If you are going to get geeky about beer there are several ways to go, depending on your mood. You can consider the historical significance of the beverage and play with tracing the DNA of your current favorite through its style definitions, its ingredients or its brewer’s influences. You can make some assumptions about a brewer’s personality and philosophy by getting intimately acquainted with a particular brewery’s product. You can even sample beers from around the world and explore other cultures in a glass.
For those with deeper and more dedicated pockets, you could take an empty glass to another country and fill it up there. Heck, you don’t even need to take a glass. I bet they have some there!
Kim Reimann of GrapeHops Tours was a recent guest on Beer Sessions Radio (TM) where she discussed, among other things, the beers of Italy with her fellow guests BR Rolya (The Shelton Brothers), Hagan Blount (ITasteYourBeer.com) and Will Cass of New Zealand’s own Tuatara Brewing. GrapeHops is offering tours to Piedmont and Lombardy in May 2011 and October 2011 to explore the burgeoning Italian beer culture. The panel discussed the difficulty in convincing American beer drinkers of the caliber of beers from a well-known wine producing country. But, it does spark the imagination a bit to consider exploring a relatively young beer scene in an area known for other alcohol traditions.
Consider the article Beer Rises in the East by Tim Webb in the most recent edition of Beer Advocate Magazine about craft brewers in Japan. Eventually, beer makes it everywhere even to places that lack the natural resources to produce it. Japan has its own economic troubles and yet, as it has here in America, craft beer continues to grow.
This is where the passionate beer drinker gets to pontificate with his friends about the power of beer to connect people with a simple vocabulary of water, yeast, malt and hops put together to create a unique reflection of time, place, culture and individuality.
I could go on. Instead, I will urge you to pick up Issue 47 of Beer Advocate Magazine, listen to Beer Sessions Radio (TM) and have a pint glass trip around the world.
Happy Holidays!