Miller Genuine Draft Light 64 Calories!

“As light as it gets” indeed! (learn more)

Miller is testing out a new light version of there MGD, and it only has 64 calories in it! Holy crap! But, honestly, how good could it really be? I bet it really sucks! But I'm willing to try it...

Less than three months after introducing MGDL-64 in Madison, Wisconsin, Miller Brewing executives are strongly considering expanding the test throughout the Midwest as well as other territories, per a source.

The 64-calorie brew, also dubbed Miller Genuine Draft Light, debuted in August. Its tagline “As light as it gets” has appeared on retail displays as well as on out-of-home signage.

MGDL-64 has posted good results since its introduction. It has fared particularly well with women who sampled the low-calorie beer against Coors Light and Michelob Ultra from Anheuser-Busch.

So, are they marketing this beer to women? Interesting... Gives me an excuse to call my buddies who will probably starting drinking this crap a bunch of little girls. No offense intended towards any of the female beer lovers out there...

NYC Beer Tour (part 1.2) Brooklyn Brewery

OK, I got an envelope in the mail last night from Chris with a CD full of images and a couple of video clips from our recent New York City Beer Tour. Thanks Chris!!!

I got tired of waiting for the images so I posted Part 1 of the tour last week here. I hope you enjoy the images from Brooklyn Brewery!!! More to come on the rest of the tour, so stay tuned!

This was the first sign that we were heading in the right direction...

Chris and I are enjoying a tasty beverage at the Brooklyn Brewery, in case you're blind... Then again, if you are you can't read this either.
Never mind then...

A closer shot of Chris and I enjoying some of Brooklyn Brewery's fine products... Beer makes Chris happy, can't you tell?

Our friendly Brooklyn Brewery tour guide gave us a detailed history on the company and the beer. She also explained the whole process, but sadly offered no free samples...
Friendly, but stingy...

Brewing in Brooklyn is a little more technical than it is in my kitchen.
I'm told the green button adds hops...

Thirsty beer-zombies stager into the brewing area for the big tour...
"More brains! I mean, MORE BEER!"

Kenn pauses for a moment as he leaves the brewery, convinced he saw a Brooklyn Brewery Oompa Loompa off in the distance...
Have another drink Kenn!

I need to get me a setup like this for the kitchen... Maybe in the next house?
Then again, this may be a little over kill...

The lonely Bar-Keep wasn't lonely for long at the Brooklyn Brewery tasting room. 8 outstanding beers on tap, and more available in the bottle too...

Just some tasty beer, sitting around Brooklyn Brewery with no one to love it. Poor beer, all it ever wanted was to be loved, and you wouldn't let it...
Maybe the lonely bar keep can give the beer the attention it so desperately desires...

Me posing with my new Brooklyn Brewery glasses on my way to the car before we hoofed it all the way to Barcade...

More on the big NYC trip is to come!!!

Homebrewbeer.net's Boston Beer Tour Part 3

All roads lead to beer...

Check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven't already done so...

My original plan for the Boston Beer Tour included some stops at historic pubs along the way. A great way to sample some of Boston's bar scene, while learning a little about Boston's past. But, the best laid plans of mice and men...

After our Boston Brewery (Sam Adams) tour, we skipped Doyle's Cafe and high-tailed it across town to the Harpoon Brewery. Some of our fellow travelers were too anxious to wait for the next tour. I was a little annoyed at my master plan being altered, but that's par for the course when it comes to group activities and group dynamics.

The gang in the Harpoon tasting room.

Beer Tour Tip # 1
If you're really into beer, and the plan, beware who you take with you. And if your friends are single guys, keep in mind the single females that are with you will have more influence than you will. That maybe true if the genders are swapped, but I couldn't be sure. If anyone has any insight, feel free to chime in.

