Every once in a while, I like to get together with my friends and drink a nice bottle or two. It started with my friend Simon and I drinking a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and it went so well we decided that we would continue the tradition.
Today's society is becoming slowly more infatuated with the end of the world. The fear of the unknown has presented itself in human culture through different mediums throughout time.
Dean Torresan poses Thursday with the "bow and plunger" he used to try to catch an elusive case of Canadian Club whisky in a video he made for the Canadian Club Hide a Case Adventure contest.
Lee Medoff is leaving House Spirits, the Oregon craft distillery he co-founded in 2002, to start a new enterprise, Bull Run Distillery, which will specialize in white and dark rum as well as whiskey.
Bought this at Kappy's last week for $6.99 for the bomber. There was some statement that this beer blew away last year's Nugget Nectar in terms of hops and lavished the discerning palate with a face filling bunch of other flavours. I was sold at the $6.99 myself given the sad lack of Troegs beer in my life.
Pretty nice stuff. It pours a swell chestnut with a mocha froth and rim. The aroma is booze, date and brown bread. A pretty thick beer on the swally with a lot of pine and white grapefruit hops going shoulder to shoulder with date, cocoa, milk chocolate, hazelnut. The brewer's notes recommend the very four months this bottle waited from production to pour. Probably could be classified as a Dauphin County Brown Double IPA. That's it. A DCBDIPA. Maybe the best I have ever had.
Today's society is becoming slowly more infatuated with the end of the world. The fear of the unknown has presented itself in human culture through different mediums throughout time.
Visit BA hmer and ask really nicely and you might get a Gosling's Punch, created by mixologist Renata Clingen in honour of Canadian actor Ryan Gosling.
The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago.
Last week I shared some of the highlights from the Brewers Association 's bi-monthly Power Hour session that Ray Daniels tweeted about throughout the hour, whose topic was " Craft Brewing & Mid-Year Category Sales Review ." As a BA member, I also was able to look at the presentation after the fact and a ' with the Brewers Association's permission a ...
If you're skipping my First Thursday show tonignt, you can learn more about beer, and hoppy beer at that, from the folks at Oregon Beer Odyssey ...here's the sked they sent: new school beer blog Oregon Beer Odyssey's Ben Edmunds is a classically trained brewer.
Are you in the mood for a crazy combination of theater, good brew and Deep South barbecue? If the answer is yes, then stop by Independent Musical Productions' fundraiser this afternoon called "Broadway, Beer & BBQ!" Local stars such as Jenny Stricklin Mahan, Darin Windham and Jay Poff will present Broadway-style performances for the evening ...
Events at O'Brien's Chop House in Lismore are very well done. Long tables with lots of random strangers , food served family style in large dishes, beer and wine on the tables for self service: it's all very relaxed, terribly well organised and enormous fun.
A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago.
"We tend to associate drugs that cure diseases with modern medicine," Armelagos says. "But it's becoming increasingly clear that this prehistoric population was using empirical evidence to develop therapeutic agents. I have no doubt that they knew what they were doing."
It's interesting that modern pharmaceutical companies use genetically-engineered Saccharomyces yeast to produce their drugs.
Peg's Cantina owner Peg Wesselink. The St. Petersburg restaurant scene has suffered through five of the most tumultuous years on record, thanks to the economic collapse and the oil spill.
Speymalt Whisky Distributors, which trades as Gordon & MacPhail, has boosted profits by almost 40% as the global economic downturn inspired burgeoning swathes of Scottish staycationers to purchase its brands in increasing quantities, it has said.
Beer garden, biergarten: We see both in this town. With summer fading and Oktoberfests forthcoming, it's a perfect time to try a beer garden's open-air seating and delicious drafts.
Gettin you ready for Labor Day weekend in true STaG Style...with food & skin...well, maybe its just Scotch & Tank Style! 1st Annual STaG Wienie Roast! 1st Annual STaG wienie roast this Friday morning in the Rock 102 parking lot starting at 7 a.m.! Free grilled hot dogs to the first 102 people! Come grab a wiener and watch Scotch body paint Classic ...
Forget the question of whether styles are real and essential. Forget the question of whether beer styles have been accurately described and traced historically. The real issue is that the names of beer styles are a mess and cause consumer confusion. Andy raises the question of the name of one black hoppy brew and seeks resolution for this very good reason:
Well, I believe that styles are important, if for no other reason than consumers can have some reasonable understanding of what they might be getting when they select a certain beer. It is in the hopes of creating some logical détente that I humbly offer the following suggestions for resolving this seemingly intractable debate.
He then goes on to ask us to choose from a number of choices that have been bouncing around beer nerd circles like Black IPA, India Black Ale, and Cascadian Dark Ale. There is only one problem. They all suck as names. Let's be clear. They aren't related to India and they aren't pale, as Andy notes, but also no one outside of the Pacific NW actually knows what "Cascadian" really means. Plus, while the picture of me from 1992 shows I have a great long love of the Vermont Pub and Brewery and the work of the late Greg Noonan, the idea of calling it "Noonan Black Ale" suffers from the same problem, needing to know some sort of back story. Also, there is a minor sort of beer - perhaps not a style at all - that you see from time to time called Dark Ale. What's it taste like? Dark? That's like something tasting ice cold.
We can do better. We can make sense. If the point of the name of the style is to inform let's get to the point. The beer is black and it is bitter. Keep it simple. So call it Black Bitter. I might even try the stuff if it was called a name as swell as that.¹
Most folks probably think of rum as the liquor you shoot on a dock while eating cracked conch, pour into vats with fruit juice, or watch getting mixed at one of those bars with the spinning daiquiri machines.
And you thought only wine could be paired with food. No, we're not talking about the way the subtle notes of ice-cold rocky mountain air in that Coors Light accentuate the cool ranch flavor in Doritos, not here at least.
Dave Lister would approve. (Although none of these particular combinations sounds appetizing to me.)
7. Peak Organic Espresso Amber Ale with Vanilla Ice Cream
6. Sea Dog Raspberry Wheat Ale with Chocolate Ice Cream
5. Michelob Honey Lager and Orange Sherbet
4. Michelob Honey Lager and Vanilla Ice Cream
3. Shock Top Belgian White and Orange Sherbet
2. Shock Top Belgian White and Vanilla Ice Cream
1. Sea Dog Raspberry Wheat Ale with Vanilla Ice Cream
You didn't need to be an aficionado to attend the whiskey master class last week at Angelina's Restaurant in Bonita, but if you weren't when you arrived, you certainly left as one.
Just in time for your unofficial end of the summer Labor Day cocktailing pleasure, we've finally completed our painstaking research into the quest for the perfect summer cocktail .
I dropped by the Beverage Castle on 56th Street in the Temple Terrace area of Tampa today to pick up up some Abita Restoration Ale and Rogue Dead Guy and was surprised to see that the drive-thru section has been enclosed .
