Brookston Beer Bulletin

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Buckeye Victory

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Again, vacation put me behind the curve on this one. I learned two weeks ago that there was trouble brewing in Ohio when KevBrews e-mailed me and a BA staff member told me about it at CBC. Even then, it looked like the language that would have been so detrimental to brewpubs wasn’t going to make it through, but I tend to be cynical about these things so I continued to worry.

It turns out the BA‘s new grassroots organization, Support Your Local Brewery, had things well in hand. Here’s their story:

Victory in Ohio Thanks to Support Your Local Brewery Members!

On April 19, Support Your Local Brewery was alerted to a potentially devastating piece of legislation on the fast track in the Ohio House of Representatives. A bill dealing with issues relating to the direct shipment of wine was amended to include language that would have essentially stripped self distribution and direct to consumer sales by breweries and brewpubs.

With a floor vote scheduled in less than 24 hours, Ohio members of the Support Your Local Brewery network were alerted and generated dozens of grassroots contacts to legislators’ offices. By April 20th, the offending provision had been pulled from the bill. Your efforts, coupled with the outreach carried on by many Ohio small brewers, turned this threat back, one which would have almost certainly hamstrung many breweries and potentially closed many brewpubs.

Thanks to all those who answered the call, acted in the best traditions of Support Your Local Brewery Beer Activists and helped to ensure the continued success of the Buckeye State’s small brewing community. Cheers!

KevBrews also received an e-mail response from Jon A. Husted, the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, confirming that the anti-brewpub language had been removed from the budget bill. I’m certainly glad that so many people could be marshaled to the cause in such a timely manner, but the speed with which the entire episode arose left me feeling disconcerted about when this will happen again and whether we’ll be as successful or lucky. I’d like to be able to just say “relax, don’t worry, have a beer” but that little voice inside my head won’t let me, the bastard.

Sprecher Remakes Shakparo Gluten-Free

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I’m still catching up from the last four days of my vacation, when I had very limited internet access (I could check my e-mails, that was all). I’m amazed how dependent on it I’ve become. I can do without a phone, television, radio and even a daily shower but I start twitching like a junkie at the prospect of even one day without access to the internet. I know it’s a little sad, but there it is. So it goes. Anyway, on to more important things.

Sprecher Brewing in Glendale, Wisconsin, announced they will be reformulating one of their limited release beers to be gluten-free, making them the latest established brewery to enter the fray.

Last year Sprecher first brewed Shakparo Ale, a beer made with sorghum, and most likely barley and/or wheat, as well. It was based on a west African recipe. Due to demand from customers suffering from Celiac disease (who cannot have several common grains in their diet, such as barley and wheat) Sprecher decided to begin making it with millet, in addition to the sorghum, so it would be wheat and barley-free.

Sprecher describes their original Shakparo Ale as follows:

Shakparo style beers originated West African and are brewed with sorghum. Our Shakparo is light and refreshing with hints of fruit and spice, and is presented unfiltered as is traditional with this style.

It also had an original gravity of 14P, was aged for 5 weeks, had only 9 IBUs and was 5.7% a.b.v.

OnMilwaukee‘s food writer Amy L. Carlson put it this way.

According to Anne Sprecher, Shakparo is “an unfiltered, light, crisp ale with a cider or fruit profile and a dry vinous aftertaste, it is best characterized as an easy-drinking or session beer perfect for summer gatherings. This beer pairs nicely with lighter fare such as sandwiches, salads, chicken, fish, and spicier foods.”

Sorghum is a traditional grain throughout parts of Africa, and even the Guinness brewed for the continent has sorghum in it. Shakparo is also apparently a time-honored type of local brew, though there is little documentation about it.

One of the few I’ve been able to find online, is the introduction to an article on how to homebrew Shakparo in the brewery.org library entitled “Shakparo: a Traditional West African Sorghum Beer.”

