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Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale

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lagunitas
No, that’s not a judgment call on my part. I love Lagunitas. But that is the name of their new seasonal ale for 2011; Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale. They’re calling it that because the new beer is a temporary replacement for their popular — and usual holiday seasonal — Brown Shugga’, which they won’t be able to brew this year due to the installation of their new 250-barrel brewhouse.

From the press release:

It is a sad day at Lagunitas when we have to tell you that our favorite seasonal — Brown Shugga — will take a year off and come back in full force in the fall of 2012 after the installation of our new brewhouse.

A brand new beer that’s sure to please is our “Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale”….. it’s our BrownShugga’ substitute.

This beer is a Dry-Hopped ‘Cereal Medley’ of Barley, Rye, Wheat, and Oats…. full of complexishness from the 4 grains, and weighing in at 7.6% abv, it is mondo-dry-hopped for that big aroma and resinous hop flavor.

The entire project has a self-deprecating air about it, including the label notes, which are always written by Lagunitas founder Tony Magee. To wit:

This sad holiday season we didn’t have the brewing capacity to make our favorite seasonal brew, the widely feared BrownShugga’ Ale. You see, we had a couple of good years (thank you very much) and so heading into this season while we are awaiting a January delivery of a new brewhouse we are jammin’ along brewing 80 barrels of IPA and PILS and such every 3 hours. A couple of months back we realized that since we can only brew a mere 60 barrels of Shugga every 5 hours, that we were seriously screwed. For every case of Shugga’ brewed, we’d short 3 cases of our daily brews. The new brewhouse will help insure that this kind of failure never happens again. It’s a mess that we can not brew our BrownShugga’ this year and we suck for not doing it. There is nothing cool about screwing up this badly and we know it. Maybe we can sue our sorry selves. There is no joy in our hearts this holiday and the best we can hope for is a quick and merciful end. F*@& us. This totally blows. Whatever. We freaking munch moldy donkey butt and we just want it all to be over ….

My guess is that the new Lagunitas Suck Holiday Ale will be so good that we’ll all forgive them and Santa will not bring them all a lump of coal this Christmas. They do seem to be appealing to Santa’s better nature but putting a yummy-looking Santa cookie on the label. Perhaps they’ll leave some of them out on Christmas Eve so when Santa comes down the brewhouse chimney, he can eat himself.

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Photographing The Pioneers

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While doing some searching yesterday for beer pioneers, I found once more the book of photographs by David Bjorkman entitled MICROBREWERS: 1981-1996: A Photo History. Bjorkman co-founded New Brewer magazine, which is today the in house trade publication for the Brewers Association. The book came out a couple of years ago, self-published as a blurb book by Bjorkman, and I bought a copy right after I got a press release about it.

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It’s filled with great black and white photographs of the very early days of craft beer and includes a lot of folks still making great beer today. Here’s how the book is described at the website:

In this homage to American microbrewers, international photojournalist David Bjorkman has created a photo gallery of brewers and breweries from 1981 to 1996. This collection of rare photos captures the early years of specialty brewing as the industry began its meteoric rise into the hearts of admiring beer-lovers nationwide.

Those were heady years filled with the pure joy of brewing. Brewers with big dreams opened their microbreweries, brewpubs and contract brewing companies on shoestring budgets, and succeeded in establishing their unique place in the history of American brewing. “Hand-crafted,” “fresh,” “flavorful” were how they described their beers, and it was the start of something special.

David’s photos document the pioneers and players who came to brewing from different backgrounds and disciplines, but who all had a passion for beer. Some became industry leaders, with their names, faces and beers known to beer-connoisseurs across the nation. Some shot to fame, but for lack of money or know-how fell into history. But all were dynamic and visionary, intense and driven to give beer their best.

Here are photos of the first microbrewers in the United States; of early Great American Beer Festivals; of Batch #176 being brewed at the Widmer Brewing Co.; of the Mendocino Brewing Co. team; and of hundreds of brewers across the country.

These photos provide a veritable “who’s who” of the early microbrewing industry, a history worthy of a place on every beer-lovers book shelf.

Below is a photo-collage video of many of the photos from the book. How many people can you identify?

Oxford Companion To Beer Published Today

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While it’s actually been available for purchase for a few weeks already, today is the “official” publication date of The Oxford Companion to Beer, the new encyclopedic reference book on all things beer. It was put together by my friend and colleague, Garrett Oliver, who’s the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery in in New York, and the author of the seminal beer and food book, The Brewmaster’s Table.

The actual authors include something like 166 beer writers, brewers, suppliers, brewing scientists and researchers; experts in their fields one and all. In the interest of full disclosure, I was one of the contributors, too, and wrote around 25 of the 1,100 entries in the 900-page book. As a result, I don’t think it’s fair for me to review it, though I must say it’s getting fairly good press already, including a rave by the New York Times’ Eric Asimov, who called it the “ultimate beer guide.”

Published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), it’s already one of their most successful reference books. Perhaps the best evidence that the world was waiting for a book like this is the fact that it sold out, twice, before today’s official publication date. According to the OUP — who considers a reference book a success if it sells a few thousand copies — they sold out of the initial 10,000 print run from pre-orders, printed another 5,000 which also immediately sold out, and are now on the third printing, all before today’s publication date.

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Associate Editor Horst Dornbusch and Editor-in-Chief Garret Oliver at a reception for the book’s launch during GABF week in Denver.

During GABF, OUP had a nice reception for all of the authors who were attending the beer festival this year, and so there were quite a few of us there to see the book for the first time and try the new wheat wine, named Companion, that was a collaboration between Garret and Horst brewed at the Brooklyn Brewery. Apparently it will only be available if you purchase the boxed set of the new book, which comes with a bottle of the beer and the book, a companion to the companion.

