One good beer deserves another (or three)

A fellow beer-loving colleague came into work yesterday with a nice surprise. When I got my first six-pack of Lazy Magnolia's Southern Pecan Brown Ale last weekend, I picked up some for him too. He's driven as far as Starkville, Miss., looking for their Party Pigs before, so the least I could do was get him some while I was in Birmingham.

He returned the favor with a self-built sampler of beers from New Belgium Brewery. I'd had their famous Fat Tire Amber Ale, of which my colleague is an evangelist. But I'd never seen any of their others. He picked some up on a recent road trip and was kind enough to share. Included was two bottles each of their Abbey, Trippel and 2-Below Winter Ale. I had the Abbey with dinner of baked salmon and Camembert last night, and it was nice. New Belgium says you'll taste fig, caramel and clove. I couldn't help but think of apples (I get that from a lot of ambers, too). I'm looking forward to the others.

The wait is over

We told you here on the blog that Mississippi's Lazy Magnolia Brewing was putting its Southern Pecan Nut Brown Ale into bottles for the first time in December. Well, a shipment made its way to Birmingham the week of Christmas. I ventured out to the Whole Foods grocery there on Saturday, and finally picked up my first six pack.

The packaging is nice, with a simple, classy label and two Southern "characters" featured on the carrier - the guitar-strumming dude you see pictured here, and a buxom blonde caught mid-laugh on the other side.

As for the beer, it's a bit sweeter than I recall from the taps and Party Pigs I've sampled before. Still, it's full-bodied, nicely nutty and very tasty. I look forward to finding it on shelves closer than an hour away, and to tasting more of Lazy Mag's brews from bottles.

Pitcher This Price Check

This post is the permanent home of what I'm calling the Pitcher This Price Check. Most know by now that beer prices are on the rise, thanks to shortages and market changes for hops and malted barely, two of beer's essential ingredients. Brewers, of course, will have to pass on their higher cost to distributors and to you, the drinker. But just how much will you wind up paying?

Brewers have said new prices should be on the shelf by the first of February. We want to document the price shift as it happens, and you can help. Pick your favorite beer (or beers), and if you don't already know the usual price by memory, stop by the store soon and write it down, then revisit over the next few weeks to watch for a change. Share your results with other Pitcher This readers by clicking below to comment on the blog, or just e-mail me what you find at bcunningham@annistonstar.com. I'll post updates whenever I get a few.

Include the brand, the store, the original price and the date you checked it, then the new price and the date you saw it. Format your stuff something like this:

Bubba's Pale Ale 6-pack
Jim Bob's Gas & Grocery in Anniston
$6.71 on Jan. 12
$8.25 on Feb. 2

NYT: To the extreme

The New York Times' Eric Asimov leads another tasting panel in a big feature today on "extreme beers." He defines that as:

"... an all-American genre in which brewers are engaged in a constant game of 'Can you top this?' Whether using an inordinate amount of traditional ingredients like malt or hops, or adding flavorings undreamed of by Old World brewers, American brewers have created a signature style that beer enthusiasts seem both to love and hate."

His panelists started off skeptical of the style, but found some stuff to like in the beers, all of which essentially were super-IPAs. All of them, by the way, are prohibited in Alabama thanks to the 6-percent alcohol-by-volume cap. The only one I've had is Dogfish Head's 90 Minute Imperial IPA. I agree with panelist Florence Fabricant who called it "a very nice beer" in a nifty audio & photo feature that's paired with the story (btw, it wouldn't work in Firefox for me, try IE). There's also a recipe for wok-seared spicy calamari salad that Fabricant says pairs nicely with these big beers.

Today's column

Pitcher This: Price of beer becomes more dear

01-09-2008

Gas is nearing $3 per gallon. Milk's past four bucks now. Health insurance and college tuition keep costing more.

And now it's even getting more expensive to drown your sorrows.

Beer lovers should start bracing for a jump in prices, as a squeeze on beer's two main ingredients — hops and malted barley — works its way from farmers to brewers to distributors to your glass.

A complicated mix of factors — from bad weather in Europe, Australia and the American Northwest to the push for biofuels and the basic economics of farming — is making both hops and barley harder to find. That makes them more expensive for brewers to buy, and consequently pricier for the consumer to pour.

Julia Herz, craft beer marketing director for the Brewers Association, says she has seen brewers paying twice as much for malted barley as in previous years. The price for hops has grown 300 to 400 percent, she says.

That's especially difficult for the craft brewers Herz's group represents. For starters, they are far smaller operations than their mega-brewing cousins such as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors, and don't have the same leverage with suppliers. And the more flavorful beers they produce rely on exactly the ingredients that are getting more expensive.

"The American craft brewer … is likely the hardest hit," Herz said. "To get more flavor you put in more malt and more hops."

