Tag: All About Beer

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Beer History Podcast – Forgotten Hops

I was excited to hear from professor and author Jennifer Jordan on the Beer Me podcast (part of the All About Beer family of podcasts).  She is in the process of researching her new book Before Craft Beer: Lost Landscape of Forgotten Hops.

The book will chronicle the Wisconsin hop growing industry way back in the 1800’s.  A great topic and I am a sucker for stories about lost times in history.  The podcast is a little slow and doesn’t dig into too much but does give a starting point for when the book comes out.

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Podcasts @ All About Beer

All About Beer has doubled down on their podcasts with John Holl hosting the new After Two Beers and adding the Beervana podcast to their roster for a formidable duo of beer podcasting.

I listened to the latest After Two Beers with guest Rebecca Newman of Summit Brewing and was treated to a science lesson that focused on packaging of beer. From there it went to how Newman conducts torture tests on the Minnesota beers either with intentional spikes of off-flavors or by warming incrementally or extremely.

The Golden Nugget that I took away from the under an hour long talk was that consumers should buy a six pack. Review one that is cold and treated well and leave one in the garage for a week and see what the difference is. I have heard that before but now it is back in my mind to try again.

The other bit of knowledge that I will incorporate is before I review a beer and say that it is off, I should go to the brewery website to check if the beer is what the brewery describes it as or not.

Beervana had Linfield grad (my alma mater) Alan Taylor as guest talking primarily about the process of opening his new brewery Zoiglhaus in the Lents section of Portland. It’s a great interview and boy does Taylor have a great command of German. Check it out HERE.

The next podcast to arrive sounds great too as the Women of Portland beer are the guests.

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Wisconsinite


I know some craft beer lovers out there are tired of the terroir and estate hops and malts trend. Just like they may have tired of collaborative beers but I simply can’t get enough of them. Literally. I have been lucky to have some Rogue and Sierra Nevada local sourced ingredient ales but there have been some done in Colorado and New Zealand that I haven’t got to try and now this Wisconsin ale comes along and puts me further behind.

You can read more about this beer over at All About Beer.

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High Tech Delivery Systems

Recently, two beer items popped up at the same time so I took it as a sign that I should talk about it.

First, All About Beer magazine had a blurb about table taps. OK, it’s got the marketing name of DraftMaster. Two tap handles rise out of the center of the table so you can pour your own beer.

I can so see why this would go over well with publicans. Saves time. People will order more because it’s right there. Technology probably hits the credit card whenever a pint is poured. But to me it just promotes the drink all you want culture and speed. I try my best not to race through beers. (Some are so good that I do it anyway). It also eliminates the creation of a rapport with the barkeep. But what scares me most is that it, in the end, promotes a homogenization of beer. You could have different beer at each table (that would be kinda cool). But then some tables would always be vacant while others would have lines going out the door. I would not give up an Upright or Drakes table easily.
To avoid that scenario, either each table would have the same beers or at least one common denominator, usually the lowest. And how do you know your table has a full keg?

The second dispensing system has the inventiveness of the first, plus some. But whereas the DraftMaster is a sure fire economic barnburner. The Biero idea may end up being too costly. I saw this earlier in the month on the fabulous Brookston Beer Bulletin.

Basically it takes bottled beer and puts it into a chilled and light protected tube so that patrons can see the beer. From what I have read on their site, they love beer and have thought of most of the technical issues, which shows how far beer culture has grown. But I don’t know how feasible it is. To compete with great tap beer, you would need a hook. The one I see is rare beers or perhaps blended beers. And that could work if they get the price point right. And I would certainly enjoy trying a rare beer that I normally couldn’t get because of price. But is the public ready for what is basically a cellared beer bar? I know Cascade opened a sour beer bar. But I worry that this a good idea ahead of its time.

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Special Rare Beer Event

All About Beer, in cooperation with BeerAdvocate.com, created the Denver Rare Beer Tasting as a benefit event for the Pints for Prostates campaign. More than 20 of America’s finest craft breweries have already committed to attend this event. They will be pouring some truly one-of-a-kind brews on Friday, Sept. 25th, from 1-4 p.m. at the Wynkoop Brewery at 1634 18th Street in LoDo. What’s more is that the legendary brewers who created these phenomenal beers will be on hand to answer your questions.

There are just 450 tickets available for this event. When they are gone, they are gone and so is the chance to say you had a Stone 2008 Old Guardian Barley Wine Aged in Red Wine Barrels poured by Greg Koch or a Stoudt 2007 Old Abominable Barleywine served by Carol Stoudt. You just will not find most of the beers at the Denver Rare Beer Tasting at the GABF, or elsewhere in Denver for that matter. We’re talking about beers like New Glarus Golden Ale, the Belgian-style Trappist Ale Dan Carey is bringing from his Wisconsin brewery’s first batch in its new R&D series.

These are just three of the great beers slated to be served to the lucky guests at the Denver Rare Beer Tasting. Other breweries expected at the event include Allagash, Alaskan, Avery, Boston Beer, Bison, Dogfish Head, Foothills, Harpoon, Jolly Pumpkin, New Belgium, Pizza Port, Rogue, Saranac, Victory, Wynkoop and more! This event will be the talk of Denver during the 2009 GABF and you can be a part of it by buying a ticket today.

All proceeds from the Denver Rare Beer Tasting go to support the Pints for Prostates campaign ( http://www.ustoo.org/pints ) in its efforts fight prostate cancer. Please help us in reaching men through the universal language of beer!