Winners Announced for The Great American Beer Festival

Winners for the Great American Beer Festival were announced yesterday after 3 days of judging. The GABF is the largest commercial beer competition in the world, with over 2,700 different beers from over 500 different American breweries, covering over 84 different categories/subcategories (here’s a very detailed list of categories and their descriptions found on the GABF website). Judges select their top three picks per style in this massive blind tasting. The winners are awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals. There were several Indiana breweries among the winners this year. Sun King Brewing Company (Johan the Barleywine and Pappy Van Muckle), Upland Brewing Company (Sour Reserve), Mad Anthony (Ruby Raspberry Wheat), Bier Brewery (Sanitarium), Three Floyd’s Brewing Company (Zombie Dust), and The Ram Brewing Company (Anaheim IPA). Make sure to congratulate these guys on all their hard work. You can find a full listing of the winners here.

Wonderful Beer Paintings for Beer Lovers

So I came across a really great blog tonight as I searching for brewing art. Beer Paintings – Original Art for Beer Lovers By Beer Lovers is a blog showcasing some fantastic oil paintings that integrate bottle caps, hops, and other beer odds and ends. I’m really impressed with these paintings! They even have an Etsy page where you can order custom oil paintings of your favorite brewery bottle caps! Please take some time to drop by their site (beerpaintings.blogspot.com) as they do an excellent job. Much respect!

Rogue Ales Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale

I posted a link to Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Coffee and Doughnut Stout kit a little over a month ago. It appears that Rogue Ales has created a beer flavored with smoked malts, applewood-smoked bacon, and pure maple flavoring! Portland, Oregon based Voodoo Doughnuts and Rogue Ales teamed up to create a beer inspired by Voodoo’s popular Bacon Maple Bar. I wouldn’t assume this would be a session beer, but it may be interesting to try. Rogue’s website lists the beer as a Brown Ale with a “Baker’s Dozen” of ingredients. If you are interested in picking one up for yourself you can always fly to Oregon, or purchase one through their online store here.

via Laughing Squid

Behind The Scenes at the Brewer’s Cup

[slideshow]

I got the opportunity to help sort out all of the entries for The Brewer’s Cup Competition today! What a great experience. I had no idea how much work went into making this event happen. Literally hundreds, if not thousands of beers were submitted to Sun King Brewery. Each entry was numbered and entered into an Excel spreadsheet to keep them all straight. The stewards had cases of beer lined up like the opening text sequence in Star Wars. As a matter of fact, the beer you see in these pictures was really just the tip of the iceberg. Judging will take place at the Indiana State Fairgrounds on July 6-7, 2012. See you there 🙂

Rogue to Release Beer Using Wild Yeast From Brewer’s Beard

 

Oregon based Rogue Ales will be releasing a beer known as the “New Crustacean,” which will be crafted using wild yeast from head brewer John Maier’s beard! Although quite hilarious, this news is actually true! Rogue sent in several samples of yeast from their hopyards to White Labs in effort to brew with their own unique, local strain of yeast. As a joke, they sent several strands of hair from Maier’s beard in a petry dish along with their hopyard samples. It turns out that none of the hopyard samples were suitable for brewing, but White Labs did find a strain of yeast in Maier’s beard follicles that is viable and perfect for brewing! Haha. I’ve heard of harvesting yeast from beer bottles and carboys, but I’ve definitely never attempted harvesting them from facial hair 🙂 Either way, Rogue is doing test batches with the new strain at the moment, and plan to release their odd new beer sometime in 2013. You can read the full article on Rogue’s website.

Beers IN SPACE!!!

Wow. My mind is officially blown. Most people would be happy with a trip to Three Floyd’s Brewery, but now it is possible to drink beer in space! This does not appear to be a joke. For $95,000 you can book a flight with Thirsty Swagman Tours to… er… space, where you will be one of the few and proud to drink a beer. Here’s what else 95K will get you:

  • 2 to 3 days preparing for space flight
  • Introduction to consuming liquids in space
  • Vostok Space Beer (brewed by our mates at 4 Pines Brewing Company)
  • One hell of a party afterwards (Thirsty Swagman style of course)
  • Extras incl. video production, space beer shirt, astronaut certificate etc.
  • The most incredible view of earth you’ve ever had through a bottle

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEhFBqBsw78]

Thirsty Swagman Tours also offers zero gravity/parabolic flights for $9,900.

Upland Releases Sour Reserve To Lucky Ticket Holders!

A select few ticket holders at Upland’s first ever Sour + Funk + Wild Fest got to taste/purchase Upland’s Sour Reserve. This unfruited lambic style is known as a Gueuze, and was created using unmalted wheat along with pale and pilsner malts. The fermentation involves using Brettanomyces yeast and lactic bacteria (Lactobacillus) at some point in the fermentation. This creates alcohol and a beer with a unique sour acidity. The beer is then aged in oak barrels for several years. Upland has bottled a series of Sour Reserve beers with select oak barrels they have been using since 2006 when they started brewing lambics. The bottle I’m holding is actually the product of blending different batches of lambic beer into a single barrel. You can read more about Upland’s Sour Reserve here.