October 2009

(Editorial:  Every year, Papago sponsors a local homebrew in the Pro-Am category of the Great American Beer Festival (GABF).  After a local selection process, we brew the winning homebrew recipe commercially and take its creator with us to the GABF.  This is a report from this year's winner, Rob Fulmer.)

This September, I traveled to Denver for my 3rd trip to the Great American Beer Fest (GABF).  I had the honor of representing Papago Brewing as it's Pro-Am brewer and so I had to balance taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity and seeing some old friends as well as some new people I had met online through twitter and HomeBrewTalk.com.

 
Tuesday Night
As in past visits to the GABF, I arrive on evening flight to Denver. It's raining yet again this year and I'm wondering if my 19th and Blake connection will be there.  Much has changed in the last year; in this country; in Denver; to clean up the streets. I am wondering if the lynch-pin to 5 days of drinking and sleeplessness will be there to provide the boost that I need.  I feel a pit in my stomach and a flash of weakness.

In the wet darkness, I  see a man beside a blue igloo cooler, it's going to happen! Money is exchanged and I am handed a foil wrapped packet of energy- a foil wrapped tamale.  Street food is the backbone to surviving GABF. Cheap and readily available energy for the days ahead where I will be on my feet for up to 18 or 19 hours sampling beers. I wolf it down and head into Falling Rock, home of some 75 handles and surly service. 

 

It's quiet tonight and so I am quickly handed a Russian River Publication brett farmhouse saison.  This crisp, tart, fruity ale is only available at Brouwer’s Cafe, The Falling Rock, The Horse Brass, Monk’s Cafe, and the Toronado.  I'm here to meet Johnathan Surratt, someone I know from
twitter, but who is also the person from beermapping.com and is the web director from Draft Magazine.  I alternate between Publication, RR Consecration and Avery Voltron as we talk about beer and technology.

 

Wednesday
I spend a good chunk of the morning running down some of my online pals over at the Oskar Blues Pub on Main in Lyons and Left Hand. Many of the online people I met over the weekend were bloggers, home brewers and/or podcasters including Jeff Bearer from Craft Beer Radio; Tim and Amy from Here for the Beer; Chipper Dave Butler from Fermentedly Challenged; The Home Brew Chef - Sean Paxton and Peter Estaniel of the Better Beer Blog.

At OB I have the Osktoberfest and Devious Dale- a Dale's Pale with a hefty dosing of late Warrior hops.  Warrior hops are also used over at Left Hand for their Warrior IPA and are all Colorado grown.  Left Hand had a casked version of their Terrapin side project "Depth Charge", a Coffee Milk Stout.  This is the second collaboration with Athens based Terrapin and Left Hand.

 

 

After a few AM beers it's time to go pick up my brewer's pass and meet Ron Kloth at Falling Rock.  Ron and Leah Huss of Papago, and Chuck Knoll of World Class Beverages, earlier in the year, had judged my version of a wheat, pear, elderflower, grains of paradise french ale - Les Fleurs de Pearadise to be the Papago Pro-Am representative at GABF.  Soon Ron and I would be heading off to Wynkoop for the Brewer's reception for exclusive beer tasting and food.  This was something that I was not privy to in years past and was the first glimpse into the world of pro brewers.

 

Before I left I had to talk a bit with Don Younger of the world famous Horse Brass in Portland.  I chatted with him briefly at the Oregon Brew Fest (OBF) in June and wanted to tell him how much I enjoyed Portland and his pub in particular.

Me and Don Younger

Once inside Wynkoop we are graciously offered plate after plate of appetizers and special pourings. Of note is a young gueuze from the Bruery, Cambridge's You Enjoy My Stout and the New Belgium / Redstone collaboration- Black Folie.

Black Folie

The Brewer's reception at Wynkoop affords me the opportunity to talk with Lee Chase of the Blind Lady Ale House in San Diego, Carol Stoudt and  Zack and Jeremy Cowan from Shmaltz.

 

Later I head back to Falling Rock to meet up with Don Webb of Naked City Beer in Seattle. He is with Josh Pfriem of Chuckanut (later to go on to win Small Brewery of the Year and 4 medals) and is next to Chuck and  Harold Sleeman from World Class.  The Brewing Network is also here and so I spend some time talking to Justin, Chad (Shat) and Charlie (Push).  It's good to reconnect with them especially after speaking with Greg Koch of Stone about the, "I am a Home Brewer",  video.  It's a long story, you'll have to ask me about it.

The BN at Falling Rock

Thursday

It's an early morning and I meet up with the Papago/World Class crew and Beth Johnson from ASH.  It's 8AM and we're off to Left Hand (LH) to get a tour and pouring from Brendan Guernsey and Head Brewer, Ro Guenzel.  I start the day with a hefty poring of their oaked imperial stout.  Ro gives us an inside tour of LH and I ask him questions about his malt smoker.  It's particularly prescient since LH will later go on to medal in the Smoked Beer Category besting perennial medalist Alaskan.

 

Our next destination is Oskar Blues (OB) production facility.  Here they are featuring all of their canned beers, but the twist is they are oaked in Stranahan's Whiskey barrels.  OB has a batting cage and a basketball hoop in the brewery.  As the tour winds down, Zach from Papago lingers behind to attempt a dunk and brings the hoop down to what Beth and I feel will be a crashing heap.  Somehow Zach recovers and manages to catch the entire hoop and stanchion and right it before it hits the ground and anyone with the brewery notices.  I see Leah wince.  Good times.

Me and Zach at OB

Redstone Meadery further up the road seems to go a little more smoothly but is not without laughs.  I have a blackberry mead mimosa in an attempt to fool my body into thinking that this is morning and everything that I have had to drink to this point, occurred last night.  It seems to work as I am able to greedily drink, Veritas- a Lost Abbey collaboration with blended sour old viscosity and blackberry mead.  As for the laughs, you'll have to ask Beth or Ron as to who has the photos of Harold and Leah.

 

At Avery, we are treated to some amazing pours and hors d'oeuvres put out by the brewery for the distributor only party in the barrel room.  I wander the brewery and talk to the marketing people at Avery and Rick from World Class.  I put in the good word for Moto, a local sushi place.  I explain that Moto always has an Avery handle on and quite frequently 2. Pete Slosberg of Pete's Wicked Ale asks me about my homebrew logo and Pro Am beer.  We talked for about 10 minutes and I never feel that I have to even acknowledge that I have had his beer or that I know who he was. Most of the people I meet were open and warm folks.

