The MaltHead Manifesto
~Malthead Manifesto~
A spectre is haunting the craft beer world –– the spectre of Sir Maltalot. Laid low by a tsunami of IPA, the wild yeasts have set in to consume his legacy. Extreme beerists have entered into an unholy alliance with sharp-fanged sours, enlisting sturdy barrel-aged beers to confine Sir Maltalot within their cavernous depths. Buried under layer upon layer of rum, oak, bourbon, and peppers, his spirit lies in wait.
Like an illumination of the darkest night, the repressed memory of Sir Maltalot’s lush aromas has begun to stir. Lovers of Scotch Ales and Doppelbocks, aficionados of lagers light and dark, let us band together to fight for a craft beer world in which value is not measured by the bitterness unit,
in which a hundred IBUs does not automatically equate with one-hundred Beer Advocate points! A revaluation of values! A world in which brown ales are not cast aside for their seeming ordinariness!
Maltheads, conceal your views and aims for not a moment longer! Emerge from the shadows and proclaim with unfaltering voice your affinity for Munich malt, crystal malt, Maris Otter, Pilsener malt, and Golden Promise! And let the lovers of the Seven Cs tremble at the prospect of a Malthead revolution. Maltheads of the world, unite! Come together to break the bitter tyranny of the IBU imperium. We have nothing to lose but our scythes.
PostScript
Installment #94 of The Session comes to us courtesy of Adrian Dingle at DingsBeerBlog, and inquires after our perceived role in the beer scene. Friday took me by surprise,
as did December in general, so I wanted to write something short that was playful yet pointed at the same time. Hence my Malthead Manifesto.
I love sitting down to a rich imperial stout (as a matter of fact, I’m drinking one with chilis as I write), and my fridge is stocked with Belgian sours, American wild ales, and all sorts of beers containing ingredients that would make the crafters of the Reinheitsgebot roll over in their graves. But I do think that some styles have gotten short shrift in recent years. Lager of just about all stripes springs immediately to mind, along with other styles that don’t push the proverbial envelope in any appreciable way.
Anyone care to join me for a glass of Munich Helles later?
High ABV, high IBU, intense sourness, and anything else “extreme”: these are the discursive markers that dominate the contemporary North American craft beer landscape. What’s more, these markers have become conflated with quality. (A glance at any of the “best-of” lists making the year-end rounds quickly bears this assertion out.) People new to the community enter a world of predetermined codes, a canon of taste that prescribes which beers are worthy of attention, and which ones aren’t.
Anyone up for grabbing a six-pack of brown ale this evening?
Diminished Choice
Aside from the pleasure I derive from writing about the stuff I like to drink, I suppose one of the main reasons I approach writing about beer in the manner I do is because I’d rather not see our choices diminished by powerful taste trends (or trends that put powerful beer above all else).
There’s a certain irony here: Our current range of beverage choices in North America could not be more extensive, but with increasing competition for shelf space and tap lines, I’m wary of a kind of consolidation that favours the dominant tastes I mentioned above. And I’m wary of perfectly good beer styles –– beer styles excellent in a subtle way that don’t call forth a cascade of adjectives to describe them –– being eclipsed by certain styles deemed “better” merely be virtue of having higher this and more intense that.
Maybe we can order a few pints of Scottish ale when we’re done with our English mild.
I drink with a catholic embrace. I drink wine, bourbon, Scotch, and tequila. And I drink saké. I even drink my share of IPA.
Better yet, make it a double IPA.
But when we’re in Berlin, let’s head to a pub in Neukölln instead of lining up at Stone’s new location.
The first round of Hefeweizen is on me.
Related Articles
Let Us Now Praise Famous Lagers: Your Saturday Six-Pack (Vol.3)
Every Day Is Craft Lager Day at Kansas City Bier Company
Celebrating Craft Lager Day with a Landbier from Kapsreiter
Drinking Lager in an Age of Extreme Taste
Hefeweizen: A Beer for All Seasons
Brown Beers Get No Luvin’: Your Saturday Six-Pack (Vol.2)
With the exception of The Session logo, images by F.D. Hofer.
© 2014 F.D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All Rights Reserved.
Love it! And I agree, Prof. Karl Marzen, hops are the opium of the craft-beer drinking masses! What is to be done? The whole point of a blog such as yours is not simply to interpret the beer scene, but to change it, one good post (and malty beer) at a time.
As ever, yours under the black flag of dark beer (and sometimes the red flag of ambers and browns)….
Indeed, Herr Doktor Einbeck, some people speculate that the soporific quality of hops is one of the reasons the late medieval/early Renaissance-era religious authorities championed hops over gruit.
And true enough, we malt-materialists need to move beyond the Young Heg-ale-ians’ heady hop idealism.
Yours in ludic humour.
Second round is on me, but I will pay homage to the spicy malts. Roggenbier is on deck!
Sounds good!
I’d be up for more Roggenbier in general.