United States

Another View On Defining Craft Beer

November 8, 2010

When the Brewers Association redefined “craft beer” a few years ago, it was viewed with controversy and downright scorn by more than a few people. It’s certainly understandable that the BA needs to define what it means to be a craft brewer, because after all that’s their charter. They’re a trade organization for the craft [...]

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Beer In Art #100: Barbara Shermund’s Beer Drinking Pianist

October 31, 2010

Today’s art is a cartoon by Barbara Shermund, who contributed regularly to the New York, Esquire and other high profile magazines. In fact, she did 597 cartoons that appeared inside the New Yorker and 8 covers, too. This unnamed cartoon was created in 1945, May 24 to be exact, and this is a color film [...]

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Postal Service Considering Beer Mail

September 26, 2010

You’ve probably heard that in the age of e-mail, FedEx and UPS the U.S. Postal Service has been losing money. A lot, and for a long time now. According to the Washington Post, on Thursday, Senator Tom Carper (Democrat-DE) introduced legislation to save the post office, the Postal Operations Sustainment and Transformation (POST) Act of [...]

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2010 GABF Winners Announced

September 18, 2010

The results are in, the winners for the 2010 Great American Beer Festival have been announced. I’ll post the full list here as soon as I get a chance, along with breakdowns of the medals. For now, you can see the full list here. One quick cool stat for California; 4 out of the 6 [...]

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Head to Head Video: U.S. Versus U.K. Beer

August 13, 2010

Marketwatch recently had a fun little video from the Great British Beer Festival about “U.S. independent beer brewers outpac[ing] their U.K. cousins and gain[ing] market share.” Interviewed in the video are UK beer writer Pete brown and also Bob Pease, COO of the Brewers Association.

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Craft Beer Numbers Up Again Mid-Year

August 2, 2010

Good news again this year for craft brewers. The Brewers Association has released the mid-year numbers and they’re positive again this year despite a rocky economy. Volume sales grew 9% over the same period last year and sales dollars are up 12% for the first six months of 2010 as compared to 2009. Last year [...]

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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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Brewery Openings Surge

July 17, 2010

The Brewers Association had an interesting little item yesterday, A New Brewery Nearly Every Day, in which they detailed the recent numbers of new brewery openings. It’s a pretty remarkable jump. Last Year: 110 confirmed openings So Far This Year: 155 confirmed openings Total U.S. Breweries Now: 1,625 If that pace continues, we’d see roughly [...]

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Beer In Art #83: Bob Kessel’s Charles Bukowski

July 4, 2010

Today’s works of art is part of a series of American Icons by Bob Kessel. It’s am abstract portrait of the writer Charles Bukowski, who was known to drink a little alcohol from time to time. Kessel writes of the portrait. “Appropriately, Buk is shown drinking a bottle of beer.” I love its simplicity of [...]

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Beer In Art #79: Jasper Johns’ Field Painting

June 6, 2010

I found today’s work of art wandering around the National Gallery of Art in D.C. this afternoon, taking a day to recover from SAVOR before heading to Philly Beer Week. The second artwork that I featured in this series was by the same artist, Jasper Johns, a sculpture of two Ballantine Ale cans bronzed over, [...]

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From Beer To Eternity

May 18, 2010

Here’s an interesting read about the tourism of breweries, From Beer to Eternity, focusing on the history of American brewing and the places that one can still visit.

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Beer City USA Poll 2010

May 17, 2010

Charlie Papazian is doing another poll this year during American Craft Beer Week to determine BeerCity USA. Last year’s winner was a tie between Portland, Oregon and Asheville, North Carolina. So far, after just one day, Asheville is out in front with Portland a close second. Everybody else, including the San Francisco Bay Area, is [...]

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The Top 50 Annotated 2009

April 14, 2010

This is my fourth annual annotated list of the Top 50 so you can see who moved up and down, who was new to the list and who dropped off. So here is this year’s list again annotated with how they changed compared to last year. Anheuser-Busch InBev; #1 last year, no surprises MillerCoors; ditto [...]

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Top 50 Breweries For 2009

April 14, 2010

The Brewers Association has also just announced the top 50 breweries in the U.S. based on sales, by volume, for 2009. This includes all breweries, regardless of size or other parameters. Here is the new list: Anheuser-Busch InBev; St Louis MO MillerCoors; Chicago IL Pabst Brewing; Woodridge IL D. G. Yuengling and Son; Pottsville PA [...]

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Top 50 Craft Breweries For 2009

April 14, 2010

The Brewers Association just announced the top 50 breweries in the U.S. based on sales, by volume, for 2009, which is listed below here. For the third time, they’ve also released a list of the top 50 craft breweries based on the new definition adopted by the Brewers Association a few years ago. Here is [...]

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National Action Alert: Help Craft Brewers Reduce Taxes

March 15, 2010

If you’re a regular Bulletin reader, you’ve already seen me rant about how unfairly taxes are levied on the brewing industry, who has to pay more taxes than any other product sold in America, except tobacco. With the help and support of the Brewers Association, H.R. 4278 has been introduced into thee U.S. House of [...]

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