The past decade has been a wild cocktail ride. We went from Carrie and the girls sipping cosmos to "Mad Men" downing old-fashioneds like theyre going out of style.
I came across this reference to the malting of wheat in a 1869 series of essays and reports called The Annals of Albany. Apparently one Peter Kalm, a professor from a Swedish university, visited North America from 1748 to 1750 making some sort of economic and natural resources survey. He made these notes on 15 June 1749:
They sow wheat in the neighborhood of Albany, with great advantage. From one bushel they get twelve sometimes : if the soil be good, they get twenty bushels. If their crop amounts only to ten bushels from one, they think it very trifling. The inhabitants of the country round Albany are Dutch and Germans. The Germans live in several great villages, and sow great quantities of wheat, which is brought to Albany : and from thence they send many yachts laden with flour to New York. The wheat flour from Albany is reckoned the best in all North America, except that from Sopus or Kingston, a place between Albany and New York. All the bread in Albany is made of wheat. At New York they pay the Albany flour with several shillings more per hundred weight, than that from other places. Rye is likewise sown here, but not so generally as wheat. They do not sow much barley here, because they do not reckon the profits very great. Wheat is so plentiful that they make malt of it. In the neighborhood of New York, I saw great fields sown with barley. They do not sow more oats than are necessary for their horses.
This passage was referenced in an earlier quotation I included in an Albany ale post back in April and cropped in June but it has me thinking. If they aren't even growing barley and are malting wheat in 1749, then it is likely the strong ale that Sir William Johnson of the Mohawk Valley, west of Albany, was drinking from 1750 maybe to his death in 1774 was a wheat beer. But by 1835, the brewers of the area responding to a set of questions posed by the New York State Senate all respond by saying that they use pure ingredients including barley malt. I don't catch any reference to wheat malt. The use of barley by this point is corroborated by this quotation from 1827.
So - am I slowly, clumsily chasing two Albany Ales? A strong wheat ale made by the Dutch up to the latter 1700s and then a strong barley ale in the early 1800s?
I am curious about something. I don't know that I am personally all that evangelical about beer. When I have the beer I like and the people I like together it is as much about exploring or, rather, explaining my good beer obsession as it is about recruiting new members. Nope, the day I actually believe in that beer community thing is the day I find myself preparing pamphlets for a meeting: "maybe you might like to come to our rally? Here. Have some literature."
But I do give things away. I don't seem to be able to keep a copy of Hops and Glory, for example. I think that Pete's book justifies a lot for me and neatly converts what otherwise can be considered my wee problem into something interesting, even brainy. Other than books, I seem to push Beau's Lug Tread and Pretty Things Jack D'or on people new to good beer and dubbels on the next steppers. Notice the spicy yeast, I say. The bread crustiness in the malt.
Do you do this? Why and how? What is your favorite small gift or sharing beer? What makes it work for you?
NY brewer chooses pigeon (aka "the sky rat") as its mascot.
Maybe there'll be a day soon when I will have something more than bullet points to post. Then again - maybe bullet points are the future of beer blogging.
Stina Persson is a Stockholm-based illustrator who has worked for the likes of Coca Cola, Absolut Vodka, Nylon Magazine, Marie Claire, Elle UK, Harper's Bazaar and much much more.
I don't know if you can draw conclusions from a trip just a couple of hours and laundry loads after hitting the driveway. Especially when you haven't even pulled out the digital camera to pretty up the post or to see if there are are any ideas in the images. So far these come to what I might still call a mind even after nine days and 2500 km:
Kids continue to be a great reason why I don't have to pay duties on the excess beers being hauled back into Canada. Who would figure that many bottles worth that much could be described as "oh, and I have some beer, too" when asked at the border?
Spending some more time in Albany to research the pre-lager ale thing would be quite fine.
Wegmans grocery chain continues to make astounding moves into being as good as any good beer store in central New York. Huge selection. They even had Pinkus hefe. Nutty.
I bought a 24 dollar beer. I can't believe that I did but it is true. Won't tell you what or where but we can all blame my loading of a counter when you have 8 minutes to buy a mixed case or two.
Beer is a good ice breaking gift but no one really wants to talk that much about it. I don't think I go on but in most situations good beer to guys with kids hanging off them is pretty much like good jam to a kid who likes toast. Tasty or not tasty is all that matters.
24 hours later, Aventinus is still striking me as great with a good steak.
I wonder whether the Sam Adams glass is the Segway of good beer? Works perfectly well but, upon reflection, no one seems to be following the example.
Nothing too profound. I was, after all, not really a beer trip - though I found myself taking photos of brew pubs I didn't even enter. I will have to think a little more about what that might mean.
OK, sure there are 700 wines at the subtitled restaurant dp, An American Brasserie - but they have Blue Point Lager, Dogfish 60 and Ommegang's Hennepin and others on tap as well as ten or twelve well selected bottles. The stash in the back of van might be better today at the end of our trip but I had an Aventinus with my NY strip loin. How many places can I do that?
Why were we there? Well, I got tired of hitting the highway hotels on my family trips and picked the moderately priced Hampton Inn in downtown Albany. How downtown? It sits behind the 1640s First Church of Albany. Is there an older continuous congregation in North America? A Catholic institution in Quebec perhaps? Is this now a Good Ecclesiastical Blog? No.
Anyway, the food was great and, after a surprisingly active drive through highway 2 across northern Massachusetts, taking on hairpins and deep gorges, it hit the spot. The kids were well mannered and the staff were good enough to jack up the background jazz a tad and give us a buffer of three tables or so. We do have a loud little one after all. Owner Yono Purnomo took time to say hello and was interested in the beery feedback.
This is the sort of thing we need to encourage. Not an island but a tide. A little good beer everywhere rather than a lot of good beer in a few places. After driving down the cliff east of North Adams, good beer and fine food was just the thing. Does it matter that they didn't have twice the taps or four times the bottles?
IT'S a whisky that hasn't been drunk in Scotland for over half a century. But in a few months, a select few will be able to taste the national drink the way it was originally imagined.
Aug 28th 2010 at 4:01PM Scotland plays host to dozens upon dozens of whisky distilleries, but only one on the isle of Orkney: Highland Park , which currently stands as the northernmost distillery in Scotland.
THE mention of Japanese whiskey was once most likely to recall Bill Murray's Suntory Time ad campaign in "Lost in Translation." But over the last decade, the drink's reputation has experienced a meteoric rise.
If you want to learn how to distill, but you don't exactly have $3,500 to spare for the American Distilling Institute's upcoming course , you're in luck.
Takers Reviewed by Josh Tyler Takers is the logical result of watching Heat over and over and over until your brain burns out, and then wondering what it would look like if the whole thing were remade as a Smirnoff Vodka commercial.