My Logo

 

In the barrel room, I stand behind Adam Avery in the buffet line. Pours of brewery only beers are flowing and Coconut Shrimp Satay are being served with Ellie's Brown Soy Sauce. Leah raves about the Macaroni and Cheese mini souffle topped with BBQ chicken and Zach can't get enough of the Avery beer marinated Carne Asada taquitos.  Clearly Adam was pulling all the stops for this generous offering. I watch as Adam struggles to separate 2 paper plates and he is holding up the line to this sumptuous banquet.  "Adam", I offer, "You are already spending thousands of dollars on us. Don't sweat the paper plates."  He glares at me, but I am later told by a marketing person that he thought it was funny. To underscore Adam's regular guy personae, later in the weekend, I watch as he waited in the same line as we did for 20 minutes to get into Falling Rock.

We head back into Denver as it was time to go to the first session of GABF.  I won't go into all of the specifics, but I will tell you that having a brewer's pass gets you into the convention center before anyone else and there is a VIP area put on by Draft.

After the session, I meet up with my wife, Brenda, who had just flown in from Phoenix. We head to Falling Rock and I talk and drink with Keith, Fletcher and Josh from ASH as well as some friends of mine from HomebrewTalk.com.  We finish the evening by scarfing down some slices at Two-Fisted Mario's.

 

Friday

Just as soon as Brenda gets to Denver, I have to send her off with my friends from Naked City Beer, she will be going to New Belgium, Odells and Avery.  Since I have toured those breweries, I'm off on my own adventure. I later find out that she got a personal tour with Peter Bouckaert. 

I try and meet up with the Craft Beer Radio guys at Snooze for breakfast, but arrive too late.  I'm right around the corner from Great Divide, so I stop in for a beer. One of the beer highlights of my trip is having the Les Claymore- a Scotch Ale that was unintentionally soured.  It's Scotch notes are still evident despite the powerful sour punch. It's a perfect morning eye-opener.

Les Claymore

Since Great Divide is having an open brewery it's probably no surprise that I run into Leah and Rick.  We split a cab to Breckenridge for a tour and the brewery's mouth watering BBQ. QC brewer John Jordan leads the World Class and Papago team on a tour of the brewery and gives us a look at the new Lucky U packaging.

Lucky U

There is nothing like drinking from a conical in a brewery and John offers up some of their winter seasonal.  John noticed that I am wearing a Cerveceros shirt, which is the Hispanic Day MLB tribute to the Milwaukee Brewers.  He tells me that he follows the Brewers because, well, he is a brewer.  I was glad I got to talk to him because he told me that he is going to Milwaukee for a ball game and always liked the Bernie Brewer character sliding down from the beer chalet int the beer mug.  John didn't know that Lakefront Brewing bought the Chalet several years ago and so I encouraged him to make sure he takes that brewery tour. It was nice to help out a professional brewer!

Drinking from the Fermenter

There's only a little bit of time before the evening session, so I part ways with Ron and the World Class guys and head to FBAG while they head to a Redstone Meadery event. FBAG stands for Free Brats and Gonzo and is put on by Flying Dog in their distribution center. I meet some other brewers that I know from twitter and chat briefly with Neal Stewart, the former Marketing Director of Flying Dog and of Pabst fame.  Neal is as much a beer geek as he is a marketing geek and I was glad to have met him.  I also met Josh Mishell who designs the Flying Dog labels.

The Friday session is when my Pro-Am beer is pouring and I run into Fred Kraus and Jim Strelau of Oak Creek Brewing at the GABF bookstore.  It's a fortunate circumstance since Stan Hieronymus, author of Brew Like a Monk, is doing a book signing and Stan is the only writer that I know that has had the Michelob pilot batch of pear beer. Les Fleurs de Pearadise was loosely based on the sketchy notes provided by the Michelob brewers at the Craft brewing Conference last April.  Stan is on record as saying that he enjoyed the Michelob beer and I am anxious  hear his thoughts on our version.

Pro-Am Beer

Stan agrees to critique and so I am racing across the GABF floor to provide him with a sample.  It was a highlight of my trip for Stan to tell me that he enjoyed my beer more than the original and that he felt I had captured the sensation of biting into a pear. 

Another person I was happy to run into several times during the week was Rick Sellers of Pacific Brewing News and formerly the Beer Director of Draft Magazine.  He took this candid shot of me while I watched the cooking demonstration by Sean Paxton.  I didn't get a chance to chat with Rick as long as i would have liked especially given his new venture, Odonata Beer Co. that he is partnering with Sacramento Brewing guru, Peter Hoey. I guess that will have to wait for another time.

Cerveceros

I finish up the evening meeting up with my wife, Brenda, and the Naked City Beer gang at the Bull and Bush.

 

Saturday

I decide to skip the Breckenridge Brewer's breakfast so that I can spend some times with friends and that ends up  being the theme for the day. At the AHA members only session we find out that the Pro-Am beer doesn't win and it's at that point I begin to reflect upon the wonderful experience that Pro-Am program has been.  From the brew day of my test batches, to the brew day at Oak Creek brewing in Sedona and these amazing days at the GABF.  

Without a doubt, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Papago Brewing, Oak Creek Brewing, and World Class Beverages.  After the Session, my friends and I share a quiet dinner at the Cheeky Monk and later some beers at Pints.  These are friends and family that got me started in brewing and supported me in my hobby throughout the year.

September '09

August '09

     I just returned from a one week fact finding trip to Europe on the state of the European beer scene in the Netherlands, Czech and England courtesy of the good folks at Crescent Crown Distributing and World Class Beverages and the one conclusion I have come to is, drum roll please…tada, the future of beer in Europe is American Craft Brewing.

     Our first stop was in Amsterdam, where we visited some of the local beer establishments.   Café in de Wildeman and Café Gollem both featured some very nice American craft beers and the beer store across from Café Gollem, De Gekraakte Ketal had a pretty extensive selection of American craft beer many beer stores in the U.S. would be proud of, even with the pricey, about $20 USD for a bomber that they carried.  The most interesting discovery though was at the Café’T Arendsnest, which has a selection of about 200 Dutch beers and no foreign beers.  The owner there is getting set to open up a new place next month that will only have 100% American beers.  I tried to convince him that he should get Monk’s Cafe and Papago’s Oude Zuipers even though they are brewed in Belgium but brewed for the U.S. market.  He didn’t seem to keen on that idea initially but I am going back next month for his American Bar opening and will try to work on him a little bit more.

