Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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St. James Gate For Sale?

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Back in October of last year, I got slapped around quite a bit when I suggested that Guinness had closed St. James Gate already, as I heard the rumor quite some time before that it was in the works and had sort of figured that the deed had been done. Turns out I was wrong, but not as wrong as some of my critics supposed. I was just ahead of my time. A friend returned recently from Dublin (thanks Chris) and sent me this article from the Irish Independent entitled Last Orders for Brewery as Sale Looms.

The article begins:

The closure of the iconic Guinness brewery at St James’s Gate in Dublin could be one step closer after drinks giant Diageo appointed three sets of consultants to oversee the sale of the prestigious Dublin site. The move away from the city centre could net Diageo a windfall of up to €3bn for the 56-acre plot.

In an effort to keep this from happening, city councilors passed a motion trying to make sure that by law there must be a brewery at the current location. It is believed that “this could restrict future development at the site, thereby reducing its market value.” So it appears that even the City of Dublin is trying to keep Diageo from closing down the nearly 250-year old Guinness brewery at St. James Gate. But if I had to guess, as an international conglomerate, I imagine Diageo will figure out a way around such a small obstacle as that if they really want to unload it.

 

 

Full Sail Re-Boots LTD Series

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Full Sail Brewing in Hood River, Oregon will be re-launching their seasonal LTD series that they debuted in 2007. Though curiously, they’re starting over again with Recipe 01, so perhaps re-booting might be more accurate.

From the press release:

Full Sail proudly announces the return of its lager seasonal program — the LTD series. Our first offering is a wonderfully balanced medium, copper colored lager with subtle hop accents, and a caramel aroma, that goes down smooth – perfect for the winter season. Since its release last year LTD has been embraced by both the critics and consumers alike winning a gold medal in the World Beer Championship and becoming one of the fastest growing new beers in the U.S. (I.R.I 12/02/07) “We are excited to be able to branch out and brew some interesting lager beers as they are such a huge part of brewing tradition. It is one of the best parts about being an independent, employee owned company – we get to celebrate our creativity as well as the rich heritage of beer styles,” said Brewmaster Jamie Emmerson. “It is such a pleasure to brew these beers and have them develop such a fervent following — it is why I love my job!”

LTD Recipe 01 will be available in six-packs and in draught and will begin shipping from the brewery again in January 2008. The bottle labels describe LTD Recipe 01, as an easy drinking, nonetheless way tasty limited edition lager. Featured on the six-pack is a “Malt-O-Meter” that will tell you at a glance that LTD is a medium body, perfectly balanced malty beer with a lovely hop aroma and caramel notes. For the beer aficionados, or the aspiring ones, the bottom of the six-pack features an easy to read chart of “Today’s Recipe”, including hop (Czech Saaz, Hallertauer) and malt varieties (caramel, chocolate and wheat), Plato (16 degrees), I.B.U. (26), alcohol by volume (6.4) and even secret sauce! Full Sail will follow up with a limited edition bottling of LTD Recipe 02, this spring.

Alphabet Soup: A-B Enters the Fray Between S&N and CG for BBH

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This is a story that’s really been going on for some time now, at least a year, probably more. In a nutshell, the BBH (or Baltic Beverages Holding) was created in 1991 by a 50/50 joint venture between Oy Hartwall (a Finnish brewing group) and Procordia Beverages, best known for Pripps (then a Swedish company). The plan was to acquire breweries in the lucrative areas of Russia and the Baltic. And little by little, they did just that. But in 1995, another Swedish company, Orkla, bought Pripps an created a new company, Pripp-Ringnes, only to then merge with Carlsberg in 2000. As a result, the Carlsberg Group became a 50% owner of BBH. Two years later, Scottish & Newcastle bought Hartwell and that’s how we got to today, with BBH being a 50/50 joint venture between Carlsberg and S&N. In the meantime, BBH became the owner of 19 breweries in Russia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) which gives them a commanding share of the market, nearly 40% of the fifth largest — and possibly fastest growing — beer economy in the world. Not surprisingly, the predatory nature of corporations generally means that other companies have developed in interest in BBH.

