Here are the results from the 2008 Toronado Barley Wine Festival in San Francisco:
Congratulations to all the winners.
I finally had a chance to stop by one of the three new Belgian bars in the Bay Area. After picking up my good friend and colleague, Stephen Beaumont, at the airport, we headed to Monk’s Kettle for lunch. It’s located on the corner of an unassuming block of 16th Street in San Francisco. Overall, a good place that shows great promise. Check out the photo gallery for more about the new place.
Co-owner Nat Cutler behind the Monk’s Kettle’s wooden bar.
For more photos from our trip to the Monk’s Kettle, visit the photo gallery.
In a terrific gesture of solidarity and community, Jim Koch of the Boston Beer Co. announced yesterday that he would be making available to small brewers, twenty tons of aroma hops at his cost in an effort to help out the hop-strapped craft industry. They’re calling it the Hop Sharing Program, and making it available to brewers in need. There’s more information at the Samuel Adams website, click on the hop sharing icon to find out more details.
Koch explained the idea on the Brewer’s Forum, a online trade forum run by the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado.
So we looked at our own hops supplies at Boston Beer and decided we could share some of our hops with other craft brewers who are struggling to get hops this year. We’re offering 20,000 pounds at our cost to brewers who need them. Specifically, we are able to spare 10,000 pounds of East Kent Goldings from Tony Redsell, a top English grower featured by Michael Jackson in Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion (page 75 has a picture) and 10,000 pounds of the German Noble hop Tettnang Tettnanger from small farms in the Tettnang region in Germany.
Boston Beer will be selling the hops at their cost, plus a modest amount for shipping, to any brewer who really needs them. As Koch explains.
The purpose of doing this is to get some hops to the brewers who really need them. So if you don’t really need them, please don’t order them. And don’t order them just because we’re making them available at a price way below market. Order them because you need these hops to make your beer. We’re not asking questions, so let your conscience be your guide.
We hope this will make brewing a little easier for those hardest hit by the hop shortage.
What a truly beautiful show of support for the industry as a whole. It’s times like these that showcase how supportive the craft beer industry is of one another. It restores one’s faith in humanity.
Jim Koch, flanked by two Longshot winners, Lili Hess and Rodney Kibzey, during a reception at last year’s GABF. Cheers, indeed, Jim.
An nice item in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sipping News today reminded me that there’s only two days until the Celebrator Beer News’ 20th Anniversary Party.
This Sunday, toast the Celebrator at its Mardi Gras-themed 20th Anniversary Party, with more than 35 breweries pouring almost 200 beers – many of which were made especially for the occasion. Dixieland jazz and zydeco bands and plenty of Cajun and Creole food will also be on hand.
All profits will go to the California Small Brewers Association, a nonprofit advocacy group.
The event takes place from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Oakland Marriott City Center, 1001 Broadway (near 11th Street), Oakland.
Tickets cost $55, and for $80, VIP tickets will earn you admission an hour early and access to some special limited-production beers.
For tickets, call (800) 430-2337 or visit celebrator.com
You don’t want to miss what promises to be the party of the year. I’ll See you there!
Lime is the new black, apparently, at least according to Anheuser-Busch‘s recent marketing efforts. Last year, SABMiller had some success with their Miller Chill, flavored with lime and approximating a Mexican drink known as a Michelada in much the same way Taco Bell makes authentic Mexican food. Because that couldn’t be tolerated, A-B launched three of their own michelada-like beers, two under the name Chelada — Budweiser and Bud Light premixed with Clamato — and also Michelob Ultra Fruit Lime Cactus. As Lew Bryson points out in a comment to his own take on Michelada’s, The Big Chelada, there’s nothing new about pre-packaged cocktails, beer or otherwise. People will pay for convenience because we’re all busy multi-tasking. I tend to prefer to mix my own cocktails, but I understand why they’re popular.
