Clamps & Gaskets: News Roundup for Weeks 31/32, 2016.

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

Weeks 31/32
31 July - 13 August 2016

• 13 August 2016
  'Craft' brewery Dogfish Head creates beer called "Beer For Breakfast," made with maple syrup, applewood-smoked barley, roasted chicory, milk sugar, coffee, and scrapple (seasoned pork scraps).
  —Via Beer Street Journal.


• 13 August 2016
  Amid a pending deal with Anheuser-Busch InBev, Devils Backbone, the largest 'craft' brewery in Virginia, is "kicked out of its own festival."
  —Via Fritz Hahn, at Washington Post.



• 13 August 2016
  French-born chef and restaurateur Michel Richard, whose career spawned the transformation of Washington, D.C. from a power-lunch town to a national culinary destination, has died at age 86.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 12 August 2016
  What do you do when your 'craft' brewery has been purchased by a much larger brewery? You buy a much smaller one.
  
  In 2002, John Cochran and "Spike" Buckowski founded Terrapin Brewing in Athens, Georgia. 14 years later, last month, Miller/Coors (via its 'craft' division, 10th & Blake) bought a majority interest in the brewery. Cochran left the brewery and has purchased Altamont Brewing, a 5-year-old brewery in Asheville, North Carolina, renaming it UpCountry Brewing. In the circle-of-brewlife, the owner and founder of Altamont, Gordon Kear, has left his brewery.
  —Via Asheville Citizen-Times.


• 10 August 2016
  In July, the temperature hit 129.2 °F in Kuwait, the hottest ever recorded in the eastern hemisphere.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 10 August 2016
  A second brewery is slated to open in the old Pabst brewery grounds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. NOT Pabst, but a 'craft' brewery called MKE Brewing.
  —Via On Milwaukee.



• 9 August 2016
  A vanilla stout has won Champion Beer of Britain at the Great British Beer Festival.
  —Via YFGF.


• 9 August 2016
  St. Louis Brewing has defeated a legal case by conservative political activist Phyllis Schlafly attempting to force her nephew Tom Schlafly —principal owner of the St. Louis, Missouri-based 'craft' brewery— from using the family name, Schlafly, for his beers.
  —Via St. Louis Post-Dispatch.



• 8 August 2016
  Stock analyst thinks Boston Beer, maker of Sam Adams beer, has serious problems.

  It's time for the Boston Beer Company to rewrite its playbook. The company's internal efforts to generate growth aren't keeping up. I can understand the desire to stay true to the craft roots, but the company opted to play the perpetual growth game and went public. Shareholders demand profitable growth. It might be time to purchase a small rival brewer or two and plug them into the existing Sam Adams family. Until the company makes changes, it runs the risk of losing more market share and revenue to both larger and smaller rivals. At current valuations and with an anemic outlook, the Boston Beer Company looks overpriced to me.

  —Via Motley Fool.


• 8 August 2016
  Pumpkin shortage threatens pumpkin beer supply. That's just too bad.
  —Via DRAFT.


• 5 August 2016
  "IPA is shorthand for the American ['craft' beer] tradition."
  —Via Jeff Alworth, at Beervana.


• 4 August 2016
  August 4th was #IPADay, as created by 'craft' beer writer and advocate Ashley Routson, aka the Beer Wench, in 2011.
  —Via CraftBeer.


• 4 August 2016
  In 1975, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) invented the modern beer festival when it staged the Covent Garden Beer Exhibition, a five-day event with more than fifty beers, attended by forty thousand people. But before the festival evan began, it was nearly derailed, by an ill-placed suitcase; Fullers Brewery saved it. Today, the festival is known as the Great British Beer Festival.
  —Via Boak and Bailey.


• 2 August 2016
  There has been significant consolidation in the hops industry—the number of commercial growers decreased from 378 in 1964 and 90 in 1987 to just 44 in 2015, according to Hop Growers of America. But new growers ARE coming online. In 2016, there are 53,213 acres of hops growing nationwide—the most acreage ever in production and an 18.5 percent increase over 2015. Almost all of the hops production is in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, but, in all, 29 states are registered to grow the crop.

  Without the advent of craft brewing, local, family owned hop farms would have gone bankrupt. It's saved the industry.

  —Via National Public Radio (NPR).


• 4 August 2016
  The world’s two largest beer companies – Anheuser-Busch InBev and SAB Miller – are merging into one brewing company. The deal, which will be worth $107 billion, is expected to close by October 2016, at which point most global beer brands will be owned by five conglomerates: AB InBev/SAB Miller, MolsonCoors, Heineken, Diageo, and Carlsberg.
  —Via Visual Capitalist.


• 3 August 2016
  Forty-three percent of Americans who drink alcohol say they prefer beer (the highest since 2002, when 44 percent said the same); thirty-two percent say wine; and 20 percent say liquor.
  —Via Gallup.



• 2 August 2016
  Inconclusive yet tantalizing historical hints: before cream ale had there been cream beer (and then Kentucky Common)?
  —Via Alan McLeod, at A Good Beer Blog.


• 2 August 2016
  Buying beer to-go at a brewery in Alabama? Showing proof of age won't be sufficient. The Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control Board wants the brewery to record your name, address, telephone number, and date of birth ... and it wants its agents to have the right to go to your home to confirm that you actually did buy that beer.
  —Via Free The Hops.


• 2 August 2016
  Total U.S. beer shipments for the first half of year 2016 were up by 0.1 percent (while June's figures were down 0.2 percent over those of June 2015). 'Craft' beer, on the other hand, was up 8 percent over the same time period. Imported beer volumes increased by 7.1 percent in June, and was up 7.7 percent for the year.
  —Via Beer Institute: here and here.


• 1 August 2016
  An infelicitous date, October 10 is announced as the official date for the completion of the merger of the world's second-largest brewing company, SABMiller, with the world's largest, Anheuser-Busch InBev. The name of the new mega-company to-be-determined.
  —Via Reuters.


• 31 July 2016
  A 'craft' brewery and its town devasated by flash flooding in Maryland.
  —Via YFGF.


• 31 August 2016
  2015 was Earth's hottest year since pre-industrial times, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in its report, State of the Climate in 2015.
  —Via Washington Post.


• 31 July 2016
  Good news for the U.S. hop harvest 2016:

  There is some concern about the effect of early bloom in some parts of Oregon and Washington, but, overall, [this year's hop] crop [in the Pacific Northwest] looks like a good one assuming weather conditions remain favorable and pest pressure is manageable.

  —Via YCH Hops.

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


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