Drunken Crayfish

Brewery fuels Austrian football team with promise of free beer

Seeking to motivate the Austrian Euro 2008 team, a brewing company promised free beer for life to any player who scores a goal in the upcoming matches against Poland or Germany.

“After losing the game against Croatia, we thought about what we could do to help,” Sigi Menz, head of the Ottakringer brewery in Vienna, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Tuesday.

Any Austrian who scores in the group B games against Poland on June 12 or against Germany on June 16 will receive 108 litres of beer every year for the rest of his life, which amounts to the average annual Austrian consumption, he said.

Chocolate’s sweet secrets

Studying microstructural changes in chocolate could help confectioners stop that seductive shiny surface from turning an unappetising dull grey in poorly stored bars and boxes.

Chemists in Sweden and Canada have used environmental scanning electron microscopy to examine how filled and plain chocolates develop fat bloom – the unappealing dull grey coating that can develop on the surface of hoarded Easter eggs, boxes of pralines and other chocolate treats. Dérick Rousseau at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, says that understanding chocolate microstructure could reveal ways to control fat bloom.

Fat bloom forms on chocolate when tiny temperature fluctuations as small as +/- 2 °C cause cocoa butter crystals to melt and then recrystallise, forming large needle-like structures that scatter light giving a dull appearance. ‘Temperature fluctuations are the death knell of chocolate – and once it leaves the factory floor, there’s no way for companies to control it,’ says Rousseau.

To get an insight into the way the bloom formed, Rousseau, along with Paul Smith at the Institute for Surface Chemistry in Stockholm, Sweden, studied chocolate structure as it aged. ‘We found that the chocolate surface was very heterogenous – and that bloom crystals only grew from specific points on the surface,’ says Rousseau. So controlling chocolate making to minimise surface imperfections could be a good way to control bloom, he adds.

“Controlling chocolate making to minimise surface imperfections could be a good way to control bloom” – Dérick Rousseau The team also looked at filled chocolates, and found that liquid-state fat from the filling migrates through the chocolate, accelerating bloom formation and ultimately making the chocolate very soft.

‘This is certainly a problem that haunts the whole chocolate industry,’ says Nigel Sanders, senior research scientist at Cadbury in Toronto, Canada, who adds that Rousseau’s study confirms ‘quite a few of the mishmash of ideas others have had regarding bloom formation’.

‘As an industry, we haven’t got to the bottom of what tools we have to stop bloom formation from happening,’ adds Sanders. ‘Companies as large as Cadbury do their own research – but that never gets published, so it’s nice to see an academic study that helps the whole industry, and isn’t just for the big boys.’

Do you know that? Struise bottles its liquid art for the global market

Tens of thousands of beer reviewers around the world, many having tasted over 1000 beers, have chosen the best brewer in the world — and that brewer is Struise of Woesten-Vleteren, Belgium.

Struise however doesn’t have a brewery. And they’re not professional brewers either. The Belgian brewing team of Carlo, Peter, Phil and Urbain, does its brewing in its spare time away from working their day jobs. They have a relationship with a brewery in Woesten-Vleteren, Belgium — not far from the former world champion brewers at Westvleteren Abbey — where they bring in their own ingredients and brew on their own equipment.

The result has unequivocally been nothing short of world class. ?Not being a commercial brewery that needs to turn over product in order to stay alive means that we can wait until our beers are perfect before releasing them,? explains Carlo. This means their distributors in Europe, American and Japan, are patient. And their consumers are just as patient. It’s not uncommon to get your Struise after sitting on a waiting list at a mail order beer shop.

Selling their beer overseas is critical to Struise’s success. Urbain explains, ?We have found Belgium to be a very traditional and difficult market. The majority of Belgian beer consumers drink the usual industrial stuff from big breweries. A smaller percentage will experiment with the better Belgian ale styles and trappists. Even there, there’s almost no room for innovation.?

Struise is all about innovation. They tapped into the online beer scene many years ago and, unlike most other European brewers, have used internet resources to experience beer from around the world, most notably from the United States and Denmark. They’ve created a unique style of beer making, harmonizing popular styles from around the world with their own pure invention.

