Craft Beer Week is May 17-23

American Craft Beer Week is May 17-23, 2010.  So this week, when you have a beer, enjoy one from one of America’s craft brewers!

Some of the Iowa brewers to enjoy this week (and some of my favorites):

Enjoy Craft Beer Week!

Grilling and Beer

Over the weekend, our close friends, for our wedding, chipped in to get my fiance and I a really nice gas grill.

Where am I going with this?  Well, the Iowa Wine and Beer Promotion Board recently posted some summer grilling recipes that I plan on taking advantage of with the new grilling setup.

I am especially looking forward to the BBQ Sauce using Millstream Brewing’s Windmill Wheat Beer.  Do you have any good beer and grilling recipes?  I’d love to hear about them!

Millstream to Begin Brewing High Proof Beer

Just found out from The Full Pint that Millstream Brewing will be brewing their first high proof beer (thanks to SF 2088) next week.  According to the website, it will be a 8% Weizenbock (a dark wheat beer). They mentioned most will be kegged, but also left open the possibility that a limited quantity of 22 oz. bombers will be available.  They anticipate it should be done sometime in June.

Also mentioned was that Millstream hopes to bring out 4 different high proof beers this year, and will allow customers to choose which one will go into regular production.

Support Your Local Brewer – Support HR 4278

US Capitol
H.R. 4278 Would Help Small Brewers

In an effort to improve the small brewer business community, in December 2009, Democrat Representative Richie Neal (MA) and Republican Representative Kevin Brady (TX) introduced H.R. 4278, decreasing the excise tax for brewers producing smaller amounts of beer.  This would give smaller brewers and brewpubs a tax break, up to a specific amount of beer produced.  The current excise tax law was put in place in the 70’s and has not been updated since then, even though the national production of beer has more than doubled and the number of small producers has increased exponentially.  In addition, this may allow the initiation and growth of start-up breweries, providing more selection.  The new proposed tax breakdown would be:

  • The first 60,000 barrels would have the tax reduced from $7 to $3.50 per barrel
  • Tax on production between 60,001 and 2 million barrels would change from $18 to $16
  • The current $18 tax would remain for more than 2 million barrels produced in a year

As you can see, this helps small brewers the most, allowing many smaller brewers and brewpubs, including Old Capitol Brew Works in Iowa City, Great River Brewery in Davenport, and Millstream Brewing Co. in Amana, to save money on these taxes.

This bill was brought to my attention by Charlie Papazian, president of the Brewers Association of America.  In his article, Charlie Papazian discusses many advantages of the proposed legislation, with the largest advantage being creation of jobs at the thousands of small breweries and brewpubs across the country.

The Brewers Association has built a resource page to list details of H.R. 4278, as well as the bill’s current co-sponsors, which has had the number almost double within the past two weeks.

So, support your local breweries and brewpubs by contacting your representative and either thanking them for the support, or encouraging them to co-sponsor the bill!

John’s Generation White’s Split Personality

I recently picked up a keg of John’s White Ale and while we were loading it into my car, the fellow helping me mentioned something I hadn’t thought about before.

He asked me if I had tried the kegged and bottled John’s White side-by-side before.  He said they were completely different beers because the beer in the keg had no oxygen permeation and was much more orange-y citrusy and the bottled version.  On the other hand, the bottled version was more spicy because the bottle cap allows oxygen into the bottle,and the oxygen works with the yeast to produce a completely different beer.

I had seen this before in terms of carbonation, etc. but not to this extent.  I tried it, and sure enough, he was right, and I was amazed.

Do you have any experience where two different packaging techniques create two different beers?