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Beer Amongst The Belgians

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belgium
British beer writer Tim Webb is working on what looks to be an interesting documentary series on beer in Belgium, to be called Beer Amongst The Belgians. The series is directed by Taylor Brush for Spotted Tail Productions. The video is listed as the “the final of the promotional episode.” The “promotional episode is a proof-of-concept to find funding to finance the six hour-long episodes.” It’s about 26 minutes, and is a great start, I’d say. Enjoy.

Indianapolis Man Wins “Brew Your Cask Off” Contest

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all-about-beer
A couple of weeks ago, All About Beer magazine conducted a contest, to win a trip to the “Brew Your Cask Off” beer festival hosted by Georgia’s SweetWater Brewing in Atlanta, Georgia on March 5, 2011.

The winner had to write an essay explaining what type of cask they’d brew, in 300 words or less. The winner, Matt Robinson, from Indianapolis, Indiana, wrote a poem which won him and a friend a trip to SweetWater Brewery’s cask festival.

From the press release:

Matt will also be a honorary judge for the cask ale competition and be a server for a cask made from his hilarious and precise poem.

Without a doubt one of the most unusual, and clever beer events, SweetWater Brewery’s Brew Your Cask Off features 80 different cask ales made by a full range of celebrities and not so celebrities, including dignitaries from the beer media, non-profits and retailers from the metro Atlanta beer community. All About Beer Magazine publisher Daniel Bradford participated in making a cask named Adam’s All About Beer Ale, after the SweetWater brewer who guided the actual cask ale production. The cask ale festival features a judging of all the casks with the winner getting serious bragging rights, including being brewed by SweetWater Brewery, and the loser getting the much coveted, and highly decorated golden toilet seat.

Matt Robinson will join a collection of very talented palates as a honorary judge helping chose the best cask of the festival. During the festival itself, Matt will have the pleasure of presenting a cask made from the numerous clues he provided in his winning poem.

Runners up included second place finisher Steve Forbes who wrote a passionate sensory entry. Third place went to Michael Iris who described how his hound found an unusual cache of berries that would have made a wonderful cask. Both of these entries and the other finishers can be found at All About Beer.

The winning entry is below. Enjoy.

aab-cask-off

What Cask Should An American Brew? by Matt Robinson

What cask should an American Brew?
But nothing less than around 55 I-Be-Yous!
I would add subtle flavor with East Kents
Perhaps more for hop compliment
Throw in some fuggles and American C’s
Many will say it’s the knees of bees!
Powerful flavor will be most divine
Even with a gravity around one-thousand nine
The grain bill is full of Golden Promise Malt
This great American session cask has no fault
The hydrometer reading will need to state
Around 3.55% alcohol by weight
This may sound like an English creation
With bold American style is my summation
Lovibond sounds nice somewhere near ten
Many hours with our cask we will all spend!
Wyeast numbered Nineteen Forty-Five
Will make our cask come alive!
Gravity-fed like our English brethren
Cask beer please take hold for American beer drinking heaven
Deep in the south in town called Atlanta
Our cask brings so much joy we call it Santa!
All the people will come and stand
To sing play us a song you’re the piano man!

CBA Out Of Cash?

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craft-brewers-alliance
Ouch, this doesn’t sound good, sad to say. The Motley Fool is reporting that the Craft Brewers Alliance is out of cash. In a post entitled Who’s Broke Now?, they indicate that the combined corporation that includes Widmer, RedHook, Kona and Goose Island “had only $13,000 in cash in its last reported numbers” and on top of that is “$19 million in debt.” I hope there’s more too it than that, because those are not good numbers. Anheuser-Busch InBev still owns 35% of CBA, but it’s unclear if they’d bail them out or even if that would be desirable.

As We Like It

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history
Thanks to Stan Hieronymus and Andrew Mason for tipping me to this little gem. It’s a pro-beer promotional film from 1952, created by the United States Brewers Foundation, the same trade group that created the Beer Belongs series. Using the tagline “sparkling, golden, pure, refreshing, a beverage as old as history,” it’s a great little gem of trying to promote the positive aspects of beer in the wake of Prohibition’s end. Enjoy.

