The state of Connecticut is trying to ban Seriously Bad Elf beer because—get this—they think the label might entice children to drink the beer. I kid you not: State wants to ban beer import because of elf on label:

The state believes it would be really awful for kids to see the label on the British import Seriously Bad Elf.

It shows a mean-looking elf with a slingshot firing Christmas ornaments at Santa's sleigh as it flies overhead.

State liquor regulations bar alcohol advertising with images that might appeal to children. The regulations specifically mention Santa....

Dan Shelton cried foul. After all, his company had no such problems when it sold Bad Elf and Very Bad Elf in previous years. It sells the beer in 30 other states and none have complained.

"We even had a beer called Santa's Butt last year," Shelton said. "They didn't notice Santa's Butt, but they notice this one. How can you miss that big red thing? Minors are not going to be looking to buy beer because Santa Claus is on the label."

That's a bit much... considering you can barely see Santa on the label at all. Pretty weak, Connecticut.

Via A Good Beer Blog, and Slashfood.

Well, it does, but only a little bit. It's really the chemical xanthohumol, found in trace amounts in hops, that appears to fight cancer. Here's the full story from KATU News.

"Xanthohumol is one of the more significant compounds for cancer chemoprevention that we have studied," said Fred Stevens, a researcher with OSU's Linus Pauling Institute and an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry in the College of Pharmacy. "The published literature and research on its properties are just exploding at this point, and there's a great deal of interest."

Quite a bit is now known about the biological mechanism of action of this compound and the ways it may help prevent cancer or have other metabolic value. But even before most of those studies have been completed, efforts are under way to isolate and market it as a food supplement. A "health beer" with enhanced levels of the compound is already being developed....

It's possible, scientists say, that hops might be produced or genetically engineered to have higher levels of xanthohumol, specifically to take advantage of its anti-cancer properties. Some beers already have higher levels of these compounds than others. The lager and pilsner beers commonly sold in domestic U.S. brews have fairly low levels of these compounds, but some porter, stout and ale brews have much higher levels.

However, don't expect to start drinking a lot of beer to prevent cancer: according to this, you'd have to drink 120 gallons of beer a day to get any benefit.

But I'm sure a beer a day wouldn't hurt...

Halloween is nearly upon us, and I've been thinking about appropriate beers for the season. This is becoming something of a series, since I've also written about Valentine's Day beers and St. Patrick's Day, and I'll probably follow up with other major holidays.

Anyway, the first beer the comes to mind as the perfect Halloween beer is Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. It was originally created to celebrate the Mayan Day of the Dead on November 1, so the time of year for it is spot-on. Plus, it's really fine beer. I'm thinking I'll take a six-pack to a Halloween party we're invited to Saturday night.

Next, I'm thinking maybe Maudite. I've never tried it, but I just like the bottle and a stronger ale seems appropriate.

Deschutes Brewery usually brews a Halloween seasonal called Old Sam Hain, but it's only ever available on tap and I've only had it once (I always miss it).

In general, any malty, stronger, hoppy ale would be appropriate, I think. Especially if it's very orange (or amber-orange)... maybe you could do a black and tan with an orange and black (stout) beer—very Halloween! But definitely look for something with a bite to it...

Five years ago Michael Jackson wrote a similar article: Some beers for Halloween. Many more suggestions to be found there.

We made it back from Florida over the weekend, missed hurricane Wilma by two days and otherwise had an uneventful time. Didn't get to sample any local beer or anything, I'm sorry to say. Even worse, I could have had a chance to meet Chris of Hail the Ale!, but since I had no internet connection I missed the boat on that one.

Well, maybe next time...

Ah, we're quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we're flying out to Florida for a week. We'll be visiting my wife's grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be online much, or at all. We're taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I'm not too devastated by this.

And from a beer standpoint, I'm not too hopeful anyway; there's not many breweries listed online, and I kind of doubt we'll have the time to check any out. If we do, though, I'll write about them if I get the chance.

I picked up a 22-ounce bottle of Deschutes Brewery's Hop Trip this evening to try it out (I can't believe I hadn't blogged about this yet). It's one of the brewery's limited edition "Bond Street Brown" series, and it's notable because it's brewed with fresh picked hops. Lots of them.

It was quite good, and strong on the hops. They're right there, up front, and stay with you throughout. Not only is it one of the hoppiest beers I've had, but you can really tell that the hops were brewed fresh—you can taste the green, resiny, grassy character, and you know what? It's really good and refreshing.

The beer itself is a fairly standard, malty pale ale. It would hold up just fine on its own, I think, but who cares? The hops really make this beer.

I don't know if it's available anywhere else, though, you might only find it in Central Oregon. I'm thinking I should stock up before it's gone.