Lime in beer is also nothing new, either, even north of the border. Some clever marketeer years ago put a wedge of lime in a Corona — more than likely to mask the fact that it’s almost always skunked — and so many consumers are already preconditioned to accept lime as a flavoring agent in beer. Even if Latin Americans hadn’t been using it in various forms of micheladas for decades, that fact alone probably makes it an easier sell.
| Now Anheuser-Busch is firing another shot over the bow at Miller Chill with the announcement of yet another line extension: Bud Light Lime. The new beer will be rolled out nationally in May, and will be supported by $35 million in advertising, according to Advertising Age. Brandweek also notes that a tagline hasn’t been decided upon nor has an ad agency been assigned the task of coming up with one yet. The Lime will be priced higher than regular Bud and Bud Light, around $1-1.50 more, and will be packaged in clear bottles with “BL Lime” on the label. Initial sizes will be six-packs and 12-packs. A-B is spinning the story that the beer has been in development for two years now, in an effort to deflect the appearance of copying. |
They may claim they started working on this long before Miller did, but there seems to be a pretty clear pattern of this sort of behavior stretching back some distance. Let’s not forget Bud Light itself was launched in response to the huge success of Miller Lite, which debuted in 1975. When Japan started making dry beer, A-B launched Bud Dry. When Molson brought Ice Beer to the U.S., A-B countered with Bud Ice. When tequila-flavored beers made a brief appearance, A-B put out Tequiza. When malternatives hit the scene, A-B came out with Doc Otis. When organic beer started gaining in popularity ever so slightly, A-B made up Wild Hop Lager and Stone Mill Pale Ale. When a few very small breweries began making gluten-free beers, A-B created Redbridge.
You could say that any business worth its salt (and lime) would do the same, that they were merely responding to the market. Maybe, but I think there’s something more at work in this strategy. I can’t really think of a niche that A-B hasn’t tried to dominate or crush. As Dave Peacock, vice president of marketing, said in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a few days ago, “[t]his lets us address a gap.”
By “gap,” of course, Peacock means any space in the market where A-B isn’t the dominant player. A-B might quite possibly be the biggest high-alpha dog of all-time, and they seem to view the smallest crack as a monstrously wide gap that needs filling. I can’t think of another industry, especially in the food and beverage world, that has a nearly fifty-percent share and still feels so threatened by any would-be competitor, no matter how slight. I’m sure some will insist that’s the way you stay on top, by treating every threat seriously. I’m equally sure there are plenty of business tomes that will advise that very strategy, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or find that it’s fair.
Craft brewers manage to carve out small niches within their already small niche and don’t usually try to crush one another in the process. Perhaps that’s because they’re all small and scraping and clawing their way up. Maybe, but there is another way. There are smaller sustainable businesses that realize staying a certain size and remaining at a static profit level is possible, and even desirable. Growth can rarely be sustained indefinitely, but equilibrium can. Anchor Brewery was profiled as one such company is a book called Small Giants, in which the author found hundreds of businesses that fit that model, and quite a few more that had problems maintaining their initial vision as they grew larger. “The bigger you get, the harder it is to preserve that passion,” [author Bo Burlingham] says. “In business, it’s easy to confuse size with greatness. Companies of all sizes can be great.”
Many of the regional craft brewers that started out small, like Sierra Nevada and New Belgium, have grown to their current size while remaining active participating members of the beer community, as supportive and helpful to the health of their smaller brethren as when they were small, too. A recent and wonderful example of this was the announcement yesterday that Jim Koch would be sharing ten tons of Boston Beer’s hops with smaller brewers who are strapped for the currently scarce ingredient. That gesture shows how even large companies can act responsibly and in a manner that’s good for everyone in an industry. And that’s why Boston Beer has grown as large as they have while remaining very much a part of the beer community. Size is not the issue, but how you wield that size is.
Anheuser-Busch, and to be fair all the other worldwide brewing giants, have become large multi-national corporations where share price, market dominance and everything they teach at business school are the most important concerns, especially to the people in the upper echelons of power. They are, in fact, legally obligated to act in the best interests of the corporation regardless of the consequences for us mere mortals. Our corporate system is, in simplest terms, broken. When much of society decides that business interests are superior to human ones, that’s a problem. But, as usual, I digress.
Last May, at August Busch IV’s first address to shareholders, A-B continued to spin up the business, despite the downward spiral of their core brands. Financial analysts, on the other hand, continue to believe that to be successful A-B must focus on the core brands. Ignoring that advice, A-B continues to believe the future lies in picking up import brands and new products, like BL Lime, to fuel its growth.