One example of the use of of traditional microbial biotechnology to produce ennobled foods is Shakparo beer, which have an immense social, economic, ritual, nutritional, sanitary role in the Idashaland, Dassa-Zoume, in the Savannah region of Republic of Benin, West Africa. It is brewed mainly from malted guinea corn (Sorghum vulgare, S. bicolor) is an example of the use. Sorghum, also called gros mil in French, seems to be the best cereal for shakparo brewing. Shakparo is a green beer, “wild” fermented,but not so “wild” as Russell and I concluded after private e-mail correspondence; shakparo yeast is somewhat cultured or maintained on an immobilized form on the fermenting vessels(clay pot or vegetable gurd). The beverage has a full body, long aftertaste, a fruity, pleasantly sour taste ( I’m as objective as I can),with a complex estery and organic acid flavor and yoghur and sorghum aroma. It is very thirst-quenching, and it is cloudy and yeasty, with a brownish pink color. The alcohol content ranges from 1 to 8% by volume. A fresh beer bubbles, contains 3 to 4 % alc. / vol and 6 % solids. The enjoyer burp and the typical aroma come back. The traditional form of the product has a short shelf life and must be consumed within a few days after ~ 24 h fermentation.

Shakparo is a traditional sorghum beer brewed by Idasha women, the “grand cru corse” version being consume mainly by man. Long before the rise of western feminism, women of the generally matrilinear beer drinker’s tribes used beer to ensure their power in the society. An Idasha myth reports that a grateful heroic ancestor build the first market for his mother to sell the fruit of her work, most notably her beer. Before “modernization” it was easy to find good shakparo in Dassa-Zoume and the region around region. Every “normal” home has it’s brewery (a part of the kitchen). Mothers teach brewing art and science to their girls before marriage. An Ifa verse which sets the temperance rule report that Beer and his brothers Palm Wine and Raphia Wine consulted the oracle. These beverages are highly esteemed by the thirsty gods of the Voodoo / Orisha based civilizations.

Shakparo can be considered to be in the same family as bantu beer (called kaffir beer before the south African revolution), pombe (East Africa) dolo (Burkina Faso, Mali), burukutu (Nigeria), pito (Ghana and Nigeria), bouza (Egypt, Ethiopia), merisa ( Soudan), hemeket or zythum or zythos, last word of the dictionary (Ancient Egypt), shukutu (Benin and Togo), Tchakpalo (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire), bil-bil (Cameroon). Tourists and culturally alienated Africans often look upon those products as primitive dirty and harmful stuffs and prefer to drink Becks, Heineken and Kronenbourg.

Despite the cultural importance of traditional sorghum beer, scientific investigations are few and often contradictory and there aren’t any geared towards shakparo specifically.

Still, an interesting development as this small niche continues to grow, especially after the recent introduction of Anheuser-Busch’s Redbridge Sorghum Beer.

Math and Beer Bubbles

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A new study published in the new issue of the journal Nature could have ramifications for your next pint of beer. Well, maybe not your next, but at some point in the future it may change the way brewers think about brewing their beer.

The article, by mathematician Robert D. MacPherson of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study and physicist David J. Srolovitz of Yeshiva University, is saddled with the indecipherable jargon-laden title, “The von Neumann relation generalized to coarsening of three-dimensional microstructures.” What that means essentially for the bubbles in your beer, is that they’ve found a mathematical formula that can be used to accurately predict and map out the dissipation of the head. It also describes the growth patterns of the beer bubbles, or any cell with boundaries. As co-author Srolovitz tells it. “What the theory does is it tells you how the size of every single bubble will evolve in time.”

Here’s the abstract:

Cellular structures or tessellations are ubiquitous in nature. Metals and ceramics commonly consist of space-filling arrays of single-crystal grains separated by a network of grain boundaries, and foams (froths) are networks of gas-filled bubbles separated by liquid walls. Cellular structures also occur in biological tissue, and in magnetic, ferroelectric and complex fluid contexts. In many situations, the cell/grain/bubble walls move under the influence of their surface tension (capillarity), with a velocity proportional to their mean curvature. As a result, the cells evolve and the structure coarsens. Over 50 years ago, von Neumann derived an exact formula for the growth rate of a cell in a two-dimensional cellular structure (using the relation between wall velocity and mean curvature, the fact that three domain walls meet at 120° and basic topology). This forms the basis of modern grain growth theory. Here we present an exact and much-sought extension of this result into three (and higher) dimensions. The present results may lead to the development of predictive models for capillarity-driven microstructure evolution in a wide range of industrial and commercial processing scenarios—such as the heat treatment of metals, or even controlling the ‘head’ on a pint of beer.

