Beer News

Celebrity Home Brewer: Wil Wheaton

Celebrity home brewer!  Wil Wheaton.  You might know him from Stand By Me, or Star Trek The Next Generation.  More recently, Wheaton has made appearances as Sheldon’s nemesis on The Big Bang Theory.  (The banter is some of the best Continue Reading →

Heineken Buys 918 Pubs

Heineken NV has just purchased 918 pubs across Britain.  The Galaxy Pub Estate purchase is worth  $646 Million (US dollars).

The pubs that Galaxy owns are already managed by Heineken’s subsidiary Scottish & Newcastle. Heineken says it plans to combine the Continue Reading →

Man Survives 3 Days On Frozen Beer

So you’re driving around Alaska in the snow.  You slide off the road into a snow drift and you’re stuck.  It’s so cold, you can’t get out and walk.  You’ll die.  How strong is your will to survive?

52 year old Continue Reading →

Posted in Beer News

Celebrity Home Brewer: Wil Wheaton

Celebrity home brewer!  Wil Wheaton.  You might know him from Stand By Me, or Star Trek The Next Generation.  More recently, Wheaton has made appearances as Sheldon’s nemesis on The Big Bang Theory.  (The banter is some of the best on the show.)  Besides the acting gig, Wil has gotten into homebrewing.  By the looks of it, an all grain batch of Stone Pale Ale.

Ten days later, I racked the beer into a carboy to clear. Ten days after that, I bottled just over four and one-half gallons of my very own Stone Pale Ale. I checked my final gravity before I added my priming sugar, and may have scared my dogs (and all my neighbors’ dogs) with the victory scream I let out when I saw that the final gravity was 1.015, exactly where the recipe said it should be. I did some math (math is hard) and calculated the ABV to 5.5%, exactly where it should be. 

Now, I’m playing the waiting game again until around December 12th, when I’ll be able to open my first bottle of this beer and find out if the final is as close to where it should be as it’s been every step of the way. 

And you thought he couldn’t be any cooler.  More on his brewing adventures [TypePad, @wilw]

pic via scrapetv

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News, Dogfish Head

Remember When Dogfish Had To Find A Spigot In A Haystack?

Remember the episode of Brewmasters on the Discovery Channel when Dogfish Head lost a bottling spigot in the beer?  The brewery had to search through pallets of packaged bottles to find the missing tip.

So what did the brewery take away from the incident? If they had what they have now, it probably never would have happened.   Asset Management software from Asset Point.

Asset management software allows maintenance crews to establish a maintenance schedule for manufacturing equipment using a variety of parameters, such as date, hours used, electricity consumed, or miles accumulated.

Knowing the state of your equipment is half the battle to efficiency.  It prevents downtime, and equipment failures, like the spigot incident.

“We used spreadsheets and whiteboards. We weren’t even scheduling,” he says. “[Asset management software has] allowed us to plan our work a week at a time, so we know what everyone’s doing. It also allows us to track our emergency type work, so we can see the machines causing us the most grief and make some modifications.” 

[CNBC]

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News

Fegley’s & Men’s Health Mag Debut Beer For Prostates

Fegley's Mens HealthFegley’s Brewworks and Men’s Health Magazine have teamed up to create a beer benefitting prostate cancer. 33,000 men die from prostate cancer each year. 1 in 6 men are diagnosed with it. Beau Baden of Fegley’s and Matt Bean of Men’s Heath brewed this Belgian Style tripel. 9% ABV. This beer goes beyond fundraising for a good cause. It’s meant to get the conversation started about prostate cancer. What better way to do it then over a couple of beers.

$1 from every beer will go to prostate cancer research. This tripel debuts Saturday, December 11th at 5pm.
[MensHealth]

 

MH Standard Player for WordPress
600×338
Theme: Light

 

 

 


 

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News, Saint Somewhere Brewing

Saint Somewhere’s Lectio Gets New Yeast

Saint Somewhere Lectio DivinaSaint Somewhere Brewing (Tarpon Springs, FL) has changed up the strain of yeast featured in Lectio Divina.  Lectio is a Belgian strong pale ale that is as complex as it is funky.  The brewery just switched up the yeast used in the beer, that is now in it’s 80th generation.  An entirely new culture was used, and is now conditioning in a new batch of bottles at the brewery.  They will hit market in the next 30-60 days. [BA]

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News, Heineken NV

Heineken Buys 918 Pubs

Heineken NV has just purchased 918 pubs across Britain.  The Galaxy Pub Estate purchase is worth  $646 Million (US dollars).

