Midwest

Do You Want Some Pizza With Your Pizza Beer?

June 18, 2007

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. Pizza and beer, of course, are one of the most beautiful pairings and one of the most natural, rivaling such other hit duos as peanut butter and jelly or warm apple pie and vanilla ice cream. But it may have been taken too far, as homebrewer Tom [...]

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Chicago Beer Society Tackles Beers Inspired by Belgium

June 15, 2007

When Ray Daniels and Randy Mosher put on a tasting, I sit up and take notice. This should be a good one. If you’re in the Chicago area in early July, you should definitely try to go to this one. Chicago Beer Society Tasting Features Flavor & Diversity of Belgian Cuisine From mussels to carbonnade [...]

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Sheboygan Brewing History

June 5, 2007

Just hearing the word “Sheboygan” brings a smile to my face. I don’t know why exactly — and I certainly mean no disrespect to the town’s residents — but it’s just one of the words. The name is believed to be a Chippewa word, probably meaning “a noise underground,” or “river disappearing underground,” though some [...]

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Wisconsin Wants More Beer Taxes

May 15, 2007

Another state is looking to enhance their revenue by tapping brewers on the shoulder. According to a report in yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “[t]wo Democratic legislators vowed Monday to try to tap the state’s beer drinkers by seeking approval of a fivefold increase in Wisconsin’s $2-a-barrel beer tax, which has not been raised in 38 [...]

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Buckeye Victory

April 30, 2007

Again, vacation put me behind the curve on this one. I learned two weeks ago that there was trouble brewing in Ohio when KevBrews e-mailed me and a BA staff member told me about it at CBC. Even then, it looked like the language that would have been so detrimental to brewpubs wasn’t going to [...]

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Sprecher Remakes Shakparo Gluten-Free

April 29, 2007

I’m still catching up from the last four days of my vacation, when I had very limited internet access (I could check my e-mails, that was all). I’m amazed how dependent on it I’ve become. I can do without a phone, television, radio and even a daily shower but I start twitching like a junkie [...]

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Trouble Brewing in Ohio

April 23, 2007

There’s a new budget bill before the Ohio state legislature that was intended to allow self-distribution of wine to retailers along with mail order wine. That’s all well and good, but somebody snuck into the amendment a provision “barring brew pubs from selling takeout bottles and sealed jugs of beer.” The author of the budget [...]

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Defining a Binge

April 3, 2007

An alert reader (thanks Pete) pointed out this short article entitled Binge Responsibly, Are five drinks always too much? from the January 2003 edition of Reason Magazine. It goes to the heart of some of the objections voiced over Wisconsin’s proposed beer sampling law, where Wisconsin is said to have “the highest rate of binge [...]

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Beer Sampling Coming to Wisconsin

April 3, 2007

Surprisingly, in the great state of Wisconsin — okay, you caught me, I’m a Packers fan — retail stores can sample customers on wine, but not beer. But now Assembly Bill 122 is winding its way through the state legislature. So far it has “passed unanimously out of the Senate Affairs Committee and will be [...]

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More Children and Beer

February 19, 2007

This month on the website “On Milwaukee” it’s Bar Month and this editorial today caught my attention because of all the recent talk regarding children and beer. The piece is by staff writer Molly Snyder Edler and is entitled “Motherfest: Kids and beer bottles.” The whole article is interesting, but I love the conclusion: The [...]

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Editorial Nonsense from San Antonio

December 19, 2006

My friend and colleague Lisa Morrison sent me a link this morning to an editorial from San Antonio, Texas (on MySanAntonio.com, a partnership between the newspaper San Antonio Express-News and the television station KENS 5) that had gotten her worked up before her morning coffee. But after taking a look at it myself, I understand [...]

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A New Gluten-Free: There’s Vikings in Them Thar Dark Hills

December 11, 2006

There’s new gluten-free brewery coming. This one is Dark Hills Brewery and is viking themed. It’s located in northest Arkansas near Fayettville. Owners Constance Rieper-Estes and Leigh Nogy (who’s also the brewmaster) plan to have the production facility up and running by fall of 2007. They will be producing five different beers all using just [...]

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Ohio Bar Declared “Most Arrogant”

November 30, 2006

Out of 46 bars nationwide that signed up for a promotion sponsored by Stone Brewing, Boston’s Bistro and Pub in Dayton, Ohio was declared “The Most Arrogant Bar in America” and will hold the title for one full year. In order to win, they had to sell more of Stone Brewing’s Arrogant Bastard beer than [...]

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History in a Glass

November 20, 2006

This is the kind of story that exemplifies the best in craft brewing, at least in my opinion. There used to be a brewery in the small town of Manitowoc, Wisconsin (pop. <35,000) by the name of Two Rivers Beverage Co. It’s earlier names were Mueller Bros. Brewing Co. and City Brewery prior to Prohibition. [...]

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Goose Island Video Profile

October 31, 2006

BusinessPOV, a Chicago media enterprise doing online video micro-journalism, contacted me about their latest effort, a video profile of Goose Island Brewing. It includes a short interview with Brewmaster Greg Hall interspersed with footage of the brewery and Goose Island’s beers. It’s a little over five minutes and manages quite nicely to give a good [...]

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Kansas City Hometown Beer Tour

October 25, 2006

I got an e-mail from Jim Quinn, “The Beer Jockey” of Kansas City, who’s hosting what sounds like a fun and educational tour of Kansas City brewing history as well as local breweries still operating. The limousine tour runs three hours, from Noon to 3:00 p.m., and three tour dates are scheduled: October 28, November [...]

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