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.
Boston Beer Co.'s fourth-quarter profit more than doubled as it shipped out more beer and its profit margin grew and write-downs fell, the company said Tuesday after the market closed.
Choo has reminded me that I was a fan of her own personal Beer Spot long before I recently discovered The Beer Spot News. As promised, here's a picture of the Original Beer Spot.
Click on the picture to experience the Beer Spot in all its glory.
Wow. A Pub Minister for Britain! Great! Has he got a Ministry staffed with people who do work? No... but he has a ministerial task force, drawing on five Whitehall departments. Is he actually given the time and resources to make change? Well, there is that thing coming up... that election. The Daily Mail notes:
A new government will be in place in less than 12 weeks, Labour or not, and Chancellor Darling is expected to unveil the last Budget of this parliament on March 23. This isn't time enough for Healey to win a campaign to Save the British pub.
If this was such a great idea, why didn't the UK government introduce it in the previous 675 or so weeks since they gained power? Right now they trail in the polls by 5% to 7% but, to be fair, that is half of what they were behind by at Christmas. And is he the man for the job? While 5 or 6 pubs are closing a day 130 families lose their homes a day in the UK. Healey, who is also Minister of Housing, has described repossession as 'the best option' for struggling homeowners according to The Daily Mail.
Sure, it's just politics heading into a tough election but that is the point - it's just politics heading into a tough election.
THE BEER, it is a-changin'. There's no better evidence of that than the fiasco that erupted last week when a phalanx of State Police barged into three local bars known for their beer selection and found themselves mouthing the words on an incomprehensible variety of strange labels with unpronounceable names.
Designer Malini Ramani, in association with Grey Goose Vodka, showcased four different resort collections on Day Three of Lakme Fashion Week and had four showstoppers, modelled by Mehr Jesia, Maheep Kapoor, Bhavna Pandey -- and Ramani herself! The showing was woven around the theme 'A Journey of Love' -- a free-spirited woman's travels to the ...
Carlsberg has signed deals to split brewing of its Tetley's beer in the UK between Molson Coors and Marston's. For the first time, brewing of Tetley's cask ale will be moved outside of the UK county of Yorkshire, after the closure of Carlsberg's brewery in Leeds in 2011.
Glenn Instapundit Reynolds explains why the U.S. government is in such deep Schlitz with the people it supposedly serves: The once-heady brew of American freedom has become watery and unsatisfying.
The owners of three upscale tap rooms in Philadelphia are crying foul after state police raided their bars and confiscated thousands of dollars in expensive lagers and ales.
Ah, bullet points. When you haven't got enough for a post there's always enough for bullet points. They are the putting green to a round of 18. The hot dog to the BBQ. But enough of my lazy blogger admissions and let's see what is going on out there:
Craft beer in the US had another good year in 2009 according to the trade association, Brewers Association. Apparently, craft brewers sold 9,115,635 barrels of good beer. The Brewer's Association works with an annual production of less than 2 million barrels. So does this mean when the next brewer goes over the 2 million barrel mark that we will get a press release stating that there has been a 20% drop in craft beer sales? Sam Adam's PA plant has about that much capacity alone. So, that'll happen soon, right?
Speaking of the state both south and west of New York, I hear that there's been some hoosegow raids down in Pennsylvania.Brewer's may be getting a chill. Lew's smoking mad. Jack's losingit. Andy makes a valid point, however. I wonder what would happen in Ontario of un-permitted beers were being sold? Likely a license suspension. Yet it does seem like a silly law.
Ticker alert: Guam now has locally-branded beer. Everyone else: as you were.
I don't understand the panic at the Beer Wars blog. Unless it's a dead cat bounce. Even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from far enough. It's a stock market phrase. But I don't think this is really a dead cat bounce at all as this is the point: "The choice is yours. You can keep complaining about what’s wrong with the film (don’t get me started on Avatar) or you can embrace it (flaws and all) and help spread the word about craft beer to a whole new audience." Actually, no - I don't have to make that choice. I can ignore the work, however well intentioned, as an ineffective advocate for the cause. But is it?
Perhaps Pennsylvania needs true leaders of vision like the UK's Gareth Epps, candidate Liberal Democratic Party for Reading East. He declared "I am proud to be speaking up for community pubs, local brewers and consumers." Hmmm... is that actually possible? Can one stand up for corner stores, the local bakers and bread eaters? Maybe you can. I would also like to point out that he works for a major infrastructure project, specialising in community consultation and I have no idea what that means.
That's a fair bit going on for a quiet late winter night. It's not all quiet. Ron's off somewhere at a festival where he is drinking stouts and lambics. Sounds alright by me.
The nation's beverage sector continues to attract foreign investment despite the hangover from the global recession, according to the market research website www.companiesandmarkets.com . In its Viet Nam Food and Drink Report for the second quarter, released last Friday, the website said a number of major global brewers had recently announced fresh ...
Brookings has become the latest South Dakota city to allow brewpubs. The city council has passed an ordinance allowing bars and restaurants to brew beer on their own premises.
Breweries of the Heineken Ceska republika group produced 2.62 million hectolitres of beer last year, down 5.2 percent year-on-year, the company's spokeswoman Katerina Eliasova told CTK.
A number of recent requests for Asian beers got me wondering...is your favorite imported beer really imported? Is it really from where you think it's from? So I did some label research on the beers at the store.
Sapporo
Brewed and bottled by Sapporo Brewing Company, Guelph, Ontario, Canada (Sleeman Brewing & Malting is owned by Sapporo.)
Kirin Ichiban
Brewed under the strict supervision of Kirin's brewmaster by Anheuser-Busch, Inc., Los Angeles, CA (Yes, Kirin's brewmaster undoubtedly spends every waking moment in Los Angeles rather than in Kirin's breweries in Japan.)
Kingfisher
Brewed & bottled by Kingfisher Brewing Co., Saratoga Springs NY under the technical supervision of United Breweries Limited, Bangalore, India (Olde Saratoga Brewing Co. is owned by Mendocino Brewing Co. / Kingfisher Brewing Co.)
Smithwick's
Brewed by Guinness & Co., Dublin, Ireland Guinness Draught
Brewed in Ireland by Guinness & Co., St James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland (No surprises there, but compare them to the next two.)
Harp Lager
Brewed and bottled by Guinness Brewing Company, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada (Moosehead.)
Guinness Extra Stout
Brewed and bottled by Guinness Brewing Company, Toronto, Canada (Labatt? Molson Coors?)
You get the idea. Is it right or wrong? I've never been a fan of breweries hiding behind fake names: Unibev, AC Golden, Plank Road, etc. If you're proud of your product, you'll put your own name on it. Then again, if a brewery has their beer brewed closer to where it will be consumed, the drinker gets fresher beer.
But in the USA, Sapporo and Kirin are as Japanese as I am.
Flying Fish Brewery, the Cherry Hill beermaker known for its English- and Belgian-styled craft brews, will launch the latest in its series of beers named for New Jersey Turnpike exits Monday at Coppermine Pub in North Arlington.
After the MA rzenbier, the zesty autumn rye beers, and brews made at hop-harvest time , the weather got colder, and the beers here at Serious Beer HQ got darker.
I am delighted that samples from Deschutes get through the solid mile high maple soaked wall that is the US-Canadian border but disconcerted nonetheless. Should I be drinking a beer that says "best before 17 October 2010" or should I not? In this weekend's spirit of not being so anal about these things let's open it and see what we find.
At 11% it is hard to argue that this is not infanticide. The beer could easily have laid in the stash for a decade. It pours an inky mahogany with a mocha rim and foam. On the nose, dark chocolate as well as some mineral notes of coal on top. Rich and supple in the mouth, it is a light dark chocolate liqueur yet with a grainy texture that speaks to its making. Had I waited, it might have been so much more complex but at this young point in its career it has a freshness that is quite compelling. Still, over time acids would arise in a year or so which would cut the chalkiness of the finish and complement the acids from the hops. The sweet of the malt lingering there would likely break down into a more interesting collection of flavours than the present hint of icing sugar. Yet it is compelling and I am grateful for the efforts that got it to me.
