john holl: that i have thisreally-- like, the coolest job on the planet. and invariably there'ssomebody in the crowd who's saying, "can i have your job?" i imagine working fora company like google, you guys are probably edgingme out on the coolness factor. so thank you for allthat you guys do. technology has played a big partin the evolving world of beer these days.
everything fromapps that allow you to check into beer, towebsites that review beer, to really just keeping breweriesin touch with consumers and technology, ithink, has really spread the goodword of good beer, not only throughout the us, butthroughout the world as well. i just came in from newzealand this afternoon. i was on an overnight flight. and their beer scene downthere is growing quite a bit.
and it was amazingto me how many people kept saying, "well i wasreading on the internet about this particular brewery. have you been there yet?" there's a lot of enthusiasm. so technology and beerare both very social. so cheers to what you guys do,and thanks for having me here. we have beer on the table. so we're going todo a beer tasting.
i'm going to talk aboutthe history of the beer. i don't know why thebeers aren't open and you guys aren'talready drinking, but let's do thatfirst, if we can. and i'm going tosteal from somebody. as we do it. oh, i'm sorry. we're going tostart with the can. we're going to start withmaui brewing company--
the beer in the canthat's in front of you. that's probably helpful toknow, as opposed to all of you guys going around and-- hey. thank you guys. so it's very importantto know that we do have a limited amountof beer for everybody. so share and share alike. be googly in your sharingness. right?
is that a thing? that's perfect. about that much ora little bit less for each of thebeers in your glass. and this is important for acouple of different reasons. one, we want the aroma to buildin these particular glasses. who's been to awine tasting before? who's been to abeer tasting before? ok.
who has not been to abeer tasting before? so those of you whohave not been to a beer tasting before, you'rein for a lot of fun. those of you who've done itbefore, you already know. you'll notice rightoff the bat that there are no dump bucketson the table. that is because you aresupposed to drink the beer. and you're supposedto enjoy the beer. if you don't like it,give it your neighbor
and they'll finishit off so that you can fill up the next one. tasting beer is really oneof the most important things about experiencingthe beer overall. so let's just doa quick tutorial on how that works overall. so the first thing you wantto look at is the appearance. and if you have a little bit ofhaze on the outside, that's ok. so you want to see what thecolor of the beer looks like.
and what does itmake you think of? what does the straw goldenyellow liquid in front of you make you think of? and if you give it alittle bit of a swirl, you can see the carbonation. you can see that nice fluffywhite head appear on top. beer is wonderful to lookat a lot of the time. but it's more fun to taste. but before we getto that, we're now
going to do the aroma of beer. so there's two waysof smelling a beer. you can do the bloodhound,where you get your nose in. and you do a couplequick sniffs. and then you can do thedrive-by-- which i know in la means somethingtotally different. and while you'redoing that, so much of what we taste--90% about-- is aroma. it's aroma-driven.
so what we perceive as tasteis really aroma-driven. so while you're smelling yourbeer, think about food terms. we're going to talk aboutthat in a little bit. but think about what itis that you're smelling. is it sweet grain? is it corn? is it floral? think about thebeer in food terms as you go along with this.
and then obviously the nextthing to do is to taste. take whatever kind of sipyou're comfortable with. and then you cantake a smaller one. really kind of see if thearomas that you experience with the beer-- and we'regoing to have a range of beers as we go through this today--see if what you're smelling matches what's onyour taste bud. see how different tastes,acidity, astringency, sweetness, how all thatappears on your palate
once you've actuallytasted the beer. and really thinkabout those flavors. then the next thingis mouth feel. and wine peopleknow that mouth feel is very important with wine. it's certainly veryimportant with beer. so take a sip, justa small enough sip to float yourtongue, essentially. and fell the carbonationon your tongue.
is it robust carbonation? is it super fizzy? is it light? is it a little bit more mellow? and then think about howit coats your tongue. is it watery? is it thick? is it falling somewherein the middle? as we go on with some ofthese-- and this particular beer
has a little bit of body to it. it's got a little bit more oompfthan some of those other lagers that you might see out there. and for the color, it's gota little bit more body to it. this is the maui bikini blonde. this comes from maui in hawaii. it's a helles lager. and i have to go tomy cheat sheet here. it's 5.1% alcohol.
and this to me iswhat an american lager should be these days, in thepromise that it can have. it's got these really nicebready characteristics to it. it's got a little bit ofthat floralness to it. it's even got a little bit of alemony characteristic in there as well. i wish i could get this beerin jersey, where i live. but my wife and i spenta week in maui last year, and i drank this by the case.
and it was just-- it's a really,really nice refreshing beer. and we're going totalk a little bit about the historyof beer in america. and it's interestingto see that this is where we're at withbeer these days-- that we do once again have these rich,full, flavorful lagers that dominate-- or that arebeginning to come back into the landscape. we were a countryfounded by beer.
the mayflower landedat plymouth rock because, according tothe captain's diaries, their provisions were runninglow-- especially their beer. they were drinkingbeer on the way over. it was running low. and so they stoppedat plymouth rock when they actually meantto go down to virginia. and so from thevery start, what we think of like thebirth of this country,
beer has playedan important role. the founding fathers-- allof their various farms, and plantations, andestates, all brewed beer. a lot of people say that thefounding fathers brewed beer themselves. maybe. but chances are, they had thewomen of the house doing it. or they had somebodyelse doing it. they were off doing other stuff.
and typically the menin the house in that era were not necessarilythe brewers themselves. over time, as we becamea country of immigrants, more people cameover in 1700s, 1800s. we were getting a lot ofpeople from uk, and germany, and other parts ofthe world that already had these established brewingcountries that had been around for hundreds of years. and as they set up in thenew cities on the east coast,
and then slowly movedwest, these people who had been brewers backin their own home countries started openingup breweries here. and so we were seeingflavorful lagers. we were seeing manythousands of breweries operating around the country. and they were bringing theirhome brewing traditions to the us shores, usingwhat they could here. this is where corn andrice as added sweeteners
and fermentable sugarscame into play in brewing, because that's justsimply what was available. we saw more localbreweries back then. we didn't haverefrigeration necessarily. and the brewers didn't havethe means to make a lot of beer to ship it across the country. so if you livedin new york city, you went to your brewerythat was down in the bowery. or you went to your brewery thatwas on the upper parts of town,
or brooklyn, or--you drank local. and that's something thatour country lost for a while, because prohibition cameinto being, as it were. and prohibition was calledthe noble experiment. it failed. from 1920 to 1933, thecountry was relatively dry. and during that timea lot of the breweries that were operating closed. which was really devastatingto these smaller breweries.
