Can beer save America?
The grand unifying theory of the American consumer has been that we are, first and foremost, low price fetishists. There’s ample evidence supporting this view: From Wal-Mart’s prominence to the fast food industry’s ongoing success, vast swaths of the economy are indeed built on the premise that buyers will prioritize discounts and quantity over premium prices and quality.
But ever so quietly, we are starting to see the rise and success of a competing vision, one that turns the old assumption on its head. In the technology arena, for instance, Apple is successfully challenging the PC world with a business model that convinces consumers to pay higher prices in exchange for better reliability, durability, efficiency and customer service. Likewise in the transportation world, more and more consumers are willing to pay higher prices upfront for hybrid and electric vehicles in exchange for the promise of lower long-term energy costs. This has encouraged companies like Philips to introduce more expensive light bulbs, in hopes that consumers will pay more for illumination that promises to use less electricity and last 20 years.
Nowhere, though, is the battle between the low-price/quantity business model and the higher-price/quality business model more clear than in the world of beer. In the fevered battle between the macrobrew behemoths and the craftbrew insurgents, both sides are digging in for an epic confrontation.
How to enjoy your beer
Most of us know you're supposed to swirl and sniff a big California Cabernet in a giant wine glass, or linger over a smoky Scotch in a snifter. But when it comes to our beer, we're clueless: We chug our bottles ice cold and let our suds sit around in a plastic pitcher. "With beer it's often drinking without thinking," bemoans Ray Daniels, a former Chicago home-brewer expert who runs Cicerone, one of the country's only beer sommelier certification programs. "We turn our analytical minds off when we drink it. But every beer tells a story," he adds. "It has a beginning and a middle and an end."
Daniels is not talking about cheap six-packs, of course, but craft beer, the modern term for brews designed to be delicious. Daniels' job is training beer professionals how to taste those suds, and how to tell their stories. And step No. 1 for us amateurs, he'd likely tell you, is to take that bottle or can out of the ice-crammed cooler, and pour it into a glass.
BBC » It is good to be able to talk the talk but on the other hand I kind of like it that you don't have to get all high-falutin' like when you are quaffing some beers. If it tastes good then drink the damn thing.
Category: Video • Submitted By:
Shayne • Posted: September 25, 2010
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Future of your beer bottle collection ....
BBC » Some people have too much time on their hands. But it does look like a fun project.
Should you try an "extreme beer"?
Two companies announce brews with about 30 percent alcohol content. But are they tasty? We ask an expert
It’s been a big week for fans of novelty, high-alcohol-content beers. A few days ago, Boston Beer Co. (the brewers behind Sam Adams) began offering its latest Utopias beer, with an eye-watering 27 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), and over the long weekend, a Scottish brewery named BrewDog announced that it had made the "world’s strongest" brew. Called the Tactical Nuclear Penguin, it contains an even more shocking 32 percent ABV. (Its label instructs drinkers to enjoy it in "small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance.")
Far from being the first such concoctions, these are just the latest of a number of "extreme beers" that have hit the markets in recent years – for a list of others, check this roundup on Asylum. But if you’re anything like me -- and you like your beer in a pint glass and, well, easily drinkable -- you might also be wondering why anybody would bother. So we called up Brooks Hamaker, ex-vice-president of Abita Brewing Co., brewmaster, food writer, beer expert and member of our Kitchen Cabinet, to ask about the surprising appeal of hyper-alcoholic beers, how they're made, and why alcohol-content laws keep small brewers down.
BBC » It's hard to imagine that a 30 percent alcohol beer would be good, but I'd certainly like to try it. Although at $150 per bottle of beer it better be good.
And the next great American beer will be...?
Pabst may be worshiped by hipsters, but can it replace Budweiser as the best classic domestic brew? The answer may surprise you.
