Today’s infographic shows beer in the state of Maine, or at least Maine Craft Beer. It was created by Carla Companion, a.k.a. The Beer Babe, for American Craft Beer Week. I missed Maine’s statehood day, which was March 15, when they became the 23rd state in 1820. But today in 1995, Allagash Brewing opened in Portland, Maine.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Today’s infographic is another one filled with some questionable information, Binge Drinking. This one’s from the point of view Best Drug Rehabilitation, a company that makes money selling rehab to people with drinking or other problems, so they have a vested interest in making it sound like everybody is a binge drinker. Their definition of binge drinking, for example, is “consuming alcohol until the blood-alcohol concentration is 0.08% or more.” So just getting drunk is the same as binge drinking. Uh-huh, that makes sense.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Today’s infographic is entitled The Great Beer State. It was created by Shana Preuett of Team Detroit, Inc. to promote Michigan’s craft beer industry, and today is Log Cabin Day in the state of Michigan.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Today’s infographic is entitled One Drink Too Many, and is subtitled “Is it the result of Nature or Nurture?” It was created by Clarity Way, which calls itself the “Premier Holistic Addiction Rehab & Drug Treatment Center.” And while there’s some great info there, there’s also some odd bits, too. For example, the odds of becoming an alcoholic if your family has a history of it or doesn’t is 50%, essentially meaning it makes no difference. The top three reasons people say they drink — to socialize, relax or just enjoy the drink — represents 88% of all reasons, meaning the vast majority of people don’t drink for the wrong reasons. Fully 68% become “happy” after three drinks, while only 1% get “angry” and just 2% are “annoying,” hardly cause for alarm. These, and many of the others, don’t seem to really indicate that alcohol abuse is the widespread problem that most neo-prohibitionists continue to insist.
Click here to see the infographic full size.
Friday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1959. It’s not the most attractive of ads, but it’s also finny, in an odd way. It starts with the setup of a joke. “Once there were two Irishmen…” and follows that up with this gem of a punchline. And “now there are millions of ’em.” They also refer to the beer below the title with this. “A most unusual ale!”
Drinks Business, a European trade publication, on Tuesday published their list of the Top 10 Biggest Beer Brands, I believe as of the end of 2012.
The rankings are based on millions of barrels, which is listed after the name. The top beer, Chinese Snow Beer sells roughly 50% more than the second place beer, Tsingtao. So it’s not even close. The number ten beer, Brahma, sells only about a quarter of Snow.
Three of the top 10 brands are Chinese, not too surprising given that it recently became the largest consumer of beer worldwide. Anheuser-Busch InBev has four beers on the list, the most, by far, from a single company. It’s also interesting that Budweiser is selling more than Bud Light internationally. That says a lot about how effective the marketing of low-calorie diet beer is here in the U.S.
Snow Beer, the world’s best-selling brand.
Today’s infographic is another unusual one, showing the amount of alcohol that the average cruise ships takes with it for a seven-day cruise for 2,000 people. It’s broken down by type, and the number of beer bottles far outweighs any other type. Not surprisingly, it was created by the CruiseWeb, a trave website specializing in cruises.
Click here to see the chart full size.
Last week, the judging took place for the 18th annual California State Fair Craft Beer Competition in West Sacramento. This year’s entries came from 83 of the state’s breweries, with roughly 700 beers judged.
From the press release:
Some 40 beer experts from all over the state judged the various panels with blind tastings of the entries considering beers by style and classification. The judging panels were selected by Head Judge Tom Dalldorf, publisher of Celebrator Beer News, a national beer magazine.
The Best of Show tasting panel consisted of five of our top judges who were confronted with an unprecedented 47 entries all gold medal winners in previous rounds of judging. After a lengthy judging session, the panel agreed on giving Best of Show honors to a stunning Vienna Lager called Una Mas from Left Coast Brewing Company in San Clemente, Calif. A new award, Best of Show Session Beer (under 5% alcohol) was awarded to a wood-aged saison called Ocho Barril from Half Moon Bay Brewing Company in Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Beer enthusiasts can taste the award winning beers from the State Fair’s Craft Brew Competition on Saturday, July 20, from 3 pm–6 pm at Cal Expo, 1600 Exposition Blvd., Sacramento, Calif.
