Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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The Perfect Season To Be Filled With Christmas Cheer

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christmas
I found this cheery Christmas verse and art at, of all things, an online craft forum, SallyB’s @ SB Crafts. There are a total eight different Xmas verses with their own graphics, so I’m not exactly sure what they’re supposed to be used for, but I love the idea of Santa and his elves and reindeer throwing a massive party after all the hard work of preparing for and delivering all the Christmas presents last night. That’s what I would do, wouldn’t you?

Xmas Cheers

Santa really knows how to party, when all his work is done
His whole team can then relax and start to have some fun
This is the perfect season to be filled with Christmas cheer
So enjoy the Christmas Spirit…. Christmas wine and Christmas beer!

xmas-cheers

A Blue Christmas Beer

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christmas
I’d heard of this Christmas beer, but I don’t think I realized the packaging was in blue, but then I don’t live in Denmark. Tuborg Brewery, owned by the Carlsberg Group, releases their holiday beer, known as Tuborg Julebryg, on J-Day, the first Friday in November (though this year it was the last Friday in October).

tuborg-blue-09
I read somewhere that red glass is actually the best color for keeping out UV light, but that it was too expensive to be done commercially on a large scale. I have seen at least one red beer bottle (it’s in my ‘frig, a souvenir I picked up in Salzburg, Austria) but the only blue I can recall was the Apollo beer line from the 1990s.

tuborg-blue-09-can

The idea for it being blue came from a successful ad campaign. From the Carlsbeg Group’s website:

Most Danes know the blue and white advertisement for Tuborg Julebryg (Tuborg Christmas Brew). But probably not many know that the famous animated commercial, which features Santa Claus in blue clothing, is actually older than the beer itself. The commercial was originally launched in 1980 as a special holiday commercial for ordinary Tuborg pilsner, but it became so popular that for Christmas 1981 we created the special Tuborg Julebryg.

Although Tuborg Julebryg is a seasonal beer and is only on the market for six weeks every year, it is still Denmark’s fourth best selling beer. It’s only beaten by Green Tuborg, Carlsberg Pilsner and Tuborg Classic, which are available all year round. Its launch, known as “J-day”, always takes place on the first Friday of every November and is an annual day of celebration across Denmark. Carlsberg employees drive around the bars and cafes, handing out free beer to really get the festive season started.

Tuborg Julebryg is a bottom-fermented, wiener beer brewed on lager, münchener and caramel malt with English liquorice. The beer is dark-golden with a fresh aroma of caramel, grain, liquorice and blackcurrant. It’s excellent with traditional Christmas recipes, smoked fish, grilled/fried herring, smoked ham with curly kale, roast pork and duck.

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Apparently they change the design from year to year, as here’s last year’s bottle.

Brewing Up A Civilization

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history
There’s a wonderful article today in Germany’s Der Speigel showcasing University of Pennsylvania Archaeologist Patrick McGovern’s theory that alcohol is responsible for nothing short of civilization itself. Titled Alcohol’s Neolithic Origins: Brewing Up a Civilization, the story begins:

Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? US Archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks so. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.

It turns out the fall of man probably didn’t begin with an apple. More likely, it was a handful of mushy figs that first led humankind astray.

Here is how the story likely began — a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message — whatever that was, I want more of it!

This is nothing new if you’ve been following McGovern and other scientists coming to similar conclusions as new evidence is continually being found to support the idea that it was the desire to brew beer that caused man to settle down and grow crops, leading to civilization’s genesis. But it’s quite nice to see it gaining traction in mainstream media.

McGovern’s latest book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. McGovern is also the scientist that worked with Dogfish Head Brewery to create Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, along with their other historically based beers.

egyptian-brewery
An Egyptian wooden funerary model of a beer brewery in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

1,000-Bottle Xmas Tree

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christmas
I’m pretty sure Heineken has done this in year’s past, too, but this year the bottle tree they built in Shanghai, China is more massive, using 1,000 bottles to create the glass Christmas tree.

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On Nanjing Road, the giant tree was built with full bottles of Heineken, which frankly is probably the best thing they could have done with them. That way no one will have to actually drink them. But they sure look cool.

heineken-tree-09-2

Fact: Geologists Love Beer

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geology
Beginning with the bold pronouncement, “Fact — Geologists Love Beer,” Wired magazine explains Why Geologists Love Beer.

This week in San Francisco, the American Geophysical Union is having their annual convention at Moscone Convention Center. According to Wired:

“Every other convention assumes that if you have a beer, your brain goes soft,” said Kathy Sullivan, who has been serving beer at the AGU meeting for 26 years. ”But not the geophysicists. They think if you have a beer, you can still learn things. So they do.”

