More than 100 years ago in 1902, a man by the name of William F. Peck built a home in the small, but booming mining town of Tonopah, Nev. He didn’t build with wood, brick or any other traditional materials for that matter; rather he used 10,000 empty beer bottles.
Other bottle houses popped up in the following decades as homes were often built in desert mining towns where saloons and their respective empty bottles, were more plentiful than construction materials. Short of necessities and far from freight lines, the mining town residents would likely be praised for their recycling efforts by builders today. Continue reading “Building With Bottles”
Over the weekend eBay began removing auctions for certain craft beer brands. Most noticeably auctions for unopened bottles of Russian River, Cantillon, Lost Abbey and Hill Farmstead were ended. As of this posting a few new auctions have popped up, so it will be interesting to see if those are removed today. Bottle and growler auctions on eBay have been the subject of a growing debate in the past year. Many breweries have publicly issued statements denouncing what they believe is a “Black or Gray Market†for beer sales. On the flip side of that coin, buyers of these auctions have said eBay is the only way they can obtain some of these limited release beers.
Recently Hill Farmstead brewery in Vermont has seen its bottles become some of the most popular auctions on eBay. Shaun Hill who owns the brewery hasn’t let his opinion of Ebay beer/bottle auctions go unnoticed. Since it appears as though eBay has begun to honor the requests of the brewers who do not want their bottles on the auction site I wanted to get Shaun’s reactions to the news. I have contacted a few other breweries for reaction, but as of this posting I haven’t heard anything back. I will update this post as soon as I get a response. Continue reading “The eBay Debate: Brewer Reactions”
Come now, surely I can get a “woo†for this weekend’s Oregon Brewers Festival, known as the biggest and best of Beervana’s keg-based parties. There will be more than 80 distinctive craft brews served alongside the Willamette River. It’ll go down under sunny skies if the early forecast is correct.
Ah, yes, but beer festivals are too often annoying. It only takes one drunken gang of broey buffoons arguing about the Sounders-Timbers rivalry precipitously close to a stroller and a flight of stairs to make you reconsider the entire venture. Continue reading “A Brief but Essential Guide to Beer-Festival Etiquette.”
Despite the fact that neither of us are hard liquor fans, when Corsair Artisan opened in Nashville we decided to check it out. Two positive notes that attracted us like moths to the distill pot flame: this used to be the old location for Yazoo Brewing and the old car motif that seemingly engulfs the building.
We wanted to see what they’d done to the place. You know: the exquisite curtains, the fancy dancy carpet, the brew tanks and distilling equipment… All of that was untrue, except the brew and distilling equipment.
Courtesy posterityproject.blogspot.comI also admit this just past the turn of the previous century building fascinates me: I love less mainstream old cars like Marathon which was the building’s namesake. The indies fascinate me. Of course, back then, they were all “indies.†It was the start of the automobile age.
Millie has never really cared for my automotive fetish, but the small, local, microbrewer-like distillery also fascinated both of us. Besides, hey, twas an excuse to do an article.
Scoot forward in time like a dog on its hindquarters… ewe. Scratch that. Slip forward in time like a well aged Scotch… that’s better… and we had become very comfortable with Andrea as our bartender at Corsair. Well educated: a biology major who went to college in Chattanooga, she obviously loves the business and the people she served. Plus her sticking roses, petunias, orchid, Brussels sprouts, hops in her hair and using weird hair dyes was just so entertaining. Continue reading “Brewer and Distiller Profile: Andrea Clodfelter”
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