Joel Levesque, Moosehead's vice-president, said the demographic that drinks the most beer, New Brunswickers aged 19 to 25, is shrinking and despite sunny weather, summer sales are down. He said that had sparked a fierce competition among the big brewers. "You entice people to take your brand by offering something that they can't get from their brand regularly, for example a T-shirt in the box or in this case, it's $5 coupons," he said. Levesque said there would be more discounts as major labels try to clear shelves by Labour Day.
Interesting to note that the province's craft brewers have no such worries - not competition at all as they are selling every drop they brew. And the government booze monopoly notes that there has been no overall drop in beer sales this summer. So, does this mean that people there are content to use their market power to force decision making in the brew economy? In that respect, demanding discount coupons for industrial beer or supporting craft brewers in this sense is a similar consumer response. And remember, too, that this is a border province where people are happy to slip over to Maine or Quebec for a better beer selection.
Isn't it the new generation of drinkers just following its own sense of good taste and good value? Wouldn't it be nice it was actually an example of the consumer getting its way even in a monopolist overly regulated marketplace?
SNOW HILL -- Officials at Worcester County's liquor dispensary are reviewing prices for some of their top selling products after concerns were raised recently that the cost of a bottle of alcohol in the county is too high.
NEW YORK, Aug. 25 -- In the news release, CIROC, 'The Official Vodka of Summer' and Sean 'Diddy' Combs Grant Lucky Winner a Lavish Miami Holiday Getaway, issued 25-Aug-2010 by CIROC Ultra Premium Vodka over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the subheadline and first paragraph, first sentence, should read "North Carolina" rather than ...
Happy to have gotten the chance to have supper at The Portsmouth Brewery this evening here where Maine meets New Hampshire on the Atlantic shore. It's still cloudy and damp but at least the sheets of rain from earlier in the week are gone. Piling into a pub was just the thing.
I got the hefeweizen and a milk stout was ordered across the table. The hefe was rich and pineappled and the milk stout creamy chocolate. I had wanted to extend my relationship with the stout but the growler wasn't available. First, I was told oddly that milk stout can't handle being in a growler due to its low carbonation level. I gave my assurance that I was familiar with the style and a growler would be fine taking their caution into account. Then, coming back from checking, I was told there just weren't any growlers anyway. That made more sense.
We had their pulled pork, a veggie burger as well as chowders and a hummus dip. All were tasty and the service was friendly and fast. Best of all, the place was full of families like us with young kids and no one batted an eye. Prices were good with meals coming in at under ten bucks and the pints costing $4.50. I am consoling myself with the Red Sox and a Port Brewing Wipe Out IPA that I picked up the other day but a growler of the milk stout would have been pretty swell back here at the hotel.
There are summer beers for cooling you off in the sunshine. There are Octoberfest beers. There are imperial stouts for sipping as the winter weather howls beyond the doors. But what beer to have when the holiday is awash with rain?
I had a Mayflower porter last night which made a reasonable claim to filling that gap. No sour tang that I noticed but plenty of those dusty roasty things going on in the glass. Bought a six for $8.99 at Murphy's in Falmouth - an extraordinarily good value - and purchased within 35 miles of where it was made giving me that wholesome new age feeling of goodness that complying with 100 mile consumption edicts provide.
The BAers give it the love it deserves... but aren't porters a bit September? I know that' next week but you want to be certain about these things, right?
Calling all fashionistas, there is a "Swanky" boutique open for your overseas shopping pleasure.A Swank Consulting Firm, LLC and Ciroc Vodka presents London is Calling.A London Calling is a boutique that brings UK fashion to the heart of Midtown Atlanta for men and women at an affordable price.
Bar , the hip watering hole/creative clubhouse, where every two months a different artist is chosen to redesign the interior, will be hosting The Big Lebowski Night.
Not a full report yet but stopped at Kappy's in East Falmouth, Cape Cod yesterday to have a look. It gets good word of mouth on the review websites like RateBeer and certain deserves the attention. I had to ask at a grocery store about the rules for beer buying in Massachusetts. Unlike New York, you can buy beer in the same place you can buy wine and spirits. Unlike Maine, there is no alcohol in corner stores, grocery stores or gas stations.
I picked up a bottle of Pretty Things Beer + Ale Project's American Darling Batch Two, June 2010 for $7.99. The beer comes with a sub-title "Good Time Lager". I like how Pretty Things gives you lots to read and consider on their labels. A beer with a name that long deserves italics. At 7%, one of the better strong pale lagers I have had from a US craft brewer, it finishes with a big malty yeast rich statement... a statement that says "I am big and malty and yeasty rich." BAer's love it. I may have to have another while here given that this is local if by local we mean made in state.
I also picked up a Port Brewing Wipe Out IPA, again at 7%, for $5.99 which makes me wonder where there is a margin for profit after cross continent transport from California. A finely balanced hoppy... statement that again earns BAer love.
BELSONIC in association with ABSOLUT Vodka returns to Belfast's Custom House Square this August for ita TMs third year which promises to be bigger and better than before! Building on the massive success to date, this year's event will cement BELSONIC as a permanent fixture in Northern Irelanda TMs summer entertainments schedule.
Just Released: "Pernod Ricard SA - Financial and Strategic Analysis Review" 2010-08-23 02:28:38 - New Consumer Goods market report from GlobalData: "Pernod Ricard SA - Financial and Strategic Analysis Review" Pernod Ricard SA is one of the leading producers and distributors of wines and spirits in the world.
Fifteen or more years ago, Ontario's wine, spirits and imported beer monopoly carried a few bottles of Millbrook for one brief shining season and it has been something of a holy grail - or maybe a lost Atlantis - for us ever since looking back on those pre-kid, pre-mortgage days. Reasonably priced regional quality red wines that needed no excuse or explanation. So it was with glee that I realized that I could manufacture a route to Cape Cod that passed near the winery. We were in and out quickly having neither tour nor tasting. Kids will not put up with that sort of thing when there is a hotel pool on offer. They join the sack of goodies for sharing along with a growler of Ontario craft beer as well as one of our Rieslings and an ice wine. In the future, cars will come with wee wine and beer cellars for such moments.
It can get a bit dreary going through the Google news items every few days looking for a story that catches the eye. There are two classes of "beer news" that depress. First, the over regulation by a small committee of a simple consumable in a small town. Second, the petty crime that involves beer. Whether they are thefts, underage parties or beatings they make for grim reading - but today beer got one back on the hooligan and the thug:
A shopkeeper from Greater Manchester fought off armed raiders - by hurling cans of beer at them. Three masked men, armed with a gun, entered an off-licence in Lord Street, Radcliffe, at 1230 BST on Thursday. They threatened the 53-year-old shopkeeper with the gun but he threw the cans at them, a Greater Manchester Police spokesman said... Det Con Peter Graham, of Greater Manchester Police, said: "What this man did was courageous - in sharp contrast to the cowardly actions of the robbers themselves. "With no thought to his own safety he fought them off and they fled with their tails between their legs.
Fabulous! A small victory for the righteous place of beer in a civilized world. We need fewer stories like this but, of course, a few stories like this as well.
