Brookston Beer Bulletin

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Craft Breweries Have Tipped The Dominos

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australia
An interesting international perspective was expressed in The Shout, an Australian trade publication covering “hotel, bar, club & liquor industry news.” The short piece, entitled “… as Specialist Hails Craft Beer Revival,” is about the International Beer Shop, a specialty beer store in Perth that carries 850 beers from around the world.

The shop’s manager, Cameron Stewart, has some great quotes about American craft beer’s influence on the rest of the world, to wit:

“Experimental US Craft Breweries have tipped the dominos, and they are falling throughout the Western World.”
…

“Cutting-edge modern breweries constantly expand their ranges, developing and reinterpreting various beer styles to provide beer lovers with their next beer experience,” he said.

“These guys are constantly refining their art. They are the magicians of the beer world.”

Nice.

Beer In Ads #181: Hurlimann Bier

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Thursday’s ad is for the Swiss brewery, Brauerei Hurlimann. It was founded in 1836, and moved to Zurich thirty years later, in 1866. They’re still brewing beer today, though I don’t know when this ad was done, though I suspect it was shortly after World War 2 ended, as “Kriegs Zeit Friedens Zeit” translates roughly as “postwar peace time period.”

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Red Lobster On Beer

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This was originally mentioned in a Beer Advocate thread, started by Will C. of Virginia, and then spread out via Twitter as a worthy topic by Todd and Jason. I found it interesting, as well, as it concerns one of the national restaurant chains attempts to promote beer to their customers. The chain is Red Lobster, a seafood restaurant I haven’t eaten at since maybe the early 1980s, and even then only once or twice. I’m not a big chain restaurant patron, less so when it’s seafood, which I’m also not a great fan of.

But I have to at least give kudos to Red Lobster for trying to educate their customers about beer. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but my sense is that regular Red Lobster customers are generally not hardcore beer geeks. Most of the people I know who love great beer, are at least somewhat passionate about the food they eat, too. So that suggests that the average Red Lobster patron could probably use a little beer edumacation. So they’ve set up an interactive Beer Tasting Guide showing each of the main year-round beers they carry on a chart with beer color on one axis and “flavor” on the other. When you move you mouse over each of the beers, a window pops up with additional information about that beer. It’s one of the better uses of Flash technology I’ve see involving beer.

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The downside, of course, is that of the seventeen beers on the chart, only the five Samuel Adams beers, and possibly the Guinness (depending on which one it is) are worth ordering, at least to my taste. The biggest blunder, though, is equating flavor with IBUs as the Y-axis seems to suggest. Obviously, they’re not remotely the same thing, and none of the beers on the list could really be considered hoppy by any stretch. There would obviously be numerical differences between the beers, but from a taste point of view, not so much. They also seem to suggest all dark beers are malty and light beers are also “crisp,” which is likewise not exactly true, at least not all the time.

Red Lobster did, however, buy the new proprietary Samuel Adams beer glass and put the Red Lobster logo on them for all their restaurants, which is a plus. And according to their beer page, they have some regional beers in select areas, though those choices, too, are nothing out of the ordinary. Still, this is the sort of thing that’s to be encouraged, I think. I’m not a great fan of misinformation — of which there is certainly some here — but it’s a start. Perhaps it will at least inspire Red Lobster’s customers to ask more questions, a move which could ultimately lead them to better beer.

Deep-Fried Beer!?!

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I’ve often used the proverb “frying makes every thing taste better,” and people who’ve eaten with me know I take that seriously. I live for French fries and potato chips, and my favorite sandwich is the Monte Cristo, essentially a deep-friend sandwich. I’ll fry pretty much anything, and indeed have tried frying many an unusual foodstuff. There’s certainly a rich tradition of using beer in batters and other sauces that food is cooked in, but I confess I’ve never considered frying the liquid itself, for what I thought were obvious reasons. But then I don’t have Mark Zable’s experience and wherewithal. His father Norman has had a Belgian Waffle concession stand at the Texas State Fair for 47 years, and several years ago his son Mark began tinkering with a number of new food ideas, such as Chocolate Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls and Sweet Jalapeno Corn Dog Shrimp.

But it’s his latest creation that made me sit up and take notice: Fried Beer, which they’ve trademarked and the process they use is also being patented.

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To me they look a bit like ravioli with beer inside. Three years in the making, the Dallas Morning News has the story:

For three years, Zable has been on a mission to concoct Fried Beer. He remembers staring at a bar menu in a restaurant. Calamari. Nachos. Fried cheese.

Bor-ing.

“Someone needs to figure out a way to fry beer,” he thought.

Zable started experimenting. But the beer-and-dough concoction kept exploding once it hit the fryer. He kept getting burned.

So he consulted with a food scientist — still, no luck.

Then, earlier this year, he finally found the recipe for success. Now Zable keeps the process shrouded in secrecy and has applied for a Fried Beer patent and trademark.

Mark Zable figured out how to fry beer by sealing it in dough. He had to persist because early efforts blew up.

I’m certainly willing to give it a try. Apparently when you bite into it, the beer squirts out into your mouth to mix its flavor with the dough. How bad could that be? It will debut at the Texas Fair and is also one of eight finalists in the Sixth Annual Big Tex Choice Awards.

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Mark Zable with his fried beer. [photo by Vernon Bryant, Dallas Morning News.]