It’s pretty heady stuff — yes, pun intended — although it will likely be many years before it can be applied directly to brewing beer, if it ever really can be used in that way. It certainly seems plausible that it may be restricted to analysis after the fact, though even that may yield insights on what to tweak in the process for the next batch in the search for the ideal head.

Harveys Home Again

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By the time you read this, you can walk into the Lewes Arms in Sussex, England and once more order a pint of the local favorite, which is brewed down the road, Harveys Best Bitter. Since last December, when Greene King pub owner pulled Harvey’s tap because their own Greene King beer wasn’t selling nearly as well, the Friends of the Lewes Arms have been boycotting the pub asking for Harvey’s ale to be reinstated.

Throughout the boycott, the giant Greene King acted the part of bully with perfect arrogance and cluelessness. Their actions created something of a P.R. nightmare for them, and in the end doomed them to failure. Even when the writing was on the wall, they continued to act like bullies who could and would do whatever they wanted in the name of business. But eventually they capitulated, saying they would take another look at the issue. On April 20, they announced Harvey’s would be returned to the pub. Both the BBC and the Publican reported the news (as did fellow beer blogger Stonch), with Greene King making the following statement.

“We are passionate supporters of cask beer, are proud of our own brews and have recognised the intensity of feeling around Harveys at the Lewes Arms.” He said that the history of the pub, including its role as former brewery tap, combined with activities ranging from dwyle flunking to pea throwing made this hostelry very special.

“Now that Harveys is going back into the pub, my team and I are hoping that we can make a fresh start with our customers and are looking forward to helping the Lewes Arms once again play a full role in the local community.”

Greene King chief executive Rooney Anand added, “The Lewes Arms is a very special local pub with a unique place in the life of the town.

“We underestimated the depth of feeling and level of reaction about our initial decision and I believe that the conclusion the team put forward to return Harveys to the bar is the right one. I’m pleased that Jonathan and the team have taken on board our customers’ feedback and hope people will be pleased with the news.”

Today, Thursday April 26, Harveys Best Bitter will be on tap once more at the Lewes Arms, which is excellent news indeed. Congratulations to the Friends of the Lewes Arms.

Not Just Age and Taxes

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Science Daily asks “When Are Minimum Legal Drinking-age And Beer-tax Policies The Most Effective?” in reporting on a new study about to be published in the May issue of “Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.” The study, “The Joint Impact of Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Beer Taxes on US Youth Traffic Fatalities, 1975-2001,” was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a government agency and branch of the N.I.H. Their mission statement is to “provide leadership in the national effort to reduce alcohol-related problems.”

The study looked at the two most common ways in which government has tried to reduce alcohol-related societal problems: through the minimum drinking age and raising taxes on beer (notice how wine and spirits get yet another pass?). Most significant is the finding that “[w]hen it is illegal for youth to buy and consume beer — as it is now in all 50 US states — higher beer taxes are less effective.” Hear that Oregon legislators (and every other state official trying to extort money from small brewers)?

“Our findings suggest that some of the varying results across past research may simply indicate that a given public policy may not have the same effectiveness in all places and times,” said William R. Ponicki, one of the study’s authors. What that doublespeak means is essentially that for any given policy decision, many other factors determine whether the policy will work as intended or not. It’s not just a simple matter that raising the drinking age will cure underage drinking or that making beer more expensive will either. And that’s just looking at two very broad factors. Imagine all the others at work but not examined, such as peer pressure, alcohol’s perception in our culture, accessibility, and on and on.

