Ale Street News Online

I caught up with Jon Bloostein at his Times Square Heartland Brewery & Chophouse about 30 hours before the ball was due to drop for 2005.

Katie Erlinger may ring up bottles of Caracole’s Nostradamus and Rulles Tripel for one customer at Royal Liquor in Kansas City and gas for the next.

Royal sits just on the Missouri side of the Missouri-Kansas state line, in the heart of the heartland, selling three grades of gasoline, hundreds of brands of beer and plenty of expensive wine.

The signs of spring. Warm breezes, April showers, Mai Bock, spring flowers — a host of golden daffodils!

Seattle-ite Named Beer Drinker of the Year
 
Tom Schmidlin of Seattle, WA has been crowned the 2006 Beerdrinker of the Year. In a very tight competition, Schmidlin used his deep beer knowledge, wit, and a few choice bribes to win the crown.

The last time the Craft Brewers Conference was held in Seattle, the emerging industry’s growth spurt had hit the wall. It was 1997 — signs of slowdown were everywhere and the media was quick to pounce on the death of a fad. Nine years later, the industry has solidified its foundation and is on a major roll!

Not long ago I gave a talk to a beer wholesalers convention on the three-tier system and how things might look after it went away. After the talk, we went out for dinner and I saw a SYSCO truck delivering restaurant supplies. "That’s the future of beer wholesaling," I said, "consolidated, multi-state, and huge."

In addition to introducing innovative new beers, ASN’s Ultimate Belgian Tasting in March showcased five brewers who are breaking new ground in Belgian brewing. The visiting brewers, who traveled to the event at the invitation of Flanders and Wallonian trade commissioners Jurgen Marschand and Gerard Seghers, included both newly- established and long-serving brewers.

Corporate stewardship is certainly not a novel activity. Companies of all sizes contribute to a plethora of charities annually. The brewing industry is no different, yet corporate responsibility and community involvement is not the exclusive domain of the big boys with deep pockets.

Every year Montreal’s Mondial de la biere festival gets a little more interesting. From a somewhat one-dimensional beginning (according to some reports), it became a three-ring circus. Now it has added more rings.

Unbeknownst to most of us, small farmers throughout pockets of the world (though principally in the Pacific Northwest here in the U.S.) are toiling away day after day, year after year, growing hops so that you and I may enjoy our next pint of IPA.

"We firmly believe the American public needs to know more about beer," said Doug Muhleman, group vice president of Brewing and Technical Operations for Anheuser-Busch. That was the underlying reason the brewing giant invited a bunch of beer writers to its hop farm in northern Idaho last August.