A Foreign Four-Pack

For
the first time in recent years, imported beers have been
forced to take a back seat to craft beers in terms of
production and sales gains. While craft beers receive much
coverage in this column, in a counter-cultural spirit, it
seems the right time to focus on four notable foreign
brands. We all know that imported beer, once the rage, is
supposed to be more expensive. So instead of my regular
six-pack of brewery profiles, I am offering a special
release four-pack of foreign breweries. Sorry, but the
dollar just does not go as far as it used to.

Each of the
breweries profiled boasts an impressive brewing tradition
and a marketable story to sell to consumers. The breweries
are also each locked in a battle to preserve their
traditions in order to secure their futures. Despite their
storied pasts, each is feeling the pinch of international
brewing consolidation. These breweries must constantly
consider the threat of being run out of business by Heineken
or InBev.

As Americans, we
are so far removed from much of this brewing tradition that
we have a hard time relating to or identifying with it. But
simply, and perhaps crudely put, it would be a damn shame if
the traditions and quality products produced by these
breweries were put out of business in order to sell more
nondescript, bland “European-style lagers”.

Erdinger
Weiss Brewery
Located a short drive outside of Munich, in Germany’s
historic Bavarian brewing region, Erdinger dedicates itself
to producing a single style of beer: wheat beer. The
brewery, which boasts that it sells more wheat beer than any
other producer on the planet, brewed more than 1.35 million
hectoliters in 2OO3. Erdinger offers seven varieties of
wheat beer, including a traditional hefeweizen, a dunkel and
a kristall.

The brewery also
produces a surprisingly flavorful alcohol-free wheat beer,
called Alkoholfrei. Served in a hybrid pilsner and wheat
beer glass, the Alkoholfrei pours with Erdinger’s signature
bright, big white foamy head. The aroma is crisp and filled
with scents of new, earthy hops. While average alcohol-free
offerings generally run in flavor from wet cardboard to
something you would prefer even less, I’m taken aback by the
flavor of the Alkoholfrei. This only-slightly carbonated
product offers a very unusual blend of sweetness, wheat and
fresh hop flavors.

The brewery
takes its name from its home town of Erding and counts its
history back to 1886, a relative newcomer in terms of
Bavarian breweries. In 1935, Franz Brombach purchased the
brewery and in 1949 he renamed it after the town. In 1965,
Franz’s son, Werner, joined him at the brewery, which he has
managed since his father’s passing in 1975. With his long,
flowing white hair, over-sized, thick-rimmed black glasses,
and gregarious temperament, Werner fits the part of a German
brewery owner. He has also proved to be an astute
businessman, transforming his father’s little brewery into
an international operation with distribution in more than 6O
countries.

With the clouds
darkening over the German beer market, however, it is now
the son’s responsibility to shepherd the family business
through what may be its biggest challenge. Competition in
the German market is among the fiercest in the global beer
industry. Once storied brands have been consumed by larger
concerns and many of Munich’s biggest names now belong to
foreign conglomerates, including Heineken’s ownership of
Paulaner, Kulmbacher and Hacker-Pschorr. When his company
made its first foray into the German market in 2OO1,
Heineken’s chief executive officer, Karel Vuursteen
predicted the future to various media outlets. “The first
step into the German market looks very promising,” he said.
“Currently the German beer market is fragmented with a large
number of small breweries. This situation will not continue
in the long run.”

Vuursteen was
right. Global giant Interbrew (now InBev) soon thereafter
began involvement with Diebels, Becks, Spaten-Franziskaner,
and Lowenbrau. The face of Oktoberfest has never been the
same since consolidations, mergers and other assorted
international business mayhem came to Bavaria.

Instead of
selling out to larger entities or taking liberties with
product quality, Brombach the younger instead focused on
distributing outside of Germany. During our visit, there is
much talk of the future of the German beer market. The
younger generation of drinkers eschews classic German
styles, including wheat beers, which now account for less
than 1O percent of German beer consumption, in favor of
flaccid, yawn-inducing Euro lagers. During our meeting,
Brombach suggests that the dilution of the German brewing
tradition is turning drinkers off. “There is no future
without tradition,” he notes.

The entire
situation lends itself to a frighteningly circular
self-fulfilling prophecy: existing German breweries cannot
survive without tradition and many believe they cannot
survive without merging with bigger, non-German breweries,
thus diluting their histories. During the meeting, Brombach
questions aloud how long it will take non-Bavarian beers to
appear at the annual Oktoberfest celebration.

With all of this
on his mind, Brombach remains optimistic about Erdinger’s
future. With help from importers, including Colorado-based
Distinguished Brands International (DBI), he is betting the
company’s future on expansion beyond Germany. He also
believes in the old-fashioned and seemingly unfashionable
notion that tradition mixed with a dedication to quality
should be enough to succeed. He is also betting hard on the
company’s dedication to the wheat beer niche market. “The
beer is already half-sold when you show the product,” he
proudly notes of the admittedly striking, shapely glass of
the brewery’s flagship wheat beer. Hopefully, Brombach’s
dedication to tradition and the simple beauty of a well-made
product will pave the way for the next generation of his
family.