What that suggests to me is that MADD and the other neo-prohibitionists were and are misguided in pushing for a higher minimum drinking age, tougher access for legal adults, higher taxes for alcoholic beverages and all the other harebrained ideas on their agenda without having any real notion of how they’ll effect society or even if they have a chance of working. There’s absolutely no reason that legal adults should have to pay more for legal products or have a harder time legally buying them, especially when such measures have not been shown to be effective in reducing any perceived problems. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of being in their petri dish of experimental legislation to mold society to their wishes. It’s my world, too. And yours, as well. We should try to remember that, I think, when fanatics try to remake it for their own benefit and worldview.

Good Beer Deserves the Right Glass

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The Syracuse Post-Standard ran a nice article entitled “Good beer deserves the right glass” by staff writer Don Cazentre, who’s also a homebrewer. He provides a good rudimentary introduction to the importance of drinking beer not just from a glass, but from the proper glass. It’s another good example of better beer coverage by the media.

Full Sail Reopens Pub & Tasting Room

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After being closed for several months, next Friday May 4th, Full Sail will be re-opening their Pub and Tasting Room. Here’s the press release:

Full Sail Tasting Room & Pub Grand Opening Friday, May 4th

Hood River — After months of planning, design, construction, remodeling and lot’s of recipe tastings, Full Sail Brewing is reopening their pub. The Grand Opening will be on Friday May 4th, 2007, in the same spectacular location with the same great beers. What is new is a more comfortable seating area that highlights the view of the Columbia River and the Gorge and a special menu designed to celebrate Full Sail’s beers.

The menu will include many dishes designed to share such as the brewmaster’s ploughman platter and hand cut Belgium style fries with a variety of sauces. Also on the menu is an assortment of sandwiches including two New Orleans specials – a muffuletta and a crispy shrimp poor boy. “Big dishes” include Session battered fresh Alaskan halibut and hand-cut fries with lemon-caper tartar sauce and Amber ale barbecued pork loin with hot mustard, grilled scallions, cilantro and coconut sticky rice. There will also be some delicious vegetarian dishes.

“To update our Pub after twenty years so that it celebrates and reflects the quality of beers as well as the growth of Hood River itself has been a very fun and satisfying project. It is a twentieth anniversary present for all of us at Full Sail and for our customers,” said Irene Firmat, Full Sail’s CEO & Founder. “Most of all we are thrilled to offer a menu that will complement our award winning brews and take advantage of the wealth and quality of local ingredients. We have also added several new members to the Full Sail crew – Chef Brian Hutchins, in the kitchen and Robert Carpenter as our front of the house manager. We are happy that our continuing investment in the brewery keeps offering the opportunity to create more employee owners,” added Firmat. Swing by the Full Sail Tasting Room and Pub to taste of Chef Brian’s tempting talents along with a cold pint of Full Sail.

The independent and employee-owned Full Sail brewery is perched on a bluff in Hood River, Oregon, overlooking the most epic wind and kite surfing spot in the world. At this very moment 47 specialists in the liquid refreshment arts are crafting barley and hops into your next beer. The Full Sail crew has been fermenting godlike nectar since 1987. Their award winning brews are now available in 17 states. The Full Sail Tasting Room and Pub is open seven days a week. Swing by for a pint, grab a bite, tour the brewery, or just soak up the view. The Tasting Room and Pub will be open daily from 11:30 am for lunch and dinner. Brewery tours are still available daily, free of charge at 1, 2, 3 and 4pm.

$190 Billion Poured Into U.S. Economy by Brewing Industry

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Each year, Beer Serves America, a joint venture by the National Beer Wholesalers Association and the Beer Institute, put together statistics on just how much money and jobs the brewing industry directly and indirectly pumps into the U.S. economy. It’s a pretty staggering amount, really, and is broken down in a variety of ways to give you a good idea of just where the contributions to the economy come from.

It’s an excellent rebuttal to the neo-prohibitionist position that alcohol does nothing for society, and I’ve rarely seen any of their groups address these positive statistics that show year after year how much is contributed to our society by beer and brewers.

