Mainstream Coverage

Media Reaction To SF Mayor’s Veto Of Alcohol Tax

September 22, 2010

As I reported yesterday, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom kept his promise to veto the proposed ordinance that seeks to add an additional tax on alcohol sold in the city. Here’s mayor Newsom’s veto letter that he sent to city supervisors: This letter communicates my veto of the ordinance pending in File Number 100865, finally [...]

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Is A-B Eyeing The Craft Brewers Alliance?

August 17, 2010

In a provocative article today, the business-oriented website, TheStreet.com, which describes itself as the “leading digital financial media company,” pondered whether Anheuser-Busch InBev might possibly be considering buying the Craft Brewers Alliance (CBA). The piece, by Miriam Reimer, entitled Anheuser-Busch Takeover Target: Craft Brewers Alliance?, certainly had the wags wagging on the blogosphere today. There’s [...]

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CBS Highlights Consumer Reports Beer Tasting

August 15, 2010

I almost forgot about this. The week before last I got a call from the local CBS television station, CBS 5, asking me to comment on a story they were working on regarding a recent Consumer Reports beer tasting that was published in their August issue. In Bargain beer from Costco, they had consumers taste [...]

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Alcohol Consumption On The Rise

July 22, 2010

A new study was just published online, and will be in print in next month’s journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research with the nearly impenetrable title Sociodemographic Predictors of Pattern and Volume of Alcohol Consumption Across Hispanics, Blacks, and Whites: 10-Year Trend (1992–2002). CNN simplified the story’s title, originally from Health.com, to More Americans Drinking [...]

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Dry Counties Dwindling

July 20, 2010

USA Today ran an interesting story earlier this month about the dry counties dotting still the landscape, areas within eight states where despite alcohol being legal statewide, it’s still illegal in those counties (along with some specific towns). According to Dry America’s Not-So-Sober Reality: It’s Shrinking Fast, many of the remaining 328 may soon become [...]

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The Season For Saisons

July 7, 2010

New York Magazine examines a dozen saisons — 4 imports and 8 craft — in ‘Tis the Saison . It’s a pretty good mix of saisons, though it’s too bad Odonata didn’t make the cut. Too new, I suppose. But I was very pleased to see Pretty Things’ Jack D’Or was included. I love that [...]

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Errors of Opinion

July 2, 2010

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago from San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius asking for my perspective on the proposed alcohol fee for his next column. He indicated he knew my position and disclosed that he was “in favor” of it. He also added this. “But due diligence says we need to [...]

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New York Times Features Beer Stores

May 27, 2010

Today’s New York Times has a great little article extolling the virtues of beer tasting bars, beer stores with tasting licenses allowing them to have limited taps and sample customers on the beers they carry. The story, Tastings With Craft Beers, features two Bay Area beer stores, Beer Revolution in Oakland, and City Beer Store [...]

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SF Weekly’s Best of San Francisco

May 19, 2010

The weekly alternative SF Weekly announced the winners in their most recent “best of” issue for 2010. Reader’s Poll Winner for Best Brewery: Magnolia Gastropub Best Beer Bottle Selection: City Beer Store Best Cult Brew: North Coast Le Merle Best Microbrewery: Elizabeth Street Brewery Best Brewery Tour: Speakeasy Ales and Lagers Best Beer and Trivia: [...]

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Esquire’s Worst 9 Beers

May 19, 2010

Esquire has an odd little piece this week choosing the Nine Worst Beers on Earth, a fairly bold claim given how many beers are brewed on our planet. The author, St. Louis columnist Evan S. Benn, has probably not tried everything yet since he’s only been writing his column since last June, but overall his [...]

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GQ Top 50 Beer Trainwreck On CBS

May 2, 2010

While I realize that I’m Mr. Negative and always see the pint glass as half empty almost every time craft beer is featured on mainstream television, I just can’t jump for joy when there’s so little respect paid to beer by the media and so much misinformation. If I have to be the lone voice [...]

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Fritz Maytag & Keith Greggor Talk About Anchor On PBS

April 30, 2010

This morning on KQED, San Francisco’s PBS station, aired a live interview with Fritz Maytag and Keith Greggor about the sale of Anchor Brewery. The podcast of the interview, Anchor Steam Sold, is now up and you can listen to it on the KQED Archive or download it for you iPod. Or you can just [...]

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Today Show Today: Good Beers, Bad Ideas

April 26, 2010

The Today Show today aired another segment on craft beer, which they still insist on calling microbrews, though I guess it’s better than boutique beers, which they used way too much in a previous segment. Overall the segment was comme ci, comme ça, with some good points made, some great beers, but also some of [...]

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GQ Picks 50 Beers To Try

April 23, 2010

Finally, mainstream magazines are learning. A number of them, usually men’s magazines, publish an annual list of their picks for good beers, whether global or just American, and varying in the number on the list. But they go wrong by trying to call their lists the “top,” “best” or some similar hyperbole. With such a [...]

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Beer In South Africa

March 26, 2010

If you’re like me, you don’t know all that much about the beer market in South Africa. In today’s Business Week, however, there was an interesting article about the market and how Heineken is going after the market leader, SABMiller. (Thanks to Anat for pointing this out.) You probably knew the SAB part of SABMiller [...]

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Brewing Up A Civilization

December 24, 2009

There’s a wonderful article today in Germany’s Der Speigel showcasing University of Pennsylvania Archaeologist Patrick McGovern’s theory that alcohol is responsible for nothing short of civilization itself. Titled Alcohol’s Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization, the story begins: Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US [...]

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