Brookston Beer Bulletin

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Jaime Jurado Moving To Abita

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One of my favorite people in the industry, veteran brewer Jaime Jurado, who recently left Susquehanna Brewing, is moving back to the south. Abita Brewing announced Tuesday that Jurado would be joining them as Director of Brewing Operations, beginning this November. Prior to the Pennsylvania gig with Susquehanna, Jurado was Director of Brewing Operations for The Gambrinus Company breweries, which included Spoetzl Brewery, BridgePort Brewing, and Trumer Brauerei. His earlier experience includes having been the International Brewing Development Manager for The Stroh Brewery, manager at Courage Brewing’s Berkshire Brewery in England and five years at the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre. He’s also a past president of the Master Brewers Association of the Americas. He recently sent me some malt flour that Sean Paxton, the Homebrew Chef, and I are working on using in a fun food project. Full details of his move to Abita can be found in their press release. Congratulations to both Abita and Jaime.

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Jaime Jurado with Lars Larson from Trumer Brauerei at the Celebrator’s 18th Anniversary Party.

Weigh In On The Craft Beer Bubble

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For our 80th Session, our host is Derek Harrison, who writes online at It’s Not Just the Alcohol Talking. His topic for this session asks bloggers to weigh in on the question that pundits and business analysts have been asking and answering frequently in recent months, Is Craft Beer a Bubble?

It’s a good time to be in the craft beer industry. The big brewers are watching their market share get chipped away by the purveyors of well-made lagers and ales. Craft breweries are popping up like weeds.

This growth begs the question: is craft beer a bubble? Many in the industry are starting to wonder when, and more importantly how, the growth is going to stop. Is craft beer going to reach equilibrium and stabilize, or is the bubble just going to keep growing until it bursts?

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So on Friday, October 4, let us know where you stand on the bursting bubble hypothesis. Is the bubble precarious and ready to pop any second or as solid as a glass ball?

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NFL Football: Pick The Winners At Brookston Fantasy Games 2013

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This is the seventh year for the Brookston Fantasy Football Games. We’ve had a lot of fun over the last six, so if you love football and beer, consider joining us this year, whether you’ve played in past seasons or are a newcomer. The NFL season begins on Thursday September 5, so you’ve got about two and change days to sign up.

I’ve again set up two free Yahoo fantasy football games, one a simple pick ’em game and the other a survival pool. Up to 50 people can play each game (that’s Yahoo’s limit, not mine), so if you’re a regular Bulletin reader feel free to sign up for one or even both. It’s free to play, all you need is a Yahoo ID, which is also free. Below is a description of each game and the details on how to join each league and play.

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Pro Football Pick’em

In this Pick’em game, just pick the winner for every game each week, with no spread, and let’s see who gets the most correct throughout the season. I’ve kept the new wrinkle I added last year. Since we’re all very busy, and you (or I) might screw up at least one week, you can still throw out your lowest week. All that’s at stake is bragging rights, but it’s still great fun.

Also, like last year, we’ll be able to keep picking all through the playoffs, so the game will continue through to the Super Bowl, which is pretty cool.

In order to join the group, just go to Pro Football Pick’em, click the “Sign Up” button (or “Create or Join Group” if you are a returning user). From there, follow the path to join an existing private group and when prompted, enter the following information…

Group ID#: 49449 (Brookston NFL Pick To Win)
Password: brookston

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Survival Football

If picking all sixteen football games every week seems like too much, then Survival Football is for you. In Survival Football, you only have to pick one game each week. The only catch is you can’t pick the same team to win more than once all season. And you better be sure about each game you pick because if you’re wrong, you’re out for the season. Actually last year they added a new feature and I changed the game so to be kicked out you have to be wrong twice. In that way more people stand a better chance of lasting longer into the season. So get one wrong, and you’re still okay, get a second wrong, now you’re gone for the season. Last man standing wins.

Again, like last year, we can keep picking all through the playoffs, assuming our luck holds. So the game could even continue through to the Super Bowl.

