Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 26/27, 2015.

A bi-weekly, non-comprehensive roundup
of news of beer and other things.

Weeks 26/27
21 June - 4 July 2015

• 2015.07.04
  Why John Adams believed that July 2nd, not July 4th would be American Independence Day.
  —Via The Independent.




• 2015.07.02
  "The feel is of a welcoming insider showing a newbie the ropes." A review of the new book by Ashley Routson, "The Beer Wench's Guide to Beer."
  —Via Jeff Alworth, at Beervana.


• 2015.07.01
  Nicholas Winton, English rescuer of 669 Czech children during the Holocaust, dies in England at 106.
  —Via New York Times.


• 2015.07.01
  Eric Wallace, owner of Left Hand Brewing Company —a Longmont, Colorado, brewery he co-founded in 1993: "No way I am going to sell out for a bunch of money." Wallace sells majority of brewery shares back to employees.
  —Via Brewbound.


• 2015.07.01
  The (U.S.) Brewers Association has created an on-line database of laws concerning beer sales and sampling laws in breweries and brewpubs, for all fifty U.S. states.
  —Via Brewers Association.




• 2015.06.30
  An appreciation of Dan Bosserman (1949-2015), long-time 'craft' beer distributor in Maryland and Washington, D.C.
  —Via YFGF.


• 2015.06.29
  The tourism office of Howard County —a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C.— creates a county beer-trail mobile app.
  —Via Baltimore Sun.


• 2015.06.30
  Clocks read 11:59:60 as extra "leap" second is officially added to world time, allowing the Earth’s slowing rotation to catch up with atomic time.
  —Via The Telegraph.


• 2015.06.30
  Influential, fast-growing Scottish 'craft' brewery, BrewDog, to open a new brewery near Columbus, Ohio, in the United States, in 2016, its only brewing facility outside of the United Kingdom.
  —Via BeerPulse.


• 2015.06.29
  The state of South Carolina is offering tax breaks and other financial incentives to lure away 'craft' brewery, Terrapin Beer Company, from its home in Athens, Georgia.
  —Via Augusta Chronicle.




• 2015.06.25
  Since 2012, Beck's sold in the United States has been brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, not in Germany. The brewery settled a class-action lawsuit, and will change wording on the packaging to clearly indicate American provenance.
  —Via Big Class Action.


• 2015.06.29
  The Beer Price Index: how much a beer costs in various cities across the world. Geneva, Switzerland, is the most expensive city for a beer: $6.32 per 11.2 ounce beer.
  —Via Wall Street Journal.


• 2015.06.26
  In 5-4 vote, U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges makes same-sex marriage a right nationwide. Majority decision from Justice Anthony Kennedy:
  " No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people be-come something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they dorespect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. "
  —Via New York Times.


• 2015.06.26
  The Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act is introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, with bipartisan support. The bill would:
  • Reduce the federal excise tax to $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels for domestic brewers producing fewer than 2 million barrels annually.
  • Reduce the federal excise tax to $16 per barrel on the first 6 million barrels for all other brewers and all beer importers.
  • Keep the excise tax at the current $18 per barrel rate for barrelage over 6 million.
  Both the Beer Institute and the (U.S.) Brewers Association support the bill; in the past, both had supported competing bills.
  —Via Brewers Association.


• 2015.06.25
  "You could be reading a lot soon about soaring hop prices." The 2015 Barth-Haas Hop Report.
  —Via Stan Hieronymus, at Appellation Beer.


• 2015.06.25
  Quotable quote. Larry Bell of Bell’s Brewery: "We are in the middle of the end of the beginning of craft beer." Anheuser-Busch InBev's 'craft' brewery acquisitions are unsettling the craft movement. A profile of Andy Goeler, CEO of craft beer for AB InBev’s Anheuser-Busch division.
  —Via Bloomberg.


• 2015.06.25
  The Affordable Care act (aka Obamacare) survives a second challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court. In King versus Burwell, by a vote of 6-3, the Court decides that subsidies should be available across the entire U.S.
  —Via The Telegraph.


• 2015.06.24
  Symposium held during SAVOR week near Washington, D.C. asks: What defines a 'craft' beer? Participants answer, "It all comes down to motive with quality."
  —Via Capital Gazette.




• 2015.06.22
  Bob and Ellie Tupper, long-time observers and chroniclers of good beer in the Washington, D.C. area, release their first book: "Drinking in the Culture: Tuppers' Guide to Exploring Great Beers in Europe."
  —Via YFGF.


• 2015.06.21
  Forty U.S. 'craft' breweries have signed the Brewery Climate Declaration, since March 2015.
  "Finding innovative ways to integrate sustainability into their business practices and finding economic opportunity through investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, water efficiency, waste recapture, and sustainable sourcing."
  —Via Ceres.


• 2015.06.21
  "There's no sense trying to start a revolution if nobody wants to follow." Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (maker of Samuel Adams beers, etc.) is profiled on his role at the beginnings of 'craft' beer, over thirty years ago.
  —Via Business Insider.


• 2015.06.21
  Twenty-one of the world’s thirty-seven largest aquifers have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed from them than replaced, during a decade-long study period, a NASA report states.
  —Via Washington Post.

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• Clamps and Gaskets is a bi-weekly wrap-up of stories  not posted at Yours For Good Fermentables.com. Most deal with beer (or wine, or whisky); some do not.
• YFGF has been remiss: Clamps and Gaskets has fallen several weeks behind the calendar. Until things are set right, there will be a weekly —not bi-weekly— update.


• The Clamps and Gaskets graphic was created by Mike Licht at NotionsCapital.
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