A Cornish brewery, Skinners Brewery, has linked up with the Fishermen’s Mission to help celebrate its 125 years of supporting fishermen and their families in times of hardship, need, accident, illness or disaster at sea.
The brewery is producing a limited edition of at least 2,000 bottles of Starry Gazey Ale for the mission.
Not sure how I came across this blog post but the headline sucked me in and the message reflects the mood of many who have posted responses to other entries here about Rolling Rock production heading to Newark, N.J. (further documented yesterday the the New York Times).
Anyway, from the blog:
Funny. I always thought that the reason Bud tasted the same no matter where it’s brewed is because it’s “beer” who’s recipe has been watered down over the years to the lowest, most generic piss-water common denominator for the hordes of sheep who fall for sophisticated, multi-billion dollar advertising campaigns.
Amazing the emotions beer brands can evoke.
After 7,776 beers how do you make the next one special?
Greg Nowatzki consumed his on July 7, at seven seconds after 7:07 p.m., at Big Dog Brewing Co. in Las Vegas. Big Dog brewer Dave Otto made a beer especially for the occasion called Quad 7. Otto used seven different malts, seven different hops, 77 IBU’s – International Bittering Units – and 7.7% alcohol.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has the story.
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has launched a way of letting consumers know what beers will taste like before they sample.
Here’s the press release:
Taking lessons from the UK wine industry, CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, and 14 real ale breweries will today launch a new initiative called ‘Cyclops’ at the Great British Beer Festival. ‘Cyclops’ aims to demystify real ale after research showed that 1 in 3 people would try more real ale if its characteristics were made easier to understand in pubs.
Declining beer sales in the UK have brought beer consumers and brewers together to revitalise the market for real ale, Britain’s national pub drink. Following the success of the wine industry to make wine more accessible to all consumers through simple tasting notes Cyclops will use common language to explain what different real ales should look, smell and taste like. Sweetness and bitterness are the two dominant taste qualities of real ale and Cyclops using a scale of 1 to 5 for each enables drinkers to work out how sweet and bitter they like their beers.
The new scheme was the brainchild of David Bremner, Head of Marketing at Everards Brewery in Leicester. Everards pilot scheme aimed to promote its beers to new consumers who may have never tried real ale before or who had only tried a few pints in the past. By using attractive imagery and simplified language, real ales are described on promotional material such as beer mats, posters, tasting cards and pump-clip crowners to inform consumers of what they are buying. This information will also be placed on the back on beer handpulls to keep pub staff informed of what the real ale is like.
Tony Jerome, CAMRA’s Senior Marketing Manager said, “Real ale is an incredibly complex drink with an enormous range of styles and tastes. Cyclops will demystify real ale so drinkers will know what a beer will look, smell and taste like before they part with their cash at the bar.â€
Jerome continued, “A great deal of skill and care goes into the brewing of real ale and there are many thousands of dedicated connisseurs and enthusiasts which has led to a whole new and fascinating language behind beer tasting. Research shows, however, that drinkers who are less familiar with real ale want to know in easy to understand terms what the beer tastes like. I am convinced that Cyclops will revitalise the real ale market by enticing younger drinkers, both male and female to try our national drink. They will quickly learn to appreciate its complex flavours and we are confident that they will soon become enthusiasts.â€
The new scheme is called ‘Cyclops’ due to the one eye, nose and mouth imagery used on the promotional material. 14 real ale breweries, from across Britain, have already signed up to the campaign and will be using it on their beers in pubs.
The 14 breweries are:
Everards (Leicestershire), Wolverhampton & Dudley Brands (National), Woodforde’s (Norfolk), Camerons (County Durham), Hook Norton (Oxfordshire), Fuller’s (London), Refresh UK (Oxfordshire), Robinson’s (Cheshire), Hall & Woodhouse (Dorset), Elgoods (Cambridgeshire), Wadworth (Wiltshire), Titanic (Stoke on Trent), Charles Wells (Bedfordshire), and Caledonian (Edinburgh).
That’s a good start, but as Americans who have been spoiled by West Coast hop-infused beers know there’s more to hops that bitterness. And there’s certainly more to malt than sweetness.
No matter the outcome of negotiations that would keep the brewery in Latrobe operating, the fact remains that Rolling Rock is gone. Don Russell – Joe Sixpack – visits the town to report on just what that means to the town.
“You think of Latrobe,” said Steve Kittey, editorial director of the town’s daily newspaper, the Latrobe Bulletin, “you think of Rolling Rock beer.”
“It’s like Hershey and chocolate,” said Ed Maher, a Latrobe Brewing employee whose father and grandfather both worked at the town’s famed brewery. “They’re inseparable.”