So what’s it taste like? You can read the reviews at RateBeer.com but a short preview: Their gigantic Imperial Stout, Black Albert, weighs in at a monster 13% and hammers notes of dark chocolate and plums. Struise Pannepot Grand Reserva Oak Aged matured ten months in Calvados oak barrels. Their ruby-colored Earthmonk is wine-like and tart.

More At RateBeer
RateBeer.com tabulates a list of the best things in beer annually in what is the world’s largest beer competition, RateBeer Best. RateBeer has assembled more than 1.4 million beer ratings from tens of thousands of reviewers around the world. Unlike most beer competitions, the amateur judges rate commercial samples, often consumed entirely ? not just little sips shot into a spittoon.

Patriotic tastes

Europeans are patriotic when it comes to enjoying beer ? 45% of Europeans prefer beer brewed in their own country and only 17% preferred imported beer.

• Czech Republic is the most patriotic with 91% preferring beers brewed in their own country
• Followed by Belgium (81%) and Germany (79%)
• Sweden is least patriotic with only 18% preferring beers brewed in thei own country
• Followed by Italy (19%) and France (20%)
• Patriotism definitely increases with age ? 40% of 18-24 yr olds prefer local beers, rising steadily across age groups to 49% of 40-60 yr olds.

Price of beer rising, glasses getting smaller

The cost of beer is rising and the size of the glasses at area bars and restaurants may be shrinking. Patrons at local establishments may soon be paying more money for less beer without even knowing it.

A pint glass generally holds 16 ounces. But Sessions Restaurant Supply recently had to start carrying 14 ounce beer glasses that look nearly identical to the 16 ouncers.

Samantha Marquis with the store says, ?Enough people asked where we began to stock it.?

Beer drinker Briana Taylor said of the smaller glasses, ?Only showing them side-by-side would I be able to tell the difference. If you just put the smaller one in front of me, I would never know.?

Bar owner Donna Wideman says you can tell the difference between the “pints” by checking the bottom of the glass: the 14 ouncer is thicker at the bottom.

German-style kölsch is an ideal summer beer

Clear quality: Golden-hued with aromatic hints of fruit, kölsch beers have a clean taste that won?t overpower. At last, American pubs and breweries are taking note of this delicate, light-bodied brew long favored in the ancient city of Cologne.

The general public may scarcely have heard of it yet, but kölsch, one of the great summer beers, is definitely a coming style. American craft brewers are getting into it — at least 30 of them already brew a kölsch, though not all call it by that name. But if it weren’t for our craft breweries, we’d have very little chance indeed to taste this style of beer, because German examples are rarely exported.

It’s the home-town beer style of the ancient German city of Köln (otherwise known as Cologne), which has more breweries than any other city in the world. Köln is very proud of kölsch, which it claims has been made there since 1300, and strictly protects the name. Only breweries in the city’s immediate vicinity are legally entitled to call their product kölsch.

What is this rare beer like? It’s generally the brassy gold of a highly polished tuba, a little lighter in color than a Pilsener, but it’s classed as an ale, rather than a lager, because it’s fermented at a warm temperature, giving it some of the fruity-floral aromas we associate with ale. So it’s a delicate, in-between style, clean-tasting like a lager but a little more aromatic, often with a fresh note of brew house yeastiness.

“It’s fermented like an ale at around 70 degrees, then it’s cold conditioned and becomes almost lager-like, so it’s really more a true hybrid,” explains Yuseff Cherney, head brewer at Ballast Point Brewing in San Diego. “It’s what makes it such a drinkable beer that still has good flavor.”

It’s rather low in malt, so its head of foam tends to dissipate rapidly, and it’s also less bitter than most lagers. The combination of clean flavor, sweet nose and gentle palate makes kölsch an easy-to-drink “session” beer. More to the point at this season of the year, it’s a fine thirst-quencher.

“It almost has a wine quality, with subtle layers of flavor,” explains Christina Perozzi, a Los Angeles-area restaurant beer consultant who recently added kölsch to the summer beer menu at Rustic Canyon in Santa Monica. “But because it’s a lighter style, you get that flavor without the heaviness of some beers.”

