Browsing Category: "fun beer stuff"
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Vaune Dillmann, a craft brewer from Weed, California, thought that he had a great marketing gimmick when
he labeled the bottle caps for his new Lemurian Lager after the name of his town. They read “Try Legal Weed”. But the Federal alcohol regulators didn’t get the humor: According to Beyondmadisonavenue.com, The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau,
Responded that the message on the caps amounted to a drug reference. In a letter explaining its decision, the agency said the wording could “mislead consumers about the characteristics of the alcoholic beverage.”
Dillmann scoffs at the notion that his label has anything to do with smoking pot.
“I’ve never tried marijuana in my life,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I don’t advocate that. It’s just our town’s name.”
I sort of doubt that last part but in any case, I feel like a bottle cap from a tiny craft brewery in Northern California (from a town called Weed no less!) really shouldn’t be high on the list of offensive marijuana references in pop culture. Then again, maybe the The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau doesn’t have anything better to do.
For more on this case, read this in depth explanation from the San Fransisco Chronicle. And keep on fighting the good fight, Mr. Dillmann!
[photo by Rich Pedroncelli / AP]
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If you need a break this summer and want to hit the road - why not center the next family vacation around a beer fest? June through October is the busiest time of the year for beer fests around the world and the perfect time (and place) to whet your whistle and flex your beer muscles. Here are just some of the options available to you (for more festival listings, check out beerfestivals.org or the calender at beeradvocate.com):
Mondial de la Bière (May 28 to June 1)
The best part of this Montreal beer fest — besides the unique, hard-to-find Canadian beers, ciders & meads, that is — is that it takes place over five days with free admission, so you’ll have plenty of time to try the more than 350 beers (and all the cheese).
Oregon Brewers Festival (July 24 to 27)
The O.B.F. is held in the other Portland, which is home to 30-something breweries and brewpubs, more than in any other U.S. city. This three day festival takes place on the fields along the Willamette River.
Belgium Comes to Cooperstown (August 1 to 3)
B.C.T.C. is a small event, with only 800 tickets available. But the experience is one-of-a-kind: more than 150 Belgian and Belgian-style beers, including those of the host, Brewery Ommegang. Add a bit of music, camping and drinking under the stars and you’ve got what is often called the “Woodstock of brewing”.
Great Taste of the Midwest (August 9)
One of the most sought-after tickets in town, this one day beer fest — The “Great Taste” — is held in Madison, Wisconsin, with 600 beers from 100 brewers — and only 5,000 tickets. The homebrewers who sponsor the festival will release 3,000 tickets locally on May 4; there will be a mail-order lottery for the other 2,000.
World Beer Festival (October 4)
At World Beer, All About Beer Magazine gathers together craft brewers from around the country and importers from around the world. And for one day only (the first Saturday in October) they all arrive at the historic ballpark in Durham, North Carolina, where Bull Durham was filmed and sample the best in specialty aged beers, cask-conditioned beers, and rare and expensive beers the world has to offer.
Great American Beer Festival (October 9 to 11)
Last but not least, The G.A.B.F., which takes place in Denver, boasts more breweries and beers than any other fest in the world. Last year, 408 breweries, from Anheuser-Busch to the smallest brewpubs, poured 1,884 different beers for 46,000 attendees during the course of three days.
Of course for all you Mainahs, there are plenty of local celebrations - from the Maine Grains & Grapes Festival in June, to the Maine Brewers’ Fest in November. So get you drinkin’ caps on; I’ll see you on the road!
Anything else that should be added to the list? Mention it in the comments!
Source: “Best of the Fest: A six-pack of the beer festivals most worth traveling to” [msnbc]
Technorati Tags: beer, beer festivals, great american beer festival
Popularity: 4% [?]
image via the Associated Press
Bill Bramanti of South Chicago Heights, Ill is 67 years old and in perfect health; he doesn’t expect to be kicking the bucket any time soon. But that didn’t stop him from buying his coffin.
Bramanti had his coffin specially made recently, and it’s designed to look like a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. According to USA Today,
“I actually fit, because I got in here,” Bramanti, 67, of South Chicago Heights said. He threw a party Saturday for friends, featuring his coffin filled with ice and, what else, Pabst Blue Ribbon.