     The main brewery we went to in Holland was Heineken in the town of Zoeterwoude.  This was one of the many highlights of the trip.  It is not open to tours by the general public.  The place is so large they drove the four of us around the brewery in an English double decker bus.  They had a number of beers there that aren’t available in the U.S. market such as a sweet Oude Bruin and a cider called Jillz that was refreshing but it showed me they are making some non-traditional beers for the younger market because what they refer to as the Coca Cola generation is tired of the same old beers their parents and grandparents grew up on.  They are looking for new things to drink and while Heineken looks at the mass market with beers on a big scale much as Coors does with Blue Moon and Miller does with Miller Chill, I think it also shows that the younger generation there may also be interested in trying American Craft brews as something totally different.

     Our next stop was Czech.  The Czech beer culture, like that of Germany is so localized that I don’t see much of a chance there of American Craft beer moving in there anytime soon, especially with the local product often costing only about $1 for a half liter.  While it gets off my theme of this story, we did visit some small places such as Novasad, where their bottling sanitation techniques were a little suspect but you could take a beer bath and Pivovar Klaster that was in a building hundreds of years old that seemed to be falling apart but had great big open fermentation vessels that were built two stories underground and they even had concrete lagering tanks though not in use at the time we visited.  Like Holland, the real highlight was the larger brewery.  We visited Pilsner Urquell and got the real VIP treatment.  In one part of the brewery they have oak fermentation and lagering casks.  Most tours through there get a little 4-ounce glass of the beer from there to sample.  We were given full sized glasses and could enjoy as many glasses of the delicious brew that we wanted.  The fresh unfiltered, unpasteurized beer there does not taste anything like the Pilsner beer we get here.

     The last destination on our trip was London to attend the Great British Beer Festival.  This year about 50 American breweries had beer at the fest.  The G.B.B.F is a five daylong fest.  By the end of the second day almost every American beer was completely gone.  I thought the best beer I tasted at the fest was easily YouEnjoyMyStout from Cambridge Brewing in Massachusetts.  I took over a few Brits to try the American beers; their opinion before trying them was that they believed that all American beer was fizzy yellow water.  Boy, were they surprised.  I kept hearing the same comment over and over. “Wow, this beer has so much flavor”.  I had the exact same experience and comments at London’s premier beer drinking establishment, the White Horse Tavern at Parsons Green where the American brewing contingent had a beer-tasting event.

      In the U.K. about 50 pubs are closing a week these days.  I think one of the main reasons is that like in Holland, the younger generation is looking for something new, that they don’t want to drink the same bland boring lager and ales their parents and grandparents drank.  In the U.K., most traditional pubs and also because of the efforts of CAMRA, the campaign for Real Ale are against selling beer that is not traditional.  This is killing the beer community in England.  CAMRA is so against innovation that they would not allow Brewdog, made in Scotland at their fest because Brewdog is pushing the envelope, making flavorful beers using American Craft Brewing styles.  I am certainly glad that in the United States breweries have evolved and experiment with new beer styles.  Craft Brewing is a growing area in sales in the United States while the macros continue to lose market share.  It may take some time for certain countries in Europe to change their beer drinking culture but based on the overwhelming reception the American beers are having there by running out on day two of a five day event I see the same craft beer movement as eventually happening there, or their breweries will eventually go under.  Tradition is fine, but they must evolve or perish.

May 2009

On Thursday, May 28^th from 6:00 to 9:00 Papago Brewing will be combining with Stone Brewing for a very special cause at Papago Brewing. Stone Brewing made a beer in 2003 called Sawyers Triple to help raise funds for one of their employee’s son, Sawyer Benjamin Sherwood who had a disease called ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy).  Sadly Sawyer passed away from the disease back in 2003.  Sawyer’s Mother; Janis Sherwood, now has a foundation to help raise awareness to fight the disease called Fight ALD of which so little is known about.  Stone made a new batch of Sawyers Triple to help Sawyer’s Mother raise funds to help fight the disease and on Thursday the 28^th, Papago will be helping to raise funds for the foundation by donating a portion of that evenings proceeds.  We will be auctioning off one bottle of the new Sawyers Triple.  Unfortunately the beer itself was only available at the brewery in California last November but we will have plenty of other Stone beverages to enjoy that night.  The rest of Ron’s Corner will be directly from Janis Sherwood. 

Thanks for your support, Ron

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"I started my foundation around May of 2004 after losing my son, Sawyer, in Sept.of 2003 to adrenoleukodystrophy, just six months after his diagnosis. The frustration our family went through for months prior to his diagnosis and during the six months he was ill, because none of the doctors we took him to knew anything about ALD, inspired me to try and bring about awareness so other boys and their family's would not have to go through the nightmare we endured.
I spent the next 5 years traveling to many medical conferences to get the information out about the symptoms, misdiagnosis, simple diagnostic blood test and treatments to as many medical professionals as I could in the exhibit halls of those conferences. When I realized that the incidence of the disease had risen from 1 in 17,000 boys to 1 in 15,000 last year, and nearly 75% of those I was talking to at the conferences still had no idea what ALD was, I decided there had to be a better way to get the information out. So I came up with the notion for ALD Awareness Across America. A tour to visit Children's Hospitals in an RV plastered with information to bring the attention to ALD that it deserves.
    

Once I started talking about the idea to family and friends, things started coming together to make it a reality.  One friend donated his RV. One business owner donated the materials and labor to put the information on the RV. Several other ALD organizations became sponsors and Stone Brewery brewed a second edition of Sawyer's Triple. Originally brewed back in 2003 to help cover costs of a bone marrow transplant for Sawyer that never came to pass, Stone owners Greg Koch and Steve Wagner donated the proceeds to start my foundation and have continued to sponsor Fight ALD ever since. Now the proceeds of Sawyer's Triple are helping to fund this endeavor. I originally had planned to visit 215 Children's Hospitals across the US, but after mapping out the first leg of the trip I quickly realized that there were some areas that had no such facility's so I added other hospitals and eventually added Pediatric clinics as well. I just completed my first 5 weeks earlier this month and ended up visiting 101 medical facility's in 8 states and I only talked to 6 people who knew, or at least had heard of ALD. Now I am more fired up than ever and am leaving Phoenix on June 1 for 5 weeks before I break for my 5th Annual Charity Golf Tournament and Anniversary of Fight ALD, back in California on July 11. My plan is to complete the tour by the end of October.
    

I am holding fundraisers along the way and can sign people up to be on the National Bone Marrow registry. A percentage of funds raised over the duration of the trip will be donated to the Make A Wish Foundation as they granted Sawyer's wish to go to Hawaii and I greatly respect the work they do.

