Charles Papazian - Microbrewed Adventures: A Lupulin Filled Journey to the Heart and Flavor of the Worlds Great Craft Beers

I AM AT HEART a brewer. The romance of beer has been a significant part of my life since the early 1970s. My first homebrew was an amber beer brewed in the basement of a Charlottesville, Virginia, preschool and day care center. I never looked back. Our five senses help me turn the basic ingredientshops, yeast, malt and waterinto beer, but it is my imagination that permits me to experiment and create an endless variety of new and inspired beers.

IMAGINATION IS A powerful factor that influences our view of the worldindeed, it is at the heart of how we interpret our senses of taste, smell, hearing, sight and touch. At recent judgings of beer I have begun cautioning myself about the extent to which we become separated from our imagination as we evaluate beer. As beer drinkers and brewers, we sometimes try to mimic machines too much.

Refreshingly, among the most experienced and passionate of brewers, objective evaluation is mixed with stories of great beers and great brewers. These side trips lend proper perspective to most discussions. A brewer may say, The character in this beer, though some may consider it a technical flaw, is a real, honest-to-God, traditional character that has beer enjoyment value and is found in some small, genuinely wonderful countryside breweriesand I like it. In fact, I am passionate about the beers character. You can see the smile on that brewers face and his daydream expression as he imagines someday recreating the experience. The beer with its eccentricnot technically brewers-perfectcharacter has warmth of heart, which is perhaps the real reason we all pay for beer. Simply by inhaling certain aromas, I can recall wonderful memories and moments of pleasure.

I often enjoyed one of my favorite American-made British-style bitters on the rooftop of a popular neighborhood tavern. The view of the Front Range Rocky Mountains, and the warmth of the sun on early spring and late autumn days, brought cheer. The all-malt, full-flavored draft bitter is easily affected by sunlight, yet I loved the beer and being there, at that spot.

Now, whenever I experience the aroma of an all-malt beer that is faintly and freshly sunstruck, I smile. I enjoy these technically destabilized beers, and often prefer them, because of the sunshine and warmth of heart they evoke. And I like the flavor! The memory is all mine, and there is no denying the power of where it can take me.

To capture the imagination is to capture our five senses. This is why we buy beer, isnt it? Its not just that India pale ale has pleasurable hop-infested, lupulin-drenched bitterness. Not just that stout is black velvet with a full-bodied, creamy texture. Not only that pale ale is graced with the floral lupulin bouquet of Cascade, Goldings or Fuggles hops. Not just that barley wine ale or Doppelbock has a tantalizing 9.14 percent alcohol, nor that a Hefeweizen is accented with spice and fruity themes. Nor do the finest hops, malt, water and yeast really make a huge difference. No, I dont really believe this is ultimately what we beer drinkers seek. We see a label, we hear the name, we see a designer glass full of beer and tantalizing foam, we smell, we taste, we observeour mind takes us on a journey with first contact.

The moment lasts less than a second, but we connect with our lifelong experiences. Will it be a good experience? Yes? Ill have one. Ill have another. I will remember the moment, perhaps more than the beer, but I will remember the beer.

The beer drinker walks out of a store, package of beer playfully swinging at arms length. The door closes behind and you know for sure that if that beer has been well made, it will transform all those beery characteristics into an experience fully influenced by imagination.

If you still cant quite picture what it is Im talking about, then sit down quietly with a beer and see where it really takes you.

MICROBREWED ADVENTURES is essentially a book about imagination. I have been fortunate in being able to meet many of the worlds great brewers and to travel across the United States and the world tasting thousands of amazing beers. My jobs as the founding president of the American Homebrewers Association (1978) and the Brewers Association, founder of the Great American Beer Festival and author of the paradigmatic Complete Joy of Home Brewing (1984) have brought me beer opportunities of which I could never have dreamed. Sometimes I realize I am living the ultimate beer fairy tale, with every new beer a happy ending.

I have collected many of these adventures and tastings to share with you. Each story inspired a homebrew recipe that can be found in the back of the book. In many cases its a recipe from a brewery that I have visited; in others, the recipe captures the flavor of the experience.

My microbrewed adventure begins in 1980 with the pioneers of microbrewing. These were a small collection of homebrewers who were making beer with the flavor and character of a time past. As their friends cheered them on to their next batch, their beer improved. They were tiring of their jobs and began to dream of life as a brewer. Their enthusiasm and confidence grew. At the time, ours was a world of mass-produced light lager, with virtually no options. Velveeta ruled the world of cheese. Wonder bread sandwiched our lunch.

The world of beer was about to embark on a new path. New Albion (Sonoma, CA), Sierra Nevada (Chico, CA), Boulder Beer (Boulder, CO), River City (Sacramento, CA), DeBakker (Novato, CA), Cartwright (Portland, OR) and Wm. S. Newman (Albany, NY) were among the handful of small breweries that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We called them small breweries until one day Zymurgy magazine small-brewery news editor Stuart Harris suggested that these tiny breweries were like these new small computers called micro-computers he used in his day job. The term microbrewery was born.

The half-dozen microbrewers in 1981 were afloat in a sea of light lager when the American Homebrewers Association, founded in 1978, began to gain some momentum. A champion of beer styles, beer flavor and diversity, the AHA was the only beacon microbrewers, homebrewers and beer lovers had to turn to. I dont recall whether we discovered them or they discovered us, but the relationship became one of mutual support.

All-malt beer with distinctive varieties of hops and caramelized and roasted specialty malts provided the distinctive and traditional appeal of those original pale ales, porters and stouts. The microbrewed adventure was entirely distinct and different from what the forty-two existing American large and regional breweries were offering.

Now there are more than 1,300 microbreweries in the United States and the numbers are growing worldwide. While many microbreweries have grown in size and are sometimes called craft breweries, they maintain their passion for flavor, diversity and adventure.

The microbreweries of today, such as Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewing Company, Deschutes Brewery, Left Coast Brewing Company, Stone Brewing Company, Brooklyn Brewery, Boston Beer Company, Rockies Brewing Company and Boulevard Brewing Company, are among the thousand-plus micro and craft brewers producing an amazing array of choice. Its hard to believe that just twenty-five years ago the American beer market was dominated by Big Beer and offered virtually no other options.

Beyond America I have discovered tradition and an equal passion for flavor, diversity and creativity. The second half of Microbrewed Adventures reveals many of my most memorable travel adventures outside the United States, tasting exotic, classically traditional and pioneering beersAndechs German Monastic Bock, Leipziger Gose, Brakspears Henley-on-Thames Ordinary Bitter, Goose and Firkin Dogbolter, Zimbabwe Zephyr Sorghum Beer, fifty-year-old Cornish mead, spicy Dutch Zeezuiper and legendary Belgian ales and lambics, to name a few. All my microbrewed adventures were invaluable lessons, serving as inspiration for a beer drinker and homebrewer gone over-the-top. I hope you enjoy