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BEER, BARS & BREWERS #30

Welcome to the week in beer! Today BrewDog kicks off their crowdfunding project to fund their hotel cum brewery project BrewDog DogHouse, Craft Bier Fest Vienna 2017 is announced, the fourth Greek BeerBartender Awards announce their winners, and Japan plans on lowering their taxation fees on Malt. Good (should we say … hoppy?) news all around. Prost!

This week Berlin gets its very own Mikkeller bar. On Saturday March 18th doors open at 2pm (come early – we’re going to wager a guess and assume that this is going to be hella’ full), the first 300 beers are free. If you’re not only a fan of beer, but also a fan of running, feel free to join the Mikkeller Running Club for the MRC Mikkeller Berlin Grand Opening Run, which will be followed by a large free house beer. There will be some incredibly fun beers available, including the Acid Trip BA White Wine, the Recipe 1000 BA Sauternes  the Nelson Sauvignon Champagne S Acasia, and the Spontancherry w. Frederiksdal 2016. We wouldn’t miss this!

The BrewDog DogHouse

You might have heard about BrewDog’s plans last year and now the dream that lives between the reality of a hotel and brewery is becoming a reality: The BrewDog DogHouse – sour beer facility in the middle of a hotel, or a hotel in the middle of a sour beer facility in Columbus, Ohio. “A sort of supersized sour sleepover” as BrewDog’s crowdfunding video so aptly puts it. The BrewDog DogHouse (as the brewery/hotel will be called) will have jacuzzis filled with beer, malt massages, food pairing with beer to every meal (we’re just going to go ahead and assume that includes breakfast), and, most importantly: fridges in the shower that are filled with beer, for shower beer. Yes, we can definitely get onboard with that. If you’d like to contribute and secure a place in the craft beer hotel BrewDog DogHouse, help them fund it through their Indiegogo campaign. “The brewery expects BrewDog DogHouse to be complete by late September 2018 if it meets its crowdfunding goal”, so craftbeer.com reports.

Craft Bier Fest Vienna 2017

Austria’s beer scene is proud to show off all their colors at this year’s Craft Bier Fest Wien. This year the Czech Republic will be the first ever country to act as a “visiting guest country” and they’re sure to bring several extraordinary breweries to the game. The place to taste Austria’s emerging beers, we hear they’ll have a killer food pairing planned as well. Don’t miss this! The fair will take place on May 5th and 6th, at the Marx Halle. More information here. http://www.craftbierfest.at

Fourth Greek BeerBartender Awards Results

Earlier this month the fourth BeerBartender Awards took place at Athens’ Maroussi Plaza. For the first time ever, the awards were handed out after a blind tasting. The jury consisted of Tim Hampson (writer, president British Guild of Beer Writers), Helmut Adam (publisher Mixology Magazine, founder Bar Convent Berlin & BrewBerlin), and Dirk Hoplitschek (beer journalist and organizer Berlin Beer Week) who tried 40 Greek beers. The night’s biggest winner turned out to be the Septem Microbrewery, “which excelled in many classes of both Consumers Awards and the Greek Beer Awards with a total of five awards”.

The Top Lager category was won by the Volkan Black Lager. The Noctua Night vision turned out to be a consumer  favorite in the Consumer’s Awards. It’s an exciting time for Greek microbreweries and we’re happy to follow along.

New Taxes Could Trigger a Japanese Craft Beer Renaissance

Japan’s got good news and it’s beer related! Malt is heavily taxed in Japan, this leads to the big breweries substituting malt with pea, corn, or soybeans to lower the cost of brewing. Bloomberg reports that “Craft brewers, which account for about 2 percent of beer sales in Japan, say the tax incentives have given bigger companies an advantage and allowed the substitutes to dominate the market, because they cost a lot less. Meanwhile, some expensive-to-make special brews with exotic ingredients must be advertised as the cheap stuff because their recipes don’t meet official definitions of beer—which regulations define, in part, as having at least 67 percent malt content”.

However, in an effort to boost the competitiveness of Japanese beers in the international market, the Finance Ministry announced that it will change its tax rates for beer and the substitutes beginning in 2020. “Changing the code to encourage more craft brewing could also help revitalize regional economies, according to the ministry’s tax bureau, something Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promotes as a key part of his development program”. A good idea, considering that domestic shipments of beer have been on the decline for 12 straight years. Expect a lot more innovation to come out of Japan in the near future!

Credits

Foto: Photo via Tim Klöcker.

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