Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Big Beer Fest Next Week

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Next week begins the eight annual Big Beers Festival in Vail, Colorado. There are quite a variety of different events going throughout the three-day festival. TO see for yourself, check out the schedule online. Tickets can also be purchased online.

From the website:

Imagine a World Class Winter Wonderland of fun activities in the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado…and then top off your trip with a World Class International Beer Festival, complete with Brewmasters’ Dinners and Seminars by some of the world’s most innovative Brewers…

Join us for the Eighth Annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival Weekend! Come up to Vail to experience the event that beer connoisseurs are raving about. Homebrewers, Professional Brewers and Industry Gurus alike speak highly with regard to the unique format, the unusual international collection of beers, the organization and the overall quality of the event. For those of you who are Big Beers Festival veterans, this Eighth Annual event promises to be exceptional, touting two new seminars and an additional beer dinner!

 

1.10-12

Big Beer Festival (8th annual)

Sponsored by High Point Brewing in Denver
Vail Marriott Mountain Resort & Spa, 715 West Lionshead Circle, Vail, Colorado
970.476.4444 (hotel) / 970.524.1092 (sponsor) [ website ] [ tickets ]

 

Moylan’s To Squeeze Kilt Lifter Into Six-Packs

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Moylan’s Brewing of Novato, California has always had many, if not all, of their beers available in 22 oz. bottles. For the first time they’re debuting one of their beers, Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale, in six-packs of 12-oz. bottles.

From the press release:

Moylan’s Brewing Company will be sending six-pack bottles to the shelves come late January of 2008, just in time for the Superbowl in February. Moylan’s world-wide award winning Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale will be available in selected retail locations with suggested prices from $8.99-9.99. Denise Jones, Moylan’s Brewmaster, journeyed up to Sudwerk Brewing Company, in Davis CA, to work on expanding and perfecting the brewing of the ever popular Scotch Ale in a larger capacity; an agreement created partly out of owner Brendan Moylan’s respect for Sudwerk, it’s Brewmaster, and the quality of beer brewed onsite, and partly due to the desire to reach more customers with different packaging options. Moylan’s Brewing Company is excited about the reception of the new packaging and, if all goes well, plan on increasing the selection to include other award winning ales in smaller options. Curtis Cassidy, sales manager at Moylan’s Brewing Company states, “Starting off, we will be offering the new bottle size exclusively to California customers. After testing the waters with the Kilt Lifter six-packs, we plan on moving other Moylan’s beers into six-packs as well. We hope to be taking steps towards these goals by the end of 2008.”

The new Kilt Lifter in a 12 oz. bottle.

And the new Kilt Lifter six-pack carrier.

 

Beer Can Table

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An interesting blog called Modern Mechanix, which appears to consist largely of showing how in the past we used to view the future, at least in old science hobby magazines. The one I stumbled upon was from the August 1936 edition of Science and Mechanics and featured this table made entirely from beer cans.

According to the magazine article, it took 420 cans of Pabst to make the table and chairs, which were soldered together over ten days by a Bernard Dier of Chicago, Illinois. I imagine it was much sturdier than if we made it now since these cans would have been a thicker, sturdier metal than the all-aluminum cans of today.

 

Hops’ Xanthohumol Confirmed To Fight Cancer

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A UPI story originating from Germany is indicating that a new German study found that xanthohumol, which is in hops, is good at fighting cancer. Specifcially, xanthohumol “inhibits a family of enzymes that can trigger the cancer process, as well as help the body detoxify carcinogens.” It appears that this new study confirms the results of a study at Oregon State University, which I covered last year. Research indicates xanthohumol has more and stronger antioxidants then vitamin E and it may even help in the fight against bad cholesterol.

“It’s very healthy. I think the ingredients in the beer are very good,” Werner Back of Brewing Technology at the Technical University of Munich.

The average beer doesn’t contain enough xanthohumol to make drinking beer an effective method for fighting cancer, though there are German beers with higher levels of xanthohumol. Though perhaps hop research could be directed toward increasing the amount of xanthohumol in hop varieties?
 