Had an email from a chap called James Saxon....would urge you all to read and support his voyage of discovery please "This April and May I shall be taking all forty-nine of Scotland's malt distillery tours and travelling by bicycle between them.
MOORESVILLE a ' In preparation for its newest packaging line, Carolina Beer and Beverage temporarily contracted the production of its beer brands to other breweries.
The color green is a serious multitasker. It speaks for St. Patrick's Day and blooming spring, tranquility and jealousy, healthy food and greed - all at once.
Some of you will be going on spring break in the next week or two. Whether you should drink or not if you are under age is up to you but please don't drink and drive! The Best Light Low Calorie Beers and Ranking based on 12 ounces.
Stash. It's one of the best words in the entire beery lexicon. I like it so much a picture of mine serves as the background of my Twitter page. No, not page... presence. It really is a Twitter presence. And, you know, it is a thing of comfort and joy, the stash. I wrote a post about my stash in 2005 and am wondering how long before that I was using the word. Back then it was about 40 bottles. Now it's about 200. I don't like to go beyond that as stuff just gets too old. I cull the stash by giving away beer. I cull it by drinking. And I preemptively cull it by living in Canada where no one really can get the good beer into the stash either by sales or samples. Yet, they are in there. A few excellent rare bottles. Buffered by a few almost excellent rare bottles. Buffered by more good but not quite excellent, hardly rare bottles. They are in there. At the back. Under boxes. Hidden. I can hear them.
The Ferm has the honor of hosting The Session, a monthly assemblage of beer bloggers to opine on a shared topic. The March 2010 topic is “The Display Shelf: When to Drink the Good Stuff.” The topic is open ended and the rules of The Session are close to nil. You can use your post to be persuasive or therapeutic. You may choose to tell a story of a great bottle you once opened or boast of your own beer collection.
Oh. dear. See, it's all fine to talk about the stash but to actually go in there and get into the rare stuff... well... I don't know. I'll get back to you later tonight.
Later: A 2006 Doggie Claw will help me think about this. One of the last bottles from the unfortunate shipment of late 2006. This bottle is rare because it is hard to get on the east coast of North America and also because it was through so much with me. And because it has mellowed. The slightest pffft on opening, the lightest carbonation, a syrup body, the most delightful barley wine I have ever had. Yum.
But does that answer the question. Let me think about that a bit.
Later still: a bottle of Gale and Co Conquest Ale bought at least five years ago for, according to the label, $3.99. A cork pop and, hmm, the waft is entirely lambic. Gorgeous. Like 50% Thomas Hardy Ale plus an equal amount of that cruelest beer. Or maybe one third to two thirds. Amazing. You figure out the proportions. Best have another wee think about what's going on here.
Delicious new flavored Absolut Berri Acai! Absolut Vodka Being Miami's Bar Examiner comes with its perks, and an invite to the swanky trade-launch party for the new flavored vodka from Absolut at Baru Urbano is just one of those such perks.
This year's May "two four" weekend just got more expensive: Beer prices will rise $1.25 per 12-pack as of Monday, March 8. The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission says the increase is a result of a recent supplier price increase, a hike in the MLCC's markup, and an increase in the fee paid to beer vendors for handling empty containers.
Traditional beer? The only solid access I've had to information about traditional beer drinking patterns in southern Africa is what I read a couple of years ago in Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals by Patrick McAllister. Botswana is apparently taking steps to bring traditional beer under the nation's general liquor law regulation. Trade and Industry Minister, Ms Dorcus Makgato-Malesu is reported to have said that issues of traditional beer are sensitive and need extensive consultation. Other politicians have chimed in:
Gaborone South MP Kagiso Molatlhegi, whose constituency includes Bontleng and Old Naledi welcomed the idea saying shebeens need to be regulated as a matter of urgency, adding that there is too much noise pollution in his area because such businesses are not uncontrolled. Adding his voice to the debate Gaborone West South MP, Botsalo Ntuane criticised government's stance on alcohol saying it was antisocial...
It's important stuff. Such important stuff that there appear to be rumours that traditional beer saves one from serious illnesses. Maybe such misconceptions are among the reasons for the government anti-alcohol campaign in Botswana.
I seem to see sorghum beer is called chibuku when sold commercially. One manufactureer describes it this way: "Chibuku has a sorghum malt dominant flavour. There is a biting taste due to the continuous fermentation. It has a thick texture and has thick foam." Jay posted way more about aspects of neighbouring Zimbabwe's beer culture which should also help the curious amongst you but could it be we are all just needing our own thick and biting chibuku?
So, why are there no craft brewers holding chibuku bashes? Could we chilly North Americans handle it? Martyn wants his South African beer basket and maybe so should we all.
Last night, ABSOLUT VODKA unveiled a new documentary, NY-Z, during a Jay-Z concert at Madison Square Garden.A The video was shot by Danny Clinch and features Jay-Z talking about his roots and inspiration.A He also talks about the importance of artistry trumping commercial concerns when trying to build a successful collaboration.A Based on the ...
Good article in the Los Angeles Times today by Evan George on the hobby of the beer stash. The hero of the story is Mr. Arrieta:
To grab a beer, Israel Arrieta doesn't just stroll to the fridge; he has to walk out his back door to the side of the house, where he pries a chicken-wire screen off a basement window and scrambles, crab position, down a wooden ladder. Several minutes later, he emerges cradling half a dozen cool, dusty bottles of beer. Arrieta, 27, keeps his beer in the closest thing to a cave: the crawl space under his parents' North Pasadena house.
We also read about a 55-year-old who writes for the film industry, a retired medic, a Raytheon engineer from Glendale but it's Arrieta, the guy who keeps his beer in a dirt crawl space behind chicken wire, who makes the story. He sums up the hobby as "not drinking everything just because you have it" and I suppose that is why I do it, too, as well as simply because I have to hunt out my beer an buy in mass purchases living, as I do behind the great mapled curtain of national denial.
One of the other stash nerds also pointed out that "If you just age all the bottles for 10 years and drink them in a month, that doesn't make sense." I don't know if I necessarily agree with that as I am quite comfortable with the idea that a beer like a wine can be on point or past it. I want it when its best because who really needs to be exposed to a beer that is "cloyingly salty, more like Kikkoman than a Boston lager"? Gak.
As the last of Ireland's independent whiskey distilleries, Cooley is the one that is responsible for some of the best Irish whiskey you may or may not have heard of.
I was there last August and spent less than an hour. Picked up a bunch of beer and this is one of the last, a 7.5% black beer. I'd call it a stout but what do I know. Very nice. Dark chocolate coloured ale under a mocha rim. In the mouth, plenty of dry cocoa powder and date enriched to short of the point of licorice but you can see the licorice from here. And an attractive rich consistency like the cocoa powder hasn't completely dissolved. The integration of the hops adds to the dark chocolate effect, a slightly mentholated effect. I would love to have this with BBQ.
I recently came across The Beer Spot, a blog that is dedicated to announcing new beers. They've become an important source for Beer Me! information, so I just wanted to say thanks and give credit where it's due.
You may have heard that Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama bet a case of beer each on the outcome of today's Olympic men’s hockey final. Apparently, because Canada won, Obama now owes Harper a case of Molson Canadian. If the U.S. had won, Harper would have owed Obama a case of Yuengling beer. How embarrassing for us and another missed opportunity that tells us how little craft beer has entered into the general conversation.
And did they even get the bet right? It is one thing for young hockey players not to know the difference but how can national leaders, at the top of their respective international trade teams, not put the best they have to offer? This bet? It's like a bet for a bag of ketchup potato chips against a box of Ring-a-Dings. And didn't they get the basic idea of the wager wrong? When the Red Sox played the Rockies in the 2007 World Series, Senators from Massachusetts bet a box of seafood and other east coast treats while Senators from Denver wagered prime beef and other food from Colorado. Shouldn't Obama have to consume the Canadian beer as part of his losing the bet? Isn't the whole point, after a Canadian win, to have the President of the United States say "you know... I was thinking... I wasn't going... to like... this Canadian beer... but I gotta say... it's not... that bad."