when we came out on the otherside, we emerged into a world where larger breweriesthrived, got bigger, started to expand theirdistribution network, and eventually becamethe dominant players throughout the country. smaller ones died off. and so by the 1970s we were leftwith not a great beer culture. only less than 100breweries where we once had many thousands ofbreweries in this country.
so we've sort of hadthis very strange history with beer in the us. and as people areemptying their glasses, we can start to open up thekellerweis from sierra nevada. don't be shy about doing that. i'm going to-- this is goingto do wonders for my jet lag. oh yeah. it's ok. if we had a little bit ofwater, we can suss it out,
but i'm going to steal alittle bit from you as well. thanks. and that's just a reallyquick, brief history of beer in the us. i mean there's obviously beenbooks and books and books written about this,but since we're here to taste and talkabout food, that's just sort of your quick one two. in the late 1970s when thebrewing culture had really
been decimated, wegot to this point where it could havegone one of two ways. and fortunately, itwent the good way. and it started with aguy named jack mcauliffe. in sonoma in the late 1970s,a former naval engineer who started home brewingback when he was in the navy and stationed overseas, decidedto fabricate some equipment out of some old stainlessdairy tanks, and opened up and got a license fora brewery in sonoma.
and he called it new albion,and it made only a few barrels of beer at a time, compared withtens of millions being produced by the largerplayers on the scene. by most accounts thebeer needed some work. but the important thingwas that it was different. and it was small. and it gave peoplean opportunity to realize that beerdidn't have to just come from many differentfactories with the same label
and so jack up in sonoma startedgetting a lot of attention. he got a spread the"new york times." he got a spread in the"washington post."" people started comingfrom around the country to see what he was doing. university of californiaup in berkeley, which already had a professionalbrewing school-- where most of the studentswho went through that were destined for careersat anheuser-busch,
or miller brewing company,or coors brewing company, started taking fieldtrips to jack's place and see that you couldfabricate small equipment and make flavorful ales andlagers on your own terms, and not just follow what hadbecome mass-produced beer. one of the peoplewho came and visited owned a home brew supply shopand a bicycle repair shop in chico, california. and he came down and hesaw what jack was doing.
and this guy had aparticular engineering mind, and looked around andsaid, "i could do this." and so the guy'sname is ken grossman. and he went back up to chico. and then he co-founded thesierra nevada brewing company, which is what we'redrinking right now. we're drinking their kellerweis,which is a german-style wheat beer that is-- going to my cheatsheet again-- 4.8% alcohol. it is brewed with wheatalong with malted barley,
so you're going to get a littlebit of that lemony flavor, a little bit ofthat tart flavor. and then as youswirl it around, he uses this reallydistinctive yeast that gives off a particularflavor and a particular aroma. is anybody picking up onwhat the dominant aroma is? getting some citrus. [inaudible] yup. banana.
that's it. and now that we've saidthat, is everybody else picking up the banana now? yeah. beer is very suggestive. i could have said, "oh yeah. chocolate-covered cherries." and people wouldsay, "oh yeah, no. i can get that as well."
i love screwing aroundwith people like that. i like you guys too much,so i'm not going to do that. yet. but yeah, banana. a little bit of clovein there as well. it's a really nice,refreshing beer. and sierra nevada is now thesecond largest craft brewery in america. they just celebrated 34 years.
they're almost 35 now. and they're producing justabout a million barrels of beer a year. they're going to growin the years to come. jack mcauliffe started withabout seven barrels of beer a year. if memory serves,in the five years that he lasted, thebest year that he had, he produced somewherearound 400 barrels.
there's 31 1/2 gallons in thebarrel, just for scale of size. so jack did 400and change barrels. sierra nevada, which wasinspired by jack mcauliffe, is now doing wellover a million. and they're going to continueto grow with the new facility so jack only lasted five years. and the historian maureenogle, who wrote a great book about the history of beer,called "jack's brewery: the most successful failedbrewery in america."
because he really did inspire somuch of what's going on today. so if you still havebeer in your glass, i always like to justdo a quick toast to jack to thank him for wherewe are these days. does anybody have anyquestions while we're just getting started? it's the yeast. so we should talk aboutthat a little bit. there's four mainingredients in beer.
and it's water, it's malt,it's hops, and it's yeast. and each of thoseparticular beers have their own foodflavors to them. and that's really where thebeer industry is right now, is thinking about beer as food. beer is food. but it's so difficultsometimes to get that message across for some of the brewersbecause they're talking about, "well this is malty,or this is hoppy.
or, you know, boy it's got thesegreat yeast esters to them. and we're not necessarilythinking about-- hey, there's some seatsin the front, guys. they're not necessarily thinkingabout beer as food terms. so that's one of thethings that is probably important to talk about. and then if you guys wantto start pouring the stout, you're more than welcome to ifyou've gotten to that point. if you haven't,don't feel rushed.
this is not a marathon. this is a fun beer tasting. this is social. it happens every time. but i'm terribly sorry, sir. you're cut off. alright so. beer as food. four main ingredients of beer--water, malt, hops, and yeast.
each of those fourmain ingredients have their own food flavorsand components on their own. and so it's kind of fun tobreak it out a little bit. so you have water, whichcan have a mineral or sulfur content to it. there's malt. and depending on howthe malt is kilned, which means roasted,essentially. it starts off as very pale.
and it can have a biscuity, orgrape-nutty, or cereal grain kind of taste to it. and the more you kiln itand the more you roast it, the darker it gets, and themore flavors it takes on. so you toast it a little bit. and then it takeson notes of caramel. and then you roastit some more, and you start to get chocolateand coffee and toffee. and then you can goreally deep with it,
and it can turn even likeacrid black, and ash, even. you could smoke the malt so thatyou get a smoky flavor from it and you just actually justput the kiln malt over a flame with a smoke, and itinfuses those flavors. and then when you brew it, ittakes on those flavors as well. so sometimes you getsome heat-smoked malt, and some other cherrywood-smoked malts, and all differentkind of smoked malts, and it takes iton there as well.
