Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Consecration In 375ml Bottled Today

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russian-river
I stopped by Russian River Brewing today, because my friend Pete Slosberg told me last week that he would be there for the first bottling of Consecration in the new proprietary 375ml bottles. Pete was there with a few volunteers, including Peter Estaniel, from A Better Beer Blog.

The new bottle was developed for exclusive use by Russian River Brewing, along with North Coast Brewing and the Lost Abbey. So for now, those will be the only breweries you”ll see using this new bottle.

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This is the third beer to be bottled by Russian River in the new bottles. The first two were Supplication and Temptation.

In other exciting Russian River news, the brewery is about to go off the grid, and go completely solar. One-half of the production brewery’s roof has solar panels already installed and the second half has the frames laid down, waiting for the panels. It may go live as early as this weekend and should power all of the brewery’s electricity needs.

Below is a short video of Consecration moving through the bottling line.

Below are some photos from today’s visit to the brewery.


Here is a slideshow of the Consecration bottling. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.

Marin Brewing Releases E.S.CHI

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marin
Marin Brewing released their newest beer, an herbal beer made in collaboration with San Anselmo herbalist Dr. Yen-Wei Choong. He runs the Yellow Emperor Natural Healing Center and Zen Garden and has been involved with Chinese herbs all his life. For the last twenty, he’s been working on just the right combination of herbs to improve beer, and make more balanced from the perspective of Chinese medicine.

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Brewmaster Arne Johnson started with his E.S.B. as the base beer. To that, he added 38 pounds of the proprietary mix of Chinese herbs that Dr. Choong created. The nose was subtle herbs, almost gruit-like. The flavors were soft and also subtle, in a good way. The herbs were there but never overpowered the beer, and in fact the two integrated together quite well. It was smooth and easy drinking, almost like a session beer, though I believe the beer is around 5.5% a.b.v. A tasty collaboration.

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Marin Brewing owner Brendan Moylan, Dr. Yen-Wei Choong and Brewmaster Arne Johnson.

For now, the beer is draft only and will be at several events and places during SF Beer Week. They’ve submitted a label for approval, so it may be available in bottles eventually.

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Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished

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haiti
This is one of the many reasons I loathe the neo-prohibitionist groups. Perhaps you saw the press release from Anheuser-Busch, detailing how they, along with many others, are trying to do what they can to help the people of Haiti, who were devastated by the recent earthquake that hit their country. They sent cans of water, hastily filled at one of their breweries, as they’ve done during other similar emergencies (I recall they did the same for New Orleans after hurricane Katrina). They’ve had plenty of negative publicity lately — some even from me — so I wouldn’t think anyone would begrudge them trying to win back some positive vibes for what really amounts to doing the right thing. That’s really what we hope any of us would do under the circumstances.

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Except that you’d be wrong assume that no one would begrudge them. Those jolly folks at the Marin Institute wasted no time in admonishing Anheuser-Busch InBev, not for sending the water, but for using branded cans and for issuing a press release. In their own press release issued today, Help for Haiti Should Not be Branded, they claim that “most of these generous people are not putting out press releases about their good deeds.” I don’t know if that’s true and frankly, if those same people aren’t putting out press releases, then how can the Marin Institute claim to know about them or that they constitute a majority of the donations to Haiti’s disaster relief? How can they total up the anonymous donations that are, by definition, anonymous?

But they’re not done with their scolding. Next, they say most people making donations (of goods, one presumes) “are [not] branding their donated goods with their personal monikers” and asking the leading question “why does the beer behemoth need to brand the cans of this much-needed water with its corporate logo?” Well, I can think of one very good reason. Who would drink blank cans or cans just labeled “water.” I’d want to know where the water came from, who canned it to know if it was safe, etc. That just seems to be common sense. It would be counter-productive to can water with no information about its whereabouts or origins so people could judge its safety. I don’t want to go too far here, but a logo works better when not everyone speaks the same language, too. That way, even if people can’t read the can, they may recognize the logo and feel safer opening it as a result (though they may be disappointed it isn’t beer).

But the Marin Institute then concludes by saying ABIB’s efforts are “more than a tad distasteful,” calling their simple press release “bragging,” and suggesting that doing so “really does diminish your brand.” Wow. I thought there were no new depths that they could sink to in attacking alcohol, but boy, oh boy, was I ever wrong. So here we have a beer company who switches gears and spends their own money to create and donate much-needed water to Haiti. They have the apparent temerity to tell others what they’ve done, perhaps in part to inspire others to do likewise, and they also had the apparent gall to let the people they’re helping know who the water came from. Um, excuse me, but what exactly is the problem here? They helped. They did something. What exactly did the Marin Institute do to help the people of Haiti, apart from discouraging others from doing likewise, lest they also incur your misguided wrath. Or are you better than ABIB simply because whatever donations the Marin Institute gave were among the anonymous kind, you know, the better kinds of donations.

Do you honestly think the people Haiti give a rat’s ass where the donations came from? As long as they get enough to eat and drink so they can, you know, live, what possible difference could it make to anyone. Unless of course, you’re looking for absolutely any excuse to demonize your enemies and further your agenda. You criticize ABIB for issuing a press release, but that’s exactly what you did, too, using the opportunity to galvanize your supporters. But when you do it, it’s for a good cause, right? When ABIB does it, they’re shameless. This is seriously one of the ugliest and vilest demonstrations of how off the reservation the neo-prohibitionist groups are. Criticizing a good deed because it wasn’t done in the manner you’d prefer, or more correctly, by someone you already don’t like. You ought to be ashamed of yourself and your behavior. As they say, let no good deed go unpunished.

