Pic(k) of the Week: Firkin Trio

Alternate caption: Beer Beard Trio

The first ever Tap Into Virginia Cask Fest, featuring 13 firkins from 11 different Virginia breweries —a fundraiser for the Virginia Craft Brewers Guild— was held at the Capital Ale House, in Richmond, Virginia, on 21 April 2012.

In the photograph, left to right:

• Tweeting:
  Thomas Cizauskas of Yours For Good Fermentables.com, at @Cizauskas.
• Pondering:
  Mike Killelea, chairman of Virginia Craft Brewers Guild, brewer at Legend Brewing, and organizer of festival.
• Questioning:
  Chris Woodford, representative for Loveland Distributing.

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• Festival recap: here. More photos: here.
• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as subject. Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

3rd annual Spring Real Ale Fest: Baltimore, Md.

This Saturday's Spring Real Ale Festival —at the Pratt Street Ale House in downtown Baltimore, Maryland— is the baby brother of the long-running Chesapeake Real Ale Festival held in the fall. Even so, $40 entitles a festival-goer to a plethora of cask ales. The count stands now at twenty-two, although organizer Steve Jones —brewer for host Oliver Ales— predicts more.

Some new and special additions to the roster include:

• Firestone Walker Velvet Merlin
• Heavy Seas Plank II, with added Yellow Poplar & Eucalyptus and dry hopped with Liberty.
• Weyerbacher Blanche
• Williams Brothers Brewery Scottish Heavy
• From host Oliver Ales, on hand-pulled beer engine:
  • Ape Must Never Kill Ape: Belgian inspired dark ale, 3.3%, with vanilla beans
  • Jacob's Winter Celebration, aged 4 months in oak barrel over juniper berries
  • James Brown Ale, aged over red oak.
• Full list of all casks: here.

So, for admittance from 1-6pm, one receives: "all the great cask ale" one can drink, a souvenir mug to bring home, live music from Table Top Poets, grilled and raw oysters, pit beef sandwiches on the patio. At festival's end, growlers can be filled for $5.

For an additional $20, one becomes a 'VIP,' gains early admittance —an hour earlier, at 12 noon— and samples from three additional casks:

• The Brewer's Art Tiny Tim
• Evolution Craft Brewing Rise Up Stout infused with oak chips, cinnamon, and coffee and vanilla beans.
• The third cask? Jones says it's "a bit hush hush."

UPDATE: Photos from the fest: here.

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The 3rd annual Spring Real Ale Festival
Saturday, 28 April 1-6pm.

• Pratt Street Ale House
  206 W. Pratt Street (at Sharp Street, across from the Convention Center)
  Baltimore, Maryland.
  
• $40 tickets: missiontix
  
• Twitter: @prattstalefest
  
• Facebook: Chesapeake Real Ale Festival
  
• Website: prattstreetalefest.com.

Pic(k) of the Week: An osprey and its lunch, at Dyke Marsh

An osprey snags its lunch, at Dyke Marsh, along the George Washington Parkway, in Alexandria, Virginia.

Photo taken by Albert C. Cizauskas, Jr., on 2 April 2012, using a Canon EOS 40D.

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Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as subject. Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.

Top 50 brewery analysis

The beer blogs Beervana and Brookston Beer Bulletin have analyzed the rankings of the top 50 US breweries, as just compiled by the Brewers Association.

Jeff Alworth notes:

The difference separating the first and second breweries is larger than the difference separating #2 and #50 (on both craft and non-craft lists). <...> Put another way, the difference between 41 and 42 is on the order of a few thousand barrels; the difference between 1 and 2 is hundreds of thousands.

Jay Brooks looks at the overall top 50 and notes movement up or down. For example, both Sierra Nevada and New Belgium dropped a spot to #6 and #7, respectively. They were bumped by the rise of North American Breweries to #5. Aren't familiar with them? They're comprised of Dundee, Genesee, Labatt Lime, Magic Hat, and Pyramid. Goose Island fell to 48th from 18th, after selling its production brewery to Anheuser-Busch InBev.

#1 is Anheuser-Busch InBev, followed by Miller/Coors, Pabst (which actually does not own or operate a single brewing facility), Yuengling, and Boston Beer.

Local to me, Flying Dog, of Frederick, Maryland, rose two positions to #48. (Among 'craft' breweries, it sits at 26th.) No Virginia or Washington, D.C. breweries made the list.

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• A US barrel is 31 gallons, the equivalent of 13.7 cases of 24 12-ounce beers.
• YFGF's look at Top 50 US 'craft' breweries: here.
• The Brewers Association releases the actual sales volume numbers in May during its Craft Brewers Conference. Go to the BA website for more information.

The Top 50 U.S. 'Craft' Breweries

The Brewers Association (BA) —the not-for-profit trade group that tabulates production statistics for U.S. breweries— has released its annual list of the top 50 'craft breweries' and the top 50 overall brewing companies. The rankings are based on 2011 beer sales volume.

