Ummm...

...Who wants to try it first?

Freshly shucked oysters and beer go hand-in-hand like milk and cookies - but a beer actually brewed with the slimy, salty delicacies and their liquor?

It was a go yesterday for Harpoon Brewery and Island Creek Oysters. The Boston beer maker teamed with the Duxbury oyster farm to produce the Harpoon 100 Barrel Series Island Creek Oyster Stout.

Sounds like this was dreamed up by boys in a middle school cafeteria in an attempt to gross out some girls, but Harpoon swears that it won't taste Oyster-y - they claim that it simply boosts the protein and thus pumps up the body of the beer. I'll believe it when I see it...

Burger King Bar... Sets the Bar Low

Well, if you're the kind of person that hangs out at Burger King, things just got a whole lot better:

Gimme a Whopper, fries — and a beer.

Those words are no longer wishful thinking. Friday, Burger King (BKC) will unveil plans to sell beer and burgers at a Whopper Bar — a new BK concept to compete with casual dining restaurants — in Miami Beach's tourist-heavy South Beach. The South Beach Whopper Bar is scheduled to open in mid-February.

I actually really like the trend that more casual, "family" type places are serving alcohol. I mean, I haven't eaten at a Burger King in about a decade, but it's this kind of change that might help folks of all stripes loosen up about alcohol. To bad they're just serving MillerCoors.

Beer Blinded Me with Science

I recently came across this categorically exhaustive graphic of the beer spectrum. Does it look like anything else you've seen before? Yeah, that's right. The periodic table of elements! If, like me, you loved 9th grade Chemistry, then this will be right up your alley.

As a visualization for beer education and appreciation, I also think it's genius. Each column represents a distinct variety of beer (e.g. Belgian ales, pale ales, Scottish ales) within one of the two major brewing styles (lagers vs. ales). And, within every column, sub-varieties are organized vertically by A.B.V., with the lowest-alcohol styles appearing at the top and highest-alcohol styles appearing at the bottom.

In case you were wondering, you can also see how common and even obscure beers compare to one another by original and final gravity, bitterness (as measured by International Bitterness Units, or IBUs), and color intensity (as measured by Standard Reference Method, or SRM). Yes, someone actually used a spectrometer to calculate how light passes through a brown porter as compared to a robust porter. And, I appreciate that. Very much.

Winter Beer Carnival at the Contemporary

Did you miss the Great Decatur Craft Beer Festival? Or that circus that sometimes appears across the freeway from Turner Field?

Well, fear not. The Winter Beer Carnival will roll into The Contemporary on February 27th from 3 to 7, carnival games and all. Mmmmmh, carnies.

Advance tickets are $30 and go on sale January 22nd at 10 am. The Contemporary isn't near a MARTA station, but the mighty #1 and #113 buses will get you within about a block of the place.

(h/t Inside Access)

There's an App for That

Katy, ask and you shall receive. I came across this today after (or during) a visit to the Monday Night Brewery page. Find Craft Beer is an app that finds craft beer locations near your body (provided your body is near your phone). It even features new change city lookup algorithm with version 1.6. It is supplemented by the, perhaps, even cooler Beer Mapping Project: they find beer, you drink the beer. If the project has a photo of the location on file it will pull it up for you. If not, no worries. The app will show locations on a map and provided that Goolge's Street View is available for the area you can likely see the bar that way.

One question remains. When will you get an iPhone?

For the Dogs

For Christmas my sister-in-law sent us gifts to open at my mom and dad's house in Detroit. Among them were a few packages for the dog. Interesting, I thought; likely some rubber toy or maybe even a gourmet biscuit (aka cookie aka treat). One of them was a bag of fancy NYC-themed dog cookies. To my surprise, the other one was beer. Beer for dogs. It's called Bowser Beer and is billed as a nutritous and fun non-alcoholic alternative to beer. That description is not winning me over but the concept is appealing: beer for dogs. 3 Busy Dogs is out of AZ and will make you a custom labeled brew with a picture of your dog on the front. We got a bottle of The Salty Paw's Blue Dane Ale. From the picture it doesn't look like it's winning over Mali either. It's fortified with glucosamine to promote healthy joints!! I couldn't find much on how it is made or if it is actually brewed. However, I think the company is pretty cool because, in addition to providing a way for your dog to responsibly drink with you, they are out to educate people on the dangers on giving real alcholic beverages to dogs (though I had no idea this was a problem serious or widespread enough to merit committed advocacy).

