Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET

The Beer Industry Summit in San Diego this week was the latest installment in an important annual series run by Harry Schuhmacher, publisher/editor/writer of Beer Business Daily, a subscription-only, copyrighted publication that I highly recommend but can’t afford, no matter how invaluable a resource it would be. Even if I were a subscriber, I therefore would not quote from it directly without permission.

Having been the beneficiary of some details of what happened in San Diego from a beer industry insider, however, I think it’s fair use to offer a brief summary of a presentation made by Information Resource’s Bump Williams. It was also, I believe, the topic of one of Harry’s newsletters this week.

What Williams, a long time industry figure who had a brief run at New Belgium a year or two back, had to say is interesting to chew over in light of the craft industry figures which were released last evening by the Brewers Association. He reported that signficant increases in sales of specialty imports and light beer were major factors in the overall industry-wise good news, I am told, noting that Bud, Coors and Miller sales of their light beers were all up and that Sam Adams Light climbed up into the top category sellers. He also spotlighted Blue Moon as as the top “Power Brand” for 2007, a more prestigious moniker for “hot” beers, which would suggest that Miller had a very good year indeed.

As pretty much the only beer writer in the nation who didn’t receive the new Miller Craft Brewers Collection of “craft style” light beers, I’m in no position to comment on them except to point out that, if crafts and the light segment are the healthy and thriving elements in the beer industry, trying to combine the two makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some movement in that direction among some folks we might never have expected to do so if the trend continues through 2008.

After all, once you get past just ramping up the alcohol and hops to get the beer geeks all hot and bothered, the real essence of craft brewing is to create a flavorful and balanced beer which is not solely dependent on just more, more more. Given that, creating a truly drinkable and appealing craft light which could hold its own in a brewer’s own brewpub or at good beer bars carrying his brand might be the ultimate challenge and a singular key to growth.

Like I said, chew on that a bit. Comments invited.

A note of interest to Pennsylvanians: Yuengling was apparently listed seventh in the Power Brand list, a significant jump upward.

After another meeting and tasting session, K.C. Kulp of The Whip Tavern and I have made some adjustments in our menu and pairings based on the availability of certain beers, our mutual concern about one rather unusual pairing we’d made on the original menu (which I’d still like to try someday but in a more private setting), my desire to include at least one organic beer and other factors.

This is revised menu:

PAIRING TRADITIONS: CELEBRATING A CENTURIES-OLD
TRADITION OF ENGLISH FOOD AND BEER

THE WELCOMING
FULLER’S ESB

FIRST COURSE
House cured Atlantic salmon served on a small potato rosti with dill cream.
Wedge of traditional pork pie served with Branston pickle.
SAM SMITH ORGANIC LAGER

SECOND COURSE
Rocket salad with warm local organic goat’s cheese and
a toasted walnut dressing
NEWCASTLE BROWN ALE

THIRD COURSE
Hand-dipped cod with brined chips and mushy peas
FULLER’S LONDON PRIDE

FOURTH COURSE
Roasted breast of pheasant served with a grilled sausage
of pheasant and Cognac and bread sauce
ORKNEY SKULL SPLITTER
FRAOCH HEATHER

FIFTH COURSE
Locally raised organic grass-fed beef with shallot
and sage gravy and Yorkshire pudding
ST PETER’S PORTER
WELSH ESB

SIXTH COURSE
Sticky Toffee Pudding
INNIS & GUNN OAK AGED ALE
KEPLIE SEAWEED ALE

SEVENTH COURSE
Fine English Cheeses
FULLER’S 2006 VINTAGE ALE
(Talula’s Table Selection*)

* The Kennett Square gourmet store’s Aimee Olexy is providing the cheeses to go with the Vintage Ale and a beer of her choice from a selection we provided her.

Here.

And here.

It has come to my attention that many of the readers of these ramblings, together with the author himself, might well stand to, um, lose a few pounds. And it reminded me that, once upon a time, I inspired America’s most beloved beer writer to go on a serious diet and become a but a shadow of his former shelf. A large shadow, admittedly, but still…

Well, to do something like that and not try and help the readership would suggest, at best, a hint of elitism and “insider trading,” and at worst, a callous disregard for the people who have made me what I am today (hey, somebody’s got to take the fall).

It would be a moral failure, the weight of which could well drive me to drink (more). Not a good thing.

Unfortunately, absent the opportunity to walk up steep hills in the Czech Republic with each and every one of you, I can’t offer personal, individualized advice. Nor am I competent to. However, a service I can provide is the opposite of that, courtesy of RNCen+ral.com, a nursing education website: Diet Overkill: 25 Of the Most Ridiculous (and Ineffective) Popular Diets.

Some of the programs you’ve already heard of, others are new, to me at least, and pretty weird, such as The Tapeworm Diet (Eww!), The Blood Type Diet and The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You To Know About (scroll down and Double Eww!). It’s a fascinating piece, really.

