Month: November 2008

FrankenBrew, a bit of American micro history

FrankenBrew: How to Build a Micro-Brewery, is now available on DVD.

I haven’t seen this video, assembled in 1995, in some time and fully expect it will be dated. In a good way.

Tom Hennessy, one of the founders of Il Vicino in Albuquerque, put it together, featuring New Mexico microbreweries that were small and smaller. And in many cases not survivors.

It originally had a subtitle along the lines of building a brewery for “less than $20,000.” That notion’s obviously dated, and it’s a heck of a lot harder to start a brewery these days with used “re-purposed” equipment, so I wouldn’t suggest this is the video you need if you are dreaming of starting your own brewery. (Additionally, Hennessy was always quick to point out the idea might have been to get started on the cheap, however the bigger plan was to use the profits to buy “real” equipment.)

If you care about American small-batch brewing it’s worth owning even if you don’t live in New Mexico (we do, although we lived in Illinois when we first saw the video). It captures an important bit of history from a time when a lot of small breweries opened on a shoestring. Some became rip-roaring successes, more didn’t make the cut. Big picture: It’s important to hear the voices of those who don’t succeed as well as those who do.

Maybe more important, I remember grinning a lot the last time I saw this video. I look forward to seeing it soon and grinning some more.

 

Monday catching up: Us beer bloggers

Too much time on the road? I thought I posted this and some other bid of news last week, but just found it in my draft cue. With a few revisions, because Jonathan moved to quickly to get the Google group going, here’s the top item. The others also need a little updating, perhaps later today (today being Croatian time).

Chatter continues here and there about the possibility of a beer blogging conference, mentioned here a while back, and also opportunities for bloggers to work together. So a couple of quick thoughts:

* It won’t happen over night, so maybe we begin with regional meetings as suggested here by Alan.

* Such meetings would be facilitated by the Google group suggested and quickly created by Jonathan Surratt. This is something that would help us all every day of the week. It would also make it easier, for instance, for five bloggers to discover they’ll be at the Great Taste of the Midwest and arrange a meeting. Or perhaps a group Twitter effort. One note I read from the American Wine Bloggers meetup is that everybody was twittering.

* If we all end up at a American Beer Bloggers Conference the event will be a reflection of the beer blogging community, and while our blogs have a lot in common with wine blogs I think the agenda would be much different than at the wine conference. One of the best posts out of that one came from Steve Heimoff (be sure to read the comments as well.). I like wine and I like wine blogs, but one of the joys of life is that beer and wine are different. There’s no reason beer and wine blogs shouldn’t be as well.

#16 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world?

Do you think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken? If you’ve been there and see a bartender pour beers for this sample tray and deliver it to a table you should remember.

In case you aren’t familiar with this almost weekly feature, here’s the background. It’s not a contest to see who can answer first, but intended to show you a few photos from our journey and to inspire some comments.

The weekly hint: This picture isn’t particularly new, so don’t be thinking it was taken in Italy. On the other hand, it wasn’t shot in the United States.

 

Session #21 roundup posted, and why I was absent

The SessionCan I plead a dog lapped up my beer homework?

I just plain missed The Session #21 and the obviously provocative topic: Name you favorite beer.

I was prepared to pick that magic, but now I don’t have to because Friday came and went while I was tracking down still more Italian small-batch beers in Venice.

See what everybody was writing — sometimes picking a favorite, often times not &#151 in Matt’s roundup.

 

A little more about Italian beer

We’re far enough south in Italy right now that we’ve spotted the water buffalo responsible for Buffalo Mozarrella. I’ve learned that Italy grows 300 different kinds of chestnuts and that Italian brewers make at least 40 different chestnut beers.

More later, but if you need to read more about Italian beer now, check out Evan Rail’s New York Times story Savoring Italy, One Beer at a Time.

Makes me want to swing back north and visit the spots we missed.