Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

Socialize

It’s A Wrap: A-B InBev Deal Closes

By

According to the Associated Press, InBev is reporting that the deal to acquire Anheuser-Busch is officially closed. Beginning today, the new company — Anheuser-Busch InBev — will be the largest beer company in the world and in the top 5 of “global consumer products companies.”

Other accounts include more details, such as CNN Money, WGN Chicago, St. Louis Today .

From St. Louis Today:

InBev says its main goals — besides running its current operations — are to mesh the two big companies, pay off debt and deliver promised “synergies.” Those include $1.5 billion in cost cuts over three years.

They’ve already launched a new website under the new name, Anheuser-Busch InBev, and the new logo is below.

.

From the splash page of the new website:

Anheuser-Busch InBev is the leading global brewer and one of the world’s top five consumer products companies. A true consumer-centric, sales driven company, Anheuser-Busch InBev manages a portfolio of over 200 brands that includes global flagship brands Budweiser, Stella Artois and Beck’s.

Geographically diversified with a balanced exposure to developed and developing markets, Anheuser-Busch InBev leverages the collective strengths of its 120,000 employees based in operations in over 30 countries across the world. The Company strives to be the Best Beer Company in a Better World.

 

Beer Parade Coming December 5

By

What do musician JJ Cale, opera tenor Jose Carreras, comedienne Margaret Cho, General George Armstrong Custer, novelist Joan Didion, Walt Disney, model Shalom Harlow, German physicist Werner Heisenberg, film directors Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger, Loggins-Messina musician Jim Messina, Malcolm in the Middle star Frankie Muniz, former quarterback Jim Plunkett, Little Richard, Telly Savalas (who played Kojak), writer Calvin Trillin, 8th U.S. President Martin Van Buren and perhaps millions of others all have in common? They were all born December 5.

There are eighteen days until December 5, the date that the 18th Amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment, ending that failed social experiment known as Prohibition. That was in 1933 and this year will mark the 75th anniversary of Prohibition’s repeal. And like people back then, we too will celebrate that fact with a parade. Fittingly, the 21st Amendment Brewery & Restaurant in San Francisco will host the parade, which will begin at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, December 5.

The parade route from Justin Herman Plaza (at Market and Spear Sts.) to 21st Amendment Brewery on 2nd.

The brewery is currently seeking two individuals to act as Grand Marshal for the parade, one born in 1933 (who would, like the Amendment, turn 75 on Dec. 5) and one born in 1987, meaning that person will turn 21, the legal age for drinking alcohol, this year. They’re offering a $100 bounty for these two individuals.

The Grand Marshals will lead the Repeal Prohibition Parade (aka We Want Beer! March), which will begin at 4:00 p.m. at Justin Herman Plaza and end at the 21st Amendment Brewery. You can’t miss us — we’ll be the ones with the marching band and a coterie of revelers in 1930’s garb carrying We Want Beer! signs.

After the parade, a “Repeal Prohibition Celebration” will beheld at the 21st Amendment Brewery. They’ll have a three-piece jazz band, special food and drinks, and a private party in the Mezzanine that requires a password to enter. We’ll share the password with the Grand Marshals, but everyone else will have to find it themselves. We’ll twitter password retrieval instructions on December 1.

There will also be other events taking place throughout repeal week.

 

Beer in Art #2: Jasper Johns’ Painted Bronze

By

art-beer
Our second installment of “Beer in Art” is another favorite of mine, and one I’ve seen the original of at a Jasper Johns exhibition at Berkeley I saw in the late 980s with an artist friend of mine. It’s official title is “Painted Bronze,” though most people refer to by what it represents, Ballantine Ale cans. Johns actually cast two beer cans in bronze and then painted them to look precisely like ordinary beer cans. The work stems from 1960, and gave the same treatment to other ordinary objects, such a Savarin coffee can filled with used paint brushes.

One analysis of the work, from US History Companion:

Johns’s views were undoubtedly influenced by the iconoclasm of the earlier dada movement and particularly by his idol, Marcel Duchamp, whom he sought out in 1960. After their initial meeting, Johns made a gesture worthy of Duchamp when he cast two beer cans in bronze and then painted them to look precisely like ordinary beer cans. This triple entendre clearly indicated how deeply Johns was engaged in the criticism of orthodox aesthetics, particularly the aesthetics of gestural painting, which he often parodied.

In an interview from 1974, Johns explains a little bit about the point of Painted Bronze.

