There is beer on Hawaii …
… especially if brewers from all over the world meet for their own Olympic World Brewing Congress. After Orlando and San Diego, Honolulu was the port of call for more than 800 brewing industry representatives from 2 to 6 August 2008.
Sorry, but I could not resist making the reference to a naff German “pro-beer” song from the Sixties. The song claims that there is no beer on Hawaii and hence the singer feels compelled to stay back home in Germany where there is beer aplenty.
Although attendance figures were down compared with the WBC in San Diego four years ago, the various symposia, workshops, keynote presentations and technical presentations were rather well attended.
Fortunately, those putting together the programme had decided to deal with so-called soft issues too. That’s why there were symposia on education (by the Institute of Brewing and Distilling), on Japanese Technology (by the Brewery Convention of Japan) and on beer, health and nutrition (by the EBC). Of all the workshops, the one on Asian Beer Styles proved the most raucous, not least because the presenter, Hiroto Kondo of the Brewers Association of Japan made the tasting both informative and entertaining. Participants were able to taste all the various Happoshus, produced by Japan’s brewers: those with low malt content and those without any malt whatsoever. Fortunately, your correspondent here does not do sensory analyses of beers. That’s why she is only prepared to say, quoting Evan Evans of the University of Tasmania: “Please give me a beer that has malt in it!”
Nathaniel Davis of Anheuser-Busch had a captive audience too. He spoke to a packed out hall about beer, cheese and glassware pairings. To a Belgian that topic would have been old hat. But in the U.S. to serve a beer in style may still be something of a novelty. Interestingly, Anheuser-Busch has finally seen the light and hopes to take beer upmarket. Although the brewer from St. Louis is not the first one to promote beer as a fine dining experience - the brewers of Samuel Adams have been doing this for years – Anheuser-Busch is doing it, well, Anheuser-Busch style: with BIG money. Like Anheuser-Busch does generic beer advertising. Anheuser-Busch’s “Here’s to beer” campaign, which is all about beer and not about Anheuser-Busch’s beers, bears testimony to this. Apparently, Anheuser-Busch spent big money airing one of “Here’s to Beer” commercials during the Superbowl.
To this correspondent here the EBC’s symposium on beer, nutrition and health was the most exciting one. And this is not because she had been invited by the EBC to take part in it. No, it was exciting because it created some debate.
Expect to read more about this symposium in the next newsletter.