but these are all flavorsto think about with the malt itself. and i'm gettingdistracted, because i want to go grabanother beer if i can. thank you, sir. you're a wonderful assistant. i appreciate it. well it shows. your skills are impeccable.
so we'll talk about theother two in a second. but this is a very malt-forwardbeer now that we're pouring. this is the oatis from ninkasi. and i looked this upjust a few minutes ago. and this is about 7.2%. they make this outof eugene, oregon. i love pairing thisin a beer float with a scoop ofvanilla ice cream. or it goes well with a reallyhardy lamb stew as well.
when you smell this andyou do that whole aroma thing with the beer-- and i'lltry not to do that again-- what are some of theflavors or aromas that you're getting off of this? coffee, chocolate. those are the two big ones. and then when you taste it, arethose flavors coming through as well? what's really interesting isthat there is neither coffee
nor chocolate in this beer. it all comes fromthe roasted malt. they use a variety ofdifferent malts in there, including a malt that iscalled chocolate malt. and when you get some ofthat, and you eat it raw, it does taste like apiece of bitter chocolate, or it can, or varioustypes of chocolate. so that's always kind of fun,because people swear, "no! there's definitely coffeeor chocolate in there."
there's not. and that just shows just howdiverse malts can be depending on how it's kilnedand how it's roasted. this is a big kind of--on the mouth feel of this, it's very creamy. it's very-- there'soatmeal in this as well. flaked oats inthis beer as well. so you're going to get a littlebit of that chewy, a little bit of that creamy mouthfeel off of this.
people think about guinnessas a big, dark, heavy beer. try the mouth feel trick nexttime you're out with guinness. and you're going to notice thatit's actually fairly watery. it doesn't have alot of body to it. its that nitrogenpour off of the bar that gives it a creamysort of texture. but the beer itselfis very watery. this is robust. sticks to your ribs.
like i say, lamb stew orone of those cold winter nights that la is famous for. if i chilled this down, andproper beer serving temperature is usually in the cellartemperature range, so about 50 or so degrees. but i admit thatsometimes in the summer i will chill down oneof these to that ice bucket-cold mountain sternblue, kind of pull it out of the cooler and drinkit ice cold on a hot day.
and it's super refreshing. it's almost likedrinking an iced coffee. except it's got theother kind of benefits aside from caffeine. so the next ingredient is hops. and when people say to me,"oh, i don't like beer." i ask them why. and some people will say, "oh,i don't like the taste of it. it's too bitter." "orit's just not for me."
and the bitternessstands out because that's what hops give beer. not only aroma, but theyalso give bitterness. and bitter is a terrible word. bitter is sort of likewhen you have a kid brother and you're eating something aschildren that you don't like, and you go, "oh, this is awful. here, try this." you immediately havethis connotation of like,
"i'm not going to enjoythis," when you say bitter. and so one of the things i liketo say with people-- and again if people are ready to moveonto the next one, that's fine. we can talk about it again. hops can have flavorsand aromas of everything from citrus, liketangerine and orange, and lemon and limeleaf, to tropical fruits like pineapple, orguava, or mango. there's other hops that haveresin or pine aromas to them.
they're still new ones thathave peach or blueberry aromas coming off of them. and where i was in new zealandrecently, they have their hops. and they're breeding themand they're growing them. and they have thesearomas of gasoline. you know when you pump gas, andthen you get back in the car, and about 20 minutes later,you kind of smell your hand. it's that faint smell of petrol? that's what's appearingin these hops these days.
and they love itfor some reason. and there's also like a smell ofwhat i was calling sweat socks, and they were calling laundry. and they're puttingthis in their beer. but again, when you know whatit is that you're smelling, and you know that the brewerswant it in their intentionally, it's not quite as unappealingas it might sound. so when we move on tothe next beer, which is going to be the alesmithipa, think about some
of those aromas thati just talked about. see if any of those present inyour mind as you're tasting it. and then recognizethat at the end, when you get a littlebit of that bite, that pucker, that bitternesson the end, that'll be an "in the back of yourtongue" kind of thing, think about the flavorsthat you smell first. and then suddenlybitterness becomes a lot more approachable in beer,especially with ipas,
which is a reallydecisive thing for people. it's the most enteredcategory-- the india pale ales-- in the great americanbeer festival every year. it is the beer style thatis leading this craft beer charge that we're in these days. and unfortunately,like i say, there hasn't been great educationto the general public on experiencing the overallflavor notes of an ipa. but if you think about it fromthe pine notes, or the fruit
notes, or even thegasoline notes, you're going to comearound a little bit more and hopefully enjoythose overall flavors. yes. why do i think ipas aremore popular in the craft-- because they're big, andbold, and unapologetic, and in your face,and that is america. [applause] it's interesting.
there's a couple ofdifferent theories on this. and i'm sort of of the mindsetof, for a long time in the us, when we had thesegeneric lagers that were out there-- that aretechnically perfectly made-- they just don'thave a lot of flavor that appeals to a lot of newbeer drinkers these days. the ipas is a run ina different direction. one, it's an ale, not a lager. but two, it's just so jam-packedwith flavor, with extra booze,
it's just the polar opposite. and that's whatthe brewers wanted. they wanted to say, "yeah, youall knew these guys over here. this is us over here. this is flavor country." as it were. and i think that'sone of the reasons that it's led the charge. interestingly enough,we are seeing a change
in the overall beermarket these days. people are tending towardssessionable beers, or more well-balanced beers thesedays, where you can actually taste all four ingredientsin the beer, and not just a dominant hop, whichis really quite great, and it shows the overallmaturity of the market right now. but i think it wasreally just running in the opposite directionof where we had been.
and where beer really tookoff up in northern california, and in oregon and washington. they were already growinghops up there to begin with, and so hops became a fairlydominant flavor in there. people startedopening up the ipa. what are some of the aromasthat you're getting off of that? orange. mango pine. grapefruit.
freedom. smells like bald eaglesand monster truck rallies. i'd love to get this ata monster truck rally. but when you taste it thought,the malt characteristic really comes through on this as well. you get a little bit ofthat biscuity, cereal grain, little bit of caramelizationin there as well. you'll also notice that whenyou hold it on your tongue and do mouth feel, it'sgoing to be a bit more chewy.
