New Abita Beer Aids Oil Spill Victims
Louisiana-based Abita Brewing has established a charitable fund that will help Gulf Coast residents and the environment recover from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The centerpiece of Abita’s fund-raising effort is a new beer called SOS (for “Save Our Shore”).
Abita’s website describes the new beer as an “unfiltered Weizen Pils is made with Pilsner and Wheat malts. It is hopped and dry hopped with Sterling and German Perle hops. It has a brilliant gold color, a sweet malt flavor, and a pleasant bitterness and aroma.” SOS will generate 75 cents for every bottle sold. The website goes on to describe SOS as “a message in a bottle…a distress signal for the troubled waters of our Gulf Coast.”
Even if the beer isn’t available where you live, you can still help out by buying SOS T-shirts, baseball caps, and lapel pins, or donating to the SOS fund.
GABF Tickets Now on Sale
Starting today, members of the Brewers Association and the American Homebrewers Association can buy tickets to the Great American Beer Festival. Your membership must be valid through September 30, 2010, in order to attend the Members-Only Tasting Session or the Farm to Table Pavilion.
GABF tickets go on sale to the general public next Monday at noon Mountain Time.
Brewing Returns to Washington, DC
Two years ago, major league baseball returned to Washington after a nearly 40-year absence. And within a couple of years, production breweries will return to the nation’s capital after an even longer hiatus.
Greg Kitsock, writing in the Washington Post’s All We Can Eat blog, knows of three breweries in the planning stages in the District of Columbia. They are DC Brau, in the northeast part of the city; the Black Squirrel Brewing Co., an offshoot of the similarly named Adams Morgan bar, in the Brookland neighborhood; and the Chocolate City Brewing Company, in southeast Washington.
A New Cash Crop for North Carolina?
North Carolina is the historic home of America’s tobacco industry, an industry has fallen into disfavor due to health consciousness and increasingly strict anti-smoking laws. (In fact, it’s now illegal to smoke in most bars in the Tar Heel State.)
But as tobacco fades, another crop is starting to make a comeback in North Carolina–namely, hops. Cultivation of hops ended in the eastern United States during the 1920s because the plants were attacked by mold and other diseases.
Hoping to build on the craft-brewing and local food movements, researchers at North Carolina State University, and several farmers in the mountainous western part of the state, are growing experimental plots of hops.
Meanwhile, volunteers from a soon-to-open brewery in Durham called Fullsteam helped researchers plant some 200 plants at a Duke University field laboratory. Duke, as you probably know, bears the name of the man who founded the American Tobacco Company. How times have changed.
Thailand’s “Beer Bottle Temple”
Drinking alcohol is inconsistent with the Buddhist belief system, but that didn’t stop a group of monks in Thailand from building an entire temple out of used beer bottles.
The construction project began in 1984, when the monks started gathering bottles. The project not only attracted tourists, but also resulted in a flood of donations. A million and a half green Heineken and brown Chang bottles later, the “Beer Bottle Temple” became a reality.
The Daily Green, which ran the story about this temple, said that the interior “draws every last bit of light in and reflects it throughout, creating a warm glow unmatched by electrical lighting. Imagine how a stained-glass church looks–now imagine the incandescence of an entire building arising out of glass, with reams of sunlight stretching from wall to wall.”
And the monks’ work continues. They’re still collecting bottles, which they plan to use to build more shelters and temples.
The Friday Mash (Buddy Poppy Edition)
When we say “Memorial Day,” what comes to mind? That first trip up north. Firing up the grill. The Indy 500 and the NBA playoffs. And, of course, plenty of beer.
But wait. On our last beer run, we were reminded why Americans celebrate Memorial Day. A frail but proud World War II veteran was selling “buddy poppies” outside the store. We’re pleased to report that he had plenty of takers.
And now…The Mash!
Stephen Rich, who blogs at Definitive Ale, explains why we say “Cheers” and clink glasses before taking a drink.
The Pabst Brewing Company has been sold. The new owner is C. Dean Metropoulos, a billionaire who has turned around such brands as Duncan Hines, Armour, and Jiffy Pop.