The pubs that Galaxy owns are already managed by Heineken’s subsidiary Scottish & Newcastle. Heineken says it plans to combine the Galaxy properties with 462 other bars it owns in Britain, making it one of the country’s largest pub owner and operators. Heineken said the properties purchased had an operating profit before depreciation and amortization of 52.3 million pounds ($82 million) over the last 12 months.

Heineken will take a charge of 28 million pounds ($44 million) in the fourth quarter for terminating leases and other costs associated with the acquisition.

Recently Heineken announced they were bringing Noche Buena in the United States.

[HuffPost]

 

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News, Bell's Brewing, Seasonal Return

Bell’s Eccentric Day: December 9th. Don’t Dress Normal

Bell’s Brewing’s Eccentric Ale release is 4 days away.  It goes on sale at the Eccentric Cafe at 9 am.  You dress “non eccentrically?” No beer for you..  From Bell’s:

Bell’s 13th annual Eccentric Day is one week from today. Here is what you need to know.

– Doors will open at 9 a.m. on Dec. 9.

– Eccentric attire is required
— come as you aren’t. If you are not dressed for the occasion, you will be turned away at the door.

– There is no cover.

– There will be eccentric food.

– DJ Bowser will provide the tunes.

– Both the front and back bar will be open.

35 beers will be on tap plus a firkin of Special Double Cream Stout. Here’s the lineup:

– Two Hearted Ale

– Kalamazoo Stout

– Porter

– Special Double Cream Stout

– Amber Ale

– Java Stout

– Pale Ale

– Cherry Stout

– Winter White Ale

– Expedition Stout

– Christmas Ale

– Rye Stout

– Best Brown Ale

– Oatmeal Stout

– Third Coast Beer

– Smoked Stout

– Third Coast Old Ale

– Harry Magill’s Spiced Stout

– Oarsman Ale

– Sweet Potato Stout

– Bell’s Lager Beer

– Trumpeters Stout

– Hell Hath No Fury … Ale

– Milk Stout

– Sparkling Ale

– Dagger Stout

– The Oracle DIPA

– Black Note Bourbon Barrel-Aged Stout

– Hopsoulution

– Eccentric Ale (bottles will also be available for sale at the Bell’s General Store)

– Golden Rye

– Exp Hop 2011-1 (an IPA brewed with experimental hops)

– Rye-ghteous Ale

– Harvest Ale

– Raspberry Ale

by Reid Ramsay
Posted in Beer News

Man Survives 3 Days On Frozen Beer

So you’re driving around Alaska in the snow.  You slide off the road into a snow drift and you’re stuck.  It’s so cold, you can’t get out and walk.  You’ll die.  How strong is your will to survive?

52 year old Clifton Vial found himself in just this situation last week.   He spent 3 full days in stuck in the snow bank, eventually eating frozen Coors Light like a can of beans.

Vial found himself alone near Salmon Lake, on a road that doubles as a snowmachine trail in the winter and stretches inland from the Bering Sea city. Far beyond the reach of his cellphone, Vial slipped into a fleece sleeping bag liner and wrapped a bath towel around his feet. He occasionally started the truck to run the heater and listen to the radio.

Finding one truck in the expanse of the Alaskan wilderness isn’t an easy task.  Search parties were formed, including helicopter searches.  The temp? 12 below zero.

His only provisions: Snow, and a few cans of Coors Light that had frozen solid in the cab. Vial ate the beers like cans of beans. “I cut the lids off and dug it out with a knife,” he said.

3 days later, a search truck pulled up behind Vial.  He was so out of it, he didn’t even hear them pull up.  At the time of the rescue, he had lost 16 lbs.  [MSNBC]

 

by Reid Ramsay