I spent last week in Utah. The organisation I work for was exhibiting at the annual conference of the Society of Economic Geologists, so I was over there demoing our platform and tools. Even though, as you all know well, I am a terrible beer tourist, I had done a little research on breweries in the city for the few nights I was there.
As it was, my first wander into a brewery was actually for lunch having set up the booth, en route to my hotel to freshen up and get ready for the opening session. Literally just round the corner from my hotel was a place called Squatters Pub Brewery, which I had spotted the night I arrived, but was too wiped to get out.
It was whilst at Squatters, having a pint of their very respectable German pilsner, that I learnt something about booze law in Utah that I was completely unaware of - though I had been regaled already with stories of people clearly of age to drink being refused service outright due to a lack of ID. Seemingly, Utah law stipulates that draft beer can have a maximum ABV of 5%. Stronger beers are available, but only in cans or bottles.
It feels almost as though since I moved to the US in 2009 I have been hearing about campaigns to have the maximum ABV limit removed, or at the very least lifted. Ohio, West Virginia, and Alabama have all raised their limits to double digits in recent years. Often the campaigns to have limits raised focus around the theme of allowing brewers to unleash their "creativity", or worse yet in my unhumble opinion because everyone else is doing it and "we need to compete".
As you may have guessed I think both arguments are spurious, though I own the fact that I think limits on ABV are daft in general. I am not a fan of overbearing, though potentially well-meaning, patriarchal rule making. At the same time I am not some "free-market" zealot who thinks that businesses should be given carte-blanche. Anyway as I reflected on Utah's 5% abv limit, I realised that it is actually a very sensible approach, and I would argue that it actually encourages creativity, far more than removing all boundaries. Creativity is more about working within the tools and limits that you have than it is about having a completely blank page for you to vomit on and declare it "art".
When you think about the beer styles that routinely fall beneath that 5% abv threshold, there is an immense scope for creativity. English mild, ordinary or best bitter, pilsner (whether Czech or German), kölsch, gose, schwarzbier, rotbier, the list goes on. Even if you take a single style, best bitter for example, there is a wealth of possibility, with everything from a paler Timothy Taylor Landlord to a much darker Windsor & Eton Guardsman, and let's not even get started on the impact of water chemistry across England - not everything is Burton-on-Trent you know.
Allowing that correlation is not causation, I had a couple of bartenders say to me whilst I was there that the limit actually forces their brewers to make better, more consistent beers, really dialling in their processes. While my sample size is admittedly tiny, just a handful of breweries in Salt Lake City over a few days, I can say I didn't have any beer that I would not happily drink again - and amongst the highlights was (I hope you are sitting down for this) another beer at Squatters, Melon Collie IPA - hopped with Centennial, Chinook, Cascade, Amarilllo (remember that one?), and Mosaic. What a stunning example of hoppy beer doesn't leave your head swimming in booze to accommodate all the hop character - it was lovely.
Anyway, I will write a bit about the other beers I tried while in Utah in the coming days, but it certainly made a pleasant change to not go hunting for an actual session beer, they were everywhere.
Maybe Utah has it right?
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