The owner of three pubs in Victoria, British Columbia, has commissioned the Phillips Brewery to brew an ale honoring poet Robert W. Service.
Pete Brown treats us to video of the Guv’nor, Brian Blessed, along with his impressions from a tour of the Greene King brewery.
Evan Rail, the author of The Good Beer Guide: Prague and the Czech Republic, has re-launched his Beer Culture blog. He’s an engaging writer, so his blog ought to be worth a visit.
Finally, from the Sticker Shock Department. According to The Mirror, the Coach and Horses in London’s West End serves the most expensive pub beer in the UK: a pint of Leffe blonde, which will set you back £5.80.
Update on Palestine’s Taybeh Brewery
Last October, we linked to a British newspaper story about the West Bank’s Taybeh Brewery. This week, Roger Cohen of the New York Times paid a visit to the brewery and wrote an op-ed about it. Your local micro’s start-up problems are–pun intended–small beer compared to Taybeh’s:
The second intifada of 2000 cut Taybeh staff from 15 to zero by 2002. Hops, yeast and barley no longer reached them from the port of Ashdod. Sales in Israel collapsed. Jordan, to the east, became inaccessible. Soon the Israeli wall-fence started going up, cutting off Jerusalem to the west. Hamas in Gaza meant an end to sales of alcohol there.
Cohen’s op-ed also contains a link to video taken in the West Bank.
Beer News Out of Africa
Thanks to civil war and Islamic sharia law, the residents of South Sudan have been unable to enjoy a locally-made beer for half a century. That, however, is about to change. SABMiller has invested nearly $50 million in a brewery, which recently opened in Juba. The brewery’s flagship beer is White Bull, a session lager.
The news isn’t so good in nearby Kenya, where prohibitionist legislation has created a lucrative market for cheap–and often deadly–homemade liquor. One possible solution: offering tax breaks to brewers so Kenyans can drink a safer, less potent beverage.
The Friday Mash (Westward Expansion Edition)
On this day in 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their historic expedition through the vast Louisiana Purchase. Their journey has nothing to do with beer festivals, except that Ludwig’s come up with the crazy idea of paying for his next pint with Sacagawea dollar coins.
And now…The Mash!
Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin comments on Miller Lite’s new Vortex Bottle (complete with a how-it-works video). He also wonders about ideas that are so silly that even beer marketing people give them the thumbs-down.
Charlie Papazian explains how the Protestant Reformation affected the beer you drink today. Seriously.
Don Russell, a/k/a Joe Sixpack, worries about Anchor Brewing’s future now that Fritz Maytag has sold it. He points out that Pete’s Wicked Ale Brewery failed after Pete Slosberg sold it, and Bert Grant’s brewery disappeared after his death.
Some in the beer community pooh-poohed the idea of craft beer in cans, but more than 70 craft breweries now can their beer, and that total is steadily growing.
Brookston Beer Bulletin’s 40th edition of The Session will be, appropriately enough, a discussion of session beers. The host will be Erik Lars Myers from Top Fermented, and you’re welcome to join in .
May is National Tavern Month, and a couple of articles crossed Ludwig’s desk. Thursday’s Guardian had an article about the best-ever bar fights in movie history. On a more serene note, the editors of Draft magazine describe their favorite watering holes.
Finally, an item from The Mash’s Retro Want Ads Department. London’s Old Spitalfields Market is looking to hire an ale taster.
News From Toronto
A couple of stories from today’s Toronto Star caught our eye. The first is about a vote by Ontario lawmakers–sort of. They selected six Ontario craft beers that will be served in the legislative assembly’s dining room and other venues in Queen’s Park. Speaker Steve Peters added a seventh beer to the list: Railway City Brewing Dead Elephant Ale, which marks the 125th anniversary of Jumbo the circus elephant’s death.
Meanwhile, Toronto’s deputy mayor favors letting bars start serving at 10 am so World Cup fans can enjoy a beer with their football. Under current law, the beer can’t flow until 11. Update: Toronto has given the green light to earlier beer sales.