Feb 27th 2010 at 7:01PM Absolut vodka has collaborated with designer Phillip Plein and come out with a special limited edition bottle that's all dressed up in black with Swarovski crystals on every side.
One of the secret strengths of craft’s little corner of the beer world has always been the breaking down of the walls between producers and customers. Add in the even stronger bond between brewers and homebrewers are you have one of the primary factors in allowing crafts to continue to thrive and grow even in a terrible economy, second only to consumer perception of quality and value for their hard-earned dollars.
There is a lot packed into that short paragraph. Three ideas really and the fourth of their ranking. He got thinking this way in response to an article in The New York Times this weekend about the ways craft brewers are reaching out to their customers. Let's have a look at Jack's ideas and flesh them out a bit.
The walls between producers and customers: this is an important idea but I think one that is frankly overplayed by the craft brewing trade including commentators. Most consumers will never meet or certainly not have the kind of relationship that is shared between people who work in the beer trade at all levels. That is why I like to say love the beer not the brewer. We can like the brewer just fine but have to be wary of ideas like "supporting" a "craft beer community" as opposed to being watchful for respect of beer lovers in the marketplace. Similarly, we have to be careful in response to claims that brewers are celebrities or even rock stars. Worse, we have claims that beer knowledge is specialist knowledge that requires only "real" writers doing the describing. These things put distance between the consumer and producer and even confuse the marketplace though fostering snobbery.
The bond between brewers and homebrewers: when I started my interest in good beer, it was through homebrewing. I was in London in the mid-80s and brought back a few books, a few collapsible plastic kegs and some other stuff. The best writing about beer at that time seemed to be all about home brewing. When I started blogging about beer back in 2003 I could find very few other bloggers who weren't focusing on making it themselves. Craft brew and home brew were connected though people trying to replicate the good beers they were finding in the shops. I don't know if that is so much the case anymore. I have a sense that the next wave of craft beer drinkers may never have met a home brewer.
Consumer perception of quality and value: what product shouldn't be judge as a matter of quality and value? Claims that value is not a vital principle to a beer fan sound to me like claims to a captured market. Sure there are real beer hounds who will spend stupid amounts to travel to the one pure source of that one unattainable beer but no one is building an industry to serve that luxury hobbyist. It's really about getting the six park into a million grocery carts.
The relative place of these three principles: You can see where I am going. For me the last idea is the most critical aspect about where the good beer market is right now. In the states, more and more good beer is getting into grocery stores. In the UK, more and more cask ale is being sold in pubs. Widespread access to and enjoyment of good beer at a good price is the golden goose. Without that event of a value-based consumer choice, good beer will be stuck speaking to the converted, to the same faces seem at beer fests, to the same names on the bylines.
Maybe there really isn't an enemy of good beer - other than perhaps complacency - as long as we trust it is a product that has the quality and value that sells itself. This is an organic process that builds slowly overtime. And it's a process that has been proven over the last 20 years of market growth. If placing more people in breweries to teach them about how it is made is what we need to do now, well, that certainly says we are past the time when home brewing was the way to good beer. But it's not about breaking down the walls between the producer and consumer so much as teaching the consumer about the product and production of good beer.
A 20 year old female permanent resident was fined $500 or jail for a month in default of payment after she pleaded guilty to illegal possession of liquor before the Bandar Magistrate's Court yesterday.
Truth be told, every Canadian male has a deep and abiding crush on every member of the woman's hockey team and photos of them drinking beer just feed the flame. We have commercials where the players kick doltish men like us all on the ice. They sell us social networking tech. While we have to work on their taste in beer, these are the sweethearts of the nation. Goalie gear, baby. Oh baby.
Starkbierzeit is my favorite time of year in Germany.
The end of Fasching, what Bavarian Catholics call Carnival, heralds the beginning of Lent, the Christian season of fasting. Normally considered a period of abstinence, in beer-crazy Bavaria it's time to crack open extra strong Starkbier brews.
Starkbierzeit has become such a fixture of Munich's annual event calendar that locals refer to it as the year's 'fifth season.' The supermarkets are stocked with the strong Doppelbock lager beer brewed only during this time.
The festival hearkens back to the fasting Paulaner monks who brewed the extra strong beer to sustain themselves between Shrove Tuesday and Easter. Today the beer is served only during Lent - but is now quaffed for less pious reasons.
The article continues to provide a history of Starkbier and tips on where in Munich to participate in Starkbierzeit festivities. Read it all at The Local.
I still wonder what the average Latvian thinks about all this but at least this story makes a little more sense than needing to shut public booze sales and politicians drunk driving. Yet the International Olympic Committee is not amused:
Nearly an hour after the Canadians won their third consecutive Olympic gold medal with a 2-0 win over the Americans, the players came back out on the ice in the near-empty arena, smoking cigars and swigging champagne and beer. (Rebecca Johnston even tried to drive the zamboni.) "I don't think it's a good promotion of sport values," Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director of the Olympics, told the Associated Press after learning about the celebration. "If they celebrate in the changing room, that's one thing, but not in public. We will investigate what happened."
Gold. Literally. What's that IOC? Leave it in the locker room? Hide your beer drinking?? What a joke. Remember, these are Canadian hockey players and remember what the Russian goalie said when the mens team gave them the boot the other night: "They came like gorillas coming out of a cage."
Yet is that what we are? Is that what the world sees? Are we really the wild men and women of the north, clubbing and hammering poor Russians and American athletes as mere foreplay for a good beer? Sadly, no one appears to have taught the women's hockey team on the ways of good beer. Does she really need to be sucking down a Molbat macro-blurt?
Hye, Texas Garrison Brothers Distillery the first and only pure bourbon whiskey distillery in Texas, is pleased to announce the pre-release of 1,000 bottles of the finest bourbon whiskey ever made! This unique bourbon is composed of small batch bourbon from a few superior barrels that were personally selected by the proprietor from the distillery's ...
One of the most well known vodkas in the world, Absolut Vodka has collaborated with the Swedish designer Philipp Plein to create an equally intoxicating bottle as the Vodka itself.
There are few phrases more evocative for a Canadian of my early middle age than "Canada Russia".
When I was nine I heard the final game of the 1972 series broadcast from Moscow on the car radio sitting in a parking lot in Middleton, NS. We won. We were not always successful in the international head to head tournaments after that and into the '80s but we quickly came to love or at least fear the Soviet National anthem. We loved or at least feared Vladislav Tretiak and Valeri Kharlamov. To fill the emotional need, there were any number of tours across the country where Canucks and Ruskies beat their heads against each other.
In 1984, I saw a touring Soviet national team play in Halifax against Canada's Olympic training team. The evil team had eight guys called Sergei which the announcer at the rink pronounced as "Sir-jay-ee." We cheered when the Canadians rushed toward their end. When they let loose slap shots from beyond half we winced silent winces expecting the goalie or the boards behind the net to crack from the awful force of a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian Moscow Red Army player's sheer power.
In the 1987 Canada Cup, Mario and Wayne destroyed them in a game so exciting that I had to turn off the TV and only knew Canada won when the wintery neighbourhood erupted out there, outside the windows of the house, car horns blaring to the horizon. Then there was Gorby, then there were Russian players in the NHL, then the bear seemed to fade a bit. Then they got good again. I have no idea what will happen tonight but over half all Canadians will watch the TV tonight to watch a quarter-final game. Because it is Canada against Russia.
What beer to have?
Later: Turns out the beer is Unibroue's Edition 2005, a 10% Extra Strong Ale on Lees under an old school "U with grain" logo. And Canada scored its first goal between the pop of the cork and my first sip. It pours a dark brown with a thin white rim. Dark plum and dark chocolate on the nose. Gorgeous in the mouth. A mild menthol effect fades into plum and cola, ginger and nutmeg, apple butter and tobacco. A little oily but not too heavy. Plenty of BAer love.
Two nuttin' for Canada 12 minutes into the first period. Excellent. Three nuttin' a minute later. Oh my. Oh my oh my oh my.
Two 15-year-olds tried to purchase a $40 bottle of vodka from a Jersey City liquor store , but the plan fell apart when the store asked for identification.
