The winners from this weekend's Great American Beer Festival have been announced. With over 75 categories, the list can be a tad overwhelming, but it still serves as a handy guide to finding great beers of every style, price point and availability.
A few personal thoughts:
With 104 entries, the American-Style IPA category was the most hotly contested. Legendary brewery Russian River took second with their Blind Pig IPA, beat out by Firestone Walker's Union Jack IPA. Scoring two golds, a silver and a bronze, Firestone Walker appears to be the GABF's go-to brewer in the pale ale department. Unfortunately, if you don't live in California or Nevada you might have trouble finding one.
In the least hotly contested department, check out Category 29: American-Style Specialty Lager. I seriously need to find out which 21 beers finished below Busch Ice. My condolences.
Finally, congratulations to Pyramid Breweries for taking home the Mid-Size Brewer of the Year award. My travels up to the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley, California sparked my love of microbrews at the tender age of... uh, ahem... 21. The gold medal winning Apricot Ale (out of 87 entries in the Fruit or Vegetable Beer category) will always hold a special place in my heart... and liver.
Equally dangerous for making your friends think you are a bad speller or a lush, drunken emails can be especially devilish since, unlike a drunk dial, a drunken email will forever linger in your sent items folder for you to read and re-read. Even worse, they can be embarrassingly forwarded to other friends or your sponsor.
So here's the deal: You enable Mail Goggles in Gmail, you choose the days and times you are most likely to be intoxicated (sorry, no "select all" button) and you choose a difficulty level. Every time you attempt to send an email during your specified hours, you'll be prompted to answer a series of math questions to verify your sobriety. Cool, huh?
Next up, a program to keep you from throwing your computer across the room when you can't figure out what 37 + 19 equals.
The Great American Beer Festival kicks off today in Denver, Colorado. Featuring over 1800 beers from 400 breweries, those who've made the trip are surely excited.
If you're reading this cursing yourself for being nowhere near the greater Denver area, don't get too down: The festival set a new record this year by selling out two weeks in advance, so if you didn't plan well ahead of time, you'd probably be, literally, locked out in the cold.
Still, if you want to get a taste of the action, grab a six-pack of your favorite brew and live it vicariously via the web:
Sadly, it looks like I've been out of the beer-flavored candy loop for quite some time now. My disappointment is immense.
The latest issue of BeerAdvocate's print edition turned me on to a type of traditional British candy called Pint Pots. The tiny beer glass-shaped, gummy-style candies supposedly provide a "disturbingly accurate though synthetic scent of beer" and present a taste "somewhere between a brown ale and cider." They contain no alcohol, however, so don't plan on getting a buzz while satiating your sweet-tooth just yet. Still, spicing up a Halloween party candy bowl with some gummy beers sounds like fun. (See all the excitement you can have by simply changing an "a" to an "e"!)
There are plenty of places you can order Pint Pots from online (BeerAdvocate suggested The Pink Sweet Shop), though all the places I found ship them from across the pond, so if you want them to arrive by October 31st, get your order in ASAP.
The Chimay Brewery has been in operation since 1862 -- a mere 146 years by European standards -- but here in the States we tend to see things in shorter perspective, so we'll gladly celebrate the 25th anniversary of Chimay Trappist Ales finally being offered on this side of the Atlantic.
You might be able to argue that Chimay isn't your favorite Trappist beer, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that it isn't the most ubiquitous. Whether served on draft (preferably in the customary goblet) or in its traditional 750ml corked bottle, Chimay's red, blue and white labels are an easily identifiable addition of class to any bar or beer shelf.
To mark the occasion, Chimay is offering up commemorative glassware and sampler packs to American customers. But if you want to indulge with other revelers, they are also sponsoring a number of events all across the country. I thought I had missed many of the dates until I realized those tricky Belgians preferring putting the day before the month -- but then again Chimay's spent the past 25 years making a name for themselves by not giving into American conventions.
As if I didn't already love our St. Louis local brewery, Schlafly, the election versions of their beers have won me over completely. Baracktoberfest is not your only choice. You can also choose from McCain's Maverick APA Ale, Palin Ale, and Hefebiden Unfiltered Wheat Ale. You can view photos of all four bottle labels on STL Hops.
The beer selection, however, does bring up all kinds of difficult decisions. If I prefer the taste of Maverick APA Ale, but I'm an Obama supporter (hypothetically, of course), do I buy the Baracktoberfest just to show my support, or do I get the beer I like?
I was recently told about study at Washington University where a group made both elephant and donkey cookies to see which ones the students would buy more of. It turns out that students bought more elephants simply because they were bigger - smart students. I suppose that, given the choice, I would take a lesson from the college kids and drink the beer I liked. I could always remove and crumple (tear to shreds) the label.
Would you buy based on your beer of choice or your politician of choice?
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin.
