Rick Kleffel is an independent producer with NPR, and has interviewed a remarkable range of figures, and reviewed a massive amount of books. You can view his work here.

He recently sat down with Charles Bamforth for a very long interview — a great bonus for beer geeks the world around. Get the full scoop on Grape vs. Grain, on early brewing history, and get Charles’ entertaining wit as a bonus.

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Joshua M. Bernstein of Gourmet recently did a Q&A with Charles Bamforth, touching on something that I find to be among the “funny-because-it’s-true” characteristics of wine and beer.

JMB: How else do wine makers and brewers differ?

CB: Brewers tend to use unappealing terms like catty, grainy and burnt, while wine guys tend to use more charming terms, like fruity. If brewers can learn some of the lexicon, we can make some of the terms more appealing. For instance, I don’t think catty is very attractive. When beer ages, it can develop a tomcat-urine flavor. Instead of saying, “This beer tastes like tomcat urine,” perhaps we can substitute the more appealing and equally accurate, “This beer tastes like black-currant buds.”

The kitty pee.

I’ve alluded to it in other posts, but this is something that somehow keeps coming up. The San Francisco Gate’s lovely wine flavor wheel (below) places the stuff in the “It Depends” category.

Yes, I agree. I haven’t tasted it so much in sauvignon blanc, as I’m supposed to, but in a really crisp pilsener, like Victory’s, yeah. It’s there. And somehow, it’s part of a great package!

I also must admit that I am a die-hard fan of beer with a barnyard flair; i.e. sour lambics.

Anyway, read the full Gourmet Q&A session with Bamforth >>

Charles Perry of the Los Angeles Times, talks with Charles Bamforth, author of Grape Vs. Grain, about the role of a beer connoisseur at a university known for its winemaking. Now that’s the kind of stuff this beer-loving, NorCal-born blogger is happy to see:

Charles Bamforth stirs the pot as UC Davis’ professor of beer

By Charles Perry, Special to The Times
June 4, 2008

Dave Getzschman photographs students in the midst of making beer.

DAVIS, CALIF. — Meet the Anheuser-Busch Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences at UC Davis.The what? There’s a professor of beer in that teeming nest of winemakers? Indeed there is. He’s Charles Bamforth, chairman of the department of food science and technology, a sturdy, jovial middle-aged Englishman with traces of a Liverpool/Manchester accent. On June 13 and 15, UC Davis will bestow diplomas on eight of his students — along with their 37 classmates majoring in viticulture and oenology.Bamforth clearly enjoys his role as the merry beer drinker at the wine tasting. “There are two kinds of students I set off,” he confides, as he heads off to teach his Malting and Brewing 102A class. “The chemical engineers, because I tell them they have no soul. And the oenologists, of course.”

Well, he doesn’t exactly set them off by accident — he teases them without end. To illustrate an issue in quality control, he pointedly tells an oenology major, “Now, let us say you’re throwing darts at a dartboard and you’re singularly incapable of hitting a bull’s-eye,” drawing out the word “singularly” to imply astonishing klutziness. (One of his recurrent themes is that beer requires more skill to make than wine does.) Everybody laughs, including the blushing oenologist.

At the end of the class, the last one of the quarter, another wine-making major presents Bamforth with a bottle of Champagne and a bottle of fine Belgian ale and slyly points out that the Champagne bottle is bigger. “Size matters, Charlie,” he says, showing that oenologists can tease back.

Bamforth, a onetime quality assurance officer at a Liverpool brewery, has a remarkable rapport with American college students. He is a prolific writer, author of such scholarly articles as “Food, Fermentation and Micro-organisms” and “The Foaming of Mixtures of Albumin and Hordein Protein Hydrolysates in Model Systems.”

His latest nonacademic book, “Grape vs. Grain,” is a concise discussion of the beers and wines of the world — including their history, technology and aesthetics — that treats beer throughout as wine’s equal in flavor and healthfulness. “I wanted to call it ‘Beer and Wine,’ ” he insists, “but Cambridge University Press preferred the note of confrontation.” In fact, he says, he likes both beverages, but he demands that beer get due respect, aesthetically and as a healthful drink.

Yes, healthfulness. When drunk in moderation, beer provides much the same health benefit as wine and is an excellent source of B vitamins and antioxidants, he tells his class. Did you know, for instance, that it’s an outstanding way to get your silicon, a trace nutrient important for bone and cartilage health, and that there are people in the U.K. who derive their entire recommended daily dose of silicon from beer? Or that the body absorbs the antioxidant ferulic acid — that’s (E)-3-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxy-phenyl)prop- 2-enoic acid to you and me — better from beer than it does from tomatoes?

Bamforth’s involvement in the beer world began when, as a postdoctoral biochemist, he was hired for his knowledge of enzymology by the Brewing Research Foundation, an institution funded by the British beer industry. A couple of years later, Bass Brewing Co. recruited him to be its research manager. Eventually, Bass sent him to its Liverpool brewery and charged him with making sure no flawed beer got into the market.

“They wanted me to have field experience,” he says. “They considered Liverpool a particularly tough brewery to work at.” No problem. Bamforth had street cred — he’s also been a sportswriter, specializing in soccer.

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I love the Anchor Brewing Co.’s beer.

I love it.

I love Anchor Steam, I love their Christmas beer on the less “piney” years, I love Old Foghorn, and I really love the rye and gin they’ve been distilling lately.

When I went to Oakland, CA for a wedding in my fiance’s family, the hotel desk handed me a “care package” basket from the bride and groom. It had some snacks and a couple big bottles of Anchor Steam. They knew.

So when the publication of Grape vs. Grain approached, and I started to think about a launch-event location near Davis, CA, they were on my list from the start. I called the brewery one afternoon and introduced myself. When I mentioned that Charles Bamforth had a new book coming out, the woman who answered the phone said “Oh, Charlie! We know Charlie. Sure, let me get you in touch with John Danerbeck.”

Thus it began, and Anchor has been very hospitable ever since. I understand that last night’s event was a very good one.

So thanks to Anchor, to John Danerbeck (pictured right) and to Charles for his work championing beer.

Also, thanks to Jay, who graciously provided the picture. Read his post about the event here.

Were you there? I wish I was. How was it? Comments are open!

Charles Bamforth is a globe-trotting brewing scientist, and I could hardly ask him for a post the day he lands from southeast Asia. Those clamoring for some wisdom should look no further than the Preface of Grape vs. Grain, in my opinion, one of the more entertaining pieces of beverage writing I’ve encountered. I’ll post some bits of it here.

flew to Heathrow from India, via Frankfurt. The four hour holdover in the German airport had not remotely bothered me. I hate tight connections, and, besides, I was able to indulge in some sausages and weissbier while peaceably reading my newspaper, a faint buzz of conversation surrounding me.

Later the same day, I found myself for the first time in several years in central London. Strolling toward Hyde Park Corner in the dusk of early evening, it occurred to me that the traffic heading toward the West End was much heavier than I recalled from when I was a more regular visitor and living just a short train ride away. As I walked, there was suddenly the most stupendous whooping, and I turned to see two girls, probably late teens, hanging (in every sense of the word) out of the windows of a stretch limo and gyrating maniacally.

I thought little of it – surely an aberration – and continued my stroll, eventually pitching up at The Crown on Brewer Street, close to Piccadilly Circus. It was a hostelry I knew of old, and, in truth, little within had changed, with the exception of the display on the bar. There was row upon row of taps for dispensing kegged beer, but just a solitary handle for pumping traditional English ale from the cask. I had a pint of the latter, a worthy drop of Charles Wells Bombardier.

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