Who Says American Ingenuity is Dead?
John Boiles and his friends on Yelp’s engineering crew have developed KegMate, which reports the keg temperature, keeps track of who’s tapping it and how often, and even collects user ratings of what’s inside.
From the Department of Bad Beer
Mediocre. Asia’s emergence as the number-one market for beer moved Don Russell, a/k/a “Joe Sixpack,” to assess the state of Asian beer. His verdict: not much to write home about.
Bad. Luke McKinney, writing at Zug.com, tried five awful beers for breakfast, then wrote scathing reviews of all five. (Hat tip: Bryce Eddings of About.com.)
Very Bad. You might not recognize his name, but if you live in New England, you might have drunk August Haffenreffer’s infamous Private Stock Malt Liquor. Sold in 40-ounce bottles, it was called “Green Death” and “Haffenwrecker.” Wilt Chamberlain hawked the stuff in the 1970s and, more recently, the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. sang about it.
Really, Really Bad. In his novel Roy and Lillie, Loren Estleman describes the beer brewed by the legendary Judge Roy Bean: “[H]e was impatient with the process of fermentation and insisted on serving the beer green, with hops and the odd drunken spider floating on top and a taste bitter enough to cause lockjaw.”
The Friday Mash (Micro Republic Edition)
On this day in 301 A.D., a stonecutter with the wonderful name of Marinus of Rab founded what is now The Most Serene Republic of San Marino. This “micro republic” has a flag, a constitution, a parliament, and even a coat of arms. Unfortunately, it’s never had an event listed on the Beer Festival Calendar.
And now…The Mash!
We start with the discovery of two-centuries-old bottles of beer at a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. So far, the divers who found the beer haven’t reviewed it on RateBeer.com.
It’s chile harvest time in Hatch, New Mexico, and Jesse Hughey of the Dallas Observer hunts up beers that pair with chile dishes.
Overshadowed by its beery neighbor to the south, Washington State is on the verge of a microbrewery explosion, with as many as 20 new establishments about to open their doors.
Stan Hireronymus reviews Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Dan Okrent. Factoid: James Madison, who stood only 5′4″, drank a pint a day. Whiskey, not beer.
Alan McLeod (A Good Beer Blog) argues that macrobrewers still don’t get it: they rely on T-shirts and $5 coupons, not better beer, to attract customers.
Seth Levy of BeerConnoisseur.com caught up with Jennifer Tally, the brewmaster at Squatter’s Pubs & Beer. He also found out how good-tasting a beer can be despite an ABV of less than 4 percent.
Finally, scientists have found that the ancient Nubians drank beer containing the antibiotic tetracycline. To your health, indeed!
News of a Virtual Tasting
The folks at Oskar Blues Brewery, who pioneered craft beer in cans, are at it again. They’ve organized the first-ever Virtual Colorado Beer Tasting, which will take place Thursday evening, September 9.
To take part in the tasting, you need to do the following:
One. Buy some Colorado-brewed beer at your local beer store.
Two. At 7 pm Mountain Time, crack open the first beer “in a resounding chorus heard around the web.”
Three. Tell us what you think about the beer on Twitter (use the hash tag #bbc10 and the one for the brewery), Facebook, your own blog, or the Beer Bloggers Conference website.
You also might want to carry some ID, just in case there’s a virtual bouncer inside your computer.
Jim Koch on Craft Beer
Normally, Beer Business Daily is hidden behind a subscription wall, but “jesskidden,” a contributor to BeerAdvocate.com’s discussion forums, ran across a rare no-subscription article. It’s an interview with Jim Koch, who needs no introduction here. His Boston Beer Company has had a great year, with sales up 13 percent over last year despite the flat economy.
Koch is always good for a few soundbites, and he didn’t disappoint. On his brand’s appeal to young adults, he said:
I think that 20-somethings are much more into indie culture. They seem to be less susceptible to mass marketed and mass produced products, unless the product has some visible heart and soul, like Apple does.
He also thinks craft beer can go head-to-head (sorry about the pun) with wine and spirits:
So a consumer can trade out of a $9 top shelf margarita or a $7 glass of wine down to a $5 pint of Sam Adams, and they can still feel like they’re getting something special and well-made. The rise of craft beer has given the beer industry a winning weapon to combat the image of wine and spirits.
