Beer Golden Age Infographic

William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill, co-authors of Craft Beer, posted an interesting infographic in Co.Design on Friday confirming that we are indeed in a golden age of beer. Some interesting tidbits:

• Outside of the Prohibition period, 1978 marked the lowest number of American breweries (44) since around 1810.
• In ~30 years since, we've added 1551 breweries in that time.
• The peak in 1873 (4,131), although it seems unlikely that we'll ever hit that number again, given that there were likely a lot of breweries because many of them were small and didn't have the distribution channels we have now. Output was tiny (under 12 million barrels).
• Today's breweries output about 200 million barrels annually. That number has stayed static since the 1980s, but a higher proportion of that number each year is coming from small craft brewers.

(thanks to Jonathan for the link)

Good Beer Writer, Lousy Self-Promoter

I've been really busy writing lots of good beer-related stuff, but I've missed posting a few of my Dayton City Paper articles. A shame, since one of them was the cover article a few weeks back--probably the article I'm the most pleased with to date. Time to rectify that. Here are three articles that you may have missed:

Craft Brew Around Town
original publication date: April 12, 2011
A guide to some of the best places in Dayton (and surrounding 'burbs) to pair craft beer with sports, music, food, and cinema.



Do-It-Yourself Craft Beer
original publication date: April 26, 2011
An intro to homebrewing for the non-brewer, with an overview of the basics. Don't miss the DCP Summer Wheat Ale recipe, a straightforward ale that's as easy to drink as it is to make.


Buckeye Vodka
original publication date: May 10, 2011
Buckeye Vodka brings microdistilling to the Miami Valley, with their high end artisanal vodka with a mid-range price point. It's become my house vodka.

Big Brews and Blues

This Friday, check out Dayton's first outdoor beer festival of year: Big Brews and Blues. The event runs from 5-9 on the 20th, and features samples of 30 craft beers and live music by 4 local blues bands. Tix are $20 in advance/$25 at the door. Proceeds go to Dayton Diabetes, a local non-profit who help those whose lives are affected by diabetes. You can see my full write-up this week in the Dayton City Paper.

Technorati Tags: Big Brews and Blues, Dayton, blues, beer, craft beer, brewing, homebrew

Pints for Prostates BrewTensils Brewout

On May 7^th from 9 am to 5 pm, in collaboration with National Homebrew Day, Miami Valley BrewTensils will be hosting a local brewout to raise funds for Pints For Prostates, a national charity designed to raise awareness of prostate cancer screening through the universal language of beer. Local homebrewers will be making their beers in the parking lot behind the store, and BrewTensils will be selling the Brewer’s Best PSA IPA ingredient kit, with a portion of proceeds for each kit sold going to Pints for Prostates

The event will include a local raffle for prizes from Belmont Party Supply, BrewTensils, Trolley Stop, South Park Tavern, Pizza Factory, Chappy's Tap Room and Grille, Boston's Bistro, and King's Table Bar and Grille. In addition, enter into the national Pints for Prostate raffle for a vacation in the beer capitals of Europe! The trip for two goes to Prague, Bamberg, and Munich for 9 nights, September 9-19 and includes airfare, hotel, brewery tours, Oktoberfest, pubcrawls and transportation (a $7,500 total value). Tickets for this raffle are $10 each, three for $25, or seven for $50 (all proceeds go to Pints for Prostate) with the drawing held nationally on July 31, 2011. For more info please visit www.pintsforprostates.org or www.brewtensils.com.