June 2007

Hi All,
The West Sound Brewers June meeting will be held at Darryl's home on the shores of beautiful Liberty Bay (nee Dogfish Bay) on Wednesday, June 20, 7ish. Contact us for directions.

Darryl usually fires up the grill, so bring appropriate meats, veggies, or fruits.

If you don't have homebrew, Darryl suggests you bring weather appropriate craft brew.

Loads of other local breweries and NW breweries dominated the awards too. Maui Brewing Company, a personal favorite of mine out there did well too. The brewer, Tom Kerns, is a McMenamins "graduate". It would be interesting to see how many of the brewers from other regions also started in the NW.

2. Port/Madeira/Sherry tasting. Several folks in the club would like to gather and share port, madeira, sherry, and similar wines. One member has offered to sell shares in a bottle of her 1975 vintage porto, an incredible treat. We'll likely invite a bunch of local wine snobs as well. Is wine snob an affectionate term, like beer geek? Nothing scheduled yet, discuss this at the June meeting.

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/d...

They've been doing a great job at their Bellevue location after the first couple years of serious problems. Their happy hour apps are to die for, and cheap. They also do great special multicourse brewers dinners. They told me they plan to mirror the beer selection between both places, for ease of ordering and inventory. We'll see, I doubt the two locations will sell the same beers at anywhere near the same speed. Hopefully the Seattle crowd will push them to be a bit more adventuresome in their craft brew
selections.

Their website:
http://www.taphousegrill.com/

Read all the way through the sidebar. It's funny the way writers and pollsters throw sadistics around so carelessly. In 2005 Americans "preferred wine", in 2006 they "preferred beer". Does this mean anything? What time of day and what time of the week were they asked? Before or after a meal? In hot weather or cold? January or August? Did they reach mostly stay at home moms? What were the age, economic, and educational levels of the respondents, and what industries did they work in? What kind of people actually answer pollsters' questions? And do they answer honestly or do they mess with the pollsters' heads like I do when they disturb me at home? ;-)

Beer in the Headlights
Sales are flat. Wine is ascendant. How did this happen?
By Field Maloney
Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2007, at 6:19 PM ET

