American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
We blame the industry for this… It used to be that when we wrapped up our Weekend Picks on Friday, we could coast through the weekend. There was little need to check in for updates – things were pretty much done. But clearly all that’s changed. So here’s some of what’s happened in the world of craft beer while you were enjoying yourselves.
Ommegang Sides with House Targaryen (Cooperstown, NY) – The next beer in the Game of Thrones-inspired series is being readied for market, and the brew kettle at Brewery Ommegang is running hotter than ever. Brewery Ommegang and HBO jointly announced that the third beer in their successful partnership, Fire and Blood Red Ale, will release in the run-up to the show’s return to air in spring 2014. The new beer, inspired by House Targaryen, features a series of labels, one for each of the three dragons on the show: Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion.
ACB Beer Label of the Week (Seattle, WA) – This week’s prestigious “Label of the Week” award goes to the Elysian Brewing Company for their brilliantly re-envisioned Elysian Dragonstooth Stout label. The new label art was done by Joe Who (Pierced Hearts Tattoo), a local tattooing legend and a friend of the brewery.
More on Anchor Brewing’s Pier 48 Development (San Francisco, CA) – Anchor Brewing has selected Lundberg Design and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson as the architectural team to design their expanded brewing, distilling, and visitor facilities at Pier 48. As the city’s largest manufacturer, Anchor will continue operating its Potrero Hill facility while expanding production to Pier 48. The 212,000 square foot “destination” addition will allow the company to nearly quadruple its annual brewing from 180,000 barrels to 680,000 barrels and distilling production from 10,000 cases to 200,000 cases.
Shocker – US Senator Wants To Do The Right Thing! (Albany, NY) – In a concerning departure from form, it appears that someone in Congress might actually try to do the right thing. Over the weekend, Senator Charles E. Schumer launched his plan to end the prohibition-era law that prevents the United States Postal Service (USPS) from delivering beer, wine, and spirits to consumers. Schumer will attempt to undo the out-of-date restriction currently imposed on USPS via postal reform legislation.”Allowing the U.S. Postal Service to ship beer, wine, and liquor from Upstate New York breweries and wineries, like other delivery firms already do, is a win-win: it will provide new business opportunity to this growing industry, all while helping to keep the U.S. Postal Service a viable agency, without cutting services,” said Senator Schumer.
Groundbreaking News from Victory (Parkersburg, PA) – The Victory Brewing Company has all kinds of exciting things going on right now with both the new brewery that they’re now building in Parkersburg and the brewpub that they’ve planned at Kennett Square. Utilities are up and running at the Parkersburg Brewery and they’ll start testing batches this week. They also expect to have the bottling line set in place by mid-December. On an entirely different front, Victory officially broke ground on Friday for their long-planned Kennett Square, Pennsylvania brewpub, Victory at Magnolia.