I do this because I love you each and every one and, truth in advertising here, a Ms. Amy Quinn of RNCen+ral.com was kind enough to send me the link this morning.

So cross all those options off your list, no matter how appealing they might be, and go find yourself a healthy way to knock off a tad of unattractive avoirdupois. Also, allow me to remind you that you don’t get this sort of stuff on any other beer website.

Whether you want this sort of stuff? Your call.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with this photograph, taken at the General Lafayette WinterFest a week ago yesterday, ever since, because, you know, we just don’t have enough photos of Dan Berger and Mark Haynie (the two gents in the rear) hanging around with girls gone wild. So far we have none, come to think of it.

Fortuitously enough, now that one of the principals has been quoted extensively in this Friday night TV news report, I have my hook.*

The photo was taken after the event was finished. The young ladies in pink are sisters named, conveniently enough, Gumpper. They identified themselves for me, left to right, as the Bad Gumpper and the Good Gumpper. There was no explanation for the “gone wild” designation and I refuse to speculate.

*This is what we call the “any port in a storm” excuse.

I am told by K.C. Kulp, owner of The Whip Tavern, that our March 11 Beer Dinner is already one-third sold, pretty impressive given how little promotion we’ve done and the fact that it took us forever and a day to get listed here.

So this is a heads-up to my bestest buddies and nearest & dearest pals, folks I know want to be on premises to heckle me and perhaps, just perhaps, learn a little something, to neither hesitate nor procrastinate.

“Tempus fugit,” as they used to say down at the Colosseum when I was just a young lad.

I’ll be out at The Whip Monday afternoon to finalize things (which will involve, I regret to say–Not!–tasting lots more beers and food). After that, I’ll probably drive down the road a couple of miles to stop in and commiserate with the soon-to-be-homeless, at least on a temporary basis, Broken-Hearted Shill.

And if you can’t figure out who that is and where that is, you really haven’t been paying attention.

Then again, some would argue that’s the only way to read this stuff.

Although I know it’s the thing to do for some beer writers to use their dogs to try and humanize themselves and become loveable, but I would never go that route. Too crass and obvious, y’know?

I express my humanity through my new granddaughter instead, which I assume we all agree is much classier:

You will recall that I told you that Regan Violet Curtin was nicknamed “Nugget” in the womb and that I figured some Nugget Nectar was thus the perfect gift to find awaiting her upon her arrival. Well, clearly, she has embraced that concept.It isn’t clear yet who emptied the bottle, but I have my suspicions.

The lovely and talented Jennie Hatton just this minute alerted me to the “ROCKIN’” (her word and caps, but she’s right) new Yards Brewing website, to which I now direct you.

Not only is the site impressive, it brings founding partner Jon Bovit back from the historical dustbin, which is a class move, and acknowledges the place of Bill and Nancy Barton in the brewery’s history, which is even classier.

I like it when people act like adults.

General Lafayette Inn and Brewery’s Chris Leonard gave me a heads-up at last Saturday’s WinterFest about some big news and promised that he’d let me break the story when he was comfortable with that happening.

He got comfy today and the story is now up over where everyone who is everyone goes for local beer news.

This morning started off really nicely, and the news about Lew’s increasingly wonderful life soon added to the overall good karma.

I know they say that the only thing that makes a writer happier than a success of his own is a failure by one of him compatriots, but I don’t hold with that theory. We all be brothers on this bus…

Still, solidarity with Lew doesn’t mean that I wish him entirely well. I’m only human, after all, and such selfless compassion would be just wrong in so many ways. So, I have this dream, I do, a dream unlikely to happen but one which, were it to somehow come about, would mean that god/the universe/whoever had finally begun paying me back that one it/they must surely owe me by now. You see, Not only is the Big Guy Belgium-bound this spring, so is the largest and ungainliest Usual Suspect of all and a whole host of his nearest & dearest BFFs.

The possibilities should those two events converge are mind-bogglingly delicious.

It is a fine sunny afternoon in Bruges and Lew and his traveling companion have ensconced themselves in a little cafe on a side street, one they have just discovered, one they are looking forward to making known to the world. The proprietors are scurrying around them, catering to their every need and whim. It is the Perfect Moment.

Suddenly the door bursts open.

A familiar voice is heard: “Missttter Bryson!”

Big Dan and the thundering hoard have found them and will, within minutes, turn that pleasant cafe into something akin to an Incubus Friday at Sly Fox Phoenixville. It is something they have been doing all over Belgium, although when they are very tired the best they have done is more like a Monday Night Tasting Session.

The owners are appropriately appalled. Stephen shrinks back in horror, wondering how he could have gotten himself into this mess. For a moment, at least, one moment, Lew wonders why he ever gave up his promising career in Library Science.

‘Tis but a dream, of course.

Although, I have to tell you, something very similar did happen to me one night in a small, underground Paris cafe located down a dark alley where I had finally found the essence of the city. It involved a busload of tourists from Iowa. More than that I will not say.

Except that dreams, nightmares, sometimes do come true.