At a recent visit, I happened to meet Dean Myers, the director of the beer program, and he kindly agreed to give an interview for the blog. Since the focus of this blog is on education, it's my hope this interview will give you all, my readers, an interesting insight into what it's like to run a flagship beer program here in DC.
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| The view from the bar |
JGL: Dean, thank you for seeing me. Let's start by talking about how you came to have one of the best jobs on Earth.
DM: Beer was never the plan...I decided to get a master's degree in creative nonfiction, and with that, you're led to figure out how to make a living. For me, I left the magazine I was working at, and I was looking for a way to fund my writing habit, and realized I have a photographic recall of everything I tasted (and I'd been collecting beer bottle caps since I was four) so I had this depth of brand recognition that went back since before I could drink...and so I lucked out, there was a boutique wine restaurant that wanted someone to come in and build a high-level, fancy beer program for them. So I went from scratch to having one of the more recognizable beer programs in Northern Virginia in two years. And that was my start! I didn't start as a bartender, I started talking to wine people about beer. And so, I had a bit of a crisis of identity...saying, "am I going to be a writer? Or am I going to be a Cicerone?" At the end of the day, you can cultivate sources and tell stories...or you can cultivate sources, drink, and tell stories.
JGL: And the Cicerone program, that's a multi-step process from what I've gathered. Can you talk a bit about that?
DM: Yes, just like Sommelier. You look at Netflix and the "Somme" documentary everyone is in love with...it chronicles the four levels of the Master Sommelier exam. [The Cicerone Certification] has four levels that mirror that almost exactly, with beer. The first level, you can do from your house. It's an online test. But after that, you're looking at written tests, tasting tests, just the same as the wine world. I'd say there's probably a little more focus on finding flaws in beer, rather than where it came from - because there are flavors in beer you can replicate a lot of places.
I mean, if you look at the oldest sour breweries in the world, in Belgium, their yeast strains have 250 years of age and the breweries are able to ferment them for a year, a year plus sometimes...and if you try to recreate that without that history, it falls short a bit. And that makes blind tasting for beer, to figure out where it's from, a little weirder than it will be for wine. For the most part, the wine world has an emphasis on service, but the beer world has its emphasis on elevating beer to that level. Not just knockin' a few back.
JGL: Yeah, and I think over the last fifteen, twenty years - there's been this upswing in craft brewing, which I assume makes it a little harder for you when you're compiling [a program] because there's so many options. But perhaps better, because there's so many choices.
DM: There's a trend out there that a lot of people have gotten into; just because beer is local and you can see the brewery, it makes for less-educated beer drinkers. There are a lot of people out there who say "Oh, I can see the brewery, it exists, therefore this must be what good beer is." And they're not tasting wide and far. Which is where someone like me, or Drew over at Pizzeria Paradiso, or Jace at Meridian Pint, people who taste far and wide and have benchmarks of "this is what this style tastes like when it's done well" and "this is what it tastes like when it's not done so well." And so there's a big education component that comes into being in the beer world and the industry.
DM: We went over to Belgium looking to create a house beer. When you have a celebrity (and Belgian) chef like Robert [Wiedmaier] you figure he needs his own beer, just because of how important beer is to the Belgian identity, and the way Brasserie Beck had taken to the Belgian beer world. One of my predecessors, Thor Cheston, who's the mind behind Right Proper, found this beer kicking around in a test tank at Troubador. It was love at first sight - we were looking for a beer that would pair with the chef's most classic cooking. If you look at the white wine mussels, or the skillet-roasted Amish chicken, they're dishes that this dry blonde ale (that's higher in alcohol than a typical blonde) play really well with. The higher alcohol gives it great pairing ability - it won't get run over by dishes. But it blends moisture to dishes, that little hint of honeysuckle in there brightens up most palettes. It's an amazingly-versatile beer.
JGL: This is a good time to talk about cultivation. So, you've mentioned you've done several beer programs over your career...when you start, is there some idea already in place, or do you have to build it from the ground up? How does someone start building a fantastic program?
