Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 3/4, 2016.

A bi-weekly, non-comprehensive roundup
of news of beer and other things.

Weeks 3/4
17 - 30 January 2016

• 30 January 2016
  Dram disaster. A single malt scotch shortage is looming, the industry a victim of its own success.
  —Via Wall Street Journal.


• 28 January 2016
  Paul Kantner, founding member and guitarist for Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, has died at age 74.
  —Via Rolling Stone.


• 28 January 2016
  'Session IPA' is NOT 'session' beer.
  • Needed: low-alcohol, layers of flavour, balance, reasonably priced.
    —Via Fuggled.
  • "A simplicity to these beers that belies their depth and balance and makes their drinkability somehow increase as you go from pint to pint during your drinking session."
    —Via Mark Dredge at Pencil and Spoon.


• 28 January 2016
  Beer production in the United States, 2015 vs. 1980: 94 times as many breweries, producing 7.3% less beer.
  —Via YFGF (on Facebook).



• 27 January 2016
  The Orwellian nature of Georgia beer laws. The state's Department of Revenue agrees to abide by the original intent of legislation, to allow state breweries to sell brewery tours at variable prices based on the kind of beer offered. In return, state breweries agree not to seek redress from the legislature. Georgia and Mississippi remain the only two states in the U.S. that forbid breweries from selling beers to customers in their taprooms
  —Via Georgia Craft Brew Lawyer.


• 26 January 2016
  Actor Abe Vigoda, known for roles in 'The Godfather' and 'Barney Miller,' has died at 94.
  —Via CNN.


• 26 January 2016
  A British wine writer interviews a brewer, claims that the ancient Greeks invented barleywine ales.
  —Via Wilson On Wine.


• 23 January 2016
  Twenty Virginia breweries collaborate in fight against the cancer of a fellow brewery owner, with Kerri's Cure Belgian-style Pale Ale.
  —Via Fritz Hahn at Washington Post.


• 23 January 2016
  Unseasonably cool weather in California and Arizona causes cauliflower shortage and price spikes.
  —Via Washington Post.



NASA map of temperature anomalies in 2015
compared to the long-term average.
• 21 January 2016
  2015 is the Earth's hottest year since reporting began in 1850, hotter than 2014, itself a record.
  —Via Guardian.


• 21 January 2016
  Total U.S. beer production fell by 1.4% in 2015 to 174,721,000 barrels (from (from 177,131,992 barrels in 2014).
  —Via Beer Institute.


• 20 January 2016
  How many calories in your beer? Four pints of a 6.5% beer would be 1,040 calories, by the way.
  —Via Joe Stange at DRAFT Magazine.


• 20 January 2016
  

  In national surveys conducted by the Brewers Association, 67 percent of craft beer drinkers said it was important to them that their beer be locally made, while 61 percent said it was important that the brewery was independent. Meanwhile, the craft category is growing faster than the total beer market, and in 2014 reached a double-digit (11 percent) share of the marketplace by volume.

  —Via [U.S.] Brewers Association at Washington Post.


• 20 January 2016
  Are 'craft' brewers co-opting 'crafty' methods? Or is it just good business?

  Brew Hub’s founders saw a hole in the craft brewing world five years ago and quickly moved to fill it, building a production facility to help popular small brewers increase their capacity without having to make the capital investment in equipment.

  —Via Fortune Magazine.


• 18 January 2016
  Oskar Blues (brewer of Dales Pale Ale) packaged and shipped 50,000 cans of filtered, fresh water to residents of Flint, Michigan, who were unable to drink the city's lead-contaminated tap water. The water came from the brewery's new Brevard, North Carolina, location (its original brewery is in Colorado); the cans themselves were donated by the Ball Corporation.
  —Via Denver Post.


• 18 January 2016
  On Martin Luther King Day, five myths about Martin Luther King, Jr.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 18 January 2016
  Glenn Frey, a founding member and guitarist of the Eagles, one of the most popular and commercially successful artists of the 1970s, dies at age 67.
  —Via Billboard (at Yahoo Music).



• 17 January 2016
  Congress passes the CIDER Act, decreasing excise tax rates on cider and perry, from levels similar to wine to rates closer to beer.
  —Via YFGF.


• 17 January 2016
  

  Is it possible to have too many breweries in a given market? Yes, of course, it is possible but I don’t think we have reached that point in even the most mature markets like San Diego and Portland. The main reason for this is the fact that it is not just the supply of craft beer that is growing, the demand itself that is growing dramatically and this growth shows no sign of slowing down.

  
  —Via Beeronomics.

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Don't be a pillock!

