Beer News Blog

Now that the cobwebs are gone from the celebratory hangovers that struck St. Patrick’s Day revelers the morning of March 18th, it’s time to reflect on Ireland’s deepening national tragedy. No, not the well-known “Troubles”, but something that hits even closer to home here in America.

The beverage most associated with Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day—and by that I mean Guinness Stout—is suffering steeply declining sales in its homeland.

Completely unthinkable! Totally unacceptable!

Imagine milk declining in popularity in Wisconsin, or Budweiser losing ground in
St. Louis. We’d be calling out the National Guard.

But it’s true. According to reports, the 7% decline in Guinness sales between 2005 and 2006 is due to several factors.

One, a switch to wine, is a shocker in Ireland, the veritable homeland of stout and Irish whisky. Another, equally stunning, is a thirst for imported beer, mainly from other European countries. In addition, younger, less patient drinkers are going for instant gratification, ordering easier to appreciate stuff like lagers, ciders, and spirits.

But the final blow, undermining our entire perception of Old Country life, is that growing numbers of Ireland’s young—and it’s newly-arrived immigrants—are unwilling to wait the extra minute or two for the perfect Guinness to be drawn. Now THAT hurts!

There is hope, however. Diageo, the parent of Guinness, reports that sales are cruising along very well outside Ireland, especially North America and West Africa. In North America, Guinness is associated with chest-thumping manliness. In West Africa it’s apparently well know to enhance male prowess.

The Guinness people have so far refused to comment on that last one.

This weblog is always bringing you important news about beer…we recently revealed that a cattle farmer in England has begun to serve beer to his cattle hoping to create a more “Kobe-style” beef. That and the daily massages, it is hoped, will produce a more tender and higher-priced product. I even connected that with the “Happy Cows” featured in California’s cheese marketing campaign, suggesting they could be even more content with a liberal allowance of beer.

I never though the twain would meet, but they have. Now, in an incredible twist to the bovine-beer connection, an enterprising Japanese brewer has teamed up with a local dairy farmer who has surplus milk on his hands (so to speak) and now includes milk as a principal ingredient in one its beer offerings.

Milk has never figured very large in the Japanese diet, so that may explain the excess milk supply.

Beer, however, has long been important to Japan’s culture. The beer industry and the banking industry have been partners for a long time. Beer and sake are the national beverages of Japan.

So, it’s all too true—the Abashiri Brewery on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido has begun production of “Bilk”, a name not calculated to generate much sales here in the States. It’s hoped Bilk’s flavor (described as “fruity”) will appeal to women. Since one-third of the beer is milk, will Japanese mothers decide it’s OK to give it to their growing children? That’d give it some market penetration potential.

As only 6 stores are offering it and they are all in the same town, it’ll take a trip to Japan taste it.

I’ll see you in Nakashibetsu, Hokkaido!

This may be my favorite beer story of all time. I’m so proud of this guy that I wanted to be sure all Duke University donors got a chance to see the kind of “outside-the-fridge” thinking a Duke education can provide.

Heart-lung machines, lunar modules, the internet…these things are Tinkertoys! A Duke University student has made one of the most important cultural contributions in human history.

Duke student John W. Cornwell has invented something long-needed and surely to be copied—a beer-can catapult that can pitch you a cold one from across the room, sparing you the effort of rising, going to the fridge and missing even one precious second of a televised Blue Devils’ basketball game.

The video that appears on the following link will show you one of the world’s ultimate inventions. Pay close attention to the trial accuracy test. It’s phenomenal! Even better than Duke’s best free-throw shooter ever. I’m not going to comment further—the video speaks for itself.

Cut and paste this one into your browser window for an eye-popping experience. Here it is: http://www.duke.edu/~jwc13/beerlauncher.html

CONTENTED COWS

We’ve all been enjoying the California cheese commercials that are featuring talking cows in warm green California pastures. They’re happy because they run free in the sun and have impossibly green grass to chew. Some have come from cold snowy places where they were apparently miserable, so miserable they won’t even talk about it. Being cold results in unhappy cows, apparently producing inferior cheese. So the warmth of California pastures results in superior cheese. Got it? Happier cows – tastier cheese.

This is important to us because beer and cheese go so well together, a natural pairing even better than wine and cheese. Contemplate if you will for a moment a nice savory chunk of Maytag Bleu washed down with some of Fritz’s Anchor Steam Beer.

The farmers of Britain have begun to appreciate California’s marketing efforts and the British counterattack has begun.

But not the way you might expect. The English are focusing their attack on the Kobe beef farmers of Japan with the stirring battle cry, “We’ll show you happy cows!”.

Cornish farmer Darren Pluess seems to have found a way to keep his cows happy even during his cold English winter. If you’re jumping ahead of me and thinking beer somehow figures in farmer Pleuss’s plans, you, like the contented cows of California, are getting warm. Following one of this column’s most cherished themes—animals and beer—after pigs, camels, elephants, chimpanzees, etc., we are now reporting on beer-drinking cows.

Farmer Pleuss has begun to feed his Kobe-style cattle up to 40 pints of beer a day. That, combined with the daily massages that are the hallmark of Kobe beef, and I think California’s sunny green pastures have been trumped. I’m pretty sure if I had to choose between sweating in the hot sun chewing grass or drinking 40 pints of beer I’d likely go with the beer.

According to the BBC, Pleuss states that the cattle are not harmed by the diet. That may not be of great concern, considering what is going to eventually happen to these five blissed-out Limousin cattle.

Pleuss’s wife Katy notes that Saturday night can get a little rowdy if they happen to run out of beer. When the beer is finally delivered, the cattle get “excited”. Pleuss added, “They are completely happy and they do like drinking beer.” What a surprise!

Now if you’ll just pass me that big ol’ juicy Kobe-style beef hamburger and re-fill my pint of bitters, I’ll be quiet. And content.

First there was the story about beer and elephants, then about camels, then about pigs, then about bears, and now finally one about dogs.

Yes, the story about mad elephants on the rampage, tearing down grass shacks in India to get at the locals home-brew was wild, and the one about the camel eating the cake and drinking all the beer at a Middle Eastern wedding was strange, the piece about the beer-swilling pigs at the Australian pub was a howl, and the one about the bear breaking into a cabin and smashing open a few dozen cans of beer and drinking the contents (the owners returned home to find the beer passed out—stay away from a hungover bear, baby!) was funny, but now man’s best friend gets in on the act.

Dutch pet shop owner Terry Berenden has decided that her tired hunting dogs should get a refreshing cold one after turning in a good hunt, just like their master. As she sat on the veranda of an Austrian hunting lodge sipping one with her fellow hunters, she realized her Weimaraners deserved to unwind a little bit, too.

Now, it’s clear that drunk elephants, drunk pigs, drunk camels and drunk bears could be a problem. But imagine intoxicated pit bulls, running free in the streets. Happy drunks we’d hope, but one sure way to keep them and the humans around safe is to remove the alcohol. So the pooches are getting a canine form of O’Doul’s…non-alcoholic brew. Maybe it should be called “O’Dogs”, but it’s actually on the market as “Kwispel”—in Dutch, it means “Wagging the Tail”.

It’s made by a Dutch brewery from beef extract and malt. How does it taste? Don’t know yet, but it’s fit for humans, of course, if they want to shell out $2.14 for a bottle.