Taybeh: Palestine’s Only Brewery

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teybah
Palestine has exactly one brewery, Taybeh Beer, founded in 1993 by Nadim Khoury, who learned to homebrew while living in Boston. He returned to his native Palestine after the “Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993, one of the approximately 12,000 Palestinian families who returned to the region to help kickstart the emerging Palestinian economy.” Since then business has grown, and is beer is imported to Germany and the UK, and they’re working on the U.S., but according to the video so far we won’t allow them to import because we don’t recognize Palestine as a separate nation. So much for supporting peace in the Middle East. At any rate, the video below gives a nice overview of the brewery.

“For Good Living” Brown Derby Promotional Film

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brown-derby
If you say my last post, Beer In Ads #314: Brown Derby’s For Good Living, now you know why I chose a Brown Derby ad. I also came across this promotional film from the same year as the ad, 1937, which was called “For Good Living,” and sponsored at the time by Safeway Stores. It’s a silent promotional film, but after some cheesy introductions shows the brewery where Brown Derby is made. Really, there’s a lot of early brewery porn. Obviously the basic process of making and packaging beer hasn’t changed all that much in the 70+ years since this video was made, but the machinery sure has. At just under twenty minutes, it’s a pretty thorough virtual tour, and includes both bottles and cans being produced. After the tour, the final minutes show the planned “For Good Living” advertising campaign. It’s quite a time capsule. I think every brewer should watch it. I’d love to hear some of their thoughts on then vs. now.

The United States Of Good Beer?

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us-outline
At the end of January, the Houston Press’ Brew Blog did a map showing a beer for every state that seemed to miss the mark for more than a few of their choices. I ranted about it in my post, The United States of Beer? Apparently I wasn’t the only one, because an alert reader (thanks, David) tipped me that they’ve redone the map, this time calling it The United States of Good Beer, though over at Good, the internet portal that originally created the map and posted it to the Houston Press.

us-of-good-beer

Seeing as the map was done by the paper’s food section, I wasn’t too surprised how embarrassing the first attempt was, but in the new effort they at least reached out to their readers for suggestions. And it shows in the Good Beer Map, which is light years ahead of the first one.

Sadly, Idaho still got left out, despite their being at least 8 breweries and 15 brewpubs in the the state. Surely, someone could picked one of those instead of leaving an empty question mark?

Good’s Food editor Nicola Twilley remarks that after seeing Beer Wars, “It’s clearly time for a beer revolution.” And while I’m sincerely thrilled she’s getting up to speed, I’m constantly amazed that so many “foodies” don’t seem to get that beer is food and have paid it almost no attention whatsoever even as it has undergone such a revolutionary change in the U.S. over the past thirty years. How could so many “food professionals” committed to what they put in their body completely miss that? Most have noticed wine is different now than it was 30 or 40 years ago, but beer … not so much. That’s such a sticking point for me that while I’m glad things are changing, I can’t help but continue to be curmudgeonly about this dichotomy of how the two beverages are treated.

Still, I’m encouraged that they were swayed by people’s comments, admitted mistakes, and forged ahead to create a better map of America’s beer scene.

You can see the new map full size here, and as before it’s easier to read the key on the bigger map.

Arizona Beer

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arizona
Today in 1912, Arizona became the 48th state.

Arizona
State_Arizona

Arizona Breweries

Arizona Brewery Guides

Guild: Arizona Craft Brewers Guild

State Agency: Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control

maps-az

  • Capital: Phoenix
  • Largest Cities: Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale
  • Population: 5,130,632; 20th
  • Area: 114006 sq.mi., 6th
  • Nickname: The Grand Canyon State
  • Statehood: 48th, February 14, 1912

m-arizona

  • Alcohol Legalized: June 16, 1933
  • Number of Breweries: 31
  • Rank: 20th
  • Beer Production: 4,708,088
  • Production Rank: 14th
  • Beer Per Capita: 22.5 Gallons

arizona

Package Mix:

  • Bottles: 42.8%
  • Cans: 47.1%
  • Kegs: 9.9%

Beer Taxes:

  • Per Gallon: $0.16
  • Per Case: $0.36
  • Tax Per Barrel (24/12 Case): $4.96
  • Draught Tax Per Barrel (in Kegs): $4.96

Economic Impact (2010):

  • From Brewing: $114,644,602
  • Direct Impact: $968,605,366
  • Supplier Impact: $646,575,797
  • Induced Economic Impact: $645,915,749
  • Total Impact: $2,261,096,912