it's going to bea bit more thick. again, people say, "oh,i don't like dark beers. they're too heavy." and they might tendtowards this because it's this nice sort of likeburnt orange amber. this is actuallyheavier than a lot of those commercialstouts that are out there. you can kind of feel that. and you can also see thatas well with the lacing
on the glass. and just how robustthis particular beer is. so we talked about water. we talked about malt. we've talked about hops. there's an oldsaying that brewers make wort-- which is a sweetliquid, sugary liquid-- but yeast makes the beer. and so when you add yeast tosweet wort it eats the sugars
and creates alcoholand co2 carbonization. and without yeast, wewould not have beer. so be thankful forthat little micro. the flavors of yeast,which are so diverse, can be everythingfrom-- and we've already seen this-- frombanana and bubble gum. there's pepper. there is flowers. there's honey.
there's bubblegum is agreat yeast flavor as well. it's really quitediverse, the various yeast flavors out there. and different styles of beeruse different styles of yeast. so belgian beers will have alot of very fruity ester yeast that could have stonefruits and plums and really great depthsof a honey kind of thing. and then you'llhave some others, like we said, some ofthese german beers that
could have banana or clove. or just can be verycrisp and clean as well, where it does let theother flavors come through. the kellerweis isreally the best example of a yeast-forward beer thatwe have up here right now. and again, if you go ontoyoutube at some point, sierra nevada does another beer. and this is an openfermented beer, which essentially means thatthey pour the sweet wort
into these large tanks whichlook like bathtubs, that are essentially thesize of this stage here. and much, much taller. and they fill itwith the sweet wort. and they add the yeast to it. and it open ferments, and thenit bubbles and blows over. and it's a reallyfun thing to watch. sierra nevada has a videowhere they do their bigfoot barleywine every year inthe same open fermenters.
and if you youtubeit or you google it, you can see this verycool minute-long video of just this yeastkind of exploding off of these openbathtub fermenters. most of the beer isdone-- most normal beer. not normal-- that'sa terrible word. these other beers are probablydone in closed fermentation tanks where the yeast canblow off if it needs to. but if you're lookingfor a fun visual,
that's a cool video to look up. i probably should haveshown it, but that's poor planning on my part. overall thoughts on the ipa? i should say thatthis is the alesmith ipa, down in san diego. 7.25%. with food, i would go withspicy thai would go really well with this.
blue cheese would goreally well with this. and also carrot cake would goexceptionally well with this. and that kind of brings usto how beer pairs with food. so after jack mcauliffecame and left, and the new breweries likesierra nevada opened up, we had a fun couple years ofwhat was called micro brew. and it got a lot of attention. it was these small brewersthat were doing various beers. unfortunately, not all ofthem were doing a good job.
and what we found was thatthey closed over time. they had these beers thatwere taking an animal name, and they were taking a bodilyfluid, and mixing it together. so you were getting likebeaver spit, or monkey piss, or something terrible. and people would goand buy these six packs and bring it toparties as a joke. they would be like, "hey! look what i saw on the shelf.
isn't this crazy?" and your friendswould look at you kind of like, you're a jackass. and when you tasted the beer,it tasted like, you know, beaver sweat. and so a lot of thesebusinesses went out of business. and the ones thatsurvived grew and became better at what they were doing. they really focused on quality.
they really focused on flavor. it wasn't just a fad for them. this was a long termbusiness and an industry that they wanted to growof these microbreweries. the name wasessentially rebranded to craft beer tokind of get away from the bad connotationsof micro brewing. and once thatreally took off, you start to see it everywhere now,which is a really great thing.
from jack mcauliffebeing the first craft brewer in the late 1970s, wenow have 3,000 plus breweries operating in the country. with another 1,000planning to come online within the next couple of years. it's grown tremendously. and all these-- or mostof them, i should say-- are really focused onquality and they're focused on their local area.
with so many people nowknowing about craft beer, there's now anattention being paid to pairing goodbeer with good food. and that's where thecookbook comes into play. i spent 2 and 1/2 years workingon the "american craft beer cookbook." pulling recipes fromaround the country, from breweries that i know,breweries that i respect, beer bars that iknow and respect,
and even a few frommy own kitchen. and what i reallywanted to do was highlight the diversity of beer. and so you hear a lot ofpeople say, "oh, you know, when it comes to alcoholicbeverages and food pairings, red meat goes with redwine, and white wine goes with chicken and fish." it's not that black andwhite, as any real wine lover will tell you.
it's certainly not easy to painta picture like that with beer. so we've already talkedabout the great diversity with these flavors of thesebeers that we've had so far. and i'm going to justask you guys to hold off on opening up that last onebefore we go any further. you can finish off some ofthese others that we have. leave no man behind. leave no beer in thebottles, as it were. when it comes topairing beer with food,
we can't just thinkabout our protein. like that wine saying goes. we really need to think abouthow the food is prepared, what it's beingserved with, what's being served on top of it. so an example that ilike to use quite a bit when it comes to thinkingabout beer and food is a steak. and so you go to anice steak house, and invariably somebody's gonnaoffer you a glass of red wine.
but why does red wine work? and for a number of reasons. it's a bold flavor that canstand up to bold flavor. for other reasons, it justlooks good on the plate, in the glass, and onthe plate as well. with beer, it's fun tothink about the steak and how it's prepared. and so you throw asteak on the grill, and you're going toget that caramelization
of the fat, a littlebit of that black char on the outside of it. and then when youcut into the steak, you're going to get thesesavory juices in there as well, and that meatiness of theoverall piece of steak. and if there's vegetariansin the crowd, i'm sorry. i'm going to stickwith this meat motif. and so i think about abrown ale, or a porter, or even a stout wheni start thinking
of a steak on the grill. and that's becauseof the malts that we talked about before,which have some of those caramel notes to them. maybe a littlebit of that black, acridness to it that willcomplement those existing flavors on the outside charand outside crust of the steak. and then when youcut it open and you get those savory juices,the sweetness of the beer
is going to contrastwith the meat itself, and bring out a whole newdimensions of flavors as well. but then you say, "alright. so a brown alegoes with a steak." but not always. because what happensif you put a gorgonzola sauce, or a blue cheesesauce on top of that steak? now that's really going tobecome the dominant flavor. and you're goingto need something
that could stand up to that. and that's wheresomething like an ipa comes in, because it canstand up to those blue cheese flavors, kind of cutthrough some of that fat, and really bringout some roundedness and some of thoseother flavors as well. so you can't just thinkabout your protein. you have to think aboutwhat it's served with, what it's being servedalongside with as well.
