Beer News

Well the 2011 Oktoberfest is over and good weather contributed to a record-breaking attendance. The full story from chinchinjobs.com describes the event: The balmy late summer weather was identified as the reason 6.9 million visitors, 500,000 more than last year, staggered around the cavernous beer tents in the German city. They guzzled the 7.5 million steins, litre-sized measures of the amber nectar, despite a record high price of nine euros. Last year, 6.4 million people drank seven million litres, the equivalent to 12.3 million pints.

It is getting to be the time of year when the seasons are changing (at least for those of you not in Las Vegas where it is 95° F here today). That means it is time to think of brewing your Christmas beer. You can call it holiday beer if you like. I am using the traditional English name since people recognize that. I have brewed many a Christmas style beer and some have been unbeleiveable and others not quite so stellar.  When I owned my homebrew store, I also tasted many beers and most had the same issues.

One of the things that I often find in my classes is that certain beers have different audiences. OK, I will say it; some beers seem to be enjoyed by the women in the class than the men. It also works the other way. Here are 4 reasons that chick beer isn't just for chicks! 1. Good beer is good beer. One of the things that bugs me is the beer snobs (you know who you are), telling me that a beer is crap just because it doesn't follow their idea of "good beer."

Closing Down After many years of running this site, and not really updating it, I'm shutting it down. I've decided to downsize my life. I will be leaving it up as long as I can for historical purposes, but won't be updating anything. I hope there is still some value in it. Cheers! There is a Beer for You Beer is a marvelous beverage with a long and noble history.

Anheuser-Busch had a competition between all of their brewmasters at their 12 breweries around the country. It was called "Project 12." The original 12 beers were whittled down to six and consumer feedback determined the three finalists. The three winning beers will be put into a special limited-edition sampler pack that will go on sale this fall. The three finalists were from the Anheuser-Busch breweries in Los Angeles, St. Louis and Williamsburg, Va. The beers will be named after their originating zip codes.

First it was hops and the hop shortage a few years ago. Now it seems that barley is going to conspire to raise the price of your favorite beverage - beer. According to a study commissioned by Molson Coors, farmers in Britain are blaming a lack of rain for a poor barley crop. A full 94 percent of 259 farmers surveyed said the dry weather has impacted the barley crop. 40 percent said the dry conditions had a very profound negative affect on the crop. The Molson Coors study found that two thirds of Britain's arable farmers were affected.

Even if I don't necessarily like the beer, I find beer commercials can be funny and creative. I saw an email claiming to have the most EPIC beer commercial ever and thought about putting up a few of my favorites. Do you think that ads like these make people buy beer? Or are they just for fun and to keep the name alive and only indirectly impacting sales?

Well it was another up and down year for beer producers in the states with beer consumption down slightly. The big brands are still losing market share, but the craft beer and import markets showed very slight increases in sales.