DM: You start with an identity. Brasserie Beck has been one of the pillars of the DC beer world, and one of the pillars of the Belgian beer world outside Belgium for a long time, and so the identity was already there for me. One of the jokes that went around one of my first lists was "If Dean could get away with doing a list that's all Belgian, he would. But no one would want that! " Then I came here, and that's exactly what we want. We want someone who's passionate about Belgian beer, and we want to share that experience with people. And so first and foremost you need an identity.
[My first program] was at a wine restaurant; so we want beer that could stand up to wine and if you could have a wine influence, perfect. Dogfish Head does an IPA called "Sixty-One Minute IPA" where they add some syrah must to their regular IPA. That was a natural fit for the list. When you look at the best lists in the city - something like Meridian Pint - it's local. If you take Pizzeria Paradiso, they're about cultivating a community built around beer. And then obviously us, is Belgian. Granville Moore's is Belgian, Dacha, partially owned by a German brewery and very German in direction. All the best beer lists aren't just "we have craft beer" but "we have craft beer, and here's the reason."
JGL: And then comes the natural question - food pairing. Can you talk a little about building a beer list around food as well?
DM: So that's one of the conversations we love having here at Brasserie Beck. There's not a lot of places that can actually do these pairings. You look at a lot of great beer lists...it's just "here's a hamburger, some french fries" or you go to some of the best restaurants in the world, like Restaurant Daniel in New York, and it's just Orval, Ommegang, Heineken, and that's it. And so to have elevated food and elevated beer, and to see the interactions...I'm a firm believer that there are some dishes out there that a beer is a better pairing than a wine. Take Southeast Asian cuisine for instance, or Chinese stir-fry with black rice vinegar - a sour beer goes far better with those dishes than wine. Sommeliers talk about how difficult it is to pair a wine with some Asian cuisines...sour beer presents an entire flavor palette that you don't get with wine.
JGL: And you also have an added layer of texture, such as draft medium or carbonation.
DM: Yes, and that's why we have a bottle list that's 200 bottles long. You can pair to individual dishes and even take into account someone's personal taste...that just having a draft program wouldn't allow us to do. And so if you're going to have beer alongside food, it plays a major part. I'll put in darker beers to play with darker fall flavors, and not just because that's the season for that beer. It's also because if you put a light wheat beer next to some roasted game, the beer will serve no purpose. It'll just get run over by the food.
JGL: When you're building a list, what are some of the resources that you'd use to help inform you? For example, if there's a new beer that comes out you want to try, or if the chefs build some new dish. What's your first step?
DM: There's two ways to do pairings. One; you can look at it as complimentary flavors - we have a dish here that's a seared scallop entree over cauliflower puree with some wild mushrooms and mushroom jus. It's a very earthy dish that presents a wide-open palette for pairing. So I could play in-pocket and take one of the flavors in the dish, like the smoke and the earth, and play it with a German rauchbier. Or I could add flavors - there's an Italian beer I love pairing with; it's from a small brewery called Birrifico Troll and the beer is called "Shangri La" and it's a Belgian-style golden ale brewed with cardamom, curry, and cinnamon. You put those savory Indian spices next to that very earthy dish and you're able to contribute flavors to the dish, not just mimic them. Those are two thoughts to pairing - it's all a matter of making sure it doesn't clash, but making sure it's a conversation.
[All this talk had me parched. I finished the Antigoon - very nice, dryer than expected, as I noted, but still refreshing and tasty - and the following beer caught my eye...it's a dark Italian beer, which you don't see much of at all. It's Birrifico del Ducato Verdi's 8.2% ABV imperial stout made with chiles. I've had plenty of these kinds of stouts before; but never one from Italy, so I was eager to give it a try. Dean really likes it. I found it one the softer end of stouts, which is certainly welcome; the zing of peppers really dominate. There's not a lot of chocolate - some, not a lot - and the overall texture and "delivery of flavors" reminds me a lot of Deschutes' "Black Butte XXVI". A nice dessert beer.]
