Banned in Utah

Posted In Beer culture, Just for fun, News at   

You have to think there is a homebrewer or beer lover in Utah who is cringing to see the attention a vanity license plate with “merlot” on it received this weekend.

Glenn Eurick’s 1996 Mercedes has had the license plate reading “merlot” for 10 years. He says the plate never got a lot of notice until the Utah Tax Commission told him last week that he had to remove it because the state doesn’t allow words of intoxicant to be used on vanity plates.

Eurick was fine until an anonymous caller told the state that merlot was an alcoholic beverage.

Will somebody driving around with plates that read zymurgy or porter be next?

CAMRA begins beer club

Posted In Beer culture, Beers at   

You’ve got to live in the UK to enjoy this, but . . .

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is launching a new Beer Club that delivers a 20-bottle case of beer each quarter.

The explanation why is here.

Here’s the place to sign up. As an incentive to join, the first shipment will include a “Taste of America Four Pack.” The four beers pictured are Goose Island IPA, Anchor steam, Brooklyn Lager and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Heineken targets airport bars

Posted In Beers, Breweries at   

A new bar at Hong Kong’s international airport serves up as much Heineken branding as it does beer. Bar stools reflecting green neon match the Heineken-logo T-shirts for sale. TV screens show Heineken ads and sports events sponsored by the company. While the bar sells other beers as well as wine and spirits, only Heineken-owned brands are available on tap.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports that Heineken plans a series of bars like these around the world.

This is a little different, but not entirely different, than breweries liscensing their name for use in U.S. aiports. This has been common for years, whether it is a Samuel Adams Brewhouse, Anheuser-Busch or a locral brewery. In St. Louis you can find a Schlafly pub, for instance. The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport has both a Rock Bottom Brewery Restaurant and a Leinie Lodge.

But Heineken seems to have high expectations for its own efforts. “If you enter the Heineken Bar, you enter the world of Heineken,” said one manager.

BTW, best fact hidden deep in the story: Beer is the second most consumed beverage after coffee.

Toasting the tastemakers

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Forbes.com has put together a list of “Tastemakers” for wine, beer and spirits.

The list includes four beer guys: New Glarus Brewing co-founder/brewer Dan Carey, Boston Beer (Samuel Adams) founder Jim Koch, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery (and plenty of beer writing) and Michael Jackson, the world’s leading beer writer. OK, he writes a little about whiskey, too, but we’re claiming him.

So, with apologies to Here’s to Beer, which one would you most like to have a beer with?

From the beer business wires

Posted In Beers, Breweries, News at   

– A strong fourth quarter wraps up an excellent year for Boston Beer, producer of Samuel Adams beer.

– Bud.TV got off to a slow start. Part of the problem is the registration process. “The first week after Super Bowl, the site got an average of 20,000 visits a day, but only about 800 to 1,000 a day were registering–we think because of the registration process,” reported A-B vice president Tony Ponturo.

– Miller Brewing is giving a national push to Miller High Life’s “Take Back the High Life” campaign. The company reports “Midwestern customers are swapping trendiness for value, so the brewer is taking its promotion of the lower-priced beer nationwide.” Kinda like this headline: Miller: Midwesterners Appreciate Lower-Priced Beer.

Getting ready for the green

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So Saturday will you be a) watching your NCAA bracket picks go down in flames? b) drinking green beer in a bar decorated with shamrocks? c) doing something more enjoyable?

A rhetorical question and excuse to give you these St. Patrick’s Day links:

– Taste for Guinness wanes in changing Ireland

– Recipes for St. Patrick’s Day

– Erin go blah.

– Irish pubs: Stouts and craic (plus a list).

Oregon beer production up 16.5%

Posted In Beers, News at   

Oregon brewers made 16.5% more beer in 2006 than 2005. That’s all craft beer because since the Blitz-Weinhard Brewery closed in 1999 the only breweries in Oregon are craft producers.

Total beer production for the state was approximately 796,000 barrels, according to figures released today by the Oregon Brewers Guild. That is an increase of more than 113,000 barrels, up from 683,000 barrels in 2005.

From the press release from the Oregon Brewers Guild:

Portland, Oregon has 28 microbreweries within its city limits which is more than any other city in the world. The Guild anticipates four more breweries opening within the city limits in 2007, bringing the total to 32.

The Portland metro area is the largest craft brewing market in the United States (U.S.). It is the only area to sell more than 1,000,000 cases of micro brewed beer according to Information Resources Inc. Seattle and San Francisco are the second and third largest markets respectively.

“Portland has more breweries than any other city in the world. Portland is the largest craft beer market in the U.S. Oregon is the second largest producer of craft beer in the U.S. and Oregon is the second largest craft beer market in the U.S. No wonder Oregon is known as Beervana and is a destination for craft beer lovers from all over the U.S. and the world” said Brian Butenschoen, Executive Director of the Oregon Brewers Guild.

“Our healthy brewing industry is good for not only beer drinkers, but the state as a whole, because it provides almost 4300 family wage jobs, a lure for tourism and an outlet for local products such as hops, malted barley, yeast and glass” he added.