Warm summers and year-long high humidity hardly make for world-class whiskey, but for Taiwan's only distiller, the climate is just one more ingredient in its recipe for success.
It is inevitable, I suppose, that folks get all whipped up and excited when the big event comes to their town but this is getting a little weird:
A B.C. government MLA is facing drunk-driving charges after an evening of Olympic-related events. In statement issued Tuesday afternoon, North Vancouver-Seymour MLA Jane Thornthwaite apologized for her behaviour... The B.C. Liberal MLA, who has three children, was driving home at about 1 a.m. on Tuesday when she was stopped at a North Vancouver RCMP road check. A spokesman for the RCMP said a 51-year-old female driver came to their attention – he would not confirm it was Ms. Thorthwaite – and the driver provided a breath sample that indicated her blood alcohol level was over the legal limit of .08 per cent.
I am not so much interested in the gotcha of the story so much as how, when combined with the instantly beloved beer drinking gold medal winner and the crowded streets out of control, it does paint a picture of what a pervasive and intimate - yet hazardous - role drinking has within Canadian culture. It's hard to place. We are comfortable pushing the pounding back, don't navel gaze too much about it. We even make it a point of pride in any number of contexts. What must it look like to others?
One of the silliest things I have ever come across in all these years of yapping about good beer was last year's infomercial made by US craft brewers titled "I am a Craft Brewer." It included many mutual back pats and self-pinned blue ribbon statements including the pledges that they do not put corn in their beer, they do not put rice in their beer. One year later, such "honouring and holding true to their craft" - as the infomercial claimed - is seemingly not so important to New Jersey's Flying Fish Brewing as they have decided to put rice in their beer... or at least one, their not yet released Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA:
Although no longer home to forests of giant cedars and salt hay marshes teeming with aquatic life, the Meadowlands is still an amazingly diverse ecosystem providing vital animal and plant habitat. In a nod to a once common food plant here, we’ve brewed this beer with wild rice. We also used brown and white rice, as well as two malts. Rice helps the beer ferment dry to better showcase the five different hops we’ve added. Lots and lots of them. We then dry-hopped this Double IPA with even more-generous additions of Chinook and Citra hops to create a nose that hints at tangerine, mango, papaya and pine.
Wow! Sounds really interesting. Who knew that rice would help showcase the hops in a craft beer? Who knew that trying three different rices would be interesting? Maybe someone who actually tried?
Promising never to make beer with corn or rice? It's like promising to never make beer in casks or to only make beer in casks. Make beer from turnips for all I care. As long as you make it tasty and sell it to me at a fair price, what does it matter to me?
Finally, the exclamation: "Whew, I think I just grew a couple of hairs on my chest!" Not the most desired effect for a woman, but a common sensation for whiskey rookies.
Spike Jonze new film to play in Car Parks across the UK-"In an Absolut world, ordinary is no place to be" Following the collaboration between Absolut Vodka and Spike Jonze in January, the 30 minute film 'I'm Here', a robot love story, is set to play in car-parks around the country before its commercial release in March.
Call the Neo-probes! Athletic competitions now proven to lead to binge drinking as Vancouver struggles to keep up with drunk jet setting gangs of cow bell ringers and fans of third-rate curlering nations. Jet setting Olympic public boozing is apparently something we are very good at in Canada:
“Due to an unprecedented number of intoxicated people, we must do what we can to ensure the Games are safe for everyone,” said a spokesman for the province’s liquor licensing branch Sunday. “We’re taking a measured approach that still allows people to have fun and feel confident that they will be safe while doing so,” he said... Vancouver Police said they are prepared to ask for more early-closing orders to tackle public drinking, drunkenness and disorder on city streets, after being granted similar orders for Saturday and Sunday. Police spokesman Const. Lindsey Houghton said there was a noticeable spike in people bringing booze into the downtown core on the weekend.
And it's not just the crowds in the streets who are booze fueled. We Canadians proudly celebrated the gold medal celebrations by our own Jon Montgomery, the fastest guy to go head first down an ice chute on a sled: "I don’t subscribe to necessarily all the things typical athletes do, and for me a pint now and then is a good thing,” he said... “I go out to parties with him, and he finishes the party,” said teammate Mike Douglas. He finishes the party. That's why we love him. He walked around chugging from a pitcher of beer after the victory pretty much like he did, above, at the Skeleton World Championships in Feb. 2008. And during an interview, a fan tossed Montgomery a mickey of rye, which he stuck in his back pocket. That's why we love him. He is us.
Iowa is about to move (some of) its beer laws into the 21st century!
The discrimination, they say, centers on longtime Iowa laws that prohibit breweries in the state from making and selling beer that has more than 5 percent alcohol content.
Out-of-state breweries have sold higher-alcohol beer to Iowans for years.
"As far as we're concerned, it is a matter of equality," said Dave Coy, president of the Iowa Brewers Guild and brewmaster for Raccoon River Brewery in Des Moines.
Iowa's 20 or so breweries could produce beer with up to 12 percent alcohol content under a section of Senate File 2088, a government reorganization bill that could receive final approval from the Senate by Monday.
So far, so good.
(Rep. Mark Smith, D-Marshalltown) is concerned that the change could lead to more substance abuse and drunken driving.
"When you increase the availability of alcohol or any other drug, you increase the social problems that are associated with use," Smith said. "While we have major concerns with other drugs, consistently, the drug that has been most related to crime has been alcohol."
This is typical neo-prohibitionist bullshit. Wine is higher in alcohol than beer, and is universally available. (And is exempt from the current restrictive law, by the way.) Distilled spirits are much higher in alcohol than beer, and are universally available. I was going to say that Smith's position on beer requires a fantastic leap of logic, but the fact is, there's no logic involved at all.
Years ago, when I was thinking about extra part time jobs I might take on, I had this idea that I could set up an ice cream van that dispensed soft serve goats milk cheese. The brand was going to be "I Can't Believe This Came Out Of A Goat!" It never happened.
This evening I was reminded of the idea when I pulled a chunk of bouc émissaire, a young raw goat milk cheese by Fromagerie Chaput of Quebec. Tangy creamy goodness with just that hint of goat. Goatiness is a bit of a twist for the English-speaking palate even if it makes great strawberry softie swirl. But it's just fine with spicy Belgian pale ale like Zot or the Het Anker Margriet I picked up at the LCBO today, on sale for an insanely cheap $1.80 a bottle. Tang on tang. I imagine a tripel or saison would do the trick as well. Or not. Style goes only so far to explain actual taste.
Is this pairing? I suppose. But if it was pairing it would be monogamous and that would be the end of the explorations. And, worse, it might even be an arranged marriage where I tell you that it's the best thing going so you better take my word for it. Rubbish. You might hate this combo. Go find your own damn goat cheese.
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.
Maybe one day I will ask a bartender for a gin with a shot of whiskey as well as a splash of rum. But if I am ever in Nebraska I now know I don't dare add a dribble of beer to that cocktail:
A Prohibition-era law still on the books makes Nebraska the only U.S. state to ban bars from serving drinks that mix beer and liquor, and some lawmakers are trying to make the restriction history, ABC News reported Feb. 17. The law prohibits bars from serving drinks like boilermakers and Irish Car Bombs -- the latter a shot of Bailey's Irish Cream and whiskey dropped into a glass of stout.
Now, it's been a long time since I had a boilermaker, a high school staple, but it's like all the anti-neo-prohibitionist / neo-prohibitionist talk out of the UK - what the heck were these guys thinking? It's wrong to dilute the strength? Boggles the mind. Maybe it's all this Olympic chest thumping up here talking but, once again, it is so weird to read about a society where you may have the right to have a drink but you may have to fret about how you have it. We just make sure that our beer ads have no reference to actually drinking the stuff. Now that makes sense.
When will the madness end? BrewDog make great beers, but this ethanol escalation is just getting ridiculous.
The flamboyantly competitive Scottish brewery BrewDog has releasedSink the Bismarck!, a "quadruple IPA" that they say is the most alcoholic in the world at 41%. BrewDog had previously earned similar attention last year with their then-record-setting 32% ABV beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, but rival brewery Schorschbrau just weeks ago (briefly) reclaimed the beer potency title with their Schorschbock, at 40% ABV, prompting Brewdog's latest counterattack.