JGL: So, nothing is without pitfalls. Can you talk about some of the challenges you run into when you're building a list, or working with the public?
DM: It's the same pitfall you get with most industries: it's preconceived ideas. People have preconceived ideas of what beer is. Sometimes you get "I want a beer that tastes like beer" or "all Belgian beers are witbiers." And so, this can be a pitfall but also an opportunity to talk about beer. And when you can open someone's eyes to a beer, in the right way, it's a really fun experience. Then they will be more open to going places; once they realize you understand what they are describing, and you can send them on a trail, they're willing to follow you places. There are more people I have introduced to sour beer that way...
JGL: And since a lot of my readers aren't in the industry, what advice would you give to them? Or, perhaps to people new to beer, or are unfamiliar with beer, or think they don't like beer?
DM: Find someone who can talk to you about beer, but find someone who can speak the language of what you like drinking - if you like bourbon, or if you like wine. When I go to tables and people say "we're more used to pairing wine with dinner, not beer" and I'll say "ok, let's not talk about what you like in beer, let's talk about what you like in wine" and I can pick a beer based off of that. Beer can tied back to whatever is you like; there's a plethora of flavors and perhaps more flavors in beer than in wine. It's a matter of having an open mind and finding a rabbi, a sherpa, someone to lead you through."
JGL: OK, last question - tell me about your favorite beer.
DM: So, it always depends on the season and what I'm eating. But as far as a beer that's regularly produced that I can always go back to ... I'm a very big fan of St. Feuillen saison; St. Feuillen being a very small, independent brewery in Belgium devoted to doing classic Belgian styles. I was in a bar with a friend of mine (I brewed a few batches of beer with him) and there was a dusty bottle of St. Feuillen saison, and I said "I want that!" I like to say this was my gateway Belgian beer; I tasted Belgian beer before but nothing that lit me on fire. And that was the eye-opening experience for me with Belgian beer.
And that's why I'm ecstatic that when the Craft Beer Conference comes to DC in April, the brewmaster of St. Feuillen is going to come do an event at Brasserie Beck on April 13th. They know I'm a big fan, and so when they realized he was going to come over to America, they made a point of reaching out to me and see if I wanted to have him come by. So, I can't wait for this.
JGL: I'll definitely be there for that. Well, Dean, thank you so much for speaking with me - I really appreciate it.
DM: Beer was never the plan...I decided to get a master's degree in creative nonfiction, and with that, you're led to figure out how to make a living. For me, I left the magazine I was working at, and I was looking for a way to fund my writing habit, and realized I have a photographic recall of everything I tasted (and I'd been collecting beer bottle caps since I was four) so I had this depth of brand recognition that went back since before I could drink...and so I lucked out, there was a boutique wine restaurant that wanted someone to come in and build a high-level, fancy beer program for them. So I went from scratch to having one of the more recognizable beer programs in Northern Virginia in two years. And that was my start! I didn't start as a bartender, I started talking to wine people about beer. And so, I had a bit of a crisis of identity...saying, "am I going to be a writer? Or am I going to be a Cicerone?" At the end of the day, you can cultivate sources and tell stories...or you can cultivate sources, drink, and tell stories.
JGL: And the Cicerone program, that's a multi-step process from what I've gathered. Can you talk a bit about that?
DM: Yes, just like Sommelier. You look at Netflix and the "Somme" documentary everyone is in love with...it chronicles the four levels of the Master Sommelier exam. [The Cicerone Certification] has four levels that mirror that almost exactly, with beer. The first level, you can do from your house. It's an online test. But after that, you're looking at written tests, tasting tests, just the same as the wine world. I'd say there's probably a little more focus on finding flaws in beer, rather than where it came from - because there are flavors in beer you can replicate a lot of places.
I mean, if you look at the oldest sour breweries in the world, in Belgium, their yeast strains have 250 years of age and the breweries are able to ferment them for a year, a year plus sometimes...and if you try to recreate that without that history, it falls short a bit. And that makes blind tasting for beer, to figure out where it's from, a little weirder than it will be for wine. For the most part, the wine world has an emphasis on service, but the beer world has its emphasis on elevating beer to that level. Not just knockin' a few back.
