It’s the height of the northern beer festival season, it seems that there is another one round every corner so get out there;

• Food, Beer and Wine Festival: Mackinac Island, Michigan - July 1
• Olesummer Festival 2007: Talinn, Estonia - July 4-8
• Beer on the Wye: Hereford, England - July 6-8
• Hastings Beer & Music Festival: Hastings, England - July 4-7

Enjoy!

For the last year or two I have become a huge fan of Micro brewed beer, and it just happens that there has been a huge increase of micro brewers popping up over the last few years. All over the place specialty microbreweries are opening up and quite often use the local area and environment as the name of their product.

Last night while browsing through my local liquor store I came across a good example of a micro brewed beer using the area to promote the beer. Outback Pale Ale is made by The Outback Brewery which make their beers in an area to the west of Sydney. They make their beers to traditional methods that where used at an old brewery in the area, and by using the name ‘Outback’ they have portrayed the beer as a one made in the desert.

The Pale Ale itself was actually a very nice drop, it has a nice pale ale taste but is so smooth that it goes down a treat. The flavors itself are not as strong as other pale ales I have taste, but fruity flavors and a toffee taste come through to make the beer a top one.

I did find that the head was a little weak probably due to the fact that it seemed a little under carbonated, and this pale ale like many other micro brews comes in just a 330mL bottle. Why can’t they produce them in tall boys! On the price front we picked up a 6 pack of the pale ale for about 15 bucks, and I believe at this stage it is only available around the Sydney area.

Overall the Outback Pale Ale is a good package, nice marketing and a well rounded pale ale gives me no choice but to give it a thumbs up. They also produce an award winning chili beer which I will have to taste and review soon, not that I have ever tasted any other chili beer to compare with.

Tennessee is set to become the first state in the nation to require proof of age from anyone, no matter the age, who buys beer for off-premises consumption.

The Tennessee Responsible Vendor Act, designed to curb underage drinking, takes effect July 1. It will expire after one year to give lawmakers and vendors a chance to review its effectiveness. The legislation does not apply to the sale of wine and liquor purchases or to beer sales at restaurants and bars.

Jarron Springer, president of the Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association, has embraced the law, saying it will make Tennessee a national leader on the issue of underage drinking. Older customers who are obviously of legal age to buy beer could be put out by the requirement, but Springer hopes they will cooperate with clerks.

Read the full story;

Three guys from Brisbane here in Australia have just completed a 78km (48.5 miles) journey down the Brisbane River on a vessel made entirely out of beer cans. The three army reservists decided to make the boat after months of beer drinking resulted in a pile of empties big enough to make a boat out of!

The nine meter long boat was made out of more than 8000 cans of XXXX Gold, a local beer from Queensland that only Queenslanders love to drink. It was held together with a bunch of silicone and took around 12 months to build.

The boat itself is a copy of the boats they make each year up in Darwin for the Beer Can Regatta. An event started after the town was destroyed by a cyclone in the mid 1970’s, the workmen repairing the city drank so much beer in the tropical climate that they had to do something with the empty cans!

The trip was actually done for a good cause, to raise money for a children’s charity SIDS and Kids after one of the mens children has passed away from SIDS a year earlier. They believed they had raised over $60,000 for the charity over the three day journey and probably gained a few ideas for the next 8000 cans they rack up.

View the full story;

A small restaurant in Washington called Rustico have started a new kind of beer drinking fad, beer pops. The frozen treats are served on a stick and have so far been very popular with guests, mainly being males.

The beery treats come in a range of flavors from Banana, raspberry and stout, and they range in price from $4 - $6. Personally I think the idea of eating a frozen banana beer treat on a sticks sounds rather nasty and would rather drink warm flat beer.

Here is a clip showing the chef and his new culinary delights;

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With the weekend coming up why not join in with some of these beer festivals around the world;

• Colorado Brewers’ Festival: Fort Collins, Colorado - June 23-24
• Great European Beerfest: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - June 23-24
• Slimbridge Beer Festival: Slimbridge, England - June 23
• Braintree Lions Real Festival: Braintree, England - June 24-26
• Wilburton Beer Festival: Ely, England - June 23-24

So go and enjoy the outdoors and a few ales this weekend at a festival, I will be stuck inside in the cold we have having down here in Aus at the moment…  have fun!

Here is a very sad story. The town of Potter in New York has just outlawed the selling of beer in the township due to stupid referendum.

A few years ago a restaurant in the township applied for a license to serve alcohol in its premises.. sounds pretty straight forwards right.. wrong!

For some reason the state of New York requires the applicant to get some sort of town agreement for the license, so a referendum was held. The only problem was that the referendum included 5 law filled questions that the townsfolk got scared of and answered no to them all. This resulted of course in a complete ban of the selling a beer in the town, a law which would create riots in areas where I live!

The townsfolk don’t want the restriction on beer sales and will probably have to drive outside of the 37 square mile township to buy beer.

The moral of this story: Don’t trust lawyers… or maybe just take up home brewing!

Read more of this story here;

A micro brewer from Chicago has developed a new beer in his garage with the unique flavor of pizza. Now call me old fashioned but I have always loved drinking a few cold beers with warm pizza, but drinking a pizza flavored beer sounds a little off.

Tom Seefurth says he developed the beer last year by adding tomatoes to a brew to see what would happen! He altered it this year by adding flavors of marinara sauce, tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano to get that fresh Italiano taste. But don’t worry he says there are no chucks of ham or cheese to be found anywhere in the beer.

Find more of the story here;

Ever tried Carbonation Drops in your home brew? Some people claim they are the best things since sliced bread, while others will say it makes the beer taste flat and flavorless.

If you have never heard of Carbonation Drops before then you will want to know that they are lolly looking things that are used in your home brew for the secondary fermentation instead of the spoonful of sugar. I have used them before once and I can say they do have pro’s and con’s.

If you are an impatient home brewer then you will love them, instead of measuring out all those spoonful of sugars for your bottles you can simply pop 1 or 2 in nothing flat. But, I did find that the drops didn’t do as good a job as your sugars, there seemed to be less of a head and it had more of a ‘green’ flavor. I do not know if this was the result of a really bad brew or if it was the Carbonation Drops, but I have read up that other people have had the same problems.

I used the Coopers range of Carbonation Drops, they are readily available online and are priced well compared to any competitor. If you have used any other brand or have anything to say about Carbonation Drops please leave a comment;

Click here to find out more about Carbonation Drops

For anyone who hasn;t heard about the storm we had here in Aus recently all I can say is that they where bad.. Many houses got damaged, hundreds where injured and a big boat ended up on a beach.

In the aftermath of the storm many communities where cut off by the rising floodwaters, and the main complaint of many was not that their house got a little wet it was that they had run out of beer! But due to the hard work of the emergency services around the Hunter they managed to supply these communities with the beer they desperately needed..

Good Luck and best wishes to the people in the area around Newcastle.

Read full story here