Manneken-Brussels Imports, which represents Chimay and G. Schneider & Sohn in the United States, is looking for a website developer/social media guru to join its staff on a fulltime basis.
MBI is based in Austin, Texas, but the employee may work from home. The job includes full benefits.
Lisa Hollingsworth, COO, says the importer wants an employee someone who is “passionate and knowledgeable about beer and the beer community” and has:
Contact her at lch (at) mbibeer.com.
Pints for Prostates is partnering with BeerTrips.com for a special trip Sept. 9-19, 2011, to the Czech Republic and Germany that will benefit the Pints for Prostates campaign.
The nine night trip includes brewery tours, escorted pub crawls, guided city tours, special meals and more in Prague, Bamberg and Munich. The trip will include special tours of famous breweries along the way, such as Pilsner Urquell and the Andechs Monastery Brewery in Germany. The tour will arrive in Munich in time to enjoy Oktoberfest 2011.
Only 14 slots will be sold, costing costing $2,895 plus air. The trip includes nine nights lodging in centrally located hotels; breakfast daily, four beer dinners and three beer lunches; and train and coach transportation. A portion of the trip price will be donated to the fight against prostate cancer.
“The Prague, Bamberg and Munich tour is one of the favorite itineraries that BeerTrips.com has offered over the years,” said Mike Saxton, founder of BeerTrips.com. “We offer small groups an intimate experience with the chance for insider tours of some the most famous breweries in the world. If you love beer and love to travel, this gives you the chance to experience some of the beer capitals of Europe, enjoying history, culture, food and beer along the way.”
The tour will be hosted by Pints for Prostates founder and beer journalist Rick Lyke. Lyke has been writing about beer, wine and spirits for 30 years and has previously visited each of the cities on the tour. Pints for Prostates is a charity that reaches men through the universal language of beer with an important health message.
As part of the BeerTrips.com and Pints for Prostates partnership, Pints for Prostates will raffle a trip for two for the special trip. For a $10 donation for a single ticket, $25 donation for three tickets or $50 for seven tickets, consumers will be entered to win the trip. The drawing will be held on July 31, 2011.
More information is available at www.pintsforprostates.org.
Homebrewers from Georgia and Illinois were the big winners in Samuel Adams annual LongShot American Homebrew Contest – which this year focused only for beers that would be entered in Category 23 of a sanctioned homebrew competition.
Georgia resident Richard Roper (right) with Friar Hop Ale and Rodney Kibzey (left) of Illinois with Blackened Hops beer. Earlier this year Kibzey won Meadmaker of the Year in the National Homebrew Competition.
The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) reserves Category 23 for specialty beers, noting “This is explicitly a catch-all category for any beer that does not fit into an existing style category. No beer is ever “out of style†in this category, unless it fits elsewhere.”
Two bottles of each of those beers will be featured in the 2011 LongShot Category 23 Variety 6-Pack from Samuel Adams. The other two bottles will be Honey Beer’s Lavendar Wheat beer from Caitlin DeClerq, which won the company Employee Homebrew competition.
“This year we asked homebrewers to push the boundaries and brew their own one-of-a-kind beers,” Boston Beer founder Jim Koch said when the winners were announced Saturday. “I was very impressed by the quality and creativity of the homebrew entries submitted to this year’s (competition.)”
For more than 10 years, Samuel Adams employees have competed in their own annual homebrew competition. Once all the employee homebrews are submitted (more than 300 this year), Koch and the other brewers at Samuel Adams spend a day tasting the employees’ entries, and they choose three finalists. Those three employee homebrewers attend the Great American Beer Festival and ask attendees to vote for their favorite. This year, GABF attendees chose Caitlin DeClerq’s beer.
More from the press release:
Roper’s Friar Hop Ale is described as a hybrid of two styles, uniting the big hoppy taste of an IPA with the spicy, fruity flavor of a Belgian. The toasty caramel sweetness from the malt and Belgian candi sugar mimics a Belgian ale, while the big citrus hop notes of an IPA balance the style. A spicy yeast fermentation and hints of orange and coriander round out the brew.
