AMES, Iowa (AP) -- A sidewalk project means there may be a little
bounce to the beer kegs instead of dings in the pavement when
delivery trucks unload.
The city is installing a rubber sidewalk at a spot near the Iowa
State University campus where beer distributors unload hundreds of
kegs from trucks for bars in the area.
All those heavy kegs hitting the ground have been cracking the
concrete pavement.
So now city officials have decided to install sidewalk pavers
that a California company makes using shredded recycled tires
instead of concrete.
The city tested the product.
"The streets supervisor took a
sledge hammer to it," said Corey Mellies, a civil engineer for the
city. It didn't even dent.
The project also has an environmental plus -- the sidewalk is
using up about 675 tires that otherwise would end up in a landfill.
Information from: The Tribune, http://www.amestrib.com/
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV-08-18-08 1054CDT
An interesting note from Live Oak Brewing Company.........
Greetings Live Oak Fans,
I know most of you are nearer to Austin than DC, but this might be of interest anyway.
OK,
the subject line may have been a bit of an exaggeration. But next
Monday, Live Oak beers will be the honored guests of the Smithsonian
Institute at the famous Brickskeller Pub in Washington, DC. I'll be
there too.
The Smithsonian Resident Associate
Program puts on their Beer Gazetteer series each summer for six weeks.
They invite six breweries to give a tasting and lecture on their beers
at the Brickskeller Pub.
We have sent up a keg each of the Pilz, HefeWeizen, Big Bark and IPA
More information is at:
http://residentassociates.org/ticket...?series=158
794"Jul 14 Live Oak Brewing Co., Austin, TexasFounder
Chip McElroy makes German- and Czech-style beers, including a
HefeWeizen (unfiltered wheat beer) that the Web site BeerAdvocate.com
named one of the top 25 brews on the planet."
Monday, July 14 from 7 to 10 p.m.Brickskeller Pub1523 22nd St., NWWashington, DC 20037
Cheers,
Chip McElroy
The BrewHound was blessed this past weekend to - through some divine intervention - end up with an unlabelled bottle of St. Arnold's Divine Reserve No. 6. The beer is about to be officially released and should be in stores here in Austin this week. But for now I have some pictures and words on it.
BEFORE THE POUR
AFTER THE POUR
To start, here is the brewery's official stats on No. 6: This is a big, malty, hoppy barleywine. Yet with all of the intense flavors, they meld together to create a well-balanced big beer. The nose has a strong resiny hop note. The taste starts with a combination of the malty sweetness and spicy hops with both flavors magnified by the high alcohol level. The spiciness carries through the middle and finishes with a satisfyingly dry bitter. It was brewed with 2 row pale, Caramunich and Special B malts with brown sugar added in the kettle and hopped with 225 lbs of Columbus hops including 44 lbs that were dry hopped. We used our Saint Arnold yeast strain which gives a rich, creamy mouthfeel to the brew. It is unfiltered and will clarify with aging. Enjoy at 45 °F or warmer. This beer will age well. Original Gravity: 1.094 Final Gravity: 1.019
Now, for my take:
No. 6 is ultra-hopped barleywine. Like a double IPA meets a barleywine! Opened with a nice psst and aroma of rusty cherries. Color: burned copper/brown/bronze/red (pick one already, huh!). Hazy and cloudy for this first bottle. Bitter aroma, earthy with strong grass resin nose.
Pours dense clouded dark copper/burnt orange. Drops like oil into the glass. No splash. Head is thin and sticky. Small head at first. As it warms, it swirls a soft tan thin ring, and eventually a puffy head towards end of session. So highly hopped that it overrides the expected taste and aroma of alcohol. Aroma of darkened grapefruit as the drinking begins.
Taste is intense! High hop body, flavor and finish. Aftertaste lasts amazingly long, sticking to the inner-cheek. A nice tart sweet to the base and bottom of the tongue. Like acidic maple candy or bitter cheery bomb. You exhale an invisible cloud of hop. Forms a sticky layer on your lips, it's so concentrated and dense.
Posted: 5/28/08 *** NOT A HOMEBREWED POST ***
Props to BARRY SHLACHTER / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Jamie Fulton in the brewery of Covey
Restraurant & Brewery.
Photo: Paige Hendricks Public Relations FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- His reaction was so over the top -- kicking a trash can, barnyard expletives shouted full throttle and eyes welling with tears -- that
Jamie Fulton's employees at
The Covey Restaurant & Brewery thought their young boss had gotten some very bleak news indeed. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
A friend and fellow brewer text-messaged Fulton from San Diego in late April to say The Covey's Vienna lager had taken top honors for its style at the
World Beer Cup, considered the "Olympics of brewing."
Fulton, who had just turned 27, was emotionally shaken to win just two years after opening The Covey. The gold medal is a goal that takes some brewers decades to attain, and some never do. "I always believed in my beer," said Fulton, whose lager beat out 24 other entries. "Now, to have it internationally recognized, well, it makes me feel good."
Aside from Fulton's gold, Fort Worth's
Rahr & Sons microbrewery snared a bronze for its Bucking Bock,
Spoetzl Brewery in Central Texas took a silver for its Shiner Dunkelweizen, and Houston's
Saint Arnold's Brewery won a gold for its Wee Heavy Scotch ale called Divine Reserve No. 4 -- a special release now out of production -- and a silver for its Elissa IPA.
The blind-tasting competition is held every other year, pitting some of the globe's smallest brewers against one another and such giants as Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Miller, plus foreign producers like Carlsberg of Denmark and the Brazilian-Belgian behemoth InBev.
The late beer authority Michael Jackson of Britain considered the World Beer Cup the most professionally run international competition on Earth. And there's no national bias. Sixty-five percent of this year's blind-tasting judges were from abroad, and in several categories this year, no beer was deemed worthy of a gold.