Were insperable.
Some of the educational seminars at the 14th annual Vermont Brewers Festival this weekend in Vermont:
– “Craft Beer and Artisan Cheese Pairing.”
– “The Art of Tasting Beer.”
– Two “Cooking with Beer” demos.
You are going to read this every where. Coors executive Pete Coors was cited in May for driving under the influence of alcohol after leaving a friend’s wedding celebration.
Coors was driving a 2004 Jaguar when he was pulled over by a Colorado State Patrol trooper just before midnight May 29, according to officials in the Jefferson County District Court clerk’s office.
He was arrested for suspicion of driving under the influence and cited for failing to obey a traffic control device.
Coors rolled through a stop sign a block from his home and was stopped by the officer in his driveway, company spokeswoman Kabira Hatland said. She said his blood-alcohol content following a breath test was 0.088 percent, above the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
How would you feel if you rolled a stop sign late a night – in our small (some would say sleepy town) we know to be very careful at stop signs any time after dark – got stopped in your own driveway and then test just over the legal limit (a limit many argue is too low)?
A Belgian brewer and forces on this side of the Atlantic have partnered in an auction to help a French girl suffering from a rare, neurological condition known as leukodystrophy.
Brasserie Fantome’s Dany Prignon and his brewer friend, Gilles Didier (who lives in the same town as the girl), have brewed a special beer to be sold at auction to raise money for an operation. They created a special, strong version of Dany’s rare and popular Pissenlit saison, brewed with dandelions. This is a one-time, very limited edition – only 20 bottles are available. Each bottle has been numbered and signed by Dany and Gilles, and 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the European Leukodystrophy Association.
Auction details are at the Shelton Brothers website (Shelton imports the Fantome beers).
The auction continues through July 3.
The New York Times (free registration) has the scoop on the dismantling of the dismantling of the famous 60-foot-tall Pabst beer bottle, which had loomed 185 feet above Newark for 75 years, the history of which we’ve already covered.
For now it is five enormous pieces of steel and copper plate three-eighths of an inch thick, and its fate is far from settled.
Ted Fiore, whose company has been demolishing the 10-acre site of the former Pabst brewery for two years, said he planned to restore the bottle at his warehouse in Newark and then give it a new home.
So far, Mr. Fiore said, “several alcoholic-beverage companies” have expressed interest. It might end up in Newark, he said, or perhaps along the Jersey Shore in Dover Township, where a nightclub could take it.
And here’s another quote from the story: “It’s kind of a sad day,” said Matthew Gosser, an adjunct professor of architecture.
An adjunct professor commenting on a giant bottle that once represented Pabst . . .
Regional brewer Everards has stuck a chord with breweries that are in one sense competitors, getting them to sign up for its “tasting notes” campaign.
In mid-April the British brewery invited 18 regional brewers up to the brewery in Leicester to explain why they should get involved. So far 16 regional brewers have opted to use the scheme, including Caledonian, Wadworth, Hook Norton, Batemans, Charles Wells and Fuller’s.
The program provides drinkers with simple tasting notes on each beer’s pump clip, as well as beer mats and drip mats. Bitter or sweet scores are given out of five and everyday language is used to describe each beer’s “see, smell, and taste†profiles.
The cooperation stands in interesting contrast to the Here’s to Beer campaign that Anheuser-Busch has bascially had to go alone.
Germany’s Spiegel Online uses the occasion of the Czech-U.S. World Cup soccer match to pit American Bud vs. Czech Budweiser. We’ll warn you now the beer matchup didn’t go any better than the one on the pitch – the headline reads: “Czechs on American Bud: It’s Missing the Taste of Beer.”
Our story begins in the narrow streets streaming from the Gelsenkirchen main train station. Packed with well-sauced fans in the red, white and blue, there was nary space to move as I hustled around trying to procure a six pack of Czech Bud. After unsuccessful tries up and down the “downtown” of this fading former mining city, I hit upon a dwindling stash in a side-street supermarket.
A lifelong drinker of the American version of Bud, US fan West Interian’s palate is hardly what one might call discerning. But on a hot afternoon, in a town who’s name every one seemed to have trouble pronouncing, Interian became a convert.
“I’ve drunk Bud my whole life, and this tastes better,” he said after a gulp or two. Then he paused. “Hell, this is warm, and it tastes better. Try this, Rex.”
Rex Corbett grabbed the modest green bottle: “Hmmmm, that is good,” Corbett agreed. The bottle never made it back to Interian.
