1970s Beer Signs

Owners of store would like to host wine tastings

by Alex Ruoff, Staff Writer

Owners of Kensington�s first beer and wine store say they�re worried the recent law that allows them to sell alcohol also may keep their business from flourishing.

Susie Cooper, who owns Old Town Market in Kensington with her husband Rob Cooper, was the first and only business owner to purchase a license to sell beer and wine in Kensington last year after the town lobbied for the change in state laws. Kensington had been a dry town since its founding in 1894.

The pair retained the coffee bar and deli-sandwich counter at the market, but replaced much of their stock of groceries with beer and wine to help them compete with the nearby Safeway grocery store. They retained the services of a local sommelier to guide their selection.

Cooper said beer and wine sales have helped improve traffic at her store, but she hopes those numbers could grow further with more advertising. The law prohibits signage advertising alcohol.

The new, $200 per year licenses, restricted to three total, also do not allow stores to refrigerate their products or sell individual bottles or cans of beer. The hours of sale are shorter than the rest of the county, between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. County stores are allowed to be open until 9 p.m.

Another problem Cooper is facing is a county Department of Liquor Control regulation that went into effect about the same time Kensington was approved for alcohol sales. That law prohibits wine tastings in Kensington, which normally allowed in other county stores.

�I thought; how fun would that be in terms of letting the neighborhood know we�re here and what we�ve got,� she said of the potential of wine tastings.

After conferring with the town�s attorneys, Department of Liquor Control spokeswoman Cathy Durbin said they decided it was a prohibited act and the law would have to be changed for the Coopers to host a wine tasting.

Kensington Town Councilman Sean McMullen said the laws were intentionally restrictive to ensure that any beer and wine store in Kensington wouldn�t result in alcohol consumption at nearby parks or a store that�s littered with signs.

He said he thinks wine tastings are in keeping with the kind of store the council wanted to promote, as long as it was allowed by the law.

�I would want to explore it,� he said. �I think that we should consider [allowing] it, if we can.�

aruoff@gazette.net

ST. LOUIS – A group led by St. Louis Blues minority owner Tom Stillman has signed a purchase agreement to buy the team, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Friday.

Stillman and the Blues must finish the sale and have it approved by the NHL. The NHL’s board of directors will meet during the all-star break Jan. 28 in Ottawa, but a vote is not expected at that time. The price of purchase, one that includes the Blues, the Scottrade Center lease, interest in the Peabody Opera House and the club’s top minor-league affiliate – the Peoria (Ill.) Rivermen – is estimated to exceed $130 million.

The news comes a little more than two weeks after the league turned down a purchase agreement that included Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer. Afterward, Stillman was granted an exclusive negotiating opportunity.

The development occurs at a time when the Blues are enjoying some of their best success in recent memory. They are 28-12-6 and have earned 62 points, one behind the Detroit Red Wings for the Central Division and Western Conference lead. They are a league-best 20-3-3 at home and are 7-1-2 in their last 10 games after a 1-0 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday night.

The Blues have not appeared in the postseason since losing to the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference quarterfinals in 2009.

Stillman, a former lawyer, became a minority owner of the Blues in March 2007. He is chairman and CEO of Summit Distributing, a St. Louis-based beer distributor that is the second-largest of its kind in Missouri. He was born and raised in Minneapolis and graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School. He attended Middlebury College, where he played hockey and soccer before earning his degree in 1974.

A group led by Blues minority owner Tom Stillman has signed a purchase agreement to buy the club, a source has told the Post-Dispatch.

The Blues and Stillman must now complete the sale and have it approved by the NHL, a process that could take several weeks. The league’s Board of Governors will meet Jan. 28 in Ottawa during the all-star festivities, but it’s expected that only an update on the Blues’ situation would be discusssed, not a vote.

The step of Stillman’s group signing a purchase agreement comes 2 1/2 weeks after the NHL terminated a purchase agreement between the Blues and Chicago businessman Matthew Hulsizer. The league then granted Stillman an exclusive negotiating window, leading to today’s news of a signed purchase agreement.

The price of the package, which includes the Blues, the team’s top minor-league affiliate in Peoria, Ill., the Scottrade Center lease and significant interest in the Peabody Opera House, is expected to be approximately $130-135 million.