At the Thirsty Bear, the closest brewpub to the Moscone Convention Center where the annual meeting is held every December, the waitstaff claims this is the busiest week of the year for them. I heard from the Borehole Research Group at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory that one server at the Thirsty Bear said the staff can’t take vacation days during the AGU meeting ”because the geologists are coming.”

earth-beyond
Betsy Mason, the author of the article — and a geologist and beer lover herself — polled the 16,00 convention attendees to try to figure why a love of rocks translates to a love of beer. Her results make entertaining reading. And, this insight is personally good news, because it explains yet another one of my own peculiar obsessions. I, too, love rocks. From childhood, I’ve been fascinated by them and to this day always pick up interesting rocks during vacations to bring back home as souvenirs. Throughout my house, I have jars and plates displaying the rocks I’ve found all over the world. Before now, I just thought it was another one of my odd obsessions, but I’m happy to learn it’s just part and parcel of my love of beer, the two apparently go hand in hand.

Watch the video below, bartender Kathy Sullivan is my new favorite person. Listen to what she has to say about the geologists drinking beer at their convention.

“It’s the only convention that thinks adults know whether they can drink and pay attention or not. Every other convention assumes that if you have a beer your brain goes soft, but not the geophysicists, they think if you have a beer you can still learn things … It’s treating people like adults as opposed to children.”

Brookston Beer Quiz #1

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quiz-can
Here is the first of what will most likely be many beer quizzes. I’ll probably do a new one every few weeks. I have tons of similar graphics I’ve been collecting for another project and figured I’d put them to good use in the meantime.

This first one is pretty easy, though I think having multiple choice answers makes them all easier. For each question you’ll be show the first letter of a brewery or beer brand’s name from their logo or label and you have to identify which one it is. Good luck. Let me know how you did.

Help Choosing Your Beer

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humor
This is a very fun little chart, though it must have taken quite some time to actually put together. Over at Eating the Road, they’ve assembled a flowchart to help you choose what beer to drink.

Here’s how they describe it:

In conjunction with the amazingly useful, humorous and insightful Sloshspot.com we’ve put together another flowchart to make your decision making that much easier. Just in time for those wonderful Holiday parties, Eating The Road to the rescue. We figured you may need this one a bit more than the others seeing that you may be a little…ahh, under the influence. Due to that, please use this chart with caution and responsibility.

I ended up with Utopias and Cantillon, so in my case it worked pretty well. Enjoy. At Eating the Road, you can also find links to other flowcharts, including ones for Fast Food, Chain Restaurants and cereal.

NOTE: If you find it hard to read at this size, you can view it full size here.
what-should-i-drink-beer

Puttin’ Up The Brookston Xmas Tree

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christmas
My favorite parts of celebrating the holiday season all involve the originally pagan rites like the mistletoe, the yule log, exchanging gifts and, of course, the Christmas tree. We got our tree last night and decorated it this morning. My mother was somewhat obsessed with Christmas, and did a completely different tree theme every year, often making all the ornaments herself. She’d also buy a few ornaments every year and add them to a box for me and, when she passed away in 1981, I inherited all of the ornaments. I’ve continued the tradition of buying new ornaments every year, though I don’t have a whole new tree each year. Instead, the family looks through the boxes and boxes of ornaments and we choose the ones that catch our fancy each year to create our decorated tree. Many of the ornaments reflect our passions, so Porter has train ornaments and Alice has princesses. Over the years I’ve amassed ornaments of some of my peculiar fetishes, such as globes, clothespins, snowmen, birds, potatoes, bowling pins, the Packers and, of course, beer. So this morning I took a photo of each of my beer ornaments, which are presented below in he slideshow. Hoppy Christmas.

Beer: A 6-Pack

Below is a slideshow of my beer-themed Christmas ornaments. 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.

Two Companies, 265 Brands

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abib millercoors
Anat Baron, who created the film Beer Wars, according to a recent post, “has received hundreds of emails and tweets since the film came out asking for a list of the beer brands owned by the 2 big brewers.” In Who Owns What?, she posted a first draft using IRI Data for the 4 week period ending 11/1/09. I spent the evening hastily putting together a second draft, which undoubtedly is still not complete, but I think moves the ball forward. My list of The Big Brewer’s Brands is on a separate page. Please let me know who’s missing or what I got wrong, as I didn’t spend as much time on it as I might have liked.