Full disclosure, I was privileged to be one of the dozens of judges who tasted all of the beers over three days, and even was on the panel of five that tasted all 47 of the winners of each category to pick the “best of show,” this year’s choice for the best beer in California. It was a very hard decision, as there were some unbelievably great beers on the table, in a breathtaking variety of styles. Best of show judging is harder than regular judging, because you’re not comparing like styles against one another. Instead, your looking for intangible qualities that make one beer stand out over another, made doubly difficult because every beer was already an award winner. But we persevered, and after a few hours emerged with a unanimous decision.
Below are all of the award winners. 1 is a Gold medal, 2 is Silver, 3 is Bronze, and 4 is an Honorable Mention.
Category 1: Light Lager — Dortmunder/Premium American
Category 1: Light Lager — Munich Helles
Category 2: Pilsner — German Pils
Category 2: Pilsner — Bohemian/Classic American Pils
Category 3: Amber Lager
Category 4: Dark Lager
Category 5: Bock
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Cream Ale
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Blonde Ale
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — Kolsch
Category 6: Light Hybrid Beer — American Wheat/Rye
Category 7: Amber Hybrid
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Standard/Ordinary Bitter
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Special/Best/Premium Bitter
Category 8: English Pale Ale — Extra Special/Strong Bitter (English Pale Ale)
Category 9: Scottish/Irish Ale — Scottish Heavy 70/-
Category 9: Scottish/Irish Ale — Irish Red Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Pale Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Amber Ale
Category 10: American Ale — American Brown Ale
Category 11: English Brown Ale
Category 12: Porter — Brown Porter
Category 12: Porter — Robust Porter
Category 12: Porter — Baltic Porter
Category 13: Stout — Dry Stout
Category 13: Stout — Sweet Stout
Category 13: Stout — Oatmeal Stout
Category 13: Stout — Foreign Export Stout
Category 13: Stout — American Stout
Category 13: Stout — Russian Imperial Stout
Category 14: India Pale Ale — English IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — American IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — Imperial IPA
Category 14: India Pale Ale — Other IPA
Category 15: German Wheat/Rye Beer
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Wit Beer
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Pale Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Pale Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Biere de Garde
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Belgian Specialty Ale
Category 16: Belgian and French Ale — Flavored Saison
Category 17: Sour Ale
Category 18: Belgian Strong Ale
Category 19: Strong Ale — Old Ale
Category 19: Strong Ale — English Barleywine
Category 19: Strong Ale — American Barleywine
Category 20: Fruit Beer
Category 21: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer — Spice, Herb, or Vegetable Beer
Category 21: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Beer — Christmas/Winter Specialty Spiced Beer
Category 22: Smoke-Flavored/Wood-Aged Beer
Category 23: Specialty Beer
A few statistics: Firestone Walker, Karl Strauss and San Pedro Brewing won the most medals, six apiece. Ol’ Republic Brewing and Sudwerk Privatbrauerei Hubsch each won five. And Auburn Ale House, Heretic Brewing, Marin Brewing and Mendocino Brewing each won four medals. Eleven more breweries won three medals each.
BEST OF SHOW
BEST OF SHOW SESSION BEER
Congratulations to all the winners.
Thursday’s ad is for Blatz beer, from 1948. Showing an orange tree supposedly with both California and Florida oranges on it, along with the Blatz beer bottles. Based on the ad copy, it looks like they were going after bigger breweries brewing in multiple breweries around the country when they state that they’ve “brewed only in Milwaukee for 97 years.” They also suggest that customers should be patient and wait for the Milwaukee beer to arrive in California … or Florida.
Today’s infographic is a chart of Suggested Serving Temperatures. It’s from a nice blog post entitled How Cool is Your Beer? on Fermented Waves, written by the assistant brewer at Boundary Bay Brewery in Washington. The chart he shows of Suggested Serving Temperatures is from Randy Mosher’s book Tasting Beer.