and as you drink more beer, andyou think about beer as food, with going through those flavorsthat we talked about earlier, it's going to becomeeasier and easier to pair good beerwith good food. the other thing that'simportant to mention is that it's not just thefour main ingredients in beer these days, but brewers,especially in the us, are fearless-- andsometimes foolhardy-- that they will brew withjust about anything.
so these days you'll actuallyget chocolate in your beer, and you'll getcoffee in your beer, and you'll get tea in your beer. and then you'll haveall sorts of manners of exotic fruits in your beer. not just ones you findat the grocery store, but ones that they are travelingto africa to source, things that a lot of us have neverheard of here in the states. they're findingvegetables to brew with.
there's one particularbrewer a couple of years ago that brewed a beerwith grilled beef hearts. it was not good. you know when you walkinto a butcher shop and you get that tinny, blood,metallic scent in the air? you would open up abottle over there, and it would just kindof waft around the room. and it had a very shortshelf life, thankfully. and i don't think they make itanymore, which is quite good.
but it shows thatbrewers are really trying to bring differentthings into beer. i try to find beers thatare brewed with honey, and i pair it withham a lot of the time. just the thoughtbeing honey baked ham is such a great combination,that why can't it work? to that point, onthe ham thing, there are beers beingbrewed with bacon that are actuallyreally quite nice.
it's like a breakfastbeer in a lot of ways, especially if they've addedsome coffee in there as well. so there's a lot goingon and the only thing that limits brewersthese days is their own imaginationand their own creativity. so it's an awesome time to bea beer drinker in the us right now. so i just challenge you to thinkabout that with beer and food next time you're out.
don't necessarily reach for aglass of wine instinctively, but really think about what itis that you're going to eat. and think about why you'rehaving a glass of wine or a glass of beeralong with it, and try to find something thatis as good in the glass that is as good on yourplate, and see if you can't meld them together. and that's somethingthat's really important. and i'm not anti-wine.
i just want to point that out. a lot of people are like,oh, you're against the grape. i'm really not. i drink a lot of wine. i drink a lot of spirits. i drink a lot. you guys laugh. every time i do that joke,my wife is rolling her eyes. it's not true.
it's a little bit true. the last thing that i'll mentionis cooking with beer as well. as you're flippingthrough the cookbook, you'll see that a lotof the recipes in there use beer as an ingredient. not only is beer fun to pairwith, beer is fun to cook with. and adding a beer to a dish islike adding a spice cabinet. because once you degas thebeer, once you heat it up, once you've addedgarlic to anything,
it's not going to taste theway that it does in our glass. it's going to tastetotally different. and so you're going to getdeeper flavors from it. it could be like using a stock. beer is great insalad dressings. its great as a marinade. not only does it add sometenderness to the meat, or to your protein, by havingthe carbonation nibble away at it a little bit,but it also can
add some additionalsweetness that can bring out some of the moresavory flavors as well. don't just cook with beer forthe sake of cooking with beer. as i was researchingthis book, there's been a lot of yourcookbooks in the past, and one thing thati wanted to avoid was people say, well,add a tablespoon of lager and then move on. that does nothingto the overall--
if you're going to cookwith beer, cook with beer. one of the recipes in thereuses an entire six pack of a scotch ale in there. which i know, peopleare like, well, why would you usean entire six pack? because it's good when itcomes out on the other end. and that's why. because anything less thansix or anything more than six just wouldn't have done.
so cooking with beercan be a lot of fun, but not if you're just going todo it for the sake of doing it. the cookbook itself--as you can see-- has 155, it'sactually 157, but that didn't have the samering for the cover. breakfast to dessert. people say, why breakfast? i say, frank sinatraused to say you can't drink all day unlessyou start in the morning.
there are a lot ofvegetarian options. i know i spent a lot of timetalking about meat today. but there are vegetarian andgluten-free options in there. i think that's important. we've moved beyond thedays of burger and bud, and pork nachos and beer,and all sorts of things. there's a lot ofgreat diversity that comes with food these days. and there's a lotof great diversity
that comes with beer these days. and really quickly,i'll just say that it's been funto watch the way that the two worlds--the food world and the beer world have evolvedtogether in the last few years. so we talked about prohibition,and after prohibition how we all kind of became thesegeneric-- oh, yeah, i'll-- these generic beers thatwere out there, these lagers. our food culture kind ofwent the same way as well.
our grandparents, ourgreat grandparents, they all knew where dinnercame from every night. and so you'd have freshbaked bread on the table. your meat came fromthe local butcher. your vegetables camefrom the green grocer or from the backyard. and you knew whatit was that you were putting into your body. but slowly overtime, that changed
and we became this culture ofconvenience and mass-produced. and so real cheesebecame velveeta. and fresh-baked breadbecame wonder bread. and rather thanworking on a dinner, even if it would only take anhour at the end of the night, we convinced ourselvesthat we were so busy that we pop a plastictray into the microwave, and whatever came outtwo minutes later, we'd call that dinner.
we've moved on. i mean we still have a lotof that in the country, but we're starting to seemore and more that people care about where theirfood is coming from. they want to knowwho's making their food the localvore movementis coming back into play. farmers' markets haven'tbeen this popular in ages. people really careabout what they're putting in their bodies.
and the same thing is truefor the brewing industry. you can walk into yourlocal brewers around here-- and you guys have quite afew here in the la area, and more and more itseems all the time-- and you can meet thepeople who make your beer. you can shake the handof the guy or woman who made what is now in your glass. and that's a personalconnection, as well. it's like knowing whereyour vegetables came from.
and so to see thecraft beer movement and the localvore movementkind of come together has really been great forthe beer and food movement, and books like this. so that's just anotherthing to think about. when you're buyingcraft beer, you're supporting smaller businesses,you're supporting local, and you're doing your partto do right by yourself by getting some good, flavorfulbeer into your system.
