Drew Beechum's blog

(Most of this article originally appeared in BeerAdvocate the Magazine in March 2011. The reprint is inspired by the latest goofiness at SCHF. Read below for more.)

I'm just going to start this entry with an editorial note - I feel like a horse's ass posting this immediately following Bruce talking about his fantastic mead, but sadly.. that's how this entry is just going to have to roll.

Vote for the AHA Governing Committee

AHA Members should get their vote on! There are 3 slots open this year on the Governing Comittee and 9 candidates for the positions.

 This was my 3rd place chili. It's my standard "healthy" chili and truly just a damn awesome meal for a week! (Note.. it tastes even better over time). This version is not the hottest chili, focusing instead on building a world of flavor. Heat is always a bottle of hot sauce away!

Gobble Em Up Chili

For 6ish quarts of Chili:

6 slices of thick bacon, chopped

2.5 lbs Ground "Lean" Turkey (Not the extra lean)

1/3 c. Fresh ground chile powder (made out of dried chiles)

Drug Charge Means No Ale at Ale House

Apparently the fine folks at the Broadway Alehouse (nee The Fifth Amendment), need to take the advice of their name because the bar's been stripped of it's license by the ABC after an investigation found solidity to the rumors of drugs (marijuana and coke) being sold at the bar and a later sting where they sold a drink to an underage decoy.

Lovely!

Need a reason to join a homebrew club? Jenn Garbee of LAWeekly and EatHistory.com drops 5 reasons you should do it. (And of course the Falcons, PG and the Yeastside Brewers all get shoutouts - thanks!)

Top 5 Reasons to Join a Homebrew Club

http://www.foodgps.com/qa-with-eagle-rock-brewery-jeremy-raub/

Jeremy gives the Falcons some love and the Doug King Competition as well!

It's official and announced by Boston Beer Company that their subsidiary "Alchemy & Science" has bought Angel City as it's first brewery. A&S is run by Alan Newman who helped found Magic Hat out of Vermont. (Magic Hat was sold last year to North American Breweries which owns Pyramid, Genesee, Labatts, etc) Michael Bowe, Angel City founder and a Falcon, is staying on for two years. Congrats to Michael for successfully establishing his brand and attracting national attention to brewing in Los Angeles.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1116_051116_brewery.html

Thought this was very interesting... makes me want to work out a spicy chica recipe.

Great Midwestern Beer Run

For those of you who don't know, erstwhile Falcon and brewer of all things "MEGA", Jonny Lieberman, is a Senior Editor at Motor Trend. Basically, he gets handed lots of cars, free gas and an excuse to swear and write funny things about motors in print.

Happy Prohibition repeal today!

Today marks the anniversary of the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution thanks to the votes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and (oddly enough) Utah. Federal Prohibition officially ended on December 15th, 1933, but the important day is December 5th 1933 as the day it all officially went down.

Google Streetview hits Brew & Grow in Chicago, IL for a little walk around

Google Streetview of Brew & Grow

If you need another reason to buy local on more things check out this report from FoodSafetyNews.com - Tests Show Most Store Honey Isn't Honey.

From TheFullPint.com comes news that Dave of Lucky Baldwins passed away today.

While he'd been sick for the past year, this is still hard news. I'm just glad that he beat the odds and opened his third and final pub before things had progressed too far.

Fermilab Anti-Proton Source Termination Device

Sad moment in science the other week with the Fermilab shutting down their collider projects. This was the switch that terminated the last experiments. Think of the can as the connection for a light switch. Remove the can, stop the science, drink the beer in memory of the science.

Remember there was a time when this was the only beer available:

Playboy.com's Retrospective of Old Beer Ads in the Magazine

Personally, I think my favorite is the Country Club "Does it Swing?" ad.

