See what happens?

This is what happens when you let some Jersey City riff-raff move into your neighborhood. A couple of months later the town brewery almost collapses.

Looks like all of the recent snow and ice caused some dangerous sagging in the River Horse's roof. No word yet on whether or not there will be any impact to production. I'll try to swing by there in the next few days for some investigative journalism.

I was worried about all of the recent snow being a problem for us. We have an old house and all of that heavy snow sitting up there on the roof was making me nervous. Luckily we didn't have any problems. Quite frankly, I'm surprised we didn't hear about something like this sooner.

The article from the Hunterdon County Democrat shows a picture of the Columbia firehouse, one of Lambertville's four volunteer firehouses. It doesn't say whether or not they were the house that responded, but I did take note of the picture. Columbia was just recently recommended for closure. Saving a brewery is way bigger than fishing kitty out of a tree, so if they were the responding house, I say they need to stay open.

Sam's Infomercial

So I finally got around to watching Brew Masters, the new show on the Discovery Channel that's a show about Sam Calagione masquerading as a show about beer. And unfortunately I have to admit that I didn't hate it as much as I wanted to. However...

It still sucked.

The elements of the show that focused on beer production and recipe formulation were really interesting. As far as beer is concerned, there's really never been anything on TV like it (at least as far as I know of). And they didn't dumb it down too much either. I found myself wondering if the average viewer (i.e. someone who doesn't already know about brewing and the nuances of different ingredients) would really get it.

For example, as different varieties of malts were discussed, there wasn't any background information given on what malt even is. And I don't necessarily think that was a bad thing. Hopefully that element of the show inspires more folks to be inquisitive about their beer and its production.

But that's it for the positive. What really smelled rotten about this show - and what should have been no surprise at all to anyone who has been paying any kind of attention to the craft beer scene for the last few years - was that it's really not about beer. Predictably, it's just a Sam Calagione vehicle.

For the past several years, Sam has been the attention sucking black hole of the craft beer world. He's the subject of movies, he has feature articles written about him in major publications (in which other brewers are thrown under the bus at his expense), his name is dropped a dozen times in every issue of every known beer publication. We all know about his modeling, surfing, rapping, baby saving, and miracle working.

And what it comes down to is that, primarily, this show is just about following Sam and listening to him talk about his philosophies and inspirations. Brew Masters is no more about beer than Ace of Cakes is about baking cakes. It's a soap opera centered around one guy (and don't even get me started on that Duff douchebag - I'd bet that they have the same publicist).

The interesting stuff that you might actually be able to learn from takes a back seat to the Sam-centric reality show. And that's just dime-a-dozen TV these days.

Kegerator for sale

Here it is:

Latest stupidity from BrewDog

I hate to come across as a crotchety old grouch these days, but I couldn't help but post a link to this great article on the latest batch of nonsense released by the attention starved hype machine that is BrewDog. Big props to the author for pointing out the incredible lameness of a brewery called BrewDog and their even more ridiculous and pompous press release:

''This is the beer to end all beers. It's an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion; changing the general perception of beer, one stuffed animal at a time.

''The impact of The End Of History is a perfect conceptual marriage between taxidermy, art and craft brewing. The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing - they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.''

WAAAAHHHH WE NEED ATTENTION!!!!

I knew the first time I saw a beer on the shelf called "Punk IPA" that I didn't want to drink anything that these people were coming out with. But I'm really please to know that I can't afford to even think about tasting their latest crap. And what's that, I shouldn't judge their End Of History beer without tasting it? Who cares. They suck.

Down With The Quitness

Kudos to Great Lakes for getting a headline on espn.com today. I've definitely never seen a craft brewery get a headline on a major sports website, so good for them.

Maybe I was wrong about jumping the shark after all.

Puke

Because Saint Sam needs even more attention, right?

They could have found someone way more knowledgable about beer to host a beer show, but there's no way they would have found someone as rugged and handsome as Sam. I can only hope that there are some gratuitious shots of him surfing or rapping or modeling his Levi's.

We've jumped the shark.