My old desk top Dell gave up yesterday. I am a couple of days away from a vacation and I feel like doing much the same. But what about giving up imported beer not for the cause of slackerdom but for a higher cause?
A majority of Canadians would give up imported beer or wine to reduce shipping and lessen the environmental impact of imported products, according to an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Postmedia News. About 67 per cent of Canadians polled said they'd relinquish imported beer -- what, no Heineken? -- and 56 per cent said they'd forgo foreign wine. "That's just a testament to the good beer that we produce in Canada, and increasingly, the good wine as well," said Sean Simpson, a senior research manager at Ipsos Reid.
While I am not the first in line for right-wing libertarian economic opinions, it seems to me to be reasonable to want to avoid the extra costs of travel, and not just the extra cash. But wouldn't it be nice if the reasons for forgoing the foreign were also based on the taste of what was in the glass? I can't imagine I am the only one who has been disappointed with the too well traveled ale. And I am not talking only of the extreme case of the beaten up beer. I recently have had a couple of beer from The Bruery from California which, though reasonably priced, I suspect had just gotten beyond their natural sphere of... influence? Maybe sphere of persuasion. I am left with a poor impression of the brewery but have to remember that the would not likely taste as they did closer to their home. And how much more the case for the green bottled, mass produced stuff.
So while it is swell to be green in an abstract sense, isn't it just as valid or even more so to pass on bottles that have been trucked a thousand miles or more because a more local one should always be fresher?
Officials at Worcester County's liquor dispensary are reviewing prices for some of their top-selling products after concerns were raised recently that the cost of a bottle of alcohol in the county is too high.
Stay tuned Sunday, August 29 from 5 pm to 8 pm PT and 8pm to 10 pm ET on NBC for the 62nd annual Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Primetime Emmy Awards.
The martini is one of the world's most popular drinks. Whether you use gin or vodka, the martini is a classic drink that can be mixed in a variety of ways.
With initiatives to privatize liquor sales on the November ballot, therea s a lot of talk of what would happen if state-run liquor stores ceased to exist, and the Mercer Island storea s future is in question.
Remember Albany ale? Last spring, I found a number of references to beer being shipped around the eastern seaboard from Newfoundland to New Orleans as well as references to it being sold in Texas and even California. Not sure what it was but there was plenty of evidence that it was something.
The other day I found something particularly helpful. In 1835, the Senate of the State of New York received the Report of the Select Committee... on the Memorial of Sundry Inhabitants of the City of Albany, in Regard to the Manufacture of Beer. Forty pages long, the Report consists of answers by brewers given in response to six questions posed by Senators intended to discover whether the brewers of Albany were brewing impure beer. Question 3 gets to the point:
3. Have coculus indicus, nux vomica, opium, laurel leaves, copperas, alum, sulphuric acid, salt of steel, aloes, capsicum, sulphate of iron, or copperas, or any other deleterious or poisonous drug or compound, or any or either of them, or any extract or essential property thereof, been, at any time, or in any quantity, directly or indirectly infused, mixed, put or used in beer, ale or porter, either when being manufactured or when preparing for market? If aye, at what time, in what quantities, and by whom?
Yikes. Yiks, too. Happy to report, however, the answers were a complete and fairly convincing denial of all charges, charges no doubt trumped up by some downstate faction. But in giving that answer, the brewers, brewery owners and staff give a lot of information about what was going on with brewing in and around the Hudson Valley at that time. I will return to this text on other topics but today, I want to look at what they say about hops and where that can lead us. Here are some of the comments:
James D. Gardner of Vassar and Co., Poughkeepsie stated: "I do not know the cause of that flavor, which gives to some beer the taste of aloes, unless it is owing to the use of strong hops which may have become damaged by packing, before sufficiently cured, or to unskilfulness in the operator, or to both combined."
James Wallace of the firm of J+U Wallace, Troy, NY reported: "There is a great variety in the flavor of hops: some have a strong, others a more delicate flavor, which readily accounts for the different flavors perceptible in the ales of the same establishment."
Thomas Read of Thom. Read and Co., Troy NY confirms he used 2.5 to 5 pounds of hops to a barrel and that they looked for the palest bales of hops to use in their pale ale.
What does that tell us? Well, no one describes varieties of hops even if they come in different colours, different degrees of curing and damage as well as different degrees of delicacy. We can fall into a trap thinking people in the past were not as perceptive as we are. Well, it is clear the brewers are looking for differences in hop characteristics with a professional eye but do not see varieties or breeds of hops as something available to them.
What were these hops? It is reasonable to suggest they were New York state hops. In Volume 50 of the American Journal of Pharmacy from 1877, there is an useful article setting out the importance of hop industry in central NY in the mid-1800s. In 1860, it states, each of four countries of central NY including Otsego produced more hops than all hops produced in the USA outside of New York state. Two varieties are mentioned by the pharmacists: "large and small cluster." In another report, this time the 1860 Report of New York State Cheese Manufacturers' Association, a trip to Otsego County is describe in which the hop plantings in every village are estimated. We are told at page 150 that at Richfield, about 75 miles west of Albany two varieties were grown:
Messrs. Allen & Hinds, the leading hop merchants of' the town, informed us that the past winter had been unfavorable to hop plantations in this section, and many yards had been badly winter-killed, more especially the older yards. There had been greater losses from this cause than in any previous year, but a considerable number of new plantations had been set, and it was believed the new yards would more than supply the place of those winter-killed. Two varieties of the hop are generally cultivated in town, the Pompey and Cluster. The Golding hop of England had been tried but did not succeed well, being liable to rust . The Pompey is a large coarse variety, a vigorous grower, but inferior to the Cluster in strength and flavor, and does not keep its color so well as the latter variety.
While there is still a village of Pompey and even a modern day effort in the re-establishment of the central NY of the hop industry there, we are unfamiliar with that strain. We do know about Cluster, however. Cluster is still with us, often described as an old American cultivar which is, notably, a hybrid of Dutch strains and wild indigenous ones. Hmm... where did the Dutch meet the wild in the US? The Albany area, of course.
There is more to know about Cluster and the need to more closely locate it in the early 1800s in an Albany brewer's log book but for now suffice it to say that when the brewers of Albany ale were talking about hops they were likely talking about the finest hops available locally, Cluster.
I brewed yesterday for the first time in well over a year; it was my first small-scale batch since 2005. The recipe was the Princess of Darkness Porter, a 13.5°P beauty of a black beer.
Apparently, I underestimated the sparge water volume. Instead of a 13.5°P beauty of a black beer, we have a 21°P beauty of an intense black beer: The Empress of Darkness.
As soon as I can get my hands on another carboy, we'll give it another try.