Who would've thunk it? Budweiser and the incomparable Dame Helen Mirren collaborating on a brilliant anti-drunk-driving spot aired during Super Bowl 50.



The commercial opens with Mirren sitting at a table in a restaurant, a burger and fries in front of her. (That's chips for you non-Yanks.) A waiter brings her a bottle of Budweiser, the label turned somewhat from the camera. "Oh, my beer. Lovely," she thanks him. Mirren looks directly toward the camera and says:

Hello. I'm Helen Mirren, a notoriously frank and uncensored British lady.

The collective we are dumbfounded that people still drive drunk. So, I'll sum it up like this.

If you drive drunk, you — simply put — are a shortsighted, utterly useless, oxygen-wasting, human form of pollution, a Darwin award-deserving, selfish coward. If your brain was donated to science, science would return it.

So, stop it.

Now, the chances are you are a fun, solid, respectable human being. Don't be a pillock. Your friends and family thank you; the friends and families of other drivers thank you; your future self thanks you.

This is supposed to be fun. Cheers!

Mirren finishes by holding up a bottle of Budweiser, and slyly whispering: "Nice and cold."

Witty, powerfully direct, and succinct. Mirren did a public service announcement; she did a product placement; she got paid.

But, ah, Dame Mirren! What of Britain's culinary gift to the world? What of 'real ale'? Making fun of 'warm,' 'flat' beer? You know it isn't! And Anheuser-Busch? I saw what you did there. Making fun of less-than-ice-cold 'craft' beer? Clever bastards!

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Pic(k) of the Week: She makes Budweiser here. Maybe.

There is an Anheuser-Busch InBev beer plant in Cartersville, Georgia, one of twelve Budweiser breweries that the international conglomerate operates in the United States.

Opened in 1993, the site comprises 1,700 acres, with a total plant floor area of 900,000 square feet. Its annual capacity is eight million barrels per year.

A barrel is not a keg. It's a unit of volume measurement equal to exactly 31 gallons or approximately 13.78 cases of beer. In one year, therefore, the Cartersville plant puts out the equivalent of one hundred ten million, two hundred twenty-two thousand, two hundred twenty-two cases of beer (110,222,222).

To take pictures, I only made it as close as Busch Drive in front of the brewery. Anheuser-Busch InBev says that it does not offer public tours here (but does so at five other of its plants). Or maybe it does.

According to The Chattanoogan, A-B did indeed offer limited public tours at Cartersville in 2015, the first time ever at that plant. And, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stated in a February 2016 story that tours will again be offered this year, although its reporter only offered a link to a story from 2015 about a series of tours which apparently were conducted at different days than the Chattanoogan had reported. Byzantine Budweiser!

Who makes the beer there? Depending on which link you access, the plant's current brewmaster is either Dan Kahn, Travis Moore, or Sarah Schilling.

I'll go with Sarah.

As seen on 31 January 2016, near exit 296 (Cassville-White Road) off Interstate 75, outside of Cartersville, Georgia.

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The Session: Beer Blogging Friday. Barleywine, for when it snows.

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.

On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session: Beer Blogging Friday. He or she chooses a specific, beer-related topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received. For more information, or to sign up as a host, go to the home page.

Jon Abernathy is the author of Bend Beer: A History of Brewing in Central Oregon, and the writer of The Brew Site, a blog on "all things beer and brewing. Based in Bend, Oregon, there is of course a strong Oregon beer focus."

For the 108th iteration of The Session: Beer Blogging Friday, Mr. Abernathy is the host. He has asked bloggers to blog on "Snowed In!":

• What style(s) of beer do you prefer for this cold weather? Open one up and write about it.
• Do you dip into the stash or cellar, and drink something special? Does the occasion warrant it? Why, or why not?
• When you know the weather’s coming, do you stock up on a favorite or go-to beer? What makes you pick this particular beer?
• Are you a homebrewer? Maybe this is the perfect time for a brew day—what would you brew? Have you brewed in the snow before?
• Alternatively, perhaps you have a hodge-podge of brewing ingredients lying around but nothing definitive—could you MacGyver up a homebrewed beer from only what you have on hand?
• Imagine you were snowed in at a cabin in the mountains for the winter. What one beer would you want with you, and why? (Think “desert island beer” but colder.)
• There’s plenty of time to catch up on reading; what beer book(s) would you read? If not a beer book, what would you be reading—and what beer would you pair with it?

***************
I don't remember now if it were snowing that evening in November 1993 in Arlington, Virginia. But it might as well have been. It was a very cold night.

