Popular Science’s intermittent series BeerSci had an interesting post yesterday on How To Make Strong Beer Stronger, tackling the issue of how “fractional freezing will concentrate any beer, provided you have a bit of patience and a very cold freezer.”
Today’s infographic is a fairly narrow one, in terms of its scope. It tackles beer in Slovakia. And although Slovak Beer uses a limited color palette, it still manages to communicate the information quite elegantly. I’d like to see one of these for every country.
Thursday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1959. It’s from a series using the slogan “Know the Real Joy of Good Living.” A man holds up a glass of Schlitz, while the woman looks up at in a way that I can characterize as way to longingly. Her hair also looks like there are two doughnuts on her forehead.
Wow, Jesse Houck, who used to brew at 21st Amendment, and most recently was at Drake’s, is moving to Los Angeles to become the new brewmaster at Golden Road Brewing. According to the press release:
Houck and Golden Road President, Meg Gill, first met at 21st Amendment Brewery in 2008, where they bonded over their mutual love for canned beers and California IPAs.
Golden Road has experienced a rapid expansion since opening in October of 2011, doubling the size of their brew house and brewing capacity, releasing four canned beers and over fifteen specialty brews, opening over 500 draft accounts throughout the greater LA area. Says Golden Road President Meg Gill: “As we look forward to 2013, we have big plans for the direction we want our beers to go. We’re thrilled to bring Jesse’s leadership and dry, hoppy, clean-beer loving palate to LA.”
Adds Houck, “I am looking forward to sharing Meg and Tony’s vision of crafting quality beers for LA, and excited to be part of one of the fastest growing craft beer scenes on the West Coast.” A long time bay-area brewer, Houck brings a blend of chemistry and artistry to his brewing, having studied Chemical Engineering before becoming fascinated — and later obsessed — with home-brewing and beer.
Co-founder Tony Yanow has also been a fan of Houck’s for years, commenting, “Jesse has created some of my favorite beers, and we’re excited to bring his creativity and brewing expertise to our team.”
That’s awesome news for Jesse. He’s a terrific brewer and should be a good fit at Golden Road.
Jesse (2nd from the left) at the Triple Rock Firkin Fest in 2008.
Today’s infographic is courtesy of Travel Insurance, and is entitled A Beer Tour of America. It’s geared toward the big boys and a few of the larger regionals, but if you were shopping for travel insurance, this would still be a far better way to spend your time.
You can see the chart full size at Travel Insurance.
Wednesday’s ad is for the UK brand Double Diamond, which was originally owned by Allsop, but is now part of the Carlsberg dynasty. The ad’s tagline, “Loyal Greetings from the brewers of Double Diamond,” and shows their cartoon mascot propping himself up, high into the air, on beer bottles so that he can better see the passing parade. As for when the ad is from, the bottom offers a clue. The phrase found there, “A Double Diamond Works Wonders,” was used during the 1970s. I assume there was some sort of royal ta-do going on.
There seem to be so many of these colorful infographics around these days that I could post one almost every day and not run out for a while. So here’s today’s, Boozin’ A Colorful Look at the U.S.’s Drinking Habits and How We Stack Up. One curious figure I noticed, especially given the whining of the neo-prohibitionists. We have one of the highest teetotaler percentages, WTF? That’s disappointing. Another factoid that stood out was that the heaviest drinking day of the year was the day before Thanksgiving, what they referred to as “Black Out Wednesday” — do I hear a new holiday being created? That surprised me, though while they do list sources at the bottom of the chart, it’s not clear where that one came from. I would have thought Halloween, or one of the summer big picnic holidays.
Tuesday’s ad is for Miller High Life, from the early 1960s, part of their “Go First Class” series. The ad seems to be saying that pizza and beer are the path to being high class. Now, I’m a great lover of pizza, and there are few pairings so obviously perfect together than beer and pizza. I could eat pizza almost every meal if you let me, and there are amazing gourmet pies all over the place these days. But in the 1960s? I certainly don’t remember pizza being thought of as “high class” until very recently. Also, I have to say. That is not the most appetizing pizza I’ve ever laid eyes on.
My buddy Ben Love, who last year opened his own brewery in Portland, Gigantic Brewing, just sent me this cool video featuring his “master brewer,” Van Havig, who joined him at Gigantic, after many years at the Rock Bottom in Portland. The short film, entitled Victory, was created by Jerry Makare as a project for the University of Oregon Multi-Media Journalism Program Foundations class (J610) in Fall 2012. Havig makes some great points. Portland is an amazing place to drink beer, and what he’s saying, I think, holds true for a few other pockets of the country, but as far as I know, the market penetration of specialty beer there is second to none. It’s certainly one of my favorite places to enjoy a beer.
I know next to nothing about Farmville, the popular farm simulation game played on Facebook, apart from the fact that it appears to be a time suck of epic proportions, with something on the order of 76 million active users every month. I know the company that created the game, Zynga, is in San Francisco. I remember passing by their offices with a huge screen outside the building on the way to the annual Christmas party at Anchor Brewing last month.
So maybe this is old hat, but here’s something I didn’t now. Searching for a graphic of hops yesterday, I discovered that in 2011, FarmVille added hop farming to their English Countryside Farm module, and it’s apparently available beginning with level 20, whatever that means. According to the wonderfully geeky FarmViller:
The Hops is a seed on the English Countryside Farm, available from level 20. It became available with the introduction of the English Countryside Farm beginning March 22, 2011.
It is available from the Market for 150 coins after reaching level 20. When bought and placed on the farm, the player receives 2 XP. It can be harvested every ten hours for 220 coins. The seed itself can be sold for 8 coins.
Here are the stages of growing hops in FarmVille:
A quick search reveals that you can also grow barley, but there appears to be no way to malt it or put all the ingredients together to brew beer. Oh, well, just when it was starting to look interesting. Perhaps I dodged a bullet there, after all.