The purchase agreement between Stillman and the Blues is an adaptation of the Hulsizer deal, which was signed in late October but after two months could not be closed because the NHL would not approve Hulsizer’s financing structure.

While Blues chairman Dave Checketts and TowerBrook Capital Partners are listed as the sellers in the process, the league is guiding the transaction. Sources have indicated in recent months that if the club went much longer without the completion of a sale, bankruptcy was a strong possibility for the franchise.

The preference of Checketts was to sell the Blues to Hulsizer and remain with the team as an investor.

Checketts created a private fund and had raised $20 million to secure his portion of the agreement, which would have given his group a 30-percent stake in the Blues. Checketts also stood to make $1 million if Hulsizer closed the deal and $650,000 annually under terms of the contract.

Checketts will not be involved with the Blues either as a managing partner or investor under a potential Stillman ownership group. This week, it was announced that he has been named CEO of Legends Hospitality Management, a company owned by the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Goldman Sachs.

Checketts appears ready to move on, and the fact that he has signed a purchase agreement with Stillman’s group suggests that he has either no control of the process or has decided not to hold up a sale to Stillman, despite a business relationship between the two that has been termed as “frosty” by many within the organization.

Stillman, who became a minority owner in March 2007, is chairman and CEO of Summit Distributing, a St. Louis-based beer distributor. He has built a group of local investors that includes his father-in-law, former U.S. Sen. John Danforth; Steve Maritz, CEO of Maritz Inc.; Donn Lux, CEO of Luxco; the Taylor family, owners of St. Louis-based Enterprise Holdings; and Dr. Rick Lehman.

Light has become the new urban flashpoint in downtown Vancouver.

A trio of giant digital signs at BC Place have sparked complaints since last fall from dozens of downtown residents who complained that light from the flashing, beer-advertising sign was invading their living rooms by day and their sleep by night.

More related to this story

• BC Place employees vote for potential strike action as Grey Cup looms
• Take a bow BC Place

PavCo, the provincial government agency that manages BC Place, has tinkered with the largest one that faces Robson Street, lowering the intensity, reducing the flashing and even, recently, turning it off altogether between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m.

But residents still are furious about the glare and advertisements coming from a sign that’s 1,500 square feet – larger than many of their glass-walled condos.

“It’s torment,” says David Cookson, a renewable-energy specialist who lives a few blocks away. “The fact that PavCo is tinkering with it is demonstrating at the core that they’re not listening to what we’ve been asking for.”

City councillors stepped up the fight this week by demanding, in a unanimous vote, that the province comply with the city’s sign bylaws or else.

Councillor Geoff Meggs is warning not so delicately that PavCo could find itself having a rough time as it winds its way through city hall in the next couple of years with its ongoing construction planned around the stadium.

And, he says, they’re doing themselves no favours by alienating residents, who have formed a group called Take the Giant Screen Down Now and are asking PavCo to go through a proper city and neighbourhood consultation.

“We have a lot of decisions to make and there’s a trust gap opening up,” Mr. Meggs said. “I think this is a longer-term problem for PavCo because they’re going to be building all the way around BC Place.”

Two of the signs had existed previously, but the largest one facing Robson, which is placed directly behind Doug Coupland’s new statues commemorating Terry Fox, came as a surprise to many in the city, including city manager Penny Ballem.

Last fall, city officials and politicians said there wasn’t much they could do because the province doesn’t legally have to comply with city bylaws.

But this week, they took a tougher stand, saying that PavCo had promised when it started the process of renovating BC Place and developing the land around it that it would work with the city.

Kathy Delisser, the assistant general manager at BC Place, said management is trying to come up with solutions as a result of neighbourhood complaints.

But she also said that the main sign is tied to a negotiation on an “overall sponsorship and technology program” with a company she can’t name, so BC Place isn’t free to do exactly what it wants with the sign.

She said she couldn’t say how much revenue the sign generates, because that’s also a confidential part of the sponsorship program.

Signs have been contentious issues in Vancouver for decades. It has been aggressive about banning billboards in many places since the 1970s. It fought a decade-long war with one building owner to get a billboard removed from the roof that ended just before the 2010 Olympics.

