Top 5 Craft Beer Headlines: A Week In Review
At Craft Beverage Jobs, we spend many hours each week researching current events within the craft beer industry. News about industry growth, new business, job openings and personal profiles helps keep us up to date on what’s happening in craft beer across the world.
At the end of each week, that adds up to a lot of information. So, we thought we would share with you our picks for the Top 5 Craft Beer Headlines from each week! Here is Craft Beer Headlines: A Week In Review.
1. Minor In Craft Beer!
Hey, College Kids: You Really Can Minor In Craft Beer Studies, by David Sommerstein – NPR/The Salt
I minored in beer studies.
Joe Conto/Courtesy Paul Smith’s College
Paul Smith’s College, a small, isolated campus in the northernmost reaches of upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains, is among a handful of higher education institutions tapping the ever more potent keg of the craft beer explosion.
Paul Smith’s is offering a new minor degree in “craft beer studies and operations.” Twenty-five students are signed up for the major’s first suds-specific class next month, with another 25 on the waiting list. It’s a three-credit course in brewing, replete with labs and lectures.
Paul Smith’s isn’t the only college to offer coursework in beer studies. Hard-core brewers-to-be can attend the Siebel Institute’s Master Brewer program in Chicago, orOregon State University’s four-year program in fermentation science. Central Washington University, the University of California, Davis and UC San Diego also have programs of varying lengths.
Craft beer has become a substantial industry, with sales up almost 20 percent over last year, employing well over 100,000 people. According to the Brewers Association, the number of craft breweries in the U.S. has doubled to more than 3,000 over the past decade.
San Diego State University
Students brew craft beer future, by Anthony Berteaux – The Daily Aztec
To beer or not to beer? That is the question for many students figuring out their class schedules for the spring semester. However, we’re not talking about chugging Coors Lights over the weekend. We’re talking craft beer: A brewing art form that holds a legitimate place in the academia at San Diego State. The College of Extended Studies is host to a professional certificate program in craft beer that offers more than six academic courses ranging from marketing craft beer and craft beer food pairing, to the art of craft beer for any interested students. The program’s versatile coursework covers a wide range of topics by enticing students to explore different craft beer styles, trends, business practices and the future of this blooming industry.
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2. 300 Year Old Beer Recipe
Virginia brewery taps 300-year-old beer recipe, by Michael Felberbaum – Yahoo News
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — What do you get when you combine water, American persimmons and hops and ferment it with yeast? A beer based on a 300-year-old recipe scribbled in a cookbook kept by Virginia’s prominent Randolph family.
Ardent Craft Ales in Richmond recently brewed “Jane’s Percimon Beer” unearthed from the book in the Virginia Historical Society’s collections from the 1700s that contains food, medicinal remedies and beer recipes. The formula for the Colonial-era concoction is one of thousands of alcoholic recipes in the society’s collection that provide a glimpse into what Virginians and others were drinking in the 18th century and other points in history.
You can feel a connection across time when you’re drinking something that maybe hasn’t been drunk for a couple hundred years – Paul Levengood, Virginia Historical Society
3. Buffalo Celebrates Craft Legislation
Craft brewers toast new law, by Emma Sapong – The Buffalo News
Founding partner Tim Herzog, right, with beer sampler Ron Raymond, left, and assistant brewer Paul Jackson, center, sample a “flight,” of beers, Flying Bison Brewery in Larkinville. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)
It’s very much a game changer for us. It does a whole bunch of good things. – Tim Herzog, founder of Flying Bison Brewing Co.
Western New Yorkers are taking a shine to locally made, flavorful beers.
There are now more Buffalo craft breweries – once a vibrant part of the 19th century, before nearly disappearing a century later – than at any time since shortly after Prohibition.
These breweries, and a nascent industry to support them, are popping up in Buffalo, as well as in places like Hamburg, Barker and Batavia. The craft beer culture is bringing young adults and others into rehabbed industrial buildings for brews that bear little resemblance to formula drinks made by large corporations.
That popularity is also being driven, brewers say, by the broader farm-to-table movement craft beer is now a part of.
The movement also is benefitting from a state law enacted Nov. 13. The legislation removed and reduced fees and regulations to the benefit of small brewers, as well as the emerging homegrown distillery industry making wine and spirits.
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4. Top Holiday Party Craft Beer Variety Packs
5 Craft Beer Variety Packs To Liven Up Any Holiday Party, by Jason Notte – Main St.
One of the beer industry’s finest holiday traditions, especially among its established smaller brewers, is offering a cost-effective 12-pack of seasonal varieties just as shoppers stock up for holiday parties. It creates a nice holiday shelf display and some added interest for breweries during what is typically their low season, and it offers buyers some options for guests who might be lukewarm on a whole lot of any one particular beer. As a gateway to company’s beer, however, it’s also fairly cheap.
The variety pack is a relative steal by comparison, and the whole industry knows it. It’s why Saranac, Magic Hat, Harpoon, Summit, Pyramid, Blue Point, New Belgium and the Craft Brew Alliance – with holiday beers from its Widmer Brothers, Redhook and Kona brands – and a whole bunch of other breweries will offer them up for between $14 and $20 this year. It’s also why big brewers wanting a piece of small brewers’ holiday fun have begun brewing up 12-packs of their own.
5. Berkeley: Sour Beer Mecca?
Rare Barrel in Berkeley finds craft beer success in all-sour lineup, by Blair Anthony Robertson – Beer Run / The Sacramento Bee
Last week, two of my drinking buddies joined me for a quick trip to Berkeley to visitThe Rare Barrel, which just celebrated its first anniversary.
The Rare Barrel / Bee Staff
Young as it is, it has already become renowned for absolutely killing it with an all-sour lineup. It won a gold medal at the prestigious Great American Beer Festival and another gold (and a bronze) at the World Beer Cup, where it competed against 1,403 breweries from 58 countries.
The lineup at the taproom changes frequently, and there is usually one beer available for growler fills, so it’s best to talk about the drinking experience in general rather than specific beers. With barrel aging and souring, you get something that is different from any other beverage you can imagine. The beers are neither hoppy nor malty. There can be berry notes on the front of the palate. It can be very tart or oh-so-smooth with a lingering sour finish and a balanced acidity. There can be a touch of sweetness. It can finish clean and dry or it can linger with an appealing aftertaste.
With making sour beer, it is a real blend of art and science. We’ll start out intending to make something, but once you get a couple of months in, the beer takes a certain direction. Then we’ll work with it and let the beer speak to us and tell us what the next direction is.
Craft Beer Headlines Each Saturday Morning!
This is an article for the Craft Beer Geek! You know who you are! Craft Beer Headlines: A Week In Review, will be a weekly article published each Saturday morning. So, come back each Saturday when we highlight another Top 5 Headlines in the world of Craft Beer.
Beer, its the best damn drink in the world – Jack Nicholson