For more information visit www.fightald.org and be sure to check out the interactive blog of my ongoing journey.

Janis Sherwood

Founder/Fight ALD

Adrenoleukodystrophy

Fighting Illness Through Education

www.fightald.org

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Whoever thought of moving the annual Craft Brewers Conference around must have had Boston in mind.  Nearly 2,000 craft brewery people from around the world attended the annual event a couple of weeks ago and Boston has enough bars to keep everyone happy.  Despite the propaganda of the Beer Wars movie of craft brewers and beer distributors not getting along, 300 beer wholesalers were also there for their conference so the two groups had plenty of time to intermingle.

My first night there I headed off to Cambridge Brewing along with Jaime Martin of Moosejaw Brewing.  We lucked out as we arrived along with a few of the Avery Brewers and Bill and Laura Lodge who put on the Big Beers festival in Vail along with Anders Kissmeyer of Norrebro Bryghus in Denmark (who seemed to be everywhere I was that week) and we had an excellent time there.  They had 19 of their beers on draught; they were even serving some out of jockey boxes since they don’t have that many taps.  Will Meyers; the brewer there is one of the real unsung heroes in the craft-brewing world.  He served us up some excellent beers and we had a dinner that was made using a lot of local ingredients.  I thought his Cacow chocolate milk stout was excellent as well as the beer he made for the symposium called Audacity of the hops which is an 8% IPA, 60 IBU’s made with a wild Belgian yeast strain that he cultured from a 15 year old bottle and that is dry hopped with everything under the sun.  You can’t really tell that it was done with a crazy yeast strain that fermented at 90 degrees because of all the late hop flavor and aroma.  Will also gave us a tour of his barrel room, which is located in what is not much more than ca crawl space under the building.  I have to say this was about as close to crazy as it comes for a commercial brewery.  He had glass carboys of beers four years old that he uses to blend in with newer beers and all kinds of brett and lacto infused oak barrels.

The conference started off with a bus tour.  I choose the Maine bus trip that visited Allagash, Shipyard and a brewpub, Gritty McDuffs.  I was actually surprised at how big Allagash was but was disappointed when the owner of Allagash, Rob Tod said that they were still four years from being able to distribute to Arizona.  Approximately 80% of their production is for their white beer that would sell extremely well here.  One very interesting thing was that next to the main brewery building they have a little area where they are making American lambics, spontaneous fermented beers.  The brewpub we went to, Gritty McDuffs was decent enough but I was more impressed with Shipyard Brewing down the street from them.  I was amazed at not only how big the place was but how they have two separate fermenting areas to keep their two strains of yeast apart from one another.

Apart from the conference, the New England brewers rolled out the red carpet with parties going on every night of the conference, one of the hardest decisions was trying to decide which ones to go to.  The parties at Harpoon were pretty good.  I was disappointed in the beers there during the real ale night when they had over 50 New England Brewery casks, especially the cask from Boston Beerworks called the Big Gouda, not to hard to figure out why that one wasn’t good.  I went to one event at the Boston Beer Companies corporate office where Jim Koch served me up some Utopias, which helped make the evening interesting.  A number of distributors, importers and breweries had events scattered throughout the city nightly which pretty much consumed nearly every beer bar worth its salt in the greater Boston area.  At one event, Sam Calagione from Dogfish made a public announcement that Arizona was in the house when Doc from BJ’s and myself walked in.  I was also able to visit with some of my Belgian brewery friends, Yvan De Baets and Bernard Leboucq of De La Senne and Jean Van Roy of Cantillon Brewing at one of parties and spent a fair amount of time talking to Stephan Michel of Mahrs in Bamberg and enjoyed chatting with him about Bamberg and Rauchbiers.  It was the night of the Utopias so it was a rather festive night.  The folks from Global Beer Imports that bring in our Oude Zuipers had a party featuring a number of their excellent beers paired alongside food crafted with it.  The beer soup made with Scotch Silly hit the spot for me.  The hospitality was more than generous.

OK.  It wasn’t all parties; there was a conference and tradeshow going on after all.  There were dozens of seminars, ranging in subjects such as "Things Every Brewer or Future Brewery Owner Should Know But Doesn't" put on by my new friend Jaime Martin to "Microbiological Quality Control and Bioluminescence."  The one I thought was the most helpful to me was on “New Media & the Brewpub: Social Networking, Viral Video and Word of Mouse” which is why I am now getting into using Twitter and Facebook to keep people informed of what is going on at Papago.  I spent a lot more time in the tradeshow part of the event than I planned to as there were some really interesting things to see such as new 5 gallon plastic one-way kegs and the new varieties of hops being produced in the USA and Germany.  Victory Brewing made a number of beers using just the single variety German hops that were handed out by this year’s German Halletau Queen Nicole to taste and I thought the German Hercules and Sapphire hops were really quite good. 

The week ended with something that would be hard to top.  A Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park that went into extra innings that Boston won.  I went to the game with guys from Coronado, Ska and Steamworks so a few beers were drunk along the way to, during and after the game.  It was the perfect ending to a good week.

This past weekend, many of us could be found on the bocce courts:  http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/2009/05/dogfish_head_intergalactic_boc.php

April 2009

Without hops or spices, beer is a sickly sweet beverage by itself.  Most beer is flavored with hops, which add bitterness, flavor and also acts a natural preservative.  The first mention of hops in beer was around 400 BC in Babylon.  In Europe the first mention of hops was in the eighth century AD in some of the German monasteries such as Weihenstephan, however hops did not become universally accepted until the sixteenth century.  Before that, most beer was called gruit and used various combinations of herbs and spices to flavor the beer and to try to preserve it.  Sweet gale, heather, mugwort, juniper berries, ginger and nutmeg are just a few of the many ingredients that were used in gruit.  In 1516 a law was passed in Bavaria called Reinheitsgebot that decreed that beer could only contain water, barley and hops.  It was later amended when yeast was ‘discovered’ and special exceptions were made for wheat beers.  Rice, corn and oats were prohibited in German brewing but were allowed in other countries and in fact flourished in American macro-breweries brewing Pilsner style lagers.  When the craft beer movement started in America, many craft brewers choose to follow Reinheitsgbot and to brew with only the traditional ingredients, leaving out the non-traditional adjuncts like rice and corn.  While German brewers no longer have to abide by Reinheitsgebot, most still do by choice, but many craft brewers in the U.S. and around the world are now beginning to experiment with unusual ingredients not traditional to Reinheitsbot style brewing.  It is pretty amazing the range of flavors a brewer can get from using traditional ingredients but when you throw in non-traditional ingredients a whole new world opens up.

