In a story related to the news that craft beer growth was up 12% last year over the previous year, the southeast region of the country — including the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina — showed sales growth of almost 32%, the highest percentage in the nation. The sales figures used are from five types of retail locations: grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, big box retailers (warehouse stores, club stores, etc.), and liquor stores. The data was complied by Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) for a presentation to the Brewers Association last week.

Another interesting tidbit: seasonal beers are now the best-selling segment of beer, having eclipsed that of Pale Ale, which previously held the top spot.

Here are the geographic areas listed by their growth rate:

1. Southeast = 31.6%
2. Great Lakes = 28.1%
3. Mid-South = 25.6%
4. Plains = 20.8%
5. Northeast = 19.1%
6. South Central = 16.5%
7. California = 13.7%
8. West = 7.2%

 
Some additional observations.

1. Notice that there are seven states where beer cannot be purchased at grocery stores and the like.

2. What happened to Hawaii and Alaska?

3. Three of the regions showed growth of more than 25%

4. Only one region, the West (excluding California) was below 10% which suggests that craft beer is growing virtually everywhere and is not limited to small pockets of the country.

The Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado today released the preliminary numbers for beer sales in 2007. Craft beer is again showing double digit growth for, I believe, the fourth consecutive year. Craft beer growth was 12% last year, as compared to 1.4% for imported beer and 1.4% for non-craft beer, primarily the major domestic beer companies. The craft beer industry eclipsed 8 million barrels of craft beer produced for the first time last year, as sales grew to 3.8% by volume and 5.9% by dollars. But perhaps the most impressive statistic is that the microbrewery segment (defined as a brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels per year) grew a staggering 21% in 2007.

From the press release:

In what has become a true American success story, the craft beer market again grew by double digits in 2007, leading all other segments in the beer category. The Brewers Association reports estimated sales by independent craft brewers up 12 percent by volume and 16 percent in dollars for 2007. Craft brewers’ share of the beer category is 3.8 percent of production and 5.9 percent of retail sales.

The Brewers Association annually polls the country’s craft brewers to estimate the total volume of beer sold by brewpubs, microbreweries, and regional craft breweries in the United States, and uses scan data to estimate sales. Results show that the U.S. had 1,449 total breweries in operation in the U.S. during 2007, including 1,406 small, independent, and traditional craft brewers. Nearly 70 percent of craft breweries are brewpubs that sell most or all of their beer on-premises.

“Since 2004, dollar sales by craft brewers have increased 58 percent,” said Paul Gatza, Director of the Brewers Association. “The strength of this correlates with the American trend of buying local products and a preference for more flavorful foods and beers.”

The Brewers Association estimates the actual dollar sales figures from craft brewers at more than $5.74 billion, up from $4.95 billion in 2006. Sales in barrels equaled 8,011,141 (one barrel is 31 U.S. gallons) up from 7,147,050 barrels in 2006. The 2007 increase totals 864,091 barrels, which is the equivalent of 11.9 million cases or 285 million 12-ounce bottles of beer.

Using the recently redone definition of craft breweries, below is the breakdown of American breweries currently operating.

A little over a month ago, I stopped by Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California to see how the installation of the new brewhouse was going and took some photographs of the new equipment. I had an opportunity earlier today to stop by again on my way back from an impromptu trip to Russian River Brewing with my good friend Pete Slosberg (but more on that tomorrow). Pete had never been to Lagunitas, whereas I have been there many, many times, so I figured a quick detour to see the brewery was in order. They’re about a week away from the first water test and it looks far closer to completion than my last visit.

The new kettle door adorned with an etching of one of the brewery logos.

All of the pipes are now attached, which includes seven miles of wiring.

Owner Tony Magee shows off the new hop dosers to Pete.

On Saturday, Matt Venzke became the 12th recipient of the coveted title “Beer Drinker of the Year,” and marked the second year in a row someone from Virginia won the title. Venzke is an aircraft maintenance manager in his daily life. This is his fourth time entering and last year was a semifinalist.