In order to join the group, just go to Survival Football, click the “Sign Up” button and choose to “Join an Existing Group”, then “Join a Private Group”. Then, when prompted, enter the following information…

Group ID#: 23412 (Brookston Survival League)
Password: brookston

With 50 players allowed in each game, there’s plenty of room, so don’t be shy. Sign up for one or both games. IN past seasons, I’ve posted the standings on the home page, and hopefully I’ll be able to do that again soon. Why not join us?

Whole Foods To Open California Brewery

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For a number of years, Whole Foods Market has carried a decent selection of craft beer and better imports, and has been steadily increasing their commitment to good beer. They have an especially decent selection for a national chain. Last week, they announced that they were taking it one step father, and opening a “6,000-square-foot, two-story craft beer brewery and tap room,” according to a story in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. This will be their first grocery store to include a brewery. The 27,291-square-foot grocery store where the brewery will occupy the rooftop, will be located at 700 The Alameda in San Jose. The company broke ground on Wednesday, and expects to include “a wall for growing hops.” The San Jose Whole Foods & Brewery is expected to open in the summer of 2014.

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Fighting The Beer Revolutionary War In The Next Session

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For our 79th Session, our host is Adrian Dingle, better known online simply as Ding through his Dings Beer Blog. Not surprisingly, he’s decided to shake things up with a provocative topic, the USA versus Old World Beer Culture.

Anyone with any inkling of my online, in-person and blogging presence in the American beer world since 2000, will know that the whole of my beer experience in that time has been colored by, sits against the backdrop of, and forms the awkward juxtaposition to, my English beer heritage and what has been happening the USA in the last few years. Everyone knows that I have been very vocal about this for a very long time, so when it came to thinking about what would be a great “Session” topic, outside of session beer, it seemed like that there could be only one topic; “What the hell has America done to beer?,” a.k.a., “USA versus Old World Beer Culture.”

This probably won’t be pretty, and you’re probably not gonna like it much, but hey, what’s new?

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So on Friday, September 6, let the battle begin. What do you think America has done to beer? And in comparison, what about England? Are we at war? Are we having a beer war? Or is the “special relationship” intact? Grab your musket, a pewter tankard of some session beer (however you define it!) along with your laptop, and let slip the dogs of beer war.

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Time To Enter Our Beer Writing Contest

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If you write about beer in print or online or broadcast, please consider joining over 100 of your colleagues in the newly reformed North American Guild of Beer Writers. Even if I can’t persuade you to join, if you’ve written something you’re proud of between July of last year and June 30 of this year, you should enter it in our NAGBW Writing Contest, which is open to non-members as well as guild members. Our goal is to raise the level of beer writing by rewarding the best efforts of our colleagues. “NAGBW’s awards honor the best beer and brewing industry coverage in seven categories. Journalism, feature writing, freelance authors, blogs and broadcast or published in print or online are eligible.” Don’t delay, because the deadline is coming up fast; it’s August 26.

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The seven categories are for Best Book, Magazine Writing, Newspaper (Paid Circulation) Writing, Brewspaper/Free Zine Writing, Beer Blog, Beer and Food Writing, and Broadcast/Podcast. The cost to compete is $30 per entry (but only $15 for members — see, you should join).

Submit your entry or entries online through our partner Submittable by next Monday, August 26. Again, that’s for work published or broadcast between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Online submissions are accepted at submittable.com, and print books may be mailed to: Lucy Saunders, Attn: NAGBW Awards, 4230 N. Oakland Ave. #178, Shorewood, WI 53211.

If you have any questions, contact www.nagbw.org via our website, drop me a line, or simply comment here. Award winners will be announced during GABF, date and time to be announced shortly. Perhaps I’ll see you there?

Let’s Hear Your Elevator Pitch For Beer

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For our 78th Session, our host is James Davidson, who writes beer bar band, where he writes about his many passions, and also writes about beer for the Australian Brews News. His topic asks everyone to make their “elevator pitch” to be as “persuasive and passionate about beer can you be in the short[est] space possible?” Here’s a fuller explanation of how to make Your Elevator Pitch for Beer:

“Elevator pitch” is a term used by marketers, sales people, film/tv makers and the like. It’s the delivery of a short but powerful summary that will sell their idea or concept to the listener in one swift hit.

