HAPPY ST. LOUIS CRAFT BEER WEEK!

Everybody! Everybody!

It’s St. Louis Craft Beer Week, May 30-June 6. That means a week of beer tastings, beer history, and other fun beer things.

If you have the means/time, I recommend checking it out. Especially the beer tasting for wine lovers you can find in events. I’ll be trying to find the time/means, but with St. Louis a mere 5 hours away, there’s really no reason not to check it out.

PBR put to good use at a Winnetka HS

High school pranks are getting weaker.

Seniors from New Trier High School in Winnetka found a way to slip a picture of a student drinking a Pabst Blue Ribbon into their yearbook, according to UPI.com.

The Beer of Hipsters… and high schoolers?

While this is probably tasteless, and a bit ridiculous, the real story are the high school administrators who have decided this is a terrible thing to do to a yearbook.

“It’s clearly defiant and subversive and intentional,” says spokeswoman Laura Blair.

Principal Linda Yonke did not consider the prank harmless.

“It sort of casts a pall over the whole yearbook,” Yonke said.

Really? One picture ruins your yearbook? I’m not worried so much that kids are drinking underage as the fact that a PBR can can be called “defiant and subversive.”

Good pranks should always, in my opinion, be slightly dangerous. Like this one from the UK. Driving cars into your high school? Awesome.

Is Illinois losing in national craft beer increase?

Unlike Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan and Ohio, Illinois has not one craft brewery in the top 50 in the nation by sales volume, reports the Medill News Service, identified as breweries that produce less than 2 million barrels per year. (Goose Island doesn’t count as a “craft brew” under the articles standards.)

Apparently, the issue is one of distribution and regulation. Smaller brewers in Illinois have a hard time paying the large fees for an alcohol license and space on distributors trucks.

The article explains:

“Let’s say you want to be a small little brewery, it’s hard to get in with the big name distributors,” said Travis Biggs, a beer specialist and salesman at Sam’s Wine and Spirits in Downers Grove. Biggs said the smaller craft breweries can’t produce the bulk amounts required to sign on with larger distributors.

In addition, taxes and union regulations make it difficult to raise the capital needed to open a brewery.

Illinois, especially Chicago, should do more to support it’s brewing industry. With Milwaukee and St. Louis are obviously the giants of the Midwest production brewing, there’s no reason a Midwest beer Renaissance can’t take root here. And with craft beer sales growing and interest booming, now is a perfect time to launch new breweries here in Chicago.

Just added myself to the http:…

Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com twitter directory under: #blogger #beer #Chicago

The Great Brewing Adventure: How to Brew Beer

It’s not exactly a secret that my beer-brewing has been less than successful so far…

But! All is not lost. In this video how-to, I’ll show you, the aspiring homebrewer/google-addicted stoner browsing the web, just how to make a decent pot of homebrew. At least, how to put together and boil ingredients:

Educational? Maybe. Howto? You betcha.

Review: Cherokee Red Ale

Overall: 8.5

So, I’m in Knoxville. I want a beer from Knoxville. I google “knoxville breweries“. I was disappointed to learn that the New Knoxville Brewery had closed.

I found a company called Smokey Mountain Brewery, a conglomeration of restaurants that brew their own beer in house based on the same recipies, which I was told were created by Marty Helles. I was told this by our bartender, and she also explained that Marty was a Nashville-native. I’m still counting his beer as a “Knoxville” beer, because I had no other options and I was in Knoxville when I drank it. Anyway, let’s get reviewin’:

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Beer vs. Beer Review: Hornsby’s Ciders – With Guest Reviewer Erin Monahan

Tonight, I sat down with Erin Monahan and enjoyed a good couple of ciders. We sampled each, and below is her take on how the drinking went:

Amber Draft or Crisp Apple? HMMMMMM?

Erin Monahan’s Battle to the DEATH: Hornsby’s Hard Cider

I like beer… but I find I can only drink one as I feel full and sleepy a few sips into the second, and where’s the fun in that? I have enjoyed Hard Cider on more than a few occasions. This evening at the Knoxville, Tenn. Kroger, Tom and I discovered in the “Cold Beverages” section of the grocery store an option to pick your own bottles  of beer, cider, etc. for an $8.99 mixed six-pack of your choice. I chose George Hornsby’s Hard Cider in two varieties, the Crisp Apple and Amber Draft. I tried the Crisp Apple first, assuming that it would be dry and tart as a green apple cider and better to have before the sweeter red amber. Woodchuck Granny Smith has twice the sugar content – and is twice as sweet – as Woodchuck Amber… and all Ciders are created equal, right?  WRONG.

The Hornsby’s Crisp Apple is crisp, light and refreshing, and tart and sweet. It is exactly the kind of drink I like to have on hot days in the sun with friends for a cookout or other function where the more drinks you have the better you fit in. The Amber Draft was dry and very much like a beer in taste- compared to other ciders I have had in the past. After a second try I felt secure that the Amber Draft is closer to a beer than a cider, and while tasty and pleasant- not a drink for me. When I crave a beer, I have a beer.

I give the Crisp Apple two thumbs up. Tragically, it has 21 grams of sugar to the Amber Draft’s 9… over twice as much.  And the definite opposite of the Green vs. Amber sugar content for Woodchuck Cider. Enjoy it, but stay in touch with reality. While it is certainly less sugary than the evil Mike’s Hard Lemonade, too many Hornsby’s Crisp Apples and a sugar hangover will follow you into the morning.

Illinois Beer Tax Hike – The Saga Continues

Gov. Quinn may be going to bat for beer lovers throughout Illinois.

In an interview on WGN, he said, ““I’m not sure I’m for the alcohol tax. I’m going to take a look at that.” That’s an interesting position, but a welcome one, from a guy who’s proposing to raise the income tax by 50% to pay for the $12,000,000,000 state budget deficit.

The Trib’s political blog, Clout Street, went on to elaborate that “[p]reviously, Quinn said he would consider higher taxes on wine and spirits but was lukewarm to an increase in the levy on beer, which is pegged at 2.6 cents per six pack.”

I still think a tax on sodas would be a much more productive solution to the government’s problem. I’m waiting to see where this goes, because without the beer tax, it may be harder to raise taxes on other liquors, so everyone wins.

The Great Brewing (mis)Adventure, …fermenting?

So…. I checked in on the vat of beer-ish liquid that’s sitting in my apartment (it shouldn’t be turning into beer because I killed the yeast).

To my surprise, the fermentation lock is bubbling. Not a strong roaring bubbling, but a slow, measured, every-couple-seconds-I’ll-spit-out-a-bubble sort of bubbling.

Now I don’t know what to do with it.  I’m very curious what would happen if i bottle it, so I may mix my priming sugar with it and bottle at least 3-4  bottles to see what I get.

I’m out of town for the week, but will be posting/drinking from Knoxville, Tenn., so I’d have to wait until I got back before I did anything serious with it.

My roommate considered that I should call it “Zombie brew” if it survives this. I whole heartedly agree.

A Visit to Metro Brewing

On Tuesday, I went over to Metropolitan Brewing to check out their brewery and get to know Brewer Doug Hurst and Business manager Tracy Hurst.

The brewery itself is small, but mighty:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.Click on a photo to view the captions.

When I arrived, Doug and volunteer Dave Bleitner were working on transferring wort from the brewing kettle to the fermentation tank to start fermenting. While they were doing that, I was free to wander around the small industrial building they call home.
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