Read the entire article, including a great quote from BrewDog's James Watt, at The Huffington Post.
Looking to build on the success of its promotional program surrounding the first "Sex And The City" movie, Skyy Vodka is hooking up with Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema again for the second movie in the franchise, set to hit U.S. screens on May 28.
I think the forces of anti-neo-prohibition are at it again. I have never been sure who the anti-neo-prohibitionists are but that goes for neo-prohibitionists as well. They each stand for everything good as well as everything else and in the end look a lot like each other. Best of all, they aren't really a "they" at all. It's just folks thinking about something and needing to make a generalization about it in order to make sure that the equation "X=good" means "X=what I like already".
You see it when someone can write: "... none of it will work because the ‘misuse’ of alcohol isn’t nearly as bad as the government or the corporate do-gooders would have us believe" without the slightest evidence to back it up other than following it with reference to "the puritanical anti-drinking movement." Safe to say, when you see this sort of thing you are dealing with the closed mind of the anti-neo-prohibitionists... or neo-prohibitionists depending on the brand of outlandishness foisted upon your eyes.
You also see it in other ways. Self congratulations. Chest thumping king of the hillery. First prize giving. Now, I like Jeff Alworth as much as the next guy but he is getting a lot of responses to his suggestion that in his home state of Oregon "we are abandoning the larger quantities of cheap beer for the smaller quantities of good beer" and, as a result, has determined that craft beer has become "competing cultural model for alcohol consumption that encourages healthy behavior." Well, just as we understand that there are actual social issues in the UK related to alcohol use (even if cask ale isn't to blame) we also realize people are cutting back and shifting drinking compared to past decades for any number of reasons which are related much to the shift caused by Jane Fonda's exercise VHS tapes as well as the breakdown of family life being based on post-work male bonding in bars in favour of driving children around in mini-vans to their incessant activities (though craft beer may add a 1% shift plus or minus.)
One of the oddest first prizes you see fans of craft beer giving each other is the "I drink less because I drink craft beer" blue ribbons. My experience of craft beer drinkers has been somewhat less purifying than that - though, to be very fair, witnessing the huge amount of pleasure that Stan got from a very small portions of very good beer was a revelation. Frankly, I think a fair measure of craft beer consumption is pretty much the same as non-craft beer consumption. Some have a little and some have a lot. In Pete's words it's about "managing their arc of inebriation in a way with which they feel comfortable" - aka the buzz even if a tasty buzz.
So, given all that tell me this: do you really drink less? Do you drink less because you are older? Because society has shifted? Because craft beer is a drink for people over 30? And if you don't drink less than you did when you were in undergrad... what the hell is wrong with you?
A Belgian pale ale from the USA's Upper Midwest. This one smells good. Either that or I smell really bad. I've just finished two 16 hour days so it is not beyond the realm of possibility. But I've been in a jacket and tie the whole time. So it's likely the beer or the guy next to me was inordinately polite.
Medium pale golden ale under a thin rim of white. Apple and pear on the nose with a little nutmeg. More in the mouth framed in a sweetish effervescent rich ale. Plenty of bready yeastiness. Dryish ending with black tea and twiggy hops and that lingering spice. A reasonable session beer at 5.3%. Part of a New Glarus mixed 12 pack that made the trip from near Lake Superior to the east end of Lake Ontario. A respectable level of BAer respect but probably not enough.
It's been a few minutes since the last bit of advance news on the Sex and the City sequel , so be aware that SKYY Vodka has announced a "comprehensive global marketing deal with Warner Bros.
The unit is about the size of an iPod touch and features a 3.7 volt 1260 mAH rechargeable battery built onto the back of what amounts to a solar panel on the device.
And it sits in a bottle waiting for the appropriate marketing moment for a price of 127 dollars. Between you and me, I don't really care that it is all about marketing but I also do not care to try this or any other loony strength beer. Drinking it isn't the point. Consider this statement:
"Beer has a terrible reputation in Britain, it's ignorant to assume that a beer can't be enjoyed responsibly like a nice dram or a glass of fine wine. A beer like Sink the Bismarck should be enjoyed in spirit sized measures. It is important that you be careful with this beer and show it the same amount of sceptical, tentative respect you would show an international chess superstar, clown or gypsy."
If it weren't for peeking at the use of "sceptical" I would have spat my coffee on my keyboard when I hit the word "enjoyed." Given that we are about ten weeks past 32%, and about as many days past 40% there can't be a heck of a lot of thought going into the recipe. Or the aging. It's all just a variation on Garrett Oliver's comment about the idiocy of the world's saltiest food. Gak even if gak with a ideological point.
Makes me yearn for beechwood aging all of a sudden. A technique with a purpose related to flavour even if you don't like the flavour.
Years before whiskey comes out of the bottle as that amber-hued, caramel-scented object of desire, it goes into a barrel as something called white dog.
Posted in Restaurants and bars by David Tamarkin on February 12th, 2010 at 2:02 pm Since joining the BOKA Group as it's head bartender , Benjamin Schiller has mainly focused on that company's eponymous flagship.
StarMag makes its own whisky at a rare class given by a master. IF you ever thought making alcohol was as simple as putting fruit or grain together with some yeast, letting it ferment and then distilling the residue ... well, you aren't far wrong, actually.
Friday, February 12 12:35:11 Cooley Distillery, Ireland's only independent whiskey distiller is celebrating after being named Distillery of the Year at the 16th Annual Malt Advocate Whisky Awards in the US.
Looking for some whiskey to warm you up tonight? How about some free scotch? Tonight and tomorrow, from 7:30a '9:30 PM, a Macallan representative will be hanging out at West Town's Branch 27 to discuss single-malt and bourbon oak barrela 'aged scotch whiskey and the use of proper glassware and ice.
Bottles of whiskey and rum from George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery recipes will be on display in the spring at the North Dakota Museum of Art on the University of North Dakota campus.
At the end of February the lucky winner will have their name drawn from a hat. By limiting the number of entrants to 250 people or fewer, Master of Malt has ensured that every entrant has an unusually high chance of winning and this doesna TMt diminish as people enter.
The bad news: after three weeks of banging my head against their dysfunctional development tools, I've given up on writing a BlackBerry version of my Beer Me! mobile smartphone app.
The good news: work on the Android version is progressing nicely. I should be ready to ask for field-testers by the end of this month.
I might revisit the BlackBerry problem once the Android version is deployed. Maybe.
iPhone? Who knows.
The Palm version has sold 78 copies already, and the free trial version has been downloaded almost 250 times! That's kinda fun.
A couple of guys came into the store Sunday afternoon. They spent about fifteen minutes checking out everything in the coolers, displaying their satisfaction with the beer selection by exclaiming "DOOD" this and "DOOD" that at every turn.
They left with only a six-pack of Bud Light apiece.
It is with a heavy heart that I am closing the business down after nine years of operation. We are shutting down the website and liquidating our entire inventory out of the warehouse. We are selling all beer, mead and ciders at 10-30% below cost. Hundreds of great beers are available. For a list of products see the post below. Come to the warehouse early for the best selection.
The sale starts Fri Jan. 29th at 3:00 and goes through Friday, Feb 5th at 8:00 pm
Sale hours: M-F 3:00 – 8:00 Sat & Sun 10:00-8:00
Matt Maples
President
Liquid Solutions Inc.
WHO: Liquid Solutions Inc.
WHAT: Inventory liquidation sale
WHERE: 275 Beavercreek Rd #C149 Oregon City 97045
WHEN: Fri Jan. 29th thru Feb 5th
M-F 3:00 – 8:00 Sat & Sun 10:00-8:00
WHY: Business is closing
I've been buying beer from Matt for years, and I'm really going to miss the great selection and service he provided. Liquid Solutions will be missed.
Germans may be famous around the world for their beer, but they drank less of the amber nectar in 2009 than at any time in the past 20 years, according to official statistics published on Thursday.