Kibzey’s Blackened Hops is a perfect combination of deep roasted malt character and citrusy hop bitterness. Harnessing eight years of homebrewing knowledge, Rodney found that combining debittered dark malts and citrusy hops yielded a surprising and unique flavor for this brew. Its black color hints at roasted malt and coffee flavors, but it is the big hop character really steals the show. Packed with citrusy and piney American hops, this beer has a big flavor and clean bitterness. This is Rodney’s second LongShot American Homebrew Contest win; he won in 2007 with a Weizenbock and his beer was included in the 2008 LongShot Variety Pack.
DeClerq has worked as a member of the Samuel Adams sales team since 2006. She created her Honey Bee’s Lavender Wheat with dried lavender petals, giving it a fragrant but soft aroma. A citrus tartness and slight sweetness from the honey and vanilla balance out the finish in this California resident’s brew, perfect to sip while kicking back and relaxing.
The 2011 Samuel Adams LongShot American Homebrew Contest – Category 23 Variety 6-Pack will be available nationwide in select retail stores beginning March 2011 for a suggested retail price of $9.99.
Boston Beer Co. has added a pumpkin beer to its Sameul Adams “Harvest Collection,” a mixed pack of beers for the fall. The 12-pack includes two bottles each of Harvest Pumpkin Ale, Octoberfest, Boston Lager, Dunkelweizen, Irish Red and Black Lager. Harvest Pumpkin and Dunkelweizen are available only in the Harvest Collection.
Samuel Adams first pumpkin beer includes 11 pounds of real pumpkin per barrel (a barrel contains 31 gallons) in the recipe, along with some smoked malt and traditional pumpkin pie spices.
Baker Carlene O’Garro of Delectable Desires bakery in South Boston has created Harvest Pumpkin Bread to accompany the beer. O’Garro is a beneficiary of the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream program, which provide microloans and business coaching to entrepreneurs in the food and beverage and hospitality industries. The recipe:
Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale Bread
Bread ingredients
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1 cup Harvests Pumpkin Ale puree (see below)
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking power
1 Tbsp pumpkin pie spice
Powdered sugar (for dusting)
Method
1. Preheat over to 350°. Combine the sugar and oil in a mixing bowl using an electric mixer with paddle attachment at medium speed. Slowly add the egg.
2. Stop the mixer and add the harvest Pumpkin ale puree (directions below).
3. Turn mixer to low-medium speed and leave it running for 4-5 minutes. In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.
4. Stop the mixer and add the dry ingredients. Mix for 1 minute at low speed or until all the ingredients are mixed together.
5. Pour the mixture into a greased 9- by 5-inch loaf pan, leaving room at top of pan for bread to rise.
6. Bake for 60 minutes. Check bread by sticking the center with a knife (when knife comes out clean, remove from oven). If needed, bake for another five to eight minutes or until knife comes out clean.
7. Once the bread has fully cooled, finish with light dusting of powdered sugar.
Pumpkin Puree ingredients
1-15-oz. can pumpkin puree
2/3 granulated sugar
1 bottle Samuel Adams Harvest Pumpkin Ale
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Method
Combine all the ingredients and stir slowly. Set aside until ready to use.
CNN is reporting that the World’s ‘Oldest Beer’ Found in Shipwreck in the Baltic Sea off the coast of the Ã…land Islands. The Ã…lands are an autonomous group of nearly 6,000 islands near Finland. The cargo ship is believed to have been sailing from Denmark, most likely Copenhagen, sometime between 1800 and 1830 possibly bound for St. Petersburg, Russia. There’s also speculation that t may have been sent “by France’s King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court.”
Initially, divers found bottles of Champagne, but later found additional bottles, some of which burst from the pressure upon reaching the surface, revealing that there was beer inside them. From the CNN report:
“At the moment, we believe that these are by far the world’s oldest bottles of beer,” Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island’s ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN on Friday via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands.
“It seems that we have not only salvaged the oldest champagne in the world, but also the oldest still drinkable beer. The culture in the beer is still living.”
It will certainly be interesting to see what further analysis of the beer reveals.