Month: July 2010

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Free Beer Tastings!!!

Ready for an adventure in beer tasting? Two chances! August 21st and September 4th: 2010; 2pm

How do I get to Beaver River for the FREE beer tastings???



Important: for further information call Ken at 315 376 6625 or Millie at 615 255 4848. For reservoir transportation/reservations/accommodations: 315 376 6200 and speak with Ginger or Scott, 315 376 7035 and speak with George, or 585 928 2726: Tom

There are NO roads to Beaver River. But you CAN get there for this year’s free beer tastings hosted by two BJCP judges. Millie and Ken Carman’s 6th annual beer tastings are scheduled for August 21st and September 4th: both at 2pm. A special warm invite to the Saratoga Throughbrews this year, with the hope by next year we can have a competition and a homebrew demonstration in the Old Forge/Beaver River area. All those 21 and older are welcome.

How do I get there?


Route 28 to Eagle Bay, NY. Take the Big Moose Road all the way until it turns into dirt. When you reach a “T” in the road, take a right. Stop at BIG lake, unless you have an amphicar. (If you need to ask then you obviously don’t.)

But NOW what do I do?


At Beaver River Station the adventure is getting there. Imagine yourself of a River Boat floating 7 miles down a scenic reservoir, or riding a barge, or traveling by railcar…
You can take the barge (The only way to drive into Beaver River… 315 376 6200), meet the River Boat (same number) or call ahead for a boat taxi. (There are two boat taxis: use the same number or call George at 315 376 7035, or Tom at 585 928 2726: railcar that would pick you up in Big Moose.)

What Kind of Beer?

Stouts, Porters, Barley Wines, Fruit Beer, Wheat, Weird Beer of ALL Kinds, Homebrew and maybe even some wine and some Peycer. (Find out at the tasting!) Ken and Millie gather beer from all over the country all year long.

Just get there by 2!

Where do I stay?


Accommodations are available at Noridgewock (315 376 6200) or The Beaver River Hotel (315 376 3010) And Millie and Ken have limited free room for members of Saratoga Thoroughbrews (315 376 6625 or 615 255 4848). We may be able to make one trip each way to pick up members of Saratoga Thoroughbrews with our boat, if we all come up with a mutual time. It’s quite the trip down Stillwater!

The free tasting on the 21st will be at Norridgewock, the tasting on September 4th will be in front of the hotel.

Don’t forget… 2pm. August 21st, 2010 and September 21st 2010

@12:30pm the Beaver River Riverboat leaves Stillwater, NY and leaves Beaver River @ 3:30. Plenty of time to sample and only $15 for the whole trip!!! A casual, beautiful cruise down Stillwater Reservoir with FREE BEER when you get there. (315 376 6200)

This year’s tastings are sponsored by Professor Good Ales and hosted by Millie and Ken Carman, Beaver River Hotel and Norridgewock. Thanks in advance for another successful year!

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Russia Beer Production Down Nearly 10%


Does not add up to 100% due to rounding. Source: Business Analytica

Written for Businessmonitor.com

Underlining BMI‘s bearish near-medium term view on Russian beer, the Federal Statistics Service (FSS) has reported that headline beer production plummeted by 9.99% year-on-year (y-o-y) in the six months to June 30 2010. We point to two underlining factors behind the decline:

  • Russia has taken a hard line stance on beer – almost trebling the excise rate on beer in 2010. Bearing in mind that the excise rate levied on beer will continue to increase in 2011 and 2012 (with more anti-beer legislation not to be ruled out).
  • Reacting to the looming tax hike, retailers and vendors pursued heavy stock piling to build up their inventories in the run up to 2010. This was evened out by destocking in the Q110 period in particular, which we believed contributed to the decline reported by the FSS.

The near 10% slip came notwithstanding favourable weather and tail-end momentum likely to have been provided by the World Cup (despite Russia not qualifying) in Q210. The excise hike has come as a hammer blow to the industry, compounding what was a dismal 2009.

Our H210 Outlook

Continue reading “Russia Beer Production Down Nearly 10%”

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Now for Those Masochists Who Thought the BJCP Test Wasn’t “Tough Enough”

Written by Julia Herz for Caftbeer.com

Ever hear of the Cicerone Certification Program? It’s similar to a wine Sommelier, but is for experts who love and are passionate about beer. Based on everything I’ve seen in the craft beer world, it is the most advanced and difficult beer education program in existence. Specifically, Cicerone is an incredibly difficult series of tests created by a mentor of mine, Ray Daniels.

