Yearly Archives: 2007

Beer authority Michael Jackson dies

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Beer drinkers around the world are mourning the man who filled their glasses with the finest ales and lagers.

Michael Jackson the Beer Hunter died yesterday morning at his home in London. The cause of death has not been determined. Jackson, 65, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Though he was not a brewer, Jackson was responsible for more good beer than anyone. His tools were not the malt shovel and mash tun but a ballpoint pen and small notebook in which he scribbled tasting notes and interviews during four decades as a newspaperman.

Jackson’s books and countless newspaper and magazine articles explored the far-reaching world of beer, from classic styles to obscure recipes.

He is primarily credited with establishing the language and identification of beer styles. Before Jackson, all beer was essentially the same; today, beer authorities recognize more than 100 major styles, defined by their cultural and technical characteristics.

Many of those styles – especially obscure varieties from Belgium – would be extinct today if not for Jackson’s writing. In 1994, as thanks for almost single-handedly reviving that nation’s brewing tradition, Crown Prince Philippe of Belgium gave Jackson its Mercurius Award.

For thousands of self-professed beer geeks, Jackson was a cult figure who inspired the U.S. microbrewery renaissance. They packed his lectures and surrounded him for autographs. His annual tutored tasting at the University of Pennsylvania Museum drew standing-room-only crowds and was the single most popular event for 17 consecutive years in the city’s the Book and the Cook festival.

A self-educated writer from a poor family, Jackson began his career as a newspaperman in Yorkshire, then in London at the Independent and the Observer. He began writing on beer as a sideline, publishing his first beer book in 1976.

Since then, he had written a dozen books on beer and whiskey that have been translated into 20 languages, including The Pocket Guide to Beer, published in nine editions. In 2006, his book “Whisky” won a James Beard award for journalism. His Web site, www.beerhunter.com, has been a huge resource on beer, travel and breweries.

Jackson was unmarried.

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Fresh start, fresher taste for Stoudt’s

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STOUDT’S IS back.

Well, actually, it never really left us. The state’s first and most-honored microbrewery has been fermenting good beer for 20 years this summer.

But about five years ago, it seemed to have lost its way. Its draft ales and lagers were hard to find in Philadelphia taverns, its cherished 25-ounce bombers were on the road to extinction, and most of its beer wasn’t even made in Pennsylvania. A brewery in Maryland handled bottle production.

And then, in 2003, Carol and Ed Stoudt – the highly respected owners of the Adamstown company – came this close to getting out. “We seriously thought we’d downsize,” said Ed, “give up on packaging, and just go back to being a brewpub. ”

Back to the late-1980s, when the only way to get a taste of Stoudt’s Honey Double Maibock was to head west to Exit 21 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, find your way behind the Black Angus Restaurant, and pick up a plain cardboard box of over-sized bottles. Maybe you discovered the beer while antiques-shopping along Route 272. Whatever, Stoudt’s seemed special in those days, like a secret, like everyone else was drinking crap, but only you knew about this incredibly flavorful amber lager made out in Lancaster County.

In those early days, Carol – a former schoolteacher – brewed the beer herself. Most of it was sold at the restaurant. The rest, she and Ed hauled to a handful of accounts. It was not unusual to find the couple sitting at the bar at Jack’s Firehouse or Bridgid’s in Fairmount, late into the night, spreading the gospel.

Things change.

More small breweries opened. After 10 years, craft beer was a full-blown consumer trend, attracting investors and larger companies with cash to buy modern equipment and advertise.

“If you’re going to package your beer,” said Ed, “you’ve got to be a certain size. You’ve got to grow. ”

Stoudt’s kept up, supplementing the output of its small brewery with 12-ounce bottles made at the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, then at the Frederick Brewery in Maryland. But everyone knew those pasteurized bottles weren’t quite as fresh or flavorful as the bombers from Adamstown.

“We tried,” said Ed, “but when you contract out your beer, you lose something. It’s just not the same. We never could get it to taste the way we wanted.

“As time went on, it became clear it was a mistake. People demanded better beer. ”

Meanwhile, as Philadelphia’s bar scene exploded, local competitors – especially Victory in Downingtown – were growing in leaps. Victory, Troegs, Flying Fish, Yards – those were the tap handles you saw around town, not Stoudt’s.

By 2003, the choice was obvious: either scale back to the cottage-sized operation of the 1980s or spend millions to grow.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend all that money,” said Ed, a grandfather who will turn 67 later this month. “Here I was, in my mid-60s, thinking, ‘Do I really want to spend two-and-a half million dollars? ‘

“Eventually we decided, ‘Hell, yes. I’m not that old. ‘ ”

It turned out, after the addition of new brewing vessels and a state-of-the-art bottling line, the investment was more like $3.5 million. Longtime brewer Marc Worona left and was replaced by the Stoudts’ son-in-law, John Matson.