He also cited the fact that almost 11% of all beer consumed in Oregon is Oregon-brewed craft beer. The national market share for all craft beer is 3.5%, according to the Brewers Association.

Malt Madness

Posted In Beer culture, Beers at   

The Washington Post has already begun its beer tie-in to the NCAA basketball tournament, starting with 32 beers in its bracket. Panelists determined the winning beers, but the Post also allows readers vote for which beer they would have picked.

You may recall that we had our own tournament at Realbeer.com for four years, calling it Battle of the Beers. We retired the tournament, and the trophy, after Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA won three straight years.

We’re partial to a tournament beginning today in Albuquerque, because it involves drinking and voting. Il Vicino Brewing’s tournament runs almost daily through March 28. Customers at the brewery taproom (the company has three restaurants in New Mexico) receive a sample of two beers, vote for their preference and the winner advances.

Today Il Vicino’s flagship West Mountain IPA meets Stock Ale.

Here’s to Beer: Part II

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Anheuser-Busch has revamped the Here’s to Beer website.

Jay Brooks offers a rather complete review.

See what he has to say and check out the site. That’s what we’re doing here at Realbeer.com (just found out it is illegal to serve beer to a moose in Fairbanks, Alaksa). Then we’ll have more comment.

One thing Jay doesn’t point out is that A-B has also struck a deal with social network Mingle Now.

“MingleNow came to us when they were still in the developmental stage,” said Tom Shipley, A-B’s director of global industry development. He said the overture came as the brewer was trying to decide, “How are we going to get into social networking in a way that’s not typical banner ad or homepage takeover?”

Another factor in picking MingleNow was the site’s focus on 21- to 35-year-old nightclub demographic — the same group “Here’s to Beer” is targeting. Shipley said that helped reduce the brewer’s fear of accusations that it’s targeting minors. The company faced such charges as recently as two weeks ago, when the Attorneys General of 21 states sent a letter to A-B stating the company’s new Bud.tv broadband site was too accessible to underage viewers.

What does this all mean? Beer is changing – Real Beer has been tracking that since 1994 – and the Internet is changing (we’ve been here as long). Anheueser-Busch doesn’t want to be left behind.

Beer launcher a hit online

Posted In Just for fun at   

Pardon us if somebody has already e-mailed this story. We’ve seen it a dozen times.

When John Cornwell graduated from Duke University last year, he landed a job as software engineer in Atlanta but soon found himself longing for his college lifestyle. So the engineering graduate built himself a reminder of life on campus: a refrigerator that can toss a can of beer to his couch with the click of a remote control.

This link includes a video.

Need an Irish pub? Try Zagat

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Irish pub guideLooking for just the right pub in which to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

The new “Irish Spring Body Wash Zagat Guide to America’s Top Irsh Pubs” will serve you well if you’re partying in any of a dozen American cities. Irish Spring will distribute the guide at special events in the days leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. GetIrishNow.com lists where the “Green Team” will be handing out books.

The information is also available online. PDA owners may beam the content onto their device with the Zagat-to-Go.

Most of the information in the book was pulled from other Zagat guides, with additional ratings done in certain markets (such as Boston).

As with all Zagat guides ratings are provided for food/appeal (based on if it is a restaurant or spot for nightlife), decor, service and price.

Five beer urban legends

Posted In Beer & Food, Beer culture at   

Maureen Ogle’s Ambitious Brew sparked ongoing discussion among beer drinkers in part because its history of American brewing begins in the 1840s, with the rise of industrial lager.

That doesn’t mean the American brewing industry didn’t exist before then, beer historian Bob Skilnik points out in his new book, Beer & Food: An American History.

“Although it would take years after the Revolutionary War for the diverse elements of an indigenous brewing industry to come together, the Eastern Seaboard was teeming with an active ale brewing industry, decades before the introduction of lager beer. Early nineteenth century Philadelphia and New York in particular were thriving brewing centers,” he writes in a press release.

He’s put together a list of Five Urban Legends of American Beer History that the book tackles.

Another one he tackles: The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock because they ran out of beer. Yes, a myth.

150 years of Steven Point beers

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To celebrate 150 years of business the Stevens Point Brewery – long ago Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko declared Point Special the best beer in American – released five historic labels created from actual labels in the brewery’s archive. Represented are labels from the 1800s, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s and the 1980s, as well as the current Point Special Lager label.

“Many companies do a retro label. What we did is use many labels,” said Joe Martino, Stevens Point Brewery operating partner was quoted in the Steven Point Journal. “We put them out at the same time instead of one at a time.”

California dreamin’

Posted In Breweries at   

A couple of stories from California:

– With the the Pyramid Brewery and Alehouse marking its 10th anniversary in Berkeley, The Daily Californian visits and adds some perspective.

The Berkeley Historical Society last year held an exhibit titled “Fermenting Berkeley” studying the city’s history with alcohol, with UC Berkeley students, local alcohol-makers and a strong pro-Prohibition movement at odds throughout.

– Did you know that since 1982, Sierra Nevada has sponsored some kind of cycling team; first, club teams that mainly participated in recreational events, and for the last eight years, a professional team?

The Chico Enterprise Record has the details.