Sales of German beer, which includes the likes of Becks, Warsteiner, Radeberger and countless other brands, dropped to just under 100 (sic) hectolitres (2.2 billion gallons) in 2009, a fall of 2.8 percent on the previous year.
(That should read "100 million hectolitres", and the "gallons" in question are Imperial gallons.)
The article goes on to blame the "desperate economic situation" and a trend away from manual labor towards a service economy as factors for the decrease in beer consumption. But the massive consolidation of the German brewing industry surely is a factor as well. Germany has lost nearly half of its small, local breweries in the last twenty years through mergers and closures, with more in the works. This is the same process that culminated some forty years ago in the United States, resulting in a massive loss in beer diversity and culture. (And it's happening in the UK as well, with the same result.)
The Germans I've met are fiercely loyal to local products. When Größer-Bräu acquires and closes Kleiner-Bräu, they don't necessarily acquire the customers along with the brewery.
Anyway, read the whole story at The Local. And drink local beer.
The free trial version of "Beer Me! mobile 1.0.2" will be available starting around 9:30pm CST January 22, 2010. You can download and install it from this link:
The trial expires 30 days after the first time it's run.
Please note that if you create brewery notes or beer notes in the free trial version, they will be lost when you upgrade to the paid version. I'm working on a fix for this; keep your eye on this forum for news.
Several dozen university students occupied a brewery near Gothenburg in western Sweden on Tuesday in their long-standing effort to convince the brewery to build a pipeline to carry beer to the students’ union.
The demonstration was part of a tradition started in 1959 when the Chalmers University student union purchased one share in what was then known as Pripp & Lyckholm, part of the company which operated the brewery until it was purchased by Carlsberg in 2000.
The stock purchase gave the students a seat at the company's annual shareholders meeting, allowing them an opportunity to push the brewery to build a roughly 100 kilometre long pipeline to the university in order to facilitate the supply of beer to the Chalmers’ student union.
But progress on building the pipeline has been slow over the last five decades. So far, only two metres of pipe have been laid – one near the university, and one near a now abandoned brewery in central Gothenburg. No further construction has taken place since 1968.
500 IBUs? I don't think iso-α-acid is anywhere near that soluble in beer.
The nine-gallon keg of barley wine – made using £100 worth of hops, compared to £5 for an average beer – is still untasted by Mr Fowler as he believes he might not be able to handle it.
He is hoping the beer will be about 500 International Bitterness Units (IBUs) – the measurement used for recording bitterness.
Although there is no official record, it is believed the current holder is Founders Devil Dancer Triple IPA, with 200 IBUs.
This weekend a big one hit the Northern California coast. The epicenter was located near Ferndale, CA. The lost coast region is home to many craft breweries and beer lovers and we want to make sure everyone is doing well.
First things first, the reports coming out of Humboldt County are all sounding great. There have been no deaths reported and only 1 major injury. Power has been restored to nearly all customers and there were no reports of catastrophic structure failure. This is all reassuring news after Northern California’s last brush with a major earthquake in 1989.
With those fears set aside, we can start thinking about the beer. Within the Eureka region there are four craft breweries, Lost Coast Brewing, Mad River, 6 Rivers and Eel River Brewing, located in Ferndale. While I’m still waiting to hear back from everyone, I have heard word from Mad River and Lost Coast.
Dylan Schatz, head brewer at Mad River, described himself as “shaken but not stirred” the night of the quake. Nothing more than a few “boxes leaning” at the Blue Lake Brewery.
Barbara Groom, owner of Lost Coast brewery, says “Everything is fine. We lost a few bottles but all in all we were unscathed.”
Good news all around. I hope to hear more from 6 Rivers and Eel River in the coming days. Eel River’s brewpub just received a major facelift, so let’s hope that all that work didn’t go to waste.
If you have any reports from the Northern California coast, please share them with us as we’re all anxious to hear. Good luck to those living in affected areas and a speedy recovery.
I don't have an Apple machine to do site testing, so if any Apple users out there can help, I'll be very grateful.
I tried to go to the beerme site tonight and couldn't load it using my usual browser, Camino 1.6.10. As background, my iPod Touch using Safari loads the site just fine. But my Mac laptop, with OS 10.3.9., accepting all cookies, java applets enabled, etc, can't load it.
The Nebraska Brewing banner ad at the top of the page never loads, and Camino continually consumes about 65% of the processor, never falling back to its usual 5% or so. I think it keeps trying to load the banner ad, but it can't ever finish the task.
I tried using Safari 1.3.2 (v312.6), which loaded the site, including the Nebraska Brewing banner ad, but it again used 60% of the processor endlessly, until I went to a completely different website, then came back to beerme. But then Safari then crashed twice when I tried to click on links. Hmm, unusable again.
I believe it is an issue of support for legacy devices such as mine. Can you configure the site so that Explorer 8 graphics are accessible to old Macs like mine? I hope you can tweak it so I can use beerme. I was able to use the beerme blog, by selecting it on the Google search, instead of the main beerme site.
With New Year's Eve less than 28 hours away, you're probably looking for some advice on how to handle the annual New Year's Morning hangover. Live Science comes to the rescue:
'Tis the season to indulge. 'Tis also the season to scour the Internet for some quick fix for the pounding headache and acute sensitivity to all things louder than a fruit fly, brought on by the previous night's adventure with alcohol.
But you've heard it before. Nothing will heal you of that hangover other than time.
Here are some pros and cons of purported cures.
Read the whole story — especially the final paragraph — at Live Science.
Nine hours of stacking beer today. As of 6:00pm, Brix management still plan to open the doors tomorrow. (I'm even more skeptical than I was yesterday.) Even if opening day gets pushed back yet further, there's still plenty of organizing to do in the coolers tomorrow.
I just got home from my first day working at Brix, a new beer-wine-spirits shop in west Omaha. Once they open the doors (supposedly this Wednesday, but I'm skeptical) my job will basically be to talk to people about beer. Today and tomorrow, however, are all about putting the 850 different beers on the shelves.
I don't know what their plans are as far as a newsletter, Facebook page, etc, but I'll let you know as soon as I find out.
Pictures and the beer list to follow as soon as everything's ready.
I just learned this morning that the beerme.com domain expired last Wednesday. Visiting the site today will land you on a generic Network Solutions page. I have asked RealBeer.com (my generous hosts) to look into it, but this being a holiday week, it could be quite some time before the site is restored.
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.
This next release is still in “beta” and it will be getting tweaked a bit in the future. Currently we have added a new feature on our Location Lookup page. When you search for a name, state, city or zip code you will now see a link to view that search on a google map.
A search for ‘rock bottom’:
A close-up of the Map Link:
Clicking on the link on a search results page will take you to a map that will attempt to display all locations in the results from your search. There are still a few bugs, but we are working through them and have this feature fully flushed out very soon. For now, play around with it and let us know what you think in the comments here or in the forums.
But there’s only one way to find out. Go visit tomorrow night, or throughout the weekend and see if their TVs are still working. If not, maybe someone at the bar would like to have a conversation instead? Plug in your address in our search engine to find out which bars or brewpubs are closest to where you are right now!
Visit your local Brewpub or Beer Bar on Friday afternoon to see if they still have TV (and good beer) available!
We’ve added a new feature to the Location Review pages that may or may not be useful. But we think it’s pretty damned cool none the less.
The new feature is a little graphic that appears in what used to be some white space above and to the right of the location address information. This graphic is actually a dynamically generated image that is provided to us through one of google’s chart technologies. We’re using this technology to create what is called a QR Code (quick response code).
Here is an example of what the QR Code looks like on the review page (note the big red arrow):
These codes can be scanned via some special software that you can install on many different types of smart phones. Android phones can use the “Barcode Scanner” application to scan the codes. iPhones and Blackberries and other phones can possibly use an application provided by BeeTagg or possibly the Kaywa Reader.
After the image is scanned your mobile device will decrypt the QR Code and show you the information contained within. In our case, a scan will put the mobile version of that page onto your phone, allowing you to bookmark locations you want to visit or look at later.
An example of a QR Code containing the url for the mobile page for 21st Amendment Brewpub:
If you are still a bit confused as to what we’re talking about here, or if you just want to see this scanning technology in action, watch the following 45 second video. It is a bit blurry, but we hope it gets the point across!
