We’ll be in Brussels (still thinking about this) on Sept. 15, the day Budweiser American Ale officially debuts on draft. We’ll be in Stuttgart at Germany’s second largest beer festival on Sept. 29, the day the first bottles of American Ale go on sale.

Will the American beer world have been transformed by the time we return in December?

I think not, but you might disagree based on the amount of words already generated in beer blogs and at the beer rating/discussion sites (one example). Anheuser-Busch has done a great job of creating interest in American Ale ahead of its release. Of course it helps to have millions of advertising dollars to spend during the Olympics.

And for POS (point of sale advertising), like the tap handle pictured, that evokes a the same classic American tavern/saloon feel many smaller breweries and the places that serve their beer have taken advantage of for more than 20 years.

Not that A-B has done everything right. For instance, this from a company press release:

“Budweiser American Ale defines a new style of ale – The American Ale – with the full-bodied taste profile of the amber ale style, yet remarkably smooth and balanced,” said Eric Beck, brewmaster for Budweiser American Ale.

There’s an arrogance in that quote that begs for a separate post with a snippy headline.

That aside, A-B is providing support that the Michelob Specialty beers didn’t receive a decade ago, and seeing of the powerful Budweiser name offers the same sort of halo effect (no, I didn’t mean with you) it did for Bud Light way back when.

So what does Budweiser American Ale it taste like? I don’t know, but you can check here (Lew Bryson), here (three stars), here (a “huge splash”) and here (”not bad”).

No surprise. Pacific Ridge (5.6% abv, 35 IBU) and American Hop Ale (5.6% abv, 50 IBU) were both solid beers. The thing is . . . neither found an audience, at least big enough to satisfy the corporate decision makers.

Will BudAle?

I don’t expect that will be decided by March. We’ll be passing through St. Louis then, so I hope to visit a tavern with a big Budweiser eagle in the window to see what the locals are thinking . . . and drinking.

We’re wrapping up the summer phase of our Grand Adventure with an American history field trip and packing for Part II-Europe, so a few links to posts you should read and think about:

- On Locale, and Maeib writes, “Whilst supporting this initiative as I like to see local businesses flourishing, and will support them wherever possible, I don’t want to hear the words ‘beer miles.’”

Be sure to read the comments. I can tell you that three months into paying attention to all things local, not just beer, it’s possible to spend too much time thinking about this. Take a break and enjoy the beer, local or otherwise.

- The Wall Street Journal recently joined the marketing to women discussion which has already already consumed plenty of space here.

But you have to smile when you read that Coors “set up a unit code-named Eve this year to develop beer brands and marketing techniques appealing to women. The unit’s mission, the company says, is to create ‘a world where women love beer as much as they love shoes.’” What beer has been assigned that task? Blue Moon.

- This is what beer is about: Beer Babe eventually gets around to drinking Shock Top Belgian White (a Blue Moon knock-off, as a matter of fact).

- This is where beer need not go: A fictitious restaurant captured a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence with a fictitious wine list. Quite a mess in the wine world (reading here and here will be enough to make your head explode).

The news to me is that there’s an organization called the American Association of Wine Economists. I don’t think I want to drink in a world where there is an American Association of Beer Economists.

Could this be the stumper?

This photo was snapped during our current adventure. That narrows it down to 24 states, eight provinces and one territory. I’ll rule out Alaska and the Yukon for you.

Anway, this isn’t really a hit-the-buzzer-first-Jeopardy-type contest (Daria would kick your butt), so feel free to comment even if you don’t know where this barn resides.

Heck, I bet we’d all like to know if you can tell us what Koehler beer used to taste like.

(Here’s how this feature started, in case you forgot.)

“I think I was the first person ever to use the phrase, ‘beer style.’ The next thing was to try to define what they were, which lots of people have done since, but I think I was the first person. But then my focus became really to talk about, to try to describe the flavors of beer. When I was first writing on beer, nobody else was describing the flavors in beer. It’s very frustrating when you read old books on beer.”

         - Michael Jackson, interviewed in All About Beer magazine in 1997.

I went looking for this quote about the time I reached the fifth chapter, the one about stouts, in Martyn Cornell’s new book, “Amber, Gold and Black: The Story of Britain’s Great Beers.”

Although Cornell himself writes in the introduction that this is “the first book devoted solely to looking at the unique history of the different styles of beer produced in Britain” don’t mistake it as “just another book about styles.” No, it’s about beers, sometimes specifically what they tasted like and other times giving us some damn good leads. Most importantly, this book brings them to life in a manner I think Jackson would have approved of.

