We meet the RedRock crew at the Toronado for some beer and a little catching up. Kevin is strainging to flip us off.
In Lower Haight catching up after a few beers.
The conference is totally sold out and packed to the gills. It's crazy here.
This is the sea of brewers and brewers to be looking for ideas, education and a little networking. Time for another beer. Man, life is tough.
Joe monkeying around. Remember Joe; speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil.
Total U.S. brewery count climbs to its highest level since 1900
Boulder, CO • March 21, 2011—The Brewers Association, the trade association representing the majority of U.S. brewing companies, today released 2010 data on the U.S. craft brewing industry. Small and independent craft brewers saw volume increase 11 percent and retail sales dollars increase 12 percent over 2009, representing a growth of over 1 million barrels (31 gallons per U.S. barrel), equal to more than 14 million new craft cases.
Posted by Utah Stories in Uncategorized
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Cheers!!!
Untappd is a beer-sharing system. You note which beer you drank where and then watch as said beer rises or falls in the ranks of beerdom. You can also find out where odd brews have popped up in your vicinity, thereby allowing you, like some inebriated, marauding Ash in Floaroma Town, to attempt to catch ‘em all.
The app itself runs on multiple devices but they’ve just announced a special SXSW version for you and yours. This allows you to compete with fellow tipplers in the streets of Austin.
If you’re thinking there’s more to this, there isn’t. Presumably you could pitch a certain beer to folks who check in, but that functionality isn’t live. It looks like a couple of dudes, tired of being ostracized for their love of the suds, have taken the necessary steps to bring their hobby mainstream. Like Beerby, the app allows you to find odd brews in odd places, a boon to the burgeoning drinker.
About 200 people rallied at the state Capitol midday Tuesday to demand the governor veto HB477, a bill that shields more government records from public disclosure. But Gov. Gary Herbert wasn’t swayed.
He announced after 8 p.m. that he had signed the bill into law, saying that with its delayed effective date, there will be plenty of time for a healthy public discussion about how best to ensure the public’s right to know what its government is up to without violating privacy rights.
“This bill provides a way to find the right balance between the public’s right to know and the personal privacy of both constituents and policymakers, while protecting taxpayer dollars,” Herbert said in a prepared statement. “Our goal is open and transparent government.”
“With HB477 now amended [to take effect July 1], the delayed implementation date allows us to have an open public process with robust, deliberate engagement by the public, the media and lawmakers.”
The governor’s news release came just a few hours after about 200 people held a demonstration in the Capitol. Almost all the speakers were from good-government groups — not the news media.
They chanted, “Veto! Veto!” and held signs reading, “Only a cockroach is afraid of light,” “Sunshine, not secrecy” and “Hiding something?”
Kim Burningham, chairman of Utahns for Ethical Government, said that the Legislature’s action in recalling the bill Monday to extend its effective date to July 1doesn’t fix the measure.
Lawmakers have said the extension will provide time to negotiate any needed fixes that then could be passed in a special legislative session in June.
“We do not need a pacifier on HB477. We need a veto,” said Burningham, a former legislator, to cheers. “This bill is a severe restriction on the public’s right to know and reduces the concept of freedom of information to a mere shell of its former self.”
Lawmakers kept the bill’s text secret until last week, when they quickly moved it to a committee hearing and to overwhelming votes of approval in the House and Senate. They recalled it Monday, saying a delayed implementation date was the only change needed to make it good legislation.
Claire Geddes, who, for years, has been a watchdog at the Legislature, said if lawmakers “really wanted to negotiate” effective changes, “they would have negotiated before they passed the bill.” She said if the bill wasn’t vetoed, she doubts any real changes would come.
Jordan River activist Jeff Salt, a frequent user of the Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA), said, “Bad government needs secrecy to survive. ... This is a blatant attempt to keep government secret.”
Sherilyn Bennion, co-legislative director for the Utah League of Women Voters, said HB477 “has been characterized as a bill that threatens media access. However, this bill threatens access for every citizen of Utah for records that we need.”
Several legislators who opposed the bill also addressed the rally.
Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City, held up his BlackBerry phone, on which he receives e-mails and texts, that would be barred from release under the bill.
“You guys are paying for this,” he said. “There’s nothing that interesting on it, but you are free to read it.”
Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, added that “the public’s business should be done in public.”
HB477 would prohibit the disclosure of text messages and instant messages; allow government agencies to charge fees for information that can include administrative and overhead costs; and require those wanting records protected by the government to show — with a preponderance of evidence — that the information should be released.
Herbert said in his statement that a working group will convene to discuss the issues surrounding GRAMA and that he is committed to call a special session in June to address “further revisions.”
There are many things that women generally tend to excel at – raising children, coordinating fashionable outfits, baking and gossiping. Also, according to recent statistics, women are now better at graduating college and being employed. This blog post, however is about women’s superior beer tasting skills.
According to this article, SABMiller is hiring more and more female taste-testers. Apparently, their "sensitive woman-tongues can taste certain flavor subtleties better than men."
Despite the fact that men account for 72.8% of all beer sales (worldwide), the makers of Miller and Coors brands, Pilsner Urquell, Peroni and Grolsch are convinced that women can better detect undesirable chemicals that make beer taste skunky. The company has 1,000 advanced-level tasters and 30% of them are female – that number has more or less quadrupled over the last decade. The "Taster of the Year" at SABMiller is a 33-year-old female with an "unusual knack for identifying extremely low levels of troublesome chemicals." She chalks it up to her "love affair with perfumes."
There haven’t been any scientific studies to prove this hunch but the folks over at Carlsberg A/S tested their taste-test panelists this year and noted that they’ve observed women performing better than men. Marcia Pelchat of the Monell Chemical Senses Center seems to think that we can chalk up the female edge to the fact that women can usually smell things better.
This may sound harsh but in my humble opinion, everyone on the Miller Coors tasting panel should get their noses and tongues checked. Most of that stuff tastes like grade-A garbage to me… then again, I’m a woman so I’m in tune to that stuff, right?
It’s a fun little idea to ponder but at the same time, men can still pee standing up. In my mind, that certainly trumps the whole smelling thing.
TAGS [ TASTE TESTING | BEER REVIEWS | BEER TASTE TESTER ]
YAY! I just got my first hater! Here’s a video on haters that I think is very helpful to watch. I need more haters!
Here’s the post – it’s really long. The author only writes a post a month, so I guess that the length is warranted. I’d like to write one post a month… You know that writing is tough, yeah? Of course, you have sentences like these last three that are more stream-of-consciousness thoughts than writing. They’re easy to write and I’m finding a lot of my posts are filled with this.
Let’s take the alternative stance on my website right now. The stance that my website bad for brewers. It’s bad for the beer industry to participate in the site. It’s bad for beer with little exposure to buy content for a fraction of the price it would cost them to make it and ad space on a network of beer blogs that reaches 1,500 people a day. It’s bad for someone to watch, be entertained, and learn about a style or brand they may not have tried before. It’s bad to collaborate with other content producers and beer experts in making a show. It’s bad to just give the facts about the beer without telling people how you feel about it. It’s bad to market under appreciated craft beer. It’s bad to advertise for anything.
I know the author of that post is an intelligent guy, but click more than one page on my site before you start the name calling. From Wikipedia:
A shill or plant is a person who helps another person or organization to sell goods or services without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with the seller. The shill pretends to have no association with the seller/group and gives onlookers the impression that he or she is an enthusiastic independent customer.
How many different places to I have to say that I get paid for each spot? I only need 365 people to understand the business model to be successful. Right now, the people that are most enthusiastic about the site are distributors. Why? Because they actually sell beer to consumers. They have ad budgets. They have creative teams. They know what it takes to expand a brand. The brewers that are excited tend to be the younger, more social-media savvy, expansion-minded brewers. The brewers that think $0.10 a click is a pretty bleeping awesome price for an ad. The brewers that take note of the stacks of three-month old beer newspapers in the corners of darkened bars. Those brewers are pretty excited about the business model.
Those are the brewers I want to work with going forward. Thanks to my paid sponsor Bohemian Brewery for getting it.
Appearance: Clear, deep orangey-gold, thick head
Smell: Floral, bright, slightly tart
Taste: Sour, sweet malty
Mouthfeel: Light body, light carbonation
Drinkability: Quaffable, clean finish
Lagers, Adjunct Lagers, Pilsners
