Archives for November 2018

The Festival of Wood & Barrel-Aged Beer (FoBAB) is the world’s largest and most prestigious barrel-aged beer festival and competition. Hosted annually by the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild (ICBG), FoBAB invites breweries from all over the world to Chicago to showcase their rarest, most innovative wood and barrel-aged brews. All beer, cider, mead, and perry featured at FoBAB has been aged in a wooden barrel or come into contact with wood during the aging process. Breweries also compete for top honors in the National Barrel-Aged Beer Competition.

This year over 400 barrel aged beers were entered by 210 breweries from 30 states.  Here are the  2018 FoBAB medal winners:

Category Cider, Perry, Mead
Gold: Cellarmen’s – Valentine Liberator Gin Barrel Aged Cranpus
Silver: Superstition Meadery – Aphrodisia
Bronze: 2 Towns Ciderhouse – La Mure

Category Wild Beer Sour w/Fruit
Gold: Rhinegeist Brewery – Perpetual Passion
Silver: The Rare Barrel- Playing for Keeps
Bronze: Horus Aged Ales – Goodbye to Beauty

Category Wild Beer Sour
Gold: Hopewell Brewing Company – Crudites
Silver: Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project – L’Brett D’or
Bronze: The Rare Barrel – The Search

Category: Wild Beer Brett
Gold: Off Color – Mousetrap – Wildings
Silver: Blackberry Farm Brewery – Barrel Series Brett Belgo IPA
Bronze: Funkwerks – Sauvin Serve

Category: Fruit Beer
Gold: Werk Force Brewing – Farmhouse Vultures Saison with Raspberries and Blackberries
Silver: Werk Force Brewing – The Legend of Mr. Birger Saison
Bronze: Brickstone – Barrel Aged AfterWorld with Luxardo Cherries

Category: Specialty Experimental
Gold: Fremont Brewing – B-Bomb: Coconut Edition
Silver: St. Francis Brewery – Teotwawki
Bronze: The Dayton Beer Company – Deep Sea Diving Aged in Bookers

Category: Strong Dark Beer Category
Gold: Rock Bottom Brewery(Portland) – 5th Dimension
Silver: Karetas Brewing – Colm Cille
Bronze: Half Acre Brewing – Orin

Category: Strong Pale Beer
Gold: Pollyanna Brewing – Orenda Volume 03 Aged in Apple Brandy Barrels
Silver: Karetas Brewing – Sacre Coeur
Bronze: Nebraska Brewing – Melange a Trois

Category: Classic Beer Styles
Gold: Middle Brow Beer Company – Sassafras Brut
Silver: Church Street Brewing – Holly Moly
Bronze: Black Horizon Brewing – Gin Barrel Aged Fooled Me Once

Category: Barleywine/Wheatwine
Gold: Verboten Brewing Cognac/Whiskey Grow Old with You
Silver: Goose Island Beer Company – Bourbon County Brand Wheatwine
Bronze: Revolution Brewing(Kedzie) – Straight Jacket

Category: Specialty Strong Porter/Stout
Gold: Bottle Logic Brewing – Fundamental Observation
Silver: Freemont Brewing – The Rusty Nail
Bronze: Four Fathers Brewing – Double Barrel Aged Wheelhouse

Category: Strong Porter/Stout
Gold: More Brewing – Barrel-Aged Mehndi
Silver: Saugatuck Brewing – BBA Gramanatrixxx
Bronze: Emperical Brewery – Neutronium

Best in Show: Bottle Logic Brewing – Fundamental Observation
Runner Up: The Hopewell Brewing – Crudites

Chico, California —Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. announced today that the company will brew Resilience Butte County Proud IPA to raise funds for those impacted by the Camp Fire. Sierra Nevada will donate 100 percent of Resilience IPA sales to Camp Fire relief, and is asking every other brewery in the country to brew the beer and do the same.

Sierra Nevada will brew Resilience IPA on Giving Tuesday, November 27. The company has asked other breweries to create their own versions of Resilience on that day and donate 100 percent of the sales to Camp Fire relief. Sierra Nevada is working with hop and malt suppliers to secure ingredient donations to participating breweries nationwide.

“Although Chico and the Sierra Nevada brewery were spared, the Camp Fire has devastated neighboring communities where many of our friends, families and employees live,” said Sierra Nevada founder and owner, Ken Grossman. “This community has supported us for 38 years and we’re going to do everything we can to support them back.”

The Camp Fire, now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, started on November 8 in the hills above the brewery’s Chico facility. At the time of this release, the fire had burned 142,000 acres, killed more than 60 people and left hundreds missing, destroyed more than 9,700 homes, and displaced nearly 14 percent of Sierra Nevada’s Chico employees.

Days after the fire, the brewery established the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief fund, which will provide much-needed long-term support for community rebuilding efforts. All donations from Resilience IPA will go to this fund. Additional donations towards this effort can be made here.

Sierra Nevada will release their version of Resilience IPA in early January with limited distribution in cans and on draught.

Western North Carolina has evolved from a mountainous frontier dotted with dry communities into an international destination for craft beer drinkers. Long-time beer writer Anne Fitten Glenn penned this as a companion volume to her first book, Asheville Beer, An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing. This new history of ales and lagers includes the tales of formerly dry towns and counties revising their post-Prohibition regulations to welcome breweries. She relates how those breweries attract community, jobs, tourists, and dollars, as well as mixed emotions, legal conundrums, and entrepreneurial challenges. Glenn traces the history of Western North Carolina beer from the wild days of saloons, bootleggers, and Asheville’s first breweries, through one of the longest Prohibitions in the nation, to the craft beer explosion of the 21st century.

About the Author:
Award-winning author Anne Fitten Glenn has been writing about and working in the beer business on and off since the 1990s. She is the author of two beer books, Western North Carolina: A Mountain Brew History (2018) and Asheville Beer: An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing (2012), both published by Arcadia/The History Press. She pens a regular “Mountain Brews” article for Edible Asheville and has written for numerous other publications, including All About Beer, Smoky Mountain Living, WNC Magazine, Asheville Citizen-Times, and CraftBeer.com. She served on the Asheville Brewers Alliance Board of Directors for almost five years and was a founding organizer of Asheville Beer Week. Western North Carolinians may remember her “Edgy Mama” and “Brewgasm” columns, which ran for several years in Mountain Xpress.

Buy it now on Amazon, Arcadia Publishing