Brave Brew World

While out to dinner with friends, the waiter comes over to your table and asks if you’d like a bottle of wine to accompany your meal. After being presented with a menu the size of a history textbook, you are overwhelmed. Eventually, you blindly choose a modestly priced Italian wine – seeing as you’re having pasta for dinner. Maybe it’s amazing; maybe it’s terrible. Either way, you’ve got an entire bottle to get through – so let’s hope it’s amazing...

We've all been in this scenario at some point or another – and we've all ended up making the wrong choice a few times, stuck with a bottle we may not enjoy and forced to let it waste or polish it off with a grimace. But, there is an alternative that's been rapidly gaining ground among professional and amateur gourmands. Long the fodder for silly jokes and hackneyed television commercials, beer is in a strikingly similar position to where wine was not many years ago.

Craft breweries, internet ordering and increasing knowledge are among the many factors that have caused restaurants to rapidly expand their selections even prompted even casual beer enthusiasts to seek out these new brews.

At restaurants in East Texas proprietors are stocking up with unusual or formerly uncommon ales and lagers that pair nicely with their menus as well as those that stand on their own.

“At Julian's we have a lot of the top craft beers and that's what we really did some research on,” said owner Matt Shulz. “We talked to a lot of our patrons, read sites like beeradvocate.com and mainly listened to the people about what they wanted. We started to see a niche market there, much like the people that come in for wine: they have their certain type they like and they know why, and they like that certain flavor. We started to see that there were people that wanted some darker beers, some with higher percent alcohols like the 1664 like we have on draft, and some of the other more unique beers like La Fin Du Monde and Chimays and the Trappist beers.”

Julian's dove in with both feet, and Shulz said it's been very well received. People have begun coming to Julian's seeking out new brews. “People are starting to come in and actually look for them, discuss them, know the different characteristics, the different brew processes, the different lengths of brews,” Shulz continued. “There is so much to it ... before this I was in the group of people saying 'Oh there's Miller Lite and then there's Shiner, and that's kind of darker.' But now, its opened my eyes because I was really into wine, but now I'm starting to learn a whole lot more about beer. It's this whole other world, but its very similar in many ways.”'

This expansion of available beers and the culture surrounding it definitely appeals to diners with refined palates or to those seeking exotic flavors to pair with food or enjoy on their own. However, there are many who have always simply preferred a frosty lager to a glass of Malbec.

“I think there's so much tradition centered around wine … and a lot of people just don't understand,” said Brandon Haffner, owner of Breakers in Tyler. “Everyone knows Chardonnay, everyone knows Cabernet, maybe Merlot, and besides that, it can be kind of up in the air. There are so many other varietals out there. I have to admit, it's intimidating to me too. I have to have some of my customers explain the wines to me,” he said, laughing. “I'm just not a big wine drinker.”

However, Haffner does have a great knowledge of beer and keeps Breakers stocked with personal favorites and harder-to-find labels that match up with the menu and keep customers coming back.

“I think over time people just realized that you have different beers, and it starts attracting more people that want those special beers,” Haffer said. “It's usually a younger clientele that asks for the more exotic beers, you almost have to push it on some of the other customers. People will ask what we have on draft, and when a server says 'Fireman's #4, I think you'd like that,' we'll let them sample it, and kind of help sell it. They gradually come around.”

Then, there are are the economic aspects of beer that are a bit more appealing. No longer will you be stuck with a 750ml bottle of something you don't particularly care for – and that you've just paid a hefty sum to not enjoy. Shulz said that he's seen people who might not be comfortable diving into wine be much more at ease with a bottle of ale.

“It's a little bit more easy for people to look in the cooler, where they can see just a bottle of beer and say, 'I'll try that.' You know it's just a bottle of beer,” Shulz reiterated. “It is a lot more approachable … You hear 'wine connoisseurs,' but you don't really hear, 'beer connoisseurs.' Everybody feels like they're kind of comfortable with beer so they don't mind jumping out there and trying new versions. Thats a big part of beer, is just trying different beer, and I agree its a lot more approachable, its a lot easier for me to introduce new things to customers as well. They want a Shiner, and we might be able to suggest a different beer they've not tried before. They're a lot more open to trying it because it's just a beer. That approachability allows people to venture out a bit further.”

However, were it not for the advantages of carrying these specialty beverages presented to the chefs, managers, owners and restauranteurs themselves, we might not see many of them on the menu. The economic benefits of being able to purchase a wide variety of beers, not having to keep a high stock level and, most importantly, being able to match up their drinks with their menus in a way that most anyone can enjoy make the emergence of beer culture a solid launching pad for successful restaurants.

John Chang, Head Sushi Chef and Operating Manager for Shogun, explains, “We are of course a Japanese restaurant so we wanted to choose beers that highlighted the flavors of our food. We brought in the top three best selling beers in Japan with Kirin Ichiban, Sapporo and Asahi. Some can go with the raw sushi, some with the heavier food like steak and potatoes, some like Kirin have a more well-rounded flavor that goes with almost anything. We're able to offer customers a new experience with their beer, something to accompany the menu and expand their tastes.”

Looking forward, the future is very bright for beer lovers or those looking to learn more. Gourmet culture is poised to expand greatly into the beer market.

“I was just watching something on the Discovery Channel last night about the Dogfish Head brewery and what they go through to make all these different and interesting beers,” said Shulz. “I think it is really starting to catch on … on the show they were trying to make a new beer out of all these Indian spices, and thats another neat thing about beer, is you can put all these different flavors in and it's not as rigid as wine making. You can experiment more and get different flavors so I think it opens the market up to more people, just to get different tastes in there … I'm just now getting into beer, but its an exciting thing to learn about and I've seen plenty of people beginning to enjoy the wide variety a whole lot.”