Editorial

Football Beer Caddy

February 5, 2012

I found this odd little gadget while searching for an image this morning. It’s a Football Beer Caddy, apparently “handcrafted from recycled steel.” The 12-inch tall steel sculture is meant to hold your beer, though I can’t for the life of me understand why you’d do that. After pouring your bottle into a glass — [...]

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A Mea Culpa: Hoodwinked By Propaganda

February 4, 2012

On Thursday I posted what I though was a fun little piece with some interesting statistics about how much is consumed on Super Bowl Sunday. In The Super Bowl: By The Numbers, I selected a few of the fun statistics that had been posted a few years earlier in a post on the blog Tree [...]

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State Alcohol Administrators Slam Alcohol Justice

January 27, 2012

You probably knew that each state has some form of an ABC, an alcohol control organization that after Prohibition was created to administer their state’s laws regarding alcohol. Not surprisingly, they also have an organization where the professionals in these state organizations can get together and share information, how they do things, and generally learn [...]

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Big Changes At A-B InBev

January 23, 2012

Wow, there’s a lot going over at Anheuser-Busch InBev, and besides the slip in sales of their core brands. Last week, rumors abounded that ABI was planning to roll out some version of 100% Share of Mind, which had been the “unofficial” policy until a few years ago, when it became unworkable. I wrote about [...]

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Loving the White Rabbit

January 19, 2012

We all know good labels, packaging and artwork can help a beer sell. I may not like that a mediocre beer might sell better than a great one if it has more eye-catching artwork, but it happens all the time. It was especially true in the early days of craft beer when many people who [...]

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Paper or Plastic & Beer

January 18, 2012

Here’s an odd little story from Virginia, sent in by an alert reader (thanks Jeff). In many places, there’s a growing debate about plastic bags, paper bags or no bags at the grocery store. In Virginia, there currently is no law regarding them, but that hasn’t stopped stores all along the southeastern coast of Virginia [...]

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Climate Change In Terms Of Beer Temperature

January 16, 2012

This is fairly clever. A blog dedicated to chronicling the science surrounding climate change, Real Climate, posted a chart comparing the chronology of climate change from 1960 through the year 2100. It was originally created by Artist As Citizen, which is described as “a collaborative, student-driven blend of art and journalism. The infographic is called [...]

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Danny Williams Needs Your Help

January 13, 2012

If you’re in the brewing industry, and especially if you’ve entered your beers in the Great American Beer Festival and/or the World Beer Cup, then you no doubt know Danny Williams. He’s worked with the Brewers Association at GABF for a number of years, and since 2001 has been in charge of the beer for [...]

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Wisconsin Homebrewing Under Fire

January 12, 2012

If you’re a homebrewer in Wisconsin, be careful not to leave the house with your beer. When they call it home brew, they really mean it. Apparently there’s a growing strict interpretation of the state’s laws regarding homebrewing — similar to what went down in Oregon recently — that could prevent homebrewers from taking their [...]

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The Absurdity Of Binge Drinking Statistics

January 11, 2012

This is one of those things that’s increasingly pissing me off, because it avoids real problems that some people have with alcohol in favor of trying to turn individual problems into an epidemic. It’s not. If anything, overall consumption of alcohol is decreasing. But it’s hard to get funding, finance addiction clinics and raise money [...]

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Consumer Reports Rates Mainstream Beers

January 7, 2012

At the end of December, Consumer Reports sent out a press release regarding a beer tasting they’d conducted by an unnamed panel of “experts.” Curious as I was, especially as similar tastings have gone somewhat badly in the past, I held off any judgment until the full report became available, which happened January 3 (though [...]

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The Beer Hunter Documentary On Kickstarter

December 31, 2011

Most, if not all, of us who write about beer, and by extension blog about it, would not have a job were it not for one man: Michael Jackson. I think most of us who’ve been doing this for at least a few years now feel that way. I first met Michael at GABF in [...]

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Make Lew Bryson’s Christmas A Happy One!

December 15, 2011

Okay people, time to step up to the bar. A month ago, a new project was announced on Kickstarter starring my friend and colleague Lew Bryson. The project is being produced by Rudy Vegliante of Green Leaf Productions and the idea is to create a series of six half-hour television shows starring Lew. With 30 [...]

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Snacking Between Meals Leads to Alcoholism & Death

December 14, 2011

Before Prohibition became a reality, the prohibitionists used shameless propaganda to advance their cause, and it became increasingly absurd as time went on. When the temperance movement began in the 1830s, it was primarily against hard liquor, and beer was thought of as a drink of moderation, which by comparison it was. But over time, [...]

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Christmas Beer Bans

December 12, 2011

With Christmas falling on a Sunday this year, apparently more than half of the states still have antiquated blue laws on their books, restricting alcohol sales on Sundays, Christmas or both. As of about a year ago, at least fourteen states still enforced some kind of Sunday restriction. But according to a report today on [...]

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Beer Sales By Style Through Thanksgiving

December 11, 2011

MC Basset, publishers of the Beer Bible — better known by its official title, “The Essential Reference of Domestic Brewers and Their Bottled Brands” — in their monthly e-mail blast, Style Trends, “provided a snapshot of (YTD) beer sales by beer style.” The data they use was compiled by the Symphony IRI Group (IRI), using [...]

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