Painted Bronze, two cans of Ballantine Ale cast in bronze, was one in a series of sculptures that came to define Johns’ theories of reality; like the pop art that followed it, his experiments with context sought to reconstitute “ordinary” objects in such a way as to highlight the power of the perceptual over the physical world. In 1964 he explained, as fulsomely as he ever would, what it was he was trying to do: “I am concerned with a thing’s not being what it was, with its becoming something other than what it is, with any moment in which one identifies a thing precisely and with the slipping away of that moment.”

Although there’s nothing about this work, Wikipedia has a good overview of Jasper johns, as does Answers.com. Also, the overview at Area of Design includes a few of his representative works throughout his career.

West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Festival

By

On November 15, The Bistro in Hayward, California held their 3rd Annual West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Festival. On tap were over 60 Barrel Aged Beers, a few in bottles. The weather cooperated by being unseasonably warm with temperatures as high as 90! It was hard to believe it was the Ides of November. Vic Krajl, Bistro owner, had been inspired by GABF and set up a new tap system using PVC pipe and served beer from pitchers, allowing more beer to be served in smaller space, which had the added benefit of making getting a beer quicker, too.

There were a lot of very tasty beers this year, such as Deschutes’ Mirror Mirror, Fifity-Fifty’s BART (a blend of barleywine and oatmeal stout), He’Brew’s Bittersweet Lenny’s RIPA (a rye IPA aged in a rye whisky barrel), a 2006 vintage of the Lost Abbey’s Angel’s Share, Russian River’s newest beer — Consecration.

Some of the stand-out beers for me included Avery’s Vogelbekdieren, Marin’s Grand Funk, Veritas 002 from Port Brewing, Russian River’s Beatification, Schooners’ Vindecation, and Echt Kriekenbier from Verhaeghe, a Flemish cherry ale blend (of 1, 2, & 3 year olds) from the same brewery that makes Duchese De Bourgogne.

And speaking of Duchese De Bourgogne, a personal favorite, it was great to try some on draft since it’s usually only available in bottles. There were a few other beers at the festival on draft that were a treat to try just for that reason, which included Allagash’s Curieux and Rodenbach Grand Cru.

My favorite beer name was a three-way tie. First there was Bear Republic’s Cuvee du Bubba and Valley Brewing’s Effingreat. And Craig Cauwels’ homage to the sour beers that Vinnie Cilurzo makes at Russian River, Vindecation has an interesting back story. Craig originally submitted it to the TTB as “Vin.de.cation” but the feds rejected it because having it begin with “Vin” they felt might confuse consumers into thinking Schooner’s was implying it was a “vintage.” So the dots were removed, obscuring the meaning just a little bit. The name is actually a portmanteau, which is a word formed by combining elements of two or more words to create a new one. Vindecation stands for “Vinnie deserves a vacation.”

Bistro co-owner Vic Krajl and Tammy at the entrance to the festival.

For more photos from this year’s West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Festival at the Bistro, visit the photo gallery.
 

Labatt Blue Must Be Sold Says DOJ

By

Though it won’t stop the deal from closing, the Department of Justice placed one condition on their approval, which was given on Friday, a mere two days after A-B shareholders approved it. DOJ approval was one of the remaining items on the laundry list of “to do” items that had be ticked off in order to complete the takeover of Anheuser-Busch by InBev.

That condition is that Labatt USA must be sold off within an unsepcificed period of time, though present contracts will remain in force for three years. The DOJ’s rationale was that without a sale by A-BIB of Labatt USA prices to consumers would be expected to rise in Buffalo and other parts of northern New York due to the sudden lack of competition the merger brings. About half of the Labatt beer sold in the U.S> is sold in that area.

The Buffalo News has the full story, and there’s an AP article as well.
 

Moylan’s Beer Dinner

By

Sadly, I can’t be everywhere at once, and I had at least five articles due this week. As a result, I had to decline an invitation to attend a beer dinner featuring Denise Jones’ beers from Moylan’s that was held Thursday at Noon’s Bar & Grill in Larkspur, California. Happily, Bulletin correspondent — and real-life newspaper man — Brent Ainsworth was on hand to give us his report on the beer dinner. Here’s what he had to say:

Taste buds were spoiled with a luxurious spa treatment Nov. 13 when Moylan’s ace brewer Denise Jones hosted a brewmasters dinner at Noonan’s Bar & Grill in Larkspur, Calif. Jones and her staff unveiled some special ales and executive chef Jose Flores delighted the diners with delectable treats including smoked oysters and quail.

