The musician Frank Zappa said a real country must have a beer and an airline. There’s a Charles Bamforth corollary. Drinking the national beer is a good idea, but drinking local beer is even better.
Google invites authors to lecture employees and shares the sessions on YouTube. Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Brewing Science at the University of California at Davis, visited Google in January 2009. If you’d rather drink beer than watch the 1-hour lecture, here’s a summary:
1. When you’re in Germany, just once, drink a weissbier and eat white sausage for breakfast. When in England, go to a pub and drink a cask-conditioned ale. When you’re in Thailand, drink Singha. When in China, drink Tsingtao. When in Singapore, drink Tiger. When in San Francisco, visit Anchor Brewing and Gordon Biersch. When you’re near Sacramento, visit Sudwerk in Davis. When in Colorado, drink New Belgium. Drink local beer. Beer oxidizes, does not age well, and does not travel all that well from far away. Beer is usually best when fresh.
2. The most beautiful brewery in the world is Sierra Nevada in Chico, Calif.
3. Does Guinness taste better in Ireland? Yes, because of point number 1. Also, Guinness has less alcohol than many mainstream beers. But widgets in cans to supposedly help ales are kind of phony.
4. China is the biggest growth market for beer. Chinese people don’t necessarily drink a lot of beer, but there are a lot of Chinese people.
5. Beer pairs especially well with Thai food, Mexican food, and great British food, also known as Indian food.
6. Only people who don’t know better put a lemon slice in weissbier.
7. At a brewpub with dozens of selections on tap, ask which beer sells best. Then drink that one. Dozens of taps require time-consuming, pains-taking sanitation practices for hoses, fittings and taps. Unfortunately, just because it’s on tap doesn’t mean it will taste better.
8. Winemakers praise each other, the big guys and the little guys. Brewers often knock each other. This hurts the beer industry. Big brewers don’t make beers stupidly; they make beers that meet market need. The craft brewing movement enables big brewers to show off their skills too. And lately, craft brewers may have gone a little too crazy with excessive hops that turn people off.
9. The next time you order wine in a restaurant, think about this. What other product do you order, other than wine, in which you actually need to test the quality before you buy it? When you buy a pork chop, do they cut off a little piece for you to taste and say, “That’s OK”?
10. Because brewers don’t do vintages, they can’t use an excuse like, “Well, 2004 was a really bad year for grain.”
11. Brewers could learn a lot about marketing, presentation and affectation from winemakers. Beer advertising often relies on “men behaving badly” cliches, ignoring other potential customers.
12. Wine experts like to say red wine is healthy, because of resveratrol. But it would take hundreds of bottles of wine a day to provide enough resveratrol to make a difference in health. Most scientists now agree the health benefits of wine come from alcohol in moderation.
In addition to authoring ”Grape vs. Grain,” Bamforth, a graduate of the University of Hull, has written about England’s Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club.
Image of Amsterdam Brewing Company’s new pomegranate wheat beer, launched in 2009 in Toronto, Canada. Elegant packaging design by Brand & Tonic of Toronto, presented by LovelyPackage.com.
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When in Laos drink Beer Lao . . . not that people come to Laos very often, but it is a good beer! It’s similar to Singha.
Sarah Page Zwier
Ban Phônsavan, Laos
I look forward to drinking one with you, Sarah, the next time I’m in Ban Phônsavan. You make some spectacular meals!
Bob Page
Chapel Hill