Month: August 2011

Written by Erin Ailworth for Boston.com/The Boston Globe

The state’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission yesterday decided to ditch a licensing rule change that would have hurt more than two dozen Massachusetts craft brewers and, the beer makers said, put several companies out of business.

The new rule would have required brewers operating under a farmer-brewery license to grow 50 percent of the grains or hops they use to make malt beverages, or get them from a domestic source, which many brewers interpreted to mean Massachusetts. That, they said, would be impossible for most brewers, because the state doesn’t produce enough of the necessary ingredients.

After meeting with brewers yesterday – including the makers of Samuel Adams, as well as Cape Ann Brewing Company and Ipswich Ale Brewery – state Treasurer Steven Grossman said the commission, which his office oversees, had made a “mistake.’’ The farmer-brewery license costs hundreds, even thousands, of dollars less than the state’s other brewing licenses, and allows brewers to market their beer directly to retailers, a necessity for many of the small businesses to grow.

“The 50 percent threshold will not be implemented,’’ Grossman said. “We realized that perhaps we went a little beyond what was practical.’’

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Written by Ed Enoch for the Opelika-Auburn News and www2.wrbl.com

The brewing kettles tucked into the backroom of the Olde Auburn Ale House are long gone, and the brewery Chris Collier dreamed of building went north. Each in their own way were victims of financial realities that, until this year, made brewing beer in Alabama a difficult business.

“Two years ago, I would have never considered opening a brewery in Alabama,” said Collier, the brewer at the North-Carolina-based Nantahala Brewing Company. “Not because I didn’t want to, but because it wouldn’t have made any fiscal sense.”

Collier, who lives in Atlanta and commutes to North Carolina on the weekends to brew, said the beer-friendly laws and culture of North Carolina made the choice of where to locate his brewery easy. But during its last session, the Alabama Legislature changed state laws, giving brewpubs and breweries more freedom to bring their beer to a wider Alabama audience.

The recent legislation was a compromise between advocates such as grassroots group Free the Hops and the distributors who currently sell beer across the state to retailers. The new regulations still tether brewpubs to historic buildings or historic districts in counties where brewing occurred before Prohibition, but it frees them of the requirement to also operate as 80-seat restaurants and to only sell their beer to customers on premise. The new law also allows brewpubs to sell their beer to wholesalers for retail sale off premise. The revised law allows breweries to operate taprooms, where beer lovers may sample brews as well as enjoy full pints.
Continue reading “New Beer Laws Could Boost Brewing in Auburn”

Written by Brandon Jones for embracethefunk.com

Awesome words spoken by Jean Van Roy of Cantillon that every brewer of sour beers should know.

What happens when a beer gets sick? To quote Dr. Evil “It got weird didn’t it?” That is what happens when a beer goes sick…. It gets weird. The awesome sour beer you last tasted is suddenly ropey, buttery, slick, and oily. It can happen in the fermenter, the bottle, or it can happen during both. Yes the beer can get sick twice.

What can cause the sickness? Pediococcus can give off the buttery/diacetyl/ropiness. Technically a Polysaccharide will form as a layer in the beer.

Continue reading ““Beer Must Be Sick To Be Stronger After””

This is just wrong-PGA

Written by Andrew McGill for mcall.com

 

Caroline Simock doesn’t know it, but she’s a rebel.

Rounding the Fahy Bridge with her husband, the Neffs woman took a swig from her cup of beer, a scene as old as Musikfest. Where else, after all, does a city founded by Moravians allow its streets to run thick with mugs of beer — if only for 10 days a year?

But as Simock walked past a Bethlehem Police Department squad car, the officer inside had every right to hand her a ticket.

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Note: to the Professor this seems an artificial debate: “real beer,” done right IS craft beer. And not every beer brewed right need be cask/firkin- PGA

Written by Danner Kline for bhamweekly.com

Once in a while I read an article that gets my mental gears turning so much I just have to write about it. That was the case this week when someone directed my attention to the BrewDog blog and their post on craft beer vs. real ale. It offers both an opportunity for me to touch on the topic of cask-conditioned ale and the topic of craft beer more generally.

Longtime readers will recall that BrewDog is the Scottish brewery that garnered tons of free publicity last year by engaging in a battle to produce the strongest beer in the world. After several rounds of one-upmanship with Germany’s Schorschbräu brewery, BrewDog ended the battle (at least for a while) with the release of The End of History, a 55-percent ABV beer—a strength produced by ice distillation. The brewery has really made a name for itself by pulling stunts that garner lots of media attention, and by brewing beers that would be much more at home in the middle of the American craft beer revolution than in their native U.K., where dark milds and ESBs are revered more than extreme beer styles or tricks like shooting for ridiculous alcohol contents.
Continue reading “Craft Beer vs. Real Ale”

Anyone else think they’re “kind of” missing the point, again?- The Professor

Written by David Kesmodel for /online.wsj.com

Anheuser-Busch InBev NV is redesigning the Budweiser can for the first time in a decade, seeking to reinvigorate sales of the storied brew.

The company unveiled a new, bolder look Wednesday that makes the Budweiser “bowtie” symbol the centerpiece of the label and goes much heavier on the color red than previous versions.

The company’s 12th design since it began selling Budweiser in cans in 1936 comes as Anheuser tries to arrest the brand’s protracted decline in the U.S. and expand sales of the brew overseas.

Shipments of Budweiser to wholesalers, a measure of sales volume, fell 7.3% last year in the U.S. after a 9.5% decline a year earlier, according to newsletter Beer Marketer’s Insights.

“Our intent was to find a design that was very powerful and positive for both old and new Budweiser drinkers,” said Rob McCarthy, vice president for Budweiser.

The brewer has been trying to entice U.S. drinkers in their 20s and 30s who have gravitated to other beers to sample Budweiser. It used a special-edition “patriotic” can design over the Fourth of July holiday to woo consumers.

Budweiser is the No. 2-selling beer in the U.S. after the company’s Bud Light, but industry watchers say rival Coors Light likely will overtake Budweiser this year.

The new Budweiser can maintains the Budweiser creed, which dates to the late 1870s and begins, “This is the famous Budweiser beer.”

The company said the new packaging will hit U.S. stores this summer and will roll out in overseas markets later this year.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest beer maker by sales, was formed by the 2008

Talk about being “late to the party.” Does this mean they’ll put their own name on it, or will it be attempts to hide the source like Plank Road Brewery, or coming up with another, seemingly unrelated name, like Blue Moon? The Professor would like to think this is going to finally be a fair fight. He’s not willing to bet any money on it.- The Professor

Written by Kim Bhasin for businessinsider.com

 

Three years ago, SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing Co. merged in order to take on industry giant Anheuser-Busch. It has been all about cost-cuttingfor the company since.

Now, MillerCoors’ newly appointed CEO Tom Long thinks it’s finally time to change course, and laid out his plans in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.

He revealed that the brewer’s plan is past “stage one,” which was the streamlining process it went through over the past few years. Now, Long is focused on growth.
Continue reading “Why MillerCoors Is Starting To Focus On Craft Beer”