Like wine, beer is a wonderful alcoholic beverage that can have complexity, sophistication, and be a delight to the senses. Like wine as well, the majority of beer produced is made to appeal to as wide a market of consumers as possible, and because of this most beers lack the above mentioned qualities.
There are now in North America many smaller micro-breweries and larger regional breweries that make superior products, many of whom have taken brewing in new directions.
Wine is a very simple drink to make. All you need is a source of sweet, juicy fruit, - grapes are ideal - and a container to squish the fruit into, and wild yeast and bacteria will do the fermentation for you. All you need to do is pour off the fermented juice, now wine, and voila!
In winemaking most of the attention is placed on the origin and quality of the original grapes. I've argued a great deal in this column that viticulture and micro-climate are the major determinates of a wine's quality. Wine almost makes itself.
Beer-making is a much more complex affair. Though beer contains essentially only water, barley malt, other grains, hops and yeast, producing (modern) beer is more technologically demanding than making wine. (Ancient beers made in Egypt or Mesopotamia must have been downright simple to make, but probably awful to drink.)
But like wine, the quality of ingredients, and thus the expense, have a great deal to do with the finished product, as well as how the beer is made.
Since the end of prohibition, the large breweries bought out and absorbed almost every regional and smaller brewery in North America, leaving the marketplace dominated by a handful a large producers. These producers have largely shaped the marketplace in their own image. In an attempt to appeal to the widest possible market they have literally diluted beer to suit the lowest common denominator. Discriminating consumers, that seek beer different from mass-appeal products traditionally have bought imported beers, many of which, in turn have been bought and produced under license by the same major breweries.
In the early 1980's all of this began to change. Hundreds of small micro and regional breweries sprang up, many of whom have passed into obscurity, but much of whom are thriving enterprises providing stiff competition to the large established breweries.
Consumers began to demand more from such a an unlikely, inexpensive beverage as beer. Quality beer that had the same cachet as trendy wine, that was of course, slightly more affordable and accessible, had an immediate appeal.
Consumers also had a belated recognition that beer was not something uniquely American or Canadian but was transplanted from Europe, and so consumption required a new perspective placed upon the experience.
The same recognition struck consumers and producers of wine in the early sixties, that a Napa Valley Cabernet or Chardonnay could, approach the qualities of a Bordeaux or Burgundy.
It was upon this fertile ground that the seeds for a truly inventive new brewing industry was founded. Copying the styles of old-world brewing was not sufficient, in fact, the nature of New World malt and hops made this a virtual impossibility. Barley grown in Washington State or Saskatchewan was significantly different from European malt, and new varieties of hops grown in the Pacific Northwest were astoundingly more powerful and rich than any European hop.
From this set of circumstances New World brewers have created an unique tapestry of variety and richness of beer styles by reinventing old and new. Today because of the proximity of quality hop and malt producers Washington, Oregon, and California brewers are producing a wide range of beers that are every bit as impressive as the superb beers of England or Germany. Many New England states as well, with their rich brewing heritage, are on the cutting edge of this fusion of beer tradition and New World materials.
Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, Yeungling of Boston, Red Hook of Seattle, Full Sail of Portland are truly on the cutting edge of beer style development producing rich, heavily hopped, zesty, quenching styles of beer, that have no real equal in European beers. Beer making has finally matured in the post-prohibition world of North America, and the future looks bright indeed.