What did we miss? Not really sure...
Doyle's Cafe has supposedly seen quite few famous people, including politicians, enjoying a good pint. It's also served as the backdrop for different TV shows and movies. My thought was it was near the brewery, it's recommended by the brewery, it's a well known cool place to grab a brew and some good bar chow, and it's historical. Why not stop in? I thought a bite to eat would slow the pace of the day down just enough so we could get Harpoon with out the fear of too much beer, too early in the day. But "they" wouldn't have it... So off to Harpoon we went, while I bit my tongue...

It was intended to look like we were holding the sign up,
instead we look like Barker's Beauties from the Price is Right.

We got to Harpoon a little early for the next tour. Too early for the anxious females in our group, although they were in a hurry to get there and skip Doyle's Cafe. If we stuck to my plan, we would have had a good lunch and then made it to Harpoon for the slightly later tour at exactly the right time, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

When we last left our hero, he was battling the diabolical Lobster...

A brief interlude
We were there early enough to walk down the street and grab a beer at a small deli, but not early enough to sit and eat. The funny thing was, they wouldn't serve us beer unless we ate something. So we ordered a small order of coleslaw and a handful of plastic forks.

May I have this dance?

We didn't eat the coleslaw, but after a few dances with the giant lobster in front of the place, we drank the beers over a brisk walk back to Harpoon. This was a little challenging as we had to avoid the attention of the nice Boston Police Officer in the next parking lot who would probably take issue with us drinking beer on our walk. We got back to Harpoon just in time for a quick pit stop and then we were ready for the tour.

Behold the power of beer!

What ever you do, don't push the red button!

"You mean the brewery is all mine now Mr. Wonka?"

Onto to the Harpoon tour!
Now to be clear, Harpoon doesn't really do tours, not really. We could look at brewery floor from behind a red rope, and the folks that worked there gave us a run down of the company's history and current state of affairs. After that, they opened the tasting room and gave us nearly unlimited free samples of 12 different beers they had on tap. (Remember kids, drink in moderation, it's about quality and no quantity!!!)

Harpoon has this cool wall of beer set up.
Beer cans from a tone of different companies, it was beautiful, I had to take a few photos.

Man! We look a little light in the loafers in this pic!

It was at this point that Dave, Erik and the ladies chipped in and purchased me a cool Harpoon tap handle as a thank you to me for planning the day. What a cool surprise! Frankly I was touched... I felt like Sally Field wining the Oscar, "You like me, you really like me!"

"You like me, you really like me!"

Just a cool photo I took of a ship just out side where we had lunch

The gang at lunch, and more or less the untimely end of my Boston Beer Tour...

When the party, I mean tour, was over, we went to a restaurant down the street, instead of the Bell in Hand, the next stop in my original plan. Apparently the girls were in a hurry to eat, and then move on. Much to the chagrin of my buddies, they had other plans for the evening. Plans that didn't include the rest of my beer tour, or any of us, but did include visiting an ex-boyfriend and crashing at his apartment after a night on the town with him. We discovered all of this as we ate our lunch. They were rushing us, so they could move onto phase 2 of their diabolical plan.

"Don't make me destroy you!"

Now don't get me wrong...
Dave and Erik weren't trying to have a romantic interlude with our female friends. And the girls were a lot of fun, I'm exaggerating here for comic effect. (mostly) A little artistic license if you will. But they did kind of alter our plans significantly and they did end up more or less ditching us for the ex... But to be honest, we all had a hand in ruining the day. It all happened the night before...

Beer Tour Tip # 2
Don't go out really late the night before an all day beer tour. Because that's exactly what we all did the night before this tour. A friend's sister was leaving for her home country the next morning, so we treated her to an American night out on the town. Completely stupid. The lack of sleep, the heavy meal, it all kicked in, and it was time to take a nap.

The plan is all history now...
I had planned on taking the lead from this guy, and finishing the day off with a historic walking beer tour. We weren't going to take his tour, but we were going to wing it and do it on our own. Instead, we ended up getting a couple hotel rooms, napping and then hitting a dueling piano bar near Fenway (LOL!). The next morning we drove home. Anti-climactic isn't it?

