Blog Migration

Good news: I've migrated this blog to the new BlogSpot system. It will make maintenance of the site much easier in the future.

Bad news: A side effect of the migration is that eleven months worth of entries got reposted, and they're showing up in the syndicators as if they're brand-new. Sorry about that, but at least with this new system it won't happen again.

Pet Shop Owner Creates Beer for Dogs

Thirsty after a long day hunting? It just doesn't seem fair to make your dog watch you enjoy a few cold brews. According to the Abilene Reporter-News, one Dutchman has decided to right this inequity:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- After a long day hunting, there's nothing like wrapping your paw around a cold bottle of beer. So Terrie Berenden, a pet shop owner in the southern Dutch town of Zelhem, created a beer for her Weimaraners made from beef extract and malt.



"Once a year we go to Austria to hunt with our dogs, and at the end of the day we sit on the verandah and drink a beer. So we thought, my dog also has earned it," she said.

Read the full article here.

Ten Thousand Breweries

Thanks to a whopping great list of German breweries sent to me by Thomas Furche, the Beer Me! Regional Brewery Guides list has surpassed the 10,000-brewery mark! To be precise, I now list:

• 7,417 operating breweries


• 99 breweries-in-planning



• 158 breweries that are no longer brewing but still operate as a restaurant/pub


• 2,373 breweries that have closed down

Thanks to Thomas and all of the Beer Me! contributors for contributing to the site's success!

"School is Hard"

This summer, I got a call from a guy in the next town up the road (Norfolk, Nebraska, about 45 miles north) who said he had been applying to brewing schools, and they told him he should do a three-month internship in an actual brewery to get the most out of the courses. I told him sure, I'd be happy to put him to work for a few months. In fact, I worked him so hard that I used to introduce him as "my rented mule".

Two weeks ago, Jeremy began a five-month program at the Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin, one of the top brewing schools in the world. (Yes, I am quite envious.) He sent me his initial impressions this afternoon:

Subject: school is hard

Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:45:55 -0600


From: Jeremy Kirby

To: rstueven@beerme.com



There are about 28 students. Half of them are turks, all from Efes, 1/3 are tai and the rest are quite a crew. I'm making some good friends and learning to live without hops. There is lots of memorization, but an evening beer or two helps. Send me an IPA!!


I'm pretty swamped but thought i would get off a quick note.


Anyway, Cheers and tell Paris hi from the both of us. I will try to send some pics


THEND


JLK

So if you know where Jeremy can find a big, hoppy, bitter beer in Berlin, please let me know and I'll pass the information along. Otherwise I just might have to bottle up some of my own and hand-deliver it.

Europeans Rushing To Bulgaria To Buy "Breast-Boosting Beer"

This appeared on NCBuy by way of Fark:

Sofia, Bulgaria (AHN) -- European men are rushing to Bulgaria to buy Boza beer, which is said to boost women's breasts, after Bulgaria's accession to the EU abolished prohibitive customs duties on the drink.

• Read the entire article here.


• Look here for Wikipedia's definition of boza, which appears to be a sort of beer style, rather than a brand name.


• Here is a recipe for a five-liter batch of homebrewed boza.

Festive special: The brewer's tale

When I give tours of the brewery, one of the most common questions I hear is "where do you put the alcohol in?" This article by Andy Coghlan of The New Scientist answers that question, along with a quick lesson in microbiology.

Next time you raise a glass of something alcoholic to your lips, spare a thought for the humble organism that makes it all possible. From the crudest home brew to the most exquisite champagne, the production of almost all alcoholic drinks depends on the single-celled fungus we call brewer's yeast.




Some time in the distant past Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to give it its full name, developed a chemical trick that would transform human societies. Some anthropologists have argued that the desire for alcohol was what persuaded our ancestors to become farmers and so led to the birth of civilisation. Whether that's true of not, alcohol has had a huge influence on our history and our prehistory.

Read the full article here.

Brewing Anniversary

Happy anniversary to me: it was seventeen years ago today that I brewed my first five-gallon batch of Pale Ale in my tiny apartment kitchen in San Leandro, California. I think I still have the recipe somewhere; I'll post it if I can dig it up. The extract kit was a Christmas gift from my mother. I told her later that she had created a monster, because that was the first step toward giving up my software career in favor of becoming a full-time brewer.

So here's to you, Mom, on the 17th anniversary of that fateful brew. Thanks!

(By the way, I'm brewing a Weizenbock today. I haven't come up with a clever name yet.)

[Edit 01-12-2007: Paris found my old recipe book; here's the scanned image of "Batch #1". Note also that the seventeenth anniversary of the brew was not yesterday at all, but rather next Friday, January 19. I figure that gives me an excuse to throw another party next week!

It was fun reading my old recipes, but it made me wonder how I choked down some of those early efforts.]