Last year, a grainy video appeared on YouTube. In the clip, three scraggly-looking men in a scraggly yard shoot full cans of Milwaukee's Best Light beer out of a homemade cannon. They shoot at a bottle of what they call "fancy-pants wine," which they've placed at the bull's-eye of a giant white target. On their first shot, they miss. The second shot sends green glass and red wine flying, in the kind of glorious mess that would please Jackson Pollock. The men hoot.
As it happens, the video was made by a beer company SABMiller, which owns Milwaukee's Best and while it plays class warfare for laughs, it also represents the ultimate fantasy of American beer executives, who have been jittery for years. For one thing, wine consumption in this country has nearly doubled in the last decade, while beer sales have been pretty much stagnant, growing less than 1 percent since 2000. Even more galling, in 2005 a Gallup poll revealed that, for the first time ever, Americans preferred wine to beer. This was an astonishing development, akin to Americans jilting baseball for bocce.
Soon after, Lew Bryson, a columnist for a beer-industry trade magazine called Cheers, lamented that beer had "lost its way." Bryson summed up beer's predicament: "Wine overcame beer's lead in the hearts and minds of American drinkers," he wrote. "Forty years ago, wine was mired in a swamp of low-margin jug sales. Drunks were called 'winos.' Now wine has cleaned itself up, with a freshly shaved face and a fashionable suit of casual clothes, and is headed uptown."
How, exactly, did wine become so dominant? The shape of American aspiration our sense of connoisseurship and the good life, the character of our nostalgias, even the thirst imperatives of a nation of office clerks rather than line workers has changed radically over the last few decades in ways that have helped wine and hurt beer.
Of course, the rise of the American fine-wine industry has spurred the broader acceptance of wine here. But who'd have guessed wine would join beer at the football game? Watching last winter's Giants-Eagles NFL playoff, I saw an ad for a cell-phone plan featuring a graying, rugged-looking man strolling through his vineyard and examining dusty bottles of older vintages in his cellar. Winning over football fans with wine! It was as if the "But of course!" Grey Poupon man of the '80s TV ads had become an unironic icon for the WWE. Somehow, wine had become manly.
Part of beer's populist appeal and its edge in the beer vs. wine war has always been its absence of cant about its main point: to provide a little (or a lot) of happy intoxication. You can appreciate wine, but you drink beer, the saying goes. Wine's cult of connoisseurship has always had a specious edge. Like the Victorian obsession with the "grace" of the nude female form, the high-flown language and ceremony of wine-drinking can seem like a fig leaf of sorts, a cover for fancy-pantses who like to get buzzed.
Wine connoisseurship became more palatable to Americans, though, when wine talk changed. As Sean Shesgreen pointed out in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), the old vocabulary of wine, passed down to us from the English squirearchy, graded wines in class terms, privileging pedigree and refinement. The ultimate parody of this kind of wine talk is James Thurber's cartoon line: "It's merely a naive domestic Burgundy, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption." The new wine grammar, popularized foremost by the American critic Robert Parker, sounds like a really weird grocery list, privileging flavor over domain: notes of blackcurrant, eucalyptus, tobacco. As annoying as this new pastoral language of wine can be, it's certainly more democratic-sounding, less forbidding. It trades one set of referents that Americans view suspiciously and uneasily class for another that, even when we haven't the foggiest notion of what it signifies (Chokecherry, anyone? Lychee?), sure sounds nice. Call it the consumer pastoral.
Mea nwhile, the American middle classes have fast become connoisseurs of everything coffee, '80s Japanese garage-rock bands, environmentalist toilet paper. Now, Americans who want the exclusivity that connoisseurship offers but didn't want to seem like snobs can have it both ways. Beer's approachability became less of a virtue. Ironically, in the ultimate about-face, craft-brew drinkers lifted the language of wine. (Tasting notes for a pale ale from the Web site BeerAdvocate: "Nose is floral, like orange blossoms, with some citric rind and soft apple.")
At the same time, Americans, who had traditionally looked to a French and upper-class English model of the good life, one that emphasized refinement and formality, began in the 1980s to look farther south, to the Mediterranean, and particularly to an Italian ideal of good living, one that emphasized passion, spontaneity, and bounty; in other words, we went from Julia Child to Mario Batali. This American embrace of the Med iterranean spirit loosened things up—and the foodie tent got immeasurably bigger when food culture became better suited to the American temperament. Our fundamental attitude about the ceremony of food and the pleasures of the table changed: What counted was passion, which anyone can have, not refinement, which you must be born into, or cultivate very deliberately.
Wine had a prominent place at this new Mediterranean table it was now part of a "lifestyle," while beer remained just a drink. The power of these linguistic associations can be measured: A Google search of beer and passion yields 1.48 million entries, while wine and passion yields four times that; a search of beer and lifestyle yields 1.6 million entries; wine and lifestyle turns up 13 million. The explosion of lifestyle in America is such a recent phenomenon, in fact, that my 1987 Compact Oxford English Dictionary doesn't even have an entry for the word. But marketers know what it means: intangible values attached to material goods. Or: serious bank. Beer executives are in the process of trying to limit their product's associations with certain lifestyles "frat-boy animal house," for example, or "devotees of the brown bag Bud lunch" without alienating those core audiences; beer marketers seem torn between broadening their appeal and energizing their base. But brand repositioning has to be at least somewhat convincing: In 2005, Anheuser-Busch released a malt liquor called Bistro 8, a "new fermented beverage created in collaboration with Master Chefs to complement Bistro Fare. Bistro 8 features the aromas of exotic fruits, spices and citrus. Bud executives pulled it.
Wine marketers have it comparatively easy. They merely summon a picture of a bucolic vineyard or people raising their glasses around a table full of food they don't have to sell their selling points . This is why brewers have been frantically pushing beer-and-food pairings lately. Beer which can be great with food, by the way is in danger of being left out of the American mealtime, banished to the den (only when pro sports are on) or to the back porch (only for the early rounds of grilling).
The boom in foodie connoisseurship in this country has dovetailed with the rise of pastoral chic. Both trends work in wine's favor. Wine, even when it's made at oil-refinery volume, can trade on pastoral associations; beer seems somewhat industrial, no matter how handcrafted the brew. This is a serious handicap. Cheers columnist Lew Bryson, in his beery lament, acknowledges as much when he calls for "a change in beer's culture: Scotch whisky people don't talk about 'moving units' of 'the liquid'; they talk about 'selling cases of whisky.' "
But it's more than a question of switching terminology. Wine is basically an agricultural product (fermented grapes), while beer is the result of a complicated process of manufacture (boiling barley to extract sugars, adding hops and yeast, fermenting the wort that results). This holds true whether the brewer is a medieval English villager or Anheuser-Busch. The hallmark of beer is consistency: A brewer strives to make batch after batch of Pilsener so it tastes the same and often succeeds without much difficulty. Wine is more variable: The sugar levels and tannins and acidity of the grapes fluctuate from year to year, and so does the character of the resulting wines. This explains why the whole concept of vintages is so central to wine but largely absent from beer.
In fact, you can trace the United States' shift from an agrarian society to an urban, industrial one through beer. In the Colonial era, settlers drank mostly hard cider (the rural drink of choice), rum, and whiskey. It wasn't until the mid-19th century, when German immigrants came over in large numbers to man the new factories and brought their brewing skills with them, that beer really took off. When beer became more popular than cider around the time of the Civil War, it signaled an altered American landscape as much as altered tastes. Mass-market beer arose out of two key innovations of the industrial revolution: refrigeration and pasteurization. Suddenly, beer could travel long distances, and lager slowly took over countryside as well as town.
But in America today, beer has lost its grip. In a column on brown ales, Eric Asimov, the drinks writer for the New York Times, wrote a line that could serve as a beer elegy: "Mild brown ales, the knock-back drink of thirsty coal miners and dock workers, are not so appealing to post-industrial office workers, who are less thirsty and more aspirational."
But who knows? Pastoral nostalgia fueled the wine boom after all, we long ago became a mostly urban and suburban nation. Maybe industrial nostalgia will be next, now that our factories are gone. Cubicle-dwellers, raise your pints!