A little creepy, dontcha think?
source: “Illinois man designs beer can coffin” [USA Today]
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Al from Hop Talk has created a WordPress plugin which integrates a BrewPoll “vote” button into every blog post. BrewPoll — the latest social networking site to hit the Interwebs — is a digg-like site where users share content from around the web with one another and “vote” on the articles they like the best. The posts and sites with the most votes naturally rise to the top. As you may have guessed from the name BrewPoll, everything on the site has something to do with beer (specially homebrewing and “craft” beer).
Many thanks to Al for putting the plugin together! Click here for download instructions and be sure to “vote” for the post from Hop Talk (and everything you read here, needless to say).
Popularity: 10% [?]
For anyone who missed it, I wanted to point you in the direction of a wonderful piece which appeared in Wednesday’s Chicago Sun-Times about why beer (not wine!) and cheese make an ideal match; it makes for a great Friday-afternoon-when-you-want-to-be-anywhere-but-the-office read. To quote the article a bit,
It’s a preference borne of passion, but there is a strong scientific basis for arguing beer’s companionship with cheese rather than wine, says Matt Parker, who ran the Lincoln Square cheese shop the Cheese Stands Alone for five years.
And my personal favorite excerpt:
“Wine and cheese are like neighbors, but beer and cheese are like family,” Parker says.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of attending a beer and cheese dinner, do yourself a huge favor and hunt one down (or throw your own). You’ll swear you’ve died and gone to heaven (I did)!
For beer & cheese pairing recommendations, check out this handy PDF, also from the Sun-Times.
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They’re portable - perfect for tailgating, camping, golf (ball, or Frisbee), the beach or the kid’s lunch box (I kid, I kid); they’re 100% recyclable; and they block sunlight and oxygen better than bottles. I’m talking about cans, of course.
But canned beer carries a very negative stigma with it - when canning beer became a popular option in the 1960s, the cans were poor in quality and the canning technology was certainly not where it is today. The result was beer that tasted more like aluminum than barley & hops.
Ever since, even though the technology has changed for the better, and canned beer no longer tastes like cans, the only beer commonly found in cans has been 30-racks from the “big 3″. So it’s not hard to see why cans have gotten such a bad wrap. But all of that is beginning to change.
A number of well-known American craft breweries have begun to can their beers - Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing Co. announced last week that they would release their flagship Fat Tire Amber Ale — one of the most popular craft beers in the country — in cans by summer. The 21st Amendment Brewery in San Fransisco will also soon be canning their beers; test marketing cans of their “Brew Free or Die IPA” and “Hell or High Watermelon” watermelon wheat by the 4th of July. And Uncommon Brewers, a Santa Cruz-based brewery which will open its doors this summer, will open having canned all of its beers. According to The Mercury News, the certified organic brewery had planned “to do Belgian-inspired beers and put them out Belgian-style, in corked bottles” but opted for less expensive, 100% recyclable cans after receiving their organic certification.
The craft beer canning revolution was started by Oskar Blues Brewing Co, who began canning their beers in the fall of 2002 as a joke - but that soon changed. Dale Katechis, founder of Oskar Blues Brewing in Colorado, told realbeer.com in 2003 that,
Right now, our goal is to change the perception in the industry about what you can sell in cans, and with drinkers about what kind of beer is sold in cans.
We went to the Great Arizona Beer Festival and did side-by-side tastes tests — out of bottles and out of cans. A lot of beer geeks went “What is this?” and they were blown away. The first thing they said is, “This is real beer, this isn’t something that was made just to sell in cans.”
All of the breweries listed above get their cans from the same place - Cask Brewing Systems Inc., based in Calgary, Alberta. Cask Brewing offers craft brewers like Oskar Blues small-scale packaging systems, using cans from aluminum can producer Ball Corp. which have a water-based coating, so the beer doesn’t touch aluminum. Today Cask has nearly four dozen customers canning beer in North America, up from one — Oskar Blues — in 2002.
It may be awhile before craft beer drinkers fully embrace craft beer cans around the country, but I can tell you from personal experience that one can from Oskar Blues and they’ll be signing a different tune. Here’s to the canning revolution!
