BEER TRAVELERS

Dane County in Wisconsin - the country that contains Madison, which tomorrow hosts the best beer festival in the world, The Great Taste of the Midwest - is getting three new brewpubs.

The Wisconsin State Journal has the details:

- In December, Great Dane Pub & Brewing Co. will open another location near Hilldale Shopping Center.

- Granite City Food & Brewery, a Minneapolis-based company, has 13 locations, all in the Midwest, and is building five more, including one at West Towne Mall. The company brews its beer a bit differently than most. It starts the process at a wort house in central Iowa, where malted barley is mashed and hops are added. The wort mixture is then shipped to the brew pubs, where yeast is added and fermentation begins.

- In Verona, Gray’s Brewing Co. - which has a production facility in Janesville - will open its first brewpub this fall to help mark its 150th anniversary.

I want a documentary like this for every state in the country (OK, California will be a little tough):

Brewed in Vermont: A Short History of Beer, Community, and the Art of Craft-Brewing in the Green Mountains (Directed by Scott McLuskey, Matt DeLuca, and Mark Byron) Brewed in Vermont explores the history of micro-brewing, brew pubs, and the connection between community and beer in the Green Mountains. Includes interviews with the founders of Magic Hat, Otter Creek, Switchback, Long Trail, and the Vermont Pub and Brewery, and provides a behind-the-scenes look at the lives and philosophies of the brew masters behind the ales, lagers, and stouts.

The film lasts 37 minutes, so set aside some time, grab a beer and enjoy yourself.

(That to Biere De Table for pointing to this.)

Read this paragraph from the New York Times (free registration) and you’ll be booking a flight to the Czech Republic:

Why travel all this way, near the borders of Poland and Germany, for a cold one? For starters, the beer is outstanding, with an unusually complex aroma: a bouquet of apricot blossoms with a note of fresh-baked bread, like fruit jam on sourdough toast. In the mouth, the taste is rich and sugary followed by a long, crisp finish. But more importantly, this is the only place where you can sip this particular Czech lager. Brewed in small batches in a tumbledown shed by the owner and namesake, Vendelin Krkoska, the beer has a distribution zone of about two mountain meadows. It is available nowhere else, and nothing else I’ve ever tasted is quite like it.

Available nowhere else.

The British Beer Company opens its seventh pub in the Boston area almost 10 years after starting the first in Plymouth.

The owners point out they consider themselves traditional British pub operators.

“We’re not a theme pub,” managing partner Gary Simon said in the Boston Herald. “We go over to England numerous times a year, and we send our managers and other employees to work in pubs in England.”

Here’s another review.

Just the phrase makes you want to put down your pint glass: bathwater beer.

Inspectors from Cask Marque, the UK organization devoted to proper care of cask beer (”real ale”), used the words in describing the temperature beer is being served as a result of surprisingly warm British summer.

The results of 200 mystery shopper-style pub visits revealed 53% of drinkers received a pint served above the recommended temperature of between 11 and 13C (52-55F). Pints were measured at 23C (73F) at one pub and even 30C (86F) in another.

Read the Cask Marque director’s comments.

Although sales of craft beer aren’t surging at the rate reached in the mid-1990s (50% at times) recent gains raise concerns about another “micro bubble.”

One difference this time around is that in the 90s much of the increase came when breweries and brewpubs opened - and despite the wisdom at the time many were destined to go out of business. This time around much of the growth comes from businesses that have been around 10 years or more.

But let’s not overlook the fact that a new brewpub or brewery pops up somewhere in American about once a week.

The Boulder Daily Camera (free registration) has a story about Wild Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery, a brewpub set to open this fall in downtown Nederland, Colo.

“I want this to be somewhere you can bring your kids on a Friday night,” owner Tom Boogaard said.

That will make it a bit different that the previous brewpub in Nederland, the Wolf Tongue Brewery. Wolf Tongue was a place for people looking for a brewpub that was more pub than restaurant. The pub was once an assay office, then a veterans’ Bud bar. It remained very much a “local,” selling 17 cases of Budweiser a week. (We profiled that pub for Brew Your Own Magazine in 1998.)

Wolf Tongue didn’t close because it wasn’t popular, but because the principals in the business moved on to other things. Other brewery owners in the region predict Nederland is ready for another brewery-restaurant.

Adam Avery, president of Avery Brewing, said the influx of breweries has increased the chances of opening a successful brewpub, and not vice-versa, like conventional wisdom might suggest.

“Microbrews are on a huge rise in popularity, and unlike in the past, he’s not going to have to educate customers about the products he’s selling,” he said. “This is actually a great time to start a brewpub.”

And about once a week somebody does.

Gordon Biersch opens its 18th facility nationwide and Dan Gordon says he’s surprised there aren’t more breweries in Virginia Beach.

“This is a booming region,” said Gordon, co-founder of the chain. “The city as a whole is one amazing development.” Plus, he said, “Navy guys have seen the world and drink a hell of a lot of beer.”

[Story via PilotOnline.com]