Since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, there have been laws generally requiring beer to be sold through distributors, which truck the beer to the bar, restaurant or store.  The laws are intended to keep alcohol producers from running bars and restricting consumer choice.  Many states have enacted franchise laws to protect distributors from being dropped arbitrarily by a brewer after they have spent a lot to develop a brand.  Whereas distributors can sell distribution rights whether the brewer likes it or not, brewers can only terminate a distributor for specific reasons, like fraudulent business practices.

Disappointed with sales in upstate New York, Brooklyn Brewery has terminated its agreement, dating back to 2001, with one of its distributors, alleging that the distributor made late deliveries and delivered stale beer.  The distributor responded by suing Brooklyn Brewery in state court, alleging that it did not properly notify it of any problems.  The new distributor reportedly has rapidly increased sales.  The brewer’s president,  Steve Hindy, says trying to switch distributors ”is a big gamble for a small company like ours, because these lawyers are not cheap and you want good representation.” He also says heightened consumer demand for craft beers is giving small brewers confidence to “assert our rights more forcefully.”  As the Journal reports, “Also emboldening them: Many distributors that once ignored craft beers are now clamoring to add them to their lineup to increase profits.  It ‘is a whole different world for us than has existed in the last 20 years,’ Mr. Hindy says.”

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Dogfish Head Brewery’s Chateau Jiahu, “uses pre-gelatinized rice flakes, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers. The rice and barley malt were added together to make the mash for starch conversion and degredation. The resulting sweet wort was then run into the kettle. The honey, grapes, Hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers were then added. The entire mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, then cooled. The resulting sweet liquid was pitched with a fresh culture of Sake yeast and allowed to ferment a month before the transfer into a chilled secondary tank.  Truly a unique beer!”

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“Once upon a time, beer drinkers only had three major choices when looking to pop a cold one: Budweiser, Miller and Coors. Now the market is flooded with imports, seasonal brews and variations of the old classics. Choosing which beer to drink may have been easier back then, but now it’s much more fun.” 

“According to the Brewers Association, there are more than 1,400 craft brewers in the U.S., including microbreweries. Craft beer industry sales have increased nearly 31 percent over the last three years, outpacing beer, wine and spirits in supermarket sales.”

“‘Twenty years ago, people would have laughed at you if you talked about pairing beer with food, but now I think the average consumer has a better understanding of the breadth and variety [of beer] available today,’ says Ray Daniels, president of the Craft Beer Institute and founder of the Cicerone Certification Program, the first official beer sommelier certification program, launched in October 2007. ‘Unlike wine sommeliers, beer sommeliers are less about the snooty tableside presentation and more about better quality beer in the consumer’s glass.’”

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Captain Lawrence Beer

On Friday, Scott Vaccaro, the owner of Captain Lawrence Brewery in Pleasantville, will release his Nor’Easter Winter Warmer - Batch No. 2 (right). At 12 percent alcohol, this powerful dark ale, brewed with elderberries and aged in bourbon barrels, can be cellared just like wine. Captain Lawrence also features a seasonal brown ale, available now through March. “Giving our award-winning beer is like giving a piece of where you’re from,” says Vaccaro. “It’s the perfect way to introduce people to our region-specific flavor, locally produced.” Plus, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Once you have a growler, you can take it back for a refill at the brewery Fridays between 4 and 7 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. ($9.50 or $10.50 for the double IPA). You can also find the beers at Whole Foods Market in White Plains, or taste it at more than 200 restaurants in Westchester, Manhattan and Brooklyn. www.captainlawrencebrewing.com, 99 Castelton St. Pleasantville, 914-741-2337 (BEER).Defiant Brewing Co.

Brewmaster Neill Acer says the water quality is one of the reasons he chose to open his Defiant Brewing Co. in Pearl River. If you want to share the magic that flows through the taps of that village - enhanced by the brewer’s art, of course - consider giving friends and family one of the two special seasonal brews now available. There’s Christmas Ale, flavored with nutmeg, cloves and allspice, or Abominable Snow Beer, with notes of sweet and bitter orange plus coriander. A filled 64-ounce growler is $11.50; refills are $7.50. 6 E. Dexter Plaza, Pearl River. 845-920-8602, www.defiantbrewing.com. 

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Details: Radegast Hall & Biergarten / 113 N 3rd St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Nov. 27 .: 6PM / Downtown Bar & Grill [map] / Brooklyn, NY / Dogfish Head
3 NEW Dogfish beers
Official Site

Come check out an impressive selection of the Dogfish Head Brewery!

Much to my surprise I also found the Stone Brewing Company’s 11th Anniversary Ale.   This beer was brewed in September 2007 and is an interesting new style, a Black IPA or India Black Ale.  Stone’s description “Resinously hoppy, roasted, a bit sweet, with a bit of alcohol warm” is spot on.  This beer is quite hard to come by and I would highly recommend trying it, if only to say that you have tried an India Black Ale

The Pour, the NY Times blog about all things related to beer, wine, and spirits, recently included a post that is quite informative on cask ale.  For those of you who are not sure exactly what cask ale is or do not know as much as you would like to know, this post is chock full of information.  Many say that cask ale is the only “real ale” …so you better recognize!  Some highlights that I was not aware of regarding cask ales..