Chicago is a great city to visit and a super city to drink beer in. We’re starting our theoretical trip on Friday around 5pm and we’re running it through Sunday brunch/lunch. We’re going to assume that you brought some money and we’re going to assume you don’t mind taking public transportation or cabs. And here we go!
Friday
5:00 pm Friday: Your cab from the airport has safely transported you and your belongings to some shanty hotel that you probably won’t see very much of. You have now made your way to one of Chicago’s best beer bars: The Map Room (beermapping link) at 1949 N. Hoyne Ave. The Map Room is phenomenal, the taplist consists of 25-ish taps always rotating and a very large list of bottles. Map Room does not have food on any consistent basis, but at 5pm you’re just getting started so you can settle into a fairly comfortable table near a window and enjoy a couple of great beers.
7:30 pm Friday: a half mile stroll south down Damen Ave would put you right in the middle of the trendy neighborhood of Wicker Park. We’re not here to look for “black frame” glasses stores or starbucks though. We’re headed to Piece Pizza (beermapping link), one of Chicago’s best brewpubs. Piece is well known for their award winning wheat styles and over the past few years they have started blasting palates with really hoppy beers with rather dirty names (Camel Toe IPA, Moose Knuckle Barleywine…). If you’re getting hungry, you may want to order a New Haven style pizza with bacon, mashed potatos and a white sauce. Or you may want to hold off on eating a bit longer until our next stop.
9:30 pm Friday: another short half mile stroll south brings you to East/West running Division Avenue. There are two bars down here that we will be checking out. If you neglected to grab some pizza at Piece, you will probably be in need of some food, so we’ll go east a few storefronts to Jerry’s Sandwiches (beermapping link). Jerry’s only has 100 sandwiches to choose from, but hopefully that will be enough. The tap selection here is usually very solid, and if there is nothing available there to please you, there are lots of bottles too.
Further to the west down Division, you will find Small Bar (beermapping link). Small Bar also has food so you could hold off for some fried cheese curds with honey mustard dipping sauce. The taps at Small Bar are often somewhat similar to Jerry’s Sandwiches, but there should be a few differences. Small Bar and Jerry’s both have nice patios, so if you are here with someone who doesn’t like sitting at the bar, you might find yourself enjoying some Chicago weather. You can easily kill 2 or 3 hours between Small Bar and Jerry’s, so this is where we will end our night and catch a cab back to our Hotel/Motel/Hostel. We’ll need our energy for Saturday!
Saturday
11:00 am Saturday: We’re making our way down to State and Grand and we’re hitting Chicago’s Rock Bottom (beermapping link). Pete Crowley, head brewer, makes some awesome beers here. Usually you can find a barrel aged beer or two on tap, make sure to ask your server or bartender for the special beers available. The food at this location is pretty good too, so we’ll be grabbing an appetizer to get our day started (recommended appetizer: Titan Toothpicks). Our next stop will also include many food options, so don’t go nuts and order a whole entree.
1:30 pm Saturday: We went underneath Rock Bottom Chicago and we caught the Red Line of the El (Chicago’s public transportation train). Headed north, we only travelled three stops to the Clybourn/North stop. From here we walked three blocks up Clybourn to Goose Island’s original Brewpub location (beermapping link). They usually have more than 15 Goose Island beers available for you to drink here and at least 1 cask at all time. The restaurant has recently undergone some changes and they are heavily focused on “gastropub” like fare. Pork is king at Goose Island Clybourn and we suggest you get a solid base for the rest of the day’s drinking by ordering the Cubano sandwich. Pair that with something from the cask engine and you’ll be thanking us, guaranteed.
3:30 pm Saturday: Next is a short walk up Sheffield to Local Option (beermapping link). Local Option isn’t well known outside of the Chicago beer scene, but it usually has one of the best taplists in town. The taplist doesn’t focus just on regional or American beer, it’s a strong reflection on what is happening in beer today. And if you can’t find anything on tap that excites you, ask the bartender if they have anything special in bottles!
6:00 pm Saturday: Our next stop is a bit further north. We have again jumped back on Chicago’s El (red line) to get to Sheffield’s Wine and Beer Garden (beermapping link). Sheffield’s is home to the Beer School bar (along with two other bars inside the building). If the beer school bar is open, you should definitely head back there and check out their available taps. You will not be disappointed at Sheffields in either the front bar or the back bars. Relax and enjoy. If the weather is nice, you can hang out in the beer garden, or if it’s nasty outside sit back by the fire and enjoy the warmth.
8:30 pm Saturday: We now have our name on the list for dinner at Hopleaf (beermapping link) in the Andersonville neighborhood. We have used the red line again to get this far north and by now we’re a pro at catching a train and avoiding eye contact with bums. Hopleaf is a belgian focused bar with some incredible food. I suggest ordering the CB&J (cashew butter, fig jam and creamy morbier cheese pannini) or just go with the Mussels Frites (Steak Frites is also one of my favorites). With 30 taps of Belgian and regional beer and a bottle list that may well blow your mind, you can’t go wrong at Hopleaf. Make sure you try a Metropolitan Brewery beer, brewed three blocks away.
We will end our night here, thumbing through the list and dreaming of a bottomless wallet and limitless time to enjoy it all. Head to bed. By now, you need the rest.
Sunday
10:00 am Sunday: We are now officially packed up and we’re doing brunch at the Publican (beermapping link). With a Publican Mimosa (Berliner Weisse and orange juice) in front of us, we’re waiting for dishes full of pork and egg to be delivered to our table. We have fond memories of the past few hours, some hazier than others. And we are in desperate need for another 36 hours before we have to return to work. We are also not 100% sure that we won’t be calling in sick on Monday.
It’s Facebook. And I’m one of these anti-snowball, no-thanks-for-the-drink, keep-your-damn-pokey-finger-to-yourself kind of grumpy gus.
But then I noticed how much fun my friends were having with all of these games. Scramble. Word Challenge. PathWords. Poker. I thought, hey, I’ll give it a try.
It’s a weekend I’ll never, ever get back.
No, I can truthfully say I did not spend every single waking hour playing these games. But when I wasn’t doing something else… all of the TV-watching, web-surfing, miscellaneous-time-wasting… No. It was game time.
Wifey’s got it worse than I have. One of my friends had this totally unbeatable Word Challenge score, and I managed to best that. So I was able to hang up that one for a while. But then I discovered PathWords and it’s like Bubblet only with letters — it’s brilliant! And then I found myself having fun at the Texas-whatchamacallit-poker, and look, no money changing hands!
The kicker, of course, is that I would love to play with all of you. But you know that story. The genie is way too far out of the bottle, I think.
Anyway, if you haven’t tried this, go ahead and jump right in — try one, you’ll like it! Because addiction, like misery, absolutely LOVES company!!
I wanted to get around and visit friends and spread some holiday cheer, but… and I don’t even know what got in the way!
And since the ice storm, I’ve had this post idea and that post idea, and… well you know how bad I am, and how much improvement I’m going to need for the new year.
But today, it’s just about wishing you and yours a very merry Christmas! I hope you’re all safe and warm with the lights on and happy and healthy.
And whether you’re surrounded by friends and/or family, or you’ll be connected by phone or internets, what is more important, after all, than that? They are the real gifts we should be stuffing boxes and shoving under the tree.
Tap tap tap — ahem — is this thing on? It’s the only way I can do this right now. Power has been out since some time Friday morning — phone, cable, internet, too. Major ice storm Thursday, worst in recorded history, took out trees, utility poles, wires, you name it. We have a generator, so our sump pumps, water well pump, heat, refrigerator, freezers, even some lights, are running for only $1.65 a gallon, a bargain, priceless! But no internet, other than my phone here, and the coverage is very fringey. So no. I haven’t fallen off the posting wagon! I’m just in survival mode, lucky to be doing just fine, and lucky to be alive, but that’s a story for another day… Come to think of it, I don’t even know for sure whether this mobile post will make it through!!
I’ve been using e-mail for 27 years now, way more than half of my life. So this way of communicating, it’s all just second nature to me.