And if Sam Adams doesn’t get him there, maybe this will:
Together we [Boston Beer Company and Weihenstephan] developed the first new style of beer in Germany in a hundred years. It’s the Opus One of beer….
It’s unique in the same way that Sam Adams Utopias is unique. Infinium combines elements of Dom Perignon, Noble Pilsener, Chateau d’Yquem and Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen.
Some beer geeks might roll their eyes at the the prospect, but…
There will probably come a day when Sam Adams will be in cans. Can makers have continued to improve the quality of the package….I’ve been watching it since the late 1980s and the quality of the liners keeps better. So there will come a time, I think, when we can put Sam Adams in a can without compromising our standards for the quality of the beer.
And finally, Koch offers this bold prediction:
I think it’s realistic that Better Beer can get to a third of the beer market, imports and crafts and domestic specialties….Craft can be a third of that third, which is 11%, up from about 5% today. So if we hold our share of craft beer we’ll more than double.
We wouldn’t bet against him. Twenty-five years ago, the odds against his company becoming the number-one American-owned brewer were astronomical.
It’s Fresh Hop Season
Summer is getting ready to say goodbye, but there’s a silver lining: the hop harvest is right around the corner. John Foyston of The Oregonian has news of several fresh-hop events in his home state.
In recent years, hop farms have sprung up outside the Northwest. One of the newcomers is Simple Earth Hops, located in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. It will celebrate its grand opening next Saturday. This family-friendly event will feature tours of the hopyard and farm, live music, and an evening potluck.
And on September 18, in upstate New York, the Madison County Historical Museum will host the 15th annual Madison County Hop Fest. The festivities will include a food and beer pairing, beer sampling, educational programs, hop-related merchandise for sale, and the crowning of the Hop King.
Celebrating American Lager
Ever since Jack McAuliffe brewed his first batch at New Albion, people have associated microbreweries with ale. But lager has definitely taken its place in the craft beer movement. In fact, according to Eli Shayotovich, this year’s Craft Lager Festival in Manitou Springs, Colorado, attracted some 5,000 beer lovers. It’s now the state’s second-largest festival behind the Great American You-Know-What.
Shayotovich adds that this year’s ticket sales were almost double last year’s, and that festival organizers ought to be looking for a new, larger venue. He also has a list of the festival’s best beers. It’s headed by Lagunitas Brewing Company’s Czech-Style Pilsner, which grabbed Best of Show honors.
Women and Craft Beer
In the provocatively-titled article “Women, Craft Beer and Centerfolds,” Julia Herz gives us facts and figures about the progress women have made in the craft brewing movement. Herz names prominent women in brewing, provides statistics (did you know that 37% of weekly craft beer drinkers are women?); and lists female beer-tasting clubs.
A Tool for Real Ale Aficionados
Alex Hall, who maintains a Cask Ale Finder for the United States and Canada, has enhanced his site with a Google map of establishments that serve Real Ale.
Of course, Maryanne and Paul went straight to the Michigan map. They discovered that the biggest concentration of establishments is in Grand Rapids, which continues to solidify its reputation as our state’s craft beer capital.
Really, Really Retro Ale
A while back, we ran across an interesting article about colonial-style ale, which is occasionally brewed at Colonial Williamsburg. The brewer is Frank Clark, the head of the Department of Historic Foodways at the historic site.
Clark runs the Art and Mysteries of Brewing program four days each spring and fall in a scullery near the Governor’s Palace where, back in the day, one royal governor kept hundreds of bottles of high-quality beer in the basement.
On this fall’s brewing schedule are Bristol beer, a strong, dark, highly hopped beer, September 12; an 1820s-style porter, October 9; mum, a North German medicinal beer that became a popular English brew rich in herbs and oats, October 24; and strong ale, November 20.
Update (8/23): Matt Gottlieb of BeerConnoisseur.com reminds us that Thomas Jefferson was a homebrewer, and that his favorite style was pale ale. Matt had the good fortune to taste Clark’s interpretation of Jefferson’s recipe.