Armageddon!

Brewmeister’s Armageddon beer has an incredible 65% abv.

The brewery, which began production earlier this year with a local pale ale, is situated about 25 miles outside Aberdeen, on the estate of Kincardine Castle.

John MacKenzie, who runs the brewery with Lewis Shand, said: “The beer has a viscous quality to it, due to the special freeze fermentation method we use to produce such a high alcoholic beer.”

This process involves cooling the beer to zero degrees during the brewing process; as the water freezes the alcohol does not and then the ice that forms is removed, leaving a very strong beer.

Shand said: “The phrase ‘delivers a punch’ doesn’t quite cut it. ‘Delivers a supersonic charged explosion and conveys the taster to drunkville’ is probably more appropriate. It really is a powerful beer.”

The beer will be launched at the Inverness Beer Festival on 3 November where it will sell for £5 a 35ml nip. The brewers recommend drinking it in small quantities, rather like a brandy.

Link

And this is why I'm a beer snob

Can Beer save America?

In the fevered battle between the macrobrew behemoths and the craftbrew insurgents, both sides are digging in for an epic confrontation.

The history of the face-off is illustrative. For decades, the big brewers (Anheuser Busch, MillerCoors, etc.) have marketed their products less on the basis of taste or quality than on identity branding. What you drank subsequently became a statement not necessarily of what your taste buds enjoyed, but of your self-image. The Miller versus Budweiser wars and Old Milwaukee ads, for instance, were so often a pitch to guys looking for working-class street cred. Meanwhile, Pabst Blue Ribbon lately has been pitched as a retro-themed statement of hipster style.

This kind of marketing made a certain sense, because while macrobrew brands are certainly appealing, the actual beers in question are basically terrible. Produced through the macrobrews’ low-price, high-volume process, they don’t contain high-quality ingredients, they don’t contain much alcohol and, thus, they simply don’t taste good. Knowing this, the macrobrews have logically designed their marketing campaigns to focus on everything (the can, the type of people who drink it, the logo, etc.) but the actual product. Indeed, if there’s one ubiquitous reference that macrobrewing companies make to the beer itself, it’s usually one telling you how cold the beer is or should be — a temperature that, quite deliberately, helps hide just how bad the beer actually is.

The obvious assumption in this business model is that Americans generally reward low price over everything else, and specifically preference beer that is cost-effective to drink in mass quantities, rather than beer that delivers more alcohol or taste in less volume of liquid. In other words, the model assumes consumers see beer as a homogenized, undifferentiated commodity and that therefore less can never be more. In this view, more is always more, and since cheaper means more, cheaper is inherently better.

Salon 

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!

Today is the day to raise a pint for your Lass, to the Lads, for Luck and for Brothers here and gone.

Seo sláinte a chaimiléirach, goidach, comhrac, is ólacháin.
Dá bheith ag rógaireacht tú, go raibh bíodh bás
Dá ghoid dtú, go raibh bíodh croí; Dá griolsa thú, go raibh d'aainneoin deartháir
agus dá hól tú, go raibh ag mise

Here's to cheating, stealing, fighting and drinking.
If you cheat, may it be a death
If you steal, may it be a heart
If you fight, may it be for your brother
and if you drink may it be with me

There's no way that this cannot be good.....

Uncommon Brewers: Organic Bacon Brown Ale


Yes, this is a meat beer. The Santa Cruz, Calif., brewery chucks in hunks of applewood-cured pork into the process to give this sweet brown ale a smoky, meaty taste. "I enjoy bacon and I thought using a nut brown would be the way to do it," said brewmaster and founder Alec Stefansky. Stefansky developed the beer with fellow brewer Reed VanderSchaaf as a companion to yet another strange brew, the Rubidus Red Ale. They weren't pouring it at the festival, but Stefansky said the latter was made with candy cap mushrooms, which grow wild in their area and give off notes of maple. The best part, he said, is that if you drink a few pints at night, then in the morning, you smell like maple syrup -- with the bacon beer, it's a complete meal experience.


Link

A Motto to Live By

Seo sláinte an tséitéara, an ghadaí, an trodaí, agus an óltóra!
Má dhéanann tu séitéireacht, go ndéana tú séitéireacht ar an mbás,
Má ghoideann tú, go ngoide tú croí mná;
Má throideann tú, go dtroide tú i leith do bhráthar, 
Agus má ólann tú, go n-óla tú liom féin.


If you cheat, may you cheat death.
If you steal, may you steal a woman's heart.
If you fight, may you fight for a brother.
And if you drink, may you drink with me.


- Gaelic Drinking Toast

This is why State and Local bureaucracy is more oppressive than Federal

The number of craft brewers is growing across the state, with beer-brand names like New Glarus, Capital Brewery and Sprecher as recognizable to many Wisconsin beer drinkers as Bud and Miller Lite.

In all, the state’s 60 craft brewers now account for 5 percent — a rising but still slim percentage — of the state’s annual beer sales, according to the Colorado-based Brewers Association, a nonprofit trade group dedicated to promoting the country’s small brewers.