Moylan’s brewmaster Denise Jones and Chef Jose Flores.

The menu:

A trio of passed hors d’oeuvres: poached white prawns with spicy tomato & pepper relish; Dungeness crab crostinis with tarragon aioli; smoked Point Reyes oysters. Served with Moylan’s ESB

Marinated Niman Ranch tenderloin of beef on a bed of arugula, fennel and orange with cilantro vinaigrette. Served with Moylan’s Oktoberfest Marzen

Banana leaf-wrapped Pacific rockfish in adobo sauce with vegetable-filled passilla pepper and queso fresco. Served with Moylan’s White Christmas Winter Lager

Wheat ale & lemon granita

Pan-roasted quail filled with dried cranberries, wild mushrooms and spinach with sauce Bernaise. Served with Moylan’s IPA

Walnut bread pudding with malted barley caramel reduction. Served with a trio of Moylan’s Ryan Sullivan Imperial Stout variations (bourbon barrel, espresso and chocolate infused, fresh raspberry).

Jones grew up hunting and fishing in eastern California’s rugged country, and she said she often craves the kind of fresh game she used to shoot as a kid. So she worked with Flores, a native of Mexico City, to hand-craft a menu that included flavors from her personal history. The roasted quail worked perfectly with the mushrooms, cranberries and spinach. “Quail is tricky to do because you have to make it moist,” Flores told the diners.

The rockfish was actually corvina, a member of the seabass family, that Flores had brought in from Ecuador. The gravita, a granular sorbet, was a cool breeze after the fish and before the quail.

Beerwise, the dinner got off to a smooth start as the extra special bitter almost stepped aside graciously to let the hors d’oeourves show off their deep-sea flavor. Jones’ Oktoberfest Marzen was light in body and crisp in autumn flavor, “almost a German cousin to an Irish red,” she said. The combination of the fish and the White Christmas Winter Lager was a sweet pre-holiday treat, and the bitterness of Jones’ signature IPA helped the quail take a posthumous flight as the meal’s star attraction.

Then came the three stouts – a style dear to Jones’ heart. The bourbon barrel version was aged only about 3-4 months, according to brewer Jim Grbac, and was intentionally more subtle than more monstrous bourbon barrel stouts floating around. The espresso/chocolate had a nose to die for thanks to Wolf Coffee Sumatra blend and Scharffen Berger dark chocolate. The raspberry stout went down like a 20-year-old cabernet sauvignon.

“These three stouts are the same age, same basic ingredients, same everything except for the infusions, and we’ve come up with three very different results,” Jones said.

Thanks to Brent Ainsworth for that great glimpse into the beer dinner. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, its all looks delicious.

 

Rogue May Buy Green Dragon

By

Portland’s Green Dragon, one of the newest bars on the scene (and trying to be a brewery) has been in a trouble almost from the beginning, despite vigorous support from the Portland community. It was founded, at least in part, by my good friend Jim Parker. It’s a great space and I’ve had a few wonderful times there. But it appears that Rogue is close to inking a deal to buy the location. According to the Brewpublic, the deal could close as early as sometime today. Brewpublic and others seem oddly opposed to it on a variety of levels, and rumors abound about the Green Dragon’s fate, and that of its employees. Rogue has responded that there are negotiations, but that’s all that’s known for sure at this time.

 

The Green Dragon during this year’s OBF.

 

Style Trends Through Early November

By

Here is a chart of the latest style trends broken out by the top six selling styles, based on eighteen-month’s worth of sales as of November 2, 2008, courtesy of DBBB, the Domestic Brewers Bottled Brands. They publish the book, “The Essential Reference of Domestic Brewers and Their Bottled Brands” and have a website, which offers monthly online updates of the book.

The chart is based on IRI Data showing sales of beer from May 2007 through November 2nd of this year by beer style. IRI is short for Information Resources, Inc., a company that surveys sales of beer (and everything else) from over 15,000 retailers (mostly groceries) in the U.S. As a result, their data is invariably skewed toward the national and regional brands since it doesn’t take into account direct sales and sales from small mom & pop stores. I used to get IRI data from almost every medium to large brewer who called on me when I was the beer buyer for BevMo. And while it’s not as accurate for craft beer in specific, it does give you a general idea of certain trends, especially when you follow it over a period of time.