Tag Archives: coors

Beer News Sampler

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Pier 55: Wine is less snobby and beer more sophisticated
Cornell University offers a course entitled “Understanding Wine and Beer”. Traditionally women drink more wine than beer and men the opposite, but recently the gap has narrowed to almost nothing. Wine is less expensive and more accessible, and craft brewed beers are becoming more sophisticated. “No longer viewed as the sole province of the barbarian, specialist brewed beer has become the new fine wine.” Even many of the health effects associated with red wine can also be had from your darker beers.

Tale of two brews
When Molson Coors bought Creemore Springs Brewery in 2005, fans of the craft brewer felt that it was like “a death in the family.” But the megabrewer has given Creemore the autonomy to stay true to their roots.

Drinkers take on brewery in beer battle
Regulars at the Lewes Arms in Lewes, England are fans of locally brewed Harveys Best Bitter beer. However, the pub’s been bought by Greene King who want to stop selling it. This has sparked something of a local revolt. Even the local politicians are weighing in.

Police flush 2,500 cans of beer
A tragedy on so many levels, beer and other alcohol confiscated from an illegal establishment had to be flushed one container at a time by police officers. What a waste of taxpayer money. Of police manpower. Of beer.

Professors debate merits of beer, wine
Faculty at University of California – Davis put on a presentation and debate arguing the merits of beer versus wine, including health effects and trivia.

Plasmax makes beer last longer
Plastic bottles coated with “Plasmax” are as good as glass, according to the German brewing institute Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei. To me, beer in plastic is just wrong. I suppose the Miller Lite served at the stadium or all those college keg parties with Solo cups have just ruined the idea for me.

Beer News Sampler

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Coors leads surge for clean water
Denver brewer donates $30,000 to effort to monitor and heal the Shenandoah River.

An airline named after a beer
One out of every three beers consumed in India is a Kingfisher. Can they run an airline? Apparently so.

Man steals beer from minor league baseball stadium
He got arrested for it in 2002 and received a suspended sentence. I doubt he’ll get such a deal this time.

Cheers for beer makers
Michigan craft brewers’ sales are up, but claim state law is stifling growth.

“Savory” Seasonals
American megabrewers Anheuser Busch and Miller are experimenting with flavored beers for the holidays.

Big dry lifts price of brewing beer
Drought conditions in Australia are making barley more expensive to grow, making malt and, thus, beer, more expensive to make.

Beer News Sampler

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Newport poster storm brewing
Sexual innuendo has been part of beer marketing for decades. This is news?

Beer-flavored ice cream is a big hit
Those beer-mad English are gaga over it.

There’s a beer out there
Australians are heading out into the bush in search of good beer at one of the many microbreweries opening up.

John Young dead at 85
Colorful brewer and fixture of British brewing died before the last batch of cask ale was due to be brewed.

Coors Brewing scores perfectly for equality
For the third year in a row, Coors Brewing has received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s “Corporate Equality Index”, which evaluates how major U.S. corporations treat their gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors.

New York plant benefiting from synergies
Former Miller Brewing Company plant finds that beer and biodiesel is a good fit.

Carlsberg looks to expanding Serbia beer market
To invest €20 million into its Serbia operations.

New brews launched as drinkers lose taste for strong ale
Sales in the UK of beer with an ABV of 5% and up are down, so brewers are rolling out lower alcohol alternatives.

Suburban beer bandits on the rise
This is only one of several stories throughout the US where young people are breaking into garages and cribbing the beer in extra refrigerators.

Beer being served at 1982 prices
Now would be the time to visit the UK and pop into a pub or three.

Paris Hilton promotes beer at Octoberfest
The billionaire socialite is mobbed by photographers and onlookers in Munich. Is there nowhere to escape her?!

But was he drinking his own product?

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Pete Coors, great grandson of founder Adolph Coors and vice chairman of Molson Coors Brewing Company, pleaded guilty last Friday to driving while impaired. This is a lesser charge than driving under the influence, with which he was originally charged.

Good old Pete was sentenced to 24 hours of community service, had his fine suspended, and needs to participate on a panel sponsored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving and go through alcohol education courses. He also has to pay about $500 in court costs. (I think he can afford it.)