Yet even though sales from the state’s largest craft brewer, New Glarus Brewing Co., trail one of the state’s largest brewers, MillerCoors, by millions of barrels of beer annually — 92,000 compared to more than 5 million — a motion slipped into Gov. Scott Walker’s budget would treat brewers of all sizes equally by preventing them from owning or operating a wholesale distributor. 

“Everything in this bill is designed to make it harder for small craft brewers to grow,” says Deb Carey, a co-owner of New Glarus Brewing and a member of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild. “It is a slimy piece of legislation.”

Carey’s anger is fueled by the fact small brewers were never consulted about the change, even though they will be affected along with every other brewer in the state.

Link

Bad Beer!

Dudes....can't we all just get along?

h/t to Joe My God

On Sept. 7, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors gave $10,000 to a committee opposing Proposition 19, the measure that would change state law to legalize pot and allow it to be taxed and regulated. The California Police Chiefs Association has given the most to the Proposition 19 opposition with a contribution of $30,000, according to Cal-Access, a website operated by the secretary of state’s office. Rhonda Stevenson, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors political action committee’s coordinator, was out of the office on Wednesday. Nobody else from the group was available to comment. “Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear,” Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in statement. “Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. Their mission is to drive people to drink.”

Beer Review

Bear with me as I write this under the influence of the below mentioned beer. Being in Germany offers no small amount of Bier selection. And although I enjoy the hell out of a great Dunkelweiss, at most hotels and bars it runs around 4.00 Euro [give or take $5 - $6]. So low and behold, I walk across the street from my current hotel to a gas station and see 1 liter cans of a beer named Faxe.

In my best Deutsch, I ask the nice lady about the quality of such a beer that comes on an enormous can. She proceeds to tell me that it is a strong beer [duh, the can clearly states that it is 10% alcohol], and not for everybody.

Well.......I'm not everybody. I'm hooked! for 2.00 Euro, I can get a Danish brew that is 10% alcohol and has a nice dark blonde color with a hint of the carbonation found in Belgian ales.

Now, if I can only find it in the states......

Wednesday Beer News

The flamboyantly competitive Scottish brewery BrewDog has released Sink the Bismarck!, a "quadruple IPA" that they say is the most alcoholic in the world at 41%. BrewDog had previously earned similar attention last year with their then-record-setting 32% ABV beer, Tactical Nuclear Penguin, but rival brewery Schorschbrau just weeks ago (briefly) reclaimed the beer potency title with their Schorschbock, at 40% ABV, prompting Brewdog's latest counterattack.

Sink the Bismarck!'s 41% ABV renders it more alcoholic than whiskey or vodka. BrewDog has preempted the expected accusations of irresponsibility from British alcohol awareness groups, and explains that the beer should be consumed responsibly, "in spirit-sized measures."

rewDog is no stranger to controversy over the strength of its product. Prior to the 40% Tactical Nuclear Penguin, their 18.2% Tokyo was criticized by alcohol awareness groups, so it crafted a low alcoholic brew called Nanny State.
HuffPo

Victory!

This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century.

Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved."

New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust team leader Al Fastier said the team thought there were two crates and were amazed to find five.

"The unexpected find of the brandy crates, one labeled Chas. Mackinlay & Co and the other labeled The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited Allandale (Australia) are a real bonus," said Fastier.

Ice has cracked some of the crates and formed inside them. Fastier said in a statement that would make extracting the contents delicate, but the trust would decide how to do so in coming weeks.

Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte and Mackay, whose company supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, described the find as "a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers."

"If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history," he said in a statement.
HuffPo

Liquid Goodness

I thought I would share a beer that I've enjoyed lately. It costs anywhere from $7 to $12, but it's worth it. Be warned...this is a sipping beer. It's not Bud Light! I'm talking to you Allen.....

Nuclear Beer!

Now if I could only figure out what 35 Pounds exchanges to in dollars......

The BrewDog team have pulled off our most audacious and ambitious project to date, and smashed a world record in the process. We have today, Thursday 26 November 2009, set a new world record after creating the strongest beer in the world. Weighing in at an ABV of 32%, BrewDog’s ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ beats the previous record of 31% held by German beer brand Schorschbraer.

This beer is bold, irreverent and uncompromising. A beer with a soul and a purpose. A statement of intent. A modern day rebellion for the craft beer proletariat in our struggle to over throw the faceless bourgeoisie oppression of corporate, soulless beer.’

The Antarctic name inducing schizophrenia of this uber-imperial stout originates from the amount of time it spent exposed to extreme cold. This beer began life as a 10% imperial stout 18 months ago. The beer was aged for 8 months in an Isle of Arran whisky cask and 8 months in an Islay cask making it our first double cask aged beer. After an intense 16 month, the final stages took a ground breaking approach by storing the beer at -20 degrees for three weeks to get it to 32%.

For the big chill the beer was put into containers and transported to the cold store of a local ice cream factory where it endured 21 days at penguin temperatures. Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. As the beer got colder BrewDog Chief Engineer, Steven Sutherland decanted the beer periodically, only ice was left in the container, creating more intensity of flavours and a stronger concentration of alcohol for the next phase of freezing. The process was repeated until it reached 32%.

Brewdog

An expedition I can get behind:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.

The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.

Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut's floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.
Mmmmmmm..........