In recent years, the issue of digital, flashing signs and advertisements projected onto blank walls or buildings has come along to plague the city.

Vancouver typically makes commercial enterprises comply with strict limits on the wattage and size of signs. When the CBC refurbished its building near BC Place, it went through city processes to get approval for signs and screens outside.

It’s not just commercial lights, either, that they have to worry about. A public-art project near Coal Harbour also sparked a resident protest, because they didn’t like the light that was invading their living rooms and bedrooms.

As several businesses within the Tuskawilla Bend Shopping Center begin to wind down early on a Friday evening, an enthusiastic crowd of people can be seen gathering at Roget’s Fine Wine and Beer. They come, they say, to mingle and to sample shop owner Roger Van Dusen’s latest wine selection.

Nearly every weekend for the past 13 years, Van Dusen has hosted a festive, yet informative, wine tasting at his neighborhood shop, known as Roget’s.

“The only way to learn about wine is to try it,” Van Dusen said.

Last year, in order to keep up with the ever-changing wine trends, Van Dusen estimates he tasted nearly 900 wines.

“When a [wine] rep comes in, I taste it, spit it out and write down the name and my impression of it in a book,” he said. “I check whether I want it or don’t – that’s the only way to do it in this business.”

“The wine in the store is set up on my palate, not sure whether that’s good or bad,” he said with a laugh. “I taste it and decide whether it will sell. It can come with all the accolades in the world and be rated in wine magazines, but if I think it won’t sell, I don’t stock it.”

Weekly wine tastings give customers the opportunity to discover what kind of variety they enjoy drinking, Van Dusen said. And with more than 450 facings at Roget’s Fine Wine and Beer, people have a real opportunity to expand their horizons.

“We feature four or five wines a week; that’s a lot of opportunities to taste wines … and it’s free,” he said.

In order to stay lucrative in a somewhat challenging market, Van Dusen said he has diligently made an effort over the years to carry wines not generally found in big box stores.

“There are probably in excess of 50,000 wines in the Florida market through wholesalers, so it’s a matter of choosing wines for their quality while keeping them affordable,” he said.

“We have painted our niche as featuring different wines of high quality you don’t find everywhere; artisan wines, only seen in fine wine shops or restaurants,” he said. “The wines selected for Roget’s are produced by people who put their heart and soul into their products.”

Van Dusen said he has built his business by remaining unique, with no pretense or wine snobbery.

“Some places talk down to people and I have never talked down to people,” he said. “I speak plain English about really fine wines.”

To help guide and educate his customers, Van Dusen creates small signs indicating the country of origin and the flavors for every label in the store.

And because of his well-known passion for cooking, Van Dusen said his customers often come in asking for food and wine pairing advice.

“Because wine and food have this natural affinity, I have been able to find wines that pair perfectly with whatever I am making. Because of my food knowledge I can recommend a wine. It’s fun … and I share recipes, too,” he said.

“The latest trends selling well are the Spanish wines, red and white, Malbecs from Argentina, unoaked Chardonnay and the Sauvignon Blancs, especially from South America and New Zealand,” Van Dusen said. “There are some excellent wines coming out of South Africa. I try to find small or little-known productions to keep this store going.”

His wife, Stephanie Van Dusen, has overseen the additional merchandise also available at the store, such as the Lolita hand-painted stemware, decorative garden flags as well as the glass tags and charms.

“My wife knows the trends; she has the ability to know what sells,” Van Dusen said. “The gift items are a big help in this market with so much competition with the wine. It has helped to diversify when competing head to head with the box stores.”

Van Dusen, who spent 32 years in the aerospace manufacturing industry and a couple years in marketing prior to opening his shop, said he definitely has found his niche working in the Oviedo/Winter Springs communities.

“We have developed a very loyal, wonderful clientele,” he said. “The majority of people who come in have been coming in for years and we consider them friends as well.”

Roget’s Fine Wine and Beer

2200 Winter Springs Blvd # 104

Tuskawilla Bend Shopping Center

Oviedo

(407) 971-9334

Jay R. Brooks
For the Bay Area News Group

SF Beer Week (contributed)

February used to mean cold weather, no more football and frankly, not much in the eager-anticipation department. But that situation has changed over the past two decades — and Bay Area beer lovers will want to start penciling dates into next month’s calendar.