Lately things have heated up with potential take-over bids. The main players have been primarily the Carlsberg Group and Heineken, both of whom have attempted hostile takeover bids to wrest control of BBH from S&N. The negotiations have been very public and quite contentious with accusations of bad faith and underhanded dealings flying around so fast and furious it’s like a blizzard. I’ve been following it somewhat casually but haven’t written about it before now. What’s changed? Today the London Telegraph is reporting that Anheuser-Busch is considering “a potential £4.6bn bid for full control of BBH.”

From the Telegraph article:

S&N already owns 50 per cent of BBH alongside Carlsberg. But the Edinburgh-based brewer is preparing a bid for full control of BBH as part of its defence against Carlsberg, which is plotting its own £10bn takeover bid for S&N as part of a consortium with Heineken.

S&N’s plan would be to finance a bid for BBH by offering a 25 per cent stake to a minority partner.

Anheuser-Busch has long coveted a place in the rapidly expanding Russian beer market and replacing Carlsberg in a new joint venture with S&N would offer it part ownership of the country’s leading brewer.

I was pretty sure A-B had a long-standing relationship with Carlsberg. They definitely used to distribute Carlsberg and their Elephant Malt here in the U.S. It’s interesting to see how quickly any loyalty they might otherwise have felt to Carlsberg over their years of business together goes out the window when the dollar signs twinkle in their eyes. This whole scenario reminds me of your average Godzilla movie where the giant lumbering monsters of business do battle with each other while at the same time stomping on and smashing to bits the very world in which they, too, live. Whatever happens to those flattened buildings (and people) destroyed in their wake are somebody else’s problem, they’re simply externalities. We’re merely the frightened tiny ants of people who can do nothing except watch as they destroy our city.

Rhetoric aside, it will certainly be interesting now to see how this plays out. I know Heineken desperately wants a bigger piece of the Russia beer pie. That’s specifically the reason they bought Krusovice from the Radeburger Group last year. As for A-B’s interest, with slowing sales of domestic beer, I can only imagine they’d love a quick fix like this.

 

A Night In Heaven

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On January 11th, 21st Amendment Brewery broke out the good stuff for a very special beer dinner. It was a five-course dinner, plus amuse bouche (which are essentially smaller sized hors d’œuvre, the name comes from nouvelle cuisine). For beer, owners Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia dipped deep into their beer cellar, pulling out their own beers from years past, beers picked up during their travels as well as beer given to them by visiting brewers. Only twenty guests were permitted to purchase tickets to the dinner, primarily because many of the beers were in small supply. The brewer’s loft, situated on the mezzanine level in the back overlooking the general seating area below, was the setting for the event. One large rectangular table with a white tablecloth with 24 place settings was the only table in the room. As a result, the dinner had the feel of a large cocktail party in a friend’s home. Throughout the evening, bottles of beer from the library were selected on the spot to pair which each course with no fewer than a half-dozen different beers that could be sampled with each new dish. The price per person was $120, which given the quality of the food and the sheer variety, diversity and uniqueness of the beers was a bargain. When you consider that one of the beers of the evening was Wesvleteren 8, it was a steal. The food was terrific, the company engaging and lively, and the beer heavenly.

 

Shaun O’Sullivan holds a bottle of 2000 Cantillon Gueuze that he hand-carried home from Brussels, after a trip he and I took to Cantillon last year.
 

For more photos from the 21st Amendment Brewer’s Library Dinner, visit the photo gallery.
 

Anderson Valley Gets Real

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I’m not entirely convinced of their claim of combating global warming, but Anderson Valley Brewing announced that they have begun brewing real ales and have added a beer engine to their tasting room, and that’s certainly good enough news for me.