Here’s the scenario:

You walk into an elevator and hit the button for your destination level. Already in the elevator is someone holding a beer…and it’s a beer that annoys you because, in your view, it represents all that is bad with the current state of beer.

You can’t help but say something, so you confront your lift passenger with the reason why their beer choice is bad.

30 seconds is all you have to sell your pitch for better beer, before the lift reaches the destination floor. There’s no time, space or words to waste. You must capture and persuade the person’s attention as quickly as possible. When that person walks out of the elevator, you want them to be convinced that you have the right angle on how to make a better beer world.

Here’s the rules:

  1. In less than 250 words or 30 seconds of multimedia content, write/record/create your elevator pitch for beer in which you argue you case, hoping to covert the listener to your beer cause.
  2. Blog/publish it online on Friday 2nd August, 2013.
  3. When your contribution has been posted, leave a comment here with a link to your post. Alternatively, email, tweet or facebook me with a link to your post.

The topic is essentially open. It is whatever you feel passionately about when it comes to the misgivings of beer in today’s market and/or culture.

What is the argument/topic that you believe will best advance a better beer world? You may just want to argue for craft beer over mass-produced bland lagers. Maybe you actually want to end the need to define “craft beer”. Maybe it’s that the way gender is used or represented when it comes to beer, such as attempts to push “girly styles”. Maybe you believe brands like Carling, Samuel Adams or James Squire should be in everyone’s beer fridge. You may be an purist for the cause of CAMRA, or you may want to argue against CAMRA. Maybe you think the outrageous ingredients and hybrid styles of extreme brewing are hurting beer today, or maybe there needs to be more delicious high alcohol triple barrel aged palate wreckers…?

Maybe the person in the elevator with you isn’t even holding beer, but instead they have some sugary pre-mix lolly-like alcoholic drink, and you want to convince them that drinking beer is a much better option. Even worse…maybe that person is holding a “low-carb” beer!

Maybe you think everything about beer is actually just fine. So argue your case for that.

And that’s the other reason why I have set this challenge is to help refocus my own argument for beer. The more I have learned about brewing, the beer industry and business, and the history of beer, the harder I have found it to define a strong argument for my own (Australian-centric) beer position statement of: drink “craft” beer instead of soulless mass produced adjunct lagers.

This is an exercise in words. I hope that this can be the easiest and hardest contribution that you have ever made to the beer conversation.

The easiest, because it’s a mere 250 words or 30 seconds. The hardest, because it requires every word to be important, meaningful, useful and powerful. There’s no room for footnotes, caveats or rebuttal.

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So on Thursday, August 1, make your pitch. As I suffer from an acute case of verbosity, the hardest part will be keeping it to the length of an elevator ride. Going down?

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Anchor Announces New Fall Seasonal

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Today, Anchor Brewery announced that they’re releasing a new fall seasonal beer, BigLeaf Maple Autumn Red. According to the press release, the beer will be available beginning August 5 and will be around through October. In addition to draft, it will also be bottled in 6-packs and 22-oz. bombers.

BigLeaf Maple Autumn Red was inspired by a native California tree, its incredible leaves, its delicious syrup, and the colors of fall. The tree, known as Bigleaf maple, thrives along the banks of California’s mountain streams. Native Californians once made rope and baskets from its bark. Today, artisans handcraft its wood and burl into custom guitars.. Bigleaf maple sugaring in California dates to the 1800s; yet this tree’s unusually flavorful syrup remains the product of a small group of hobbyists. A hint of maple—including bigleaf maple—syrup in every brew perfectly complements the malty complexity, balanced hoppiness, and rich fall hue of BigLeaf Maple Autumn Red, a red ale like no other.

“When presented with the challenge of developing a new seasonal beer, all of our brewers collaborated to think fall and came up with this red ale,” said Mark Carpenter, brewmaster at Anchor Brewing. “We are very happy with the finished product, especially since we don’t do test batches here at Anchor. It requires us to be on top of our game when crafting new beers and BigLeaf Maple is a beer we’re all proud to share.”