The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project blog has a mouth-watering post on several regional beer cheeses: Rogue Creamery Soba Cheddar (made with Rogue Ales' Morimoto Soba Ale) and Windsong Farm's Hefeweizen Cheddar and Double Trouble IPA Cheddar (made with beer from The Great Bear Brewing Company).

I'm going to have to keep my eye out for beer cheeses now, these definitely sound good to me. Barring that, I'll have to think about doing some cheese tastings paired with beer... I'm thinking a good strong, dark, perhaps even smoked selection of ales would be good accompaniments...

Ahh, the 2005 Deschutes Brewing Jubelale is out! The theme this year is "an après ski party after a day of skiing on Mt. Bachelor," with a definite vintage look. Here's this year's artist:

Andrew Sewall, a graphic artist from Pullman, WA drew inspiration from his youth spent in the Sun Valley, ID area. With his background in watercolor, the scenic picture captures the camaraderie and fun of the après ski scene.

As always, it's very good. And it weighs in at 6.7% alcohol by volume, which is just right as the weather gets cooler.

See also my Jubelale post from last year.

You gotta love traditional/historical beers (I do, anyway): here's a review of Samuel Adams Boston 375 Colonial Ale, on draft only in Boston, that aims to emulate the kind of colonial beer that Sam Adams himself would have brewed.

Pouring cloudy and deep-glowing amber, this unfiltered ale immediately imparts a richly sweet aroma, tinged with a pleasing, earthy acridity. The first pull reveals a smooth and viscous beer, almost chewy, that splits the difference between smoky and sweet, with burnished notes of caramel and brown sugar. Well-hidden, too, is a faint bite of dark rum. That's no accident.

"In colonial days, a significant portion of fermentable materials came from blackstrap molasses," says Sam Adams founder Jim Koch. So while Boston 375 uses two-row Harrington, Munich, and caramel malts, about a third of the fermentable stuff comes from molasses - hence the rum flavor. The subtle smokiness comes from a fourth type of malt, which Koch smoked lightly to approximate what early American brewers would have used.

BeerAdvocate has a more detailed article about the beer. Sounds good... now I only need an excuse to go to Boston. :)

BeerAdvocate reports on a Great American Beer Festival item that I missed: one of my favorite (though least-visited) brewpubs, the Pelican Pub & Brewery, was awarded Small Brewpub of the Year.

For the second time in six years, the Pelican Pub & Brewery was named "Small Brewpub of the Year" at the 24th Annual Great American Beer Festival. Head brewer Darron Welch was named "Brewer of the Year - Small Brewpub". The team from the Pelican Pub & Brewery won three highly coveted medals: Kiwanda Cream Ale won a gold medal in the Golden or Blonde Ale category, MacPelican's Scottish Style Ale took a silver medal in the Scottish-Style Ale category, and Doryman's Dark Ale brought home the silver in the American Brown Ale category.

Kudos to the Pelican! Now I need an excuse to visit Pacific City to get some of the award-winning beer...

Starting tonight you'll see some new ads I'm trying out here on The Brew Site: Chitika "eMiniMall" ads. I've placed them on the individual item pages, and I'll be playing around with them over the next few days to see how things work.

Sorry if it's intrusive... I think they're kind of cool, though, so we'll see.

This just sounds nasty: Nicotine beer in the pipeline:

A Gernam company has come up with a novel way of beating bans on smoking in pubs – put the nicotine in the beer.

A new beer, known as NicoShot, is undergoing testing in Germany with hopes it can be moved toward approval in the next few months.

Each beer contains three milligrams of nicotine and a 6.3 per cent alcohol reading.

It's supposed to help you quit smoking... I don't know, maybe it's just me, but combining two vices like this just doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

Some blowback already: Nicotine beer a no go Down Under.

But there is little chance of the same happening in Australia.

Lydia Buchtmann from Food Standards Australia New Zealand says it has already addressed the issue.

"People overseas were adding nicotine to other things such as mineral water, so we thought we'd be absolutely cautious because while the Food Standards code didn't actually say you could add nicotine, it didn't actually say you couldn't," Ms Buchtmann said.

"So we've since amended that, done a safety assessment and ensured that nicotine can't be added to food or beverages."

And apparently Gizmodo beat everybody by reporting this back on July 13th.

Roundup of some Great American Beer Festival pages around the web:

• Gold Medals & Glory - The Great American Beer Festival: BellaOnline touches on highlights and runs down some of the big winners.
• The joy of blind tasting: Stan at the Beer Travelers blog was at the GABF and talks about the blind tastings required for the competition.
• The GABF 2005 Winners is posted on the official site.
• BeerAdvocate has a quick list of the winners also.
• Anheuser-Busch Honored at Great American Beer Festival: A Yahoo press release that A-B was quick to publish.