And I was on the Internet before there was a World Wide Web. I know, you’d never know it, because I didn’t make a bazillion dollars at anything.
So none of this technology amazes or surprises me.
But I was on Facebook this morning and found out that my friend’s father had passed away.
Now I have learned about deaths online before, but it’s only been people that I knew online, if you know what I mean.
Jimmy won his soccer game! Take a look at the snowman we made! Jane made honor roll this quarter! YES. That’s the kind of stuff I want to keep up with online.
Mr. Jones passed away last night. NO. This is about life, real life.
I’m in that holiday spirit — yes, NEW YEARS! Time to start making resolutions, I think.
1. Be a better blog visitor. I just flushed a couple thousand updates out of my Bloglines and I’m going to start over.
2. No more eating in bed. Candy corn, Triscuits… oh, and the animal crackers have been the worse offense-inducer. I think if I bring something upstairs, especially if it’s something healthy, then that’s different. But that’s it. This will be a tough one, but I’m really going to try.
3. Post more. I’ll think of something I want to write, and then I’ll think, nah, that’s dumb. I should just post whatever pops into my head, because really, that’s all I’m much good for. Yes, I’ll be going to quantity over quality, in case anybody’s wondering about that.
In the past I’ve done this as a Thursday Thirteen, but I can’t think of that many, and if I wait until I do, it’ll never happen… look, I’m on top of #3 already!! :)
That’s right, I’m not waiting until the new year, I’m getting started now. Wish me luck!
I just had the weirdest dream so I thought I’d write it down and see if it makes sense.
I’m sitting in this garage doing something on the computer. And there is this white horse, yes a horse, and I must have spooked him because he like flattens himself up against the far wall.
You see, I’m in the opening part and the door is open. Yeah, so he’s got his hooves up in the air at like ten-two on a clock face, up against the wall, and then he climbs up on top of the open garage door.
I don’t know where Wifey is at this point, but it seems to me we’re away at some event of hers — something horse related? I don’t know. She got out of horses a couple years ago, thank God, and we don’t have one anymore.
But I’m just there with the horse, and not like I’m watching him or anything, because he’s hiding up on the garage door.
Now do you have a picture of how this all is? Because the next part doesn’t really make much sense. Now he’s like on this shelf and really high up and am I sitting under the shelf? Wait, no, I’m like several feet away from it.
And what happens next is the horse falls from this shelf, and I see this long slow-motion fall, and it’s from this tremendous height, and he lands right in front of me.
My first thought is I check myself to make sure I didn’t get anything on me — blood, guts, whatever.
And now Cesar Millan comes in — yes, the dog trainer extraordinaire — and I tell him that the horse fell. Well I’m thinking it’s just dead, but he’s trying to revive it somehow.
So Cesar is on the ground shaking the horse, and the horse is talking gibberish, like English gibberish, and I can’t understand a word he (yes, the horse) is saying. But he’s alive and his head doesn’t look to me like a horse head anymore, but almost like an only slightly-elongated human head. But the gibberish, he’s just not in good shape, the horse.
And that’s where I woke up. Don’t know where Wifey was or where I even was, though the garage kind of looked like mine, but don’t they all.
Pretty weird, eh?
********
Now as I came here to post this (I had typed it up in the e-mail program) I realize I dreamed something last night about WordPress, that the — you know how it tells you your software isn’t up-to-date and you need to upgrade? Well that version number kept changing, to higher and lower numbers, right before my eyes…
Wow, totally bizarre! And no, no late snacks or anything like that! I did eat some candy corn before bead, so my body had plenty of sleep energy. No, I just made that up.
OK, I’m back. Figure it out? This morning, Wifey and I were watching last night’s Amazing Race (EXCELLENT) and there was an ad for something about the Blue Ray.
“What is Blue Ray, anyway?” she asked. And I told her it was like VHS and Beta, only with DVD and it’s like the difference between this (me, pointing at the screen) and high def and blah blah blah, and for people that care about really great pictures, well it’s just the greatest thing.
Doh, what if she got me one for Christmas, and I didn’t just jump and down and say it’s the greatest thing! Thing is, though, I don’t care, don’t need one, don’t want one, happy with the regular DVD’s, and all I want… hell, I really don’t even need a new iPod, the MP3 player I have is fine for what I use it for.
All I want for Christmas is __________… hmm, I’d have to think about it. What? You know what it is that I want? Go ahead, fill in the blank! :)
Are we still doing MM? I didn’t think so… but I was pulling into the Wal*Mart parking lot this morning to pick up my weekly supply of apples and bananas… usually I go in the other entrance, but the light turned red, so I made the right turn and then the left and ended up in that corner of the parking lot where eldest daughter and I worked on her parking skills.
Has it really been a whole year? It’s about eleven months since she got her license, so yeah, it must be about that — but weren’t there huge piles of snow already? Or am I thinking of some other time. We did a lot of practicing in snowy parking lots, I do remember that.
At W*M we practiced the backing into the parking space. She was all crazy about backing into parking spaces, and sure enough, it was something she had to do to get her license. It got busy there, though, what with all the holiday shopping… and ended up going to the big company parking lot where I actually did a lot of my driving practice, uggh, has it really been 28 years??
And then there was the elementary school where I invented this great parallel parking technique. I’ll have to diagram it and post that one of these days.
Well I just had to share these monday morning memories.
Was it really last week? I actually remember the day quite well. Looking back, I guess it was my *second* post, after the requisite “is this thing on” post.
Three years! No wonder I’ve got pretty much nothing left to say! Have I really said it all before, just with different names? Somehow it feels different now, I don’t know. I’ve changed, but then I haven’t, really. Not ever, I don’t think.
And going back even further… no, you really can’t. I don’t think I even have the archives from the old blog. It was a database and I saved it somewhere… I’ll bet it’s backed up to CD or DVD or magtape or magpie or pumpkin pie or pumpkin muffin or blueberry muffin or… OMG, could I go for a blueberry… no, a pistachio muffin right now.
I’m actually wearing my “I’m the blogger” sweatshirt right now. It doesn’t fit anymore. Not literally, not figuratively. But it’s nice and warm and has a pocket where I can put stuff. The metaphors just keep coming.
I have so much to say, I’m just bursting at the seams. In a way, though, you all know me too well now. I’m afraid of what you’ll say. I don’t know why. Not like you’re going to talk me into anything, or out of anything. Maybe I need more private posts and really tell you what the heck is going on. The problem with problems is sometimes they just have no solutions. I guess those are the ones you just vent and someone says, hey I’ve been there and you feel better. Or do you? But could I have problems? I mean, really — Uisce have problems? I really, truly lead an infinitely charmed life.
I can hear the dogs jangling about upstairs, and now my me time is over. Maybe I’ll get deeper into all of this in year four. Yes, it’s been three years already. Happy bloggaversary to me! :)
There used to be this car wash and lube place here in town where you could get inspected.
Yes, I meant cars.
Well now it’s changed and the coffee pot is gone. The TV is gone. Even the cashier window is gone!
“Still do state inspections?” I ask. “Yup, my inspection man will be off lunch break in a few minutes,” they tell me.
So I stand around and wait. I’ve left the keys in the ignition and the registration on the passenger seat. I’m starting to feel like I’m in the Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.
“Where is your front plate?” says the inspection man.
I can see this is going to be a very thorough inspection. “On order,” I tell him. I mean, the inmates only work so fast. “Got any paperwork on that?” he asks. I have to think about that one. “Well I’ve got a temporary plate on the back,” I tell him. “Yup, that works,” he says, nodding.
Having completed phase one od the rigorous process, he drives my truck inside and closes the see through garage door behind him. I’m left standing there.
“I’ve got a waiting room, so you can get out of the cold,” says a voice from a man in a Lubes-R-Us uniform.
Two chairs, about where the coffee machine used to be. A nice one, with the cups and you could get anything you… the K-cups, I mean. And then also the kind you drink out of. The place was nice. Now it’s just a little… I dunno, odd.
But my truck does appear to be in good, safety-minded thorough hands.
Anheuser-Busch strikes deal to distribute beer known as Czechvar in U.S.
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.
