Recently in Miscellaneous Category

One of the things I don't really understand about the beer world is why so many beers use green bottles. When beer is exposed to ultraviolet light for a certain period of time, certain molecules (basically the stuff contributed by hops) start to break down and cause bad flavors. This is what's called "light-struck" beer, but it's more commonly known as "skunked" beer. Brown bottles provide a large degree of protection, but apparently don't make the beer invulnerable (unless you've got your brown bottle baking in the sun for a long time, you should be ok). However, green and clear bottles provide nearly no protection from UV rays, and thus those beers can get skunked rather easily. Incidentally, cans? They actually provide the best protection, which is one of the reasons you see so much talk of craft beer in cans these days.

This begs the question: If light is so bad for beer and if green and clear bottles don't provide any protection, why do breweries use green or clear bottles? Sure, some of the crappy imports do, but even really good beers use green bottles. A while ago, I got drunk and sent out a series of pedantic (but polite!) emails to a bunch of my favorite breweries that nevertheless use green bottles. I asked why they used the green bottles and if it had anything to do with cost, tradition, or marketing. I didn't get a response from Dupont, but Yuengling was very responsive and provided a very forthright and honest explanation:

Thanks for your recent inquiry regarding our usage of green glass.

We make 7 year round beer brands and 1 seasonal Bock Beer. Currently, 2 are offered in green glass.....Lager and Lord Chesterfield Ale. The others are in a standard brown.

Your questions are great...let me address a few as I go. First, green is definitely not less expensive. It's actually harder to source in the quantities we need.

Originally, when Dick Yuengling reintroduced Lager in 1987, he placed it in brown glass and had a very different label designed than what we know today. In the early 1990s he decided to redesign the packaging entirely.....he knew he had a great beer that was different than other full calorie beers on the market at the time. But the brown glass and original label just didn't make it look "special". It looked like every other beer on the market. There was no point of difference.

When the label was redesigned to what we know today, Dick also considered a change to green glass. First, no other domestic brand was in green. Miller High Life was in clear. So was MGD back then. But the "special" beers of that time were mainly imports. Becks, St Pauli, Lowenbrau, etc. All green glass.

So the shift to green was a marketing shift.....a point of difference for this special beer.

You are accurate....green is less protective of the product than brown. We have been working closely with our glass supplier who has developed a UV coating to apply to the outside of the bottle. This is in early stages of development. We are also considering a "high wall" six pack carrier to protect the bottles on the shelf. But there are also other packaging considerations to sort through. But the bottom line is that it's always a concern to protect the integrity of our products. Luckily, our Lager turns very quickly on the shelf so we rarely get complaints about this product. We do sometimes get off taste feedback on chesterfield ale, which we make good to our customers on a case by case basis.

With all that said, cans are actually the best vessel for packaged beer. Very many craft breweries are figuring that out now. Luckily nearly all of our brands are available in cans.

Thanks again for the email and for your support of our brewery!

Ah Marketing! The Alehead's worst enemy. It is funny because I've always noticed that I enjoy Lager the most out of the can or on tap, but until I started getting all beer nerdy, I never really put two and two together. Also, it's rather heartening to see that they're researching UV coatings for their beer, though I'm guessing it will be a while before that happens (and honestly, at this point, switching to brown bottles would probably be fine).

I'm still a little baffled when I see beers from Dupont or Fantôme in big green bottles though (even more confusing - Dupont sells smaller bottles of Saison Dupont that come in capped brown bottles!) During Philly Beer Week a while back, I asked an importer why so many good beers use green glass. He said he didn't know, but he always assumed it was tradition. I would bet marketing probably has more to do with it (especially given Yuengling's response), but I'll still be forever confused as to why a brewery with the reputation of Mikkeller would use green bottles for something (seriously, I just bought a bottle of Mikkeller barleywine, and it came in a green bottle).

On the first Friday of every month, there's a beer blog roundup called The Session. Someone picks a topic, and everyone blogs about it. This month, Brian Stechschulte is hosting, and he wants to know about everyone's beer collectibles and breweriana:

I've decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold. These objects constitute the world of breweriana, a term that surfaced in 1972 to define any item displaying a brewery or brand name. The majority of highly prized objects are from the pre-prohibition era, but ephemera from every period in brewing history, including craft beer, finds a home with each beer drinking generation.

So what old or new beer related items do you collect and why? It's that simple.