And here’s Zable talking about what he went through to come up with it:

They’ve also set up a website, where they further describe Fried Beer:

People said it could not be done; impossible is what we were told! When you put beer into a fryer, it will cause a violent reaction with the oil…

We took that challenge and did everything we could to prove naysayers wrong! As a result of three years of research and development, we are now excited to present Fried Beer™ to the world! In such a revolutionary way, we are able to put beer inside dough that is shaped like a ravioli and deep fry it. The process is so unique, we have a patent pending on the manufacturing process!

By using our patent pending process, we are able to place beer inside a salty pretzel like dough, and deep fry it. When you take a bite, beer pours out of the inside pocket of dough. We even had to get the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to rule on our new product. The verdict… You have to be over the age of 21 to purchase Fried Beer™.

CBS also did a video report on Zable’s Fried Beer:The only other food I’ve seen that’s even similar is a Korean dish also called “Deep-Fried Beer” at the Korean Food website ZenKimchi’s Korean Food Journal. ZenKimchi even includes the recipe, though it seems more like a deep-fried batter that includes beer as an ingredient, so I’m not quite sure if it’s misnamed or it is similar at all. Though I may have to give the recipe a try one of these days.

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Korean Deep-Fried Beer

Beer In Ads #180: Birra Dicitura

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Wednesday’s ad is for another Italian brewery, Birra Dicitura. It seems like it has to be later than the 1920s, because the art is less well-defined, more abstract. It almost seems unfinished, a rough sketch. And I can’t help but wonder; why the five of hearts? Dicitura, by the way, is Italian for “wording.”

birra-maquette

Yuengling Phasing Out Returnables

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I wrote about this last week, where the focus was on the Straub Brewery, in The Extinction Of Returnable Beer Bottles, but they did mention the decision by Yuengling to discontinue offering returnable bottles. Today my old hometown newspaper growing up, the Reading Eagle, picked up the story but centered instead on Yuengling. In Returnable Bottles Leave Beer Drinkers Cold, Dick Yuengling explains the reasons for discontinuing returnables.

Yuengling said returnable bottles still make great sense ecologically. He said that at one point 60 percent of his business was in returnable bottles.

“Now, if you showed a 16-ounce returnable bottle to a 22-year-old, he wouldn’t know what the heck it was,” Yuengling joked. “I like the idea. I installed a bottle washer at our new (Pottsville) location. I was going to try to revive the returnables but the customer just doesn’t want them anymore.”

According to the Beer Institute, in 1981 about 12% of beer sold was in returnable bottles. Today it’s just under 0.3% … and dropping fast. As I opined last week, even though I understand the rationale for this, I still can’t help but lament it. It just feels like a lost opportunity in our current obsession with being green. I did a lengthy feature article for All About Beer magazine a few years ago about brewery’s green practices, and I was astounded by how much most breweries, both big and small, were doing.

It seems like going back to returnables, while undoubtedly difficult and expensive, would be a great way to keep local beer local and show the craft beer industry’s leadership in recycling and being ecological. It may be nearly impossible to ramp up by any national company, but the smaller the brewery, the more manageable it could be, giving an advantage to local brewers. Oh, well, I know it’s not going to happen, but I can still dream.

Asia Overtakes Europe In Beer Consumption

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For a long while Europe has led the world in beer consumption by continent and also by nation since the EU has increased in economic prominence as a single entity. According to new data by Credit Suisse, China now leads the world in terms of beer consumption, growing at a pace of about 10% per year. The Economist has more details in All Pints East.

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World Beer Awards 2010

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I keep forgetting to write about this. Earlier this year I was asked to help judge for the World Beer Awards, which are put on by the former UK beer magazine Beers of the World, which is now published only online at Tasting Beers. They separated the beers into regions and Stan Hieronymus chaired the America’s region, along with me and Eric Warner.

We were each sent four large boxes filled with bubble-wrapped bottles or cans with a number assigned to each and the labels and even crowns obscured by labels and stickers. They were then separated into five broad categories: pale ale, dark ale, lager, stout & porter, and wheat beer. Then within each of those five, they were further subdivided by style. I don’t know how the rest of the judges did it, but I invited friends with judging experience and/or beer knowledge over to help taste them and bounce descriptors off one another and also had a volunteer steward to help keep the beers as blind as possible, but each beer’s numbered score came strictly from me.

The other two regions were Europe (chaired by Jeff Evans) and Asia (chaired by Bryan Harrell) with Roger Protz overseeing the entire process. In stage 2, the chairmen re-tasted all the regional winners and then a final round was held to determine the overall winners. It was great fun and the results are certainly interesting with a lot of beers with great reputations — and personal favorites — doing quite well. Because participation was not universal (that is, not every brewery submitted beers for judging) there are, of course, many beers not represented which may or may not have done as well or even better than the winners and I certainly hope more breweries will enter their beers next year. But within the group of what was submitted, it’s a pretty damn good list.

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Here are the big winners in each of the Five main categories:

  1. Pale Ale: Deschutes Red Chair NWPA
  2. Dark Ale: Unibroue 17
  3. Lager: Primator Premium
  4. Stout & Porter: Minoh Beer Imperial Stout
  5. Wheat Beer: Weihenstephaner Vitus

The rest of the winners within each style and also the regional winners can be found on the Tasting Beers website.

I didn’t know this going in, but they actually published a small book with all the winners, including a mash-up of all the tasting notes for the beers. It’s a nice small-size (3-3/4″ x 8-1/4″) paperback. In 162 full-color pages, there are features about the winning breweries and listings for all the winning beers, including at least a bottle shot for each. If you’re keen you can buy one online at Amazon UK or directly from the Tastings Beers website. Amazon US also has a listing for the book, but I believe it’s from a vendor selling copies from overseas.

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