It doesn’t even matter is the boss or manager has chosen a glass of Merlot or beer, then offered it to the job-seeker or that the job-seeker shows no effect of alcohol. The negative association is so strong that, despite evidence to the contrary, there is a perception of impaired reasoning. “Prospective job candidates largely fail to anticipate the imbibing-idiot bias,” writes Rick from the University of Michigan and Schweitzer from the University of Pennsylvania. “Candidates in informal interview settings follow the boss’s lead, even when the boss chooses to consume alcohol. Our demonstration of a robust imbibing-idiot bias suggests that this form of mimicry is a mistake.” Why a mistake? “Consuming, or merely holding, an alcoholic beverage reduced perceived intelligence [even] in the absence of any actual reduction in cognitive performance,” they say.
"Imbibing-idiot bias"? How odd. Personally, I find T-totalers a bit weak in the rafters if you get my drift. But it is not really about who is wise and who is not. It is about who has control and what delusions they are acting under.
So, if I was a clever beer advocacy conspirator, I would get beer into the hands of the bosses (or, rather, if we are honest... middle management) to make sure that even if they were imbibing then they need to be viewing craft beer appreciation as an exception to the imbibing-idiot bias. How? A complex and overwhelming volume of knowledge making the middle manager uncomfortable, giving a clear impression that the job prospect has one up. We need scripts, people. Web pages filled with scripts for the job seeking beer fan. And then, sooner or later, we become the hiring classes. It could happen.
One of the most important things I ever learned in life was the importance of an index. Why? Well, if you are overwhelmed by information as I was in law school I learned that reading the index for each course's material (because that is what we called it: "material") was what was in the course and what was not. Andy (who I call "Andy" even though we have never met due to our rich, rewarding but inherently thin relationship in the nature of all internet relationships) flagged this about this his second book with his thoughtful post "Great American Craft Beer: What’s Included, What’s Not…" This is not a book about every US craft beer. It does not describe every beer bar. It is an effort to exemplify where US craft beer is now.
Which beings me to a quibble. I wish it was called "Great American Craft Beer 2010" as I would like this to be an annual book. "WHAT!!!" says Andy. Exactly. A superhuman effort would be required to make such a book an annual - but it is odd that no such thing exists for a country as rich and diverse as the USA. It also contains no profiles of brewers, no real history of beer in the land and no maps. The first 45 pages include a number of brief essays on the background of beer and at the end there is a bit about enjoying beer but it is the 200 pages in the middle that are the meat of the book - reviews of specific beers.
One might say that this is the section that will go stale the fastest but it takes a picture of where we are all now. And by "we" I mean anyone who has an interest in US craft beer at this time when there are so many false pretenders, established giants, tiny interesting voices and weird experimenters out there on the beer store shelves. This is a golden era and this book captures it. From beers as pervasive as Magic Hat #9 to rarities like Three Floyds Dark Lord of which Andy writes:
At the far horizon of the Imperial Stout Spectrum lurks a beer whose flavor and motor oil consistency have made it perhaps the most geeked out craft beer on the planet. Three Floyds sells much coveted bottles of its near-mythical Imperial Stout on one day per year, appropriately called Dark Lord Day.
Note: that is about half the whole entry. Andy's writing is economical, vivid and accurate. You will see that throughout the book. We can only hope that it is at least a first edition if not an annual affair.
The advice so far has been great. Now we are working on the route - it looks like we are heading from Binghamton NY to Cape Cod through Connecticut and Rhode Island. Looking for real makers of apple cider or pear perry. Pete got me thinking. Any ideas?
I forgot to mention the status of the Beer Me! smartphone app. The Palm version is still 1.0.3, and the Android version is still not ready for testing. To be honest, I haven't been able to work on either of them since April or May.
Interestingly, even though my app has been downloaded 929 times (including 184 paid), I haven't received any feedback at all. It's a bit difficult knowing what features to improve or develop if I don't know what's being used.
Anyway, I'll resume work on the Android version in the next week or three.
A fun way to spend the evening. Beau's had their quarterly business meetings in town and they all came over for a few hours of opening bottles - including the father, son and a sizable host. We nine started well with two saisons and biere de garde: Hennepin, Jack D'or and 3 Monts. Batch 10 from Pretty Things was much better than the more recent bacth 13. Lesson: let it sit.
Things got a little wobbly with three Quebec takes on Belgian white beer. We thought RJ's Coup de Grisou was fine and a good value beer. And Barbier from L'Ilse D'Orleans was not well understood given its level of rich maltiness. But Blanche from Charlevoix was a revelation in nasal interaction with beer. Freesia. Fabulous.
Three more bottles were opened. Trade Winds Tripel from the Bruery was a bit muddled with a nice aroma. Too much of the malt ball for the style or maybe just our level of interest given the other choices. Next, the Poperings Hommel Ale, as always, was amazing. The greatest pale ale in the history of the planet? Could be.
Then the taxi was called for the eight to be off. It was time. The mosquitoes had begun to bite. Just time to open a quart of Drie Fontienen's Oude Gueze, one of the few beer that could follow a Poperings. Like any divider of people, some were not with it. They got the first taxi. The rest of use stood on the driveway, waiting on the warm quiet summer night sipping. Then the taxi and then they were off and away.
'It was a dark and rainy night in St. Augustine and I had just slipped in to my favorite martini bar for a cool gin with a splash of vermouth with an olive.
There's been a lot going on over the past few weeks, so I haven't been getting much done on any given project.
I started a new job as the "Staff Brewer" for a new Hy-Vee store in Millard in June. I pick the craft beers and imports that we carry, and I host the beer dinners and tasting events. You can find us on Facebook.
Paris and I judged at the Buffalo County Fair homebrew competition, and likewise at the Nebraska State Fair.
We wrapped up our nine-week BJCP Exam Preparation course last week. A handful of the attendees (including myself) will probably take the exam in Lincoln in November.
I've been building Öchslebräu, my new homebrew setup. It should be operational by Sunday or Monday.
I'm about three weeks behind on the Beer Me! updates, with more than 140 in the queue. I'll start hacking away at them this afternoon.
Dear Rob Tod. I have realized that I don't think I really care about that corked 750 ml bottle after all:
We have been doing cork-finished beers for a number of years and early on we wanted to come out with a lower-alcohol, pretty full-flavored but around 4.5%- to 5%-alcohol beer. It was called the Allagash Special. That was in a cork-finished 750 mL bottle and it didn’t sell in that package. It cost us a lot to make it and cost us a lot to package in that bottle, so we had to charge a lot for it. We got beat up for it and people didn’t buy it. I think people want higher alcohol with the bigger, cork-finished special releases. I’ll welcome it when the consumer will buy those lower alcohol, fuller-flavored beers in that package. I think it will be great.
Why in "that package"? Look, I don't want to suggest Rob is the moving force behind corked bottles but he does give a very good quote. And he takes a question well. I was fortunate enough to catch a moment him when I popped into the Allagash retail shop last summer when I mentioned my unhappy reaction to one of the annual editions of Victor. He was patient and listened, not indicating at all that he was staring at a sunburnt Canadian beer blogger somewhat smelling of fried clams and ice cream with a child tugging at his arm who really didn't make that much sense. It was, rather, Ron Jefferies who, when he was kind enough to give me the best part of an hour at the end of a Friday, I asked about the price implications of the corked bottle. I was shocked.