It is indeed simple, but I'm at a bit of a loss here. I have a nice Ommegang Hennepin glass that was a memento of a trip to Cooperstown a few years ago, but that's kinda boring and it's not like I have a big collection of other breweries' glassware (though that's not a bad idea...)

I suppose the only thing that I have a pretty wide variety of is beer bottle corks. I didn't really consciously think to myself: Self, I should collect beer bottle corks! but I do tend to have some packrat tendencies and have recently found a couple of caches of corks (click for larger version).

Indeed, I am often intrigued by what appears on the cork. Some have nice artwork or patterns, some use it as a way to date the beer, some show the preferred glassware, some just have the brewery name printed on there, and some are just plain and unadorned. They're not as varied or interesting as, say, Bottle Caps (come to think of it, I probably have a lot of those lying around as well), but I like them. Obviously I don't keep every cork, especially since each brewery seems to use the same corks for most bottles, but I will keep ones I like or find interesting.

So, yeah, not a very exciting collection, but then, I prefer to direct my energy to finding and drinking beer. Speaking of which, it's Philly Beer Week! I should be drinking (Maybe I'll save a cork or two).

I've made some beer runs lately and thought this might be a good idea for a post. Pennsylvania is a really strange place to be a beer fan. Living in the Philly area (West Chester, PA, to be exact), there are certainly lots of great beer bars around (center city is a bit of a hike for me, but there are even some decent bars out here in the 'burbs) and a pretty amazing amount of actual local breweries (to name a few: Philadelphia Brewing Co, Yards, Victory, Weyerbacher, SlyFox, Iron Hill, among several others), but on the other hand, we have some really weird liquor laws. Liquor and wine are only sold at state stores and beer is mostly sold at separate distributors (and neither are generally sold at convenient locations like supermarkets, though there is an exception we'll get to). Up until recently, no alcohol at all was sold on Sundays. Furthermore, beer is generally only sold by the case, with one major exception: If you operate an eatery, you can sell loose bottles, six packs, etc...

As such, there are a few places that have been popping up in PA in recent years that have pretty great selections of loose bottles and make-your-own-sixpack deals, though I also often find myself in Delaware or even Maryland, trying to find that hard-to-get beer. Here's a quick list of where I frequently find myself buying beer:

• Pinoccio's Beer Garden (Media, PA) - Probably the best combination of selection and convenience for me is this pizza joint. The food is pretty standard pizza place fare, but they've got a large selection both on tap and in coolers in back. It's a fantastic place, and probably my favorite PA bottle store (though there are a couple others that I need to check out).
• Hockessin Liquors (Hockessin, DE) - Believe it or not, this is one of the first places I found that had a really great selection of 750 ml bottles and 22 oz bombers, and it's about half a mile from a family member's house, so whenever I go there, I make sure to stop by this store and marvel at the amazing beer selection and pick up as many bottles as I can.
• State Line Liquors (Elkton, MD) - My most recent discovery, this place looks like a total dump from the outside, but it has the most amazing beer selection I've ever seen in one place (in particular, their selection of foreign beer is impressive). The majority of the beer from the below picture came from this place. I've only been here once, and it's a bit far, but it's not a horrible drive and I will most definitely be returning.
• Total Wine (Claymont, DE) - This place is bigger than my usual supermarket. Unfortunately, most of that is dedicated to wine, but there's a nice, sizeable beer selection as well. It's probably not as extensive as some of the other places on this list, but it's a worthy location, and about 10 minutes from my parents' house, so it's still somewhat convenient.
• Wegmans (Downingtown, PA) - Not too long ago, Wegmans started exploiting the whole eatery loophole for sale of single bottles. Their eatery is attached to their grocery store, so this place is doubly convenient (it's also right near a movie theater I frequent, which is nice). The selection varies, and you have to be a bit quick on the draw to get good seasonal stuff, but they've got a pretty good variety here, though not quite the religious experience some of the above places are...
• Goshen Beverage (West Chester, PA) - This is the place closest to me, but it's also a beer distributer, so no loose bottles here. Still, if I want to get a case of something, this is where I go first, and they really do have a great selection.
• The Beeryard (Wayne, PA) - This is also a beer distributer, but if I'm looking for a case of something and I can't find it at Goshen Beverage, this place will probably have it. Alas, I don't end up here very often.
• Capone's Restaurant (Norristown, PA) - I've only been here once, but I get a very Pinocchio's vibe from this place. It's definitely a cool place, and I'd like to check it out again someday, but it's also a bit far. A friend in beer club often gets her beer here, so I certainly benefit from this place. I should probably give it more of a fair shake.
• The Foodery (Philadelphia, PA) - It would be negligent to not mention this place, which is indeed quite awesome, but at the same time, both locations are in center city Philly, which is a bit of a hike (and when you add in traffic, parking, etc... , it can be a bit of a hassle and costly too). Still, if I lived in the city, I'd probably go here often.