Brewery Porn From Schlafly

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schlafly
I just saw this Re-Tweeted and I can’t pass up brewery porn. The photographs are of the St. Louis Brewery a.k.a. Schlafly Beer and were taken by a woman calling herself Truckey. The slideshow below is from her Flickr account and all the photographs can be purchased. According to her Flickr gallery page, “prices range from $10-$200, and range in size from 5×7 to 24×36. I can do matte, lustre, glossy or pearle paper, or even print on canvas!” There’s some beautiful shots there. They’d look great framed on your wall. But for now, enjoy the porn!

Falling Beer Sales?

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I meant to comment on this more fully before now, but my friend and colleague Stephen Beaumont beat me to the punch with his post, A Victory for Boire Moins, Boire Mieux. He had nearly the exact same thought I had, too, though not in French. Boire Moins, Boire Mieux translates as Drink Less, Drink Better, the unofficial ad hoc motto of craft beer.

I’m referring to a Wall Street Journal article published Thursday, Falling Beer Sales Have Brewery Mergers Over a Barrel, where they detailed how beer sales have fallen 2.2%, the first year since 2003 that showed negative growth in total beer sales volume (and the highest negative number since the 1950s). And sure that’s what the numbers say, from one perspective, at least. The Journal, an unabashedly pro-business paper, lost no time decrying the terrible implications for big business and especially the on-going merger-mania the big beer companies are engaging in. There’s also a handy chart.

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And sure, they all show declining volume, except for two near the bottom, Boston Beer and Yuengling. And that’s the tip of an iceberg that tells a very different story than the one the Wall Street Journal is telling. As Beaumont notes, “nearly every craft brewer I speak with is sounding quite happy with their sales figures from the preceding year and optimistic about 2010.” And that’s exactly what I’ve been hearing all along the hopvine, too. The 1500+ breweries that didn’t brew more than 2-million barrels a year, are doing quite well, thank you very much. Not all of them, of course — some brewpubs have been struggling with less people eating out — but overall they’re trending positively. And that’s a very different story than the Journal is telling.

So I’ll leave you with Stephen’s conclusion:

The BBC and Yuengling numbers are important because they represent what I believe is really going on, which is not so much a literal “worsening” of demand, but rather a shift in demand, coupled with a growing endorsement of the old French axiom boire moins, boire mieux, or “drink less, drink better.” Simply, the battle is between style and substance, and right now, substance appears to be winning!

The WSJ doesn’t see this because they’re used to looking only at the large, public corporation side of things, rather than the successful entrepreneur side. Then again, weren’t they the ones who years ago predicted that the craft beer craze was finished?

Beer To Flow Again In Belgium

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belgium
I’ve been avoiding this story over the last few weeks, mostly because I’ve been busy with other work and it’s a complicated one. I’ve sure you’ve seen it and pieces of it, though. It’s even gone mainstream, with Time magazine wading into it, mostly because of the big business angle. In a nutshell, Anheuser-Busch InBev announced more layoffs despite having also recently announced just over $1.5 billion in profit for Q3 2009. The latest proposed layoffs, about 800 jobs at ABIB’s European breweries included about a third in Belgium. But unlike here in the U.S., labor unions still have a bit of actual power in the EU. And they decided to fight back. At several breweries in Belgium — Stella Artois, Jupiler and Hoegaarden — workers have barricaded the breweries, and even took management hostage overnight at one plant.

After two weeks, supplies of Stella Artois and other beer brands owned by ABIB were running low, though most headlines seemed to suggest that beer itself was almost out in the nation. Obviously, with hundreds of breweries still open there was hardly a shortage of beer, just a shortage of a few popular ones, but none that true beer-loving Belgians would even miss. But on Friday, the union agreed to stand down and enter into negotiations, for the time being “they struck a deal that postpones the brewer’s plans to reduce 303 jobs in Belgium — some 10 per cent of its work force there. It says it will also create 40 call centre sales positions, bringing net job losses to 263.” According to the AFP, “‘After the blockade is lifted, the unions and management will start from scratch with meetings of the works council that will deal with problems site by site,’ union representative Tangui Cornu told AFP.” Reuters also had an update.

Stone To Release Collaboration Video

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Stone Brewing, at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, will be releasing their latest video project, Stone Skips Across the Pond, a record of their collaborations with two breweries. [NOTE: the video, once released at 1:00 p.m. PST, will be available at Stone’s Blog.] If you just can’t wait to see some of it, check out the trailer.

The first collaboration is with Nøgne Ø, the Norwegian craft brewery. After brewing there, the Stone team heads to Scotland to brew yet another collaboration with BrewDog.

I had an opportunity to screen the video last night, and it’s a fun short film at just under 30 minutes. It was filmed again by Redtail Media, the same team that created I Am A Craftbrewer. The production values are amazing. The film stars not just Greg Koch, but also his business partner Steve Wagner and head brewer Mitch Steele, some amazing landscapes, terrific looking food, some beer you’ll be jealous you didn’t have along with the brew crews at both Nøgne Ø and BrewDog. Looks like it was a fun time. It’s a great window into the camaraderie among brewers, regardless of national boundaries, in the craft beer world

Next Thursday, Part 2 will be released, followed by parts three and four on each subsequent Thursday. For now, enjoy part one.

Brookston Beer Quiz #4

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quiz-can
Here is quiz number four. This one is without images, because there were problems last time (see below). For this quiz, there is a beer slogan that is or was used for a particular beer or brewery. See how many you can get right. Good luck. Let me know how you did.

If you missed any previous quizzes, they can all be found on the beer quiz page.

NOTE: A number of people in the last quiz told me they couldn’t see the images. If you were one of those people, please send me the name of the browser you were using so I can try to see what’s going wrong. I tested it using Firefox and Safari and it worked fine. Perhaps it’s Microsoft Explorer or other browsers that is the problem?