This one really belongs at Real Beer for the Holidays but that blog isn’t set up to accommodate videos.
Happy holidays. If you go to the Grolsch website there’s a chance to win a case of beer.
This one really belongs at Real Beer for the Holidays but that blog isn’t set up to accommodate videos.
Happy holidays. If you go to the Grolsch website there’s a chance to win a case of beer.
The American Homebrewers Association is giving away a trip to the Great American Beer Festival. Register at HomebrewersAssociation.org before Nov. 30 to enter in the sweepstakes.
The contest winner receives airfare for two, three nights of hotel accommodations and two all-session passes to Great American Beer Festival 2011 in Denver, Sept. 29-Oct. 1. The rules.
P.S. Those registered before the contest was announced are automatically entered in the sweepstakes.
Sierra Nevada Brewing has announced plans for its 30th anniversary party, Nov. 15 at the brewery’s hop field.
Let’s cut right to the invitation:
Come and celebrate this American craft beer renaissance at the Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Party in our very own estate-hops field.
The party kicks off at 4 pm with sampling of 30 beers including some of your favorites from the last 30 years, plus a few unique finds from the cellar. Many of these beers never have been, and never will be, released to the public – this may be your only chance to sample them! They are available in limited quantities, so arrive early to ensure that you get to taste the ones you are most looking forward to. We will be posting the full beer list in the coming weeks.
The evening will also feature the musical stylings of Roy Rogers & The Delta Rhythm Kings featuring two very special guests! The Joe Craven Trio will kick off the evening’s festivities, followed by Houston Jones.
The Sierra Nevada Taproom is catering dinner from 5-8 pm, which costs $15. You can purchase dinner tickets onsite at the event.
MENU
Fresh Baked Breads – Straight From the Sierra Nevada Ovens
Sierra Nevada Salad – Mixed Organic Greens Tossed In Balsamic Dressing with Cherry Tomatoes, Crumbled Gorgonzola and Candied Chico Pecans
Fall Vegetables -Tossed In an Estate Garden Herb Butter
Garlic Mashed Potatoes – With Sweet Creamery Butter and Roasted Garlic
Estate Herb Rubbed Tri Tip – Pale Ale Bbq Sauce
Sweet Pepper Polenta – With Roasted Estate Tomatoes And Peppers, Onions Carrots And Chives* Date: Monday, November 15th
* Time: 4:00 – 9:00 pm
* Place: Sierra Nevada Brewery, 1075 E. 20th St, Chico CA, 95928 – The party will take place in the Sierra Nevada Hop Field.Tickets are only available online, in the Sierra Nevada Taproom, and the Sierra Nevada Gift Store.
Remember, you must be 21 or older to attend! Photo ID will be checked on site and there are no in and out privileges.
How to get to the Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Party?
1. FREE SHUTTLE – from downtown Chico. The shuttle will run on a continuous loop from 3:30-10 pm. Pick up and drop off are at the transit center across from Madison Bear Garden.
2. RIDE YOUR BIKE – there is plentiful bike parking at the brewery!
3. PARKING AT SILVER DOLLAR FAIRGROUND – complimentary parking available at the fairgrounds, a shuttle will run back and forth from the brewery from 3:30 pm – 10 pm.**THERE IS NO PARKING ON-SITE AT SIERRA NEVADA.**
“This may be your only chance to sample them!”
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.
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.
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.
NPR’s Science Friday had a show last week devoted to The Science of Smell. If you’ve ever taken tasting beer seriously, you know how important smell is to the flavor of beer (and everything else). Host Ira Flatow discussed Olfaction with research scientists Stuart Firestein and Donald Wilson. The show’s only a little under 18 minutes but is pretty interesting.
For example, twenty years ago [the field of olfaction] made the most important discovery in the modern era of olfaction, which “was the identification and cloning of a large family of receptors in our noses that mediate the sense of smell that act like a lock. If you think of it, odor is a key, and when they fit together, the brain is clued in to the fact that this odor is out there somehow. And this identification of this large, large family of genes, a thousand of them in many animals, as many as 450 in us, mediates this smell.
This turns out to be “the largest gene family in the mammalian genome. The mammalian genome, typically, we think consists of about 25,000 genes. So in a mouse, it’s about 5 percent of the genes and even in us, it’s almost 2 percent. About one out of every 50 genes in your genome was devoted to your nose.”