  Part of the movement of using non-traditional ingredients has been accelerated by the recent hop shortage.  While hops now are more plentiful as the supply problems have decreased, prices are still extremely high for some of the varieties craft brewers like to use.  The hop shortage caused some breweries to either stop making certain beers such as IPA’s or Double IPA’s or to tone them down by changing their recipes.  Some breweries opted to brew more mainstream beers while a few of the adventurous ones have pushed into new uncharted territory by adding unique ingredients to their beers and some have even gone back to making a completely unhopped beer.  The Wynkoop Brewery in Denver, CO and Cambridge Brewing in Cambridge, MA have both made totally unhopped gruits as have a handful of other U.S. brewpubs.

Dogfish Head in Milton, DE is probably the most well known craft brewery for their use of unusual ingredients in their beers.  Their Midas Touch beer is inspired from an analysis of residue found in a pot in King Tut's tomb that contains muscat grapes, honey and saffron while their Pangaea beer is brewed with ingredients from every continent, including crystallized ginger from Australia, moscavado sugar from Africa and basmati rice from Asia.  Chateau Jiahu is their beer that I believe is closest thing to historical gruit that many of us can try simply from a flavor point of view that is produced on a large scale, it uses pre-gelatinized rice flakes, wildflower honey, muscat grapes, hawthorn fruit, chrysanthemum flowers and sake yeast.

  Herbs and spices have long been used in Belgian beers as well as seasonal Christmas beers.  Now we are seeing brewers not only using the traditional spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves for their seasonal beers but trying out different spices and herbs like saffron, chilis, chocolate, pepper and even wasabi in beer.  Yes, Custom Brewcrafters in New York makes a Wasabi beer which is a light American Pale Ale with a great aroma and flavor of the Japanese delicacy; wasabi horseradish.  It isn’t for the faint hearted but one that is more palatable to the masses would be from the Boston Beer Company, maker of the Samuel Adams beers, which brews the award winning Chocolate Bock using raw cocoa nibs.  Using spices is a delicate thing for brewers to do as anyone who has tasted a Cave Creek Chili beer can attest to.

  Fruits have long been used in Belgian lambics and were amongst the first non- traditional ingredients to go into craft beer.  Cherries, raspberries and blueberries are amongst the more common fruits used in beer.  Now though you can find apples, grapefruits, watermelons, apricots and bananas to name just a few of the fruits that brewers are now using to create new flavors.  Craft brewers aren’t just putting a little squeeze of lime in a beer.  Some are going to extreme lengths.  New Glarus Brewing of Wisconsin uses one pound of Door County Cherries in every bottle of their Wisconsin Cherry Ale.  It is literally like tasting a cherry pie with every sip and if you like Banana Bread you must try to find Wells Banana Bread beer from England, you’ll be simply amazed at how much it tastes just like Banana Bread.  Coconuts are another fruit that goes well in certain styles of beer, especially combined with the chocolate flavors of a porter or stout. 

  While fruits are definitely more prevalent, vegetables have even entered into the brewer’s repertoire.  Pumpkin was probably the first vegetable used in craft brewing.  Yams and tomatoes have even made their way into the brewing world.  Nuts also are an ingredient that brewers are using to flavor their beers these days.  Many people are familiar with the nutty taste of traditional Nut Brown Ale that receives its nuttiness just through the use of the toasted malt added.  But by adding pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts or peanuts to a beer another complex flavor layer can be added to a beer.  Rogue Ales Brewing of Oregon Hazelnut Brown is probably the best known example of using nuts in a beer.

  Hops are not the only flower that is found in beer these days; some brewers are going back to the days of gruits and adding flowers to their beers albeit mostly on a experimental basis but jasmine, chrysanthemum, heather, rose petals, elder flowers and hibiscus have all found there way into beers recently.   

  Buzz beer from the Drew Carey show is now a reality.  Coffee is now being used in more beer than ever before.  Darker beer styles like stouts and porters often carry notes of coffee as a result of using dark roasted malts in the brewing process and it is only natural that many brewers would try to increase those flavors and aromas by adding actual coffee to the brew.  Mikeller Brewing of Denmark has pushed the use of coffee to an extreme level by using the most expensive coffee bean in the world in their Beer Geek Brunch.  The coffee beans are harvested after a weasel like cat called a civet has digested and excreted the beans.  It is not a cheap beer to buy but if you had to go through cat droppings to collect the beans you’d like to get paid well yourself. 

  Other adventurous breweries include California's Russian River and Lost Abbey Brewing, both of which are personal favorites.  Both Russian River and Lost Abbey are brewing beer with ingredients such as fruits and spices, but have added another level of complexity that they excel at.  Once upon a time all beer was finished and served from wood casks. The casks were covered in pitch in order to keep the beer from obtaining any of the wood character.  Recently, pioneering craft brewers like Russian River and Lost Abbey have reintroduced the method but with a twist: the wood casks they use formerly held other spirits such as bourbon whisky and wine and those flavors get imparted into the beer being introduced into them along with the micro flora in the wood that can create some very wild flavors and aromas.  Winemakers despise any barrel that have any hint of micro flora being in them which make them perfect for breweries that are looking for a beer with ‘Belgian’ character.  Some used wine barrels are chock full of ‘critters’ as Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River is so fond of calling the micro flora of brettanomyces and peddiococcus that can grow in the used wooden barrels.  Barrel-aging beers has picked up substantially in the past decade. Goose Island of Chicago’s Bourbon County Stout has been around since 1998 but only recently hit widespread distribution across the country and has huge bourbon notes throughout the beer.

It isn’t only the craft brewers who are starting to use non-traditional ingredients in brewing.  The big boys have entered the game also with Anheuser-Busch being not just the king of beers but the king of macro flavored beers as well with such beers as Bud Light Lime.  The flavored Michelob line up in which they have made such beers as Chocolate Lager or Vanilla Oak are examples of superior craftsmanship and shows what even the big guys can do if they wanted to and one must give them credit for releasing beers such as 9th Street Blood Orange/Grapefruit and 9^th Street Pomegranate/Raspberry or the Bud Light Chelada which is Bud Light and Clamato juice for offering a wider range of flavors to consumers.