...or maybe not. Last month, the Elevator Brewery & Draught House turned some heads after issuing a recall on T-shirts they sold bearing the above quote and a likeness of the man to which it's attributed, Ben Franklin. Turns out the accuracy of the quote has been in question for quite a few years, and after hearing a talk from brewing historian Bob Skilnik, Elevator's Dick Stevens was convinced the quote was flawed and offered to replace the historically inaccurate T-shirts.
Most of us probably have heard the quote at some point, and many of us have used it in our internal monologue for justifying an unwarranted trip to the pub. But Skilnik does a solid job laying out his logic for debunking the quote on his Beer In Food website.
In actuality, Franklin was talking about wine when he wrote, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." Whoops! Time to toss those koozies and pick up a corkscrew. Or you could just make your own beverage decisions instead of deferring to the founding fathers.
I'm not sure what it is about the 2008 Election that has driven people to the bottle. Sure, coping with the anxiety of tough decisions by imbibing alcohol has been around since, well, the day alcohol was invented (good day, by the way), but this year's campaign for the ages has really upped the ante.
Tonight is the first, and presumably only, vice presidential debate. Maybe it stems from those viral videos of Sarah Palin's Katie Couric interview or Joe Biden's generally gaffe prone nature, but people are expecting it to be a doozy. Many peoples answer: Get boozy.
Googling "Vice Presidential Debate Drinking Game" (in quotes) racks up a respectable 839 results -- and not many are leftovers of Cheney/Edwards. Want to join in on the fun? After the jump see the links to the top 8...
I'll be back with the Slashfood Ate (8): Beer Edition later, but as soon as I saw this gizmo, I just had to drop everything to put you guys in the know...
Perpetual Kid is offering a USB Mini Fridge -- a single-serving can refrigerator that gets 100% of its power from your computer. Plug this fridge into any USB port and you'll be getting enough juice to keep your juice (or soda or -- my preference -- beer) at a respectably cool 45 degrees. How cool is that?!
Um, well, it's around 7 degrees Celsius... assuming your beverage is in a can or can-size cup, of course.
Though this product probably scores around a zero on the practicality scale, score it an 11 on the "must have gadget of all time if you don't want to see me crying on Christmas morning" scale!
Originally intended as a limited edition beer that would "only last for the duration of the Democratic primary hiatus," Hop Obama, much like the candidate who inspired it, is still around. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, I'm guessing we might see it for another four years.
Brooklyn's Sixpoint Craft Ales, brewers of Hop Obama, state "the delicious and refreshing quality it represents reminds us of the Senator's successful grassroots campaign" and that they were inspired by Obama to brew "an entirely unique ale that doesn't adhere to traditional style guidelines."
Another big similarity between beer and candidate: Made with a heady mix of "five different kinds of European crystal malt and three different kinds of Pacific Northwest Hops" and only available in New York and Massachussetts, Hop Obama probably won't be the beer of choice anytime soon for conservative drinkers in middle America.
Politics aside, Hop Obama delivers on its promise of drinkability. It also makes me wonder what kind of craft ale John McCain could inspire? Maybe a barley wine? Something that ages well.
Drink all the Budweiser "Lagers" you can this weekend: On Monday, the American beer market will change forever with the official rollout of Budweiser "American Ale." Drinking macro-brews will never be the same!
Or so they'd like us to believe. Sure American Ale isn't meant to replace Anheuser-Busch's flagship lager, but its definitely an attempt at rebranding -- a not so subtle marketing trick that has left many a New Coke in its wake.
That dark red American Ale label reminds me of another much hyped macro beer rollout. Most may not remember, or even care, but 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of the failure of Miller "Red."
It's official name was simply Miller beer, and the logic was simple: Miller Lite had served as a worthy competitor to Bud Light, maybe a Miller beer could chip away some of the market from Bud. It was a bold move -- almost literally putting their name on the line. But, rest in peace, after a massive 1996 launch, by 1998 it was gone. Now, a short 10 years later, I struggle to even find a picture of this revolutionary product online.
Will a similar fate befall Budweiser American Ale? Only time will tell. But I definitely see some striking similarities that go way beyond the red labels...
A great man -- MC Paul Barman -- once said of beer: "The liquid is ubiquitous and has such a hold; on all the strata, it's just got to be government-controlled. Behind the bottle and the throne sits an unknown man wiser and bigger for the liquor store the number one franchiser. Perhaps George Bush and his sons are relatives of Anheiser."
I'm not 100% sure what MC was talking about, but his gist is right: Sometimes you just feel like beer is everywhere. Television, sporting events, plastered on the side of a bus: It's seems like everyone wants us to be thinking beer. Which got me thinking, What beers do I encounter on an average day?
A far more accomplished lyricist -- John Lennon -- once wrote a song called "A Day in the Life," and from what I've heard Lennon liked to drink, so in his honor, here, after the jump, were my beer encounters on an average day... Tuesday.
Along with "organic" beers -- yesterday's topic du jour -- another phrase far more brewers have been throwing about recently is "wet hops."