And here’s a later revealing exchange, from the transcript:
Dr. FIRESTEIN: I think we use our nose a lot more than most people believe. The biggest problem with our sense of smell or the feeling that we don’t have a good sense of smell is actually our bipedalism, the fact that we walk on two legs. And we have our noses stuck up here five or six feet in the air, when all the good odors are about eight or 10 inches off the ground. Or for example, as the case with other animals, they’re more willing to put their nose where the odors are, shall we say, delicately.
FLATOW: And well, we’ve always heard that animals like let’s pick out dogs, bloodhounds and things like that, that dogs are able to smell so much more sensitively than us in all different kinds of smells. Is that true?
Dr. FIRESTEIN: Well, it’s a good question. I mean, I often say to people who ask me that question, if they have such a good sense of smell, why do they think they do that greeting thing that they do?
Dr. FIRESTEIN: You think you could do that from 10 feet away, you know?
FLATOW: Well, that’s true. They get right up there and sniff you.
Dr. FIRESTEIN: Boy, they sure do.
FLATOW: So why do they need to be so close if they smell…
Dr. FIRESTEIN: Yes, well so some of this is behavioral, and a part of it, the another way to show that, I think, for humans, is that we actually have very sophisticated palate, for example, for food, much more than many other animals and we know that most of flavor is really olfaction.
And here’s another interesting exchange about the specifics of our sense of smell, insert “beer” in the place of “coffee” and the process of judging beer critically works the same way.
FLATOW: Don Wilson, tell us what happens what is connected to our noses in the sensory? What goes on in the brain when we smell something?
Dr. WILSON: Well, it’s actually really exciting because – so these you mentioned the ABCs of olfaction. I think that’s a good analogy because these hundreds of different receptors that Stuart just mentioned essentially are recognizing different features of a molecule. You don’t have — for most of odors, you don’t have a receptor for that particular odor. You don’t have a coffee receptor or a vanilla or a strawberry receptor. You have receptors that are recognizing small pieces of the molecules that you’re inhaling, and the aroma of coffee, for example, is made up of hundreds of different molecules.
So what the brain then has to do is make sense of this pattern of input that’s coming in: I’ve got receptors A, B and C activated when I smell this odor, and I’ve got receptors B, C, D and E activated when I smell this other odor. And what we’ve found is that what the brain is really doing with the olfactory cortex and the early parts of the olfactory system are doing is letting those features into what we and others would consider something like an odor object, so that you perceive now a coffee aroma from all of these individual features that you’ve inhaled. And, in fact, once you’ve perceived that coffee aroma, you really can’t pick out that, you know, there’s a really good ethyl ester in my Starbucks today or something – you really have an object that you can’t break down into different components. So that’s what the brain is doing.
And we know that part of that building of the object, that synthetic processing of all these features, is heavily dependent on memory. So you learn to put these features together and experience this odor the first time. So it’s really a – in some ways, olfaction seems really simple. They suck a molecule up my nose and it binds to a receptor and so I must know what I’ve just inhaled. But, in fact, it’s a fairly complex process where it’s akin to object perception and other sensory systems.
FLATOW: Does the fact that it elicits such strong memories — you know, so you can a smell from 40 years ago or something. Is it because — are they close together, the centers for smell and memory in the brain?
Dr. WILSON: Well, in humans, it’s — in some ways, the olfactory cortex is really enveloped by — embraced by parts of the brain that are important for emotion and memory. There are direct reciprocal connections between the olfactory system and the amygdala and hippocampus, these parts that are important for emotion and memory. So – and we think that as you’re putting these features together to make this perceptual object, the brain and the cortex is also sort of listening to the context of which I’m smelling it, maybe the emotions that I’m having as I’m smelling it. And those can, in fact, we think can become an integral part of the percept itself. So it not only becomes difficult to say what the molecules were within that coffee aroma, but it also becomes difficult to isolate the emotional responses you’re having with that same odor.
After that they go on about memory and aromas, and then take calls from listeners. You can also hear the entire discussion below or at Science Friday’s website (or download it below or at NPR) and also see the full transcript.
Stella Artois’ World Draught Masters competition has begun, and this year allows contestants to enter online.
The U.S. finals for the competition, now in its 14th year, are set for Sept. 17 in Boston. The winner earns a spot in the 2010 Stella Artois World Draught Masters final in Old Billingsgate, London Oct. 28. Fifteen of the 16 U.S. finalists will come from live regional competitions with one wild-card participant randomly chosen from the top 25 national scorers in the interactive 9-Step Pouring Ritual game found at www.DraughtMasterUSA.com.