"When your peers give you a gold award at the World Beer Cup, they place your beer at the pinnacle of achievement," said Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of prize-winning
Brooklyn Brewery. "That's a mighty nice moment for any brewmaster." It's been a rapid ride, not without bumps and potholes, that put a fine arts major from San Antonio's Trinity University perched over gleaming brew kettles on South Hulen Street.
The son of a Wise County immunologist and a dermatologist, Fulton knew he wanted to make brewing his career after graduating in May 2003. His parents told him to go for it, later backing him financially when he decided to build his own brewhouse-equipped restaurant in a market late to acquiring a craft-beer culture.
He worked as a brewhouse assistant at
Blue Star Brewing, a San Antonio brewpub, then took an intensive brewing course at the Siebel Institute's World Brewing Academy in Chicago. He followed that with further work at the Doemans Academy in Munich, Germany.
All the while, he worked at conceptualizing the sort of brewing operation he envisioned running one day. After Germany, he returned to San Antonio and crafted a business
plan, then began scouting for a possible location. Quickly ruled out was an ultracasual brewpub with typical fare of brats and fish and chips.
Fulton said he believed then, and still does, that food is more important than beer to draw enough customers to make the venture viable in Texas. He chose the
Bitter End, a now-closed, upscale brewery-restaurant in Austin, as a model. "You just can't expect to serve beer and make a profit on it," he said.
He eventually chose the South Hulen location, which formerly housed a Fresh Choice salad buffet restaurant. Fort Worth didn't have a brewpub at the time -- one had failed
downtown, as had another in the Stockyards, and the closest still fermenting were Humperdink's in Arlington and
Big Buck Brewery in Grapevine, two chain-owned operations.
"Food and beer are both important, and people will drive long distances for a good beer," Fulton asserts. And while some might dispute how deep Cowtown's craft-beer culture runs, he notes,"We've got Central Market up the street, and people there are
always talking beer."
Various complications, from wiring to plumbing to licensing, delayed the opening. It didn't help that the main contractor hadn't done restaurants -- or brewhouses -- before. Equipment ran $500,000, and remaking the restaurant cost $400,000 more. The bulk of the capital was provided by Fulton's father, and the rest, about 15 percent, was bank-financed, he said. "My father and I are best friends, and he has faith in me," he
said. "God bless him."
Aside from typical launch hiccups after The Covey opened in April 2006, there were intermittent staff problems. And there was an early crisis with food preparation. "If you don't manage the kitchen well, you upset a lot of customers," he said. "And it can be a one-shot deal. If they don't enjoy the meal, they don't come back."
Fourteen months ago, Sean Merchant took over as chef and improved food quality and consistency while introducing some new dishes. The Covey also called in VSAG, Dallas restaurant consultants, who came up with various cost-efficiencies and menu tweakings. Food costs now represent 26 to 31 cents of a menu dollar, down from 40 cents.
"What I've learned is to hire people with experience, lots of experience," he said. "You get what you pay for." Meanwhile, Fulton has worked with Merchant to create gourmet beer dinners, with each course paired to a different ale or lager. The meals, usually $59.95 and held monthly, have been well-attended, even selling out at times. (Nonbeer drinkers can get wine instead for an additional $9.).
------
On the Web: www.thecovey.com
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV-05-28-08 0835CDT
Austin homebrewer Kerry Martin wins the 13th annual Big Batch
Brew Bash. Martin is a member of the homebrew club, Austin
Zealots.
http://www.austinzealots.com/05/22/2008 -- When it comes to brewing your own beer...it's the grand
prize that dreams are made of. This past weekend, Austin Homebrewer
Kerry Martin won the 13th Annual "Big Batch Brew Bash" sponsored by
Saint Arnold's Brewing Company in Houston.
Martin is pictured with his brewing assistants - Kate and Clara.
Judges evaluated 66 examples of the Weizenbock-style and selected Martin's as the best.
As the winner, Martin will have his recipe brewed as Saint Arnold's
Divine Reserve No. 7, a one-time release typically quick to sell out in
stores.
Congratulations to Kerry!
Official St. Arnold's press release (with brewery info and more about the Divine Reserve series):
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=858568
A new beer has arrived in the Austin market and it's cantastic. It's called Dale's Pale Ale from the Oskar Blues Brewery (and Cajun Grill) in Lyons, CO. I picked up a six-pack of cans from Whip-Inn recently. Yep, cans! And they're awesome.
Given the past (and slowly changing for the better) state of American beer, I tend to look at a can and think 'Good beer could not possibly come forth.' But a few years ago, Surly Brewing Company in Brooklyn Park (outside Minneapolis), MN changed my mind on that forever. Their bold brews are only available on draft and in cans. I've had the beer from both sources and they are solid. Sadly, they are not available in Texas at this time, but make a nice friend at RateBeer.com or BeerAdvocate.com and maybe you can arrange a trade. It's well worth it. http://www.surlybrewing.com/index.php
Back to Dale's Pale Ale. It was pleasure to pop the top and pour this from its bright blue and red can... very classic design. I'll take this beer disc golfing, hiking or camping anytime! Had nice head retention. Yellow-orange color and great hop nose. Bitter is met with honey-like sweetness, but last longer in the finish. There are all kinds of discussions on bottles vs. cans, but the places that ship beer that way tend to agree it's easier to recycle, has no influence on taste (actually blocks out possibly skunkifying light that even brown bottles can stop completely) and most important - is good for outdoor activities, lakes, pools, etc. Call your favorite beer spot and see if they have Dale's or any of the other three Oskar Blues beers that should start popping up around town. http://www.oskarblues.com/