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In 2006, the Gallup results flipped; Americans again claimed a preference for beer over wine. Still, while wine consumption has grown steadily in this country, beer consumption has remained flat. (The one exception to this trend is craft beers, which have enjoyed double-digit sales growth in the last few years. But craft beers command less than 5 percent of the domestic beer market. Anheuser-Busch alone, by comparison, controls about 50 percent of it.)
Field Maloney, who comes from a hard-cider-making family, is writing a book about wine in America. He likes to drink beer.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2167292/
Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

For Immediate Release

Washington Beer’s biggest celebration of the year
2nd Annual WASHINGTON BREWERS FESTIVAL

Kenmore, WA- The day thousands of craft beer fans have been waiting for is fast approaching- the 2nd Annual Washington Brewers Festival will be held at Saint Edward State Park this Fathers Day Weekend. This year’s beer lineup will feature nearly 200 beers from over 60 breweries and is the largest in the Festival history, making it Washington Beer’s biggest celebration of the year. Here are some of the beers you can find at the Festival:

NW classics We cannot call it “Washington Brewers Festival” without some classic Northwest brews. There will be a lot of hoppy beers to satisfy die-hard hop heads. There will be nearly 40 varieties of IPA’s by different breweries, including Elysian Brewing Co. who will showcase three different versions of their IPA’s.

Summer Seasonals Now the sun is out more often and temperature is soaring, so is the demand for refreshing summer seasonals. There will be many thirst quenchers such as Kolsch, Hefeweizens, Blondes and even some lagers. Try Baron Brewing Co, Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Co, Alpine Brewing Co. and Pyramid Breweries for their summer seasonals.

New comers Every year the Festival introduces new breweries to thousands of beer aficionados and this year’s no exception. Schooner Exact Brewing Co. (West Seattle), Skookum Brewery (Arlington) and Stix Billiards and Brewhouse (Seattle) will make their debut at this year’s Festival.

Beers with Twists Many beer connoisseurs with a sophisticated palate will be pleased to find special versions of their favorite beers. For cask-beer fans there will be Cask Anacortes IPA (Anacortes Brewery), Cask XXX IPA (Diamond Knot Brewing Co.) and Cask 3 Grid IPA (Schooner Exact Brewing Co.). Maritime Pacific Brewing Co. will bring a rum-aged version of its Bootlegger Bosun’s Porter, and both Hale’s Ales Brewery (Mongoose IPA) and Redhook Ales Brewery (EESB) will serve a dry-hopped version of their popular beers.

Fruity Beers One of the trends at this year’s Festival is beers using fruits as ingredients such as Berry White by Ram Restaurant & Brewery with raspberries, Blueberry Cream Ale by Northern Lights Brewing Co. and Huckleberry Cream Ale by Laughing Dog Brewing Co.

2007 Washington Brewers Festival WABL Beer- Belgian Blonde by Hale’s Ales Brewery At every Washington Brewers Guild festival WABL (WAshington Beer Lovers Club) members get to try a WABL member-exclusive beer brewed specially for each event. This year’s WABL Beer, Belgian Blonde, was brewed by Hale’s Ales Brewery and will be available at the Merchandise Booth to the current WABL members only.
For a complete list of breweries and beers please visit: http://washingtonbeer.com/beerwabf.htm

It is not only the length of the beer list that distinguishes the “Mother of All Fathers Day Festivals” from other beer festivals in the area. As the name suggests, the Festival is designed and organized by the brewers of Washington themselves to showcase quality beer made in Washington. The festival planning was done by the Guild Festival Committee consisting of a dozen of local brewers and all the beers will be served by the brewers themselves. Event the Rootbeer Garden will serve premium craft rootbeer and soda brewed by local breweries, and also not to be missed is the Brewers Keg Toss Contest where a dozen teams of brewers will compete against each other for a championship trophy.