there's a question over here. audience: in regardsto cooking, how do the four differentingredients-- probably mostly the hops and theyeast, those flavors-- how do they stand up tocooking, and what do you lose? john holl: so the questionis, how does the four main ingredients stand upwhen you're cooking with beer? it really depends on the beer. i tend to find that moremalt-forward beers work
a little bit better thanmore hop-forward beers when it comes to cooking. the hops can take on someastringency and some not nice flavors, if you're going tobe boiling it for a long time. whereas moremalt-forward beers, i think go a lot further, justbecause of the sweetness that it brings to the game. but it really dependson the overall beer that you're cooking with.
i try to be as specificas possible in the book, and saying like, if you'regoing to cook with this beer, here's why youshould, and here's some of the flavorsthat come out with it. and it was a lot offun trial and error to try to come up with thatwhile i was doing that. so we can get into the generalquestion portion of things now. and with that, openingup the last beer. so ipas have been leading thecharge in the us for a while.
and i keep hearing frompeople, oh, a sours going to be the next ipa. i don't know ifthey are, but this is going to be a sour blondefrom the almanac brewery company up in thesan francisco area. it's tart. it is brewed with two typesof cherry-- a rainier cherry and i'm so hesitantto use this, the name of the variety of cherrythat they use here.
it's called bing. i was reading the descriptionbefore, and i was like, oh, man. i'm bringing likea bing to google. that's so weird. and this has been agedin wine barrels as well. there's a lot goingon with this beer. it's 7%. uses three typesof yeast in here,
including famous sanfrancisco sourdough yeast culture in there. so as you're doing youraromas and your flavors and everything inbetween, you're going to get a lot of things. i'm going to come downand join you if i may. thank you so much. audience: [inaudible]. john holl: what's that?
john holl: right. are there google cherries? if not. get on it. so that's kind of where we'reat it very quickly with beer and food these days,in the history of beer and how we got to sittingin a room drinking a wide range of diverse beersfrom a wide range of mostly west coast breweries.
and any thoughts? any questions? i'll go back there, and yes. audience: if possible, canyou use the microphone? just for the sakeof the youtube? john holl: yes. this is going on the youtube. so if you coulduse the microphone. audience: so you talked aboutthese wonderful food pairings.
i mean, some of uswere getting actively hungry in the back there. i'm wondering, in additionto these speaking tours, if you considered doing sortof an event where we come in, and we try some of the beer,some of the food together. do you spiel on the steak. now with thegorgonzola, now without. how soon do you want meto come back and do that? audience: um, saturday?
john holl: sure. audience: that'd be good for me. john holl: absolutely. i will absolutely. yeah, i do that quite a bit. we do beer dinnersand beer tastings. and that's a fun thing. scan-- and i lovedoing it, but they're happening all over thecountry these days.
sign up when you go andvisit your local brewery, and sign up fortheir newsletters. and they will send you differentthings that they're doing. and you'll really find beerdinners that they're doing and beer and cheesepairings that they're doing. boy, you're reallyhaving a tough time with this microphone, man. audience: i am. john holl: you arecut off at this point.
you're now the secondperson to get cut off. the cool thing, andone of the things i didn't really touch about withthis book, is beer is local, but so is food. and so when you lookthrough this book, you're going to findseafood dishes that come from new england andthe pacific northwest. and you're going tofind spicy dishes that come from the southwest.
and you're going tofind meat and dairy dishes that comefrom the heartland. or you're going to find verycity-specific food traditions and the book kind ofoverall tells the story of where we are with beer andfood, and how both can be local and how both can playwith local strength. so i love doing beer dinners. and especially wheni travel around, because i get to talk with chefsand brewers and be like, ok.
here in la, there's a greatfood truck culture that exists. and there's a reallygreat mexican that exists. let's find theselocal food traditions and find local beers that bringout the best flavors in both. and that's reallythe cool thing. so the point that iwas trying to make is find your local brewers,find good local beer bars around here, and see if they'redoing beer dinners. and go and just sit and taste.
it's a lot of fun to do. and it's fun to get outwith friends as well. and it's somethingdifferent to do as well. awesome date nights. it's all sorts of very cool--there's very cool stuff that's happening. but, yeah. any time you guys want me tocome back and do a beer dinner, yeah.
i'm on the nextplane from jersey. yes sir. first times the charm. i like that. audience: i am mic enabled. so you were mentioningthe pairing with a steak. you mentioned youhave some blue cheese, you add either a porteror perhaps a stout. what is the moderndifference between those?
john holl: god, ihate that question. audience: i know. john holl: very little. audience: that's what i thought. audience: i was alwaysjust kind of assuming-- john holl: yeah. it's evolved over time. when you look at the overalldefinitions when judging is done.
it can be tough to tell thedifference between the two. audience: there's evendifferent categories. john holl: exactly. it's different categories. i some people make the argumentthat it's irish versus united kingdom kind of difference. guinness versus londonporter kind of thing. there's not-- there's not aheck of a lot of difference, on its face, of them.
when you start getting intosome of the larger, or the more boozy, complex,stouts and porters, the differencesbecome more vast. the difference between a foreignextra stout and a baltic porter are a little bit different. yeah i hate that question,because i get it all the time. and i've never come upwith a really good answer that people walk awayfeeling, you're a genius! so, yeah.
audience: so, much easierpersonal preference question. obviously you get asked everyday, what's your favorite beer? but within yourfavorite style-- if you have one-- what is your favoritebeer that you've ever tasted? john holl: favorite beerthat i've ever tasted. shit. that's a tough question. audience: assumingyou don't have a favorite thatyou've never tasted.
there are known knowns. and there are known unknowns,and unknown unknowns. i tend toward stoutsand porters myself. it's really sort of mygo to style if i'm out. but it really dependson where i'm at, who i'm with, what'slocal, what tastes good. for the purposes of when ido beer tastings at home, and judging, i keep samadams foster and a lager, and sierra nevadapale ale in my fridge.