My friend and I had just finished watching a screening of Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas. We stepped out of the comfort of the movie theater, and a vicious wind unwelcomingly insinuated itself despite the leather of our jackets and the tight wrap of our scarves.

"Let's duck into Bardo," my friend said.

A block from the movie theater, located within a former Chevrolet dealership, the cavernous Bardo Rodeo was the first brewpub (and, at the time, only) to operate in Arlington, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Cold as we were, we knew that no brown ale, IPA, nor even a stout would suffice. Ah, but my friend did know the anodyne. "What barleywines do you have?" she asked.

"We don't have barley wines," the tattooed bartender informed us. "But," she added, with just a tincture of haughtiness, "we do have red and white wines."

Looking at the taps behind the bartender, my friend replied, "Well then, I'll have that Sierra Nevada Bigfoot BARLEYWINE you have on tap ... right there."

Nonplussed, the bartender acquiesced, and poured us two. My friend and I were soon warm and content.

Barleywine, big and boozy... for when it snows.

**************

Postscript

Upon further consideration, as NFL officials are wont to say, maybe it was Anchor Brewing's Old Foghorn that was on tap at that night Bardo Rodeo. (Northern Virginians were fortunate to have that original 'craft' American barleywine on draft.) But the conversation at the bar, as written, did indeed occur; draft barleywine was indeed drunk. At least, I think it was. Two decades and 9% alcohol beer can have that effect.

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#VeggieDag Thursday: Superbowl 50.

VeggieDag Thursday is an occasional Thursday post
on an animal-free diet and ecological issues.

In Santa Clara, California, this Sunday, it's a Super Bowl so momentous, that the National Football League has abandoned its Roman numeral scheme, and designated it "50." It's young quarterback, Cam Newton —probably the NFL's MVP for the 2015 season— versus Peyton Manning —the 'old guard', one of the league's all-time great quarterbacks. And, oh yes, it's the Carolina Panthers (based in Charlotte, North Carolina) of the National Football Conference versus the Denver Broncos of the American Football Conference.

The First AFL-NFL World Championship Game in professional American football, known [only] retroactively as Super Bowl I, was played on January 15, 1967, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, California. The National Football League (NFL) champion Green Bay Packers defeated the American Football League (AFL) champion Kansas City Chiefs by the score of 35–10.

—Wikipedia

The game is its own mini-economic stimulus, quantitative feasting. Nearly one hundred eighty-nine million Americans ¹ are expected to watch. During the day, they will consume: ²

• 1.3 billion chicken wings
• 139.4 million pounds of avocados
• 8 million pounds of popcorn ³
• $277 million in sales of cheese ⁴
• $140.2 million dollars worth of potato chips
• $93 million dollars of crackers
• $90.8 million of unflavored nuts
• $20.1 million of tortilla chips
• $5.1 million of vegetable trays
• $4.9 million of tater tots

And beer?

It's the number one product by far, expected to generate $583 million in sales (including the week leading up to the game). ⁵

Happy drinking (be safe!); here's some good eating (be veggie!).

RECIPES

• Vegan Bánh mì
  — Via Kindred Kitchen.
• Veggie Burgers ⁶
  • Grated tempeh patties.
    — Via Vegan Dad.
  • Baked marinated tempeh rectangles.
    — Via Slate.
  • The 'Ultimate' Veggie Burger (tofu).
    — Via New York Times.
  • Beet Burger.
    — Via Wall Street Journal.
• Vegan Beer Chili with beans
  — Via YFGF.
  
• Kepta Duona (Lithuanian-style fried garlic-rye-bread strips).
  — Via YFGF.
  
• Dip with:
  • Guacamole.
    — Via Washington Post.
  • Hoppy Hummus.
    — Via YFGF.
  • Baba Ganoush.
    — Via Minimalist Baker.
• Vegan Cheese Stix (Daiya cheese).
  — Via Vegan Zombie.
• Cauliflower Hot Wings
  — Via Evolve Vegan.
  You might have a problem with this. Cold weather in the growing regions of California and Arizona has caused a cauliflower supply shortage; prices have soared.
  — Via Wall Street Journal.
  
• Dip with vegan ranch dressing (cashews).
  — Via Uncooked 101.
• Go fancy; go English. (Do they watch the Super Bowl?). How to make The Perfect Tea Sandwich, with thinly sliced radishes, a light spread of curried egg salad, or the classic cucumber.
  — Via Food & Wine.
• Curried Tofu 'Egg' Salad for the tea sandwiches.
  — Via Happy Herbivore.

UPDATE: Peyton Manning secured the second Super Bowl triumph of his legendary career, in his fourth, and probably, final appearance. The Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers, 24-10, to win Super Bowl 50.

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