“A perfect pour is fundamental to experiencing the perfect Stella Artois,” said Alexander Lambrecht, global marketing manager for Stella Artois. “The brand’s time-honored 9-Step Pouring Ritual helps ensure all adults around the world are served as they have been in Belgium for more than 600 years. Belgium’s gold-standard lager should only be poured one way, and it is important that all those who enjoy Stella Artois pay as much attention to serving it as we do to making it.”
Regional competition began this week in Tampa and continues into September.
Rick Lyke, founder of Pints for Prostates, has announced the 26-beer menu for Denver Rare Beer Tasting II on Sept. 17. It includes beers not available commercially or ones consumers often line up overnight in order to buy.
A few tickets remain available for the tasting from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Wynkoop Brewing in Denver. Only 500 tickets ($80 each) will be sold and may be purchased through eTix.
Beers scheduled to be poured are: Alaskan Whiskey Barrel-Aged Smoked Porter; Avery Quinquepartite; Bell’s Eccentric Ale 2004; Big Sky Barrel-Aged Ivan the Terrible; Samuel Adams Cosmic Mother Funk; Brooklyn Reinschweinsgebot; The Bruery Melange #3; Cascade Noyeaux Sour Ale; Cigar City White Oak-Aged Jai Alai India Pale Ale; Deschutes Black Butte XXII; Dogfish Head Namaste; Foothills 2009 Sexual Chocolate; Founders Nemesis; Goose Island Bourbon Barrel Coffee Stout; Great Divide Flanders Red; Jolly Pumpkin Biere de Goord; New Belgium Tart Lychee; Pike Tripel Kriek; Rogue 21 Ale; Russian River Temptation; Sierra Nevada Sierra Nevada Brandy Barrel-Aged Belgian Trippel; Stone Collaboration ESB; Three Floyds Dark Lord; Upstream 2006 Gueuze; Weyerbacher Decadence; and Wynkoop Orville.33.
Admission includes samples of 26 beers, hors d’oeuvres, a commemorative tasting glass, event program and the chance to meet the men and women who created the beers.
The tasting will benefit Pints for Prostates, grassroots effort to raise awareness among men of the importance of regular prostate health screenings and PSA testing.
Oskar Blues Brewery will host Burning Can: The Canned Beer Ragbag in Lyons, Colorado, June 26.
The brewery expects 15 or so others breweries that also can their beer to participate in the festival. Nashville band Bonepony will provide the music. Beyond beer and music, the event will feature beer can art and beer-infused dishes (including beer can chicken). Keeping with the environmental spirit of packaging in cans Eco-Cycle will also be on hand.
Proceeds will benefit the Colorado Brewers Guild.
The first craft brewery to can its own beer on premise back in 2002, Oskar Blues has been joined by about 75 other small breweries (so far) in canning their own beer. The company continues to operate its original brewpub in Lyons, where it first canned beer, but has since expanded into a production brewer in nearby Longmont.
New Belgium brewing has posted the tour dates for the 11th season of Tour de Fat, its “traveling celebration of all things bicycle.” The tour begins June 26 in Chicago and concludes Aug. 30 in Austin, Texas.
For the fourth year in a row, Tour de Fat is looking for volunteers for the “swapper challenge.” One volunteer in each city will give up their car and receive a hand-built Black Sheep commuter bike. A volunteer is chosen after submitting a video or essay describing their desire to live sans-car for a year. To submit an application, log on to the Tour de Fat site.
“The car-for-bike swap is the pinnacle of the day, illustrating one person’s true belief in all that a bicycle can offer,” said Bryan Simpson, spokesman for New Belgium. “Bikes represent freedom, fun, fitness and folly while helping the environment. It’s a way of life that we live and share at New Belgium.”
The full schedule:
June 26 – Chicago, Palmer Square Park
July 3 – Milwaukee, Humboldt Park
July 10 – Minneapolis, Loring Park
July 31 – Seattle, Gasworks Park
August 14 – Portland, Waterfront Park
August 21 – Boise, Anne Morrison Park
September 4 – Fort Collins, Mothership
September 11 – Denver, City Park
September 25 – San Francisco, Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park
October 2 – San Diego, Balboa Park
October 9 – Tempe, Tempe Town Park
October 23 – Los Angeles, L.A. Historic Park
October 30 – Austin, Fiesta Gardens
Friday Wynkoop Brewing in Denver begins the first of bi-monthly beer deliveries by wagon.