A friend and colleague of mine recently opined that the reason for this is that the slide of A-B’s core brands can’t be stopped. Presumably they’d know this and so buck conventional wisdom and concentrate their efforts instead on line extensions, new brands and signing up more imports. It’s a compelling idea, I think, and harder to dismiss than I thought at first blush. There’s currently so far ahead that it would obviously take quite some time for any truly substantial erosion of their market share to take place. But if the core brands can no longer be counted upon to steer the ship, it would only make sense that you’d look for another way to bail out the ship and set her right again. And I suppose with such thinking, any “gap” could be thought to weaken the ship, too. So it must be that corporate thinking truly believes every gap must be addressed. As a result, it looks we’ll continue to see more diversification, more new products and line extensions, and more mergers and acquisitions. And like the now trendy lime, I think the changes we’ll see will continue to be sour and a little tart and bitter.
Better known to the rest of the world as Valentine’s Day, I’m pushing for it to be called Beer & Chocolate Day instead.
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I know I promised yesterday would be the last beer and chocolate posting but it’s pretty hard to ignore a story called Beer + Chocolate = Love. This article comes from Michigan and my colleague Rex Halfpenny had something to do with so I knew it was worth a look. It’s actually from the Grand Rapids Press, and it’s a nice overview of how to pair beer and chocolate. It includes a number of suggestions from a range of people, such as this pairing with the beer pictured on the left.
And this wonderful observation:
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And here’s a step-by-step guide to tasting beer and chocolate by Rex Halfpenny, who publishes the Michigan Beer Guide:
- STEP 1: Depending on the amount of running around you want to do, each pairing can be presented one at a time or the chocolates can be plated ahead of time. Arrange them like the numbers on an analog clock, with all plates arranged the same, pair the chocolate at 1 o’clock with the first beer and so on. Generally use 3 ounces of beer per pairing — aim to provide about two bottles worth of beer, 24 ounces, with no ill effect.
- STEP 2: Instruct the audience ahead of time to learn the beer and learn the chocolate, then match their flavors. Take your time, sniff, taste, enjoy the beer. Then do the same with the chocolate. Then take another bite of the chocolate, let it melt and just as it is about finished, take a small sip of the beer to blend the flavors. This is the highlight of the experience.
- STEP 3: Encourage folks to take notes. Many do not, so give them a sheet listing the beers and a couple of sentences about them, including brewery, style, alcohol level and the aroma/flavor. Note what you want them to focus on. Have a space for comments on appearance, aroma, flavor, body, finish, aftertaste. Do the same with the chocolates. If inclined, they will take notes; if not, they are given a clue of what’s going on.
The 2nd annual Slow Beer Festival, again sponsored by the San Francisco Brewers Guild, will take place on Saturday March 1st.
From the Guild’s website:
Saturday, March 1, 2008, noon-4pm, SF County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park. Tickets: $50 ($75 VIP ticket includes gift bag and a tour of the participating brewery of your choice). Beer tasting of all 8 breweries of the SF Brewers Guild plus Marin Brewing, Russian River Brewing, North Coast Brewing and other local, artisan breweries. Food from Hog Island Oyster Company, Fatted Calf Charcuterie, Harley Farms Goat Cheese, Acme Bread, and more.
The festival is in association with Slow Food San Francisco and Slow Food USA. The slow food movement began in Italy and is a great organization if you love good food. Their philosophy is simple:
Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.
There also more information at the Slow Beer Festival website and tickets can be purchased online, too. See you there.
With only one more day to go before “Beer & Chocolate Day,” here’s one more article on this delicious subject.
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This one is by Greg Kitsock and appeared in the Washington Post today, entitled A Different Kind of Drinking Chocolate and explores a number of chocolatey beers, including one of my favorites, Rogue’s Chocolate Stout featuring Sebbie Buhler on the bottle. Here’s what Kitsock has to say about the Rogue Chocolate Stout, some of which I didn’t know:
Sebbie also had a bit to say about the beer that bears her likeness:
Sebbie lives in the same state where I grew up, Pennsylvania. Her brother Dave Buhler is also one of the co-owners of Elysian Brewing in Seattle, Washington. The pair have been in the beer business as long as I can remember. Happy Valentine’s Day, Sebbie. |
Me and Sebbie at the Falling Rock during GABF week 2006.