Drinking Beer In Our DNA

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First a little good news to ring in the new year. According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, a thirst for alcohol may indeed be hardwired in our DNA. And perhaps more importantly, unlike some other mammals, we appear to be predisposed to drink it in moderation, in direct contradiction with claims of neo-prohibitionist propaganda. According to an article by Natalie Angier in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune (via the New York Times News Service), “[t]he holidays are a time of multicreedal spirituality and festivities, and alcohol has been a fixture of celebration and religious ritual since humans first learned to play and pray.”

From the Tribune article:

“As far back as we can look, humans have had a love affair with fermented beverages,” said Patrick McGovern, an archeological chemist at the University of Pennsylvania. “And it’s not just humans. From fruit flies to elephants, if you give them a source of alcohol and sugar, they love it.”

McGovern and other archeologists have unearthed extensive evidence of the antiquity and ubiquity of alcoholic beverages. One of the oldest known recipes, inscribed on a Sumerian clay tablet that dates to nearly 4,000 years, is for beer. Chemical traces inside 9,000-year-old pottery from northern China indicate that the citizens of Jiahu made a wine from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey.

Humans may have an added reason to be drawn to alcohol. Throughout antiquity, available water was likely to be polluted with cholera and other dangerous microbes, and the tavern may well have been the safest watering hole in town. Not only is alcohol a mild antiseptic, but the process of brewing alcoholic beverages often requires that the liquid be boiled or subjected to similarly sterilizing treatments. “It’s possible that people who drank fermented beverages tended to live longer and reproduce more” than did their teetotaling peers, McGovern said, “which may partly explain why people have a proclivity to drink alcohol.”

What I find most interesting about this is that for much of mankind’s history, because of poor sanitation, drinking alcoholic beverages was safer than water, which led to such labels as “liquid bread” for beer. Without understanding why, people discovered that they were better off with booze than bacteria. But even after drinking water became safe as our understanding of the world increased, people still enjoyed a pint from time to time. Of course, there’s the social lubricant aspect that remains prevalent today, which still may be an aid to reproduction. But as for promoting health, hardly a month goes by without another new claim that drinking moderate amounts of alcohol has a previously undiscovered health benefit. I find it reasonable and altogether ironic that these two reasons for or benefits from drinking, which have literally been around since the dawn of civilization, are not only still with us but are largely unchanged since we crawled out of the muck and first stood erect. As if the lessons of prohibition weren’t obvious enough, we are a species who drinks. And no amount of proselytizing or preaching can change that. To which I can only reply, cheers to that!

 

Strange Brew: My Beer Predictions for 2008

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To Beer or Not to Beer. As Strange Brew was a loose parody of Hamlet, I thought I’d again peer crazily into the skull of poor Yorick, and try to divine the future. Let’s see if anything that happened last year can be used to predict what might happen in the beer industry in 2007. Here are five things I think will happen this year. Let’s see how I do a year from now. What are your predictions?

 
The hops and malt shortages will continue to plague the industry throughout 2008 and may even grow worse. It seems to me that the malt problem can be solved more easily than the hops problem, not that either are particularly simple. But the hop one seems as resistant as a mutated spider mite. A Hop field or yard takes three years to produce a full yield and nobody is planting new vines so once most breweries’ current hop contacts run out, then what? I’ve been joking that we’ll see more gruits in 2008, but it is going to get harder and harder for big hoppy beers to remain economically viable as hop prices triple and quadruple, especially on the spot market. Will 2008 be the year of the session beer? Perhaps not, but it may not be a good idea for brewers to make fresh hop beers for a couple of years while hops are in such short supply.

 
Beer prices will go up, that’s a fact not a prediction. The real question is whether or not beer consumers will be willing to pay more and, if so, how much more? The big beer companies can more easily afford to absorb some margin losses to keep volume up, and so I don’t think they’ll raise their prices as much as the smaller breweries will be forced to. Whether or not, or to what extent, that will effect the continued growth of craft beer remains to be seen but I believe it will slow the growth of craft beer at least until hop prices come down and availability is up. I think craft beer will continue its upward movement, but it may be closer to 8-10% this year.