What began as the tiny Toronado Barleywine Festival — a one-day event 19 years ago with half-a-dozen barley wines — has grown into a weeklong celebration featuring more than 60 different brews from across the nation. It’s one of the biggest such beer festivals anywhere, and without a doubt the original. This year’s Barleywine Festival will open its doors on Feb. 18.

Anticipating the meteoric rise in the popularity of hoppy beers, the Bistro in Hayward launched its Double IPA Festival 11 years ago. That festival helped put Imperial India Pale Ales — as they’re also known — on the map. Today it’s a recognized beer style with its own judging category at the Great American Beer Festival and other competitions. The Bistro Double IPA Festival, the original start to SF Beer Week, will be held this year on Feb. 11.

And this year also marks the 10th anniversary of the wonderfully named Strong Beer Month. Every February, San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery and Restaurant and the Magnolia Gastropub and Brewery each brew up half-dozen special beers, all of them quite strong, of course. Try all 12 over the course of the month — before they run out — and you’ll get to keep the

commemorative glass.

Enter SF Beer Week

So when the Celebrator Beer News, the local beer magazine I was running with publisher Tom Dalldorf, hit its 15th anniversary in 2003, we celebrated with a “Beerapalooza” of events that filled in the days between the Double IPA and Barleywine Festivals. It proved such a rousing — and repeat — success that it eventually turned into SF Beer Week in 2009.

That year, Dalldorf and I got together with Dave McLean from Magnolia, Shaun O’Sullivan from 21st Amendment, “Beer Chef” Bruce Paton and Dave Keene from the Toronado to craft the new festival with a lot of hard work and a shoestring budget. I think a lot of people thought we were crazy.

Today, the festival is sponsored by the San Francisco Brewers Guild and more than two dozen breweries, as well as Whole Foods, Brewers Supply Group and several area bars and beer stores, The fourth SF Beer Week will begin Feb. 10. The opening celebration, which features 50-plus breweries pouring their most unusual beers alongside the classics that made them famous, has been moved to larger quarters at San Francisco’s Concourse Exhibition Center.

The 2011 festivities included more than 250 beer events over 10 days, and this year’s should be at least as rich in things to do, places to go, food to savor and beer to enjoy from Feb. 10 to 19. When I spoke to McLean, who is in charge of the opening celebration, about how things have changed since the first year, he says he believes the event has hit “a much deeper recognition level — with craft beer up 16 percent last year, and all signs pointing to craft beer hitting critical mass, we’re now on everybody’s radar.”

SF Beer Week has, in effect, “changed the weather,” McLean says, through the “power of the beer community.” What once was the slowest month for Bay Area beer-related businesses has become the best.

For details on this year’s events, check out the SF Beer Week website at http://sfbeerweek.org and download the free iPhone or Android app.

California Beer Month?

For the past seven years, the state Legislature has declared September “California Wine Month.” Now February may become “California Beer Month,” giving us one more reason to celebrate next month. Insiders tell me it’s not a done deal, but the paperwork is winding its way through the halls of power in Sacramento and soon may land on the governor’s desk.

It would be the official recognition that the craft beer industry in California deserves. In a down economy, it’s one of the few bright spots. In 2010, California’s beer industry was behind nearly 230,000 jobs and more than $10 billion in wages, and it generated more than $33 billion for our state economy, according to National Beer Wholesalers Association statistics.

But officially or not, February really has become California Beer Month. If you’re a lover of great beer, California is the place to be in February.

Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com. Read more by Brooks at www.ibabuzz.com/bottomsup.

by Associated Press

WHAS11.com

Posted on January 18, 2012 at 11:38 AM

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — After more than 30 years of production in places like Evansville, Pittsburgh and Black River Falls, Wis., one of Louisville’s most iconic brand names is preparing to come home.
   Falls City Beer, long a dietary staple of brew-loving Louisvillians, is back.
   The brand’s English pale ale has been on tap in select bars for just about year and is now available bottled at a few local liquor stores and supermarkets. And its new owner is about to buy fermentation tanks so he can begin producing small quantities in Louisville, where the original beer was brewed beginning in 1905.
   The label’s rebirth — in recent years it wasn’t brewed anywhere — is the brainchild of Louisville computer software entrepreneur David Easterling, who snatched up the Falls City trademark when its last owner allowed it to lapse.
   “If it was `Dave’s Beer,’ I wouldn’t be interested in doing this,” said Easterling, 45. “It was such an integral part of Louisville history and culture, and I was sad it wasn’t around any longer.”
   So, for the cost of lawyers’ fees, Easterling in 2009 became the owner of a beer company.
   Now, Easterling knows what you’re thinking.Why in the world would someone care to own the trademark of a beer that, in its later years, was known primarily for its weak, watered-down flavor?
   While it was still being made by the Pittsburgh Brewing Co., the Beer Advocate Website gave it a 69 rating, with the recommendation to “avoid.” Some of the more crass beer drinkers in Louisville were known to have called it “Falls (asterisk)(asterisk)itty.”
   But it wasn’t always like that, and Easterling argues that it won’t be like that again.
   When the company was formed by local bar owners early in the 20th century, it was designed to break the grip of other breweries in town that exerted control over the taverns.
   Back then, the company brewed pale ales, bocks and dark beers. But when it emerged from Prohibition, the company made only the lager that would define its image for the next 70 years, Easterling said.
   It would become the city’s largest brewer, and it outlasted the 25 others in the city that were operating in the early 1900s. When the Frank Fehr Brewing company closed in 1964 and Oertel’s stopped brewing in 1967, Falls City became the last of its kind in Louisville.
   At its zenith, the company brewed more than 700,000 barrels of beer a year — that’s 1.4 million kegs or nearly 22 million gallons per year. Its iconic red oval trademark can still be seen on vintage signs outside of three Louisville taverns in some older neighborhoods.
   Among Falls City’s innovations were the StaTab can, the non-detachable lid which replaced the old pop top on aluminum cans, and Billy Beer, a short lived beer named for and endorsed by Billy Carter, the brother of then-President Jimmy Carter.
   But the brewer came under increasing financial pressure from the big operations of the 1970s, like Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Budweiser, and went cheap on the products it used to make the beer. By 1978, it had sold out to the G. Heileman Brewing Co., which moved production from Louisville to the Evansville, Ind., plant where the old Sterling beer was made.
   The brand name was later transferred to the Evansville Brewing Co. and then to the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. in 1998, where Easterling said the brand was dropped a few years later.
   ——
   The taste
   Easterling didn’t want his new Falls City to be anything like your father’s Falls City. He was shooting instead for your grandfather’s Falls City or perhaps even your great-grandfather’s Falls City.
   So he called on Bill Moore, a friend who has been home-brewing since his wife bought a kit for him for Christmas about eight years ago.
   Moore said idea was for a “drinkable beer” that wasn’t too heavy on the hops, which makes beer bitter. They settled on an English pale ale, similar to a Bass Ale, and Moore went about working on a recipe.
   “Dave wanted to come up with an ale-style beer … that would appeal to a variety of beer drinkers,” Moore said. “He wanted it to be reasonably close to the style of beer they brewed when Falls City was in its heyday. From his research, it was a Vienna-style ale.”
   With a few tweaks to the recipe Moore developed, Easterling was ready to begin brewing. He found a brewery in Wisconsin with excess tank capacity and the first pint of Falls City was pulled last February at Chubby Ray’s pizza in Jeffersontown.
   In September, Falls City won the silver medal for pale ales at the Bramwell Oktoberfest competition in West Virginia.
   ——
   The production
   Falls City is now making about 120 barrels of beer a month in Wisconsin — a figure that Easterling hopes to double by the end of 2012.
   By contrast, the Bluegrass Brewing Co., Louisville’s largest microbrewery, averages more than 800 barrels each month, said Scott Rousell, the managing partner of the company that owns and operates the BBC brewery on East Main St.
   But Falls City is growing. Less than a year ago, it was available in fewer than 10 locations in Louisville. Now, it can be found in about 150 bars, restaurants, liquor stores and supermarkets as far away as Richmond, Ky., and Mishawaka, Ind.
   (To find out where it’s available, go to fallscitybeer.com.)
   At the Back Door bar in Louisville, owner John Dant said he sells about two kegs a week and that the brand has supplanted Budweiser on his tap line.
   Nobody is more surprised than Dant, whose first reaction when he was approached about selling the beer was, “You gotta be kidding me. … They’re not going to spend $3.50 a pint for a Falls City.”
   But he figured that he’d put it on tap because of another old brand that has made a comeback — Pabst.
   “If PBR is selling now, you have to give it a chance,” he said.
   Dant said Falls City has gotten a good reception because retro is now in style and because people like to sample new products — and once they try it, they keep coming back.
   “It doesn’t taste like the old Falls City,” he said.
   ——
   The next move
   Easterling said he’ll soon order brewing tanks to begin making a limited quantity of Falls City Beer in Louisville for the first time since October 1978, when G. Heileman moved Falls City Production to Evansville.
   They’ll make it in a building on Barret Avenue in the Highlands where the company has a largely unused tasting room.
   Easterling said that the company hopes eventually to use it for tastings to test and market new styles of beer, and to sell growlers, the large jugs that some bars and stores will fill with fresh tap beer for carryout. He said he hopes the company will introduce a new seasonal style before the 2012 Kentucky Derby.
   “We don’t want it to be a bar,” said Easterling, who said his business model is different from that of the Bluegrass Brewing Co., which began as a microbrewery and restaurant before eventually selling kegs to other bars and bottling its brews.
   Easterling said he wants eventually to bring all production to Louisville but plans to wait and see how much he can grow the brand before building a facility that could be either too big or too small for his needs in a short period of time.
   He said he doesn’t expect to sell the huge amount of beer Falls City did in the 1960s and early 1970s but hopes to make as much beer as some other regional craft beer makers.
   “I’d like to see us do 30,000 barrels (a year),” he said. “That’s a lot of beer.”
 