Last year fellow beer writer Greg Kitsock conducted a March Madness bracket for beer in the Washington Post, calling it Beer Madness. It was a brilliant idea and I vowed to do my own this year (and I still may). The Post will be doing another one again this year, and over 400 hopeful judges submitted applications including “inspired limericks, hopeful haikus, reasoned arguments and, yes, desperate pleas.” Judges are expected to be announced shortly and the beers for this years contest should likewise one upcoming Sunday soon. I’ll follow along like I did last year.
In the meantime, Great Lakes Brewing News, has announced their own contest involving India Pale Ales, the National IPA Contest, or NIPAC. It may not roll off the tongue like N-C-Double-A but I’ll wager it’s a damn side tastier on your tongue. They’ve chosen 32 IPAs from around the country and over four separate rounds will have three brewers judge each head-to-head competition to determine who moves on toward the championship.
To participate you need to register online (it’s free) and then after receiving your password via e-mail vote for who you think will win each of the sixteen contests in round one. You simply choose who you think will win each head-to-head contest of IPAs. You can even win some prizes, which, according to the website rules will “include a full case of beer from the 2008 National IPA Champion, tee-shirts, posters and brewery merchandise.” The schedule of rounds is below. Get picking.
What fun! Now I need to get off my arse and figure out something different from the other two contests. Anybody have any thoughts or ideas?
As I wrote about last month, there’s a new Reunion beer but I don’t remember noticing it will be a rye beer. After trying Bear Republic’s wonderful new all-rye beer, I’ve taken a renewed interest in the alternative grain in beer. It will make it’s debut at the Celebrator’s 20th Anniversary Party this Sunday. If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, there’s still time to order online. Join me for a/the Reunion.
From the press release:
Calling it a beer for hope and in honor of the passing of a long time friend, SBS Imports will once again offer its specially crafted Reunion Beer. Reunion Beer is the inspiration and collaboration of Alan Shapiro, president of SBS Imports, Pete Slosberg, creator of Pete’s Wicked Ale™, and Virginia MacLean, long time friend and colleague, as a way to raise awareness of and donations for the Institute of Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research. All met during the early days of Pete’s Brewing Company. Virginia passed away from the disease last June, four months after the initial release of Reunion.
“Reunion ’08 celebrates the life and cause of our departed friend,” said Alan. “Virginia wanted to continue the mission of bringing hope to others with the Reunion project.” All proceeds are donated to IMBCR. “To date almost $100,000 has been raised by the Reunion team’s creative approach,” said Dr. James R. Berenson, CEO and President, Medical and Scientific Director at IBMCR. “We are eternally grateful to everyone supporting the beer and their efforts to bring this disease to the attention of the public,” added Geoffrey M. Gee, IMBCR’s Executive Director. The beer will be unveiled at the Celebrator Beer News’ 20th anniversary (Mardi Gras) party at the Oakland Convention Center on February 17.
Reunion Beer
Last year’s version was an Organic Imperial Brown Ale based on one of Pete’s popular brews. This year’s style, Organic Red Rye Ale, combines another popular Pete’s style ‐ Wicked Red with rye and caraway. Pete not only lent his name and likeness to this philanthropic and heartfelt effort, he worked closely with Bison Organic Brewery to craft the Reunion recipe. Visit Bison Brewing for more information.
Where to Buy
Reunion ’08 will be available starting mid‐February at leading specialty beer retailers. For those living in states where there is no retail availability, it may be possible to purchase Reunion via mail order from selected retail partners, pending individual state laws. Reunion ’08 will also be available in kegs. Retail availability and distribution, and a list of partner pubs and restaurants featuring Reunion ’08 on draft, will be available at the Reunion website.
Pete Slosberg, who’s currently in Argentina, sent me an e-mail with some additional history of this beer:
Just so you know, [Reunion]’s origin was about 15 years ago when we developed Pete’s MultiGrain Beer. We started out doing a rye beer and then expanding it. Along the way, I asked Pat Couteaux, our brewmaster to try, for fun, a test batch of a “liquid rye bread beer” and it was great, but we didn’t go with it. It tasted like I was back in a NYC deli.
The back story on this beer for Reunion is that whenever Alan came to visit Virginia in the Bay Area, they would go to Max’s Opera Cafe for deli food. I mentioned to Alan that our old formula would be a fitting memory to their friendship so I contacted Pat and he got the old formula to Dan at Bison.
Thanks, Pete.
