Dear Pub Owners: PLEASE lower the price of beer. Something needs to be done to protect the sanctity of getting smashed in a bar! If there is no one around you physically, you are still drinking alone. Web friends don’t count.

Dear Poor People: Sell your laptop, then you will have enough money to go to the bar. Don’t use your financial situation to become a recluse.

The proper way to use Twitter to communicate about beer is to tweet things like “@francs, I’m over at St Louis grabbing some wings and a pitcher. You in?” or “I just ran into @darcievany who just ordered her 5th Mill Street Organic. Delicious!”

Post from: EveryJoe

You Can Never Take Away the Pub!

I love Wikipedia, but there’s actually an entry for this product in Wikipedia. Does that mean they have an employee whose job it is to create Wikipedia entries on every product ever made by Kraft? Or is someone really so enamored of a product whose claim to fame is having once been offered at Burger King that they feel the need to put it on Wikipedia?

The internet is a strange and wondrous place.

Post from: EveryJoe

A slight diversion

In case you’re looking for another reason to go organic when it comes to beer, consider this: additives in beers are not strictly regulated in all countries.

And when I say additives, I mean, oh, say, carcinogens.

The Chinese beer industry, one of the top beer producing countries in the world, was found to include formaldehyde in 95% of beers brewed in the country as recently as 1995. Yep, formaldehyde.

Chinese brewers verified that this was true but claimed that the additive “does not pose a threat to public safety,” according to Xiao Derun, director of the beer branch of the China Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association. The chemical is reportedly used because it is a cheap way of preventing sediment from forming during storage.

Later that same year, the Korea Food and Drug Administration said it had decided to test Chinese beer imports for formaldehyde before allowing them to clear customs. The Korean FDA tested 13 brands of Chinese beer and found average formaldehyde levels to be 0.132 parts per million, below the legal limit.

Yes, that means there is a standard in Chinese law that allows formaldehyde in beer. The law allows 2 milligrams per litre; and even “organic” Chinese beer may contain formaldehyde up to 0.2 milligrams per litre. The World Health Organization has a recommended maximum limit of .9 milligrams per litre; this means that Chinese laws allow for more than twice the recommended WHO limit.

Despite the claims from Xiao that their studies found “no domestic beer that exceeded the set limits”, the China Business Times reported that a 2002 survey of 19 domestic brands conducted by the National Food Quality Supervision and Inspection Centre found the average formaldehyde content to be 0.31 milligrams per litre, more than 50% in excess of the limits.

In response to consumer concerns, Chinese mega-brewers Tsingtao and Yanjin no longer use formaldehyde in their beer. What a relief.

Those that continue to put formaldehyde in beer insist that it’s safe. It is worth noting, however, that numerous studies have labeled formaldehyde as a carcinogen. Not that the spectre alone of getting cancer from beer isn’t enough to convince me to stick to the major Chinese breweries this day, but I just can’t shake the image of formaldehyde being used for embalming corpses (shudder). Pass me another Samuel Smith, please.

Post from: EveryJoe

What Else Is In Your Beer?

As I’ve mentioned, the story of Pennsylvania’s frontier (and that of much of the rest of the United States) is inextricably entwined with that of beer. Almost every town, camp, or outpost had some sort of plan for the provision of beer, much as they did for any other of life’s necessities.

We found an interesting example of this in a so-called “ghost town” in Pennsylvania’s Oil Country, a town once known by the unfortunate moniker of Pithole. Much of Pennsylvania’s history involves “firsts” which are later taken over in a big way somewhere else. Oil is no different, and shortly after the first oil well was built near Titusville, PA there was a Gold Rush of a different sort to the Northwestern woods of Pennsylvania as a host of hopefuls, ne’er-do-wells, and merchants hoping to supply both with goods and services sought their fortunes in oil.

Pithole was a town which was born and died with the supply of oil, building up to 15,000 inhabitants and a host of businesses, including banks, a post office, and some 57 hotels, before fading away in something less than 2 years. One of those businesses was the brewery of D Steadman (see above), located between 1st and 2nd streets on the other side of the river from the center of town.

It’s logical, of course, that beer would follow the men and women in search of riches and success. That the demand for beer would warrant an entire brewery for a relatively small town with an incredibly short life span shows how the development of the US has been driven by beer in a way which wine and other spirits could never hope to replicate.

photo by JCE

** Don’t forget to enter this month’s contest! Click here to find out how to win! **

(c) Brew Ha-Ha, 2008

Post from: EveryJoe

Ghost of a brewery

As travelers interested in brewing and the history of beer, we’re fortunate to see all of the new and exciting breweries springing up across the country. It’s a pretty good time for beer and brewing, as long as you’re brewing the good stuff, and it’s a really good time to be drinking.

