Category: Front Page

Written by Michael Bauer for insidescoopsf.sfgate.com

Beer is quickly becoming as popular as wine in San Francisco –not surprising, given the city’s distinguished brewing tradition. Earlier this year, Travel and Leisure readers ranked SF as the ninth in America’s Best Beer Cities.

And beer’s popularity is on the increase at at some of the city’s best restaurants. There have always been places like Toronado that features about 50  brews, and  the Monk’s Kettle that has 25  on draft and even more bottles. But you know there’s something brewing when mainstream hotels like the Palomar  (above Old Navy,  on Market and Fourth streets), creates a “Local Brew for Two Package” to lure people to the city.

The special room package starts at $229. Guests receive a mini-fridge filled with Anchor Steam beer, and warm pretzels from the Fifth Floor restaurant in the hotel, sent to the room on request. The press release also mentions the restaurant’s $25 burger, bourbon and beer promotion, where diners in the bar get a thick burger and fries, a shot of bourbon and a pint of artisan beer that change seasonally.

Other restaurants have also beefed up their beer offerings. Here are a few that stand out:
Continue reading “Hold the Wine, Bring Me a BEER!”

Author Not Credited. From timesofindia.indiatimes.com

From the last week of September to the first weekend of October, it is the happiest time of the year for beer lovers all over the world. Wondering why? Well, think mugs and steins overflowing with frothy beer, tables filled with people and friends and family waiting to get a taste of the delicious beer – It’s Oktoberfest time again.

This age old festival, which takes place in Germany every year since 1810, has over 2 million people travelling across the country just to attend this glorious fair in Munich.

Joining in the celebrations from across the seven seas is our city, that doesn’t lag behind when it comes to the number of beer lovers!

Forgetting all their favorite ‘buy one get one free’ offers or even the popular ‘happy hours’, Beer-o-holics, if we may call them, rush to the nearest Oktoberfest celebrations in the city, to enjoy a few mugs of draught beer.

While Germany may brew special beer for its biggest ever fair, Hyderabad too is all set to celebrate this festival by bringing out the best best of beers and typical German food like SauerKraut (Sour Cabbage) with Wurstl (sausages), Hendl (chicken), Schweinebraten (roast pork), along with Brezn (Pretzel), Knodel (potato or bread dumplings), Reiberdatschi (potato pancakes) and Blaukraut (red cabbage).

Beer-ing it on!
Continue reading “It is Beer O’ Clock in the City!”

No author credited. Posted at benningtonbanner.com

BENNINGTON — There are so many brews being poured at this year’s Southern Vermont Homebrew Festival that they had to move the location.

The annual festival, now in its fifth year, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 24, from noon to 5 p.m., at 210 South Street (across the street from Town Hall).

Attendees will sample wonderful home brews, enjoy great food, listen to live music, watch brewing demonstrations, get brewing tips, and so much more. And some home brewer will walk away with the bragging rights of having their winning brew prepared and served at Madison Brewing Company. There will also be a People’s Choice Award, with a $200 prize.

The tastings throughout the afternoon will include more than 50 brews ranging from Boston Brewin’ Coffee Porter, a Robust Porter, and Husky Al’s Pumpkin Lager, a Spice, Herb, and Vegetable Beer to Vanilla Bourbon Imperial Porter, a Specialty Beer and Hoppy Grief Ale, an English IPA. And that just starts the list. There are Pilsners, English Ales, Stouts, and more.
Continue reading “Vermont Homebrew Festival”

Written by Dana Cimilluca for online.wsj.com

LONDON—Iconic Australian brewer Foster’s Group Ltd. dropped its resistance to a takeover by SABMiller PLC and agreed to a sale to its U.K. rival for a sweetened price of more than $10 billion.

The deal values Foster’s at 5.10 Australian dollars a share, or A$9.9 billion (US$10.17 billion), 4% above what SABMiller offered when it kicked off its pursuit of the company in June. Foster’s said Wednesday that as part of the deal, it would return 30 Australian cents a share to its shareholders and that Foster’s shareholders owning the stock as of Sept. 7 would be entitled to a dividend of 13.25 Australian cents in October. That would bring the value of the offer to A$5.53 a share, or 13% above SABMiller’s first offer

SABMiller’s original offer came just a month after Foster’s completed the separation of its beer and wine operations. .Although many industry watchers expected the demerger to lead to multiple bids for the beer business, no rival bid to SABMiller’s emerged, though Foster’s said Wednesday that it would still consider one. That, as well as recent choppiness in global financial markets, likely helps explain why Foster’s was ultimately unable to manage to extract more of a takeover premium out of SABMiller.
Continue reading “SABMiller to Buy Foster’s for Over $10 Billion”

Written by Stanley A. Miller II for Milwaukee Tap/The Journal Sentinel

There are brewery tours that give visitors some company propaganda and a cup of beer.

And then there is the Legacies of Milwaukee Brewery Tour, an all-day junket under the guidance of an archaeologist and a local historian specializing in the city’s brewing culture and industry.