Cornell uses a nicely balanced combination of words mined from a dizzying number of sources and his known, cleverly mixed with delightful vintage illustrations (his first book, “Beer Memorabilia,” also belongs in your collection).

As Cornell showed with “The Story of the Pint,” he is a trustworthy historian. Yet this is not all about the past. He writes that the microbrewery boom in England has “helped bring in new styles such as golden ale and wood-aged beers.” It is an unapologetic “celebration of British beer in all its many beautiful shades and inspiring flavours.”

And it is specific to the UK (although it provides examples of how styles evolved as they were exported to other brewing nations), making it comfortably uncomprehensive. We don’t need another compleat guide to styles. Cornell passes on breadth to provide refreshing depth.

Certainly this book will be useful in starting, and one would hope settling, barstool arguments. As Cornell’s press release states, “Long-standing stories about beer, lovingly retold over pints by beer drinkers and brewers down the ages are comprehensively debunked in the book.”

Now to that fifth chapter. We find Charles Knight writing in 1851 about Guinness: “Its sub-acidity and soda-water briskness, when compared with the balmy character of London bottled stout from a crack brewery, are like the strained and shallow efforts of professed joke compared with the unctuous, full-bodied wit of Shakespere [sic].”

Then Cornell connects the dots by explaining the difference between London and Dublin stouts.

“Amber, Gold and Black” is available only in electronic form for a modest £5 (about $10 US). Not everybody seems keen on reading it on a computer screen. Personally I had no problem. My only complaint would be that it lacks an index.

Quite simply, this is both a terrific resource and a wonderful read. An index would make it easier to find just the right fact or phrase when you find yourself perched on a barstool, computer on your lap, pint in hand, ready to make an important point.

Need to know more? The Table of Contents is here.

My take on Pabst’s efforts to make Schlitz the next . . . well, Pabst (in other words, popular with the young and hip)?

Lawnmower beer.

Brew Blog reports that MillerCoors is bringing back the classic “Great Taste, Less Filling” advertising tagline for Miller Lite.

MilllerCoors has said it plans to drive growth for its two lead brands by focusing on sharply differentiated marketing positions. Coors Light is about Rocky Mountain cold refreshment. Miller Lite is about taste.

“Research has shown the two factors that matter the most to mainstream light beer drinkers are taste and refreshment,” MillerCoors said on Tuesday in a message to distributors. “And so the path to simultaneous share growth for Miller Lite and Coors Light is clear: We will distinctly align each brand against one of these benefits, driving home our positions in everything we do on behalf of each brand.”

So now we’ve established that Coors Light has nothing to do with taste. That’s progress, I guess.

“You should have been here yesterday.”

Oooh, that can hurt.

“Too bad you can’t be here tomorrow.”

That might inflict even more pain, because sometimes it seems like there should be a way to hang around an extra day (or two more weeks if necessary).

In New Glarus, Wis., it was Dan Carey talking about a Czech-style lager they would brew the next day as part of the Unplugged Series. Triple decoction with 100% undermodified Moravian malt, Czech hops, fermented in oak, krausened at bottling . . . after more than two months of lagering.

And then showing off the new open fermenters dedicated to the production of Dancing Man Wheat (can’t youenvision the billowing wheat head?). “We’ll be brewing it tomorrow,” he said, standing in the yeast propagation room, which smelled a bit of banana. “Too bad you can’t be here tomorrow,” he said. There are those words again.

In Portland, Maine, brewmaster Jason Perkins opened a door to display the wood foder recently acquired from Bonny Doon in California. It would be put to work — you guessed it — tomorrow, filled without about 2,800 gallons of Allagash Tripel nearing the end of regular fermentation. That was to be inoculated with a grundy full of funk the brewers have been collecting. It might be two years before anybody tastes what comes of this.

Right after I mentioned some of this in a post, Sean Paxton scribbled on my Facebook wall: “How long are you on Maine? I am doing a beer dinner @ the Ebenezer’s Pub the last week of August.”

Aug. 28, as a matter of fact, the beer dinner everybody is linking to. Don’t just look at the beers being served, but the ones that Sean is cooking with. Aug. 28 will be the 100th day of our adventure.

Gotta be there, right? Not when we fly to Germany three days later. But then that excuse doesn’t earn much sympathy from you, does it?

What if the New York Post printed a beer column?

If you aren’t familiar with the Post, and its well known Page Six, this may be lost on you. I picked up the paper because a) a tabloid is easier to deal with on a windy morning at the beach and b) while most other newspapers are struggling to retain readers the Post rolls merrily along. I figure there’s something to be learned here. Post.

Beyond what rock star’s ex-girl friend is sleeping with what movie star, that is. Or who’s shopping for multi-million dollar villas in Croatia.

