What kinda beer do you drink?

yum, can't wait till beer fest

 

Right now: Young's Barleywine.

 

I started to grab some of that, but went for the Paulaner Oktoberfest instead. I'm usually not much on Ambers, but I like it OK.

 

The Avery Oktoberfest was very barleywine in style, so pushing the alcohol and hops up really doesn't keep it as authentic as other Imperial styles. Still tasty. Directly getting to taste each of the pumpkins against each other recently, I like the Weyerbacher Imperial the most - tastes good, highest alcohol. The Cottonwood is very good and spiced well but it's more of a brown ale base, the Post Road well spiced and more of an amber base as it should be. The Southampton was the most realistically pumpkin.

After two beerfests this year I've found very little that's new that really caught my interest. The fall and winter seasonals are more interesting now.

 

http://adage.com/article?article_id=122339


Published: December 03, 2007
Anheuser-Busch is deploying its Michelob brand against surging craft beers.

Creative from the brand's new agency, Euro RSCG, Chicago, closely mimics recent spots for leading craft brewer Boston Beer Co.'s Sam Adams brand, featuring interviews with brewery personnel discussing the beer's craftsmanship as well as malt and hop selection.

The new tagline: "Crafting a better beer."

"Michelob has always been a connoisseur's beer, so it has a lot of credibility in that area," said Keith Levy, A-B's VP-brand management.

Leaving Heineken alone
Michelob -- an 111-year-old brand that has long been positioned as A-B's trade-up option from flagship brew Budweiser -- has been used by A-B in the past as a counter to imports during their various surges, particularly in the 1980s to counter the initial rise of Heineken and Corona.

But the specific targeting of craft-beer competitors is a departure for Michelob.

The shift of Michelob to a craft-fighter in part reflects A-B's burgeoning portfolio of imports, which can compete more directly in that category. It signed a 20-year agreement last year to import InBev's portfolio of brands such as Stella Artois, Bass Ale and Beck's. Separately, it cut similar import deals with brands such as Grolsch, Tiger and Budweiser Budvar.

But A-B executives admit candidly that their vast portfolio -- which has been bolstered by product introductions, myriad distribution agreements with craft brands and even a few bottled-water and liquor products -- has hurt their focus on flagship core brands.

Doubling up
A-B told Wall Street analysts last week that its wholesalers carry 147 brands on average, more than twice as many as they carried five years ago.

So now the brewer is focusing hard on its core brands, with plans to boost total media spending significantly -- with virtually all of the increases going to Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob and Michelob Ultra.

A-B executives said Michelob's craft strategy will not apply to Ultra, whose relationship with Michelob as its sponsor is being diminished. Instead, Ultra will be pushed as a young-skewing, low-carb lifestyle offering, a positioning similar to the one A-B was spending upward of $80 million a year to establish for Budweiser Select, with little success following a strong 2005 launch year.

Less media for Select
"You're going to see us reduce the reliance on the name Michelob with Ultra, maybe even to the point of taking it off the packaging down the road," Mr. Levy said.

Select is expected to see less national media going forward, and instead will be marketed primarily in the handful of urban areas where it's gained traction. "We need to fish where the fish are with that one," said one person familiar with the strategy.

Budweiser and Bud Light both will see significant spending increases in 2008, executives said. While Bud Light will continue its long-running sophomoric humor campaign, Budweiser is shifting to a strategy of dubbing itself the "Great American Lager."

But Michelob's strategy shift is the most dramatic among the core brands, thanks in part to its new agency. Euro -- which did some minor project work for A-B on the 2004 launch of caffeinated beer Bud Extra -- beat out A-B roster shops DDB, Chicago, and Cannonball, St. Louis, in a pitch for the assignment.

The shift in focus from imports to crafts made the win possible for the agency, which works on Heineken's Dos Equis brand out of its New York office.

Euro's Chicago CEO, Ron Bess, led the DDB pitch that won agency-of-record duties on Bud Light from D-Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles in the mid-1990s.

 

Wall St Journal on Bell's

FWIW I highly recommend Oberon and Two Hearted. Cherry Stout's awesome too.

 

If you are ever in Omaha, go to their Upstream Brewery. I hopped in for a second for a Scotch. It was only ok. But investigating further, they had several cask aged ales. I took home a wine bottled and oak aged 2006Belgian "Trippel" ale that is excelent. Malty, honey sweet, slight yeast, with a citrus (orange and lemon) finish and flowery nose to go with a 10.0 ABV.