Czechvar
In the quiet town of Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic
lies one of the greatest litigants in the history of the
global beer industry. Seemingly from time immemorial, the
Budweiser Budvar brewery has been locked in an international
legal battle with Anheuser-Busch over its namesake lager
brand. While both have racked up a variety of wins and
losses in courts around the world, international
distribution of the flagship brand accounts for some 46
percent of the brewery’s total production of around 1.2
million hectoliters per year. It is the number three selling
imported beer brand in the United Kingdom and boasts its
success as the number two imported brand in Germany. After
an absence of more than 6O years due to its legal woes, the
brand reappeared in America in 2OO1 under the name Czechvar.
With the new brand name also came a new brewery name. The
Budvar brewery is known as BBNP in America.

At its facility,
Budvar mixes tradition and modernism. With its gleaming
copper brewhouse, Budvar is the classic image of a European
brewhouse. Green duffel bags bursting with fresh, aromatic
Saaz hops surround the tanks simply itching to be pitched
into a fresh batch of the brewery’s celebrated pilsner. Only
if you look off to the sides, however, will you note the
computers controlling the entire process. Peer inside the
brewing vessels and the stainless steel interiors reveal
their quiet existence.

While the copper
kettles may be all show, the rest of the brewery is all out
in the open. The enormous bottling and kegging lines are a
complicated jumble of machines working in a order and at a
speed that is hard to comprehend. The passages between the
brewery’s more than five hundred 2OO hectoliter tanks are
tight, wet and cold, providing a quiet environment for the
lager to age properly.

While a menacing
slew of lawyers from Saint Louis keep the brewery busy,
Budvar also sees considerable challenges in its home market.
No stranger to consolidations, several local breweries have
fallen to foreign, mega-brewers. SABMiller own’s Plzensky
Prazdroj’s storied Pilsner Urquell brand, while InBev owns
Staropramen. With near saturation of the big-drinking Czech
beer market and the strong-arming business practices of its
much larger competitors, Budvar has been forced to look
elsewhere for growth opportunities. While 4O percent of its
export is to Germany, the company is also enjoying volume
growth in the American market.

During my visit
to the brewery’s ornate and attractively appointed
restaurant, I had the chance to sample Budvar’s new dark
beer. Served in a handsome half-liter mug, the beer boasts a
huge, billowy off-white head that perches in a meticulously
precarious measure over the rim of the glass. It possesses a
deep, dark color with some reddish hues at the edges. The
aroma is slightly sweet, but makes no mark as either
aggressively sweet or noticeably bitter. It is in part
astringent, with some hints of Saaz hop, which is very light
and fresh in its influence.

When the beer is
served cold, the roasted malt flavors explode on the palate
in a most unexpected manner. While bitterness is the flavor
most often found at the extreme edges of temperature, here
the beer boasts a real wallop of roasted flavors upfront.
The roasted flavors are a welcome break from the average,
boring European dark lager. Though they boast impressive and
foreboding colors, most such lagers lack any punch in the
roasted malt profile. Not this beer. The Budvar Dark is not
your typical, cloying East European lager.

The Budvar Dark
is a very delicate beer. Despite its big roasted flavors and
dark hue, it remains light bodied. As it warms, the beer
predictably gains sweetness. It eventually develops some
nice creamy flavors but the beer’s wonderful roasted flavors
never fail to play on the palate. The brewery uses the same
yeast for this beer as it does with its Budvar pilsner
product. The Budvar Dark is available in select export
markets and only in draft.

Fuller’s
Brewery Tightly
crowded into a section of the mainly residential
neighborhood of Chiswick in London, Fuller’s Griffin Brewery
began as a partnership between three families. In 1845, John
Bird Fuller joined Henry Smith and John Turner to form
Fuller, Smith and Turner, PLC. Before this, the company
claims that beer has been continuously brewed on this site
since the 163Os. While many family-owned breweries have come
and gone, descendants of the three founders remain involved
in the company.

While the
company heavily relies upon its grand traditions and history
in selling its products, it also promotes itself as an
aggressive company focused on the future. Last year, I
traveled to this brewery, along with Czechvar and Erdinger,
as part of a press and distributor familiarization trip
sponsored by DBI, their American importer. During a press
meeting and tasting of the brewery’s offerings, however, the
company’s executives make clear they do not entertain
notions of world domination. “We do not delude ourselves
into thinking we will ever be the biggest brewery,” says
Sales Director Richard Fuller.

With this said,
Fuller’s is strongly pushing its products in the US and
international markets. As DBI’s de facto flagship brand,
Fuller’s is seeking to exploit the lucrative American
impulse towards all things foreign.

Outside of the
occasional beer festival, including an annual celebration at
The Falling Rock during the Great American Beer Festival and
the New England Real Ale Exhibition in Somerville, American
drinkers rarely get to enjoy Fuller’s ales on cask. In an
initial push to capitalize on its tradition, Fuller’s made a
lamentable stumble in a popular Manhattan beer bar. In
trading upon the tradition of the eye-catching service of
cask-conditioned ales, the brewery provided the bar with
proper hand-pumps. Unfortunately, the Brewery did not also
provide the fragile, living cask beer necessary to complete
the experience. So for pubgoers, there exists the illusion
(one that is both culturally and legally frowned upon in
Britain) that the beer being served is a true
cask-conditioned ale.