Dealtalk: AB Inbev seen brewing up final mega deal (Reuters)

Another year, another set up rumors about brewery mergers. The name of the game on the big end of the brewing business is all about volume. For all we talk about flavor, passion and craft, it turns out that to be truly successful you need to remove a bunch of the first, have the second for money and use the third on marketing and business strategy as you try and push another 3 cents profit on a can of beer.

Spotted this link on beernews.org just now.

It looks like beer and particularly Belgian beer has become popular enough that folks want to open a chain of cafes here in the US. Think.. well, the Starbucks of beer in a way.

I'm in talks right now with a yeast provider to get our hands on a set of strains. They ain't cheap, but as a club we could probably make this work.

Look here for the product list:
East Coast Yeast

If you'd like to get something (or multiple somethings) leave a comment below with type and quantity, once I have a good feeling for our numbers, we'll settle on a small subset of strains we'll get and I'll get back a price and people can pay online for their yeast.

The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/garden/home-brewing-need-a-beer-hit-th...

My take away - how incredibly awesome that homebrewing gets into the Gray Lady. Any publicity is truly well and good for the hobby. Anything to get people to think "wait, what? I can do this at home?"

Ladyface gets some love today from the LA Times Brand X group and the Falcons get some mention too!

The Craft Beer Chronicles: Ladyface Ale Companie brings its brews to L.A.

Hi-ho the derry-o, crap that's a ton of kegs and I'm not done yet!

New Trappist beer on the way!

That's right boys and girls - it looks like the second Trappist brewery outside of Belgium is about to become active. The of Abbey of Monts de Cats is working with the brothers at Chimay to setup an 8th Trappist brewery.

And just after I finished my collection of Trappist glasses! :)

Register now to listen to Charlie Bamforth, A-B Endowed Professor of Brewing at UC Davis on Thursday March 31st. Charlie is awesome to listen to and really knows his stuff from his time with big brewing companies like Bass.

The precis of the talk:

“Advanced Chemistry of Beer and Brewing” A short presentation followed by Q&A with speaker Charles Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Endowed Professor of Malting & Brewing Sciences at UC Davis.

What You Will Learn

* The chemistry that underpins the quality of beer (foam, color, clarity, flavor).

According to the press release from the Brewer's Association (aka the professional branch of the same org as the American Homebrewer's Association), craft beer grew in volume produced by 11% last year. Not only that, but we now have more operating breweries in this country (1759) than we did in the pre-Prohibition era of 1900 (1751).

Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin has a writeup with all the figures and graphs.
http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/craft-beer-grows-11-in-volume/

Ok, so St. Patrick's day may be just about over, but I loved this

A Biologist's Saint Patrick's Day Song

(courtesy of the AHA Forum)

What an awesome time to be a Falcon. There's a lot of stride hitting going on around here, an awesome party at Anchor, big experiments on the horizon and new faces joining the crew continuously and spreading the love of homebrewing and craft beer.

Becki Kregoski, new brewer and new Falcon, joined in with VPster Steve for his shop brew session. Looking at her pictures on her blog, I'm a little sad I couldn't find my way to that session, cause man, those Oatmeal Stout Brownies with Caramelized Bacon look awesome!

Met a few weeks ago with the wonderfully ebullient Cambria from DrinkEatTravel.com at my new homestead where she asked questions, nosed around the R&D Brewing Company grounds and took some pictures that actually make me look not entirely loutish. All for part of her series on the homebrewers of LA.

Found today via Brookston Beer Bulletin, the American Chemical Society has released in time for St. Patrick's Day a video all about the chemistry of beer. It features Senior Brewing Manager of Boston Beer Company, Grant Wood.

Check it out!

The Chemistry of Beer

Hey everyone from the webmeister department!

It's a new year and while we're between that Anchor Madness and the Mayfaire, I figured this was the perfect opportunity to upgrade our website both in look (ohh shiny in blue - thanks Cullen!) and in performance. We're housed in a new setup that should be faster than our old site.

I'm still working on fixing a few glitches, so bear with us!

-- Drew