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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.

There are several Firehouse Breweries. I tried tracking this down with little luck. The main one is in San Diego it seems, but their bottles look nothing like this. OK, it is from the 90s but I swear it was from northeast Ohio, but if it is it’s since gone out of business.

 

Obviously the beer was not memorable. But the painted glass is nice. The picture sucked. I took it 3 times, the one I tried to download was the least “sucky.” I swear sometimes this camera hates what I point it at. In fact I have tried to load it 6 times and my computer hated it! So finally I found a reference site that tells you where different brands are brewed.

Yes, I gave up. I have better things to do than loading something that will never load. Forgive me.

Picture courtesy microlabelguide.com

I am looking for the bottle and will add more info if I do find it.

OK, back again. I almost blamed it on a defunct brewery in Iowa, but actually it was a brewery in Miami. Probably picked it up about 10 years ago as we swung south and went to visit the Keys from my more northern haunts. We did stay in Miami and stopped by several breweries/brewpubs. Web sites seem to indicate it was a micro, and I use “was” only because their website has been disabled. Another link: firebrew.com, brings you to some site for an engineering concern. The site that link came from says about their bottles…

“…this brewery offers more than the best looking bottle in town.”

Yup.

But from what I remember not the best beer. In craft beer world presentation is not everything, though if you look at AB’sa and Miller/Coor’s efforts in the past to do craft someone should really tell their marketing wizards that.

Tourists can enjoy celebrations of a 400th anniversary.

Written by Shirley O’Bryan Smith for AP

 

Some consider it “swill,” some “hip.”-The Professor

Written by Julie Wernau for The Chicago Tribune

Pabst Blue Ribbon: the breakfast of Chicago hipsters. Old Style: beer of the Chicago Cubs. Schlitz: “The beer that made Milwaukee famous.”

Continue reading “Move to Los Angeles Could Tap Pabst’s Character”

This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here.

Written by Millie Milliken for triplepundit.com

In the early part of the 20th Century, beer drinkers had only two choices when it came to quenching their thirst for a delicious frothy beverage: draught beer or bottles. It wasn’t until the 1930s that canned beer arrived on the scene. Initially, tin cans could not withstand the carbonated pressure and burst. Eventually, technological developments and the introduction of a vinyl liner proved successful in containing the pressure. Then in 1935, Kruger’s Brewery of New Jersey introduced the first canned beer–Kruger’s Finest Beer–to the market, revolutionizing the beer industry. The canned versus bottled beer debate has raged ever since, and now the emerging mircrobrew trend is putting a new spin on the topic.

The traditional debate has centered on factors including taste, convenience, and cost. Beer is a sensitive beverage and exposure to both light and oxygen results in off-flavors. The caps on bottles are not completely airtight, creating a chemical reaction between oxygen and the hops, whereas cans are impervious to both light and oxygen, protecting the flavor, reducing chances of creating a “skunky” amora, and extending the shelf life. Although proponents of bottles have remained steadfast in the claim that cans produce a metallic taste, there has been little empirical evidence to support the claim. Additionally, the lightweight and portability of cans often prove to be more convenient than bottles for both consumers and producers. In regards to shipping efficiency, the longneck design on bottles wastes packaging space, while cans are able to be efficiently packaged and weigh less, which allows more to be shipped at less cost.
Continue reading “The Great Canned vs Bottled Beer Debate 2.0: Craft Brewing Weighs In”

Written by Jim Lundstrom for scenenewspaper.com (Wisconsin)

Mud Slinger, a tasty nut brown from Redhook. Soft and malty and just on the edge of darkness. Excellent session beer.

Speaking of soft and malty, I picked up a four pack of an Austrian dunkel that had been discounted, Hirter Morchl, a dark lager made by the Hirt Brewery, which has been making beer since 1270.

I’d never heard of the brewery before, but I’ve also never had an Austrian beer that hasn’t charmed me with a quality unlike any other beer in the world. The bottle proudly proclaimed the use of Alpine spring water. Something about the Austrian aquifer produces lovely, soft beers.

Judges at the 2008 World Beer Championships were so impressed with Hirter Morchl that they made it head of the class all by itself with a Platinum Award. Here’s how those judges described it: “Dark reddish copper color with a frothy tan head. Aromas of chocolate pudding, delicate baking spices and roasted nuts follow through on a soft, satiny entry to a drying medium body with accents of toffee, roasted root vegetable, and cream. Finishes mildly with a cocoa-dusted nut and grain fade. Fantastic.”

Obviously those judges have far more refined snouts and palates than I do. Chocolate pudding? Really? I guess I don’t know how chocolate pudding smells. Nor did I taste roasted rutabagas in this delicious brew.

