BeerTools.com News

GOLD v3.5 allows the user to choose from 7 different hop utilization formulas. These formulas are from some of the leading minds in brewing such as Daniels, Garetz, Mosher, Tinseth, Rager and more! You can also use any combination of these to achieve a custom hop utilization formula. Want to see more? Take the GOLD v3.5 tour at http://www.beertools.com/html/calc_tour.php

Berlin - Now you can have both - thanks to a German brewery which has developed a beer you can wash down your food with or wash down your body. Klosterbrauerei, or monastic brewery, was looking for ways to mop up excess capacity in a slumping beer market and struck upon the bathtime supplement to help the stressed soak away their tension and strains. The brewery, in Neuzelle, near Leipzig, eastern Germany, says the dark brown brew has restorative powers for both the mind and body to improve the skin and pep up spirits. "It opens up the pores, the yeast penetrates the skin and after 15 minutes your skin feels softer everywhere," company spokesperson Dirk Vock said. "It is also a good remedy for people with skin problems." "The beer cloaks bathers in a delicate aroma of malt," said, Vock who recommended about three litres of beer per bathtub.
Special Thanks to Klosterbrauerei.com

Have you seen the new look of the recipe search results? Now at a glance you can check the OG,FG, color, IBU, alcohol, and, style compliance. This should make the recipe database even easier to use.

Lagos, Africa. The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC), has called on brewers and importers of alcoholic beverages to obey labeling requirements on expiration date and declaration of content on the product label. At a meeting between NAFDAC and the Alcoholic Beverages Brewers and Importers in Lagos, it was agreed that best before date on beer should be inscribed on the label or inscribed on the bottle through a notching, laser printing on label or on bottle, can, keg from December 2, 2002. The parties agreed that companies should exhaust their stockpiled labels by the end of June 2003. But with effect from July 1, 2003, all beers manufactured locally or imported without the alcohol content declaration will be seized and destroyed. While the use of volume by volume declaration of alcoholic content will replace the organisation number required by SON.
It was also noted that the level of nitrosamine in beer which is a by - product of beer brewing is carcinogenic. NAFDAC urged brewers to refine their beer to reduce nitrosamine to the barest minimum or completely eliminate it in the products. NAFDAC is attempting to bring African beer makers up to international standards on nitrosamine levels.

All of the tools, the Recipe Generator, the Recipe Calculator, and the Final Analysis; have been upgraded. Be sure to take them for a drive; access them using the links on this page.

UK company Oxoid, in conjunction with the UK Institute and Guild of Brewing (IGB), has launched a new, international, brewing industry award for hygiene and quality standards. Oxoid has created the Award for Beer Quality and Brewery Hygiene “to reward those whose activities are making a real difference to brewing quality and hygiene standards”.
The annual award is open to individuals, companies and organizations worldwide. Entrants will be encouraged to describe improvements that they have made to working practices that ensure beer quality and brewery hygiene. For example: improvements to filtration techniques, improved cleaning processes adopted, identification of spoilage organisms or ‘new’ organisms not previously encountered, the development of a new media or testing method, and the monitoring and usage of disinfectants.
The closing date for entries is 28 February 2003.
Special Thanks to foodproductiondaily.com

Englands, Bradford University has been criticised in the House of Lords over its part-time Drink and Society course. The course focuses on the history of alcoholic drinks both locally and across the country. According to The Yorkshire Post Conservative peer Lord Trefgarne demanded to know whether public money was going on funding a course "relating to beer drinking in Yorkshire". The peer raised the suspicion that Bradford University had created the course to maintain its student numbers. The university insists it isn't funding students to go on a glorified pub crawl. It says it's asking them to "examine the place and significance of alcoholic drinks in society in the period 1750 to 1920, principally in England".
Special Thanks to Ananova