There might be a little celebrity favoritism going on here. Would an average Joe gotten the charge reduced? Still, I suppose with all his money he might have gotten it swept under the rug. Expect a slew of new Coors-branded PSAs this football season.

On that note, your hosts at Hop Talk want to remind you that as much as we, and you, love beer, it is still an alcoholic beverage. Don’t drink and drive.

Is beer by megabrewers automatically bad?

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As you are no doubt aware, large brewers often have multiple brands. Some may be marketed as “premium” compared its more famous brand (e.g., Michelob vs. Budweiser), some are marketed as more economical (e.g., Busch vs. Budweiser) and some to appeal to one or other demographic category that traditionally eschews beer (e.g., Michelob Ultra, Mike’s Hard Lemonade*). In many cases, the big brewer tries to hide that it’s actually the brewer, using different company names that coincidentally have the same address of the parent brewer.

A couple of news items in the beer industry in the last couple of weeks (Rolling Rock acquired by Anheuser Busch and Latrobe brewery shut down, Sapporo buys Sleeman’s) plus a review I wrote about Blue Moon Belgian White got me thinking about this. Do so-called beer connoisseurs automatically turn their noses up at a beer just because it was made by Anheuser Busch, SABMiller, Molson Coors, et.al.? Because I knew it was made by Coors, was my review of Blue Moon totally fair?

The answer to the first question is, in many cases, yes. Take a look around the beerblogosphere and you’ll see plenty of bashing of anything touched by the “taint” of a megabrewer. Even here, where we try to maintain an open mind and enjoy beer for what it is, not necessarily for who made it, we’ve been known to look askance at some brews no matter what.

Really, though, is that right? Isn’t that the same sort of bourgeois attitude we beer-drinkers have endured for decades from obnoxious oenophiles? Okay, yes, if a company is involved with “blood diamonds”, or sweatshops, or polluting, or accounting fraud, or exploitation, or predatory pricing, or any of a hundred other bad behaviors, then go ahead and not buy their products. But how often is a brewer caught up in stuff like that? If the beer is good (to you) and you like it, who cares who the brewer is?

In answer to my second question: I don’t know. As I said I try to keep an open mind. I am a big NFL fan, so I get “treated” to advertising from the very biggest brewers. I think some play fast and loose with laws regarding marketing to young people, and for the most part they are insulting to my intelligence. But I don’t buy their beer simply because I’ve had it and I don’t like it (any more), not because I am rebelling or because of snobbishness. I believe that I am beyond the simplistic “this (craft brew) is good beer and that (megabrew) is not” way of thinking. I do not like the bland, adjunct-filled offerings of the big brewers, but that’s not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional Killian’s Irish Red, for instance.

So I say to you: If you drink beer for the taste, if you enjoy trying new beers and styles, if you like finding new and better ways to enjoy your beer, then to heck with where it came from or what other people say about it. You’re our kind of people.

* While it is ultra-filtered, purified, and has all kinds of syrupy flavors added, it is a “malt beverage” and begins life as malted barley. It, and others of its ilk, is technically and legally beer.

Belgian White – Blue Moon Brewing Company

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I’m not a huge fan of most “Belgian” styles. I’m also not a big fan of the Coors Brewing Company lineup.

So, it was with some trepidation that I picked up a six-pack of Blue Moon Belgian White. Blue Moon is, of course, a brand owned by the Coors Brewing Company. They make only two beers: the Belgian White and a Pumpkin Ale, which is obviously seasonal. My wife, who is not much for adventurous beer tasting, recommended I try it.

Blue Moon Belgian WhiteThe orange peel and coriander used to spice the beer are definitely present in the aroma, but not overpoweringly so. In fact, the actual flavor of the beer only hints at these spices. It’s a nice straw color with the classic white beer haze. Like all wheat beers, it makes a prodigious head.

The flavor is pretty light and, dare I say it, downright refreshing. There’s only a light aftertaste, more reminiscent, to me, of oranges than of beer. Of course, that may be due more to the orange slice I dunked in it. (An embellishment recommended to me. Influenced, no doubt, by Coors’ marketing.)

All in all, it’s better than I expected. I do wonder how it would do head-to-head (no pun intended) against something like Celis White or even Hoegaarden. Still, it’s not one of my favorite styles, although I will be finishing the six-pack. I’ll give it a two-and-a-half out of four.