Craft beer's creativity: "To sustain and destabilize?"

I always read the book review section in the Sunday New York Times, and spotted this one yesterday:

Book Review - Warning Shadows - Home Alone With Classic Cinema, by Gary Giddins, reviewed by Dave Kehr.

In this consideration of a collection of columns by jazz and film writer Gary Giddins, reviewer Kehr offers an insight that looms large in considerations of craft beer in America, circa 2010.

A sensitive critic of jazz needs both a familiarity with basic forms and genres and a special responsiveness to the often minute changes worked on that primary material by the individual artist. Similar skills are needed to decode the genre-based films of high Hollywood …

Kehr focuses on Westerns in this context of genre-based film and contrasts the approach of directors John Ford and Anthony Mann before arriving at the point that strikes me:

“The 1950s were arguably the greatest years of the western,” Giddins writes in his Mann essay, “the period in which generic formulas were at once sustained and destabilized through psychology, revisionism, high style and the kind of grandeur that follows when the most durable clichés are reframed against classical paradigms.”

To sustain and destabilize — that’s as good a definition of the Hollywood filmmaker’s function as it is of the jazz musician’s …

And, I’d add, of today’s craft brewers, who pick apart conventional viewpoints even as they perpetuate the art and science of brewing.

A healthy contingent of Italian craft brews headed this way in December.

Last week I began the task of collating the many pre-orders and gearing up for December, when NABC's annual offering of Saturnalia Winter Solstice selections go on tap. A healthy number of Italian craft beers, which we've considered randomly in this space during the past year or more, have been intended for the holiday period.

Coincidentally, the Sunday edition of the New York Times offers a travel page consideration of the burgeoning Italian microbrewing scene. Thanks to Matthew and Jeff for pointing me to it.

Savoring Italy, One Beer at a Time, by Evan Rail.

“Italian brewers have done a wonderful job of making it clear that they are the same sort of artisans as chefs and others involved in food,” said Stan Hieronymus, the author of “Brew Like a Monk,” who is making his own trip to the region this fall. “That makes a trip to Italy to find more of these beers and to experience them, along with local cuisine, particularly appealing.”

Stan says it all, and if you examine the innovative ingredients being used by these Italian microbreweries, the food pairing possibilities seem limitless. In no particular order, here's the list of Italian beers ordered for Saturnalia.

1 20L Shangrila Shangrila (8.5% abv)
1 20L Birra di Natale Birra di Natale (8.5% abv)
1 20L Krampus Krampus (8% abv)
1 20L Chiostro Chiostro (5%)
1 20L Verdi Imperial Stout (7.5% abv)
1 30L Nora Nora (6.8% abv)
1 20L Malthus Birolla Malthus Birolla (6.5% abv)

And, here's the link to the Italian craft beer promotion we staged earlier in 2008:

Week of July 21, 2008: Carobs, Chestnuts, Chinotto & Chamomile: Italian Microbrewed Specialties.

Starlight Distillery: I told you so … sort of, anyway.

Major league props to Huber’s Starlight Distillery, a division of the family’s renowed Orchard & Winery, which made the Sunday edition of the New York Times not once, but twice, and in the main section, no less!

In an article about the rise of microdistilling that begins on the newspaper’s front page, legendary local vintner and distiller Ted Huber gets a nod and a quote:

Farmyard Stills Quench a Thirst for Local Spirits, by Susan Saulny.

“There was no way for me to have an artisan distillery the way Indiana law was written after Prohibition,” said Ted Huber, who runs the Starlight Distillery on his farm in southern Indiana and who helped draft the law that was passed six years ago. “I can’t make whiskey, but can make anything that would come from raw ingredients for wine. I’m experimenting with grape vodka now.”

Mr. Huber also runs a winery, and it attracts a half-million tourists a year. But he finds that his copper pot still, imported from Germany, “is really a crowd pleaser, even when it’s not running.”

Eric Asimov, the NYT’s drinks writer, then considers several microdistilled products: THE POUR; Just Don’t Call It Scotch. Or Irish. Or Tequila.

Speaking of rugged stuff, grappa, distilled from the residue of the winemaking process, generally has all the appeal of a flame-throwing punch to the stomach. Most are harsh and unpleasant, though there are significant exceptions. A grappa made by the Starlight Distillery in Borden, Ind., is one of them. It is smooth with a fruity, floral aroma, and would be highly enjoyable after a heavy meal.

Since our visit to the winery and distillery a couple of weeks ago, I've also been praising the Grappa. I remembered the beverage from Italian excursions chiefly as lighter fluid or fuel additive, but like Asimov, I found Starlight’s version to be delicate and aromatic.

What are we going to have to do to the Indiana state law (burning it springs immediately to mind) to allow Ted to distill Hoptimus into schnapps?

Speaking of legalese, I learned earlier today that our Brewers of Indiana Guild was visiting Indiana's legislature in an effort to gain support for legislation that would allow the state's brewers to promote their breweries on state highway signage. It's something that wineries have been doing for two decades, but is currently denied to breweries under the wisdom ... well, under no discernable wisdom whatsoever.