Unfortunately, traveling also reminds the beer drinker that there has been a constant ebb and flow of small and medium sized breweries throughout the US, as technologies changed and demand shifted. I’ve already already posted on the demise of the DuBois Brewery some years ago, just as local brewing was beginning its long and arduous comeback. There are hundreds if not thousands of other breweries which have disappeared from consciousness, leaving little or no remnants of their existence. Sometimes the remnants remain even where the memory doesn’t.

The photo above shows the last remaining building of George Wurster’s Oil City Brewery, a once-large brewery located in Oil City, PA. It’s an interesting re-use, to say the least, but it just shows how the thread of brewing is woven throughout the fabric of our cities and towns, often in places you wouldn’t guess.

photo by JCE

** Don’t forget to enter this month’s contest! Click here to find out how to win! **

(c) Brew Ha-Ha, 2008

Post from: EveryJoe

There once was a brewery

As a woman, I’m always surprised that more women don’t drink beer. It’s not unusual for me to be the only beer drinker in the crowd. Case in point: over the weekend, I was in the minority as a woman at an Irish bar drinking pints of black and tan in the midst of girlfriends throwing back cocktails.

Of the 10.7 billion pints of beer sold in the UK annually, only 13% are drunk by women. This inequity is finally being addressed by Coors UK with a new business division codenamed “Eve.” The company is trying to woo women with more “girly” variants. Also on the company’s check list, touting the value of beer’s lower alcohol and calorie count compared to wine.

The British Beer & Pub Association has also jumped on the women should drink more beer bandwagon with its “Beautiful Beer” campaign. The BBPA is aiming to change the way that we think about beer by making it, well, pretty. Tops in the campaign are tulip-shaped glasses, which apparently make you feel more elegant whilst drinking a beer. Really? Cause I don’t get it.

The goal among various brewers and marketers is to change the appeal of beer by introducing it as a “lifestyle” product. It could actually work. Think about how cosmos a la Sex and the City revitalized the cocktail market – it wasn’t that the drink tasted any different, it was that our perception of the drink changed.

Personally, as a woman and a beer drinker, I love the idea. But is anyone else having difficulty *getting* that a company associated with the Coors twins is now reaching out to women?

Post from: EveryJoe

Will “Beautiful Beer” Entice Women to Drink?

Unfortunately, summer is the one time of year I have difficulty picking a beer. I know, I know, there are beers which are well suited to warm weather just as there are beers which are suited to cooler weather, and I’ve talked about those earlier this week. On a day with strong sunshine and temperatures in the 90s, I find picking a beer to be rather difficult. In fact, last weekend we were at a backyard barbecue and, although I brought beer, I didn’t drink any.

As an alternative, I will also sometimes indulge in *gasp* an alcohol-free beer. If you’re really in the mood for a beer, but can’t get past that strong afternoon sun, a Beck’s or Clausthaler alcohol-free might fill the bill.

Post from: EveryJoe

The beers of summer

You may have noticed that a lot of photos on this site come from Wikipedia. Now, Wikipedia is a great resource, and I’m happy to have it, but I thought it was time to start providing some of our own photos.

To that end, check out the brewha-ha flickr site. It’s clearly a work in progress, since it includes whatever beer-based photos I could scrounge off of my hard drive (sadly, much of my beer photography is on print film). Check back often for new and, hopefully, interesting photos reflecting the history and culture of beer.

image from me

Post from: EveryJoe

Smile and say “beer”

1. Augustiner Edelstoff (The best of the Munich lagers)

2. Spaten Helles (a good Munich lager which is more readily available in the US)

3. Gaffel Kölsch (it’s an ale, but a wonderful summer beer)

4. Erlanger Weißbier (hard to choose between this and Schneider, or Weihenstefan for that matter)

5. Pilsner Urquell (not what it was, but still a great beer)

Post from: EveryJoe

The beers of summer, imports

I sometimes won’t drink a beer in the summer, which I’ll elaborate on later. That said, often I will, so now I’ll give you a list of beers to check out if you’ve decided to have a few. Since I’ve been aiming to be more energy efficient in my beer choices, I’ll give a list of domestics today and a list of imports later this week. Not surprisingly, both lists are heavy on lager beers, and my US beer list is somewhat local as well.

1. Tröegs DreamWeaver Wheat Beer (a tasty Bavarian-style wheat)

2. Victory Lager (a good, solid beer)

3. Tröegs Sunshine Pils (another solid PA pils)

4. Dogfish Head 60 Minute Ale (a little heavy compared to the others, but always a good beer)

5. Straub’s (my domestic lawnmower beer of choice, although Yuengling Lager will also do)

What’s your favorite local summer brew?

image from me

Post from: EveryJoe

The beers of summer, domestic