BigLeaf Maple Autumn Red (6% ABV) is a quaffable, well-balanced red ale with character. Its malty complexity and coppery color come from a combination of two caramel malts, pale malt, and a hint of maple syrup. To complement these flavors, Anchor Brewing uses three additions of Nelson Sauvin hops in the brewkettle and a unique blend of Nelson Sauvin, Citra, and Cascade for dry hopping. The result is a distinctive fall seasonal with extraordinary depth and intriguing aroma.

Since the 1970’s, Anchor Brewing has worked with renowned local Artist Jim Stitt to create our beer labels. A distinct, handmade beer deserves a distinct, handmade label and BigLeaf Maple is no exception. In autumn, the bigleaf maple’s huge leaves, up to a foot across, can display a full range of color as they slowly turn from green to gold to red. Capturing this symbolic transition from summer to fall, a watercolor of bigleaf maple’s magnificent leaf is featured on our label and signed by Jim Stitt.

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Cantillon’s Zwanze Day 2013 Announced

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Cantillon just announced both the date — September 14 — and the participating bars for this year’s Zwanze Day. If you’re not familiar with it, here’s an overview I wrote about last year’s Zwanze Day for my newspaper column.

Belgium has essentially two separate regions, with the northern half known as Flanders. The language spoken there is a dialect of Dutch, known by the same name as the people of Flanders: Flemish. The word “zwanze” is unique to Flemish, has its origins in Yiddish, and essentially means a self-deprecating type of humor that’s typified by sharp-edged, playful jokes, usually good-natured. It’s said that this type of humor has become “a characteristic, defining trait” of the Flemish themselves, and for some a way of life. A “zwanze” is a joke, a “zwanzer” a joker.

It was with that same playful spirit that Cantillon approached the concept of making a Zwanze beer. The goal was to create a fun beer; something a little unusual, using non-traditional ingredients. This year’s Zwanze beer is made with rhubarb. The base beer is a Lambic, with two seasons, or summers, in wooden barrels. That’s then moved into a stainless steel conditioning tank where 300-grams of rhubarb per liter — about 2/3-pound — are added and aged for roughly three months, and then it’s kegged directly from the tank.

The first Zwanze beer was made in 2008, and was also a rhubarb beer. In subsequent years they’ve made it with elderflowers, pineau d’aunis (a red wine grape) and last year they brewed a sour witbier, made with the traditional coriander and orange peel. This is the only repeat so far, which was necessitated when the originally planned 2012 version — a Lambic take on a Trappist Abbey Ale — didn’t mature in time. Van Roy decided instead to make the rhubarb Lambic again, primarily because it was his wife’s favorite.

As a result, while it’s not been announced, I believe this year’s Zwanze Day beer will most likely be that Lambic take on a Trappist Abbey Ale that wasn’t quite ready last year.

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A worldwide toast of the rare, unique beer will be held simultaneously at 46 beer bars and breweries across the globe, in 14 countries, mostly European. By far, the U.S. has the most, with 22, including four in California:

  • Beachwood BBQ — Seal Beach, California
  • Mikkeller Bar SF — San Francisco, California
  • Russian River Brewing — Santa Rosa, California
  • Stone Bistro & Gardens — Escondido, California

You can find the full list at Cantillon’s website.

Date Announced For 2013 Brews On The Bay

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The San Francisco Brewers Guild today announced the date for this year’s Brews on the Bay beer festival aboard the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, docked at Pier 45 in Fisherman’s Wharf. This marks the 10th anniversary of the festival, which will take place on Saturday, October 19, from Noon to 5:00 p.m. According to the press release:

Enjoy over 50 different beers made by San Francisco breweries, while soaking up the salty air, sunshine, live music, food, and spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and San Francisco.

This year’s event is shaping up to be our biggest and best yet. Although we’re still finalizing some of the details, you can expect our member breweries to serve unlimited eight ounce pours of their latest and greatest IPA, farmhouse ale, session beer, barrel-aged sour, imperial stout, and many other beer styles. The brewers will also be on hand to answer any questions about your favorite beers.

In addition to the local beer, we’re going to serve up local food and music. San Francisco’s best food trucks will line the pier to fill your mouth-watering needs. We’ve also enlisted The Brothers Comatose to play their lively roots music on the ship’s deck.

Brews on the Bay tickets will go on sale August 5th at 10:00am.

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