Here's a quick picture of some recent purchases, mostly from State Line Liquors and Pinocchio's:

(Click for a larger version)

I'm pretty excited to try, well, all of these. And yes, per my friend Padraic's suggestion, I picked up two bottles of Ola Dubh, the 40 and 16 (which should be quite interesting). Not pictured are three of Mikkeller's single hop IPAs, which should be an interesting experience as well.

That about covers where I buy bottles (bars, brewpubs, and or breweries will have to be a separate post someday). Obviously I'm always on the lookout for new places, so I'll try to keep this post updated if I find anything new and interesting. Also, if you have any suggestions that would be convenient for this West Chester, PA native, feel free to leave a comment below!

One of the two visitors to this blog today (a good day, traffic wise!) came from google; apparently a curious Gainesville, Florida resident wanted to know: "was benjamin franklin a poon hound?" As it turns out, my screenplay on General Washington's Tavern Porter (which featured Franklin as a character) comes up third on the list of google results for such a query. Score!

Of course, there isn't much substance to my claim of poon-houndery in that post, so I figured it might be worth expanding on Franklin's love of women. For instance, he had at least one illegitimate child, William, who Franklin blames on his tendency to consort with "low women." I have a biography of Franklin on my shelf, and a quick look at the index shows no less than 12 references throughout the book that concern Franklin's "flirtatious relationships" with women. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that anything illicit was going on, but where there's smoke, there's fire... Perhaps the several sections on his "sexual appetites" are more indicative of his love of poon.

But I don't want to give the wrong impression. Franklin's attitude towards women was somewhat enlightened for his time (somewhat... for his time). He seemed to truly enjoy the company of women, and while it is true that he spent a lot of time flirting with them, he also took them seriously, often discussing important issues of the day with them. Speaking of which, Franklin was obviously also an instrumental Founding Father of the nation, and, of course, he brewed beer too! (Gee, I wonder what this post will do to the search terms that lead here?)

Update: It seems I'm not the only one having fun with our Founding Fathers and the beers they make/drink. This post is brilliant and funny, and features Franklin, Adams, Kennedy and Lincoln. Certainly more substantive and accurate than my original screenplay...

Twitter continues to be the most entertaining source on the controversy (see previous post on the subject). My favorite recent tweet:

Overheard near ReasonHQ kitchen: "There is definitely some evidence of people drinking Four Loko out of wine glasses."

Heh.

I've never had any Four Loco (and from what I've heard, it's pretty foul), but the recent news that the FDA will be effectively banning caffeinated alcoholic beverages has caused a bit of a stir in the beer bloggery world (as it turns out, much of the hand-wringing seems to be a bit overblown - don't worry, our coffee stouts are safe). I don't really have much to say about this, but I did want to point to the best insight anyone has had about the whole flap:

People are actually acting about Four Loko the way people in the movie should've acted toward The Stuff.

Brilliant. Now I want to watch The Stuff again.

Over at Badass Digest, Devin Faraci adds an unlikely member to their Badass Hall of Fame:

A Sumerian godess, Ninkasi was a specialist god. She let other gods deal with the mundane shit like creating the world or healing the sick or governing the rains. Ninkasi got down to business, and her business was brewing. Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer.

He then goes into the Hymn of Ninkasi, which apparently doubles as a recipe for beer itself (paging Dogfish Head: I think you have a new candidate for your Ancient Ales series). The post also goes into the oft-repeated rumor of beer helping create civilization, a subject that is apparently gaining credibility (it's probably still wishful thinking, but whatever). In any case, here's to Ninkasi, the brewing god.

Update: Apparently there's a brewery called Ninkasi Brewing Company in Oregon. Go figure. Looks like they make some good stuff too, though I don't recall seeing any of them around here (they seem to be West Coast only at this point, and of course since I'm in PA, no shipping to me either).