JGL: Yeah, and I think over the last fifteen, twenty years - there's been this upswing in craft brewing, which I assume makes it a little harder for you when you're compiling [a program] because there's so many options. But perhaps better, because there's so many choices.
DM: There's a trend out there that a lot of people have gotten into; just because beer is local and you can see the brewery, it makes for less-educated beer drinkers. There are a lot of people out there who say "Oh, I can see the brewery, it exists, therefore this must be what good beer is." And they're not tasting wide and far. Which is where someone like me, or Drew over at Pizzeria Paradiso, or Jace at Meridian Pint, people who taste far and wide and have benchmarks of "this is what this style tastes like when it's done well" and "this is what it tastes like when it's not done so well." And so there's a big education component that comes into being in the beer world and the industry.
[At this point we took a break to order beer. Dean had a half-pour of a Belgian sour, and I went with the "Antigoon," a 6.8% ABV Belgian doubel blonde ale custom-made for Robert Wiedmaier by Brouwerij de Musketiers out of Ursel, East Flanders, Belgium. I wanted something lighter, since it was my first beer, but all this talk about 250-year-old yeast has me in the mood for something Belgian.]
JGL: Wow, this is dryer and not as spiced as I expected. What can you tell me about it?
JGL: This is a good time to talk about cultivation. So, you've mentioned you've done several beer programs over your career...when you start, is there some idea already in place, or do you have to build it from the ground up? How does someone start building a fantastic program?
DM: You start with an identity. Brasserie Beck has been one of the pillars of the DC beer world, and one of the pillars of the Belgian beer world outside Belgium for a long time, and so the identity was already there for me. One of the jokes that went around one of my first lists was "If Dean could get away with doing a list that's all Belgian, he would. But no one would want that! " Then I came here, and that's exactly what we want. We want someone who's passionate about Belgian beer, and we want to share that experience with people. And so first and foremost you need an identity.
[My first program] was at a wine restaurant; so we want beer that could stand up to wine and if you could have a wine influence, perfect. Dogfish Head does an IPA called "Sixty-One Minute IPA" where they add some syrah must to their regular IPA. That was a natural fit for the list. When you look at the best lists in the city - something like Meridian Pint - it's local. If you take Pizzeria Paradiso, they're about cultivating a community built around beer. And then obviously us, is Belgian. Granville Moore's is Belgian, Dacha, partially owned by a German brewery and very German in direction. All the best beer lists aren't just "we have craft beer" but "we have craft beer, and here's the reason."
JGL: And then comes the natural question - food pairing. Can you talk a little about building a beer list around food as well?
DM: So that's one of the conversations we love having here at Brasserie Beck. There's not a lot of places that can actually do these pairings. You look at a lot of great beer lists...it's just "here's a hamburger, some french fries" or you go to some of the best restaurants in the world, like Restaurant Daniel in New York, and it's just Orval, Ommegang, Heineken, and that's it. And so to have elevated food and elevated beer, and to see the interactions...I'm a firm believer that there are some dishes out there that a beer is a better pairing than a wine. Take Southeast Asian cuisine for instance, or Chinese stir-fry with black rice vinegar - a sour beer goes far better with those dishes than wine. Sommeliers talk about how difficult it is to pair a wine with some Asian cuisines...sour beer presents an entire flavor palette that you don't get with wine.
JGL: And you also have an added layer of texture, such as draft medium or carbonation.
DM: Yes, and that's why we have a bottle list that's 200 bottles long. You can pair to individual dishes and even take into account someone's personal taste...that just having a draft program wouldn't allow us to do. And so if you're going to have beer alongside food, it plays a major part. I'll put in darker beers to play with darker fall flavors, and not just because that's the season for that beer. It's also because if you put a light wheat beer next to some roasted game, the beer will serve no purpose. It'll just get run over by the food.