Here’s the press release:

New Study Shows Beer Industry Contributes Billions Annually to U.S. Economy

Report Tallies Jobs, Wages, and Overall Economic Impact

WASHINGTON, D.C. – America’s beer industry, made up of brewers, beer importers, beer distributors, brewer suppliers, and retailers, directly and indirectly contributes nearly $190 billion annually to the U.S. economy according to a new economic impact study. The industry’s economic impact includes more than 1.7 million jobs—paying almost $55 billion in wages—as well as more than $36 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. The study of 2006 data was commissioned by the Beer Institute and the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA).

“This study shows that more than ever, America’s brewers play a pivotal role in promoting strong and robust economic growth throughout our country,” said August A. Busch IV, president and chief executive officer, Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc., and chairman of the Beer Institute. “Brewers in all 50 states have been supporting the economy in their communities for generations, creating jobs for their neighbors, tax revenue for public services, and promoting alcohol awareness responsibility initiatives for retailers, schools, and families.”

According to the study, the direct output of brewers, importers, beer distributors, and retailers into the American economy is almost $90 billion each year. The beer industry directly employs more than 900,000 Americans, paying them more than $25 billion in wages. Large and small brewers and beer importers employ 47,000 people, and the nation’s 2,750 beer distributors employ approximately 91,000 individuals across the country. Beer is a key driver of profitability for the more than 531,000 licensed beer retailers, according to TDLinx, a service of The Nielsen Company and the recognized leader in location information management. Beer sales help support roughly 800,000 jobs at these retailers, which include supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, bars, and other outlets.

“Beer distributors are independent family businesses like mine that provide a wide selection of fresh, quality beer to the nation’s retailers and strengthen the U.S., state, and local economies. Over 90,000 hard-working men and women across the country are employed by America’s beer distributors. These people do not work for minimum wage. They earn quality wages and benefits,” said Betty Buck, NBWA board chair and president of Buck Distributing Co. in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

The production of beer helps support other segments of the economy as well. For example, the study showed more than $4 billion in economic contributions for the agricultural sector, including malting barley ($537.8 million), hops ($280.7 million), brewers rice ($222.9 million), and brewers corn ($58.4 million).

“These figures demonstrate that the beer industry extends beyond those who make and distribute our products,” said Jeff Becker, president of the Beer Institute. “As the single largest purchaser of rice in the country and one of the leading purchasers of other agricultural goods, the beer industry’s contributions to America’s farm economy are helping support rural families and small businesses coast to coast.”

“Millions of hard-working Americans earn their livelihood in brewing or beer distribution. This is an industry that takes great pride in the fact that its employees have good wages, employer-provided health care, and good benefits,” said NBWA president Craig Purser. “America’s beer distributors also work within a framework of individual state laws to ensure their products are sold only to licensed retailers who in turn are responsible for selling only to adults of legal drinking age.”

In addition to strengthening the U.S. economy, the industry plays a significant role in promoting responsible consumption of its products. Brewers, importers, and independent beer distributors have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in communities across the country to develop and implement numerous programs to promote responsibility and help fight alcohol abuse. These efforts, along with those of parents, law enforcement, educators, federal and state alcohol beverage regulators, and other community groups, have contributed to declines in illegal underage drinking and drunk driving over the past two decades, according to a variety of independent and government data.

The complete Beer Serves America Economic Impact study, including state-by-state and congressional district breakdowns of economic contributions, is available at the Beer Serves America Web site, www.beerservesamerica.org.

Vinnie Cilurzo’s Keynote Address

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Vinnie Cilurzo gave the keynote address at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference in Austin, Texas. Hoping to spark a new tradition, like Sam Calagione last year, he served some of his own beer so everyone assembled could drink a toast to craft beer’s success and to everyone’s efforts that led to that success. He set out bottles of the second batch of Russian River’s Beatification.

Vinnie spoke in part about innovation and the innovative contributions of many of the early pioneers of craft brewing. The video below is a little more than half of Ciilurzo’s speech from near the beginning until the toast. My memory card ran out at that point.