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Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For October 2011

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wikio
The October 2011 standings have been released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. No changes at the Top 2 spots, with Jeff, from Beervana and The New School at 1 and 2 again. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio October 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Beervana (=)
2The New School (=)
3Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+6)
4Brookston Beer Bulletin (+1)
5Washington Beer Blog (+3)
6Drink With The Wench (-3)
7Brewpublic (-1)
8Hoosier Beer Geek (+2)
9Beer 47 (Not in Top 20 in September)
10The Daily Pull (+4)
11Road Trips for Beer (Not in Top 20 in September)
12It’s Pub Night (+1)
13BetterBeerBlog (+4)
14A Good Beer Blog (-7)
15The Brew Site (-4)
16Beer PHXation (Not in Top 20 in September)
17The Session Beer Project™ (-1)
18Seen Through a Glass (-3)
19KC Beer Blog (-7)
20San Diego Beer Blog (Not in Top 20 in September)

Ranking made by Wikio

As usual, I included the relative movements of each blog from last month. Four new blogs emerged in the Top 20 that weren’t there last month. Otherwise, only a few moderate swings. For the most part, things to move around too much this month. As always, I continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously. Until next month ….

Next Session Thanks The Big Boys

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Our 56th Session is a nod of the head, acknowledging the positive aspects of the big, multinational brewers that we so often admonish and criticize. Our host, Reuben Gray at Tale of the Ale, calls his topic Thanks to the Big Boys, which he describes as follows:

What I’m looking for is this. Most of us that write about beer do so with the small independent brewery in mind. Often it is along the lines of Micro brew = Good and Macro brew, anything brewed by the large multinationals is evil and should be destroyed. Well I don’t agree with that, though there may be some that are a little evil….

Anyway I want people to pick a large brewery or corporation that owns a lot of breweries. There are many to chose from. Give thanks to them for something they have done. Maybe they produce a beer you do actually like. Maybe they do great things for the cause of beer in general even if their beer is bland and tasteless but enjoyed by millions every day.

I can think of two right away that I would like to thank (don’t feel the need to limit yourself to one). If you can’t think of any well then here is one quick one. Diageo and Arthur’s Day. At the very least, this is a worldwide celebration of beer. It may be Guinness* orientated but anything that gets people drinking beer and not alcopops is a good thing in my book. If you honestly have nothing good to say about a large brewer, then make something up. Some satire might be nice, It will be a Friday after all.

So put away your poison pen, at least for the day, and wax poetic about a big brewer. Let’s hear your positive vibes for the next Session on Friday, October 7. And yes, that’s this Friday, just three days away.

Beer Week Explosion

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Out at GABF last week, I heard about a few beer weeks that were new to me. As I’ve been tracking them for some time now, that surprised me. When I first put together a list a couple of years ago, there were a couple dozen. By the time I wrote the entry for beer weeks in the Oxford Companion to Beer, there were around forty. Before I left for GABF, my list included around 55. After hearing about those new ones, I decided to do some more digging and my list now includes 78 beer weeks around the world. Of those, six seem to have been held once or aren’t continuing and three more are “unofficial,” but have all the elements of a beer week (CBC Week, OBF Week and GABF Week). That still leaves 69 ongoing beer weeks, plus I also found eight more that have been announced, have Twitter feeds or Facebook pages but have not set a precise date yet. So that takes the total back up to 77 beer weeks. Of those 77, 68 are in the U.S. and 9 are outside America; in Canada, Australia, Germany and the UK. Fold back in the 3 “unofficial” ones and we’re at 79, meaning it will take over one and a half years to go to every beer week. Now that’s a lot of beer weeks. If you want to see my list of beer weeks, click here.

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The 2011 Alpha King

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hops
While GABF judging is done, we won’t know the results until tomorrow. But we do know one winner, the 2011 Alpha King. If you’re unfamiliar with the Alpha King Challenge, it’s a side contest during GABF week to find America’s hoppiest — but still drinkable — beer that’s been going since 1999, and was inspired by Three Floyd Brewing‘s own hop bomb, named The Alpha King. These days it’s sponsored by HopUnion and the Brewing News. After finishing GABF judging this morning, I hightailed it over to the Falling Rock to take part in the Alpha King judging.

The 2011 winner of the Alpha King Challenge was Poor Man’s IPA, brewed by Jeff Bagby at Pizza Port in San Diego. This is the second win in a row for Poor Man’s IPA and the third win by a beer brewed by Jeff.

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Jeff Bagby, the 2011 Alpha King

Here’s a list of the winners:

  1. Poor Man’s IPA, by Pizza Port, San Diego, California
  2. Double Jack, by Firestone Walker Brewing, Paso Robles, California
  3. IPA by Sun King Brewing, Indianapolis, Indiana

The 30th Great American Beer Festival Judging

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gabf-2011
Right now I’m out in Denver, Colorado judging at the 30th Great American Beer Festival. Because it’s the 30th year, after orientation last night, they took an impromptu group photo of all 167 judges, or at least as many as would fit in the photo. See if you can find me (hint: I’m a little to the left and two-thirds of the way back). Recognize anyone else? There’s plenty of other faces in the crowd that you probably know.

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Click on the photo for a larger view.

Great American Beer Festival 1982 vs. 2011

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Joey McDaniel created a cool infographic comparing the first Great American Beer Festival in 1982 to this year’s festival. Joey was introduced to craft beer by his wife, Jen, and together they run the beer blog Wet Your Whistles, covering beer in the Bay Area, with an emphasis on the “watering holes along the San Francisco Bay Area Caltrain railway line.” It’s interesting to see how far we’ve come in the 30 years since the first GABF was held. Nice job, Joey.

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