While brewers using traditional ingredients can make a remarkable range of flavors using the same basic ingredients, by using non-traditional ingredients a brewer can intensify and add new and exciting flavors to a beer.  Incorporating an unusual ingredient into a beer is a fun challenge and one that I think a lot of beer consumers enjoy.  At Papago Brewing in Scottsdale, AZ we have a wide variety of beer for customers to choose from including a couple of flavored ones that we produce and the most popular beer by far out of either traditional or non-traditional beers is our Orange Blossom Wheat beer that has mandarin orange and vanilla added to it.  It is like an old fashioned creamsicle in a glass.  Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey sums up using non-traditional ingredients this way, “We look at our recipes and the use of non-traditional ingredients as a chef would approach a meal.  For us, we see flavor gains that can be made from the inclusion of non-traditional ingredients and hope that each beer featuring non-traditional ingredients is a chance to explore techniques and processes that benefit our beers.”  Beer drinkers are becoming more sophisticated in their suds consumption, drinking beer with different flavors and aromas in them through the use of brewers using different non-traditional ingredients increases the number one reason to drink beer, enjoyment.

January 2009

I recently returned from a trip to Colorado where I attended the 9^th annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywine festival in Vail.  This little festival has surprisingly turned into one of the best beer festivals in the country that very few people know about.  It only has about 400-500 people attending it but it attracts some of the best brewers and beers from around the country and from Belgium.  It also has a couple of great beer dinners, some educational seminars and a homebrew competition that is second to none.

  There were three beers dinners to choose from this year.  Eric Wallace from Left Hand Brewing had one that I heard was really good.  I opted to go to the second annual Dogfish/Avery dinner featuring Sam Calagione and Adam Avery at the Marriott that was being held at the same time instead.  No beer we had at that dinner was less than 9%.  That alone would have made it a good night but the beer and food pairings were great.  Also, since I am allergic to seafood, the kitchen prepared for me a fantastic steak using the chef’s own steak sauce that was to die for.  There was a ton of food and a ton of beer and a of course Adam and Sam both were their typical funny selves.  The dinner the next night was With Matt Brophy from Flying Dog and Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River.   While the food and beer pairings didn’t always match up together, everything still was pretty good.  I have to give the chef credit in trying to pair up some sour beers with beers that weren’t sour and trying to get the food pairing to try and work with both.  Sometimes it worked but sometimes it didn’t.  For those that have traveled with me in Europe they know I love Duck Confit, people also know I love Russian River’s Pliney the Elder and after they were paired up together I was good for the rest of the weekend.

The homebrew competition had about 200 entries, which is a lot for any homebrew competition but is even more remarkable in that it is limited to only Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines.  I was given one of the categories that every beer judge dreds getting, the Specialty Beer Category which means that the beers could be pretty much any style, as long as they were big or Belgian.  The best one I had was a Imperial Eis Pilsner, it probably was close to 18% ABV.  Another surprising one was an Imperial Chili beer that we saved for last but it was actually quite drinkable (at least for me but I love spicy foods).  I missed out on the Ham in a Can beer that was judged at another table. Drats…This competition tries to have at least one pro brewer at every table judging beer which really never occurs at homebrew competitions.

The seminars and speakers this year were quite good, no, not because I was one of them but because of the other speakers.  Scott Kerkmans, the Chief beer Officer from Four Points By Sheraton and myself gave a seminar to about 50 people on the Cicerone program that was quite well received.  Julia Herz of the Brewers Association gave a seminar on beer and food pairings.  There was a great seminar on experimental brewing from brewers from the Wynkoop in Denver, Flying Fish in New Jersey,  Sierra Nevada and Anheuser-Busch.  At least for me, the big surprise was from Kristin Zantop from Anheuser-Busch who really opened my eyes to how things work there and about some of the crazy beers they have let her make, i.e Carrot Beer.  She even has provided me with some ideas for a beer that she said is the best beer she has ever made but that isn’t commercially viable for A-B to make because of the scarcity of some of the specialty ingredients.  I am planning on making a batch or two at home as soon as I am able to obtain the ingredients myself.  If it is as good as she says it is maybe I’ll brew a batch up for Papago.  Also, found out from Sierra Nevada that they are using a very rare hop hybrid called Citra for all their dry hopping during the seminar.  Since returning from the trip I have been able to secure a little bit of it, (don’t bother to call your local homebrew stores because they probably can’t get it since it really isn’t commercially available yet since there are only about 3 acres of it made).  I plan on using it in my new experimental beer and will be sharing the leftovers with Jeff at BJ’s and Uwe at the Brewers Den who are going to use it to dry hop some casks.  Matt Brophy from Flying Dog and Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River were the last of the speakers.  Afterwards, Vinnie opened up one of his rare 3L bottles of what I vaguely remember as being Supplication that was devoured in about 30 seconds.

  The festival itself was better attended than other years.  I would estimate about 400 or 500 people attended it.  I think about 80 different breweries were represented.  A number of breweries had some special beers there apart from their regular offerings.  Anchor had a number of years of their Christmas beers going back to 98.  Boston Beer had some crazy things.  Ska had some whisky barrel and some peach barrel aged beers. Much of it was barrel aged.  I even think I saw some Scaldis Prestige floating around.  When I wasn’t pouring my beer I spent most of my time trying beers that aren’t available here, such as Cambridge, Flying Fish, Russian River, Victory and Allagash.  Like any fest, you have your hard core beer fanatics and you have the young 21 year olds just looking to get drunk and even though the name of the fest starts with the words Big Beers- you get people asking for what is your lightest beer.

Apart from the beers dinners and the fest, half the fun is going to the after hours party that is attended by mostly the brewers and those in the know.  There were some good beers floating around such as Rodenbach Alexander and such but this year the supply wasn’t that plentiful so a couple of us went back to where the beer was being stored and grabbed a few cases to take them back to the after hours party.  I just happened to grab the one case that was the festival organizers private stash, to me it was just the case of beer on top of a pile.  Anyway, when he saw we had it he flipped.  He wasn’t that mad but he couldn’t figure out how we got it since it was supposed to be locked up.  When you have a bunch of brewers looking for beer, nothing is really that secure.  Especially when you have brewery badges on.  Heck, we even got some of the hotel employees to carry some of the beer for us.  It made for one heck of a party.  Even though that party was good, there was an after after hours party that a few of us went to where we even had some more unique beers that haven’t been produced in 10 or 15 years.  I guess I’m getting old because about 3:00 AM I hit the wall and had to call it a night.  I’m already looking forward to next year though.

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Arlo's Revised Great American Beer Festival Schedule

Thursday Oct 9th

 8-10 am puke in hotel toilet and try to hold down continental breakfast

10-12 bloody mary’s at first bar that lets us in.