So, in telling you about the only two times I have ever talked to actual US craft brewers my point is this: the bottle may well add two bucks to the price of a beer. If the point of a session is to comfortably have more than one (or even more) why do I want to see so many dollars dedicated to filling the recycling bin? If Knut of Norway can have a cheap and cheery Rodenbach from a can, what beer shouldn't be packaged in that consumer friendly format? Even if not in a can, if you want to to sell your session beers please make them reasonably affordable to buy. Like a bottle of Allagash White or Jolly Pumpkin Bam. h/tLew.
Baja fish tacos at the 4th Street Grille. Regular price, $7.95; happy hour price, $5.95. Since 1992, the 4th Street Grille has been serving unique dishes crafted with care and attention to detail.
Nice find, but true beer geeks want to know: whose beer was in the bottle? There's no mention of the brewery in the article, and no picture of the label.
An empty beer bottle that is as old as the state Capitol has been found tucked inside a vent in the building in Pierre.
Highway Patrol Trooper Brent Saucerman, who works security in the building, spotted the Blatz beer bottle stuck in plaster inside the third-floor vent last month. He removed the vent, cleared away the plaster and pulled out the bottle dated June 30, 1906. The Capitol was built from 1905 to 1910.
"When they talk about people drinking in the Capitol at that point in time, that would not have been an unusual occurrence because the attitudes for alcohol consumption were a whole lot different before Prohibition," Kolbe said. "People would have brought a beer to the job and had it with lunch."
Thanks to Jay Brooks for posting this press release from the American Beverage Institute. It sounds like MADD is finally starting to get what they deserve, and the release itself is so full of MADD-bashing goodness that I'll post it in its entirety here.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving Downgraded to a ‘D’ by Charity Rating Guide
Poor Fundraising Practices and Too Little Focus on Victim Services Earn MADD Low Grade
(July 26, 2010)
WASHINGTON – The American Institute of Philanthropy’s (AIP) Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report has downgraded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to a “D” rating on a A-F scale in its August 2010 report.
“Under the leadership of CEO Chuck Hurley, MADD further diminished its focus on victim services and educating Americans about the dangers of drunk driving, instead pushing anti-drinking, anti-alcohol public policies,” said American Beverage Institute (ABI) Managing Director Sarah Longwell. “The public needs to realize that MADD isn’t the same group it was 20 years ago.”
MADD has consistently received low ratings from the Charity Rating Guide due to its poor fundraising and spending practices.
According to the AIP, it should cost most charities $35 or less to raise $100. In some years, MADD has spent nearly double that amount. The AIP also says most highly efficient charities are able to spend 75 percent or more of total expenses on charitable programs. In some years, MADD has spent as little as 57 percent on programs. In 2008, MADD spent almost $30 million on salaries and fundraising, leaving just 1/3 of its budget available for charitable work and victim services.
Another charitable giving guide, Charity Navigator, gives MADD an overall rating of 1 out of 4 stars. Charity Navigator reserves this embarrassing basement-level for a charity that “fails to meet industry standards.”
During Hurley’s tenure at MADD, the organization’s revenue declined while Hurley and other officers and directors saw their salaries increase - a whopping 56 percent. In contrast, MADD’s revenue declined nearly one-quarter over the same period. And MADD’s spending on community programs—what a charity should be about—dropped by 17 percent. In 2009, MADD had to lay off 50 employees nationwide—15 percent of its workforce—a move that cut much of the organization’s victim advocacy work.
These financial changes reveal a shift in MADD’s mission. In the words of its own founder Candy Lightner: MADD “has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I had ever wanted or envisioned … I didn't start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with the issue of drunk driving.”
Longwell continued: “MADD’s anti-alcohol agenda includes advocating for alcohol detectors in all cars, sobriety checkpoints and sky-high alcohol taxes. By spending on these new priorities, MADD has diverted money from programs created to help the victims of drunk driving and get dangerous drunk drivers off the roads.”
The American Beverage Institute (www.AmericanBeverageInstitute.com) is an association of
restaurants and on-premise retailers committed to the responsible serving of adult beverages.
Source: American Beverage Institute
Contact: The American Beverage Institute, 202-463-7110
I like the BrewDog beers that I've tasted, but Erik at Top Fermented hits the nail on the head with respect to the recent "The End of History" hullaballoo:
What’s the point of spending your time creating a beverage that nobody will ever drink?
and
Is something exclusive worth having if it’s specifically designed to be exclusive?
Read Erik's excellent dissection of the issue at Top Fermented.
We’ve done a small revamp on our maps over the past week; changing the way they look and altering some of the ways that you may use the maps. We have tried our best to only add features and not remove any that you might be already used to. It may take you a few map viewings to get used to the changes but we feel that you will enjoy the maps more after seeing what we have made available.
First off, the maps now have a nice blue top navigation bar. This navigation takes the place of the floating “main menu” from the older version of the maps. You’ll see that we’ve added the location lookup on the far right of the screen and we have more space up there to add more links to important parts of the site.
Map Legend
In the top left, you’ll see our logo and the hideable legend should appear pretty much like it used to. You can still click the “x” to hide and you can click the names/pins in the legend to hide specific types of locations.
City Map Selection
When looking for a city map, you’ll realize that they are now grouped by regions and hovering over a region will produce a flyout dropdown allowing you to select the city you are interested in.
Registered User Functions
People viewing the maps that are not registered and logged into the site will often get a reduced number of features. If in the top right you see the “login/register” links, this means you are not logged in. Click the links to do so.
When you are logged in, on many of our maps (City Maps and Proximity Maps) you will get extra links via little green and red colored buttons that will allow you to only see locations you have reviewed or locations you haven’t reviewed on a certain map. These links will allow you to plot the next location you may want to visit or help to find a location that you may have forgotten to review.
Toggles and Traffic
Note: If you are looking for the toggles to turn on or off the location list or the legend, those are up in the top right under the map selectors (view image above). We have also added the “traffic” layer to many of the maps, allowing you to plan your trips a bit better.
We hope you enjoy these new features and the new styling of the maps. Please let us know what you think by leaving a comment here or by posting in the forums (or replying to us on twitter @beermapping).
We’ve updated the applications page here at Beer Mapping to inform people of the current mobile apps using our API. Currently Beer Mapping does not have an official application for any device.
All applications are developed by third party developers and the apps listed here are built off of Beer Mapping’s Application Programming Interface (API). This means that if you decide to purchase one of these apps, you are giving money to the third party developer and your money is not going to Beer Mapping. These developers spent time creating these apps and in most cases the applications are priced at an extremely reasonable fee.
My machine is running again, with an upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 thrown into the deal.
The good news: the source code for my Palm app survived, as did the Android version, so work on those can continue.