“Cask… is really a sort of archaic word as only a few rigidly authentic brewers in England still insist on using actual barrels. Most casks today are metal.”

“If you are curious about cask ale, I have one important piece of advice. Always call ahead to your destination to make sure they are serving cask ale. Each cask has a life of around two to four days, and if the bar or restaurant has not planned well, there can be a void in between casks. Call ahead to avoid disappointment.”

Read this very informative article here

If you want to go an extra step, I would highly recommend trying to volunteer at these events.  When you do this, you can arrive early to meet the brewery reps and VIPs before the rush of thirsty beer drinkers.  I myself volunteered this year and got to talk to several brewery reps.  

I specifically spoke with Ray Hill of Hill Brewing.  He brews a Pre-Prohibition Pilsner that was a completely new style of pilsner for me and it was quite delicious.  I spoke with him about how he got into brewing, which was quite interesting to me because I have always had dreams of being a successful brewer.  He said he started out brewing as a hobby and as more and more of his friends kept asking him if he sold his beer, he eventually decided to make the leap of faith and quit his IT job to buy the equipment and start brewing commercially. 

I asked him how he initially started to come up with recipes for homebrewing because to date I have mostly used the homebrewing kits and exercised very limited improvisation.  He said that his best strategy for developing a beer that he liked was to brew a clone recipe that mimmicks a commercial beer that he likes and then brew the clone several times altering certain components of the process to single out the specific part that he likes.  Essentially you start out with the framework of a commercial beer that you like and you accentuate the flavors that you like through trial and error and go from there.  I asked Ray Hill what books he would recommend to an amateur homebrewer like me and he said there is a book with clone recipes, which I found on Amazon here.

As always, people in the craft beer industry were incredibly friendly and interested in helping out anyone interested in taking part in the craft beer movement.  Mr. Hill inspired me to experiment with brewing a hefeweizen last night, which I made sure to improvise with.  Time will tell how it turns out. 

Coming soon will be a guide to homebrew stores in NYC.

Miller Brewing reportedly has been the most aggressive of the three big domestic brewers in trying to expandi ts craft beers over the past year, introducing its Leinenkugel’s portfolio of brands into 17 new states, giving it a presence in 42. Mr. Leinenkugel says “[c]onsumers are so willing and wanting to try new things, especially in beer styles.” He also credits the mobility of American society and the “power of the Web” for raising awareness of the brand.

Blue Moon apparently began to attract fans in the Midwest because of some hard working Coors distributors who taught bartenders to serve Blue Moon in a glass with a slice of orange, which caught drinker’s attention. This year Blue Moon, led by the Belgian White variety, increased sales by more than 80% at U.S. grocery, drug and convenience stores, according to Nielsen data.

Anheuser-Busch lacks a star craft brew but it owns big stakes in several craft brewers, including approximately 40% in Oregon’s Widmer Bros. Brewing Co.

The article concludes: “Some craft brewers say the giants’ move into the category is a good thing because they’re bringing new legions of craft drinkers into the fold. Even if the independent brewers’ market share falls, they may enjoy higher sales and profits as the category grows. “Go Blue Moon,” says Greg Owsley, chief brand officer at Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing Co., the maker of Fat Tire Amber Ale, a leading craft beer.”

JUST 10 years ago, the proposed merger of SABMiller and Molson Coors into MillerCoors would have worried craft brewers. Back then, “American beer” was thought of as a cheap product with very little beer flavor. But today the United States has by far the most exciting beer culture in the world, and America’s 1,500 craft brewers are undaunted by the prospect of a juggernaut that would have 30 percent of the domestic market. The age of American industrial brewing is over.

Craft brewers used to be called “microbreweries,” but many of us are not so micro anymore. And the people who once thought the craft brewing movement was a fad can now see it for what it really is — a welcome return to normality.

In the 19th century, there were more than 4,000 breweries in the United States, brewing almost every sort of beer made in Europe and a few indigenous American varieties besides. By 1870, Brooklyn was one of the great brewing capitals of the world, with 48 breweries. People bought meat from the butcher, bread from the baker, coffee from the roaster and beer from the local brewer.

But by 1970, almost everyone shopped at the supermarket, frozen food and “TV dinners” were godsends, and we had about 40 breweries left in the entire country, all making the same bland beer.

Now Americans are moving away from spongy industrial bread, watery coffee, plasticized “cheese” and other wonders of modern food science. The top maker of white supermarket bread went bankrupt a few years ago.

Industrial beer is still the vast majority of the American market, and it’s not going away tomorrow, but there is no future in it. While industrial beers suffer flat or declining sales, craft brewers are experiencing double-digit growth. The big brewers now try to copy craft beers. European brewers, who once laughed at watery American beer, now look to the United States for inspiration.

MillerCoors is not a threat to craft brewers but a warning: we should not walk the road of overexpansion or be tempted by the lowest common denominator of the mass market. Miller, Coors and Anheuser-Busch were once small breweries making fine local beer, too.

If we truly want to restore the vibrant beer culture that flourished in this country before Prohibition, craft brewers need to retain the values and goals — creating beers that are flavorful, interesting to drink and made from proper beer ingredients — that put us on the map in the first place. Let’s not undo American beer again.