Technorati Tags: beer, canned beer, Cask Brewing Systems, Oskar Blues, Fat Tire Amber Ale, New Belgium Brewing
Popularity: 15% [?]
Buster Martin completed the London Marathon this past weekend in just about ten hours. The 101 year old man set a new record for the oldest person to ever complete the marathon. So, what did he do to celebrate? Have a beer, of course. While it would be logical to assume that, since Martin appears in such great health, he must be a health nut but the truth is actually quite the opposite.
Buster Martin smokes more than a dozen cigarettes and drinks an average of 7-8 full pints of beer — usually at least one during a break in the middle of his daily run — every day. It truly boggles the mind.
“He smokes, drinks, stays out late, which is probably why he is still alive,”
Charlie Mullins, the managing director of the plumbing company where Martin cleans vans three days a week told ABC News.
Maybe 7 pints a day is the missing link to my physical fitness routine.
Popularity: 16% [?]
While the best way to drink a Coors Light (if you’re forced to do so in the first place) is to plug your nose and chug as quickly as you can, perhaps it’s needless to say that with “better beer” comes a better tasting experience. And here’s how to properly do so:
image by The Washington Post
1. Appearance: Before you take your first sip, look at your beer. Hold it up to the light and observe the color – is it brown, red, golden, pitch black? Is the beer itself crystal clear or hazy? Now how about the head – is it thick and pillowy or did it dissipate quickly? How about the color of the head, pure white (common to pilsners and other light-bodied beers), deep tan (common to stouts and porters), or somewhere in between?
2. Aroma: Smell the beer. Is there the spicy, citrusy, piney aroma of hops or the burnt, toasted, chocolate, coffee aroma of malted barley? What are some of the other spices or fruit smells (often caused by different yeast strains) present? Raisins or cloves? Banana or bubblegum? Pinning down the smells can be the toughest part of the tasting process and takes awhile to master. Be sure and take your time and check back in on the aroma of the beer as you drink – it often changes and morphs as the beer warms.
3. The First Sip: When you take your first sip – swirl it around in your mouth and over your tongue; note the initial sensations the beer causes. Is the brew sweet, bitter, sour or something else? As you’re beginning to learn, beer (especially ale) can be very complex and there can be quite a difference between the first sip and the finish.
4. Mouthfeel: This aspect is more important (and maybe more fun) than it sounds. The mouthfeel – The texture of the beer and how it feels in your mouth – of beer ranges from silky & dry and thick & chewy to thin and fizzy. Is your beer slick on your tongue?
5. Finish: Note the flavors that stay behind after you swallow – is it the bitter hops or the sweet malt? Before you take your next, and subsequent, sips make note of your final detections and rethink your conclusions about the beer.
6.Enjoy: This, needless to say, is the most important part. For God’s sake, take pleasure in your beer.
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Don’t get me wrong, I love Maine and the beer and bar scene around the state; there’s nowhere I would rather call my beer home. That being said, there are a number of things I wish my town did more like the town of Burlington, VT. Vermont seems to embrace their home grown beer like none other. From programs like the Passport Program and the Vermont Brewers’ Festival — both run by the Vermont Brewers’ Association — to start-ups like the new website Burlington Bars, Vermonters (Vermontians?) really seem to get it. burlingtonbars.com is described as “Vermont’s newest website completely dedicated to the local bar scene”. They are creating separate pages for each bar, pub and dance club in Burlington. Not only that but the actual bar owners have access to their listing so they’re able to update information (bands playing, drink specials, menu, etc.) themselves. And it’s all free of charge.
The site is still new (and about to undergo a redesign) so there’s not much there at the moment (I’d call it still in the “beta” phase) but it shows promise. From breweries like Magic Hat and Long Trail to Burlington mainstays like the Vermont Pub & Brewery and Ri-Ra, to the fact that Burlington — which isn’t all that different than Portland — supports such sites and organizations makes my jealous. Even just the fact that their brewers’ festival — again, not that different than Portland’s in thought — is both outdoors and during the summer, is something to be envious of.
I’m impressed that such a site can exist for one town in one small New England state, and the fact that it does shows the dedication of the people of Vermont to their beer. I wish it success, but more so - I wish such a thing would exist for Maine (unless I am that thing).
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