beernesday

stolen from npr : Changing Tastes Drive Shift In Beer Sales by Wendy Kaufman "Americans drink a lot of beer during the summer. But beer drinking habits are changing. People are drinking less and drinking differently. Sales of some of the big-name brands are down, and the major brewers are fighting back with big marketing campaigns. At The Spot Off Main in Bellevue, Wash. — a neighborhood place for billiards and beer — the No. 1 selling U.S. brand, Bud Light, is on tap. But assistant manager John Stevens says his bartenders are pouring less of it than they used to. "Everyone's budget went down. That includes their entertainment dollars when they go out to drink in bars," he says. A lot of young men — some of beer's biggest fans — have lost their jobs in the down economy. And some are skipping bars altogether in favor of drinking at home. But those sales, at least of the premium and high-profit brands, are also down. Last year, the Beer Institute repor...

stolen from npr: What Makes A Craft Beer? Andy Calimano, one of the producers of the Philadelphia Craft Beer Festival, talks about about craft beers and the idea that they are not considered craft once the brewer exceeds 2 million barrels annually. to check it out, click here .

stolen from npr : For The Best Belgian Beer, Go To ... Michigan? by Noah Adams April 18, 2010:   "When The New York Times published a ranking of Belgian-style beer — based on a blind taste test — the top spot went to a golden ale from a small brewery in Michigan. Oro de Calabaza, from Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter, Mich., beat out 19 other beers, several of them from — you guessed it — Belgium. The beer is the work of Ron Jeffries, who owns Jolly Pumpkin. He had worked nine years for brew pubs before deciding it was time to start his own brand. And how did he decide on a name like Jolly Pumpkin? After he and his wife brainstormed brand-name ideas, Jeffries says, "The absolutely most ridiculous name on that list was 'jolly pumpkin,' and it made us laugh every time we would say it." The name stuck. And now his Oro de Calabaza is taking top honors."

stolen from npr : Aged 9,000 Years, Ancient Beer Finally Hits Stores by Brad Horn July 17, 2010:   "Dogfish Head brewery is known for making exotic beer with ingredients like crystallized ginger or water from Antarctica, so it might not sound surprising that one of its recent creations is a brew flavored simply by grapes and flowers. It's not the recipe that makes this beer so special; it's where that recipe was found: a Neolithic burial site in China. Chateau Jiahu is a time capsule from 7,000 B.C., but to hear Dogfish Head owner Sam Calagione talk about what beer was actually like back then, it's not the kind of thing that makes you say "Hey, pass me another ice-cold ancient ale!" "Probably, all beer thousands of years ago — to our modern palates — would have tasted spoiled," Calagione says. "In fact, in a lot of hieroglyphics, people are shown drinking beer using straws because they were trying to avoid the chunks of solids and wil...