From the press release:

Anderson Valley Brewing Company (AVBC) proudly added to their award-winning line of handcrafted beers, “Real ale”—a natural ale created in a traditional and environmentally-friendly style. Real ale is a beer that highlights Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s continuing efforts to make high quality beers in an environmentally responsible manner. Real ale is:

  • * A truly “organic” ale with only four natural ingredients: malted barely, hops, water and yeast and absolutely no additives.
  • * Served at 10-13 C degrees via a human-powered “hand pull” it’s naturally cool, resulting in far less energy being used for cooling.
  • * Naturally carbonated through the yeast’s effervescence — no additional carbon dioxide is added.
  • * Reducing packaging by using casks which can be reused for up to 20 years.
  • * Created using solar power which provides 40% of Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s annual energy needs.

Though Real ale is environmentally responsible, the traditional method of brewcrafting also results in a more robust, stimulating, and fresh taste that can’t be found in traditional brands. Real ale’s unique flavors and aromas are partly due to the process of fermentation.

While a great many breweries remove yeast before the beer reaches the glass, Real ale differentiates itself by retaining the yeast in the container from which the beer is served. Though the yeast settles at the bottom of the cask and isn’t poured into the glass, the yeast is still active in the cask where the process of fermentation continues until ready to serve. Real ale is currently available in Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s visitor’s center.

 
In other Anderson Valley news, they will be having a special event on February 2 to celebrate their 20th Anniversary. And the 12th annual Boonville Beer Festival will take place in 2008 on May 10.

 

 

The Times Goes For Extremes

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There was another terrific article by Eric Asimov in the New York Times yesterday about extreme beers called A Taste for Brews That Go to Extremes. Although admitting not everybody likes the new extremism, Asimov certainly does and the article also includes several Bay Area beers, including ones from Lagunitas, Mad River and Moylan’s breweries. And there’s a great quote from Brendan Moylan, owner of both Marin Brewing and Moylan’s.

“We’re the same country that put men on the moon, and we’re taking the same approach to beer,” said Brendan Moylan, the founder of Moylan Brewing Company in Novato, Calif. “We passed the rest of the world by ages ago, and they’re just waking up to it.”

The Times also did a tasting of several extreme beers, and happily included two well-known brewers in the process: Garrett Oliver, from Brooklyn Brewing, and Phil Markowski, from Southampton Publick House. Despite their initial derisiveness over the very pursuit of extremeness, even they found beers they enjoyed. 90-Minute IPA from Dogfish Head was the group’s favorite, followed by the Double Simcoe I.P.A. from Weyerbacher and Maximus from Lagunitas. There’s also a Beers of the Times feature where you can listen to the tasters talking about their favorite beers.

 

Coast Range Closed?

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coastrange
I heard a rumor today from a fairly reliable source that Coast Range Brewing in Gilroy, California has closed their doors for good. My understanding is that they’re a Chapter 11 Reorganization Bankruptcy and are actively looking for a buyer.

I’m sorry to say that’s it’s not a huge surprise as they’ve been having financial difficulties … well, for a very long time now. For several years at least they’ve managed to stay afloat due mainly to doing contract beers for a variety of clients, having picked up quite a lot of new business when Golden Pacific Brewing was sold to Gambrinus a few years back. Before that they picked up a tidy sum from a French brewery by selling them the U.S. rights to the name Desperado, which had been the name of their Pale Ale, so that the tequila flavored French Desperado beer could try to take over the American beer market during those thirty seconds when tequila flavored beers were the “in” thing — A-B’s Tequiza, which they still make, managed to own the category.

Coast Range’s passing, though, is quite a shame as I thought brewer Peter Licht was quite talented. Back when fruit beers were more popular, he made a Blackberry Wheat that I thoroughly enjoyed. And he did several fine contract brews for me when I was the beer buyer at BevMo, too. The only reason they never seemed to reach very far beyond their own backyard had more to do with distributor networks, retailers and some poor management decisions than bad product. I will mourn their passing tonight with one of their Farmhouse beers, a new label they debuted two years ago.