Why wet? Well, the name is somewhat self-explanatory. Typically hops are dried before they are packed, shipped and stored to await the brewing process. Hops is a plant (the flower of a plant technically), and anyone who's ever forgotten a fern for too long knows plants become distinctly different when they're dead. The theory behind wet hops is that as soon as the flowers are picked oils, resins and flavors begin to dry up, so by going direct from the bine to the brew kettle, your hops will pack more punch.
The trick works -- beers brewed with wet hops hold more of their distinct flavors -- somewhat begging the question, Why doesn't everyone do it? Well, price is a factor. And unless your ale needs some serious hoppiness, a lot of that subtlety is going to be drowned in malts regardless. Also hop varietals can be pretty picky in where they will grow. But even when everything else works out, the schematics are a pain. Every hour those hops hang out, dryness sets in: They have to find their way to the brewery in a hurry. So brewers looking to use wet hops need a field nearby and the dedicated manpower to make it happen.
After the jump, hear about an accessible example of a beer brewed with wet hops: Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale.
Organic beers seem to be all the rage as of late. Either that or my "rage sensors" are a bit slow on the uptake. Either way, more and more I'm seeing the words "organic" on labels and hearing people talk about organic alcohols.
When it comes to organic food, people often speak of benefits to taste or their health. However, after speaking with representatives from a number of organic breweries, many of them pointed out most craft brews use a higher quality of ingredients to begin with, leaving less room for true organic beers to separate from the pack. One of the biggest distinctions, it turns out, is the use of organic cleansers when cleaning the brewing equipment, which (pardon my skepticism) I find hard to believe will translate into any major jump in product quality or add to my longevity.
Still, organic products do benefit the environment and support organic farmers, so if you're the type who loves to look out for our planet (and I guess we should, huh?) drink all the organic beers you like. My point though, when it comes to rating organic beers on taste, don't expect them to receive any special considerations.
So imagine my surprise when one of the best beers at this year's NY Brewfest turned out to be a certified "USDA organic" serving. With an almost too strong grassy, herbaceous nose, Wildfire Extra Pale Ale by Four+ Brewing fulfilled my desires for taste bud-blowing hoppiness with a dry, bitter finish that was out of this world. This product is probably a love it or hate it beer based on your affinity for hops, but if you're a hop-head, here's an extremely quaffable opportunity to be environmentally friendly.
Bonus points to the brewery for succeeding against the odds: Four+ (who is directly affiliated with the Uinta Brewing Company) is located in the not so beer friendly city of Salt Lake City, Utah, proving once again that you can't leave Utah out of the craft beer conversation.
It's no secret: Anyone who's ever seen a football game and is not blind to mass-marketing knows beer and football go hand in hand. And as much as the federal government would like to have us believe otherwise, beer and college go hand in hand too. Therefore, beer and college football are like a "perfect storm" of drinking. And (thankfully) football season is upon us again.
So it makes sense that someone would want to compile a list of "the 10 best beer towns in college football" as Joey Redner of the St. Petersburg Times attempted to do. What doesn't quite make sense is the ratio between football prowess and craft beer quality used to determine his official order.
With two national titles and "16 brewpubs or breweries" the Washington Huskies took #1. But when a South Florida Bulls team with a 1-2 postseason bowl record can take #9 over a six-time national champion Tennessee Volunteers team (#10), all I can think is, the Tampa Bay Brewing Company must serve one heck of a beer!
So sure, the list has some heavy hometown bias, but it's more about sparking some friendly football and beer-infused debate than compiling a definitive list. What do you say? Which college football town has the best mix of brewers and bowl expectations?
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin.
I'm not sure what it is about the 2008 Election that has driven people to the bottle. Sure, coping with the anxiety of tough decisions by imbibing alcohol has been around since, well, the day alcohol was invented (good day, by the way), but this year's campaign for the ages has really upped the ante.
Originally intended as a limited edition beer that would "only last for the duration of the Democratic primary hiatus," Hop Obama, much like the candidate who inspired it, is still around. If Barack Obama wins the presidency, I'm guessing we might see it for another four years.
Drink all the Budweiser "Lagers" you can this weekend: On Monday, the American beer market will change forever with the official rollout of Budweiser "American Ale." Drinking macro-brews will never be the same!
Along with "organic" beers -- yesterday's topic du jour -- another phrase far more brewers have been throwing about recently is "wet hops."
Organic beers seem to be all the rage as of late. Either that or my "rage sensors" are a bit slow on the uptake. Either way, more and more I'm seeing the words "organic" on labels and hearing people talk about organic alcohols.
It's no secret: Anyone who's ever seen a football game and is not blind to mass-marketing knows beer and football go hand in hand. And as much as the federal government would like to have us believe otherwise, beer and college go hand in hand too. Therefore, beer and college football are like a "perfect storm" of drinking. And (thankfully) football season is upon us again.
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