A Hardin woman accused of leaving two small children in a van as she tried to buy beer at a Lockwood convenience store at 5 a.m. has been charged in District Court.

Vanessa Faith Pretty On Top, 24, appeared Tuesday by video from the county jail for arraignment before Judge Russell Fagg. She pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of criminal endangerment and misdemeanor charges of DUI and driving without a valid license.

Fagg set bond at $10,000.

Pretty On Top was arrested Jan. 6 after a sheriff’s deputy was called to the store shortly after 5 a.m. to check on a report of a possible drunken driver. A witness said a woman appeared very intoxicated in the store as she tried to use an ATM, and she had left at least one small child in a van parked outside.

The deputy found Pretty On Top in the van behind the wheel with two toddlers also inside. Neither child was in a car seat or a seat belt, court records state.

Pretty On Top showed signs of intoxication, the deputy said, and he saw two bottles of alcohol in the van, including an empty bottle of “Mad Dog” wine.

A clerk told the deputy the woman had come into the store and tried to buy an 18-pack of beer. The clerk said he refused to sell the beer, court records state, because of the time of day and the woman’s apparent intoxication.

Pretty On Top performed poorly on a sobriety test and refused to provide a breath sample. Prosecutors said she has a prior DUI conviction in 2004. 

The Indianapolis distributor of the official beer of the Super Bowl hopes to tap into this market like never before.

It takes a team effort to supply enough beer to quench the thirst of Super Bowl fans.

“This is Final Four times five,” said Jim Zink, Zink Distributors.

But while they’re borrowing supplies from colleagues across the state, Zink Distributors will deliver the official beer to Super Bowl venues. Their south side warehouse is already filling up with the blue cases of Bud Light, the official beer sponsor of Super Bowl XLVI.

“We don’t know what the sheer numbers will be. We do know we’re going to have a nice increase in volume,” Zink said.

Already, signs are going up, increasing visibility. Two dozen more are expected to display the familiar blue logo.

“We actually started supplying the stadium last Monday,” Zink said.

Nowhere will the Bud Light logo be more visible than the downtown Hampton Inn, which will be transformed into the Bud Light Hotel. Hotel manager Jess Ghumm detailed the changes to Eyewitness News last summer.

