But did RoboKeg pass the Cicerone Beer Server exam?
Sierra Nevada Collab-a-palooza
Check out this mega-collaboration……
Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is celebrating the opening of its new Mills River, North Carolina, brewery by bringing revered craft brewers to North Carolina via a cross-country festival path in 2014. A dozen craft breweries across the U.S., both up-and-comers and noted names, will join Sierra Nevada in the creation of a variety 12-pack—one partner brewery per beer—to be released in summer 2014. A multi-weekend, west-to-east tour of regional festivals will culminate with the Mills River doors opening.
The specific travel path for festivals is a work in progress, but in spring 2014, these breweries will visit Chico to develop recipes and begin brewing:
Allagash Brewing Company, Portland, ME
Ballast Point Brewing Company, San Diego, CA
Bell’s Brewery, Inc., Kalamazoo, MI
Cigar City Brewing, LLC, Tampa, FL
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Paso Robles, CA
New Glarus Brewing Company, New Glarus, WI
Ninkasi Brewing Company, Eugene, OR
Oskar Blues Brewing Company, Longmont, CO
Russian River Brewing Company, Santa Rosa, CA
Three Floyds Brewing, LLC, Munster, IN
Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, PA
Local brewing community in Asheville, NC”
Holy Hell that is an impressive list of breweries. From the LA perspective it would have been nice to see Craftsman on the list or Eagle Rock but hey, you can’t win ’em all. I will be really interested in the New Glarus and Russian River combos. I know the Firestone Walker one will be a huge hit.
Brew Hub
Staying on the helping those with less cash upfront front. Brew Hub is a new contract and market penetration brew space for up and coming brewers that is based in Lakeland, Florida. (With more to come across the country, presumably if the idea catches hold.)
As they say on their website, “With our first brewing and packaging facility in Lakeland, Florida, we will become an incubation center for partner-brewers looking to capitalize on the fast-growing craft segment. Our unique, turnkey solution will help craft brewers overcome production and distribution barriers to brand profitability.”
Just like micro-maltsers and crowdfunding, it looks like craft beer is building an infrastructure around itself.
Addendum: Beer Advocate has a nice piece on this new entrant into the craft beer world.
Review – Beer Hunter (The Movie)
Thanks to the combined efforts of Beer Belly and Smog City Brewing, I was able to view the Kickstarter funded Beer Hunter movie about the beer filled life of Michael Jackson.
This documentary grew out of footage that was shot for the Rare Beer Club that Jackson was affiliated with and that still bears his name today. The movie travels from Philadelphia, to Belgium, to San Diego and the Czech Republic as he talks with brewers and attends numerous sold-out beer dinners and signs many copies of his influential book, The World Guide to Beer, and of course drinks beer.
If this movie was about someone who I didn’t know anything about, I don’t think I would recommend it. It seems rather poorly shot at times and the sound quality is all over the place. You really have to strain to hear what Jackson is saying throughout the film (more subtitles please). At first, I thought it was the acoustics of the brewery space that the audience was in but other talking heads in the film come through clearly. Taking footage from so many sources really makes the look of the movie suffer .
My documentary gold standard is Ken Burns and specifically, his Prohibition series. And this doesn’t have the same solid structure or mixture of interview subjects. It would have been great to have footage from other beer writers like Pete Brown in England or Jay Brooks here on the west coast. More Charlie Papazian wouldn’t have hurt either. And it was odd to see an extended scene with the great Randy Clemens dropped into the end credits and not have had him show up in the main movie.
It was great to see Jackson’s writing and beer lair and his local pub and the tributes after his death were touching but I came away feeling that the definitive Michael Jackson documentary is still out there waiting.
Beer in Brooklyn
If you want a PBS style documentary to get you up to speed with the past and present of brewing and beer culture in Brooklyn then look no further than Hulu for Beer In Brooklyn.
CrowdBrewed
If you want/need one stop crowdfunding for craft beer projects then it is time you take a look at CrowdBrewed. It is a Kickstarter-esque site aimed at the beer world.
Now, I have sponsored L.A. Aleworks, Mystery Brewing, Wilderness Brewing and Alosta to name a few. And that is just the beer makers, not the books or movies or other beer gizmos.
Time will tell if this site catches on. Because right now it has no projects to fund.
TurboCool
I saw this on the Craft Cans Facebook page and thought it might be of interest to craft beer fans now that more and more beer comes canned.
First, a warning, look past the horrible, horrible brands of beer in this video. It will only make you weep and not see the Kickstarter project correctly. Just imagine your favorite Golden Road beer just arrived at home from Trader Joe’s (who doesn’t refrigerate, boo!) (great price though). You want your Point the Way IPA. But it is at best lukewarm. How about using TurboCool
about the Cicerone
Beer Enhancer?
This “product” floated around the internet back in June but I wanted to make sure my specific audience saw it and shunned it like the plague.
OnTap Beer proposes to add good beer “syrup” to a bad beer to make it better.
Now back in the day, Bert Grant from Grant’s Brewery (sadly, no longer with us) would carry hop drops for lack of a better term to bitter up his beers. He would use an eye dropper, I guess, to improve the IBU quotient in his glass.
But he went on to brew beer. Groundbreaking beer. Beer that I still remember fondly. This “Beer Enhancer” probably won’t save you money when you factor in shipping and you still have to PURCHASE a bad beer to fix.
Just buy good beer. Much easier and tastier.
Can-Tails
The job of creating cocktails for a nationwide chain must be hard enough. Trying to please corporate and managers without ever seeing an actual customer and finding out what they would actually like with their Red Robin burger.
Then fold in having to satisfy tie-ins and “synergy” must just add a whole new level of difficulty.
I imagine the discussion was, “tell the cocktail person that they need to use this brand of vodka and this brand beer and to use the can too ’cause the dishwasher costs are too damn high.”
On a side note, I like how they slyly add craft into the tag. It dresses up the Coors.
I would rather buy Paula Deen butter because these cocktails look absolutely gross.