Matt Venzke moments after winning. Behind him are judges that he had to impress to be crowned this year’s Beer Drinker of the Year.

From the Press Release:

“For four years now,” Venzke said, “it’s been a dream of mine to win the Beerdrinker of the Year title. It’s great to now be recognized by the judges and previous winners. I’m proud to be among this very select group of beer lovers.”

“I feel like I’ve been given a flag to carry,” Venzke adds, “for all of the great things beer has to offer.”

Venzke’s home beer bar is The Taphouse on Queensway in Hampton, Virginia. He is the second straight Virginia resident to win the competition. (Diane Catanzaro of Norfolk, Virginia was the 2007 Beerdrinker of the Year.)

Venzke beat out finalists J Mark Angelus (of Nehalem, Oregon) and Richard Pedretti-Allen (McKinney, Texas). He landed the title with a combination of impressive beer drinking experiences, humor and beer ambassadorship.

Venzke’s resume boasted of many beer drinking experiences. Venzke has visited 454 breweries in 69 nations and 39 states. Over the past five years, he has recorded tasting notes on over 3200 different beers in 69 different styles.

He logged 3,000 miles in 2007 while traveling to breweries across North America. While stationed in alcohol-free Kuwait on a military deployment a few years ago, Venzke conducted a tasting of 17 non-alcohol beers.

Questions from the Finals judges elicited some revealing info from Venzke. When asked what he’s doing to get around the current ban on carry-on beer for US air travelers, Venzke winkingly cited an upcoming effort to petition US brewers to start packaging beer in 3-ounce portions.

Congratulations to Matt.
 

According to Vermont local television station WCAX Channel 3, Magic Hat Brewing will be installing both a new bottling line and brewhouse, effectively doubling their size. The project should be finished by autumn, and will allow Magic Hat to expand their distribution farther into the south and midwest.

Last Friday, I had an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on porters, tying together the style and George Washington’s well-documented love of them for Presidents’ Day. Since today is Washington’s actual birthday (at least under the converted Gregorian calendar), I thought I’d share the dessert recipe I came up with for the story, a variation on a porter float I called Washington’s Porter Float.

Pour a bottle of porter over vanilla ice cream, add a symbolic powdered wig of whipped cream and, because it’s Washington, put a cherry on top.

To which in the original I added. “A spoon is recommended for chopping it down.” Understandably it got cut. It was more than a little overly cutesy. But I still liked it. Happy Washington’s birthday.

Purity Brewery, a newer British microbrewery in Warwickshire, England, became the first brewery in the UK to earn a Red Tractor Assurance Mark for one of its beers, Farmer’s Harvest.

In a sense, the Red Tractor mark is similar to labeling something organic, except that the goal is to promote local ingredients in a variety of goods, with a standard of quality, too. It is administered by Assured Food Standards (or AFS), which is a trade group “owned by the entire food industry. It represents interests from each of the key links in the food chain, including the National Farmer’s Union, the Ulster Farmers Union, the Meat & Livestock Commission, Dairy UK and the British Retail Consortium. Observers include DEFRA and the Food and Drink Federation.” Their stated objective:

AFS believes that the Red Tractor has a major role to play in the future of British food and farming — by promoting recognition of professionally-produced assured food, and by boosting the reputation of food production in the UK. We do this by first establishing the benchmark for production and then ensuring that producers, processors and other operators continually meet those standards by carrying out regular and robust audits.

Purity Brewing was founded in 2005 and makes two beers in addition to Farmer’s Harvest, Pure UBU (an amber that’s 4.5% abv) and Pure Gold (a 3.8% abv golden ale). The Pure UBU was chosen last year as one of the world’s top fifty beers at the International Beer Challenge, an international competition headquartered in the UK. The Supreme Champion that same year was none other than Deschutes’ The Abyss. Based solely on their website, they appear to be a well-funded craft brewer, but with the accolades one dares to hope they care about the beer, too. I’m certainly looking forward to giving them a try on my next visit across the pond.

