Bryce's Beer Blog

The familiar beer brand that “made Milwaukee famous” hasn’t actually been available in Milwaukee for quite a while. That is it wasn’t until last week.

Pabst Brewing Company has found success in brewing and selling beer nostalgia. Schlitz is one of the latest brands that they’ve revived. It started showing up on store shelves in Minnesota and Florida late last year and then in Chicago a few months ago. And, as of last week, it was available once again in Milwaukee.

A couple of superlatives stumbled into my inbox this week.

First is the largest draught beer in the world (maybe) – The Beer Goddess. Heartland Brewery is now offering a big glass that holds 101.4 ounces of beer. That’s just under one and a half six packs. Ordering one will set you back $49 and you don’t even get to keep the glass!

Oh, and Heartland wants to know if you’ve seen a bigger single serving of beer. (Not a pitcher.) If you have send them an email at beergoddess@heartlandbrewery.com.

The other biggest beer is a monster beer can. It seems that Tom Leach, a collector in Chicago, has a love of things that are the biggest of their kind. So, in order to own the biggest beer can he had one built. Does this seem like cheating to anyone else?

I don’t have any dimensions for you unless you’ll accept gianormous. To see pictures of the thing, check out Jay Brooks’s blog entry “World’s Biggest Beer Can.”

OK, we’ve seen this kind of thing before. But this time it’s cute and everyone knows that makes it WAY better!

Asahi Beer has developed a robot that can serve bottled and draught beer. Necessary modern appliance? No. Obvious marketing ploy? Yes; but tell me you wouldn’t stop and watch it in action if it appeared in your local bar.

Miller’s super slim 64 calorie beer has been slowly rolling out in test markets across the US for the last year or so. With reports of better than expected sales and repeat sales Miller is now promising to have the brand nationwide by early October.

That’s an interesting time to try to appeal to weight-watching beer drinkers. October is when all of those lovely, chunky autumn/winter beers start hitting the shelves. Pumpkin beers, Oktoberfests, some early Christmas beers plus this year A-B’s new Budweiser American Ale will be crowding the shelves. A diet beer rollout with an aggressive marketing campaign might seem an odd juxtaposition.

The merger of these two breweries has been discussed for a long time. Both of these brewers as well as talk of their merger has engendered passion among their fans, dissenters and even competitors. The merger will make a stronger company better able to deal with the highly competitive industry.

Do you think I’m talking about Anheuser-Busch and Inbev? I’m not. This merger between two long brewers on the west coast will consolidate the operations of Redhook and Widmer under the new company’s name – Craft Brewers Alliance. The division is about as fifty-fifty as it could be with the breweries leaders sharing the title CEO and stocks being issued to equally divide ownership among the shareholders.

There are beer lovers and then there are beer lovers. Most simply pop into the beer store when the occasion strikes and pick up whatever six-pack or two that look good. But others actively seek out special, rare bottles of beer and, upon finding them, rush them home to be carefully cellared. If the idea of a vertical tasting of Thomas Hardy from 1968 to 2004 sounds like a perfect evening - or even if the first half of this sentence makes sense to you – then you are dangerously close to falling into the second category if you aren’t there already.

The New York Times published a nice piece about cellaring beer and the beer lovers who do it on Wednesday. Check out Beer Lovers Make Room for Brews Worth a Wait.

My wife came across this free offer for homebrewer cleaning supplies. You can pick up a sample of One Step or Straight-A to clean and sanitize your homebrew equipment. Personally I use One Step and I love the stuff. I've been using it since my first brew and have never been disappointed with it.

I try to separate beer and politics but here’s a movement I can definitely get behind. The European Beer Consumers Union’s first constitution has been agreed to by national beer consumer groups in 13 countries and will be signed next week at the Brewers of Europe House in Brussels.

The high points are:
• The promotion of Europe's beer culture
• The promotion of traditional beer styles
• The promotion of diversity and consumer choice
• To enhance the image of beer
• To represent the interests of consumers
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Exploding Beer Kegs

Thursday June 19, 2008
Yesterday saw a dramatic scene on Interstate 15 in Nevada. After hearing some loud noises and seeing smoke from the back of his rig a trucker got out in time to watch some of the 278 beer kegs he was transporting explode.

According to the UPI report it was caused by carbon dioxide in the kegs. Really? There’s a lot of beer in this world with a lot of CO2 in it and most of it isn’t exploding. I wonder if something else might have contributed.
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Pint Glass Falsies

Thursday June 19, 2008
Have you heard about this? According to Neal Taflinger over at indy.com some restaurants and bars are using thick bottomed “pint” glasses that appear to be the same as standard US pint glasses but actually hold 2 ounces less fluid.

This nasty little cost cutting measure probably escapes the notice of most beer drinkers. I know for my part I generally just look at the top of the glass but you can be sure that hereafter I’ll be checking for falsies in every pub I visit!
• The "Piaget" Beer Gauge
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