Microbrewers put taste back into U.S. beer

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 6

Microbrewers put taste back into U.S. beer

By. KEVIN COONEY, of Reuter (through NZPA) New York A small group of pioneers has set out to give American beer-drinkers something they have been missing for decades — flavour. People have long complained about the quality of American beer — “swill,” "suds," “dishwater” are some of the more polite descriptive terms. “Just smell some of these,” says an independent New York brewer, Matthew Reich, as he pops open six bottles of different American beers and swirls them

around in glasses like the wine taster he used to be. He sniffs and sips and frowns. “Chemicals,” he says. “Caramel colouring. Corn filler. Rice filler. Sugar. Extracts.” Mr Reich and a handful of young men like him have

z set out independently to recreate the strong, tasty beers of yesteryear. They have been so successful that a word has been created to describe their industry. They are called microbrewers. The quantity of beer they produce is a drop in the barrel .compared with the output the main Ameri-

can producers. But the microbrewers speak of quality. “We use all top quality barley malts and no adjuncts such as rice or corn,” says Robert August, brewer at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in Chico, California. “And we use more malt than the big brewers and twice the hops. We produce pretty heavy beer.” Mr August taught himself to be a brewer in college and now produces pale ale; porter, a light-bodied dark beer; and stout, a heavybodied dark beer. His Californian brewery was founded two year? ago with an of

SUSIOO,OOO ($151,000) and made a profit of SUS4O,OOO ($60,400) last year on sales of $U5350,000 ($528,000). Mr August says that the company, which has four fulltime employees, hopes to double its output this year. Mr Reich raised $U5250,000 ($377,500) to invest in his New York beer business. The first expense was hiring Joseph Owades, an old-time brewmaster who remembered how beer was made before Prohibition (1920-33) and before the industry was consolidated into a handful of national companies which gave all American beer virtually the

same taste. For a year they developed recipes based on those passed from generation to generation of brewmasters in the days when New York City alone had more than 120 breweries. The result was a lager called New Amsterdam Amber Beer. Mr Reich opens a bottle with pride and expectation tend inhales. “That is the aroma of hops. We use Cascade hops from the States and Hallertauer hops from Germany. They’re expensive but they’re the best We use two-row barley, not the cheaj&r six-row the big

breweries use. “The malt house we use has been in operation since the 1880 s in Paterson, New Jersey, and the employees look like they’ve been there since then. They really know what they’re doing.” Mr Reich did not have enough money to build a brewery, so he rents one in upstate New York and keeps the beer cool in a converted chicken-packing plant. The first batch of 7000 cases, 24 bottles to a case, arrived in the city in January and quickly sold out. “When I go to a bar the first thing they says ‘No

beer salesmen today.’ T’m not a beer salesman,’ I say, T’m the brewer.’ Once they taste it they usually buy it,” he says.

His beer is sold at 130 bars and restaurants and 50 food stores in New York City and is expanding into New Jersey and Long Island.

Robert Hunt, business manager for the Real Ale Company in Chelsea, Michigan, says that the hardest thing about selling his beer is having people develop a taste for it.

“They’ve been used to tasteless beer for so long it’s hard for them to get

used to something with taste.” Chelsea Ale has had its biggest success at the University of Michigan, where the students drink it by the gallon. The company also makes stout and porter and sells between 600 and 1000 cases a month depending on the weather.

“As far as I’m concerned, lightness is tastelessness,” says Mr Reich. “And I think the American public has been misled about lightness of taste in beer, bread, cheese, just about every-

“issee my beer as an antraote to tastelessness.”