Professor Good Ales

Written by Jay Brooks for The Brookston Beer Bulletin

 

If you missed last year’s Lagunitas Beer Circus, you missed one of the most amazing spectacles involving beer I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. It was so good, they’ve moved it to May for the better weather and because it deserves its own time slot.

Continue reading “The Beer Circus Is Coming To Town”

Lake Placid Pub and Brewery
(Enterprise photo — Chris Knight)

Written by Chris Knight for The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

One usually hates to see a craft/micro brewer like Lake Placid with it’s interesting ales like UBU Ale and Honey Rye drop their own brewery to this extent and vend out: but this was actually cause by excessive demand and popularity. Matt Brewing is also noted for brewing to your specifications, not simply handing the customer something they already brew that’s “close enough.” But, hopefully, they will be back on line brewing with their own facilities soon.- Prof GA.

Lake Placid – The Lake Placid Craft Brewing Co. has closed its brewing facility in Plattsburgh and is now producing all its beer for distribution at the F.X. Matt Brewing Company’s facilities in Utica.

Chris Ericson, who owns the Lake Placid Craft Brewing Co. and the Lake Placid Pub and Brewery, said the company’s production brewery in Plattsburgh was shut down earlier this year because it couldn’t make enough beer to keep up with demand. The facility had opened in the winter of 2001-02.
Continue reading “Lake Placid Brewing Goes to “the Matt””

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

The Topic: Behind the Anchor Purchase

Written by Ken Carman

The purchase of Anchor Brewing came as a surprise to me. But I should have seen it coming. Fritz Maytag has been in the biz since the 60s and I’m sure everyone with an ounce of knowledge is familiar with how Fritz took Acme, which was about to go crash faster than Wily E. Coyote using the other: fictitional, Acme product, like some variation on those spring loaded shoes, to catch his nemesis.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

A portrait of before…………….. and AFTER

Written by Sandra Duxbury for The San Francisco Business Times

It’s Anchor’s away in the brewing world, as Fritz Maytag sells the company that helped launch America’s taste for craft beer. Fritz Maytag sold his Anchor Brewing Co., maker of Anchor Steam beer and Junipero Gin, to Griffin Group.

Keith Greggor and Tony Foglio, who helped create Skyy Vodka, lead the Novato-based investment firm. Maytag will remain chairman emeritus of the new business — in part to keep the business in San Francisco, a release said.

Maytag purchased a small San Francisco brewery in 1965 and introduced Anchor Steam beer in 1971. The original brewery itself dates back to 1896, and owing to that history, 72-year-old Maytag has remained committed to keeping the company here.

Greggor and Foglio, a former CEO of Skyy, sold their shares of Skyy to Campari in 2007. In 2009, Griffin invested in BrewDog, one of the U.K.’s largest independent breweries.

Terms of the Anchor Brewing Co. deal were not disclosed.

 

Sarah Duxbury covers retail, restaurants, hospitality and nonprofits for the San Francisco Business Times.

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Courtesy fyeahstrangefinds.tumblr.com

Written by QMI Agency for The Toronto Sun

Bad news for outdoorsy types: mosquitoes like beer as much as you do. This according to an Australian study published on PloS One, the Public Library of Science online. A team of researchers in Australia put volunteers in tents in Burkina Faso in West Africa. The tents used a complex system of tubing to direct the volunteers’ body odour into boxes in such a way that the mosquitoes could choose which scent to go after.

Half the volunteers – all men between 20 and 43 – were given one litre of 3% beer to drink, and the other half were given a litre of water. Then the researchers unleashed the lab-bred mosquitoes. The experiment was conducted four times: before beer, after beer, before water and after water.
Continue reading “Well That BITES or Why Mosquitoes Have More Fun”

It’s the time of year many start thinking “vacation.” Here’s one possibility: if not this year; next.

Every year beer lovers gather for a two day event: Hastings Beer and Music Festival. This fascinating event takes place in Alexandra Park, Hastings. English and visiting music fans delight to the sounds of many acts, including Not Guilty, Pugwash, Joe’s Blues Band, Slam, Keane, Hastings Horns, Blair MacKichan, Status Quo, Lenny Beige and even a family sing-a-long. Here’s a hint to festival organizers: how about some international acts to increase the appeal to visiting tourists like us Yanks? This has been a charity event with much of the funds going to St. Michaels Hospice, so local appeal, musically, is certainly necessary.

Usually held in early July around the 4th. Stick it to our former oppressor: go dressed in your American best!

Beer selection: over 100 different ales, bitters, milds, and stouts. Past tastings: Thwaites Well, Well, Well (Pale), Whites Grumpy Guvnor (malty deep amber bitter), Westerham British Bulldog “BB” (Maris Otter anyone?), Wells and Youngs Eagle IPA, Titanic Longitude (perhaps a Brit take on an American IPA?) and many, many more.

Cost last year 8L in advance, 10 at the door. That’s about $12 and $15. Not bad.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zIFG2wxp9I&NR=1[/youtube]

If you dare to wear, can be bought at foulmouthfish.com