Wine, Pleasure, Beauty

A talk with Peter, Brewmaster at New Belgium Brewery

To continue with my series of local interviews, I met up with Peter Bouckaert, brewmaster here at Fort Collins’ own New Belgium Brewery. Though most of my posts are about wine, about which I have the most passion and knowledge, I want to broaden to include other aspects of a local community and a culture of pleasure and appreciation. And though many people may not think of it, beer can be pretty complex and varied. (I don’t believe the variety is as great as wine, a point about which Peter disagrees.) And since Fort Collins actually makes some really great beer locally - and isn’t known for growing wine grapes - it makes sense to take a look at beer here.

Peter and I met up a few months ago at Cafe Vino, a local cafe/bar, one of my favorite hangouts in Fort Collins. We had a couple of beers together (of course) and split a pizza, and talked, and talked, and talked. Mostly about beer and wine (at first), but also about health, culture, American politics vs. Belgian politics, and kids. I’ll stick to beer for this post (or it would be unapproachably long).

When Peter arrived I was already sitting at a table, daydreaming and doodling in my notebook (as usual). He woke me from my reverie with his usual enthusiasm, opening our conversation as he usually does, with an update from the latest beer meeting or beer conference or beer board meeting he has just come from attending. (I think the poor guy lives in meetings.) This time it was a conference on the health benefits of beer. (Apparently it’s a really rich source of silicon, for any of you who are worried about silicon deficiencies and what supplement you should be taking to remedy that.) The one thing I’ve always noticed about Peter is his enthusiasm for beer. And how in conversation with him all things either begin with or return to or somehow relate to that subject. The guy’s got passion is what I’m saying.

Anyway, we got to talking and I told him how mostly I was into wine, having started drinking it a couple of years ago, and how I loved the variety and complexity you get with wine that you don’t get from too many other foods and drinks. Guess what. He’s got a different opinion about that one. Poor winemakers, he says. Stuck with grapes and, well, pretty much just stuck with grapes. Sure they can mess around with different kinds of yeasts and barrels, and that’s pretty much it. Take this beer we’re drinking now, pointing to our glasses of Dark Heather Saison. It’s got yeast, spice, black pepper. Winemakers should be envious. They are stuck with grapes. We get to experiment and use whatever works. Flavor components are in anything. Use them. You crush the grain. You go into an enzymatic process. You work on proteins, starches, you can target certain areas of certain enzymes to express them less or more, he says to me a mile a minute, as if I’m a fellow brewmaster who knows what he’s saying is obvious and true. If I’m a yeast, I want to live in beer. It has more of what I want. The beer has more nutrients for a yeast to be able to deal with the sugar. We need to feed our micronutrients. We have to boil, which is worse from a sustainability stance - New Belgium kicks ass when it comes to alternative energy and sustainable practices, by the way - and on and on he goes. For winemakers, it’s damn easy. As brewers, we have a more intensive process. Nope. Not pulling any punches. Come on, Peter, why don’t you tell us what you really think? But the whole monologue comes out not in a combative way (as it perhaps looks in writing) but out of a passionate engagement with the science and craft of the process of fermentation.

On to philosophy. To make our love and talent manifest. That’s the NB motto. Here’s his personal philosophy. There’s three ingredients to create beer: knowledge, experience, and creativity. (Check, check, and check.) He’s got a strong opinion about this as well. Craft brewers try to be holier than the pope. They need to remember the third ingredient. The problem goes back to Rheimheidsgebok [he wrote this down for me, but has messy handwriting so I may still have misspelled it]. The German Purity Law of 1516: beer must be water, barley, and hops. Absurd. Absurd. I look at him quizzically. It’s absurd to stick to traditions based on solutions to the problems of the 14th century, he says, clearing that up totally, since I and every reader will know what those problems were and how the purity law was meant to deal with them. 

In beer, we are only trying to create 10 minutes of pleasure. This is my favorite part. A little perspective, one you wouldn’t expect from someone with a life-consuming passion for this product. That woman over at the bar. The one with the book and the glass of wine. It’s not about the subject, it’s about the atmosphere. It adds a little pleasure.

I get into this with brewers around the world. IT HAS TO HAVE A STORY. I was at the — conference [what did I tell you about stories from conferences and meetings] and I was talking to this brewer, and I said to him, you have to have a story. We traded stories. I talked him under the table. [Note to self: for when you can’t drink someone under the table…] I have an authentic story for every beer. I develop a beer, I develop a story. Like this song [Jack Johnson, playing in the Cafe at that moment]. You probably enjoy it way more than me because you know his story. We are completely in the entertainment industry. IN THE END, IT’S ONLY 10 MINUTES OF PLEASURE, so you have to relativize it. Some beer geeks can tell me more about my own beer, but the love factor isn’t there. It’s like music. It’s SNOBISTIC. If I drink a beer it’s only going to be my pleasure. I don’t care about you. But for you, it’s about you. Beer geeks and wine freaks are useless. 

And I think he thinks those 10 minutes, even if it’s only 10 minutes, could be so much richer - and that it’s part of his mission to make it so. So Peter, as a Belgian, what do you think of Americans? No, actually I didn’t ask (but I know he likes us, or at least this one). But later in our conversation, when we had moved on to talk culture and politics, after the interview portion of the conversation was over and I had put aside my notebook, he made an analogy back to beer. Americans start with Wonderbread and move on. With wine, from jug wine to great wine. Craft brewers have done the same. Beer is the younger wave. The US is very commoditizing. But the pendulum swings. And people want craft.

And somewhere in there, in his words that come out more as an engaging lecture from a passionate professor than as a dialogue or conversation, lies a coherence linking the perspective that it’s 10 minutes of individual pleasure with the conviction that love and story make that 10 minutes so much personally better.

Passion, creativity, the Good Life, and more. I’m fortunate to live in a town where I know so many people with these qualities. It shows in our projects and in our work. And in Peter’s case, it shows in the beer. Cheers, Peter, and thanks for chatting and sharing,  not to mention for the beer.