Beer News (Feb. 24–Mar. 1)

BWJlogoEvery week, someone makes a list of beers they claim you gotta try. This week, it’s the website Cool Material and they give their “bucket list” of 25 beers to try before you kick the bucket. The list is an odd mix of some of the more popular and trendy beers, with some head-scratchers thrown in. In a related note, Deadspin lists 24 beers that might have you reaching for a bucket.

One cool thing about beer is, just about any beer you can find, you probably afford. Or at least that was true before beer started to be viewed as a commodity by some collectors. In an article for Draft magazine, their beer editor presents some crazy beer prices for (what he calls) black market beers.

Science

Biologists have isolated a new bacterial species and named it after Frank Zappa. That’s cool in it’s own right, but the bacteria also has an equally interesting story to go with it. Apparently, it had been a bacteria that caused acne in humans, but now has branched out to living on wine grapevines — a journey from zits to Zinfandel. The original paper is in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

In California, the drought may be affecting residents draughts. Several brewers, including Lagunitas, may soon face a water shortage that will affect beer production.

 

Business, Show and Otherwise

A movie about brewing at UC Davis beer wins a TASTE  award. In Michigan, a movie about that state’s beer industry is making the rounds. In terms of growth, Shock Top (made by Anheuser-Busch Inbev) is the fastest growing “craft” beer. (As mentioned in the article, the quotation marks are important.)

Earlier this week, I posted an article on session IPAs. A few days afterwards, Stone introduced that it was introducing it’s own session IPA. (There’s no connection, obviously, but I thought I’d add it to the beer news.)

Apparently, there’s a new yeast lab in San Francisco — called Gigayeast — that sells to both commercial and home brewers. (According to their website, they opened in 2011, so maybe they aren’t new. They’re new to me, though, and I doubt I’m alone.) If you live nearby, the new Victory brewery is open for tours. And to round out the business news, Business Insider has an article about the growing popularity of sour beers.

 

Oregonian Beers in Iceland

A bunch of Oregon brewers have taken their beers to Iceland for an Icelandic beer fest. Good for them.

 

 Don’t Keep Your Kegs

And finally, a reminder to the right thing by commercial breweries — return those kegs. The deposit doesn’t cover the purchase price.

Comments

  1. The black market beer article is a bit eye-opening. I still have a bottle of Malheur Brut Reserve 2006 (the Michael Jackson Commemorative edition) in my cellar. I wonder how much that could end up fetching.

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