It was one of the hipper events this unhip correspondent has ever attended. The Windy City Story Slam was held in an unmarked storefront on the northwest side of Chicago. The neighborhood was in the interzone between a bohemian enclave and a barrio. Paintings hung from the bare brick walls. The opening act was a locally famous Mexican bartender in overalls, who played obscene folk songs on his guitar. During the Slam, five contestants spun five-minute vignettes -- one was about a childhood fight, another a druggy ex-boyfriend. The winner, a man wearing the biggest glasses I'd seen since Charles Nelson Reilly ruled "Match Game," took home $50. Every mote and motif in the room was a post-millennial hipster cliché, including the beer of choice. In the back of the room was a bar selling Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Since the beginning of this decade, Pabst Blue Ribbon's audience has changed from old guys with refrigerators in their garages to arty young urbanites. An unexceptional and declining brand, a former top-three beer turned redneck also-ran, Pabst reinvented itself as the coolest of brews in a movement that began in a Portland, Ore., dive bar and spread to indie-rock shows across the country. But now Pabst is trying to move on from its success with hipsters to conquer a far larger and very different demographic: all-American beer drinkers alienated by Anheuser-Busch's sale to a Belgian corporation. In its campaign to snatch Budweiser's title of Great American Lager, Pabst is already employing the kind of slick, misleading marketing that's bound to turn off hipsters who've embraced it as the anti-Bud. It may be exactly the right move.
The rise and fall of an American beer
Before it was bought by Belgium's InBev, Budweiser trampled local breweries across this land. Who's crying in their (piss) beer now?
I did my heaviest drinking before I turned 21. I had the motivation: I was spinning my wheels in community college. I had the opportunity: My best friend was already losing his hair, so he never got carded. And the gas station in my neighborhood sold a beer I could afford on my $3.35-an-hour video clerk's salary: Falstaff. Twelve stubby brown torpedoes of Fort Wayne water, subtly flavored with hops and barley, packaged in a plastic yellow tray. Under every bottle cap was a rebus ("It's [heart] 2 [bell] [leaf]") that was fun to solve before the first beer, but not worth the trouble by the fifth or sixth.
Falstaff was once the third biggest brewery in America. George Will drank it when he was a teenager, as hard as it is to imagine George Will as a teenager. It even outsold Budweiser in St. Louis. But Falstaff no longer exists. The last bottle was capped in 2005. The only remnant I know of is a faded mural on the East Side of Chicago.
Ever since Budweiser was sold to Belgian brewing monster InBev on Sunday, beer drinkers have been sighing that a piece of Americana has been lost. They've got it all wrong. During its rise to President for Life of Beers, Budweiser ended up crushing dozens of local brands that formed part of this country's colorful drinking heritage.
Category: Joke • Submitted By:
Keith • Posted: April 10, 2008
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Subject: WORK
The Center for Disease Control has issued a medical alert about a highly contagious, potentially dangerous virus that is transmitted orally, by hand, and even electronically.
This virus is called Weary Overload Recreational Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from your boss, any of your colleagues, or anyone else via any means whatsoever, DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely.
If you should come into contact with WORK, you should immediately leave the premises.
Take two good friends to the nearest grocery store and purchase one or both of the antidotes - Work Isolating Neutralizer Extract (WINE) and Bothersome Employer Elimination Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.
You should immediately forward this medical alert to five friends.
If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.
Plastic fantastic beer bottles The plastic beer bottle, says nanotechnology analyst Peter
Conley, has long been the Holy Grail of the global beer
industry. A switch from glass and aluminum to plastic would
dramatically cut costs for the big players. The problem:
plastic bottles have a bad habit of letting oxgyen molecules
get through when sitting on the shelf. This is bad for beer.
Very, very bad.
Enter AMCOL, the largest producer of kitty litter in the
world. AMCOL has devised a "nanocomposite" that
solves the problem, keeping oxygen molecules out and carbon
dioxide molecules in. So be prepared, a new era of plastic
beer bottles is upon us.
Whether this is progress or not depends on a complex mix
of aesthetics, logistics, and perspectives on the proper
role of technology in our lives. If you're Budweiser or
Coors, anything that allows you to cut costs while maintaining
the same horse-piss taste is considered progress. If you
happen to savor the feel of an ice-cold glass bottle gripped
firmly in your hand on a hot summer day, you might think
otherwise ...