and that's because i knowexactly how those beers taste like. they're not my go to's, buti'm very familiar with them, and that helps wheni'm tasting new beers. because if i feel like i'mtasting something that's an off flavor, or i'mfeeling like i'm just having a bad tasting day,i can open up one of those. and if it tastes how i knowit's supposed to taste, then i know that there'ssomething wrong with this beer
that i'm tasting. if those beers don'ttaste right to me, it means that i hadsomething weird for lunch. and it's throwingme off a little bit. there's a couple of beersthroughout the country, and i hate playing favorites,because i run this beer magazine where we'reimpartial, but there's a couple of beers thati do try to seek out whenever i'm traveling.
new glarus out inwisconsin makes a beer called raspberry tartwhich is just phenomenal. it's about 4% alcohol, madewith fresh raspberries. it's like a brownale with raspberries. it's just delightful. the cambridge brewingcompany out in massachusetts does a summerbarleywine that they call arquebus that'sabout 14% alcohol, that's got these really wonderfulboozy vanilla flavors.
and they only putit out once a year. and it seems like i'm on atrain from new york up to boston every summer just to tastethis particular beer. but for me thesedays, there are so many cool beers tobe tasted out there, that i haven't foundmy next favorite yet. and i haven't foundthe next one that's going to stop me dead in mytracks and make me say, wow. and that's kindof a cool thing is
it just shows how muchthe brewers are pushing the envelope these days, andreally continually trying to make themselves better. it's always a lotof fun when i smell a beer for the first time,like i did with this one. and i get this bigsmile on my face, because i know assoon as i smell it that i'm really goingto enjoy this beer. and that's a cool thing becausethat still happens quite a bit.
and you'd think with 3,000breweries in the country that it wouldn'thappen quite so much. but it is. i'm really digging the cherriesoff of this by the way. audience: so youmentioned beef hearts. audience: so ignoring that. what's your favorite gimmickingredient and your least favorite gimmick ingredientthat you've tried thus far. john holl: beef heartsis my least favorite.
audience: besides beef hearts. john holl: besides beef hearts. probably my favorite is coffee. i think coffee justbrings so much to stouts. and there's brewers thatare trying different things these days with coffee. we have a breweryin new jersey called carton which did acoffee light and sweet. so that's sort ofan east coast thing.
i don't know if it's outhere, but it's basically like three sugars andmilk in your coffee. and so it's like coffeefor kids, essentially. and they did abeer that was maybe about this color, thereabouts. but it had a goodton of coffee in it. and when you thinkof a coffee beer, you're not necessarily thinkingof a light colored beer and so i really digthat, because they
use some lactose sugar,which is milk sugar, and the coffee init, so it actually tasted like a coffee light andsweet, which was kind of fun. coffee's also great with ipas. stone brewing companya couple years ago did a collaboration--dayman coffee, where it was thesebright floral hoppy notes with this reallynice kick of coffee. and again, lighter color.
my magazine did a collaborationwith sierra nevada brewing a couple monthsago, where we also did a coffee ipa withcounterculture coffee, which is a growing chainand growing business. and we tried differentcoffee varieties where we wanted ones that hadberry and lemon notes to it. then we found hops to match,so that it brought out those additional flavors. so i'm really diggingwhat's happening
with coffee these days. as i've been ramblingon that, i've been really trying to thinkabout some of the bad stuff that i've had. there's a lot ofbrewers that are using rare and exoticfruits these days. and sometimes it works,and sometimes it doesn't. the thing that i'm hesitant tosay about things that i overly don't like is that i mightnot like it, but you might.
and then who am i to saythat this is not a good beer? and who are any of us to saythat it's not a good beer? if somebody likesthe taste of it, that's a personal preference. i'm sure as we did thistasting today that you noticed that some of youreally liked it. maybe your neighbor sittingnext to you is like, oh that's not for me. i saw people passingoff their glasses.
and there's no shame in that. beer is a verypersonal experience. brewers are tryingweird stuff these days. but it's from the weirdstuff that you sometimes get the best stuff. and it's that continuallypushing of the innovation. it's that continually pushingof brewers going and finding weird ingredients. oyster stouts have beenaround for a really long time.
and oysters and stouts area wonderful beer and food pairing. and so putting oystersinto your stout really brings out thesort of like savoriness in the beer along withsome of that sweetness, and adds a little bitof body and depth to it. i love oyster stouts. but if there'speople here who are squeamish at theidea of oysters,
or eating raw shellfish,you're not going to like that. and so it's toughto say ingredients that i don't personally like. there's some people whoare tea drinkers and not coffee drinkers whoare just turned off by my whole littlespiel on coffee. so it's a tough thing toreally say these days. it's judge each beer yourself. and if you like it,drink more of it.
if you don't, you'regoing to find something that you will like. questions? you guys can duke it out there. is there any ofmore this almanac? somewhere? sorry, i just need to reload. i'm not joking. i got off of a plane like threehours ago from new zealand.
i've been up for like 24 hours. and i still have to flyback to jersey tonight. so this is-- my seat mate isgoing to hate me on the plane. audience: yeahi'd love to hear-- kind of a two-part question. first question is how youropinion of california breweries versus breweriesfrom other states. and then part twoare what are three beers we have totry before we die?
john holl: good questions. california hasthe most breweries out of any state inthe union right now. so by nature of that, you havea really big, diverse beer culture. san diego is a hopcapital right now. they're doing thesereally big, dank, super hoppy, superaggressive beers. and you're seeing some of thosein other parts of the state
hops come into bigplay in california. whereas other states use them,but maybe not in the same way that california does. if you say to somebody a sandiego, or a west coast style ipa, chances arethat they're thinking of california,specifically san diego. but then you go up toberkeley and san francisco and that general area,where this beer comes from, and they're doing a lot ofbarrel aging, because they're
in wine country, orclose to wine country. and there's access to barrels. and they're reallyinterested in those flavors. and they'reinterested in using-- like with this beer--that wild sourdough to help culture the beer. so it's a reallydiverse beer state. i mean, it's a greatbeer state, no doubt. three beers thatyou have to try.
that's a really tough one. because when you talk about--is it the global beer scene. is it the us beer scene? is it your local beer scene? i think that there'sa couple of beers that have shapedthe us right now. sierra nevada pale ale, ithink everybody should taste. i think that's a great beer. that it has a great hopcharacteristic to it.
