Monday, April 22, 2019

How Fast Is Your Beer?

As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. In the 1990s, the hammer we had was an arcane knowledge of distance running, including where our own performances placed us in the vast hierarchy of this old, global sport. And in these years before the great polarization of racing distances-- i.e. between the 5k and anything with the word "marathon" in it-- the 10k performance was the standard measure of running ability. For peak-age male athletes like us, 30mins was (and still is, really), the dividing line between good and very good (the Mercier performance tables say 30:00 is roughly equivalent to 35:00 for women). So handy was this metric that we would begin applying it by analogy to things otherwise completely unrelated to running. You have a friend who is a pretty good figure skater? How good is he in 10k terms? You have another one who's making his way in music or journalism? Is he sub-30 yet, or still in the 32:30 range? And on it went. The quality of anything and everything could be reduced to the thing we knew best--  the 10k personal best-- never mind the accuracy. 

With the ascendance the website beeradvocate.com and its famous beer-rating function, it has become standard practice to evaluate beers on a 5 point system, with anything over 4 registering as from "very good" to "world class" (as of today, for instance, the top 250 rated beers on BA range in score from 4.46 to 4.84, with the top rated Canadian beer, Dieu du Ciel!'s Barrel Aged Pèchè Mortel, coming in at 4.45). This rating system is fine, but also boring. For this blog, I therefore propose a new metric-- you guessed it, the 10k equivalent! For the beers I discuss in the blog, of which there will eventually be many, I will be employing the following scale:

Sub-28 (women's sub 32)-- For the truly world class. Here, the aforementioned Pèchè Mortel would be the Mohamed Ahmed or Cam Levins of beers-- not quite at the very top, but in the conversation when it comes to the best all-time domestic drinking experiences, and certainly known to the serious beer drinker globally. Of course, this category would also include the Kenenisa Bekeles and Eliud Kipchoges of the beer world-- your Heady Toppers and Westvletern 12s-- beers you may never get to try, but have heard tales of. For me, the hallmark of the sub-28 level beer is its ability to induce a mild shock of surprise at its quality, not once, but on a consistent basis. These are the beers you know are going to be good when you crack them, but that forcibly remind you of their superiority to the main beer pack every time you are fortunate enough to return to them. They are superbly balanced, but also bursting with unique character. The very best are utterly sui generis-- instantly recognizable and impossible to mistake for anything else.

Note: If you are very new to beer, you will probably lack the palate perspective to register the full power of the beers in this category. In other words, you may find yourself feeling like the beer drinking equivalent of that NARP relative of yours, the one whose mind is blown by the thought of any 10k performance under 40mins. So, do try these beers if you get the opportunity, but understand that you may not fully "get" them until you've tried a few dozen of examples from the category below.

Sub-30 (women's sub 35)-- For the best of the hardworking and more readily available brews found anywhere there is serious crafting going on. This category will include most of the beers we go to on a weekly basis, if we're lucky enough to have good suppliers. Off the top of my head, and using an example local to me, this category would include the best offerings from a brewery like Hamilton's Collective Arts. Sub-30 beers are excellent exemplars of their style; they are flavourful, well balanced, and highly drinkable, but lacking the above-mentioned capacity to stop the drinker in his/her gustatory tracks.

+30-- For the vast majority of beers available, including beers that make an honest effort but fall just below their top local and national competitors (but also some beers that, sadly, aren't really even trying to challenge anyone's palate). It would include most of the beer coming out of the many new craft breweries now springing up almost by the month-- beverages that are sometimes good for training the palates of hop virgins, but are typically not worthy of the daily alcohol quotient of the aficionado (except in a serious pinch, or when graciously offered by a friendly host). These beers are at least recognizable by style, and often easily drinkable, but are just a shade off in at least one key area (balance, weight, mouth feel) compared with the sub-30 brew.

For the worst beers out there (about which I will try to say as little as possible) I will, with apologies to Dom Mazetti, reserve the category "Do You Even Run?". In beer parlance, this category would include "drain pours" (serious but colossally failed crafts) and ubiquitous macro-brewed schizen. If you are drinking any of these beers (and, yet, have still found your way to this blog) you will be advised to proceed directly to the +30 category for remediation.These days, there is no excuse for drinking bad beer.

In some cases, I will be giving down-to-the-second scores in the sub-28 and sub-30 categories, but these will be the main groupings. And apologies in advance to masters' age competitors like me. Unfortunately, there is no beer equivalent of "age-grading". I will therefore be sticking with the peak-age performance measure.

Finally, a note on beer tasting and subjectivity. Those relatively new to beer may be inclined to scoff at my certainty, broadly speaking, when it comes to ranking beers. They may say "Come on. Taste is completely subjective. My Tankhouse or Mad Tom is completely fine. There is no way any beer is THAT much better. It's all pretentious hype!". And they would be dead-wrong. There is a remarkable consensus among the mass of serious beer drinkers concerning what constitutes top notch beer, and so on down the pecking order. We all have our preferred styles, but we very rarely deviate by more than a couple of BA basis-points (.1-2) when it comes to identifying the top brews. Once you have refined your palate, play the game yourself: Try a new beer, rate it 1-5 in your head, then check said beer's BA score (the result of often thousands of serious drinker's impressions, all registered in relative isolation from one another) and be amazed at how close your own evaluation comes!

Return next week for the first of my beer and running travel reviews-- this one on the city of Philadelphia, where I will attending this year's edition of the Penn Relays. I may also include my first "Run Fast, Drink Well" featured athlete, if I can secure a volunteer! 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Summer of My Re-Content:

The sun is going aslant again, yellow and red are creeping into the green, and the hop harvest is in. Let us welcome back the best time of t...