Colorado breweries fund organic hops research

New Belgium Brewing has awarded a $20,000 grant to a Colorado State graduate student to further her research on growing organic hops in Colorado.

Odell Brewing — located in Fort Collins like New Belgium and CSU — has been supporting Ali Hamm’s work for several years.

Hamm’s plan is to figure out what kinds of hops grow best under organic conditions in Colorado. “Nobody thinks about growing hops in Colorado – well, not until this year,” Hamm said.

New Belgium currently uses organic hops from New Zealand in its organic Mothership Wit, and obviously would like to be able to use some that aren’t shipped half way around the world.

Friday morning linking: That’s no monk

A few links to get you to Happy Hour.

– The first is to my own post about Flying Dog Kerberos, because it’s a tripel and those are the sorts of beers Brew Like a Monk is about. Flying Dog recently shipped bloggers a package with the new beer plus others in the Canis Major Series (since they’ll be available in a mixed 4-pack) and World Beer Cup medaling beers so you might want to look for varying opinions at rsbs (just search for Kerberos).

You might call Kerberos a different sort of collaboration. About the time last fall Flying Dog was releasing its Open Source Doppelbock brewers in Denver — this was before operations moved to Maryland — began making test batches of Kerberos. The doppelbock recipe was based on input from Internet visitors and tweaked through the discussion. For the Kerberos, each brewer came up with a recipe that was brewed on the pilot system. The final recipe came from that.

– The Champagne of Blogs has a wonderful recap of FredFest — photos, facts and just plain good reading.

– The Sun, the UK’s largest tabloid, is getting into the beer business, including a cask ale under the Sun brand. Rupert Murdoch and real ale should scare us a little.

Pete Brown has questions.

Will it be shit beer because most things The Sun does tend to be lowest common denominator? Or given that what they do, they do well (Sun journalism is actually very skilful), will they produce something that’s accessible, but decent quality?

He’s even created a poll.

Are beer drinkers really trading down?

Tired of hearing about trading up? How about a little trading down?

This from the Association Press:

Cash-strapped drinkers are starting to trade down to economy beers, the chief executive of Miller Brewing Co. said Thursday.

The Milwaukee-based brewer saw some shift between higher-priced, premium beers and economy beers such as Miller High Life and Milwaukee’s Best starting in January, Tom Long told reporters on a conference call.

“We think it’s primarily driven by decline of disposable income and pocket money that American consumers are feeling right now,” he said.

Mr. Long said the volume of beers sold remains stable, but the company expects to sell more lower-priced beers this year if gas prices continue to rise.

Look closely. This is a discussion about drinkers already wed to industrial lagers moving from one price level to another. Also, if you read on in the story you’ll see that Milwaukee Best sales were down. Doesn’t that present a contradiction?

Brewers of more expensive beers face plenty of challenges between rising ingredients prices and an economic slowdown, and maybe beer drinkers will opt for less expensive beers, but has anybody seen that yet?

A bottle of Shiner put to good use

I’m not going to tell you that Shiner Bock is my favorite beer or even that it is a bock. I think it deserves better than it gets at the ratings sites (2.6/5 at Rate Beer and C+ at Beer Advocate), but we don’t seek it out when eating smoked meat in Texas. Just as a f’rinstance.

But I like some of the beers more — the Shiner 99 is a pretty nice Helles, at least if you have it fresh, as I did — and that this little brewery with a certain amount of German heritage and Texas terroir will soon celebrate 100 years of business.

Now they’ve produced this commercial that gives us one more reason to appreciate the old fashioned Western saloon.

Pencil us in for a visit on their 100th anniversary.

Larry Bell: Brewer and (now) farmer

Michigan hopsThose are Michigan hops on the right.

How can I tell? It’s a trick. I shot the picture in 1995 when we were on our way to visit Kalamazoo Brewing, as it was known then, and talk with founder Larry Bell for a story Daria was writing for Brew magazine. We stopped at a roadside farm stand, chatted with the woman selling produce from her farm and she mentioned she was also grew hops for Bell.

Not enough for even a decent size batch of beer, but that wasn’t the point. A few years later Bell bought some six-row barley — you know, the stuff America’s largest breweries use &#151 grown on Michigan’s “Thumb” to brew a batch of Homegrown Ale.

So a recent transaction seems perfectly consistent. “I’m becoming a farmer,” he told the Kalamazoo Gazette after signing a $400,000 sales agreement with a farmer near Mount Pleasant who will grow two-row barley for Bell’s Brewery, as its known these days.

A subsidiary of Bell’s Brewery Inc., called Bell’s Brewery Farms LLC, purchased an 80-acre farm in Shephard. Bell said that land is being prepared to grow soy beans as part of a regular crop rotation. That land should produce barley by next year. Turnwald has already used 40 acres of another nearby property to grow barley for Bell’s.

That barley will most likely be used for a new specialty brew, Bell said.

“Our preliminary plan right now … is to introduce a new brand in November and it’s not for sure at this time, but it would be a Christmas ale made with Michigan barley and, partial, Michigan-grown hops,” said Bell.

Isn’t it winemakers who are supposed to be farmers?