On our way to the hotel we drove by "Cheers"...

Looking to the future...
I still think the over all plan is a solid one. And I will make another attempt at the historic beer tour starting with the Bell in Hand. But I think I'll hold off until next year. Now, I have my eyes focused on Connecticut and New York City.

Stay tuned!

And they lived happily ever after, the end...

Homebrewbeer.net's Boston Beer Tour Part 2

A photo in the dimly lit tasting room. We snagged the table next to the bar and shared it with an older couple and a younger couple. The great thing was the older couple was not intent on drinking as much beer as possible, leaving more for us! Those poor saps behind us didn't get a table because they dragged their feet getting into the tasting room! Suckers!

Another photo in the tasting room. Dave was trying to work the female tour guide/bar tender, hoping to score another pitcher. No dice, but good try Dave!

The Sam Adam's Brewery Tour

The Sam Adam's Brewery tour is simply a great time for any beer lover. But, before you get touring and sampling, you need to find the place. This is a challenge, even on my second trip to the brewery. (Check out the pics from my first visit here!) My buddy Erik purchased a GPS enabled cell phone the day before and we relied heavily on it to find our way to this beer lovers mecca. Honestly, leave home early, because you WILL get lost, even with a GPS. But the adventure getting there will only make you enjoy the tasting portion of the trip all the more.

Once you get there and park, you find your way to the proper building and get in line for a a mini walking and talking tour of the surprisingly small facility. The tour kicks off with a promotional introduction video featuring the man himself, Jim Koch. It's a little goofy, but it's clear Jim Koch's personality is the other driving force behind Sam Adam's success. (The first being the great beer!)

As the tour goes on you learn about Mr. Koch's family history of brewing and how his great-great-grandfather (a brewer himself from St. Louis) created the recipe that would one day be renamed Samuel Adams Boston Lager. A little later you get to taste some barley, which taste like grape nuts, and you get to smell some sample hops and discuss how the primary ingredients are used along with water to make some fine beer.

There's a brief discussion on beer styles, and the key qualities of beer including taste, aroma, complexity, body, smoothness, finish, and balance. After that, you get to look closer at some of the large vats used to make the beer. But by now the free beer, just a few feet away in one of the tasting rooms, begins to call my name. It's at that moment that I begin to shuffle closer to where I know, from my previous visit, the door to the free beer is.

Now, I want to stress here how important it is for you to take your time, learn from the tour and participate by asking questions. You might help one of your lesser knowledgeable tour mates learn a thing or two. Having said that, I have a trick or two in mind to help you score the most free samples you can get. I'll tell about them, but you gotta promise not to tell anyone about them or where you learned them. It'll be our little secret, ok?

In this group shot you can see the small sampling glasses they give you to sample the beer and also to take home as a souvenir. Not bad, not bad at all. They different words on them, like "taste" or "smell"... I have almost all of them now... How about you?

Getting more beer than your share

Step 1: When the tour starts and the video is played, stay in back.
Step 2: When the group moves towards the barley and hops, get to the front where the tour guide is. Now this is a great opportunity to ham it up with the guide, make a few people laugh and show off how much you know about beer. If that's your thing.
Step 3: As the crowd moves towards the middle of the facility and looks at the vats, get to the back, near the railing.
Step 4: turn around, pull out your ID card, and show it to the guide at the door once the tasting room opens.
Step 5: Haul ass into the tasting room and sit as close to ethe bar as possible.
Step 6: Share the beer with your table, but fill your glass again, before the pitcher moves on to the next table.
Step 7: Not everyone will finish their pitchers, be sure to be helpful and offer to pass them back up to the bar for the next round. (Don't forget to finish the pitcher before passing it up.)

And that's pretty much it. Honestly, it works! You won't get enough to get loopy, but that's a good thing, you have another brewery to drive to. You will get enough beer to really enjoy the quality products Sam Adams has to offer. Keep in mind, they give samples of about 4 different beers to give you a range of their products.