 
Distributor consolidation will increase and will continue to make things difficult for small brewers trying to bring their beer to market or increase their distribution to new areas.

 
Mergers among big multi-national beer companies will continue and at least one or two big such announcements will be made in 2008.

 
Neo-Prohibitionists will continue to step up attacks on alcohol generally and to specifically and inexplicably target beer.

 

Toasting the New Year

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All of us at the Brookston Beer Bulletin — okay me — would like to wish you and yours a very Happy New Year. 2007 was certainly an interesting year and never dull with plenty of ups and downs to keep us on our toes. Nobody knows with any certainty what 2008 will be like for the beer industry, but I’ll be here for my third straight year of ranting about it, er .. analyzing it, online. I hope you’ll join me on the adventure that 2008 will surely be.

Toasting you a Happy New Year with one of my favorites:

Here’s to the four hinges of Friendship—
Swearing, Lying, Stealing, and Drinking.
When you swear, swear by your country;
When you lie, lie for a pretty woman (or handsome man);
When you steal, steal away from bad company;
And when you drink, drink with me.

The Brookston kids, Alice and Porter, can’t help but getting in on the act of wishing everybody a Happy New Year.

Here’s to those who love us,
And here’s to those who don’t,
A smile for those who are willing to,
And a tear for those who won’t.

Here are more of my favorite toasts. Let me know your favorite ones.

 

D Is For Drunk

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Back in the early 1990s, I wrote a book on bars in the county where I was living at the time, The Bars of Santa Clara County, A Beer Drinker’s Guide to Silicon Valley. In addition to the reviews of over 500 bars, I included several appendices, one of which was a collection of slang terms for being drunk. It’s amazing just how many of these there are, especially when viewed historically as our language has changed and evolved. I finally got around to converting the original list and thought today the most appropriate time to publish it again online. I have nearly 3,000 colloquialisms listed alphabetically. Please have a look and let me know if there are any you know of that I’m missing. I’ll give credit to you for any I don’t have listed when I add new submissions. Please let me any and all information you have about it, such as if it’s local, regional, etc. and where geographically it’s used, it’s origin (if you know) and stuff like that. Just post a comment or send me an e-mail with any new drunk words you know. Thanks, and happy new year.

D is for Drunk

 

Top 10 Beer Stories of 2007

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As the year winds down yet again — didn’t we just do this a year ago? — everybody and his brother has a top ten list for the year and I’m still no different. It helps, I think, to stop and reflect on what happened over the previous year which puts the whole year in perspective and makes it easier to prepare for the coming one. So here are my choices for the top ten beer stories of 2007.
 

Irish Brewing in the Bronze Age: While seemingly a historical side note story, I think this has the potential to change how we view beer’s history in civilization, especially in Europe, where most our modern brewing heritage has its origins. If bronze age Ireland was brewing it means the impact of beer on mankind began far earlier than originally believed.

Lewes Arms Boycott Successful: I’m a sucker for the underdog and the small fry. The citizens of a small pub in the middle of nowhere took on pub giant Greene King to save their local beer being served in its home town. Greene King foolishly let it go on far longer than was prudent but eventually saw the light and relented.

Sam Adams vs. Sam Adams: The Boston Beer Company, owner of the trademarked Samuel Adams eponymous beers, went head to head in late October with a flesh and blood Sam Adams running for mayor of Portland. In a battle between a corporation’s fictional, but oddly legal, personhood and the real life variety, my money’s always on the real Sam Adams. For Boston Beer it was a public relations disaster and even their half-hearted apology seemed flat. On the plus side, Boston Beer did announce they’d be brewing at the old Rolling Rock brewery in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, which is good for that town. The one they were planning in Freetown, Massachusetts, on the other hand, after months of rumors, was finally canceled.

The Loss of Steve Harrison: Steve Harrison was Sierra Nevada Brewing‘s first employee and was as much responsible for its success, especially early on, as owner Ken Grossman and the rest of the crew from Chico. When he went missing under mysterious circumstances in August, it took a week of searching the area before his body turned up in the river. His passing was a huge and terrible loss to the brewing industry.