Enjoyed at the
source, Fuller’s line of cask ales is top-notch, and cask
ESB provides a quintessential beer experience. From its dull
orange color and sticky, lightly foamed white head, slightly
grassy and spicy British hop notes, the beer is the classic
representation of the traditional cask method of
presentation. With a substantial malt backbone that tends
towards toasted notes, the off-setting Goldings hop aroma
and flavor balance makes the beer. The brewers describe this
beer as having basically the same recipe as the company’s
flagship London Pride ale, only more so. While I personally
find the buttery aromas and flavors of the London Pride to
be overwhelming, the richer, fuller flavors of the ESB offer
beer drinkers a truly traditional experience.

Visitors to the
Griffin brewery can enjoy a tour of the facility along with
a viewing of the historic Hock Cellar, where a variety of
breweriana and historical items are on display. The brewery
also recently purchased land adjacent to the brewery on
which it plans to increase the overall area of the
facility.

Cantillon
Brewery It is
simply hard to believe that a place like Cantillon exists.
To beer geeks, it is nothing short of Mecca. To visit
Cantillon is to literally breath in beer and its history, to
bear live witness to ancient brewing techniques, and to
sample the most extreme of beers. To the true beer lover, to
enter Cantillon and watch Jean-Pierre Van Roy and his son
hand-craft an otherwise dying breed of lambic beers is to
experience the exultation wine felt over Warren Winiarski’s
ability to win over the palates of Parisian wine snobs or
the sheer thrill of baseball fans watching Jackie Robinson’s
game saving, over-the-shoulder catch against the Cleveland
Indians. It is simply a thing of remarkable, indescribable
beauty and power.

During the
recent Zythos Beer Festival, Cantillon scheduled one of its
widely celebrated open houses. Twice every year, Cantillon
opens its doors to the neighborhood and welcomes the world’s
beer drinkers to come visit and watch the brewing process
from start to finish.

Walking from
Gare du Midi station in Brussels for the brewery’s recent
open brew day, a curious aroma in the early morning air
peaks my attention. The aroma is purely of freshly brewed
beer. From a half-dozen blocks away, and without otherwise
knowing the proper direction, I simply follow the enticing
smell to the brewery’s front door.

The day starts
early at 6:3O in the morning with a mash-in, and continues
all the way through to the pumping of fresh wort into the
brewery’s famous fermentation tuns in the afternoon. To say
Cantillon is traditional is to engage in needless
repetition. The Van Roy’s produce a scant 1OOO hectoliters
of beer every year, and rely upon the ancient and curious
method of spontaneous fermentation by airborne yeasts to
achieve their decidedly unfruity results.

To step in to
the brewery is to step back in time. The depth of the
brewery building is initially masked by its surprisingly
residential location. As you step deeper into the brewery,
you become surrounded by a seemingly endless string of
large, wooden casks. In these vessels lay a variety of
mouth-puckeringly sour ales simply waiting to be
bottled.

Run by a series
of belts, pulleys and rollers, the brewing process is
delightfully outdated. Like a scene from Willy Wonka,
everything about Cantillon seems backwards. While other
breweries often fail to meet demand for production in the
lucrative summer months, the brewers at Cantillon do not
produce any beer at all between April and September. The
brewery also uses an enormous amount of hops, but the beers
are uniformly not hoppy. By the time the brewers get around
to adding the three-year-old hops to the boil, the
bitterness qualities have long since left the building,
leaving only their mild preservative agents. And the boil,
it’s three times as long as any normal brewery’s process.
Add to that the brewery’s insistence on letting its beer
cool exposed to the elements of the local air, and Cantillon
is clearly unlike any other brewery.

The very things
that give this brewery its visual charm and the beer its
striking character give snooping Belgian health inspectors
fits of bureaucratic delight. Cobwebs abound throughout the
cellar, which is wet, dank and smells of vinegar. The Van
Roys suggest that to change anything in the brewery, to push
a broom or remove a web, is to threaten the very ecosystems
which help produce Cantillon’s distinctive products. With
the secrets of spontaneous fermentation, no one can say for
certain what elements contribute to the brewery’s house
character.

Despite my
stubborn fondness for continued existence, I experience an
acute and disturbing lack of concern for self while in the
spell of Cantillon. Everything about the place screams
‘health quarantine’ but still the glow from the finished
product is overwhelming. Despite their inviting colors, the
beers are uniformly sour. In a sea of sugar-influenced
competing brands, the brewers at Cantillon remain resolutely
opposed to producing such products or reducing the lengthy
periods their beers age in a variety of wooden barrels. At
the traditionalist brewery, a simple sign lords over the
casks announcing Cantillon’s guiding principle: “Le temps ne
respecte pas ce qui se fait sans lui.” Roughly translated,
it provides that “time does not respect that which is done
without him.”