BBC » What a dumb idea. Drinking beer out of plastic
vessels sucks. But on the other hand, if all beer was sold
in plastic bottles it might increase the value of my collection
and I wouldn't feel like I have to continue updating this
website.
West
Bank beer fest
A Christian-Palestinian microbrewery is defying the hardships
of occupation -- and perhaps Hamas' vision for an alcohol-free
Islamic state.
TAYBEH, West Bank -- High up in the hills of the West Bank
in mid-September, thousands of visitors arrived for a two-day
village fair filled with music, folk dancing and local goods,
from honey and oils to embroidery and olive-wood carvings.
But the star attraction this year was a more surprising
local offering: a German-style beer brewed here that bears
the name of this small Palestinian village.
Located about 20 miles northeast of Jerusalem, Taybeh is
a Christian enclave dotted with churches rather than mosques,
but entirely surrounded by Muslim villages. The village
festival is billed as an "Oktoberfest," after
the annual beer-lovers bash in Munich -- although it takes
place in September so as to avoid clashing with the Muslim
festival of Ramadan.
Taybeh the beer is crisp, clean and very drinkable. It
comes in light and dark versions, with a label that proudly
reads "The Finest in the Middle East." Its makers
seem to have tapped an unlikely region for venturing into
the beer business.
"Everybody thought I was nuts to build a brewery in
a Muslim region," said Nadim Khoury, the company's
master brewer, regarding the glaringly obvious problem that
the Quran forbids the consumption of alcohol.
BBC » The world would be a better place if we all
had access to good quality beer. Can't trust them teetotallers
like Bush, Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad and Hitler.
Subject: Drink up
Good news for most of us. Happy hour for drinkers' wages.
New study reveals that those who enjoy a tipple now and
then earn 10 to 14 percent more than teetotalers.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If you thought swigging beer
or indulging in a glass of chardonnay was putting your career
on a fast-track to nowhere, think again.
In fact, a study conducted by two economists and published
Thursday by the Reason Foundation and in the latest edition
of The Journal of Labor Research, says that drinkers earn
10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking.
"Instead of earning less money that nondrinkers, drinkers
earn more," authors of the study, Bethany Peters and
Edward Stringham, wrote. More specifically, the study found
that workers who drank in a social setting earned more than
those who tipped a glass at home.
The study contends that social capital, which entails everything
from a person's charisma to the size of their social network,
can be enhanced by drinking.
Those who drink socially, for example, may have an easier
time finding a new job if they had made more business contacts,
the authors claim, or they might strengthen relationships
with co-workers or clients that could ultimately affect
their salary.
While earnings for both men and women benefited from drinking,
the study discovered a few noteworthy differences between
the two groups.
Female drinkers earned 14 percent more than non-drinkers,
while males who drank earned 10 percent more than their
teetotaler counterparts.
At the same time, men who went to a bar at least once a
month earned an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percent
drinking premium. But women who engaged in similar behavior
did not experience any effect on their earnings.
The authors said their research came in response to growing
efforts to restrict drinking on college campuses, limit
alcohol advertising and raise taxes on liquor.
A spokesman for Reason Foundation, a libertarian public
policy research organization which was founded in 1968,
said the group was not commissioned by any outside parties
to conduct the study.
Subject: Beer After a Beer Festival in London, some of the brewery
presidents decided to go out for a beer.
Corona's president sits down and says, "Señor,
I would like the world's best beer, a Corona." The
bartender takes a bottle from the shelf and gives it to
him.
Then Budweiser's president says, "I'd like the best
beer in the world, give me 'The King Of Beers', a Budweiser."
The bartender gives him one.
Coors' president says, "I'd like the best beer in
the world, the only one made with Rocky Mountain spring
water, give me a Coors." He gets it.
The guy from Guinness sits down and says, "Give me
a Coke." The other brewery presidents look over at
him and ask, "Why aren't you drinking a Guinness?"
and the Guinness president replies, "Well, if you guys
aren't drinking beer, neither will I."
Should you try an "extreme beer"?
And the next great American beer will be...?
The rise and fall of an American beer
West
Bank beer fest
