Professor Good Ales

Bud Light may still be America’s best-selling beer — it has been for more than a decade — but retail sales of this and other leading lower-calorie lagers such as Bud Light Lime, Miller Lite, and Natural (aka Natty) Light, declined in 2013, according to data from IRI, a Chicago market research firm.

Bud Light may still be America’s best-selling beer — it has been for more than a decade — but retail sales of this and other leading lower-calorie lagers such as Bud Light Lime, Miller Lite, and Natural (aka Natty) Light, declined in 2013, according to data from IRI, a Chicago market research firm.

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HERE

PORTLAND, Ore. (TheStreet) — There’s no “peak beer” or “beer bubble,” but it’s getting crowded in the craft beer world.

Word from the Beer Institute beer industry lobbying group in Washington, D.C., is that the U.S. now has a record-high 3,699 active “permitted breweries” overseen by the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. According to Beer Institute analysis, the majority of the 948 permits issued in 2013 went to brewpubs. That’s great if you’re up for a beer and a burger, but even a modest uptick in production breweries makes a big difference.

Just from a historic perspective, those 3,699 breweries are no small deal. That’s well ahead of the 2,722 total presented by the Brewers Association craft beer industry group at the end of last year. That group noted that 1,744 breweries were in the planning stages at the end of December, though. The TTB’s total would not only exceed 2,685 breweries that appeared on the Register of United States Breweries in 1876, but surpass the 3,286 that existed in 1870.

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  The beer flows freely in Nashville, and Gallup polling just placed Tennessee in the nation’s top 10 most religious states, but those two facts tend not to overlap. A growing exception: an interdenominational Beer and Hymn Sing group that first met in November to do exactly what its name says and nothing else. They don’t talk doctrine. There’s no prayer or Bible study. Once a quarter, they pack the dark upstairs bar at MadDonna’s in East Nashville to sing centuries-old favorites. The last one kicked off with “Amazing Grace,” ended with “Go Now in Peace” and featured classics such as “How Great Thou Art” in between. The organizer, Geoff Little, said he got the idea from seeing soccer fans in London and Dublin pubs switch seamlessly from singing fight songs to singing “Be Thou My Vision.” He believed it would be a way to draw Generation X and Y friends to a religious gathering outside the classic venues for those. Want to read more? Please click…

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For those who are unfamiliar, Ellicotville Brewing has two locations: Ellicotville, NY and Freedonia, NY.

Here is what Ellicotville says about this beer…

Stainless Steel Obsession
7.0 ABV | 77 IBU

Stuffed with hops, this flagship IPA pays homage to the material all beer is born in–Stainless Steel. Combining a traditional pale malt bill with a modern and aggressive hop profile, this new age American IPA is carrying EBC into the future.