Important! While I did seek out more than my share of the beer, I didn't act like a jerk and nor should you! This is not some college bar hall, and you're not there to get drunk. So, take your time with the beer, and use the proper method for a tasting! Be polite to the others, and make sure everyone got to try the beer before you swipe and extra glass. Don't be a jerk! Now shut up and drink up!

Stay tuned for part 3 of Homebrewbeer.net's Boston Beer Tour. Next stop the Harpoon Brewery!

Check out this Sam Adams audio (pod cast) tour of the brewery!

Hombrewbeer.net's Boston Beer Tour Part 1

Living so close to Boston is great thing for a beer lover. Boston has scores of great pubs, bars and two major breweries. Back in Feb, I set out to tour both breweries and then check out some of the local pubs. Unfortunately I was pressed time, and only hit the Sam Adam's brewery and have few more pints at one of the local bars. But I vowed to return and tour both breweries in one day.

A couple of months ago, I returned to Boston with a few friends in tow and with a 2 phase plan.

Phase 1: Tour both Sam Adam's Brewery and the Harpoon Brewery.

Phase 2: Initiate a mini pub crawl touring some of the more historically significant watering holes in the city.

Sneak peak, the gang at Harpoon's tasting room!
From left to right. Erik, "Mo" & Nicole, Me in back and Dave on the right.

I'll be blogging about this trip as the week goes on, so stay tuned! In the mean time, check out this Google Map I made for my "Boston Beer Tour". The map is a work in progress. More to follow!


View Larger Map

First Gas and Now Beer, Prices on the Rise

Hops and malt, key ingredients in your beer are getting more expensive, and so your next six-pack might be a little more expensive.

Consumers could pay 50 cents to $1 per six pack more in the coming months for many small-batch ''craft beers'' as brewers pass on rising hops and barley costs from an unpalatable brew of poor harvests, the weak dollar and farmers' shift to more profitable crops. Other makers of craft beers, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. brewing industry, say they may eat the higher ingredient costs, which would pare their profits.

Well that sucks! Russ Klisch is the president of Lake Front Brewery in Milwaukee fears some micro-breweries may not even survive the crisis. I wonder if this effect the prices of home brewing kits and ingredients as well. Anyone have any insight into that?

Steve Kuftinec, sales and operations manager at Uinta Brewing Co. said, "I seriously doubt that there will be any new brewers wanting to get into the industry under these conditions. And we'll probably see some just deciding that with these prices, it's no longer worth it."

The larger beer companies like Anheuser-Busch use less barley and hops in their beer, hence the weak taste. And they have more buying power than your favorite micro-brew so they can lock in lower prices. In other words, the mass produced lower quality beers will survive, but some of our smaller production favorites might be jeopardy. It was the larger brewing companies that survived the prohibition, smaller craft brewing took years to come back.

Let's all hope this crisis doesn't have the same affect on the industry...

Josh Mishell, Creative Manager at Flying Dog Ales

I recently started talking to Josh Mishell, the Creative Manager over at Flying Dog Ales. Josh stumbled upon homebrewbeer.net and left a comment one day, and the emails below resulted. Read below and learn more about Josh and Flying Dog Ales!

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From: Bryon
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 1:45 PM
To: Josh Mishell
Subject: Greetings from HomeBrewBeer.Net!

Josh,

I’m sending this email in response to your comments on my blog.

I must admit, I was excited to see someone from the actual brewery comment on the post I did about the Open Source Beer Project. In addition to loving quality beer, I also come from an IT background, so I’m familiar with the Open Source concept. I’m sure this idea has and will continue to endear your brewery to the hearts and minds home brewers and beer lovers alike. Great marketing idea and a good thing for quality American beer!

Could you tell me a little more about yourself? What do you do for Flying Dog Ales? How did you find my blog? And what’s a guy got to do to get a drink around here?