JGL: When you're building a list, what are some of the resources that you'd use to help inform you? For example, if there's a new beer that comes out you want to try, or if the chefs build some new dish. What's your first step?
DM: There's two ways to do pairings. One; you can look at it as complimentary flavors - we have a dish here that's a seared scallop entree over cauliflower puree with some wild mushrooms and mushroom jus. It's a very earthy dish that presents a wide-open palette for pairing. So I could play in-pocket and take one of the flavors in the dish, like the smoke and the earth, and play it with a German rauchbier. Or I could add flavors - there's an Italian beer I love pairing with; it's from a small brewery called Birrifico Troll and the beer is called "Shangri La" and it's a Belgian-style golden ale brewed with cardamom, curry, and cinnamon. You put those savory Indian spices next to that very earthy dish and you're able to contribute flavors to the dish, not just mimic them. Those are two thoughts to pairing - it's all a matter of making sure it doesn't clash, but making sure it's a conversation.
[All this talk had me parched. I finished the Antigoon - very nice, dryer than expected, as I noted, but still refreshing and tasty - and the following beer caught my eye...it's a dark Italian beer, which you don't see much of at all. It's Birrifico del Ducato Verdi's 8.2% ABV imperial stout made with chiles. I've had plenty of these kinds of stouts before; but never one from Italy, so I was eager to give it a try. Dean really likes it. I found it one the softer end of stouts, which is certainly welcome; the zing of peppers really dominate. There's not a lot of chocolate - some, not a lot - and the overall texture and "delivery of flavors" reminds me a lot of Deschutes' "Black Butte XXVI". A nice dessert beer.]
JGL: So, nothing is without pitfalls. Can you talk about some of the challenges you run into when you're building a list, or working with the public?
DM: It's the same pitfall you get with most industries: it's preconceived ideas. People have preconceived ideas of what beer is. Sometimes you get "I want a beer that tastes like beer" or "all Belgian beers are witbiers." And so, this can be a pitfall but also an opportunity to talk about beer. And when you can open someone's eyes to a beer, in the right way, it's a really fun experience. Then they will be more open to going places; once they realize you understand what they are describing, and you can send them on a trail, they're willing to follow you places. There are more people I have introduced to sour beer that way...
JGL: And since a lot of my readers aren't in the industry, what advice would you give to them? Or, perhaps to people new to beer, or are unfamiliar with beer, or think they don't like beer?
DM: Find someone who can talk to you about beer, but find someone who can speak the language of what you like drinking - if you like bourbon, or if you like wine. When I go to tables and people say "we're more used to pairing wine with dinner, not beer" and I'll say "ok, let's not talk about what you like in beer, let's talk about what you like in wine" and I can pick a beer based off of that. Beer can tied back to whatever is you like; there's a plethora of flavors and perhaps more flavors in beer than in wine. It's a matter of having an open mind and finding a rabbi, a sherpa, someone to lead you through."
JGL: OK, last question - tell me about your favorite beer.
DM: So, it always depends on the season and what I'm eating. But as far as a beer that's regularly produced that I can always go back to ... I'm a very big fan of St. Feuillen saison; St. Feuillen being a very small, independent brewery in Belgium devoted to doing classic Belgian styles. I was in a bar with a friend of mine (I brewed a few batches of beer with him) and there was a dusty bottle of St. Feuillen saison, and I said "I want that!" I like to say this was my gateway Belgian beer; I tasted Belgian beer before but nothing that lit me on fire. And that was the eye-opening experience for me with Belgian beer.
And that's why I'm ecstatic that when the Craft Beer Conference comes to DC in April, the brewmaster of St. Feuillen is going to come do an event at Brasserie Beck on April 13th. They know I'm a big fan, and so when they realized he was going to come over to America, they made a point of reaching out to me and see if I wanted to have him come by. So, I can't wait for this.
JGL: I'll definitely be there for that. Well, Dean, thank you so much for speaking with me - I really appreciate it.
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| Source: Washington.org. Photo credit: Len dePas |
Great interview James! I learned more than I knew I could about lists and pairing and Belgian beer.
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