I thought that was cool enough but then a coupld days ago this came across the Twitter expanses. Dogfish Head has partnered with a local bakery to make use of their spent grain to produce a new dog treat they're calling Dog Bark.With all the spent grain we have from our Brew Day I want the recipe. We did have some success making loaves of spent grain bread. However, I ate it and later became sick, though not, we think, from the bread and the essence of so many DSBC members. Beer? I'm not sure, but being sick is definitely for the dogs.

The Beer Can: Happy Birthday

Remember those Mad Men episodes when Don Draper opens his beer with a church key? Ah, those were the days before all that technology cluttered up our beautiful beer cans. Well, it's time to wax nostalgic, because the beer can was invented by Gottfried Krueger Brewery 75 years ago this month, and this is an anniversary I'd like to celebrate by indulging in a beer - one in a can, of course. Several great microbreweries have begun to sell great beer in cans, including Oskar Blues and Ska Brewery (for the hiker types). Anybody see any other good beers in cans?

So if you want to see a ridiculous collection of old school beer cans, including the first ever (pictured above), just head to Flint, Michigan to check out the "Brewery Collectibles Club of America." Vargo, next time you're going home for the holidays? If for some reason you don't want to go to Flint, the video embedded below gives you a nice tour of the place. Or, you can check out their annual convention, called (I kid you not) CANvention. Check this out for some great pictures from the 1998 convention - excuse me, CANvention. Seriously, look here. Oh, and don't forget your BCCA gear. Dibs on the lanyard.

Beer Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

The other day I was listening to one of my favorite public radio programs, Marketplace, and heard an interesting story about recent shake ups in the beer market. Apparently, amidst declining U.S. beer sales in 2009, there have been a number of mergers and acquisitions involving macro breweries (i.e. the Goliaths in the David v. Goliath beer wars).

We've all heard about Belgium-based InBev buying up Anheuser-Busch, but there appears to be a trend emerging. Dutch brewer Heineken announced recently that it has negotiated the purchase of Mexican beer conglomerate FEMSA, maker of Dos Equis, Tecate and Sol.

I'm no economist, but it seems like some macro breweries have weathered the recession better than others, and they are using cash, debt, and/or stock equity to buy up some of those companies that haven't been doing as well. This could be a big boon to the InBevs and Heineken's of the world, because it gives them wider distribution outside of Europe, and will likely increase their global market share, at least in the short term.

But, I also think something else might be happening, and it's an issue that Marketplace reporter Amy Scott barely touched upon in her segment. There has been an undeniable trend over the past 5-10 years of micro-breweries gaining market share in the U.S. as American beer tastes skew increasingly towards more flavorful, more full-bodied, and yes, higher A.B.V. beers. True, craft breweries still have a very small piece of the pie, but it's getting bigger.

What if the big guys are starting to get scared of the little guy? And instead of improving the quality and flavor of their own beers, what if they are gobbling up each other in the hope that they can bully the micro-breweries around, without improving their product?

Here's a remarkable statistic: In the middle of the biggest recession the U.S. has ever experienced, what is typically considered a "recession-proof" market--alcohol sales, and more specifically, beer sales--slumped 2 percent overall in 2009, but craft brews were up 5%.

As statistician Nate Silver noted in his blog, it's difficult to understand what is driving this divergence--and whether it's a one off thing, or part of a larger trend--but he thinks it may have something to do with more Americans "substituting Michelob and Coors for more expensive micro-brews like Alpha King and Dogfish Head." Presumably, Americans are drinking more craft beer, even while total beer consumption is declining.

All of this begs the question: What would you do if you were the executive of a big, macro-brewery with loads of cash to spend?

Would you 1) buy a Mexican beer company that mass-produces poor quality beer that Mexicans themselves don't like to drink, and Americans are increasingly dubious of? Or, would you 2) acquire a well respected craft brewery that is making really good quality stuff, and gain a foothold in the fastest growing segment of the beer market? Hmm...

Don't Give Me Ideas...

...or I may act on them.

Another Revolution 'Round the Sun

Things to look forward to in 2010...

An excerpt:

Founders Brewing Company of Grand Rapids, Mich., has a mysterious new beer planned called Nemesis.

"It isn't actually a beer, it's a series of beers," said Founders' Dave Engbers. "Every year, we're going to be releasing a new style, or a new beer. It's going to be a beer never brewed before and it'll never be brewed again."

Engbers would not say what the first Nemesis will be, but said it will be in stores in a couple of months.

Another beer to watch out for will be from the Brooklyn Brewery. The Cookie Jar Porter will be the next entry in the Brewmaster's Reserve series, and will be available in the middle of the month.

Cookie Jar Porter... sounds delicious.