I’m not quite sure why people keep trying to “improve” beer by adding vitamins to it, trying to make it akin to the sort of health drinks one might find at a health food store. Beer is plenty healthy already and it certainly feels like brewers have pretty much perfected how to make it by now. If there’s a more perfected beverage, I can’t imagine what it might be.

It’s fairly well settled that when you drink, you lose B vitamins. Alcohol robs your body of those vitamin compounds. My personal regime after a night of drinking is to take a B complex vitamin pill along with two or three Advils before retiring (which has been nearly a perfect preemptive remedy for me).

A Philippine inventor, Virgilio “Billy” L. Malang, has come with yet another beer that adds vitamin B back into the beer. He recently presented his beer at the First International Inventors Day Convention held February 2 in Thailand. Malang’s beer also nabbed a gold medal at the Genius-Europe competition in 2004 out of 1,000 inventions submitted by 540 would-be inventors from forty-six different nations.

Malang apparently began homebrewing while living in the U.S. in the 1980s. He uses organic rice syrup as his wort, using no grains at all, which he believes gives his beer a distinctive taste. There’s also one more secret ingredient, which still has a patent pending, that he uses as a substitute for hops. This substitute he says is “sourced locally” so that suggests a plant that grows in the Philippines. At this point, it’s sounding less and less like an actual beer, since it uses only half the traditional ingredients: yeast and water.

Other related inventions by Malang include “a ‘tagay cup’ good for three drinkers—with three handles and three cup lips assigned to each member of a drinking trio, and an anti-hangover capsule derived from ‘activated’ coco shell charcoal.” For more on Malang and his inventions, there’s a story in the Philippine Inquirer.

I guess what I don’t quite understand is how simply adding vitamins to a beer at some point during the brewing process guarantees that it can be absorbed by the body when you drink the finished product. I mean, it my still be in there, but how do we know that the body can take it from the solution and add it to the body’s total amount, thus replenishing whatever B vitamins have been lost in the same process. Otherwise, it really doesn’t do much good, does it? And it seems like an awful lot of effort when simply keeping a bottle of vitamin pills on the nightstand would do the same job.

Last night, I attended yet another beer dinner. This one took place at the Hotel Mac in Point Richmond, California, which is just over the Richmond Bridge from where I live in Marin County. It was four-course affair and was done quite well, despite it being the restaurant’s first beer dinner. I’m starting to think 2008 is going to be the Year of the Beer Dinner. I think this was my sixth one so far this year and I’ve had to turn down another two so that’s pretty impressive for only the first six or seven weeks of the year during what is ostensibly the off-season for beer. Perhaps pairing beer and food is finally going mainstream. It’s certainly gaining attention, and that’s great news for all of us who love better beer.

Lauren Salazar, Ashley, me and Jen Garris at the Hotel Mac for a New Belgium beer dinner.
 

For more photos from New Belgium Beer Dinner, visit the photo gallery.
 

The four-hour regular session for the Celebrator Beer News’ 20th Anniversary Party began at four, after the hour-long V.I.P. session came to a close. As soon as everyone waiting in line was inside, a Dixieland band — led by a tuxedoed Tom Dalldorf complete with plunger — paraded into the hall, with the Celebrator writers bringing up the rear. For the next four hours, there was great food, music and, of course, beer.

A number of Celebrator Beer News writers, past and present, made it to the party from all over the world.

A Colorado-themed trio enjoy the festivities. Lauren Salazar (QA/Sensory Analyst with New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins), Cheryl Black (co-owner of the Falling Rock in Denver with her husband Chris and his brother), and Jen Garris, San Francisco Beer Ranger for New Belgium.
 

For many more photos from the Celebrator 20th Anniversary Party, visit the photo gallery.