Beer links for the New Year!

This was the alternate for yesterday.
I still wanted to use it. 

Welcome to 2012, it's time for the weekly beer links!


In the news!
Beer bombshell: Guzzlers to dig deeper in their pockets.(Nyasa Times)

86¢ for the low end, $1.53 for the top. Sounds cheap, but the average yearly income is about $800 US dollars. It was a 40% markup from previous with no lead announcement by Carlsberg…Happy New Year. (As I have mentioned before I find the beer scene in Africa absolutely fascinating)

Double blow for drinkers as price of pint and peanuts riseby 10p (The Daily Mail)

Not only the beer but the peanuts too?! For those keeping score at home, 10 pence is the equivalent of 15¢ US. Average price for a pint in the UK is just shy of $5 US. Never forget beer is a commodities based beverage. Bad harvests = higher prices.

Beer-Ad Ban Hits Russia as Nation Boosts Sobriety (Advertising Age)

Good luck with that, for a country and culture so intertwined with alcohol, the ad ban won't do anything intentional. Unintentionally it will have some unplanned effects. 

Beer pong champs get ready to defend their title (stltoday.com)

Meanwhile in America…someday I really hope we do have a BeerFest. All the pieces are slowly starting to combine. 

Governors bet beer and more on Rose Bowl (KGW- News Channel 8)

Hey look! The Governor of Wisconsin is still boot-licking his corporate interest friends at MillerCoors…with all the fine craft brews that call Wisconsin home you would think Gov. Walker would send one of theirs, particularly when you’re going up against a craft beer juggernaut like Oregon. Capital Brewing is in Madison for Pete's sake! New Glarus is right down the road! Oh, I forgot, Walker hates the small brewer scene. /rant over.

Brewers keen to join craft club (New Zealand Herald)

The rise of craft beer in New Zealand. Take note of the definitions being tossed around because this will become more and more important in the upcoming fight.

The Beer Nut: It was a great year for beer (Milford Daily News)

Nice little recap of the 2011 Massachusetts beer scene. I’ve seen similar articles for places like Houston, Asheville, Sacramento, etc. The trend is the same though, craft beer continues to make its presence felt.

This app knows your tastes in beer (newsobservercom)

We’ve been playing around with Untappd, (Our review will be up this week) but I think I am going to add this to the phone also. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Men caught trying to steal beer for New Year’s party (Salt Lake Tribune)

It isn't beer links without an article about beer crime! There is so much going on in this article. The amount of beer, the number of people involved, how they knew and and of course the entry…at least they were honest on the why.

The Great Midwestern Beer Run in a Cadillac CTS-V Wagon (Motor Trend)

That is my kind of road test and my kind of a job. My brother and I may have to recreate this test in a car of more dubious distinction. (Car yet to be determined, suggestions welcome.)

In site news!

We now have an official podcast channel set up on iTunes. You can find the JGF Beercast here. We will be recording a new podcast every 2 weeks. If you have recommendations on what we should talk about let us know! Also if you enjoyed the first then rate us please!

We now have our facebook page up and running. Find us at www.facebook.com/beerfellows

As always you can find us on twitter: @beerfellows
See what we are drinking on Untappd: BeerFellows

Stick around, this week we will be diving into winter warmer month, finishing out the cellaring series, reviewing the Untappd app, and actually publishing the "To the Lab" article I keep talking about. I hope your New Year's has started well. Thanks for stopping by. 

Where we stand – The Jolly Good Fellows Manifesto (Updated!)

Now that we are up and running and the JGF writing team has been mostly introduced; it is time to make a stand, to draw our proverbial line in the sand, and tell our beliefs on beer.

I personally believe there is a time and place for every beer; from the stankiest and nastiest of swills to the ambrosia of the gods. Every beer has something to tell you if you are willing understand the context it was produced and consumed. That doesn’t mean that this has to be the time or the place where its strengths or weaknesses are made clear.

That being said, Jolly Good Fellows falls pretty heavily down on the side of the craft and microbrew side of things.  Below is a simple Venn diagram that shows a visual representation of where we want to stake our claim. We realize there is a lot more diversity in the beer world but this gets the point across. (It is important to note that we have a strong favorable impression of imports also.)

We will spend a majority of our time exploring and celebrating the diversity of beer, reveling in the fact that for most of its existence beer has a heterogeneous history.  We are witnessing the rise of this again right before our very eyes in America where micro and craft brewers have placed an emphasis both on creativity and quality.

This doesn’t mean that we will ignore macrobrews though. As a post-modern beer drinker, you simply can’t.  Macrobrewing still has hegemony in the market; both in what is consumed and how beer is created. Their sheer size alone and global reach means they have incredible influence and a dominate position in price for ingredients. (This is particularly true with hops.)  

They also wield incredible political clout. They are profitable big businesses that have survived for a long time and are marketing and lobbying powerhouses. At the very minimum they must be acknowledged for setting the “standard” to improve from and for serving as the monolith that micros and crafts needed to respond to.

So don’t be surprised when on occasion we explore these monoliths and their hold on the world, looking to understand their contributions, their context in the brewing world, and how they continue to influence how beer is both produced and enjoyed.

With all that out of the way, our main purpose here is to celebrate beer in all its wonderful diversity, creativity, history, future and our enjoyment of all of it.  Thanks for reading and as always please share your thoughts in the comments!

But You Hate Beer...

"You used to hate beer - remember the time you told me that?"

My mother (bless her heart) likes to remind me of this statement, spoken when I was 16 years old.

What I like to remind her is that I still don't like beer...or at least what they called "beer" at that time. Honestly, what 16-year-old kid seriously enjoys the taste of Budweiser or Busch Light? Unless it's in the middle of a cornfield (I grew up in a rural small town in Southwest Wisconsin), and served from plastic cups for the sole purpose of getting you drunk (with an unbelievably bad hang over - not to mention the runs), why would I enjoy “beer?”

I sure didn't.

The first time I enjoyed beer was when I had a New Glarus Spotted Cow. The brewery opened in 1993, during the upswing of craft brewed microbreweries, and it was around 1998 when I had my first taste of this “real” beer. Its yeasty flavor with a mellow malt aftertaste made me realize beer is far more complex than the macro-brewed items made with corn and rice. I was spoiled by beer from this moment onward, and all the beers made in Wisconsin have only enhanced my curiosity in exploring the complexity and varieties of beer. If you want to know when I became more of a beer enthusiast, it was when I moved to Boston. Drinking the Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great Pumpkin Ale and their Heather Ale changed my beer life forever.

Now I study beer (my senior undergraduate thesis focused on how customer’s interact with beer), write about beer (www.beermeetscheese.com), and enjoy the beverage in all its aspects (especially when it’s a microbrewery beer I share with my mom). I can feel my German ancestors rejoice.

Prost!