“It’s very in-depth and . . . you can’t find this anywhere else,” said Kevin Cullen, an archaeologist at Discovery World who started hosting the Legacies tours last year.

“Sure, people are enjoying the beer on the bus,” Cullen said. “We are tempering it with history and comedy along the way. It’s a great way to see the city in a way you’ve never looked at it before.”

The Legacies tours are an intellectual’s brewery adventure that includes introductions to local brewmasters, being ferried to historical breweries both still standing and long gone and even visiting the final resting places of the city’s founding beer barons.
Continue reading “Tour Visitors Can Drink Up City’s Brewing History”

Written by Elizabeth Gunnison for Esquire

When former Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer rolled into the capital last week to receive his Medal of Honor, the 23-year-old war hero’s one request was to share a beer with the president. Meyer’s beer of choice is Bud Light, but Obama broke out the good stuff for the occasion: White House Honey Ale, one of three beers brewed on White House grounds with the help of a beehive the Obamas had installed on the South Lawn. President Obama is the first-ever American leader to brew his own beer in the White House, and he even personally ponied up the initial $200 necessary to buy the home-brewing equipment. We approve.
Continue reading “Obama’s Homebrew Needs a New Name”

 

Written by E.D. Cain for Forbes

I’ve spilled a good deal of ink on craft beer in the past, discussing how regulations have factored into the big beer monopolies, and questioning whether small brewers need to be unionized the way the big brew shops do. I’ve also written about craft beer as it applies to the “human economy” (more on the human economy here).

Suffice to say, the American beer industry fascinates me, not least of all because until quite recently it was dominated by a handful of very big corporations making a very limited, and subpar range of brews. The craft brew revolution has changed all that.

Continue reading “The Rise of Craft Beer in America”

 

Written by Ryan Farrell for craftbeer.com

“You’re a beer judge?”
“Yes.”
“So, you judge beer?”
“Yup.”

This is roughly what it sounds like when I’m on a plane, or at a wedding—or sometimes on a plane going to a wedding—and the topic of work and my job at the Brewers Association (BA) comes up. The next part usually goes one of three ways:

1. The Overexcited:“Dude, that’s awesome!” I’ve even gotten a few high fives. Then I explain that’s not really what I get paid for. “I help handle the finances, HR and write the occasional article. But, yes, I love my workplace.”

Continue reading “My First Semester at Beer College”

Written by Joshua Bernstein for oregonlive.com Photo by Ross William Hamilton

If Oregon had a state beer, it would be the India pale ale. Nearly every brewery in the state releases a riff on the bitter, aromatic IPA. And since brewers more or less have access to identical hop breeds (flowery and fragrant Cascade, citrusy Amarillo, pinelike Chinook), the beers can seem to coalesce into a piney, citric blur.

But Oregon craft brewing doesn’t adhere to the status quo for long. Responding to brewers’ desire to create singular quaffs, hop farmers in Oregon and Washington, as well as New Zealand, plant thousands of experimental hop breeds annually, most identified by numbers seemingly plucked from a lottery machine. These fledgling varieties are created by crossing existing strains in hopes of augmenting yields, increasing disease resistance or fashioning unique flavors. Each year, brewers examine these numbered hop breeds, hoping to answer a single question: Can this hop make a great new beer?

Over the next three years, Sidor brewed test batches with hop 394, growing to love its beguiling blend of citrus and tropical fruits such as mango and papaya. “It was absolutely a home run,” Sidor says.

Often, the answer is no, but every blue moon a hop shows promise. When this happens, the hop is named, it graduates from farm field to brew kettle and the experimentation starts. Lately, several new hop varieties have wound their way into local IPAs, bestowing them with curiously appealing notes of tropical fruit, berries or white wine that helps set them apart from the bitter pack.
Continue reading “Exotic New Hop Varieties Infuse Local Beers”

 

News from VT. No author listed. From benningtonbanner.com

BENNINGTON — There are so many brews being poured at this year’s Southern Vermont Homebrew Festival that they had to move the location.

The annual festival, now in its fifth year, will be held on Saturday, Sept. 24, from noon to 5 p.m., at 210 South Street (across the street from Town Hall).

Attendees will sample wonderful home brews, enjoy great food, listen to live music, watch brewing demonstrations, get brewing tips, and so much more. And some home brewer will walk away with the bragging rights of having their winning brew prepared and served at Madison Brewing Company. There will also be a People’s Choice Award, with a $200 prize.

The tastings throughout the afternoon will include more than 50 brews ranging from Boston Brewin’ Coffee Porter, a Robust Porter, and Husky Al’s Pumpkin Lager, a Spice, Herb, and Vegetable Beer to Vanilla Bourbon Imperial Porter, a Specialty Beer and Hoppy Grief Ale, an English IPA. And that just starts the list. There are Pilsners, English Ales, Stouts, and more.
Continue reading “Museum’s Homebrew Festival Makes a Move”