Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 21/22, 2016.

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

Weeks 21/22
22 May - 4 June 2016

• 3 June 2016
  Deadly flooding has inundated parts of northern Europe. [...] The situation is particularly bad along the Seine River in Paris. [...] The Seine is expected to crest around 21 feet on Friday afternoon — the highest crest since 1955, the BBC reports. Water levels along the Loing, a tributary of the Seine, have already toppled record crests from the major flood event in 1910.
  —Via Washington Post.




• 3 June 2016
  Goodbye, champ. "The Greatest," Muhammed Ali, has died at 74.

  Muhammad Ali, the charismatic three-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world and Olympic gold medalist who transcended the world of sports to become a symbol of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and ultimately a global ambassador for cross-cultural understanding, died Friday night at a hospital in Phoenix, where he was living. The boxer had been hospitalized with respiratory problems related to Parkinson’s disease, which had been diagnosed in the 1980s. He was 74.
  
  Mr. Ali dominated boxing in the 1960s and 1970s and held the heavyweight title three times. His fights were among the most memorable and spectacular in history, but he quickly became at least as well known for his colorful personality [...] and his standing as the country’s most visible member of the Nation of Islam

  —Via Washington Post.


• 2 June 2016
  A big merger may flatten America’s beer market.

  As Anheuser-Busch InBev looks to finalize a $107 billion merger with SABMiller, the world’s second-largest brewer, federal antitrust authorities need to weigh what this means for the growing number of small brewers and independent distributors who are driving the industry. Recent reports say that antitrust authorities are likely to approve the deal by the end of the month. If they do so without adequate protections, the merger could stifle consumer choice and choke off America’s beer renaissance.

  —Via Bob Pease, president of [U.S.] Brewers Association,
  in an op-ed at New York Times.


• 2 June 2016
  In an effort to forestall the extinction of African elephants, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service enacts a near-total ban on U.S. commercial ivory imports.
  —Via USFWS.


• 29 May 2016
  Over one-third of the coral in the northern and central sectors of Great Barrier Reef has died due to warming ocean water.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 27 May 2016
  Nearly 71 years after an American bomber passed high above the Japanese city of Hiroshima on a clear August morning for a mission that would alter history, President Obama called for an end to nuclear weapons in a solemn visit to Hiroshima, the first U.S. President to do so, and offered respects to the victims of the world’s first deployed atomic bomb.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 27 May 2016
  Bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort has been found in U.S.; could signal "end of the road" for antibiotics. The antibiotic-resistant strain was found last month in the urine of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. Defense Department researchers determined that she carried a strain of E. coli resistant to the antibiotic colistin.

  Colistin is the antibiotic of last resort for particularly dangerous types of superbugs, [which] in some instances, kill up to 50 percent of patients who become infected. Health officials said the case in Pennsylvania, by itself, is not cause for panic. The strain found in the woman is still treatable with other antibiotics. But researchers worry that its colistin-resistance gene, known as mcr-1, could spread to other bacteria that can already evade other antibiotics.

  —Via Washington Post.




• 28 May 2016
  

  Be it Resolved: That the Senate commends the craft brewers of the United States.

  —Via YFGF.


• 26 May 2016
  U.S. antitrust officials are investigating Anheuser-Busch’s distributor incentive programs for violations.
  —Via Craft Brewing News.


• 25 May 2016
  As goes the beer, so goes the nation. Venezuela’s president gives a brewery an ultimatum: brew or go to jail.

  Empresas Polar, the country’s largest brewer — with an 80% market share — completely shut down their operations in April, apparently because of “supply problems of its main raw materials.” The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has threatened to take over the closed breweries, saying that the business owners risk being ‘put in handcuffs.'

  —Via Brookston Beer Bulletin.


• 25 May 2016
  Is John Hickenlooper —past 'craft' beer pioneer and current Governor of Colorado— in the running to be the Democratic vice-presidential candidate if Hillary Clinton wins that party's nomination?
  —Via NPR's Diane Rehm Show.


• 24 May 2016
  Ballast Point Brewery (of San Diego, California) announces that it will be opening an East Coast brewery, in Botetourt County, Virginia, located outside of the city of Roanoke, thus joining Deschutes Brewery, of Oregon, which, in March, announced that it as well would be building an East Coast facility in Roanoke.
  —Via Roanoke Times.


• 23 May 2016
  

  In the Craft Beer Industry, it’s either you are WITH it, or you are AGAINST it, there really is no in-between.

  The owner of a 'craft' beer tap room in Denver, Colorado, denounces the move by a 'craft' brewery to open a rival tap room in the city.
  —Via The Full Pint.


• 23 May 2016
  Lake Mead —which supplies water to seven western states— has fallen to its lowest level since first created by the construction of the Hoover Dam in 1935.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 22 May 2016
  Why the hottest trend in beer is an IPA that tastes like pineapple or mango.

  Sales of flavored IPAs skyrocketed in 2015, according to data presented at the Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia this month, with “tropical flavored” IPA sales increasing by 250 percent year-on-year even though they make up only 8 percent of the flavored IPA market [in part] the result of brewers experimenting with a new generation of hops prized for their aromatic qualities rather than just their bittering properties.

  —Via Fritz Hahn, at Washington Post.


• 22 May 2016
  Wine-in-a-can is back, especially canned rosé: "one of those perfect summer ideas."
  —Via Washington Post.


• 22 May 2016
  

  The world’s biggest breweries now have diverse portfolios and brands that they bought and make within their massive facilities to sell to their extremely powerful and increasingly unilateral distribution networks. All of this is done in an effort to marginalize craft brewers’ access to ingredients and market.

  —Via Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Brewery at Imbibe.




• 22 May 2016
  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a revision to its mandated nutritional label, the first major change in over twenty years.

  Calorie counts are bigger and easier to read. A line has been added to let eaters know how sugar levels of the product stack up against daily values. Daily values for things like fiber and sodium, which were set in the mid-1990s, have been adjusted for current recommendations. Vitamins A and C (which have almost no recorded deficiencies among Americans today) were removed, and Vitamin D and potassium (for which deficiencies are rising) were added. Serving sizes are the most significant change. They’re being adjusted to reflect the amounts we’re really eating.

  —Via Gizmodo.


• 22 May 2016
  

  Alaskan Brewing Company produces 140,000 barrels of beer annually and, as by-product, produces 4,500 tons of spent grain. Over the next 10 years, by re-utilizing their waste product as fuel, the brewery is set to save over 1.5 million gallons of fuel, reducing the company’s fuel oil consumption by 70%. Because this system runs entirely on dried spent grain, burning to create steam which powers their entire facility, less transportation of outside ingredients is required, further alleviating costs to this Juneau [Alaska]-based brewery.

  —Via Energy Design Program.

-----more-----

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


• For more from YFGF:
  • Follow on Twitter: @Cizauskas.
  • Like on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
  • Follow on Flickr: Cizauskas.
  • Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.