Continue reading “Now for Those Masochists Who Thought the BJCP Test Wasn’t “Tough Enough””

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Dead Animal Beer Bottles at £500 Each “Perverse”


The End of History – featuring dead animals – comes at £500 a bottle

From the BBC

A beer served in bottles made from stuffed animals has been criticized as “perverse” and “pushing the boundaries of acceptability”. The End of History, made by BrewDog of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, is 55% and £500 a bottle. The bottles have been made using seven dead stoats, four squirrels and a hare, said to be roadkill.

However, Advocates for Animals and Alcohol Focus Scotland both condemned the marketing.
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What the Colonists Might Have Quaffed

Written by Greg Kitsock for The Washington Post

Yards Brewing Co.’s Ales of the Revolution are beers with a history chaser. The Philadelphia microbrewery, which opened in 1995 in a building the size of a toolshed and now occupies a former skateboard rink, has attempted to replicate the brews our Colonial forefathers would have downed while talking sedition in wayside taverns.

General Washington’s Tavern Porter takes its cue from a home-brew recipe, preserved in the New York Public Library, that Washington jotted down while he was serving in the Continental Army. It calls for fermenting a “small beer” from molasses, evidently a more common ingredient than barley in that era.

Yards President Tom Kehoe compromised, beginning with a base rich in dark, heavily roasted malts, then adding four pounds per barrel of baking molasses during the second fermentation. The sugar-rich molasses kicks up the alcohol to 7 percent by volume, but enough residual sweetness remains in the beer to balance the sharper, coffeelike flavors.

Thomas Jefferson’s Tavern Ale presented a bit of a dilemma, Kehoe says. Jefferson brewed extensively at Monticello, but in his voluminous records he never recorded a complete beer recipe. Rather, he left the fine details to a slave named Peter Hemings, brother of the more famous Sally Hemings.

Kehoe scoured our third president’s farm records and “used whatever was available at Monticello in formulating the beer.” In addition to barley, Tavern Ale is brewed from 30 percent wheat (a major crop at Monticello), plus small amounts of corn, oats, rye and honey. At 8 percent alcohol, it’s more potent than the porter. “They made them strong back then to hide their mistakes,” Kehoe says with a laugh.
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Meantime Brewery Tour: London


From Wiki…

It was founded in 2000 by Brewmaster,Alastair Hook,[1] who trained at the world famous brewing school at the Technical University of Munich of Weihenstephan. The Greenwich Brewery, home of the Meantime Brewing Company, is located 0° 2′ 12″ east of the Greenwich Meridian, though the brewery will be moving to new premises in 2010.

This mission driven company aims to help the consumer rediscover their cultural and culinary beer heritage, which it believes has, in the UK at least, largely been lost as beer manufacture has been concentrated in the hands of a smaller number of ever bigger brewers, who do not wish the consumer to have any great understanding or appreciation of beer.

Since its establishment Meantime has built a worldwide reputation for both quality and for the authentic recreation of several of the world’s iconic and pivotal beer styles. Its India Pale Ale and London Porter (beer) are generally regarded as being amongst the most historically accurate recreations of these beers available today.

Meantime has matched its reputation for autheticity with one for innovation. Its CoffeePorter – launched in 2005 – was Britain’s first Fairtrade beer (using coffee from the Maraba Coffee cooperative of Rwanda), and went on to win a gold medal at the 2006 World Beer Cup. Meantime was the first British brewery to win medals at the World Beer Cup in 2004 and is the only British brewery to have won medals at every WBC since. In 2007 Meantime had no fewer than four beers ranked in the ‘Worlds 50 Best Beers’ as compiled by the UK based International Beer Challenge; a feat it repeated in 2008.

As a consequence of Meantime’s stiving to raise the bar of British brewing Alastair Hook was named the 2008 Brewer of the Year by the British Guild of Beer Writers.

The tour video tour guide from The Guardian visits with a Meantime brewer. Our video tour guide makes the tour even better! Want to watch? Click…

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