In response to your last comment, I would be honored to receive some of your fine products for the purpose of reviewing them on my blog. I’m specifically interested in getting my hands on some of the Collaborator, if at all possible. But I’d be more than happy to have my crew of beer lovers review any of your other fine products as well…

At any rate, I love the unique concept that is Flying Dog Ales. You guys really do stand out from the rest of the pack. Keep up the good work, and stay in touch!

Cheers!

Bryon

www.homebrewbeer.net
bryon@homebrewbeer.net

PS: Do you mind if I post this email and your response to my blog? Just let me know… Thanks again!

--------------------------------

From: Josh Mishell
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 12:46 PM
To: bryon@homebrewbeer.net
Subject: Re: Greetings from HomeBrewBeer.Net!

Bryon,

Sorry it's taken a few days to get back to you. Good news, we just bottled the Doppelbock recently and will be sending out samples in the next few weeks. If you email me your mailing address, we can get a 12oz bottle of Doppelbock out to you. We're definitely excited about the Doppelbock, and after drinking some on Monday, it's pretty damn tasty! Feel free to post this to your blog, that sounds exciting!

Thanks for the kind words about our brewery, too. We're trying hard to be the leading brewery on the internet (through our online newletters, blogs, microsites, and the like), and it's good to know we're being noticed. We answer every email that we receive from consumers, and I think people really like the personal touch.

I was hired about a year ago to be the Creative Manager of Flying Dog Brewery. In the past year, I've redesigned many of our printed goods. The most exciting part is that I redesigned our labels, carriers, and case cartons (look for updated labels to hit shelves by December). The new labels keep Ralph Steadman's iconic illustrations, and we've enlarged the illustrations and better organized the rest of the information in a better way. You can see those changes here:

http://bankgothicoverload.com/did-i-mention-that-people-pay-me-to-design-beer-labels/

It's pretty much a dream job for me. I grew up in Colorado, and the Colorado Craft Beer explosion of the 1990s. Granted I wasn't 21 until 1999, but I remember how it defined Colorado (which just became the #1 beer producing state in the country, by the way). I went to college in Upstate New York and loved bringing my friends great Craft Beer from all around our state. Never in my life did I expect to work for a Brewery, and I'm pleased as punch to be working for a brewery with such cool branding. It makes us unique in the world, and I'm loving every minute of it.

I found your blog because I have an RSS feed that alerts me whenever a blog writes something with the term "Flying Dog Brewery". But now I've subscribed to your RSS feed and will be reading everything you post. Thank God for Bloglines. I'm following over 50 beer blogs right now, and that list is increasing every week as we find new bloggers who are writing great stuff about Flying Dog.

Josh

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Josh Mishell
Creative Manager
Flying Dog Brewery

http://www.myspace.com/flyingdogbrewery
http://www.bankgothicoverload.com

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin

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From: Bryon
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2007 6:45 PM
To: Josh Mishell
Subject: Greetings from HomeBrewBeer.Net!


Josh,

Thank you for the response, and thank you for agreeing to send out a sample of the Doppelbock. I’ll be sure to write up a nice review and post it to the blog.

I’d be more than happy to sample and review any of the products from Fly Dog Ales any time you want. Please keep in mind I have a core group of beer loving friends that would also love to write some reviews of your products. So feel free to send a six-pack or a case next time. :-)

This may sound odd, but do you have any plans to release any new lite beers in the near future? By lite I mean low on the calories and/or carbs… We’re on a new health kick here and are on the hunt for quality lite beers for those days when we want to go easy on the calories. It’s just something to keep in mind if you release a new product along those lines and are looking for some bloggers to write up reviews or if you need some one to beta test on.

I was at one time a graphic artist employed by the US military, and I worked as a web designer in corporate America for a number of years. Now I just do that sort of thing for a hobby. Based on my experience, it does sound like you have a dream job for a beer loving graphic artist. Congrats! Are you guys hiring? J

Well, Josh I sincerely appreciate your generosity and time. I look forward to trying the Doppelbock and to hearing more from Flying Dog Ales…

Cheers!

Bryon

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More to follow once I get my hands on the Doppelbock! Stay tuned!!!