Of the top 50 overall brewing companies, thirty-six are 'craft breweries,' which the BA defines as:

Small, independent, and traditional.

Small: Annual production of beer less than 6 million barrels. Beer production is attributed to a brewer according to the rules of alternating proprietorships. Flavored malt beverages are not considered beer for purposes of this definition.

Independent: Less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewer.

Traditional: A brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewer's brands) or has at least 50% of its volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.

This is a fungible, and somewhat capricious definition, which the BA has changed a couple of times just in the past dozen years.

One local brewery (local to this blogger is Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia) continues its presence in the Top 50: Flying Dog, of Frederick, Maryland, at the 26th spot, and 38th largest brewery overall. In 2010, the brewery produced 60,827 barrels.

The second largest production brewery in Maryland, Heavy Seas, of Baltimore, increased its 2011 volume 50% above that of 2010 to approximately 30,000 barrels. Even so, it failed to crack the Top 50 of craft breweries. There are no Virginia or Washington, D.C. breweries in the top 50.

The BA releases the actual sales volume numbers in May during its Craft Brewers Conference. This year the conference is in San Diego. Next year, it's here in Washington, D.C.

Rankings first; analysis later!

1. Boston Beer Company
Boston, Massachusetts.

2. Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
Chico California.

3. New Belgium Brewing Company
Fort Collins, Colorado.

4. The Gambrinus Company
San Antonio, Texas.

5. Deschutes Brewery
Bend, Oregon.

6. Matt Brewing Company
Utica, New York.

7. Bell's Brewery, Inc.
Galesburg, Michigan.

8. Harpoon Brewery
Boston, Massachusetts.

9. Lagunitas Brewing Company
Petaluma, California.

10. Boulevard Brewing Company
Kansas City, Missouri.

11. Stone Brewing Company
Escondido, California.

12. Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Milton, Delaware.

13. Brooklyn Brewery
Brooklyn, New York.

14. Alaskan Brewing & Bottling Company
Juneau, Alaska.

15. Long Trail Brewing Company
Burlington, Vermont.

16. Shipyard Brewing Company
Portland, Maine.

17. Abita Brewing Company
Abita Springs, Louisiana.

18. Great Lakes Brewing Company
Cleveland, Ohio.

19. New Glarus Brewing Company
New Glarus, Wisconsin.

20. Full Sail Brewing Company
Hood River, Oregon.

21. Summit Brewing Company
St. Paul, Minnesota.

22. Anchor Brewing Company
San Francisco, California.

23. Firestone Walker Brewing Company
Paso Robles, California.

24. Sweetwater Brewing Company
Atlanta, Georgia.

25. Rogue Ales Brewery
Newport, Oregon.

26. Flying Dog Brewery
Frederick, Maryland.

27. Victory Brewing Company
Downingtown, Pennsylvania.

28. CraftWorks Breweries & Restaurants
Chattanooga, Tennessee.

29. Oskar Blues Brewery
Longmont, Colorado.

30. Odell Brewing Company
Fort Collins, Colorado.

31. Stevens Point Brewery Company
Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

32. Ninkasi Brewing Company
Eugene, Oregon.

33. BJ's Chicago Pizza & Brewery, Inc.
Huntington Beach, California.

34. Blue Point Brewing Company
Patchogue, New York.

35. Bear Republic Brewing Company
Cloverdale, California.

36. Lost Coast Brewery Cafe
Eureka, California.

37. Big Sky Brewing Company
Missoula, Montana.

38. North Coast Brewing Company Inc.
Fort Bragg, California.

39. Saint Louis Brewery, Inc./Schlafly Bottleworks
St. Louis, Missouri.

40. Gordon Biersch Brewing Company
San Jose, California.

41. Breckenridge Brewery
Denver, Colorado.

42. Founders Brewing Company
Grand Rapids, Michigan.

43. Saint Arnold Brewing Company
Houston, Texas.

44. Karl Strauss Brewing Company
San Diego, California.

45. Real Ale Brewing Company
Blanco, Texas.

46. Mac and Jack's Brewery Inc.
Redmond, Washington.

47. Smuttynose Brewing Company
Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

48. Utah Brewers Cooperative
Salt Lake City, Utah.

49. Left Hand Brewing Company
Longmont, Colorado.

50. (tie) Anderson Valley Brewing Company
Boonville, California.

50. (tie) Four Peaks Brewing Company
Tempe, Arizona.

The BA simultaneously announces the list of the Top 50 overall brewing companies in the U.S. craft or otherwise, again, by sales volume (and without the actual numbers). In that ranking, Yuengling and Boston Beer (maker of Sam Adams) come in 4th and 5th. (The BA does not acknowledge Yuengling —the oldest continuously operated, American-owned brewery in the U.S., and still family-owned— as a craft brewery.) Sierra Nevada and New Belgium are 6th and 7th. Overall No.1 is Belgian-owned Anheuser-Busch InBev.

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• A US barrel is 31 gallons, the equivalent of 13.7 cases of 24 12-ounce beers.
• Go to the Brewers Association website for more information.