Do you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?
Couldn’t resist showing you this picture from a spot where the goings on are about to be an excuse for a lot of beer consumption.
Good news – an excellent wine and beer store nearby.
Were those really the good old days?
I really shouldn’t admit how fascinating I find most of the numbers Ron Pattinson assembles.
The particular series that has me on the edge of my seat right now are the posts like these: assessing beer quality and Barclay Perkins Porter and Stout quality in the 1920’s.
These provide some hint if quality was a reason some styles, and some specific brands, survived at various points in time and why some didn’t.
I just wish somebody could find tasting notes to go with them. (Isn’t going to happen.)
How strong is a standard beer? Not 8% abv
In some of the many discussions about Session Beers (like here and here) the fact that Utah brewers make a range of great beers containing less than 4 percent alcohol by volume usually comes up.
So it’s nice to see them get a little credit in Sunday’s New York Times: “Brew Pubs Gain an Unlikely Following in Utah.” But — whoa! — when I read this paragraph I don’t know if somebody got confused converting alcohol by volume to alcohol by weight (4% abv equals 3.2% abw) or perhaps had a few beers first.
Utah still has quirky alcohol laws, including one that sets a limit of 3.2 percent alcohol — a little more than half the amount standard in most beers around the world — for beer sold on tap.
Does this mean that Vanessa Chang figures a standard beer contains almost 8% abv?
And how strong would a Session Beer be? Six percent? Lew, there’s work to be done.
More on the Miller one-second ad
If you watch as much television as I don’t then you probably haven’t seen the Miller one-second ad that spoofs how much money Anhesuer-Busch is spending on Super Bowl advertising.
Apparently it got posted on YouTube but removed. You watch it by visiting the story Adweek posted. That article concludes, “If nothing else, Miller’s effort implicitly challenges Budweiser’s bona fides as a beer for the common man.”
I’m not sure how much the commercial has to do with beer, and certainly not the beer we’re interested in drinking, but it is sorta funny.
Capturing the ‘warm glow’ on the telly
Pete Brown writes about Oz Clarke and James May’s televised journey through Britain in search of the “drink that best speaks for the country.” Really something you need to click over and read, but two excerpts:
You come away with a vague knowledge of brewing ingredients and processes, and that’s it. This is disappointing to those already knowledgeable, because they believe that people just need to be educated about beer and then they’ll love it.
And . . .
I’ve always argued that beer’s cultural role is far more interesting to the average punter than its taste profile, especially if you’re in a situation where you’re talking about beer rather than drinking it.
You can probably sense where he is going, so head there now.