The new equipment and new blood kick-started the brewery. Matson and his assistants now brew four or five times a week, instead of just once or twice. In the last two years alone, production has nearly tripled, to more than 10,000 barrels (about 137,000 cases) – an output that is expected to reach 15,000 barrels in the next two years.

The beer is fresher-tasting and more consistent. Stoudt’s Gold Lager and Pils are both crisp delights. Fat Dog Stout is a massive (9 percent alcohol) imperial oatmeal stout that is so smooth and satisfying, it makes you wonder why anyone bothers with Guinness. Stoudt’s Double IPA is even stronger, but no less drinkable.

Equally encouraging, the brewery is producing new styles, including Smooth Hoperator, which Ed describes as an “American-style double bock. ” It’s a hybrid in which the sweetness of a typical double bock, like Paulaner Salvator, is tempered by a large amount of Amarillo and Summit hops.

And we can expect even more edginess, from barrel-aged brews to funky ales made with wild yeast.

Best of all, perhaps, they’re selling those big bottles again.

“I like where we are right now,” Ed said a few weeks after the brewery celebrated its 20th anniversary with a festive dinner. “We’ve evolved. We’re still small, but we’re big enough to show a small profit. Some of the years were kind of bad, a little negativity, like, ‘Why did I do this? ‘

“But I don’t feel that way these days. I’m passionate. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t have a beer. It’s a wonderful business. ”

Stoudt’s other great contribution to the local beer scene is its Great Eastern Invitational Microbrewery Festival. Since 1991, it’s run two or three of them every summer, attracting the finest area breweries and thousands of beer-drinkers to its outdoor beer garden.

Besides the suds, the festival is known for its “Best of the Wurst” sausage buffet and good dancing music from the Daisy Jug Band.

The next fest is tomorrow, with four-hour sessions at noon and 7 p.m. Tix are $27. Info: 717-484-4386.

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‘Reno 911!: Miami’ is almost perfectly stupid

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With all the finger-pointing over that 24-hour traffic debacle on I-78 last week, I wonder if anyone has bothered to look into the whereabouts of the infamous Reno., Nev., sheriff’s department. Abandoning children and diabetics to suffer through an icy night on the highway sure sounds like the work of the world’s most incompetent law enforcement agency.

Of course, Lt. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) and company usually leave their victims laughing, not shivering to death.

If you’ve already seen Dangle’s, um, dangle on Comedy Central’s hit pseudo-docu-cop series, “Reno 911!,” you already know pretty much what his crew is up to in their first feature-length film. You’ve got car crashes, kinky sex, public drunkenness and accidental gunplay – and that’s all the work of the cops. The preposterously titled “Reno 911!: Miami” plays like three back-to-back episodes of the TV show.

Which is not a bad thing. The TV show is a raucous bit of satire with sight gags that work even in reruns. Plus, this is not the kind of movie where you want to waste any time on character development; you only need to know that, for these guys, “serve and protect” has been replaced by “my bad. “

And you certainly don’t want to see them holding a loaded gun. When Deputy Trudy Weigel (Kerri Kenney-Silver) takes aim, you know the bullet will always hit the wrong person for the biggest laugh. It’s no wonder Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant) never goes anywhere – including his own bed – without a bulletproof vest.

As in the TV show, “Cops,” a camera crew follows the Reno sheriff’s office on its daily patrols. Dangle, outfitted in his trademark tight shorts (to provide him with the dexterity of a “law enforcement cheetah”), takes them all to Miami for a police convention, where a terror plot leaves them as the only cops on duty.

The deputies leap into action, wreaking havoc on alligators, coke dealers, local citizens and their own patrol cars. You might say it gets ugly – but only if your idea of ugly is the ample Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash) in an official police thong.

These guys couldn’t find South Beach with a GPS, much less crack a drug kingpin’s evil plans to take over the city. They are, as Dangle describes his deputies, “the dumbest group of people who aren’t legally retarded. “

You’d think the joke would wear thin after a while, especially in a post-9/11 world where you’re immediately suspect if you goof on law enforcement.

The truth is, though, cops are among the biggest fans of “Reno 911! ” When the cast visited the city last month to promote the movie, they were hosted by the local Fraternal Order of Police chapter. I’m guessing you need a pretty good sense of humor to be a cop these days.

Produced by Danny DeVito, Ben Garant, John Landgraf, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, directed by Ben Garant, written by Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver, music by Craig Wedren, distributed by 20th Century-Fox.

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