Barack Obama is also having a Beer at the end of the day

It's official, Barack Obama is Part of the Beer Conspiracy!
In perhaps the most unusual sitdown of his administration, President Barack Obama hosted Prof Henry Gates, a prominent black scholar, and Sgt James Crowley, a white police sergeant, for beers in the White House Rose Garden on Thursday evening.



Mr Obama was hoping to defuse the angry racial furore that has raged since Sgt Crowley arrested Prof Gates for disorderly conduct at the Harvard academic’s own home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 16.

The President has acknowledged that he fuelled the controversy when he said that the police “acted stupidly” for arresting Prof Gates after he protested vociferously about Sgt Crowley’s actions during a burglary investigation.
Mr Obama invited the two men and Vice-President Joe Biden to join him for a symbolic beer and chat and to talk over their differences.


Source: Daily Telegraph

Brewdog Brewery Under Fire!

The legendary Scottish craft brewery Brewdog has was under fire yesterday from critics and various newspapers.

The award winning brewery has released the new batch of Tokyo at 18.2% ABV (last year's was 12% ABV)
This highly anticipated beer is brewed with jasmine and cranberries in the kettle and then dry-hopped with bucket loads of American hops. After dry-hopping Brewdog then age the beer on fantastic French toasted vanilla oak chips for 4 weeks. The beer is fermented with a champagne yeast and uses an insane amount of malt.

All sounds great doesn't it?
Well not according to the Alcohol Focus Scotland chief executive Jack Law, who claims that beers with such a high ABV (alcohol by volume) could cause as much damage as binge drinking! "This company is completely deluded if they think that an 18.2% ABV beer will help solve Scotland's alcohol problems," he said. "It is utterly irresponsible to bring out a beer which is so strong at a time when Scotland is facing unprecedented levels of alcohol-related health and social harm. "Just one bottle of this beer contains six units of alcohol - twice the recommended daily limit."

I personally can't see what all the fuss is about! Brewdog are only releasing a small batch of 3000 samples of Brewdog Tokyo. The beer can be ordered from the Brewdog website here and can be delivered outside of the UK. These 3000 bottles will go all over the place (to be precise Around 2,000 bottles have been sold to retailers abroad, and only 1,000 remain in the UK)so our friend Jack Law doesn't really have to worry about the "Scotland's alcohol problems" as the UK let alone Scotland won't be the sole receiver of this devilish beer.



"All we can see is that it will add to the binge drinking culture. They are promoting the high ABV which they should not be allowed to do." says Sarah Matthews from the British Liver Trust.

Brewdog have priced the beer at just shy of £10 pounds per 330ml bottle and encouraged it as a beer to savor. At this price I can't really see any binge drinkers forking out £10 for 330ml of drunken fun! Binge drinkers have little interest in this kind of beer. They are far more likely to pop down to the local CO-OP and spend £3 on a litre and a half of white lightning! Never mind faffing about online and waiting patiently for their £10 bottle of tiny Tokyo. Brewdog Tokyo is marketed to people who enjoy and understand beer not hoodlums.

The ABV is so high as it is used as a backbone to maintain the unique body and flavours of this very special beer.

Health campaigners should find something far more important to worry about and take a step back to admire this outstanding technical achievement!


BREWDOG BEERS AVAILABLE HERE AT BEERHERE.CO.UK

Homebrewing

Homebrewing carries with it an image of middle-aged men in baggy jumpers and broken spectacles, hiding in their garden sheds, searching for that elusive drinkable beer, like alchemists looking for gold, but merely producing an undrinkable flat brown liquid.

The truth is slightly different.

Homebrewing has gained in popularity since the late 1970s and early 1980s as a reaction to the few major breweries which produced only streamlined beers for the mass market. Since then, micro-brewers (small breweries which typically make a regional beer) and brewpubs (pubs which brew their own beer sold only in the pub) have had their small market share, as has homebrewing.

A few companies and micro-brewers, many of which had been in the homebrew brigade themselves, filled a gap in a niche market and are producing brewing kits that are foolproof. It is now possible to go into a shop on any high street and buy a brewing kit. Often the instructions on these are straightforward and the results taste pretty damn good, too. Buy the equipment, sterilise it, open the can, add some boiling water, stir, add some cold water, add the yeast sachet, leave for a while, drink.

With a little time, patience and care, anyone can do it.

Beerhere stocks some of the beers from micro breweries around the UK (see link)

Old beer is not harmful to health

The EU requirement introduced a consume-by date on the bottles a couple of years ago; The Objective Beer Tasters, a Belgian association of beer consumers, conducted a campaign against this measure.

The breweries are not happy with a compulsory consume-by date on the label, either. Beer does not really go off, although the flavour can change and it may turn slightly cloudy, experts advise.

Lager in particular has a tendency to cloud over time. The gradual clouding is caused by bonds being formed between proteins (from the malt) and polyphenols (from the chaff of the malt and the hops), so that is why types of malt are selected with not too high a protein content in which the proteins easily coagulate and can be removed during the brewing process.

Consumers do not like cloudy lager. Keeping lager clear is generally a sales issue. Drinking cloudy lager has no effect on the health of the drinker. Some special beers are deliberately made and sold cloudy.

The following beers would be highly recommended for a beer cellar (e.g., a cool cupboard in the basement). Suggested cellaring periods are in brackets, though they are only approximate cellaring times based on personal experiences and in some cases, brewery recommendations. Three gueuzes have been included for the simple reason that these beers have the best cellaring potential in the beer world. Frank Boon of Brouwerij Boon claims a 30-year cellar life for his gueuze beers.


* Brasserie d’Achouffe N’Ice Chouffe (up to 5 years) - Belgium
* Chimay Grand Reserve Blue (up to 5 years) - Belgium
* J.W. Lees Harvest Ale 1998 (up to 10 Years) - England
* Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene (up to 15 years) - Belgium
* Frank Boon Gueuze Mariage Parfait (up to 20 years) - Belgium
* Cantillon Gueuze (up to 20 years) - Belgium

It is proven: Beer belly is genetic!

Experts claim that “beer does not cause pot bellies”, The Sun reported. The newspaper said the researchers had found that heavy drinkers do put on weight, but it is spread all over their body. It said that the pot belly, long thought to be associated with drinking, may be due more to genetics.

This cohort study looked at beer consumption, weight and body measurements in almost 20,000 people on two occasions over an average of six years. It found that increased beer consumption over time was linked with increased waist circumference, particularly for men. However, once a person’s overall weight was taken into account, the significance of these associations disappeared. This suggests that any weight gain from beer is distributed all over the body, rather than being concentrated around the waist.

More information on the NHS website.

Beer Glass Collecting

People now want to have the maximum out of their beer drinking experience. The German Wheat beers, for instance, have their own type of esthetically designed glass to enjoy drinking the beer to the core.
People with a craze for collecting breweriana exhibit a passion for collecting different beer glasses besides mugs and steins. Breweriana buffs collect glasses based on the variety of beers that are on hand in the market. We are sure that some of you love to collect mugs based on their make as to whether they are made by hand or are mould-blown and so on.

Here at BeerHere we stock beer glasses from all over the World from America to Spain to Austria and of course your German and Belgian glasses so why not try us out, go on make you beer drinking experience that little bit more pleasureable!