WATERLOO -- Brick Brewing Co. went to court today seeking $10.5 million in damages from The Beer Store in a dispute over access to empty beer bottles, a dispute that Brick says could cause "irreparable harm'' to its Waterloo-based brewing business. In a 13-page statement of claim, Brick alleges that Canadian beer giants Molson Inc. and Labatt Brewing Co. have systematically tried to undermine the craft brewer. The statement says the two giants used The Beer Store to deny Brick access to standard long-neck, brown bottles, an action taken in retaliation for Brick's popular relaunch of the old stubby bottle used for its Red Cap brand. The Beer Store, speaking for its three shareholders, Molson, Labatt and Guelph's Sleeman Brewing and Malting Co., claims that Brick has broken a 10-year-old agreement restricting it to the industry standard bottle. Brick founder and president Jim Brickman has denied ever signing such an agreement.
The court document says that Molson and Labatt went so far as to "instruct'' the largest bottle-maker in North America -- Owens-Illinois Inc. -- to stop selling new bottles to Brick, which the bottle-maker did as of last May. Molson and Labatt are Owens-Illinois' largest Canadian customers and together control more than 90 per cent of the Canadian beer market.
If The Beer Store is allowed to cut off Brick's access to long-neck bottles, the brewery will be out of containers for most of its beer within a month, the court statement says. The brewery will be unable to handle the costs or logistics of moving to an alternative bottle, such as the stubby, quickly, the statement also says.
Their fear is that the courts might throw open the bottle agreement, which provides financial incentives to small brewers to stay with the brown long-neck bottle. The agreement has helped save millions of dollars in beer-production and distribution costs.
Special Thanks to SUSAN PIGG and the Toronto Star

Labatt Breweries halted 252,000 cases of beer brewed in London after chips were found in the necks of some bottles. No glass got into any bottles -- the brewery withdrew the cases as a precaution before they got to market, said Bob Chant, a Labatt spokesperson. The problem occurred between Oct. 12 and Oct. 22. Affected brands included Budweiser, Labatt Blue, Blue Light, Labatt Ice and Labatt Classic for domestic sale and Blue, Blue Light and Ice intended for export to the U.S. Chant said. Labatt workers will manually check more than six million bottles of beer to find the few hundred with chips. "It's not quite a needle in a haystack, it's more like a knitting needle in a haystack," said Chant. "We are examining every bottle." Chipped bottles will be recycled and the beer in them dumped. The remaining beer will be repackaged. George Redmond, president of the Brewery General and Professional Workers Union, Local 1, stated yesterday that "a faulty machine caused the chipping, no glass got into bottles and no chipped bottles made it to beer stores" he added. "It was strictly a mechanical malfunction and they corralled all the production just to be on the safe side,".
Special Thanks to NORMAN DE BONO and Free Press Business Reporter

To announce the many new features and enhancements coming to BeerTools.com we will be running ads in BYO magazine. (Dec '02, Jan/Feb '03, March/April '03 and May/June'03) We hope our Gold Members are enjoying the soon to be released version 3.5.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Researchers are trying to find a way to make beer taste better. The U.S. Agriculture Department has awarded a $300,000 grant to the subsidiary of a Minneapolis-based company. It will examine how growing conditions and locations affect hops and barley and change the flavor and aroma of a brand of beer from batch to batch. Sierra Nevada Brewing and a taste panel at Texas A&M University are also in on the two-year study. The ultimate goal: Allowing brewers to produce their gold standard of beer in every batch.
Special Thanks to Karren Mills and the Associated Press

The craze for a cheap beer made out of sea water and raw malt has Japan's brewing industry hopping mad. Japan's biggest brewer Asahi said it was seeing a continuing slide in sales as more and more Japanese turned to the drink called happoshu. Asahi makes Japan's best-selling beer but in the past three months the company's operating profit has fallen more than 20%. The popularity of happoshu is hurting the sales of all Japan's big brewers. Asahi is trying to cash in on the craze by offering its own happoshu beers. And the government is flirting with the idea of a new happoshu tax to help the established brewers. According to one columnist at the Japanese website - Captain Japan - the only thing the success of happoshu proves, is that if a drink is cheap enough, it will sell, even if it tastes like medicine.
Special Thanks to Victoria Broadbent BBC World Business Report