but it also has a greatmalt characteristic to it. it's a very, verywell-balanced beer. it's a very easy drinking beer. and it's foundeverywhere these days. and it can be easy to forgetthat when it first came out, that it was revolutionaryin a lot of ways. so many-- if ken grossman wasinspired by jack mcauliffe, whole new generations ofbrewers were originally inspired by sierra nevadaand that particular beer.
so that's a fun beerto pay attention to. man, i'm reallytrying to think of-- i already mentionedraspberry tart from new glarus, which isfor me, one of those ones that everybody should try. and they have aninteresting business model that they're doing more than100,000 barrels of bee a year, and they're just stayingin the state of wisconsin. they're choosing to staylocal, which is incredible
when you think abouthow people are shipping their beer around thecountry and around the world. will myers makes that awesomearquebus from cambridge, but you can onlyget it if you're at his pub in cambridge,massachusetts. so that's a tough thing to say. audience: we have anoffice in cambridge. john holl: you do havean office in cambridge? road trip.
let's go! next summer we're all gonnameet at cambridge brewing and we're all gonnadrink the arquebus. yeah, i mean those kindof jump out in my mind. but again, i've hadso many good beers. i've had these wonderfulbourbon barrel aged beers. full sail brewing companydoes a bourbon barrel aged imperial stout every year thathas these really wonderful boozy, vanilla, woody notes tothem as well with the stout.
and a lot of people are doingbourbon barrel aged these days. if you love bourbonand you love beer, it's just a perfectmarriage between the two, if it's done right. there's some reallywonderful belgian quads if you're really intodeep stone-fruity, boozy, foreign styles of beer. there's something beautifulabout just a normal kolsch. a very simple german kolschthat is refreshing and light.
and so, try them all. follow your palate. i mean that's really it. who am i to situp here-- i mean, except that i was invitedto-- to say, try these beers. follow your passion. follow where yourtaste buds move you. because again, it's subjective. whatever i say-- i couldsay, oh this is a must
try before you die. and you could drink itand go, this is awful! he doesn't know what thehell he's talking about! personal palates are different. do you have a question? audience: so you were talkingabout some of the reasons why people say theydon't like beer. audience: and one thati hear in la a lot is it's too many carbs.
it's too heavy. blah, blah, blah. do you see anything inthe craft beer industry trying to tackle that, orapproach that, or market that? john holl: so i'mnot in the best of physical conditionsas a beer drinker. so it's tough for me to talkabout the caloric intake. but here's the thing. a lot of people will citethat beer is bad for you,
or worse for you than wine orspirits and that kind of thing. it's really not. it's comparable to someof those, sometimes. but it's everythingin moderation. really. if you're going to drink threesix packs a night, or three six packs a week. and then not workout, and all that. well yeah.
it's going to be bad for you. but i've been outtraveling where i've seen people just killa bottle of wine themselves. and that's not better for you. it's not much [inaudible]. what we've seenthough is there's a lot of the largerbeer companies that market to a lowercalorie intake. so ones that say, weonly have 65 calories.
or we only have 100 calories,and things like that. 65. no, i wasn't tryingto like-- i'm getting corrected in the back. it's miller 64! i was trying to givethem a pass on this one. i was trying to give thema pass of just throwing out an arbitrary number thena watered-down beer. but a guinness, for example.
they had a big advertisingcampaign a couple of years ago, it has about 125 calories in it. people would thinkthat it has a lot more. your normal beers aresomewhere in the 100 to 200 calorie range. it's not that bad for you,considering everything else that we might eatduring the day. it's just that perceptionthat beer makes you bloated, or beer makes you fat,or you get a beer belly.
or all those mannersof things that wine has done a very goodjob, and spirits have done a very goodjob of sort of playing up the sophisticationand the health aspect, or the higheraspect range of it. so it's not necessarilybad for you. it's just everythingin moderation. audience: right. so my question was moredo you see something--
because i agree withyou, i love beer. and i don't thinkit's bad for you. but there's thatperception out there, whether you see somethingin the marketing. is that something that'strying to be attacked head-on. or if it's just conversationslike these where you say-- john holl: it's not beingattacked head-on in the way that i would like theindustry to attack it head-on. i think that if brewersstarted putting caloric intakes
on there, i think itcould help or hurt. because you're goingto get some beers that are going to have600 calories in them, just given by thenature of the sugar. and they're not going towant to put that on there. and if one brewery makes abeer that has 100 calories, and the same brewerymakes one that has 600, do you do a blanket or not? and then you're going to getaccused of false advertising.
so i think it's a slipperyslope for a lot of them. every couple years that"eat this, not that," "drink this, not that."book comes back into vogue. and invariably they showup on the today show. and it's have thisbeer that's like water. and not this barleywinethat has 600 calories. you can't evencompare the two beers. and it's like if i'm goingto drink this barleywine, that means i'm onlygoing to have one.
and it means thatrather than drinking six of those, which wouldactually equal one of these. and that's somethingthat we need to change. but that's a question forthe individual brewers. there's not an easyanswer, unfortunately, for that at this point. the other thing,just perception-wise, we were talking aboutcalories, one of the things i wanted to point outjust really quickly.
as you look at the bottlesup there that we had today, you'll see a lot of the famousbrown glass 12-ounce bottles. but you also see the larger22-ounce bottle of the ipa. and then that reallycool-looking bottle that we have with this blondethat we're drinking right now. and then there's also the can. which i alwayslove pouring cans, because people think thatcan is a lesser vessel. it keeps out light.
it's easier to ship. keeping out light helps thebeer from getting that skunk flavor, that oxidationflavor as well. it's lighter, soit ships easier. it's stackable. you can take it camping. you can take it to the poolside. you can take it to theshore without worrying about broken glass.
so don't dismiss beers in cans. i hope you all likethat flavorful beer. you can crush it on your headafter you're done drinking it, if you're really into it. and if you've had a couple. so yeah, don't dismissa beer in a can, because i'm sure asyou were drinking it, you didn't noticeany off flavors. and you hopefullyenjoyed that beer.
and that came from a can. so don't dismissit when you see it. so thanks so much, guys. this was really coolfor me to be here. it's a company that i'velong admired from afar. so to sit here with you guys andbe able to talk about the thing that i love and the placewhere you guys work and love has been a really coolexperience for me. and i hope that you enjoythe book and your beer
and food-tasting journey. i hope to come back anddo a beer dinner with you guys at some point. cheers. thanks so much.