third of our citizens and ruins their families."

George Washington had a thing for beer, too, according to Baron. In addition to fighting for a government that took no orders from Britain, he didn't want any porter coming over the Atlantic.

"We have already been too long subject to British prejudices," Washington wrote the Marquis de Lafayette in 1789. "I use no porter or cheese in my family, but such as is made in America."

The first president apparently was fond of porter - a dark brown ale - produced in Philadelphia, the country's first capital.

Another founder, Benjamin Franklin, often is credited with a famous quote calling beer a divine gift. "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

As fun as it is to imagine raising a pint with Franklin - in my estimation the coolest founder by far - it turns out he never said it; or at lest he wasn't talking about beer.

The quote comes from a letter, written in French, by Franklin to an abbot, in 1779, during his time as ambassador to France. Thanks to TheFranklinPapers.org, a digital archive provided by The American Philosophical Society and Yale University, I've read them myself. And thanks to Google's online translation service, I've understood them:

"Here is water which falls from the skies on our vineyards; there, it enters the roots of the vines to be changed into wine; constant proof that God likes us, and that he likes to see us happy."

So Franklin probably preferred wine to beer. Well, he also wanted the wild turkey to be our national bird in place of the bald eagle.

There's no accounting for taste, they say.