The bad news: I lost all of the "Beer Me!" updates and comments that were sent between 2010-06-28 14:47:52 and 2010-07-01 19:15:00 PST. If you submitted any updates or comments during that time, please try to send them again. Thanks!
My computer crashed this weekend in the most literal sense: it fell on the floor and broke. I'm cleaning up the pieces and trying to recover what I can.
It looks like I lost all of the beerme.com email, so if you sent an update on or after June 25, you should probably send it again.
Worse, I may have lost some or all of the source code for my Beer Me! smartphone app. That would be a Very Bad Thing Indeed.
One of the Gulf Coast's most famous breweries has crafted a new beer and promised to send a portion of the money earned on each bottle to oil spill relief efforts.
But Abita's Save Our Shores Charitable Pilsner won't be sold in two of the four states affected.
The beer is 7 percent alcohol, too potent to be sold in Mississippi, and it's served in a 22-ounce bottle that's too big under Alabama law.
"Because of a stupid, archaic, nonsensical restriction on container size, Alabamians are being prevented from taking part in a tasty way to help out the entire Gulf Coast."
Read the whole story at al.com. And if Abita's SOS beer is available in your state, buy it.
Anheuser-Busch was the official beer sponsor of the last World Cup, held in Germany in 2006. They didn't think their cunning plan all the way through...
When Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, the country was awash in fuzzy feel-good patriotism. Only one thing threatened to ruin the party – crappy American beer.
In the months running up to the football tournament, panic spread through the nation after it emerged that the US beverage corporation and FIFA sponsor Anheuser Busch would only allow its official World Cup beer Budweiser to be sold at the matches. Rumours even circulated of a 1-kilometre-wide Bud-only zone around the stadiums.
Germans became gripped with such a bad case of “beer fear” that the sensationalist newspaper Bild even declared: "Watery Yankee beer in the 12 stadiums? No way!"
In the end it didn't happen because the makers of the German beer Bitburger raised objections when Budweiser attempted to shorten its name to "Bud" for World Cup advertising because of a legal dispute with a similarly named Czech brewery. This, Bitburger decided, was much too close to its marketing nickname "Bit."
Fearing a wider fiasco as German football fans raged against having American beer forced upon them, Anheuser Busch eventually relented and agreed to sell Bit next to Bud at all official World Cup stadiums and events.
This time around, Anheuser-Busch InBev is the official beer sponsor, and they've taken a more global tack.
When Argentina hits the pitch, viewers will see ads for Argentine beer Quilmes. Brazilian matches will feature Brahma. Germans fans will see ads for Hasseröder, an old East German favourite from a small town in Saxony-Anhalt.
But why not one of the better-known German beers in AB InBev's portfolio such as Beck's, Franziskaner, or Löwenbräu?
Hasseröder's official reasons offer an insight into the ruthless targeting of market strategies. "We're a proper man's brand, and we represent male friendship," says spokeswoman Claudia Klehr. "At the same time we are among the ten most famous sports sponsors in Germany." Hasseröder sponsors a number of different sports teams, including the Bundesliga club Hannover 96.
Klehr declines to compare the new strategy to 2006, but she says, "Anheuser Busch InBev has found an intelligent way to use the FIFA sponsoring rights as efficiently and synergistically as possible."
The article goes on to mention the great variety of German beers and the history of Hasseröder Brauerei. Read the whole story at The Local.
Wisconsin has a long-time reputation of being "Beer Central". Now Lucy "Beer Cook" Saunders has put together a guide to visiting Wisconsin's centers of beer.
Just as Napa and Sonoma offer wine tours, we have our beer meccas.
Did you know that Wisconsin is home to more than 70 brewing companies and brewpubs? Some 20 of them will be pouring at the first-ever Wisconsin Brewers Guild festival - the Summer Solstice - at Bayshore Town Center in Glendale on June 26 (www.welcometoglendale.com).
Better still, it's fun to visit the breweries, cafés and taverns that celebrate craft and imported specialty ales. To explore the places that put pints on the state map, here are eight beer meccas within a day's drive of Milwaukee (view on an interactive map here).
Lucy goes on to list destinations in these areas:
Milwaukee
Lake Mills
Madison and New Glarus
Mineral Point
Chippewa Falls, Dallas and Downsville
Ashland and Bayfield
Stevens Point and Wausau
Amherst and Waupaca
Good destinations all, even though Green Bay and Appleton are conspicuously absent. Still, I encourage you to visit the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and start planning your trip.
I just received word that the first-ever International Beer Bloggers & Online Media Conference is scheduled for this November in Boulder, Colorado. If you're interested in attending, you can get more information at http://beerbloggersconference.org/. It sounds like they're expecting space to fill up fast!
This is some of the saddest news I've read in a long time.
Last weekend, The Ironclad Hotel, the only pub in Marble Bar, Western Australia, closed its doors for good. The town, with a population of just 300, is barely a dot on the map of the vast Pilbara region, and has no dedicated off-licence. Supermarkets in Australia are not allowed to sell liquor.
Temperatures in the town regularly top 113F and the average maximum temperature exceeds normal human body temperature for six months of the year.
So thirsty residents in search of a "tinnie", or cold beer, were forced to drive more than an hour by car to Nullagine. But now that pub is running low on supplies.
Here's a new way to search Beer Me!: by geographical location.
The new search field lets you look up breweries near an address, city, state, whatever. Typing in the field presents you with a list of locations that match what you've typed.
Clicking on one of the list items takes you to a page listing the twenty closest breweries to that location.
I'll be adding a map to that page shortly, and I'll also add this search function to the Beer Me! mobile app.
One thing about typing a location: if the place you're looking for doesn't show up as a partial match, keep typing. For example, lovely Danbury, Connecticut doesn't appear in the list until you get all the way to "danbur".
Beer Me! mobile version 1.0.3 is now available at the Palm app store. I made a couple of changes that should smooth out the search results display and make it easier to use.
Beer Mapping and Hop Cast have joined forces to present this awesome event at Small Bar Fullerton. There will be barrels of rare beer poured as well as a couple of firkins sitting on the bar. Our goal was to get local breweries to bring us something that is rarely seen on tap.
We hope to see you there! Wear your Beer Mapping t-shirt (or make you own!) and we’ll buy you a pint!
The neuroscientists from the University of Southampton's School of Biological Sciences studied the simple brains of C. elegans worms, which have a makeup similar enough to the human brain when intoxicated or dependent on alcohol.
Basically, when a worm brain (similarly, a human brain) is exposed to drinking over a long period of time, it becomes accustomed to certain intoxication levels. The brain experiences a series of withdrawal symptoms when the drinking stops.
When the worms were given small doses of alcohol during their withdrawal their irritable behaviors eased. Unfortunately, this approach to combating a hangover also increases the chances for alcohol dependency.
You and your pet Caenorhabditis elegans can read the whole article at LiveScience.