When bottling your homebrew, you typically need to "prime" the beer with a bit of sugar to reinvigorate the yeast enough to produce the desired carbonation in the bottle. This primer can be straight sugar (corn sugar is typical, but table sugar would work too), or another source of fermentable sugars, like honey, malt extract, etc.

In the "old days" one method of priming was to add a teaspoon of sugar to each bottle before filling it, which of course would lead to widely varying degrees of carbonation per bottle (and would often cause the infamous exploding bottle problem). Consistency in the amount of primer per bottle is key to avoiding problems like these.

Most modern homebrewing books and techniques call for priming the beer with no more than one cup of sugar (typically one-half or three-fourths of a cup). Usually you boil this with a cup or so of water to dissolve and sterilize, and then add it to the beer before you bottle it, to ensure a uniform distribution of sugar in the brew.

I'm running through the Brief History of Priming here because I remembered a story about an unusual primer a friend told me about: Gummi bears. Yep. My friend Justin knew a guy who tried priming his beer by putting a gummi bear in each bottle before filling it, the idea being the gummi bear would dissolve and the sugar would prime the yeast... needless to say, the result was about as nasty as you'd imagine.

In theory, you could use any fermentable sugar source to prime the beer. Aside from the usual suspects I mentioned above, what other kinds of crazy or unusual things could you prime the beer with? Pieces of candy is the obvious choice; you'd want to stay away from chocolate, though, since the oils would affect head retention and possibly other things. Mints? Jolly Ranchers? Rock candy?

That's what you gotta love about homebrewing: You can experiment with every single step of the process.

Like last year, this one just snuck up on me again: the Newport Microbrew Festival. It was this article which reminded me.

It's Friday and Saturday, October 7th and 8th. Eight bucks admission. I won't be able to make it, there's other plans already in place. Which is just too bad, I love the Oregon coast and Newport in particular.

Okay, I'll have to mark next year's fest on the calendar now so I don't miss it...

The title of this post refers to this article that reviews three energy drink "beers" (You got beer in my Red Bull! You got Red Bull in my beer!): Budweiser B-to-the-E, Tilt also from Anheuser-Busch, and Sparks from Steel Brewing Company.

Of the three products I tried, only Budweiser E is a beer at face value. Tilt (another Anheuser Bush product) and Sparks (Steel Brewing Company) bill themselves as a "premium malt beverage�." With ingredients including caffeine, gaurana, ginseng, taurine, and natural flavors in varying combinations, E is the only product that calls itself "a beer with something extra," although very small letters on the side of the Tilt can read "a flavored ale." Both the Sparks and Tilt also had "certified colors," whatever those are.

Of the three, only E has even slight beer characteristics, including a stale beer aroma, some light husky grain and corn aromas and a crystal clear, light straw color. Similarities fall off the cliff right there, though. E has a sweet, almost tropical fruit smell and the flavor is syrupy. Absent is the hop aroma, flavor or bitterness that defines most beers. Although light bodied, each product's cloying sweetness made it seem fuller. E doesn't list the alcohol content. Sparks weighs in at a significant six percent alcohol, and Tilt at a hefty 6.5 percent. By comparison, an American ale is considered strong when it exceeds six percent.

Sparks and Tilt share nothing with beer. Sparks poured day-glow orange with a brief, alien orange-green head that went flat quickly. Tilt was light, neon pumpkin orange with a dusty orange head and remnant lacing. I'm guessing the manufacturers intend consumers to gun this stuff straight out of the can because in the glass it looks like something that should be lubricating an engine. Maybe this is what "certified color" is all about. Sparks smelled like chewable baby aspirin. Tilt smelled like an orange creamsicle.

Anyway, I thought the review was rather amusing. I'll avoid these types of drinks at all cost.

Tried Full Sail's Wreck the Halls (a 2004 limited edition beer) this evening. For some reason, when I bought it (earlier this year), I was under the impression that it was a barleywine, but it only weighs in at 6.5% alcohol, much too low for a barleywine. BeerAdvocate classifies it as an American IPA, but I'm not sure I agree with this assessment; I didn't get any of the usual IPA characteristics when drinking it.

It poured very orange-copper and crystal clear (until I hit the dregs at the bottom). Nice, just-off-white head. It's not a heavily-hopped aroma, much more floral and maybe a bit of pine. Nothing dramatic.

Taste: mostly by impression, since I couldn't identify any single thing: alcohol (you can taste the 6.5% there), floral hops (not really bitter at all; I'm thinking Cascade hops since they're so citrusy and florally), sweet malt—in fact, it was almost too sweet for me. Not what I expected, I wondered if they used a liberal amount of Belgian candy sugar in the mix. Perhaps the over-sweetness was due to expecting a maltier, hoppier barleywine-type ale? A couple of the BeerAdvocate reviews agree with me on the sweetness, too.

Not terrible, not great (for me), I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but worth the bottle to try.

RateBeer also has a review.