Your fun beer fact of the day:
Data indicate that only 6 percent of U.S. beer drinkers consume both Budweiser and Bud Light.
(From Sports Business Journal via Lager Heads.)
Some things are worth the trouble
From Josef Schneider, owner and brewer at Brauerei Gasthof Schneider in Essing, Germany, quite close to better known Private Weissbeierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn but totally unrelated.
Why does he bottle-condition all his hefeweiss rather than offer some of it on draft as well?
“It’s like sex and Champagne, worth the bother.”
Oregon Bounty: Enter to win
Travel Oregon has announced a “Cuisinternship” contest, which is really seven contests. Despite the tongue-twisting name any would be nice to win. Requirements include a video camera and a Twitter attention span.
The prizes: Seven winners will get to hang out with an Oregon culinary personality in a week-long cuisine-internship. The winner of the Brew Master category will spend time making beer with Jamie Emmerson of Hood River’s Full Sail Brewery. I pass that along because the information was in my personalized press release. Insider tip: Go for the cheese/chocolate combo. We visited both those places during our Grand Adventure.
To enter: Applicants must submit a short video, along with a statement of 140 characters or less explaining why they are the best candidate for their dream job.
I’m not entering or I wouldn’t be telling you about this.
News flash from 1879
From “Berlin Under the New Empire,” written by Henry Vizetelly in 1875:
“Through Prussia the larger breweries are swallowing up the smaller ones which have not sufficient capital to make the needful modern improvements by means of which they might compete on more equal terms. Within the last thirty years upwards of half the Prussian breweres have had to give up business, though the consumption of beer has been steadily increasing.”
You connect the dots.
Would you drink a purple beer?
This is what can happen when you judge in beer competitions, particularly homebrewed beer. The beer pictured here is a Prickly Pear Wit. Although Pierre Celis, the Belgian who resurrected the dead Belgian White or Wit style, later moved to Texas, founded the Celis Brewery and took to wearing a bolo tie was an inventive guy no proof exists he thought of brewing a beer with the fruit of prickly pear cactus.
We have a lot of prickly pear in New Mexico, so folks make wine with the reddish fruit, use it in mead and I’ve previously had a prickly pear pale ale.
But never a wit. Until Saturday morning. We were judging fruit beers in the New Mexico State Fair Pro-Am competition, amateur division. Just finished back-to-back cherry Berliner Weisse beers. The note with this entry said the beer contained no artificial coloring. Wow.
Alas, this might not have been the best brewing idea ever. When prickly pear meets wit the wit flavors get run over.
But the execution was better than in the afternoon, when I sat on a panel that judged a Prickly Pear Lambic. This was from a commercial brewery (judged blind so I have no idea what one, but bless their heart for trying.) Prickly Pear meets vinegar (acetobacter), nobody wins.
Don’t you wish you were a beer judge?