The people of Cologne certainly quaff it in quantity. In their bars, the beer is poured from wooden casks into stylish-looking glasses, tall, narrow and perfectly cylindrical, known as stangen (poles).

Nobody insists that a stange is the only suitable kind of glass for drinking kölsch. It’s just an efficient way to move a lot of suds, because its small footprint allows a waiter to haul a dozen or more beers around at a time. The stangen fit neatly into holes in a special circular tray called a kranz (wreath), which the waiter carries by a handle sticking out of the center.

We don’t need any of this folderol, though. We’ve got pools, lawns and shady porches with a fridge or an ice bucket nearby. If we try, we should be able to kölsch with the best of them.

The most widely available authentic version in Southern California is Reissdorf, a light, grassy kölsch made by the largest brewer in Cologne. It’s available at several local retailers and a few bars around town. Rustic Canyon stocks it during the summer, and in Pasadena, Lucky Baldwin?s co-owner David Farnworth says he typically orders it for Oktoberfest (and occasionally gets lucky with a keg), when the weather’s still plenty warm.

Bar adapts to smoking ban by adding beer garden

Brian Hughes calls Iowa’s looming smoking ban a disaster — but the bar owner says it’s one he can avoid.

Not by some legal remedy, mind you. Hughes who owns Volume, a bar-nightclub in Cedar Rapids, will blast a 12-foot-wide, 9-foot-tall hole in his club’s back wall, which will lead out to what he said will be downtown’s first outdoor beer garden.

He hopes to have his new creation in place by the time the ban takes effect on July 1.

“It will be the only place (bar-nightclub) in downtown where you will be able to stand with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other,” he said.

Without his proposed 900-square-foot beer garden, which will have a metal roof, 8-foot fencing and the nightclub feel, Hughes said, his smoking patrons would have to flee out front along downtown streets to smoke.

“Come July 1, I guarantee you there will be crowds of smokers out front of every bar,” he said. “And that’s just not a very safe place for people to be after they’ve been drinking.”

“It’s going to be a big problem for the police,” he said. “It’s going to be a disaster.”

Hughes’ beer garden will have security people and bartenders in place to look out for smoking customers. Bouncers are in bars to care for people, not just to break up fights, he said.

Hughes owns another bar, in nearby Marion, called Wrigleyville, which he says long has had an outdoor deck where patrons can drink and smoke.

Other taverns in the metro area are similarly situated, he said, but he knows of no other such bars or clubs in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Creating a beer garden will require conditional use approval from City Hall, but it has cleared a key hurdle after the City Planning Commission recommended approval this week.

The Board of Adjustment will have the final say later this month.

Hughes said his beer garden will have its own bar, speakers to deliver music being played inside and a venting system to keep smoke out of the club.

Hughes said he has read about gimmicks by others who have talked about turning bars into private clubs to try to get around the ban.

“I’m not trying to pull anything over on anybody,” he said. “I’m just trying to give somebody who wants to smoke a safe place to be.”

Do you know that? Toernichoise Fume is a beer brewed by Millevertus sprl Brasserie Artisanale de Toernich.

Toernichoise fume is the beer with the village brewery?s name and is exceptional. The first production of the Smoked Toernichoise has many nicknames (ham juice, horrible thing,, the second and third ones, lighter with smoke taste only met a lukewarm success, the next evolution has just been ordered by a café in Roma, and the last production is in refermentation.

Millevertus is the only brewery in Belgium to do it and in fact this taste does not please yet the average belgian drinker. For your guide, Rauch bier in the Bamberg area (Germany) has the equivalent success there than Orval in our region. Their smoked malt is quite different from our belgian one (lighter) but we are confident that the recipe evolution will soon give us a unique beverage good enough to drink too and which will assume Toernich (cradle of Mllevertus) as a name in beer world.

Japanese plan to brew ‘space beer’

Researchers said the project was part of efforts to prepare for a future in which humans spend extended periods of time in space — and might like a cold beer after a space walk.

Japanese brewery Sapporo Holdings said it would make beer using the third generation of barley grains that had spent five months on the International Space Station in 2006.

“We want to finish the beer by November. It will be the first space beer,” Sapporo executive Junichi Ichikawa told reporters.

