Category: Front Page

Written by Emily Corwin for NPR

As beer drinkers demand increasingly obscure beers with ingredients like jalapenos or rhubarb, smaller and smaller breweries are stepping up to the plate. New Hampshire is one state helping these brewery startups get off the ground, with new laws that make it easier for small-scale breweries to obtain licenses and distribute their craft beers.

Among those benefiting: Nicole Carrier and her partner, Annette Lee, of North Hampton, N.H. A year and half ago, they were just enthusiastic home brewers. Now, they spend much of their time rinsing equipment and mixing ingredients at their brewery, Throwback. As in, a throwback to the days when communities were smaller, and all food was local food.

Carrier still works for IBM, while Lee left her job as an engineer to start the brewery. With two full-time employees, Carrier and Lee produce 360 gallons of beer a week. That’s about what bigger craft breweries throw away.

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Written by Zachary Fowle for phoenixnewtimes.com

 

Beer: Hop Bomber India Pale Ale
Brewery: Grand Canyon Brewing Co.
Style: American IPA
ABV: 7.5 percent

One of my major complaints about Arizona’s breweries is that they seem afraid to innovate. For all the different breweries in the state, the consumer still has very few Belgian ales to choose from — and not a single sour. Novelty is rare, so when a brewery does come out with something new and interesting, I applaud it.

See also:
– Bear Republic Racer 5, In Beer And Whiskey Form
– Budweiser Black Crown: The Poor, Desperate Man’s Yeungling

This week’s acclamation goes out to the Flavor Bomb, an invention from Grand Canyon Brewing Co. in Williams, Ariz. Sent to shelves in December, these tiny plastic vessels are made to be stuffed with additional ingredients — wood chips, cocoa nibs, hops — and added to a bottle of beer before capping.

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Written by Elizabeth Flock for USNews

For the last six generations, beer has defined Jim Koch’s family.

And for much of that time, his family’s story has criss-crossed that of another brewing company, Anheuser-Busch. Koch’s great-great grandfather founded their family’s brewery the same year Anheuser opened its doors. Both were housed in St. Louis. Koch’s grandfather even worked as a brewmaster at the Anheuser brewery post-Prohibition.

But in the years since, the Anheuser and Koch breweries have taken very different paths, ones that have led them to become more foes than friends.

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New York Times Editorial

Consumers will benefit from the Justice Department’s antitrust suit to block Anheuser-Busch InBev, the country’s largest brewing company, from acquiring one of its competitors. This kind of action was seen less frequently in the Bush administration.

Anheuser-Busch InBev announced in June that it would pay $20.1 billion to buy the 50 percent stake in Grupo Modelo of Mexico — maker of Corona beer — that it did not already own. Together the two companies sell about 46 percent of all beer in the United States and more than 50 percent in big cities like Houston and Los Angeles, according to the department’s antitrust division. The proposed acquisition would leave the country with just two companies — the second being MillerCoors — controlling more than 70 percent of the beer business.

Under the Bush administration’s less robust antitrust division, a series of big mergers severely reduced competition in the beer industry and led to higher prices. In 2008, it greenlighted two mega-deals: Belgium-based InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch, and a merger of the American beer divisions of SABMiller, a London-based brewing giant, and Molson Coors, a Canadian company.

Not surprisingly, beer prices started rising faster than the Consumer Price Index, according to a detailed study by the American Antitrust Institute, a research organization.

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Courtesy classictrucks.com

Without intent, I have collected well over 1,000 beer bottles since the early 70s. When something finally had to be done about the cheap paneling in this old modular, I had a choice. Tear down the walls while, oh, so carefully, replacing the often rotted 1X3s. Or: cover them with… The Bottle Collection.

Written by Ken Carman

H.C. Berger Brewing Co.
1900 E. Lincoln Ave.
Fort Collins, CO 80524

H.C. Berger was a brewer out of Fort Collins, CO. I’m sure this was one of the beers I offered at my beer events I hold in the summer. Seems to me it wasn’t all that remarkable. According to Beer Advocate they are closed. Chocolate mild at best. Not a lot of head and brownish-black.

According to thecoloradoan.com H.C. opened in 1992, and in 2002 it was shut down due to non-payment of taxes and reopened as well known craft brewer Fort Collins. They do a Chocolate Stout, but I doubt the recipe is the same.

Here is how brewpublic.com describes that beer…
Continue reading “From the Bottle Collection: H.C. Berger Chocolate Stout”

The Bible Belt Brouhaha over Beer

Written by Tommy Andres, CNN

 

Editor’s Note: Listen to the full story in our player above (on their site: PGA), and join the conversation in our comments section below (on their site too-PGA.)

Montgomery, Alabama (CNN) – Despite the fact that it has been federally legal since 1979, there are still two U.S. states that don’t allow residents to make beer in their own homes: Alabama and Mississippi.

The issue is expected to be one of the first to surface in Alabama’s state legislature as lawmakers there head back to session this week, and a colorful standoff is likely.

Homebrew laws have failed to materialize for the past five years, with religion and morality arguments narrowly beating out the estimated 5,000 underground homebrewers in the state who say their civil liberties are on the line.

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(Note: this link also includes the CNN radio report.)

Written by Julia Herz for craftbeer.com

I like to call craft-brewed beer a cerebral beverage. Based on all the flavors, variety and innovation going on today, it certainly gives beer lovers much to talk about. But therein lies the challenge…

In talking about flavor on a daily basis, I’ve searched high and low for a solid answer on what exactly flavor is, how the heck we perceive it, and more importantly, describe it.

Admittedly, as one on a flavor-finding journey, and ever a palate athlete in training—we train each bite people—the bottom line is flavors are often difficult to describe. There are a multitude of books on the very topic. A new one that relates directly to pairing is Beer, Food, and Flavor by Schuyler Schultz.

Schultz talks about tasting in terms of attack: primary, secondary and tertiary flavor characteristics, finish, balance and dimension. There’s also the stand-by bible Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher. For those who really want to geek out, read Neurogastronomy by Gordon Shepherd, or Sensory Evaluation Techniques by Morten Meilgaard, Gail Vance Civille and B. Thomas Carr.

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