And Cox News Service offers a report from Munich:
In the cavernous back room of Munich’s famous Augustiner beer hall, Heiko Hofrichter sits at one of the long wooden tables, takes a sip of his thick brew, and explains why German soccer fans just can’t swallow the fact that America’s Budweiser is the official beer at World Cup stadiums.
“For Germans, Bud tastes like watered down beer. It’s not beer,” complained Hofrichter, 24, a graduate student from the city of Nuremberg.
“It’s Spuelwasser!” cried Robert Paustian, 32, from another table in the boisterous beer hall, using the German word for dishwater.
Not everybody was quite so unkind. Back to the report from Spiegel:
“It (American Bud) is quite good,” Vladimir Herink, of Prague, will tell me later during half-time. But by then, of course, the blazing hot sunshine had done its damage. “It’s good for this occasion,” he said adding a decisive qualifier to his first statement. “We’re quite thirsty, you see.”
Of course, unlike the Americanshe wasn’t crying in his beer.
Bless those researchers at Oregon State University.
The study they released last fall about how hops in beers may help prevent cancer has popped back into the news.
News outlets around the world are carrying the story about xanthohumol, found in hops, inhibits a specific protein in the cells along the surface of the prostate gland. So you get headlines like this one from ABC News: Beer Ingredient May Fight Prostate Cancer.
The story also points out “that a person would have to drink more than 17 beers to benefit.”
What’s 17 beers when it comes to your good health?
Oregon’s brewers have plenty planned for the Third Annual Brewers Summer Games June 24 (noon to 10 p.m.) at the Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City.
Starting at noon, brewer teams from around the state meet on the beach to battle it out for the Grand Champion Altitude Cup. Each participating brewery brings a team to compete in a series of nine events, including a Keg Toss, a Hand Truck Race and a Yeast Toss (including balloons full of yeast).
The event will raise money for two local charities: the Nestucca Valley Boosters and the Caring Cabin. The Nestucca Valley Boosters supports athletics and other extracurricular activities in local schools. The Caring Cabin is a retreat for children undergoing cancer treatment.
Admission is free, with beer, root beer, food and T-shirt sales going to the charities.
Here we are at 6/6/06 and if you are reading these then it would seem the apocalypse has not yet arrived and we should be thinking about what 06.06.06 means to a beer drinker.
Why, of course, it’s the day Stone Vertical Epic Ale gets released, just as it did on 5/5/05, 4/4/04/, 3/3/03 and 2/2/02.
From the press release:
Stone Brewing first released the Stone Vertical Epic Ale series on February 2nd, 2002 and has done so consecutively, for five years now, one year, one month, and one day after the last edition. This year’s version happens to come out on June 6th, 2006, next year’s edition will be released July 7th, 2007, followed by August 8th, 2008, all the way to December 12th, 2012.
Stone’s “Epic†saga isn’t even half way over, but is already taking the beer community by storm. A beer that started as an original, quirky concept has morphed into an enigmatic quest for beer enthusiasts everywhere. The early years of the Stone Vertical Epic Ale are actually so revered by beer geeks worldwide that single bottles are commanding prices of $400 or more per bottle, and according to the Wall Street Journal, the Stone 02.02.02 Vertical Epic Ale is one of the rarest craft beers in America.
Should you be tasting it on 06.06.06 or wait until 12.12.12 or even beyond? That’s up to you, but to help Stone has posted early tasting notes.
Based on those we’re waiting . . . at least until this afternoon.
Should you serve German wheat beer with lemon?
Joe Sixpack makes no bones: “Don’t do it!”
But today’s column also notes that consumers get mixed messages form all measure of beer authorities.
At his Beer Hunter web site, Michael Jackson writes:
When I first encountered South German wheat beers, in the early to mid 1960s, they were regarded as an old-fashioned, rustic style, favoured by old ladies with large hats. The beer was at that time customarily garnished with a slice of lemon.
People have told me the lemon was to mask the taste of the uneven products made at that time by unscientific country brewers; I do not believe that. Some of the wilder wheat beers might taste odd to the uninitiated, but not to people who grew up with them.
I have also heard it said that the lemon reduced the foam to manageable proportions, but why would anyone want to flatten a naturally sparkling drink?
I believe the lemon accentuated the tart, refreshing character of the beer, and I am sorry that it is so rarely seen in Germany today.
Apparently the green movement is worried that the rind may carry pesticides; a new generation of beer purists dislike the lemon; and it does not go so well with the heavily sedimented style currently favoured.
In the Realbeer.com offices we prefer not to partake of lemon before noon, and since German wheat beers are the perfect breakfast drink long ago became accustomed to enjoying them sans lemon.