THS 43: Blood Sweat & Beer!

Cask & Vine’s What’s On Tap: Alexis Irvin and Chip Hiden of Blood Sweat & Beer!

Blood, Sweat, and Beer is a feature documentary about the explosive growth of the craft beer industry and the dramatic journeys of two start-up breweries.

The film follows a trio of 23-year-olds as they struggle to start The Brew Gentlemen Beer Company in Braddock, PA. Matt, Asa, and Brandon hope their brewery will help this once-prosperous steel town bounce back from decades of neglect, violence, and population loss.

The film also tells the emotional story of Danny Robinson, a boardwalk brewery owner and restaurateur whose empire is threatened by an aggressive trademark lawsuit that could leave him penniless.

Four entrepreneurs, two brand new breweries, and one ultimate goal: to quench the thirst of the craft-craving masses.

Blood Sweat and Beer: Website | Facebook | Twitter | KickStarter

Bert’s Better Beers’ Draft Pick of the Week:

1. 10 Fidy by Oscar Blues Brewery

2. Focal Banger by The Alchemist

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Kettle to Keg’s In the Kettle: Planning Out Your Brews!

Ale Communications:

Blood, Sweat and Beer

A new documentary follows trials and tribulations in the craft beer industry.

What does it take to create—and keep—your own successful craft brewery?

More than a couple of tanks and a handful of hops, that’s for sure.

Filmmakers and craft beer fans Chip Hiden and Alexis Irvin started filming interviews in May of 2014, amassing footage of an interview list that reads like the “Who’s Who” of the craft beer industry. However, what started as a story about the continued rise of craft beer soon became more about the people behind the brews in the documentary film “Blood, Sweat and Beer,” currently in production.

Take, for example, Danny Robinson, located in Ocean City, MD, owner and brewer at what started as Shorebilly Brewing Co., now known as Backshore Brewing Co.

“We were instantly struck by his enthusiasm, his passion,” says Alexis Irvin, one of the filmmakers. “He was very candid and open and it’s a great story: following a startup in the first year of business.” READ MORE

Can beer be made like your coffee? New product tries hops via barista

Adding flavour to beer after its been bottled or put in a keg has never been all that successful, but it’s never stopped people from trying.

Exposing brewed beer to yet more hops (the little leaves that add aroma and fruity flavours) is the most commonly proposed method of doing this, but due to the number of chemical difficulties of executing this process it’s never really caught on.

English company Cambridge Consultants have created a unique-looking, barista-style beer tap that they’ve called ‘Hoppier‘.

The goal of the contraption is to filter freshly poured ale through a portafilter. I didn’t know what that was either – picture the coffee-ground laden arm on an espresso machine, but full of fresh hops and on the end of a beer tap. READ MORE

Bud Crowded Out by Craft Beer Craze

Faded Beer Brand Unhitches Clydesdales in Favor of Fresher Pitches to Young People

GREENSBORO, N.C.—The wall behind the bar at Jake’s Billiards has 69 taps offering beer choices that range from California’s Lagunitas Fusion 22 to Natty Greene ’s Buckshot, which is brewed across town. The last tap in the long row belongs to Budweiser, and it is about to be removed.

A Halloween promotion earned Budweiser a place at the bar, a hot spot frequented by students and recent graduates of the University of North Carolina here, but owner Jessica Dewey sees no reason to keep Bud on tap. She sells 20 cases of Bud bottles each week, “but it’s mostly to older gentlemen and country kids. Our clientele likes the craft beers.”

The self-proclaimed King of Beers is more of an afterthought among young consumers at Jake’s and bars across the U.S.: Some 44% of 21- to 27-year-old drinkers today have never tried Budweiser, according to the brand’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev NV.

Young drinkers aren’t the reason Budweiser volumes have declined in the U.S. for 25 years, from its nearly 50-million-barrel peak in 1988 to 16 million barrels last year. Light beers like its sister, Bud Light, have chipped away at Bud’s share of the market for decades. Bud Light overtook it as the No. 1 selling beer in 2001, and Coors Light displaced it as No. 2 in 2011. READ MORE

Quirky brewers set to open ‘eclectic’ nanobrewery in Concord

 By NICK REID Monitor staff

To get a feel for what the Area 23 nanobrewery coming to Concord will be like, you needn’t look further than its name.

If you ask Kevin Bloom, one of the co-owners, why it’s Area 23, he gives you his reason.

“We took Area 51, (defunct New England discount store) Building 19½, divided by pi and rounded to the nearest whole number,” he explained.

Ask the other co-owner, Kirk McNeil, and he’ll give you a different reason.

“That’s the number of Monty Python sketches I can remember off the top of my head,” he said.

Or they just like the number 23. Or they’re paying homage to a famous old Manchester speakeasy by the same name. Is that true? Was that a real place?

“Sure,” Bloom says, smiling wryly through his purposely lopsided moustache. “They’re all true.”

Suffice to say, the tenants of section H of the Smokestack Center will be bringing over the next few months something unique to the state’s capital. McNeil says the atmosphere should be described as “eclectic” – Bloom says it will be a mix of nitrogen and oxygen.

“We’re thinking Hunter S. Thompson posters, hanging bats,” Bloom said.

“We’re gonna hang stuff from the ceiling. It will include bats. It’ll probably also include some model airplanes and flags and stuff like that,” McNeil added. READ MORE

Why Humans Drink Alcohol: It’s Evolution, Plus Bad Fruit

Human ancestors may have begun evolving the knack for consuming alcohol about 10 million years ago, long before modern humans began brewing booze, researchers say.

The ability to break down alcohol probably helped human ancestors make the most out of rotting, fermented fruit that fell onto the forest floor, the researchers said. Therefore, knowing when this ability developed could help researchers figure out when these human ancestors began moving to life on the ground, as opposed to mostly in trees.

Jukebox: “Reindeer” by Litherman’s Load

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