Month: January 2013

Posted on

New Belgium Brewing becomes a 100% employee-owned company

Press release from New Belgium Brewing

Credit: mfajardo
Picture credit: mfajardo

(Fort Collins, CO) – New Belgium Brewing is excited to announce that the company’s Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) has purchased the balance of company shares, making it 100% employee-owned. New Belgium, brewer of a wide variety of award-winning beers including Fat Tire Amber Ale, has been a partial ESOP since 2000 with a controlling interest held by co-founder Kim Jordan and her family. This transition will put the company on a path to control their destiny into the foreseeable future.
Continue reading “New Belgium Brewing becomes a 100% employee-owned company”

Posted on

Some Yazoo Notes and The Dark Passenger Rises

Written by Brandon Jones for embracethefunk.com

I hope everyone’s New Year is going awesome so far. It seems like things have gotten busier for me after the holidays, but wow is it a good and fun type of busy. In November I wrote about the Embrace The Funk Series by Yazoo. The project is coming along nicely with the beers Linus and I started progressing as I would expect at this point. (Side note- even on days when I’m topping off a barrel or cleaning a barrel I still can’t believe what a cool opportunity I’ve been afforded!)

So….with things fairly under control and something to talk about… I thought an update on the Yazoo front and my home brewing front was in order.

flandersbarrels

Continue reading “Some Yazoo Notes and The Dark Passenger Rises”

Posted on

America’s 100 Best Beer Bars: 2013

Writer NOT Attributed. Via draft.com

As craft beer has exploded, so has the number of incredible places that serve it. This list celebrates those special haunts with less than three locations and one passionate focus: beer. There might be darts and a jukebox or candlelight and a turntable; there might be five beers or 500. But in every spot on our list, you’ll find an excellent brew in your glass and people—staff, owners, barflies—who care about that as much as you do. (Read last year’s list here.)

APEX | Portland, Ore.
Continue reading “America’s 100 Best Beer Bars: 2013”

Posted on

Sweet, Sweet Braggot

Written by K. Florian Klemp for allaboutbeer.com

Said to be at least 9,000 years old, mead is considered our most ancient intentionally fermented beverage. The uninitiated assume that today’s mead is heavy and cloyingly sweet, a surprisingly prevalent misconception. To be sure, mead can be made sweet, but honey as a medium allows for a vast number of interpretations, the majority of which would destroy any preconceived notion of its character. Home meadmakers know this well, and the variety that this writer has run across is mind-numbing, in more ways than one. Varietal honey alone offers dozens of choices and even brings with it a distinctly regional flair. With that in mind, and since this is a column dedicated to beer brewing, a natural path worthy of exploration is the melding of mead and beer: braggot.

Honey varieties are as distinctive as any malt or hop, and should be chosen carefully to meld with other additions, be they spice, fruit, grape or in our case, malt-based recipes.

Braggot (variously called bracket, bragot, brakkatt or brackett) is often associated historically with medieval Britain. Consumed widely in the Middle Ages, it was either ale wort fermented with honey, ale blended with fully fermented mead, or an ale laced with honey and spices. Often it was blended by the publican on the spot in one way or another. As hops gained acceptance in the British Isles, they too found a home in braggot.

Posted on

Sometimes the Good Guy Wins

beer-news10

State-owned Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar NP says a British court has rejected for good Anheuser-Busch’s request to have Budvar’s Budweiser trademark declared invalid in the country, the latest ruling in a long legal battle over the brand name.

NOTE: In case you don’t know this brewery started the brand, essentially. AB has, long before InBev, been repaying them for the inspiration by claiming only they can use anything with a similar name. It’s kind of like trying to declare your father no longer has a right to use your last name. =PGA

Posted on

Beer Bill Brews in Missouri Legislature

4c2114ddbe0c6.preview-620

beer-news10Homebrewed beers may be allowed to be poured at festivals, competitions and charity events under a bill introduced this week in the Missouri Legislature.

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, is the sponsor of Senate Bill 114, which seeks to amend a state statute that says homebrew can only be made for “personal or family use.”

Under Schmitt’s bill, homebrewers still would not be allowed to sell their beer, but they could take it out of their homes and pour it at certain “organized affairs, exhibitions or competitions, such as homebrewer contests, tastings or judging.”

Such events would include beer festivals that have obtained temporary retail licenses as well as at licensed charity events.

The proposed legislation comes after homebrewed beer was unexpectedly banned from last year’s St. Louis Brewers Heritage Festival downtown.
Continue reading “Beer Bill Brews in Missouri Legislature”

Posted on

Beer Profile: Laika, by Straight to Ale

Profiled by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.net

laikaRISlabel-e1352407854402-200x200Beer-Profile1-258x300Light brown head: rock mixed with pillow. Obsidian. Roasted barley up front but not too much to be problematic. This is a beer worthy of the heroic dog it was named after. Sent into space, Laika was a struggling street dog who was taken from trash barrels in the old USSR where life was tough tough to begin with unless you were highly placed in the party, taken from a street life of scraps. Then he was trained, not that he needed a lot of training. Everyone who worked with him said he was brilliant. Brilliant even for some humans. He died in space because they didn’t know how to bring him back. That sucks!

Nice full mouthfeel with a sturdy abv to support. Carbonation light but perfect. Head holds and slowly fades. The pale malt plus roasted barley mix is perfect: not that much of “other” malt sense. Hint of sour, as per Guinness. Foam tingles the mustache as it gently glides over the palate.

Taste is a nice roasted barley mix with malt intensity. I would call it roasted barley, mostly… with just a hint of sour. Hint of sharp hop bitter balanced with malt sweetness: the balance here is superb. This is what a Russian Imperial should be. There are obvious sweet unfermented sugars, but: in the background.

From Straight to Ale out of Huntsville, Alabama. I will have to check this out. Sweet Magnolia is great, But this is impressive!

Welcome to the new PGA rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “prefecto.” This beer was rated…

3361242-simple-drawing-of-a-pint-of-beer-isolated-on-white3361242-simple-drawing-of-a-pint-of-beer-isolated-on-white3361242-simple-drawing-of-a-pint-of-beer-isolated-on-white3361242-simple-drawing-of-a-pint-of-beer-isolated-on-white3361242-simple-drawing-of-a-pint-of-beer-isolated-on-white

Posted on

How New Hampshire Is Helping Nanobreweries Revolutionize Craft Beer

Written by Emily Corwin for npr.org

beer-news10While beer sales have been down, nationally, since the great recession, the craft beer industry has been going strong – growing 15 percent in 2011, according to the American Brewers’ Association. The newest kid on the block in craft beer is the nanobrewery – a very small scale commercial brewery that produces fewer than 2,000 barrels a year. To put that in context, the Brewers’ Association defines a microbrewery as producing fewer than 15,000 barrels a year, and a large brewery as exceeding 6 million*.  Hess Brewing in California keeps an online list of nanobreweries and estimates about 93 in operation nationally – although that list is probably not comprehensive.