 

I thought this was a good article. I'd like to try the Carlsburg.


updated 12:17 p.m. ET, Fri., March. 7, 2008
Luxury beer’s coming-out party was held on January 25, when Danish brewer Carlsberg announced the restricted release of 600 bottles of Vintage No. 1, a small-batch brew aged in Swedish and French oak casks. The complex, low-fizz libation is as nuanced as Scotch, possessing prune, caramel and vanilla notes, and boasts a knockout-strength 10.5 percent alcohol content—nearly as strong as a glass of merlot.
Yet high proof isn’t Vintage No. 1’s only dizzying quality: Its price tag is 2008 Danish kroner, or about $400, setting a new ceiling for finely crafted yet costly beer.
Carlsberg’s pricey Vintage No. 1 may seem like an attention-grabbing stunt, but it’s actually a sign of beer’s rapid evolution from lowbrow, aluminum-can quaff to top-shelf tipple. Brewers are unleashing their imaginations and aging Belgian ales in bourbon and burgundy barrels, tinkering with wild, untamed yeasts and fashioning coal-dark, chocolatey stouts meant to be cellared alongside that Cabernet sauvignon. Want opulence? Try Boston Beer Company’s 25 percent Utopia, typically priced at more than $100 a bottle. Or Dogfish Head’s limited-release Fort, a strong ale concocted with pureed raspberries.



“The quality of the craft beer available around the country is better than ever,” says Matt Brynildson, head brewer at Paso Robles, California’s Firestone Walker Fine Ales, which crafts wood-cured double ales and mad-scientist experiments. For Eleven, winemakers were called in to blend and precisely calibrate an unlikely combination of barrel-aged Russian imperial stout, imperial brown ale, imperial amber ale and oatmeal stout.
“We broke the taboo that says you can’t blend beers,” says Brynildson. “Instead of being ridiculed for producing bland, watered-down beers, the American craft movement has turned this around and brewers around the world are emulating our newfound creativity.”

Also on this story
Slide show: Best American beer bars


It’s paying off. While beer sales overall remained sluggish last year, barely growing two percent, the industry’s shining sector is craft brew. Through the first half of 2007, industry group Brewers Association reported that craft tipples grew 11 percent, and America’s craft-brewing ranks swelled to more than 1,400 microbrewers nationwide. This growth is spurred forward by innovators such as Dexter, Michigan’s Ron Jeffries, who favors time-consuming methods more in line with Slow Foodies than mass producers.
“I think we’re fairly—well, unique may be too strong of a word—but we make fairly different beer,” says Jeffries, whose Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales churns out barrel-matured, unpasteurized and unfiltered brews fermented with wild yeasts. Jeffries’ elite elixirs are typically sold in capped, champagne-size bottles adorned with gallery-class illustrations of seafaring vessels, conquistadores and pooches.
“We’re not trying to create straight-ahead flavors—I want subtlety and hints,” Jeffries says. Take, for example, La Roja. This amber ale is blended from beer aged in bourbon and red-wine barrels for nearly a year, resulting in spicy, sour-caramel flavor profiles. Or, sample the light, sour-citrusy Bam Bière farmhouse ale that’s bottle-conditioned, which means it contains live yeasts that cause the brew to evolve just like wine.
Dovetailing with craft beer’s rapid growth and innovation, topflight beer bars have blossomed, eschewing Bud and Miller for heady, high-quality suds.
“We are seeing growth in bars specializing in higher-end beers,” says Paul Gatza, director of industry group Brewers Association. These esteemed alehouses are sprouting across America, from Brooklyn’s shabby chic Spuyten Duyvil, which serves ultra-rare Belgian ales paired with fine cheese, to Seattle’s industrial-cool Brouwer’s Café, featuring homemade sausages, decadent ice cream-and-beer floats and luxe brews like the wood-aged Scaldis Prestige strong ale.

These bars have one thing in common: a “challenging” beer list that goes beyond Stella Artois and Blue Moon. Says Gatza, “A great beer bar includes a mix of local, regional and national offerings, and some mechanism for matching beers and menu items.”
That’s exactly what Michael Roper has accomplished. “Our mission is to make people think of beer in the same way they think of wine,” he says. As the manager of Chicago’s Hopleaf Bar, he eschews the boilerplate bar formula in favor of a more distinguished atmosphere that includes regal beers and finer dining such as braised rabbit legs. Accompanying the grub are superb sipping brews such as Goose Island’s barrel-aged Bourbon County Stout or monk-made, dark-chocolatey Trappist Achel Extra—not canned swill.
The Hopleaf is one of many bars across the country are rising above dollar-beer nights and pitcher specials, citing both economic and gastronomic reasons. Says Roper, “If I have 10 tables full of people drinking $1 Pabst, that’s not in my best interest.” He’s then quick to emphasize craft beers’ superior value and advantages. “A $20 bottle of beer can be astounding. You’d pay so much more for a similar taste experience in the world of wine.”

 

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american ale?