The Festival will also feature a wide array of entertainment including live music, craft projects for kids, festival food and craft markets. Admission is $20 at the gate and includes a tasting cup and six 5.5 oz tastes, or advance tickets are also available at $15 ($5 saving) at select ticket outlets and online at www.washingtonbeer.com. Those under 21 are admitted free but must be accompanied by a parent.

Washington Brewers Guild presents:
2nd Annual WASHINGTON BREWERS FESTIVAL

DATE Father’s Day weekend
Saturday, June 16th
Sunday, June 17th

HOURS 11:00am-8:00pm
LOCATION Saint Edward State Park
14445 Juanita Dr. NE, Kenmore, WA 98028

Free shuttle bus service available between Kenmore P&R and Saint Edward State Park during the Festival. Carpooling strongly encouraged.

ADMISSION $20 at the gate or $15 advance tickets
Advance tickets are available online at www.washingtonbeer.com and local ticket outlets.
Those under 21 admitted free (must be accompanied by a parent)
ALL AGES
Sorry, no dogs allowed

BEERS Washington Brewers Festival is the celebration of the world-class beers brewed in our state and there will be the largest selection of craft beers you can find anywhere in Washington on the Fathers Day weekend! The brewers are challenged to bring their very best beers to showcase their talent, craftsmanship and creativity. There will be a wide variety of beers including many NW style hoppy beers and refreshing seasonals.

BREWERS Here’s a chance for the brewers to show off their muscles and keg-maneuvering skills they

KEG TOSS developed from years of hard work! Each contestant will toss an empty pony keg toward three

CONTEST kiddy pools full of water and points will be awarded for landing the keg in the pools. Be there and find out who will claim the title of ultimate championship!

KIDS In addition to the spectacular beer selection for dads the Festival offers many activities for

PLAYGROUND kids too. There will be bouncy toys to keep the little ones busy while the craft tent will have Father’s Day gift projects to surprise Dad.

ROOTBEER The Festival will feature one and only Rootbeer Garden serving the finest craft rootbeers and other soda drinks by Washington breweries! Who said beer gardens are for adults only? There are many family-friendly brewpubs in Washington where patrons can take their children and have quality family meals together. And just like the parents who want nothing but the best quality beer, kids can also enjoy premium craft rootbeer and soda at those establishments. There will be rotating taps throughout the weekend.

WINE/CIDER Select local wines and ciders will also be available for those who opt for something different.

MUSIC From bluegrass to worldbeat and alternative country, the Festival will feature a variety of electrifying music all weekend long.

BENEFICIARY Washington Brewers Guild is a non-profit organization whose mission it is to build a community of Washington State brewers, advance their common interests, and promote the quality and value of locally handcrafted beer. Founded in 1999, the Guild now has over 50 members.

CONTACT Public inquiries: (206) 447-5649
INFORMATION Email: lisa@washingtonbeer.com
Press inquiries: (206) 915-0015

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Intro  C  F  C  G  C
          C
Never hit seventeen
                F
When you play against the dealer
        C
You know that the odds
                        G
Won't ride with you
        C
Never leave your woman alone
                F
With your friends around to steal her
                C
She'll be gambled and gone
                        G
Like summer wages

And we'll keep rollin on

Till we get to Vancouver

And the lady that I love

Shes living there

Its been six long months

And more since I've seen her

Maybe she's gambled and gone

Like summer wages

(Chorus)G

        In all the beer parlors

                F               C

        All down along Main Steet

                C

        The dreams of the season

                F                          G

        Are spilled down on the floor

                   G

        All the big stands of timber

          F                        C

        Wait there just for fallin'

                C

        The hookers stand watchfully

             F              G

        Waitin by the door

I'm going to work on them towboats

With my slippery city shoes

Lord I swore I would never do that again

Through the great fog bound straights

Where the cedars stand waitin

I'll be lost and gone

Like summer wages

(Break - fiddle same as verse)

(Chorus)

Never hit seventeen

When you play against the dealer

You know that the odds

Won't ride with you

Never leave your woman alone

With your friends around to steal her

She'll be gambled and gone

Like summer wages

F                          C

And the years are gambled and lost

                      G  C      G C

Like summer wages