“The outside signs, the canopies, the soaps and shampoo bottles, everything will say Budweiser. They’ll own the theme,” Ghumm said.

It’s also expected to be home to Super Bowl parties and that, along with commitments to other venues means this warehouse will be working around the clock.

“We’ll be working 24 hours a day, delivering 24 hours a day,” Zink said.

When the game is over and the signs come down, the family-owned company expects business to pick up, hoping to toast not only their success, but the success of the host city.

Zink estimates it will take eight workers five days to supply Lucas Oil Stadium with enough beer for the Super Bowl.

There is also a new commemorative aluminum Bud Light bottle, now available in stores.

WTHR Super Bowl guide

For a novice beer judge, the first morning of judging can be an intimidating affair. I recall my own state of mind when I initially walked into a room of sensory specialists, seasoned and experienced.

There were few women – only three or four among a group of forty men. I had run through the ranks of the Beer Judge Certification Program and knew I needed to trust my training and my instincts. As a woman, I had been exposed to many spices, aromas and flavor profiles in the normal course of cooking, so I had advantages that may not come as naturally for people who had, by their own orchestration, avoided such tasks.

One of the most difficult parts of judging is the sensory identification of flavor. For those taking a BJCP course, recognition of off-flavors comes in the latter stages of training. Many trainees wish it came earlier, but a clear understanding of beer styles is necessary in the beginning. Aromas and flavors that indicate a flaw in some styles may actually define another style.

For example, Berliner Weiss has a sharply sour, acidic profile. This would be a dramatic flaw in a Bohemian Pilsner. Old Ale is vinous and often oxidative. Russian Imperial Stout may also have a vinous character, albiet more port-like, but should not have any signs of wet-cardboard or sherry-like aromas.

What is the best way to train your palate, without spending big bucks on a flavor kit for sensory training?

First, familiarize yourself with common aromas. The fruit and vegetable aisle at your local market is a good place to start. A Farmer’s Market will serve even better. Most fruits have pungent aromas that infuse the air with esters. Strive to identify the differences among several types of berries. Citrus fruits also have distinctive aromas, even though they also have a citrusy profile that identifies them. Tomatoes, corn, broccoli, cabbage, celery, and cauliflower can help you identify DMS and vegetal flaws in beer, so become well-versed at recognizing these with your eyes closed.

You may look a little foolish sniffing fruits and vegetables with your eyes closed, so don’t be surprised if a store employee calls in the ejection police. It may be better to purchase produce that is less familiar to you; then, examine it more closely in your kitchen.

A Specialty Spice Shop is also a great place to become familiar with aromas. Fresh spices have a higher level of intensity than those packaged by McCormick or ACH Foods. If you have not often used spices in food preparation, it may be difficult for you to identify common beer flavors. Clove, coriander, orange peel, rose hips, lavender, hickory smoke, cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, nutmeg, pink and green peppercorns, vanilla, nutmeg, almond extract, caraway, saffron, heather, cilantro, and mint are common aromas and flavors found in beer. A Homebrew shop may have other herbs not commonly found in the spice store. Consider growing an herb garden … or your own hops.

One last exercise that will help you: Assemble a do-it-yourself flavor kit. Use a bland beer (Bud-Miller-Coors lager) to start. Mark up several red plastic cups on the bottom with tags (so you can’t see them). Put the same amount of beer in each cup – then doctor them with the following ingredients:

A drop (or 2) of butter flavoring (diacetyl)
A drop of Vanilla Extract
Clove powder(phenolic
A few drops of apple juice (acetaldehyde)
Canned corn juice (DMS)
Expose one to the sun for 5-10 minutes (skunky)
Vinegar(sour/acidic)
Onion powder (Vegetal)
Almond Extract
A few drops of molasses
Maple Flavoring
Cinnamon
White Pepper

Mix well, to completely dissolve all liquids or powders. Be careful not to contaminate the doctored beer with any of the other ingredients. Then mix the cups around so you don’t know which is which. Try to identify them. It’s hard.

When you get good at that, you can try the same exercise with Stout or Wheat beer. You will be stunned at the difference, but well on your way to becoming a beer judge with more refined sensory training.

Cheers!