The company will have enough space grain to produce about 100 bottles of beer but has no immediate plan to make it a commercial venture, Sapporo officials said.

The company teamed up on the project with Okayama University biologist Manabu Sugimoto, who has been part of a Russian space project to explore ways to grow edible plants in space.

Barley can grow in relatively tough environments, such as high and low temperatures, and is rich in fibre and nutrients, making it ideal for space agriculture, the associate professor said.

“In the future, we may reach a point where humans will spend an extended period of time in space and must grow food to sustain ourselves,” Sugimoto said.

As of now, scientists have not detected any differences between Earth-grown and space barley, said Sugimoto, who will present DNA analysis of his findings before a conference in Canada in July.

“In the long run, we hope our space research will be not just about producing food, but about enjoying food and relaxing,” Sugimoto said.

It was the latest space experiment with food.

South Korea’s first astronaut, Yi So-Yeon, brought kimchi into space last month, while Japan has previously sent noodles into orbit.

Survey claims heavy drinkers prefer beer

A new survey shows beer is the alcoholic drink of choice for heavy drinkers.

The study says beer accounts for three-quarters of the alcoholic drinks consumed by people who have more than 100 drinks per month.

The survey has been released by the Distilled Spirits Industry Council, which is using the figures to argue against the need for higher taxes on pre-mixed spirit-based drinks.

The Federal Government recently increased taxes in an attempt to reduce binge drinking, especially amongst teenage girls.

First ‘carbon neutral’ beer available on draught

Adnams’ environmentally friendly beer East Green is available in cask form in pubs.

This move follows the launch of bottles of the drink in the off-trade in April.

Rob Flanagan, Adnams sales director, said: ?This is undoubtedly our most successful beer launch to date. The draught version is even more environmentally efficient because it is packed in casks rather than bottles.

?We know that there is a growing demand for ethical products and we believe that our commitment to reducing our environmental impact and in particular, East Green is exactly what our customers are looking for.?

The beer is brewed in Adnams? eco brewery, designed to recycle 100 per cent of the steam created during brewing which is then used it to heat 90 per cent of the next brew.

It is made with Suffolk-grown high-yielding barley to keep food miles down and Boadicea hops, which are naturally aphid-resistant so reduce the pesticide use.

Adnams collaborated with the University of East Anglia?s carbon reduction CRed team to make the brew.

Dr Simon Gerrard, manager of the CRed programme, said: “The carbon lifecycle assessment from farm to delivery helps Adnams target key elements in the process and reduce the emissions of the overall product. As consumers become more carbon literate, so the requirement for authoritative and independent information becomes more important.”

Chocolate’s secret health benefits

Remember that scene in the Woody Allen movie Sleeper in which Woody, who has been frozen for 200 years, wakes up to find that chocolate and banana cream pie are now health foods? Well, it’s not so far-fetched.

Chocolate is chock full of potent antioxidants called phenols, the same as those found in wine. In fact, a 1.5-ounce chocolate bar has as much antioxidant power as a 5-ounce glass of red wine. (White chocolate, which doesn’t contain any cocoa solids, doesn’t count.) And contrary to popular belief, chocolate contains only a very small amount of caffeine.

More good news: One-third of the fat in chocolate is a cholesterol-friendly fat called stearic acid, and another third is an unsaturated fat called oleic acid. When Pennsylvania researchers (including some from the Mars candy company) had 23 people follow either the average American diet or the same diet supplemented with 22 grams of cocoa powder and 16 grams of dark chocolate, they found that the chocolate diet reduced LDL oxidation. If you’re going to indulge:

Choose dark. Dark chocolate contains more phenols than other forms of chocolate. Milk chocolate contains milk fat (palmitic acid) that is highly saturated. Semi-sweet chocolate has less fat than milk chocolate.

Kill two birds. Dip strawberries into melted chocolate for a high-antioxidant snack that can easily satisfy one or two fruit servings. An easy way to get melted chocolate is to simply microwave semi-sweet chocolate chips on medium for about 30 seconds. Be sure the strawberries are complete dry before you dip.

Go for quality. Buy the richest, creamiest chocolate you can afford. You’ll be more satisfied with one piece of the good stuff than five pieces of the mediocre stuff.