Different brewers are dealing with the shortages and price spikes in different ways.

Atlanta-based microbrewer Sweetwater is paying around $9 per pound for the hops it uses in its line of beer, according to Steve Farace, who carries the unlikely title "minister of propaganda." That's up from $3.75 per pound. That, plus twice as much cost for barley, has meant about $500,000 per year in increased production costs.

Sweetwater has grown large enough to sign a two-year contract with its hops supplier, locking in the current price, though it can save money if supply improves. That means the company hasn't had to fool with its recipes. As for the cost, Farace said Sweetwater "will take some of it on the chin," but that buyers will soon see a price increase of around $1 per six pack. That's on top of the roughly $8 the brewery's fans are already paying.

At Hurricane Brewing Co., Mobile's only brewpub, customers will now pay $4 for a pint, up by 50 cents. It buys malt and hops in batches too small for a long-term supply contract to make sense. Head brewer Todd Hicks says the restaurant and brewery will alter its beer lineup and tinker with the recipes to deal with higher costs. Its super-hoppy India pale ale has been replaced with a standard pale ale to stretch the hops the company can afford to buy.

"That way we can keep the price in check. The beer's a little bit lighter, but still full flavored," Hicks said. "We can't make beer if we use up all our ingredients."

What's your beer worth to you?

Tomorrow's column (I'm back on the beer beat after taking most of December off to do my real job ... and take a short vacation) looks at the impending jump in prices for beer, especially craft beer. Brewers are paying triple or more what they used to for hops, double for malt. To stay afloat, they'll have to put some of that on the price tag. I haven't seen much difference yet, but folks I talked to said we should see costlier beer on the shelves by the end of the month or in early February.

Wanna help document the price shift as it happens? Pick your favorite beer, and if you don't already know the usual price by memory, stop by the store soon and write it down, then revisit over the next few weeks to watch for a change. Share your results with other Pitcher This readers by clicking below to comment on the blog, or just e-mail me what you find at bcunningham@annistonstar.com. I'll post roundups whenever I get a few.

Include the brand, the store, the original price and the date you checked it, then the new price and the date you saw it. Format your stuff something like this:

Bubba's Pale Ale 6-pack, Jim Bob's Gas & Grocery in Anniston, $6.71 on Jan. 12, $8.25 on Feb. 2.

This should be interesting.

Today's column

Here's today's column, also available at The Star's Web site.

Pitcher This: What's brewing in the kitchen?

Ben Cunningham
Metro Editor
The Anniston Star

12/5/2007

Praising the cook after a sublime dining experience is common enough to have become cliché — "compliments to the chef."

But it's not often one gets to pay the same respects to a brewer after downing a fine pint during a meal out. At least, not in Alabama, though beer lovers here are (slowly) getting more options to drink beer brewed beneath the same roof where-under their steaks are grilled and salads tossed.

Brewpubs, commonplace across the country, have emerged slowly in the Heart of Dixie since the Legislature 15 years ago made it legal to brew beer in the same restaurants where it's served.

Brewpubs have helped to fuel the growing craft beer movement in the United States since first popping up on the west coast in the early 1980s. They were actually a re-emergence of an old tradition. In the 19th century and before, most beer would have been brewed in the inns and taverns where it was served.

The modern brewpub was an outgrowth of demand for styles beyond the typical pale lagers made by the ever-larger breweries that had come to dominate American beer.

Part of the reason for their rarity here is the strict limits the Alabama Brewpub Act of 1992 places on their operation. Brewpubs may only open in buildings eligible to be listed in the National Register of Historic Places or in federally recognized historic districts. They also must be able to seat at least 80 people at a time. The beer may be sold only for consumption in the restaurant, not packaged for retail sale.

But the most limiting part of the law says brewpubs may open only in counties where beer was brewed for public consumption prior to Prohibition in 1919. That knocks out whole swaths of the state where there once weren't enough people to justify having a brewery to sell it.

Does that include Calhoun County? No one seems to know for sure. There are now brewpubs in Montgomery, Auburn and Mobile, and a new one is on the way to Birmingham. Only history knows if a brewpub could be in the Anniston area's future. There were saloons in Jacksonville and Oxford before Calhoun County went dry in 1883, but someone would need to prove they served beer to make restaurant brewing legal here. That could be as simple as poring through old newspapers looking for an ad peddling beer. To date, no one seems to have been interested to do that research.

And they could be forgiven for that. Non-chain restaurants of any stripe are risky ventures. Throw in the specialized art of brewing, and there's every reason to fear failure. Those who've done it say you can't cut any corners. The beer must be top-notch, says Daryl Cargile, who opened the Olde Auburn Ale House seven years ago. But so must the food.

"You're not going to make it on beer only," he says.

Of course, until someone decides to give it a go here, we'll have to reserve our compliments for the chef.