Legal Restrictions:

  • Control State: No
  • Sale Hours: 6 a.m.–2 a.m. (Mon.-Sun.)
  • Grocery Store Sales: Yes
  • Notes: Sales of any type of alcohol are legal at any store that has an off-premises liquor license, including but not limited to convenience stores and grocery stores. Bars may sell closed containers of alcohol for consumption off the premises. Drive-through liquor stores are allowed. Everclear Grain Alcohol Proof 190 (95% alcohol) is legal. A large percentage of the land area of Arizona is in Indian reservations, many of which have liquor laws considerably more restrictive than state law, up to and including total prohibition. “Beer busts” (all the beer/liquor one can drink for a set price) in bars are illegal. Persons 19 years of age or older may work in bars and liquor stores serving and selling alcohol. Patrons may not have more than two drinks in front of them at any time, or one large pitcher of beer. DUI penalties are some of the most severe in the nation. A person convicted of a DUI (even first offense) must have an interlock installed in his or her car for one year. Arizona has an ‘Impaired to the Slightest Degree’ law that can convict a person even if his or her BAC is less than .08%.

arizona-map

Data complied, in part, from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac 2010, Beer Serves America, the Brewers Association, Wikipedia and my World Factbook. If you see I’m missing a brewery link, please be so kind as to drop me a note or simply comment on this post. Thanks.

For the remaining states, see Brewing Links: United States.

Oregon Beer

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oregon
Today in 1859, Oregon became the 33rd state.

Oregon
State_Oregon

Oregon Breweries

Oregon Brewery Guides

Guild: Oregon Brewers Guild

State Agency: Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC)

maps-or

  • Capital: Salem
  • Largest Cities: Portland, Eugene, Salem, Gresham, Hillsboro
  • Population: 3,421,399; 28th
  • Area: 98386 sq.mi., 9th
  • Nickname: Beaver State
  • Statehood: 33rd, February 14, 1859

m-oregon

  • Alcohol Legalized: December 5, 1933
  • Number of Breweries: 105
  • Rank: 4th
  • Beer Production: 2,824,072
  • Production Rank: 26th
  • Beer Per Capita: 23.1 Gallons

oregon

Package Mix:

  • Bottles: 34.9%
  • Cans: 49.7%
  • Kegs: 15.3%

Beer Taxes:

  • Per Gallon: $0.08
  • Per Case: $0.19
  • Tax Per Barrel (24/12 Case): $2.60
  • Draught Tax Per Barrel (in Kegs): $2.60

Economic Impact (2010):

  • From Brewing: $295,945,708
  • Direct Impact: $1,019,694,095
  • Supplier Impact: $763,029,556
  • Induced Economic Impact: $535,686,085
  • Total Impact: $2,318,409,736

Legal Restrictions:

  • Control State: No
  • Sale Hours: On Premises: 7 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.
    Off Premises: 7 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.
  • Grocery Store Sales: Yes
  • Notes: Liquor, all of which is state-owned prior to sale to consumers, is sold in private liquor stores. These stores are approved by Oregon’s Liquor Commissioners to act as sales agents on the state’s behalf.

oregon-map

Data complied, in part, from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac 2010, Beer Serves America, the Brewers Association, Wikipedia and my World Factbook. If you see I’m missing a brewery link, please be so kind as to drop me a note or simply comment on this post. Thanks.

For the remaining states, see Brewing Links: United States.

More On The Possibility Of An ABI / SABMiller Merger

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abib sabmiller
You’ll no doubt recall the Interwebs were lit up last week with the idea of an Anheuser-Busch InBev merger with SABMiller, which was started by Credit Suisse analysts engaging in speculation. While there were some reports to the contrary, the two mega-beer companies were not in talks.

Yesterday, apparently Credit Suisse followed-up their report by saying, after fueling such a flurry of speculation, that “nobody in our diverse pool of responders indicated that we are off the mark.” They further suggest that ABI “could come knocking” on SABMiller’s door before the end of this year.

As usual, there’s more to it, such as stakes in Grupo Modelo are part of the equation. You can read more about those at Beer Business Daily, which again I heartily recommend that everyone get a subscription to Harry’s newsletter.