Look, Ma! No hands!

A very handy piece of apparel!

Just in time for Summerfest, Brew City Beer Gear is launching a shirt that will hang on to your drink for you: a hooded sweatshirt with a front pouch designed to hold a beverage while keeping your hands free.



"We've been working on it for close to three years," said George Keppler, a co-owner of the Milwaukee shirt company. He has a patent on the design.



Keppler said he would have brought the beer-pouch shirt to market sooner, but his lone sample was stolen from the Las Vegas apparel trade show where he tried to introduce it two years ago.

Read the entire article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Feud brews between Capital, Bud

Too many lawyers, not enough beer.

Anheuser-Busch probably spills more beer in day than Capital Brewery makes in a year.



But a size difference hasn't stopped the world's largest brewing company from filing an objection to Capital's effort to trademark the phrase "America's #1 Rated Brewery."



The Middleton-based brewer began using the phrase following the 1998 Beverage Tasting Institute's World Beer Championships where Capital ended up seventh overall behind six European brewers.

Read the entire article at The Capital Times.

Beer's in a milkshake, but never on a sundae?

Mmmm...beer. Mmmm...ice cream. I first experienced the luxurious flavors of a Stout Float at CooperSmith's in Fort Collins back in 1994. Lots of brewpubs offer them now, including some that I've worked at.

Nothing says summer like a frosty milkshake or a cold beer. Just don't assume the two are mutually exclusive.



Beer-flavored ice cream — often made with splashes of hearty brews such as stout — have become staples on dessert menus in brewpubs across the nation.



A British dairy caused a stir recently when it came out with New Castle Brown Ale-flavored ice cream, a creamy concoction that is said to highlight the distinctive New Castle taste. Unfortunately, the product appears to be available only in England.

Read the entire article at The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Beer Prices Come To A Head; Ethanol Blamed

Sure, switching barley production to corn to feed the ethanol plants might be a cause of rising beer prices. But with gasoline and diesel at record high prices (in the U.S. anyway), the shipping of raw materials and finished goods is also more expensive than it's ever been.

It's the latest example of the trickle-down economics of ethanol -- beer is getting more expensive.



Compared to this time last year, beer prices are up about 3 percent across the nation, according to the Labor Department. The increase marks the largest jump in more than two years.



One big reason, according to some brewers, is the rising cost of barley. A high demand for corn-based ethanol has many farmers devoting more fields to their corn crop and less to barley.

Read the entire article at WGAL.

Can you pick out your brew?

This is so obvious that it requires no comment on my part.

Put samples of half a dozen or so mass-market American beers before a panel of drinkers in a blind taste test, and even the most confirmed quaffers would be lucky to match two to the right brand.



But put half a dozen or so mass-market American beer advertising slogans or jingles before a panel of testers, and even teetotalers with some exposure to media would come close to a perfect score.



Try it yourself:

• It's the water


• From the land of sky-blue waters


• The beer that made Milwaukee famous


• The one beer to have when you're having more than one


• The king of beers


• The champagne of beers
• 
  

That even non-imbibers would score well on such a quiz (some of you are not just humming the melody of the jingle but finishing out the verse) is testimony not only to the pervasive nature of mass-market advertising channels when combined with a memorable message. It's also evidence of the power of advertising to create brand identity — and customer loyalty — out of what is basically a commodity product, in which one brand is largely indistinguishable from another.

Read the entire article at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Hark! It's 'The Canned Beer Apocalypse'

Canned beer definitely has a "cheap" image, but one that's not necessarily deserved. I have tasted some canned beers from Oskar Blues, as well as other craft breweries, and found them just as tasty as their bottled versions. And since cans are great packages for picnics, golf courses, ballparks, etc, we'll be seeing more and more small breweries starting to can their beers. Sam Spilker once told me that canning is expensive, and he doesn't like doing it, but it got exposure for his beers that he couldn't have got any other way.

The Canned Beer Apocalypse is both a joke and serious at the same time.



The phrase is actually a registered trademark of Oskar Blues Brewing Company in Lyons, Colo. Back in 2002, owner Dale Katechis, the namesake of Dale's Pale Ale, and maker of Old Chub Scottish Ale and Gordon, got a fax from Cask Brewing Systems, a Canadian company hawking canning contraptions to small, independent brewers like himself.



"Put my bold, hoppy Pale Ale into a can?" he scoffed. Then he laughed, long and loud, and continued to laugh for weeks. At some point, (exhaustion I presume) Dale stopped laughing and started learning, and you know what he found out?

Find out what he found out, at palmbeachpost.com.

The first week of July, more or less

• Thursday, June 28: Filled root beer kegs.


• Friday, June 29: Delivered root beer kegs to Council Bluffs and Lincoln. Stopped by Yia Yia's for lunch. The pizza was almost as excellent as the beer selection!


• Monday, July 2: Went to see a spine specialist in Omaha. They took some more MRIs and X-rays of my neck and back, and said they'd get back to me with the results. I hope they find something treatable; I could barely walk this weekend. Had lunch at Crescent Moon as usual when I'm in town.


• Tuesday, July 3: Cleaned the draft lines. Cleaned and filled a whole bunch kegs; in fact, I ran out of root beer before the order was filled. Broke the handle off the keg cleaner coupler. Picked up a pallet of sugar in Duncan, and used 750 pounds of it to make 21 barrels of root beer.


• Thursday, July 5: Exeter homebrewer Chase Becker came to Columbus today to help brew two beers: seven barrels each of Brown Ale and Hefeweizen. (I say he "helped"...actually he did all the work.) Other than the slow runoff, the brews went pretty well. I called the manufacturer of the keg cleaner to see if I could get a new handle, figuring it would probably cost $30 or so. He told me they don't make that kind anymore, and I'd have to get a whole new coupler FOR A HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE BUCKS. So it should be here early next week. In the meantime, I have exactly one clean half-barrel.


• Friday, July 6: Filled the rest of the root beer kegs and drove them to Norfolk. Filed June's tax reports, along with most of last week's invoices which I stupidly allowed to stack up on my desk.