12-5:30 Falling Rock because that is the only time to get a beer without standing in line.

5:30- 10 GABF Session one

10-close Diamond Cabaret near convention center

Friday Oct 10^th

8-10 Check stool for blood in hotel toilet still try to hold down continental breakfast.

10-12 early brunch at Shotgun Willies on Colorado Boulevard

12-5:30 Does it matter we never left Shotgun Willies

5:30-10 Session Two GABF

10-close La Boheme near convention center

Saturday Oct 11^th.

8-10 Brush teeth because you will swear a cat crapped in your mouth.

10-12 Breakfast at Breckenridge and slow walk to convention center stopping at as many bars and you can. ( inspired by Joe Cotroneo)

12-4 GABF members session Little Guy picks up gold medal for best distributor in the nation and there was much rejoicing.

4-8 La Boheme celebration party lap dances paid for on Little Guy expense account ( I checked with Bubba he said it was cool, trust me)  

8-close We all go to the Roller Derby match at the Denver Bladium and watch lesbians beat the shit out of each other.

Arlo Grammatica
Ska Brewing Company

Finding God at the GABF

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27202499/

What 'ya been up too???

     Usually when people ask me what I’ve been up to I usually respond with “Not much, just hanging out”, well recently that hasn’t been the case.  First, Papago has discontinued our brewing operations at Sonoran in Pinnacle Peak.  Now we are having our beer made for us by Oak Creek Brewing in Sedona and at Sonora Brewing on Camelback and I have been busy dealing with all the logistics of making such a move.  You will notice a number of subtle changes in the beers in the coming month’s as we have to tweak the recipes to account for using different brewing systems, different grains, hops, water, etc.  Once the recipes get dialed in, specifically for the Orange Blossom, we are going forward with bottling it finally, but that is still a few months out.

     I also had a great trip to Belgium with my friends at Crescent Crown Distributing and Little Guy Distributing who graciously hosted the trip.  The first day there we started out at Cantillon for some breakfast lambics.  The brewer there, Jean Van Roy treated us to a very good aged apricot lambic and to a wonderful fresh framboise that only had the raspberries added to it a few weeks before.  We spent much of the afternoon at the Bier Circus.  That evening the real fun started, we went to the Great Brussels Beer Festival held at the Grand Place.  It was unlike any beer festival I have been to before.  Instead of little taster glasses, you got full beers in the breweries own glass.  When you went to the next booth, they replaced that breweries glass with one of their own and then they returned it to the other brewery, often you didn’t get a chance to finish your beer because as you ventured to the next booth they were anxious to take your current glass and replace it with one of their own as soon as possible.  Even so, massive quantities were consumed.  After the fest we hit the Floris bar across from the Delirium Café and ended the night with more than a few absinthe’s.  That is when things got a little foggy for me and others.  At least I made it back to my hotel room which is more than some other people can say.

     The next day we did a daytrip to Cologne and Dusseldorf.  We had a couple of kolsch’s at Peter’s Brauhaus and a few at Fruh along with an excellent meal.  I made Joe from Crescent Crown get a Hax’n (ham hock) that would come back to haunt him later.  We then ventured up to Dusseldorf and had some Alt’s while standing outside of Uerige, which was packed with people standing outside the brewery drinking beer out on the street.  We then hit Schollser and ventured home after introducing the boys to feiglings (Fig juice and vodka shots).  We ended the night with more absinthe at Floris again.

     Sunday, we headed to Westvlerten to drink some of their wonderful trappist beers and then to the Hommelhof for a beer lunch, on the menu that day was Jambon Carolous (a ham hock with Gouden Caroulus sauce, Joe passed on eating.  Then we hit Dolle Brouwers for a tour and a few beers.  Chris the owner/brewer broke out some vintage beers that soothed the soul.  After that it was back in the van and off to Brugge where we met Hildegard and Bas from Urthel for some beers and where we first crossed paths with a number of other American distributors and bar/restaurant owners who were doing a tour with Artisinal Imports.  We ended the night at Cambrinus with another beer dinner.

     Monday, we went to Bosteels to share their wonderful hospitality with us, the other American group hooked up with us there.  We were served tartare which would come back to haunt Chuck later.  After a great visit and tour we headed off to Van Steenberge for a tour and a few beers, then Jef from Van Steenberge accompanied us to Ghent where we did a pub crawl and had dinner.  It was here that some future Papago plans were hatched.  For a long time I have been wanting to have a beer made for us in Belgium.  Yes, Papago is going international; Van Steenberge is going to be making a Belgian Strong Ale for us.  It will first be available on draft then in 750 ML bottles after we are able to obtain federal label approval and could actually be here before the end of the year if everything works out as I hope.  We of course ended the night with more absinthe.

     Tuesday was an incredible day.  We started out with a tour of the Trappist Monastery at Rochefort.  It was a nice little tour with incredible scenery that cannot be described, it was simply beautiful.  We even saw a few of the monks themselves, something that almost never happens and I saw a real monks table, just a little bit different than the one we have at Papago.  The beers they offered us were of course fantastic.  Next stop was to one of my favorite places to visit, Caracole Brewery with its wood fired brewery.  We were able to sample a few of his experimental beers that he is thinking about making as well as some that are only available in the local market there.  Following lunch in the picturesque town of Dinant we headed to Lustin to go to one of my secret hideaways, a beer museum where we were able to drink and buy to go some very old beers.  We drank some 27 year old lambic, a 20+ year oud bruin and a host of other old Belgian beers.  While touring the museum Chuck spotted some old English beers sitting in a box.  We enquired about them and ended up buying quite a few of them.  I bought a 25 year old Courage Russian Imperial Stout, and some 24 and 25 year old Traqair House, a 27 year old Lambic Kreik, a very old Christmas beer and an Oud Bruin.  That night we ate at the Creppiere Brettone that has hundreds of different crepes and about 50 or so beers to choose from, and then of course, more absinthe.

     Wednesday the other Phoenix guys left and I then hooked up with the other American group and got a tour of St. Feuillien where I learned a little about those big 1.5L and up sized bottles.   We are basically buying the bottles that are in the states now for cheap, their bottle prices have recently gone up, a 3L bottle now costs the brewery 50 euros a bottle, just for the glass alone without any beer, importers, distributors or retailers markup.  First night without Absinthe… Thursday and Friday I just hung out in Brussels visiting a number of good little restaurants and bars.

