Month: December 2015

MARCY,NY — A trio of teachers are just about ready to roll out their first commercial batch of beer at Woodland Hop Farm and Fermentation. The small brewery will begin production Sunday.

Keith Redhead, AJ Spado and Nick Natishak were all teachers at Rome Free Academy and home brewers. Spado, 34, teaches earth science at the school. Natishak, 30, teaches physics there. Redhead, 30, now teaches social studies in Oriskany.

They’d been brewing in their homes for nearly a decade, all while talking about the dream of one day opening a brewery.

Spado and his wife were visiting a small brewery started by a fellow teacher, and Spado asked him if it had been a big leap. The answer — that it was not — empowered Spado to propose the idea of Woodland to his two friends.

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HERE

This may actually be short – and yes, I CAN hear you laughing! – because the whole subject just irritates me so badly that I want to transform my body into electrical impulses, flow through the internet, emerge on the other end, and just slap the shit out of all those people who seem so freakin’ determined to turn this into an Issue.

This business of craft beer and boutique wineries and artisan distilleries suddenly experiencing a bust on the order of the dot-com collapse is pure nonsense, promulgated by people who have little or no knowledge of economics and the average American consumer.

FACT: the dynamic that kept Anheuser-Busch atop the brewing world for generations was the simple act of kids coming of drinking age being raised to think that the precise definition of “beer” was one of a relative handful of adjunct Pilsners, all of which looked and tasted almost identical. If a child grows to his/her majority and sees nothing in their home’s fridge but BudMillerCoorsPabst…

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The total number of U.S. breweries reached an all-time high in 2015, according to a year-end review from the Brewers Association.

The professional beer industry in the United States has passed a milestone this year with 4,144 breweries, topping the historic high of 4,131 breweries in 1873. Since prohibition, the United States saw its lowest number of brewing companies in 1978, with just 50 brewing companies and 100 brewing facilities.

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My Thanksgiving weekend didn’t include a turkey, tree, or even a single Mariah Carey song, but it did include an afternoon of brewing beer—which I’d argue is just as holiday appropriate.

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On Sunday, after three days of baking pie, playing cards, and taking long, chilly walks, I coaxed my boyfriend away from a crossword puzzle to brew some beer with me. While it was already a little late to be starting the three-hour process—made even longer by an unexpectedly lengthy boil time, a leaky sanitizing solution, and a bodega-run for more ice—it ended up being one of the best things we did all weekend.

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HERE