Like I said, I found my four-pack in a closeout sale, and it’s long gone now. But I will certainly keep my eyes peeled for more from this brewery. I would love to try their pils.

As a general rule of thumb, you can’t go wrong with an Austrian beer, or, at least, I have never met an Austrian beer that I didn’t like.

Little Slammers. I’m a sucker for shorties, but they’re hard to come by, especially in flavors I like. While I prefer my shorties to be of the lager variety, these Little Slammers from Wasatch Beers, Salt Lake City, Utah, a golden ale, will do. Such a dainty bottle. Kinda cute.

The brewery also does a classic lager in seven-ounce “slammers,” but I’ve yet to see them. If anyone knows where they can be had — short of going to Utah — please let me know ( info@scenenewspaper.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). The lager season is here!

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Written by James ‘Dr. Fermento’ Roberts for The Anchorage Press

One of the quickest paths to the most intimate

appreciation and understanding of beer is to make it yourself. This takes beer appreciation beyond simply reacting to sensory input from the frothy beverage that we love so much to actually becoming its creator and dabbling in the alchemy that makes brewing part science and part art. Do a little research and talk to the brewers at your favorite brewery and you’ll quickly discover virtually all of them started out as homebrewers and developed such a passion for it that they eventually bridged the gap between making great beer at home and making it a commercial endeavor.

As mysterious and metaphysical as brewing may seem, the process of making beer at home is actually pretty simple, affordable and fascinating. One of my trademark lines when explaining homebrewing to another interested beer lover is “if you can follow a recipe and make pancakes, you can make beer.” With minimal, locally available or even scrounged equipment and a handful of key ingredients you can make five gallons of very good homebrewed beer in a couple of hours. And, like any hobby, you can expand your homebrewing system over time to some pretty cosmic, highly sophisticated levels which approach professional miniature commercial systems the big boys use.

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Written by Michael Agnew for starttribune.com

The selection of palate-pleasers for Minnesota craft-beer fans has grown a little bit larger. Three high-profile national breweries entered the state this spring and one new home-grown start-up has put beer on store shelves.

Stone Brewing Co. of San Diego crashed the state in March. Their highly hopped ales and cocky promotional copy have made them legendary among craft-beer aficionados. Fans in the Land of Lakes previously had to trek across the St. Croix for these palate-pushing brews. Now they are as close as a trip to the local beer store.

The label for Stone’s best-known beer, Arrogant Bastard, throws down an audacious challenge, proclaiming that the drinker may not be worthy of consuming the bottle’s contents. It boasts an aggressive bitterness that lingers long into the finish. Pine-resin hop flavors overlay a malt profile that features a complex mix of toast, bread and raisins, with touches of Tootsie-Roll-like chocolate. It’s a style-bending beer that would be great with a grilled steak.
Continue reading “Liquid Assets: Wide-Ranging Flavors of Beer”

Written by Ken Ellingwood for The Los Angeles Times, McClatchy-Tribune News Service and Clrvrland.com/The Plain Dealer

MEXICO CITY — It sounds like a movie where high jinks ensue: A teetotaling Mexican hotel worker travels to England, befriends a whisky-drinking Irishman and scrubs toilets in a pub while learning to brew killer beer.

Such is the odd path Jose Morales has taken since a sweltering day five years ago when he found himself wondering how to make a beverage he doesn’t even drink. The daydreaming has led Morales, then a hotel warehouse manager, to an unlikely new calling as a beer maker.

Morales, 36, is among a burst of Mexican brewers who are testing recipes and investing in imported equipment in hopes of finding the same formula for success that microbreweries north of the border have found.

Mostly self-taught, the Mexican brewers have launched an array of offerings, from Belgian-style wheat beers and imperial stouts to an ale aged in tequila barrels. They want to translate a hobby into commercial success in a country that is increasingly quick to embrace foreign trends, from smartphones to designer coffee.

Continue reading “Brewing Up a Craft Cerveza”

Welcome to (sign 400)

Millie 300 in front of brewhouse

Stairs 300(hazy pic)

Nice 400 size Interior upstairs shot

From the Associated Press

MEXICO CITY — The craft brewers plotted their revolution

in a bar evoking the era of Prohibition speakeasies.

Their goal felt equally subversive: nothing less than the transformation of Mexico’s beer-loving culture into one that thirsts not for the mild flavors of Corona or Dos Equis, but for the richness of stouts, the dark body of double malts and the bitterness of India pale ales.

The brewers said they were fighting for choice: “Por la Cerveza Libre,” or “For the Liberated Beer.”

“To choose what we consume based on our tastes, translates as free choice, a fundamental right of every person,” they wrote in a manifesto.

Even though Mexico is known worldwide for its beer, only two companies dominate the domestic market and determine what millions of people swig.

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HERE