     Saturday, I went to another beer festival in Brussels called Bruxellensis that was a 180 degree polar opposite type of festival than the week before.  This one was indoors, extremely small, and like a normal beer fest, small taster glasses.  Most of the beers I have had before except for some of the German and Italian beers that had tables set up.  The fest’s theme is to only serve tasty beers, basically no macro swill.  There were some good Belgium beers and some gravity fed casks from Germany.  I ran into a number of other beer industry people there such as Stan Hieronymus who wrote the book, Brew like a Monk and Lorenzo, who is affectionately dubbed the mad Italian.  Lorenzo introduced me to the best beer I had on the trip, it was called Xyauyu from the Baladin Brewery in Italy, yes, even with all the wonderful Belgian beers I had, the best beer I had on the trip and in quite awhile was from Italy, that says a lot for the beer.  It is a 14% beer that they artificially age by actually adding oxygen to the beer after the primary fermentation is complete.  Every brewery in the world does its best to keep out oxygen to preserve the freshness of their beers, but these guys actually add it to the beer, totally contradictory to everything I’ve learned about making beer.  Time to start some oxygen experiments at home…

Prost, Ron

May 2007

     For many millennia people have known what scientists are only now beginning to prove, that beer is good for you.  Up until the 19^th century, beer was the health drink of choice for many people simply because clean healthy water or pasteurized beverages were not available.  The water in beer having been boiled and the subsequent alcohol produced as a preservative made beer a naturally clean, relatively bacteria free health drink.  Now, even though many people will only drink bottled water and not tap water, municipal water supplies are generally healthy and pasteurization has made milk and other drinks safe to drink but beer drank in moderation may still be healthier for you than water, milk or other beverages.

     The reason is that scientists are now finding that many of the individual chemical components of beer that are derived from the malted barley, hops and yeast are good for you.  One of the first studies that brought this to light actually developed as an offshoot to a study that French scientists did that has become known as the “French paradox”.  The French study showed that even though the average diet in France was very high in fat, that the French people had very low heart disease because of a chemical compound found in red wine called a polyphenol or flavanoid that served as an anti-oxidant that was found in large amounts in red grape skins and seeds that was in the red wine the French drank religiously with every meal.  The compound was found to have a positive effect on cholesterol levels.  The French wine makers were quick to take advantage of this study in broadcasting it to the world and red wine to this day is still viewed by many as healthier beverage than beer.  In fact, twice as many men and four times as many women believe that wine is healthier than beer according to a recent study by the University of Maryland Center for Food, Nutrition and Agriculture.  It wasn’t until studies done in Denmark and Holland in 2000 that scientists were able to prove that beer and not wine is actually healthier for you.  Since the first European studies in 2000 there have been four European Beer and Health symposiums where researchers have gathered to present their findings and just this past October the first one was conducted in the United States so the science behind the theory that beer is a healthy beverage is relatively new.

     Beer is healthier than many other beverages because beer has more nutrients per serving than most drinks.  The Munich Paulaner monks called their beer liquid bread to help sustain them during lent.  If you are worried about calories, beer has fewer calories than milk or apple juice.  Vitamin-B in particular as well as carbohydrates, protein and various minerals are higher in beer than in wine, water or milk.  Certain beers are higher in some individual chemical compounds than other beers.  Dark beers are higher in polyphenols than lighter colored beers because of the higher amount of tannin in the dark grains.  In the 1920’s Guinness had a marketing slogan that Guinness was good for you and it looks like they were right.  Another style of beer that is healthy for you is Bavarian style Hefeweiss beer which is very high in Vitamin-B because the yeast, which is held in suspension and which makes the beer cloudy is chock full of the vitamin.  Some people claim that Vitamin B-helps prevent a hangover, which while it is not a long-term health benefit in the short term can make you feel better and drinking a good Hefeweiss a day is much more fun than taking a Vitamin-B pill.  And last but not least is the fact that beer contains hops and hops are full of all kinds of healthy compounds that scientists are only recently discovering may be good for you.   

     Hops in beer add an extra level of polyphenols with their anti-oxidant properties.  One of the component elements of hops which has scientists excited about is a compound called Xanathohumol.  Unfortunately, in order to get a decent dose of Xanathohumol you need to drink about 20 beers, which is hardly considered drinking in moderation.  Scientists at Weihenstephan University outside of Munich along with the brewers at the state run Weihenstephaner brewery and the brewers at Neuzeller Brewery in Germany have been working on adding concentrated dosages of Xanathohumol which was extracted from hops to both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beers.  At this time the Xanathohumol induced beers from either brewery are not available in the United States.  Weihenstaphaner’s alcoholic Hefeweiss beer is called simply, Xan, and the non-alcoholic version is called Xan-Wellness.  Xan-wellness has apple juice added to it, which gives it a non-beer taste.  It is drank as a sports drink by many in Germany and I have found it to be a great breakfast drink after a rousing night of hoisting liters of beer in Munich.   Until these beers are distributed in the United States I would suggest that if you want a more concentrated dose of Xanathohumol that you drink a big hoppy double IPA such as Moylan’s Hopsickle, Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA or Pizza Port’s Hop Suey.  Compared to most beers you probably only need to drink a couple of them a day to get a good dose of Xanathohumol but these beers are extreme examples of hoppy beers and are not for those who are not full fledged hopheads.

     Alcohol in beer, in moderation also may be healthy for its relaxing, anti-stress effects.  Going out to drink at your local favorite bar instead of just drinking at home may help you to unwind and to help you psychologically through increased social interactions and might be why social drinkers earn 10 to 14% more money than non-drinkers according to a recent study by the Reason Foundation.  In Spain, an alcohol and stress study showed that moderate drinkers feel better about their health than non-drinkers. In every study that suggests that beer is good for you the one standard theme throughout is to drink in moderation.  The thing that no one agrees upon on though is what is considered moderation.  Moderation varies between 1-3 beers a week to no more than 3 beers a day.

     Much of the scientific results about the health benefits of beer have only been proven in the laboratory in helping to prevent a whole slew of diseases which include prostrate, breast and colon cancer, heart attacks, stroke, tooth decay, gallstones, type II diabetes, Alzheimer’s and as a woman’s hormone replacement therapy.  Even with the scientific tests already done and their results it may take years before drinking beer is viewed as a healthy drink by the mainstream populace.  It is up to you now to spread the word and to make yourselves healthier.   

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November 2006

September '06

It has been awhile since I have posted a Ron's Corner.  Many of you have asked about the newsletter.  Our hard drive fried and we lost our e-mail list.  We have passed around the hard drive to a couple of different computer geeks and so far no luck in trying to rebuild it.  One of these days, someone here at Papago will just say screw it and start up a new list.