Sunday’s ad is by the United Brewers Industrial Foundation, from 194. It was part of their award-winning “Morale is a Lot of Little Things” campaign. This one, “Remember The Time We Taught Mary How To Bat?,” seems a bit insensitive by today’s standards, but was attempting, at least, to remind people why we were fighting World War 2, with the aim of building up morale both at home and in the various theatres of war.
Archives for April 6, 2014
Bistro IPA Festival Winners 2014
For the fourth straight year I missed the Bistro IPA Festival, as I was in Yosemite National Park with my family. Happily, owner Vic Kralj was again kind enough to send me the list of the winners. Citra Extra Pale Ale, from Knee Deep Brewing in Lincoln (and a new brewery and tap room in Auburn), was chosen best in show, out of 75 IPA offerings, at the 17th annual IPA Festival yesterday at the Bistro in Hayward, California. The full list of winners is below.
- 1st Place: Knee Deep Citra Extra Pale Ale (Knee Deep Brewing)
- 2nd Place: Citra-R-Ama (Pizza Port Solana Beach)
- 3rd Place: Middle Man IPA (Pizza Port San Clemente)
- People’s Choice: Knee Deep Citra Extra Pale Ale (Knee Deep Brewing)
Beer In Film #96: Vermont Craft Beer — Hill Farmstead Brewery
Today’s beer film is an episode about Vermont craft beer done by Vermont Public Television. This episode is from 2013 and features the Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro Bend, Vermont.
EU Negotiating For Protected Beer Names
Apparently in Washington, our Congress is hard at work negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU. Not surprisingly, the EU is asking for protective status of European products that are traditionally from Europe. You can’t really blame them. For instance they’re asking for the names “feta” and “parmesan” only for cheese made in Europe. I don’t know the history of those cheeses, but I’m guessing Greece and Italy do, and believe their cheeses to be the true expressions of them. They’re also asking that “‘bratwurst’ be allowed on only European-produced sausages.” Again, I don’t know the history but given that German and other European immigrants came to America and started businesses making bratwursts a hundred years ago, or more, it seems a tough sell. I likewise assume it was Italians in the U.S. who began marketing parmesan cheese here long before Kraft got in the game.
But according to an article in the USA Today, Senators: Back off our brats, beer, they’re not stopping there. I might have expected that Belgian beer might be part of the negotiations, since Belgian brewers aren’t thrilled about American beers labeled as “Belgian” instead of “Belgian-style.” But it’s “Oktoberfest” they object to. According to the story, “[i]f U.S. negotiators agree to European demands, U.S. manufacturers would have to change product names to “Oktoberfest-like ale.”
But since an “Oktoberfest” beer has certain style parameters that just about any brewer worth his salt could replicate, I can’t see how that one makes sense. I’ve never known German brewers to complain about that the way that I’ve heard Belgian brewers, but maybe I’ve missed that. Can a beer style, once created in a geographic area, sometimes because of the locally available ingredients or water source, only be made in that same place to be considered authentic? I think we can say yes for lambics, but others? What do you think?
There’s also countless local American Oktoberfest events throughout September and October each year, some have been taking place for decades or longer. Does Germany object to those, too?