Perhaps I got too much sun, but I began to imagine beer stories that would interest the Post and how they’d be written. Before reading please remember there’s less chance they are true than the fact Eric Clapton is a dud in the sack (who knew?).

- Where’d the Budweiser tap go? Our spies report that Stella Artois is now on tap (along with Bud Light) in Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis brewery board room.

- What brewery that has long advertised using Saaz hops in its best selling beer might be experimenting with Sterling hops?

- Spotted on the Jersey shore: An airplane dragging a banner advertising $9 pints of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA and $3 bottles of Miller Lite during happy hour at The Animal House. $9 pints? Have you checked the prices on airplane fuel recently?

- No reports what they did with the left over food, beer and wine, but Saturday’s seven-course dinner at Caffe Taci was cut short when beer chef Sean Z. Paxton and television star Rachel Ray reached an impasse over what beer to use in the Flemish stew. “Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock,” Paxton was heard muttering later in the evening over a glass of Saint Lawrence Smoked Porter at a popular Village watering hole.

I have more, but will spare you. However, one serious thought. Would life be better if small-batch beer were popular enough for the Post to pay attention?

This week’s “Where in the beer world?” includes a person . . . for those of you with facial recognition software.

A hint? We bought “scratch and dent” cheese at a store in a nearby town. These are cheeses presumably from small-batch cheesemakers of the region that didn’t end up quite right in the package, and thus cost a little less. This is one of America’s great cheese regions, but the S&D swiss did not do well in a family tasting. It seemed a like a good idea at the time, but later I thought, “Would I buy scratch and dent beer?”

I know I promised we’d be talking about prizes for sharp-eyed contributors (readers are four-for-four), so here’s the first: a $50 gift certificate at BeerBooks.com. Lots of great books there to choose from, but Carl Miller also has other cool stuff. Including a bunch of new photos.

Comments are open.

Both catching up and musing . . .

- Nice interview with Jim Koch by Fortune. He says Sam Adams make flag waving, that is pointing out that every U.S. brewery larger than Boston Beer is foreign owned, part of its marketing program. Here’s the part I like.

Our destiny is to remain very small. We don’t make a mass-produced or mass-marketed beer. We make a very flavorful beer that really only appeals to 5% of beer drinkers. If we were a car we’d be a Porsche. Everyone is familiar with it, but the market share is probably what ours is.

He’s talking about Sam Adams, of course, but for “we” substitute “Goose Island” or “Berkshire Brewing” or “Boscos” and the thought is as valid.

- Both Jay Brooks and Maureen Ogle are commenting on a Slate article “And the next great American beer will be…?” Hop you can follow all those links.

That’s good enough excuse to play the nostalgia card and include this old Falstaff advertisement. I pretty much agree with what Jay has to say and with Maureen’s take on the silly Schlitz revival.

But I disagree with the notion Budweiser (or Bud Light), Miller and Coors are not American beers. Have they changed from when they were made at breweries fully owned by Americans? Are they not still brewed by American workers?

- Todd Ashman of FiftyFifty Brewing in California has organized a different sort of collaboration. In other projects brewers get together and make a beer at one or the other’s breweries. Like this one.

Concentrated Evil will be something different. Ashman first brewed the strong, dark Belgian-inspired beer made with raisins, exotic sugars and aromatic spices at FiftyFifty. Then he shared the recipe with Zac Triemert of Lucky Bucket Brewing in Nebraska and Matt Van Wyk of Flossmoor Station Brewing in Illinois.

This is like “indentic-ale” projects among regional breweries (Eugene, Chicago-area breweries, New Mexico breweries to name three) where brewers used the same recipe and sometimes the exact same ingredients (except for water) to make a beer. But in this case the breweries are in California, Nebraska and Illinois.

Problem is, how could anyone easily compare the results? Here’s the really good news for those who will be at the Great American Beer Festival in October. All three versions will be available in Denver.

This should be a great opportunity to debate the importance of “where” in the beer versus (or should that be plus) what the brewer adds. Heredity versus environment, anybody?

- Angel’s Share from Lost Abbey was chosen as the best American cask-conditioned beer at the Great British Beer Festival. No surprise (I’ve already written enough about the beer), but a here’s what Andy Benson, manager of the Bieres Sans Frontieres bar, had to say: “American beers are often a surprise to the British palate, they are so intensely flavored that most people either love them or hate them, nothing like the insipid lagers we usually associate with America.”

- It appears the way is clear for Bell’s return to Illinois. That’s a good thing, because Bell’s has been an important part of Chicago becoming a better beer town, and Chicago was essential to Bell’s “early” success. I put early in quotes because Larry Bell’s brewery was hardly an overnight success.