Lumpy Gravy: Now That’s A Beer Name

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By know you probably already know that Tony Magee, the iconoclastic owner/brewer of Lagunitas Brewing, is a big fan of Frank Zappa. So far, with the permission of Zappa’s widow, Gail Zappa (who runs the Zappa Family Trust), he’s released a Lagunitas beer on the 40th anniversary of each of Frank Zappa’s first two albums. First there was Freak Out and then Kill Ugly Radio, the original title of his second album, Absolutely Free. Now comes Lumpy Gravy, again using artwork from the original album. I haven’t tried it yet, but I can only hope it’s a brown ale. That would be most fitting.

 

 

A Bender That Brews Beer

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Remember the television show Futurama? It was the Simpsons’ Matt Groening’s other animated series that ran on Fox for four seasons beginning in 1999.

There was a robot — or perhaps more accurately a “foul mouthed, cigar smoking, booze drinking, shiny metal arsed, bending robot” — in the show whose name was Bender. Besides his name and the character’s predilection for going on one, you may be asking yourself what that has to do with beer? Well, even though the show was canceled, like many such shows it has a pretty good cult following. There are fans, of course, and then there are fans.

One such uber-fan, Simon Jansen, in New Zealand, if not an engineer by trade then one of the most impressive hobby engineers I’ve encountered. He’s also a sci-fi fan generally and it appears he started his website with the extremely impressive Star Wars Asciimation, which is the entire Star Wars movie done in Java using nothing but ASCII art. For those of you new to the web, ASCII art is pictures created using nothing but the characters that can be found on an ordinary keyboard, which were used in early e-mails before graphics became ubiquitous throughout the internet.

Those emoticons, like 😉 for example, are a simple, though enduring, form of ASCII art. But they can get extremely complicated and detailed, too. Check out the Great ASCII Art Library for hundreds, if not thousands of these.

Okay, so as usual I’m veering off on a tangent, back to the Bender. Last summer (his winter) Jansen was challenged by a friend to make an actual Bender robot. Jansen also took as inspiration a third season episode, The Route of All Evil, in which while the main plot was going on, there was a subplot involving the two characters, Fry and Leela, along with Bender himself where they undertook to “brew beer inside Bender, treating the robot like an expectant mother.” Jansen reasoned that “just having a Bender that doesn’t do anything would be a waste of time so mine shall be used for a practical purpose. One Bender himself would be proud of. I’ll use him to make beer!”

The Bender Brewer Project, as it’s known, took over six months to complete and yielded its first brew last week. The website includes four pages of detailed information showing every step of the way with copious photographs of the various stages along with diagrams and source code. But for my purposes, it gets really interesting in mid-December on page four when the brewhouse went online, so to speak.

Basically, it’s only a rudimentary homebrewing kit but you have to admire the sheer amount of work and effort to take this project from drawing board to actual robot that produces beer. His initial specific gravity was 1.034. In early January, the beer was ready to bottle and he had his first taste f it, describing it like this.

By the way I did have a little taste of the beer before I bottled it. It wasn’t totally unpleasant. It tastes very green but it had a fair amount of body. Yeasty with maybe just a hint of Mom’s Old-Fashioned Robot Oil!

How odd and cool is that?

 

Bender with brewing system inside. Reminds me a bit of the Wizard of Oz’s Tinman, but this time he’s wishing for something different. “If I only had a beer!”

 

Bottled on January 2, the new robot-brewed Bendërbrau, with labels designed by Jen, one of Jansen’s friends.

 

Malt Disneyland

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My friend and colleague, Lew Bryson, must have been thrilled when he came up with the title Malt Disneyland for his most recent First Draft column for Portfolio magazine, because in my humble opinion it’s one of the best new names for Belgium anybody has ever come up with. Of course, I love wordplay and the Walt/malt thing cracks me up. I confess I never remember to check out his Portfolio column — sorry about that Lew — but luckily MSNBC reprinted it yesterday and so it showed up in the old, handy dandy RSS Feed Reader. Naturally, it’s a great read, too, but oh that title — now that’s a grabber. Well done.