Sign On San Diego provides this welcome followup to the San Diego brewery tasting room scandal:
The great beer bust of 2010 has gone bust, as the county Department of Environmental Health this week reversed itself and tasting rooms reopened at four local microbreweries.
[...]
The county then dropped the matter. “We got clarification, and we decided to allow the state jurisdiction,” Gath said.
So the tasting rooms are back in business.
“As long as we’re operating the way we were, we’re OK,” said Peter Zien, AleSmith’s brewmaster. “I lost a weekend’s worth of business in the tasting room and no one has apologized for that, but I guess that’s the way it goes.”
Ok, we’ve been showing up on Google search results for locations and other things for a while now. That isn’t big news. We’ve been the top result for US Breweries since sometime in 2006. Cool, but not really that helpful for bringing new eyes to the site.
Well, the big news today is that we now appear to be showing up in the “reviews” section for some beer locations when people are searching Google Maps. In our opinion, this is a pretty big deal.
As you can see from the image above (click image to see live google result page), they are pulling contents from one of our reviews for the location and displaying it for people searching for that location. We’re sharing this honor with other sites like Citysearch, Metromix, Urbanspoon, Insiderpages and Google’s own in house review system.
We’re excited about this and will probably be searching google all day looking for new examples! Please let us know in the comments if you find any!
We’re currently suffering from some site redirect issues due to server errors.
We are working on the problems and we hope to have the server back up and running the way it is supposed to very soon. Many links on the site will not work, the forums seem to be cooperating properly, but Location Lookup and many other important functions are broken at this time.
Beer Mapping member SiB57 has created an iPhone application that will help you Find Craft Beer.
Check out the official site for the Find Craft Beer application at findcraftbeer.com
This application uses the Beer Mapping API to find Breweries, Brewpubs, Beer Bars, Stores or Homebrew Shops near your current location. The app displays review scores from Beer Mapping and includes links to the mobile version of our site, in case you wish to read more reviews for a specific location. Click the image below to see more screenshots of the application in action.
The Find Craft Beer application will also enable you to use a city or zip code as the starting point for a search, using options to narrow down results by location type.
Google has declared this week to be a week where they dedicate time and energy to educating people about the mobile functions and features that they offer. We here at Beer Mapping have also put a lot of effort into giving our users tools to use while on the go. So we thought we could spend a few minutes educating or reminding you about what we have available on the mobile side of things.
We have a full fledged mobile site (beermapping.com/m) with search, forums, reviews and even proximity functions available. And our system also works with all recent versions of google’s mobile mapping software. If this interests you, check out our Mobile Functions page.
The Mobile Lookup page is simply a scaled down version of our regular location search functionality here on the main site. We’ve set up our Mobile Lookup page to be a very easy to remember url: http://beermapping.com/m (the M is for mobile).
We also have set up some Mobile Map functionality that is now linked from the Mobile Maps Lookup page. You can read more about the Mobile Map functions click the following link: Mobile Maps and Applications
Reviews, score breakdowns, weather, traffic and maps are all available through the beermapping.com/m url. We’ve even included a tiny version of the regular forums as well if you like to participate in discussions while on the go. As far as we are aware, there isn’t a beer based website around that is providing the level of mobile functionality that The Beer Mapping Project is giving you. Recently we’ve also integrated Twitter into our mobile application.
If you have any ideas about how we can better help flesh our our mobile interfaces, please let us know in the comments. We know that many of you will mention or ask about iPhone apps or applications for other platforms. Well, there are some applications under development for iPhone, Android and possibly Blackberry. The only one that we have been working on in-house is the Android application. You can watch a teaser video of it here.
Note: Even though our beers are mobile, we would still like for you to be responsible and avoid drinking and driving. We encourage our users to add any public transportation options to their reviews and if there is no public transportation readily available, please find a designated driver.
Beer Mapping got a mention in the August 2009 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine! We’ve taken a few small pictures of the article (entitled “12 Sexy, Totally Free Dates”), but if you would like to read more; this issue is currently on the newsstands. As you can see from the picture, we are mentioned on page 120.
We would like to thank the author of the article, Molly Triffin, for including us. In honor of this article, we would also like to make a list of 12 Sexy Ways to use Beer Mapping!
You came, you saw and you seem to have voted. The Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery chain was the winner of our little informal poll. With 18% of the votes, they easily defeated the second place spot which was shared by Pizza Port and McMenamins.
Below are the rest of the top ten spots in the poll.
Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery | 43 Votes | 18%
Pizza Port Brewing Company | 29 Votes | 12%
McMenamins | 29 Votes | 12%
Iron Hill Brewery | 24 Votes | 10%
Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurants | 17 Votes | 7%
The Beer Mapping Project wants to know what your favorite Brewpub chain is? Scroll down to vote in the poll for your favorite.
We’re using a fairly loose definition of a Chain Brewpub. We decided that the locations all need to have brewing equipment and a Brewpub Chain needs to have 3 or more locations in order to make our poll. Wikipedia’s definition of a chain store is:
“Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses.”
They don’t actually state a number, but we decided that if you have three or more brewing pub/restaurant locations under the same name or branding then we could classify them as a chain of brewpubs.
Anyway, enough with the fine print… Vote! (names in poll are randomly assigned)
This Poll has closed!
If your favorite Brewpub Chain got left off the list please post in the comments. If you want to see how we came up with this list, read this forums thread.
Johnnie Walker Blue Label - $200 bottle of Scotch, this was an awesome night where we drank everytime someone said a curse word in the movies we were watching. At the heart of Blue Label™ is Royal Lochnagar™ a rare malt distilled near Balmoral, the Queen's holiday home. Around 15 other mature and precious whiskies are added to balance Blue Label™ perfectly - 'a blend that cannot be beat' (Alexander Walker, 1888).
Pierre Ferrand Excellence 1971 - $300 bottle of Cognac, This was my favorite bottle so far. This special Grande Champagne cognacs are bottled in a replica of the bottle used by Cognac Ferrand in 1900. The heavy glass bottle with a deep punt is etched with the words “Cognac Pierre Ferrand” and “Memoire”. A hand-written parchment label shows the vintage. Each small lot has been certified by a Huissier de Justice, the most respected level of authentication under French law. Each bottle is numbered and signed by the cellarmaster and comes in a dark mahogany box adorned with an etched brass plate. A certificate of authenticity accompanies each bottle.
Cragganmore 12 - "One of Speyside's greats. Elegant and austere. Gradually, almost reluctantly, reveals itself. The most fragrant of whiskies: delicate, herbal, flowery. A palate blossoming with flavours, and a long, lingering, finish." Michael Jackson, whisky writer and expert.
2008 scandalz.net
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
All applications are developed by third party developers and the apps listed here are built off of Beer Mapping’s Application Programming Interface (API). This means that if you decide to purchase one of these apps, you are giving money to the third party developer and your money is not going to Beer Mapping. These developers spent time creating these apps and in most cases the applications are priced at an extremely reasonable fee.