A wagon pulled by two 2,000-pound Clydesdale horses will roll out from the alley behind Wynkoop Brewing at 7 p.m. and head to a few of the brewery’s downtown beer retailers. The public is invited to watch.
“We’re bringing back a piece of our city’s beer-blessed past,” Marty Jones, cheersleader/Idea Man, said for a press released. “Our local historians tell us it’s been nearly 100 years since beer was delivered in Denver in this fashion.
“It’s a great way for us to shrink our carbon footprint while expanding our hoof print.”
Denver historian Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel said, “It’ll be a joy to see horse-powered beer wagons rolling down Denver’s streets again. . . . Wynkoop Brewing Company brought back boutique beer in Denver, and now its bringing back horse-drawn thirst aid.”
For this debut run, the horse-drawn wagon will leave Wynkoop and visit Wazee Supper Club at the corner of 15th & Wazee streets.
The wagon’s other stops include Wines off Wynkoop (the brewpub’s first Rail Yard Ale can account), Lannie’s Clocktower Cabaret (in the historic D & F Tower on Denver’s 16th Street Mall) and Scruffy Murphy’s Irish Pub at 2030 Larimer St.
Wynkoop will continue horse-powered deliveries on the second and fourth Friday of each month.
Dennis Holzrichter, owner of D & D Featherfoot Clydesdales & Carriages, will provide the retro transportation for these deliveries. He has been offereing horse-drawn carriage rides in downtown for 20 years.
New Belgium Brewing is seeking short digital, film and video submissions for the first season of its traveling cLips of Faith Beer & Film Tour. Chosen entries will screen in 14 cities throughout the summer and fall of 2010. From the press release:
The top three winning filmmakers will travel to New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, CO for a private screening and beer dinner extraordinaire.
“The cLips of Faith Beer & Film tour is a celebration of the innate creativity of both brewing and film,†said event director, Meredith Giske. “We’re looking for eclectic and creative short film submissions to complement the beers we are bringing from our Lips of Faith portfolio. These are some of the most creative beers we make, so it will be a one-two combo like you’ve never seen.â€
Each stop along the fourteen-city tour will feature an outdoor screening of the collected films, a full tasting of New Belgium’s Lips of Faith beers and food from local vendors. All proceeds will benefit local bike non-profits. The series will run between mid-June and mid-October.
“At this point, we’re looking for you and your friends to create something original and fun for all of us to watch,†said Giske. “We’re looking for stories that touch on beer, whimsy or sustainability in the categories of comedy, drama, adventure, documentary or animation. The slate is completely blank and the possibilities are endless.â€
To learn more about New Belgium’s cLips of Faith series or to submit content, go to www.clipsoffaith.com.
Below is, as far as I know, the most recent label for Budweiser, updated in 2000. We all know that labels change over time, sometimes dramatically, but usually more subtly with just small tweaks from time to time. But even small changes over a long period of time become dramatic in the long view. So this is a fascinating peak into those changes.
Etiquette Systems, a label manufacturer, has an online gallery showing what they call the Evolution of America’s Most Famous Beer Label. It shows a dozen different versions of the Budweiser label, from the first 1876 version up to the 2000 latest one, with all of the changes in between.
How’s this for some back-to-back romance in Oregon?
Feb. 13: Zwickelmania.
Feb. 14: Valentine’s Day.
Close-toed shoes required.
The Oregon Brewers Guild has extended the scope of the Zwickelmania Oregon Brewery Tour after last year’s successful debut. Breweries across the state will host open houses and special tastings From 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Feb. 13.
“Last year we had more than 10,000 visitors from across the state participate in Zwickelmania,” Oregon Brewers Guild Executive Director Brian Butenschoen said for a press release. “This year we have extended the hours to make the experience more enjoyable and allow participants to experience more breweries.”
Zwickelmania takes its name from the zwickel, or sample valve which is mounted on the outside of fermentation or conditioning tanks and allows brewers to take samples for quality assurance and control.
Admission to all Zwickelmania events is free, with some breweries offering complimentary sample tastings, food pairings and other activities. The guild will provide buses in Portland and Eugene to shuttle visitors to multiple breweries throughout the city. Close-toed shoes will be required for any visitors entering brewing facilities.
For a complete list of Oregon breweries participating in Zwicklemania and sample itineraries visit the guild website.