It’s Official! Double-Digit Craft Beer Growth Again!: It was another terrific year for craft beer and although there are problems in the horizon, three years of double-digit growth suggests that craft beer is on the right track. Barring some foreseen shortages, things are likely to continue to be rosy for the foreseeable future.

Widmer & Redhook Merger: Rumored since at least January, Widmer and Redhook agreed to merge in November.

Michael Jackson Passes Away: This was a huge and somewhat unexpected blow to the cause of better beer. Many of us who’d known Michael for a time had speculated about his health and last year he had finally publicly announced that he’d been battling Parkinson’s for at least ten years. I know I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew Parkinson’s could be treated and wasn’t the immediate threat it had once been. So when I got the news I was taken aback, as were most of us in the industry. It was news of the worst kind, especially coming on the heels of the losses of several other beer industry personalities throughout 2007: Alan Eames, Steve Harrison and John White. As I’ve said many times before, Michael’s impact on the craft beer industry here in the U.S. and better beer throughout the world cannot be overestimated. He was a singular talent that I can’t imagine being replaced. And beyond the loss to the industry, for me personally I think Michael Jackson’s death should be nearer the top because it’s doubly difficult and surprisingly emotional to lose a friend so unexpectedly.

Assaults on Beer by Neo-Prohibitionists & Wine Writers: Perhaps because of craft beers’ recent gains and renewed attention, the number of attacks on beer by both anti-alcohol groups and misguided and ignorant beverage and food journalists seemed to be on the rise with hardly a week passing without yet another egregious example. Neo-prohibitionists accused beer of all sorts of evil and wine writers blasted beer with all manner of misinformation and twisted statistics. Here’s a sample of some of the worst:

Coors & Miller to Merge U.S. Operations: In an unexpected, if not altogether surprising move, the second and third largest American beer companies decided to pool their efforts in competing against number one. What the impact will be on the rest of the industry still remains to be seen, but I, for one, am not convinced it will be all for the better or that there’s nothing to fret about.

The Hop and Malt Shortages: The shortages of hops got most of the attention but shortages of malt is just as serious. This could not have happened at a worse time for the industry as shortages quite possibly could have disastrous consequences for continuing the roll that craft beer has been on for a half-decade.

And what will next year bring? See tomorrow’s post with my predictions for the beer industry in 2008.

 

My Report Card From 2007

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Last year at this time, I made five predictions for the 2007 beer year. Let’s see how I did.

 
Craft beer growth will hit double digits for 2006 and also will continue to rise through 2007.

My Score: A+ This one wasn’t a stretch, of course, though things will likely be trickier next year.

 
Price wars among the large domestic producers and the popular import brands will heat up again beginning in spring or early summer.

My Score: B Price wars by the major players did indeed start up again after a short ceasefire, but didn’t begin until late summer, which I continue to believe is bad for the industry and the image of beer as a whole.

 
Mainstream media attention will increase and will actually begin to improve.

My Score: B While there was certainly some shoddy reporting, overall things did improve for beers’ coverage by the mainstream media, and I’m not just saying that because I started doing some writing for one of the mainstream news outlets. There weren’t nearly as many of the really horrific articles that were so common in 2006. As craft beer regained its cache, good beer again became the story and happily one that’s being told with a bit more accuracy and attention to detail.

 
A-B’s Here’s to Beer PR campaign will either quietly disappear or if the website remains up will not have any new content added now that Bob Lachky is no longer in charge of the effort.

My Score: C+ While Here’s to Beer has not disappeared, after Bob Lachky was promoted, the website did indeed lie dormant for many months but last March a new version was launched to much fanfare. But when I look now the current edition is only Vol. 3, meaning since March it has only been updated with new content twice in nine months rather than the promised monthly changing content.

 
Gluten-Free beer made for the growing number of people with Celiac disease will surprise most predictions and become a bigger niche than expected.

My Score: C This wasn’t quite as big as I anticipated, but I understand Red Bridge and the others are holding their own. It’s probably going to remain small but steady.