Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last forty years you undoubtedly know the iconic image of the album cover to the Beatles’ seminal work, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. There have been countless homages and parodies of the cover, from Frank Zappa to the Celebrator Beer News, who used it initially for their tenth anniversary. Their version, of course, features well know figures from the brewing industry, both past and present.

The original and the Celebrator’s beer world view.

Well, it seems there’s more of a connection to beer than first thought, as the artist who designed the Sgt. Pepper cover Peter Blake, has designed the label artwork for a new beer, which has been named the official beer of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. Better known simply as Liverpool 08, it’s a yearlong cultural event with something like 350 events taking place in Liverpool. There will be “more than 50 international festivals in art, architecture, ballet, comedy, cinema, food, literature, music, opera, science and theatre.” One billion people from more than 60 countries, across five continents, are expected to visit and/or participate.

Cains chief executive Sudarghara Dusanj said: “Sir Peter Blake is one of country’s best loved artists and, through his work with the Beatles, has built a strong affiliation with Liverpool so we couldn’t think of anyone better.

“The final design is truly striking.”

No doubt the bottle will be highly sought after by breweriana collectors.

Saturday’s Wisconsin State Journal had a very well done quiz on their state’s beer labels. They’ve removed the text from sixteen Wisconsin beer labels, and you have to choose which is which. I got two wrong, fourteen correct. How many can you get right? Post your results below. Enjoy.
 

Golden West Brewing, who is the parent company of Chico-based Butte Creek Brewing, issued a press release today that they have created a new division within the company, dubbed Blue Marble Brewing. This new division will be launching a new organic brand beginning next month with the release of Blue Marble Organic Pilsner. According to the press release, they “are in negotiations with a key nationwide retailer to create a nationwide platform for the selling and marketing of this exciting new brand.” PR-speak aside, presumably that would be a chain like Whole Foods, to hazard a guess.

Reuters is reporting that SABMiller has overtaken rival InBev to become the world’s largest beer company. This is based on preliminary numbers from 2007, and assumes both SABMiller completes the expected purchase of Grolsch and the S&N breakup is approved. Additionally, Heineken’s acquisition of a portion of S&N will also net them the number three spot, displacing Anheuser-Busch who’ll fall to fourth. That will make the new top five look like this:

1. SABMiller
2. InBev
3. Heineken
4. Anheuser-Busch
5. Carlsberg

 
The world beer market grew almost 5% in 2007, also based on the same preliminary figures, up from 3% the previous year.

The Barley Wine made by Bridgeport Brewing, Old Knucklehead, has long had one of my favorite names for a beer. For whatever reason, I’ve always loved the word knucklehead. As insulting epithets go, it hearkens back to a gentler age when people called each other big galoot, nincompoop or goof ball. To me, they’re the kind of insult you call your friend when he makes a mistake that you want to point out, but without really hurting his feelings. They seem more in the good-natured ribbing category of name-calling. And that’s how I see Old Knucklehead. With each label, a different beery luminary was featured in an illustration. Batch No. 11, for example, had Portland beer writer Fred Eckhardt on the label. The new one, which makes its debut today, has John DeBenedetti on it.
 

 
DeBenedetti owns F.H. Steinbart, a well-known homebrew shop in Portland. Batch 12 was aged in bourbon barrels and then was blended back into a cask. 1,100 cases will be bottled. John Foyston has the full story in today’s Oregonian.
 

MSNBC had an article last week on the increased costs of hops and barley, and what that’s doing to Rising Beer Prices. There’s nothing particularly illuminating or novel about the piece, apart from the video, which was shot at both Los Gatos Brewing and the Tied House, both in the San Jose area.

Last week Miller’s Brew Blog revealed that Costco was brewing up three private label beers under the Kirkland private label brand name. Today they’re reporting a fourth one, this time a German Lager. So the news for smaller brands in Costco stores is even more grim. As I opined last week, these Costco Beers will more than likely displace existing beer skus.

The German Style Lager label.
 
 

The back label tells the tale.
 
NOTE: Noble Beer News has posted all four of the labels if anyone is keen to see them. I knew all the illustrations on the labels would have something to do with brewing, but curiously the Amber Ale drawing is of Weyermann Specialty Malts, a malthouse in Bamberg that I visited in November. I wonder if owners Thomas and Sabine are aware of that?

This is part two in my two-part series of goofy YouTube videos about beer I’ve stumbled upon. This one uses stop-motion, a cheap but time-consuming way to make an animated film. If you haven’t guessed by now, among my many other idiosyncratic passions, is animation. I fell in love with cartoons and all things animated at an early age and never really stopped. My favorites are Rocky & Bullwinkle (I even tried to name my son Bullwinkle, but my wife vetoed that one), the old black and white Max Fleischer Popeyes, anything by Tex Avery and more recently, Wallace & Gromit. Anyway, this one isn’t high quality, animation-wise, but it is a little humorous and the idea has potential. Enjoy.

Continuing my recent posts about beer and chocolate, my good friend and colleague, Stephen Beaumont, in his monthly feature for February, also tackles pairing the two. He nicely takes to task fellow Canadian wine writer Natalie MacLean, for her own list of wines to pair with Valentine’s Day treats. Beaumont takes her list of ten chocolate desserts and suggests some delightful sounding matches. Since her original wine pairings came from an e-mailed newsletter, I don’t know what wines she chose for the desserts (NOTE: Ms. MacLean has been kind enough to post those wine pairings in a comment, to see them please click on “Comments” below), but they can’t have been anywhere near as perfect as the beer. It will be certainly interesting to see if MacLean takes the bait and agrees to a side-by-side tasting of both.

You’ve probably heard this song before. I know I have. It’s been around for a while now, attributed to everybody from Weird Al Yankovic to They Might Be Giants, though I’m still not entirely sure who actually performs it. It’s only mildly amusing, in a baser sort of way, but the video here really makes it. Whoever edited this together did a great job of matching the song to various snippets from Japanese anime. That’s what makes it funny, at least in my opinion. Enjoy.