Brewsweek

Well it looks like “America’s Entertainment Beer”, Bootie Beer, is finished. Fox Business reports that Bootie has filed a voluntary petition under the provisions of Chapter 7 of the United States Bankruptcy Code. The Bootie Beer website is down too, which means you’ll have to be resourceful if you want to “Get great Bootie 24/7″ (an actual marketing slogan…I couldn’t make this stuff up).

I was able to find a 2005 press release on Beer Advocate. Here’s a few juicy pieces:

Bootie Beer Company created an exciting family of quality, premium beer brands that is relevant to both the edgy 21-to-35-year-old demographic and the baby boom generation. The Company is positioning the brand as a solution to revitalize the beer industry as a whole by providing innovative products and marketing to distributors and retailers. Bootie Beer is introducing Bootie and Bootie Light, both brewed with fresh artesian waters, hops and other natural ingredients.

It seems that this “edgy” beverage was lost in a sea of fizzy yellow macrobrews, where taglines like “grabëbootie” wouldn’t even save it. I think we can all raise a glass to the burial of another garbage beer brand.

Tags: Bootie Beer, bankruptcy, macroswill, awful marketing, bad beer, bootie

TechEBlog.com has one-upped the fermenting Bender with a robot that opens and pours a bottle of beer. It was built by an college student for an engineering project and it’s totally autonomous, assuming there happens to be a bottle of beer directly in it’s path. Now the only thing left for mankind to invent is a robot that will bring a requested beer from the fridge to the couch. It’s the Renaissance 2.0, baby!

Witness the awesome:

I haven’t found out if the robot can be retrofitted to pull the cork out of a 750mL bottle of Chimay and gently pour it into a glass goblet, but if it can this student’s engineering professor had better reenact the dream sequence in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie’s teacher gives him an A+++…

Tags: beer robot, pour, beer, robots, robot video, humanitarian electronics

A wonderful thing is happening at Oberlin College in Ohio. As most students are overwhelmed by the stress of their final exams, huddled in their corners of the library attempting to cram as much data into their short term memory banks as possible, some suddenly look up to see a vision of warmth and compassion…the Beer Fairy. Never judging, the Beer Fairy pulls a beer from it’s backpack and hands it unconditionally to the student, then slipping away to find another. The Oberlin Review was able to track down and interview this benevolent soul. You can read the entire interview here.

What’s the Beer Fairy all about? What do you do?
During reading period, late at night, after midnight usually, when the staff in the library has left and there’s only one person left, I have a backpack full of beer — of PBR. I walk around the library. I usually try to find people that are secluded, like in the dark crevices in back of a study carrel. I walk up to them, pull out a beer, give it to them and say, “Would you like a beer?”

PBR is your beer of choice?
Oh, yeah. Can’t have anything other than cold PBR. I take great pride in the fact that it’s very cold when I hand it out.

When did you become the Beer Fairy?
My sibling started it when she went to this school seven or eight years ago. She started doing it her freshman year and did it every semester she was here. She told me that I had to carry on the tradition and continue the family Beer Fairy experience.

When you’re handing out beers, do you wear any kind of disguise or go incognito? Do you wear a fairy costume?
No, I do not wear a fairy costume. That’s a little too conspicuous. I try to blend in. Sometimes in the winter I’ll wear a Santa Claus hat. And, you know, at Oberlin something like that seems pretty normal. I don’t wear a disguise or a mask or anything like that.

I really wish I had read through this interview in it’s entirety last week when I first heard about it. I read “the Beer Fairy” headline and excitedly went to bed with visions of rare and amazing beers I was sure to see the next morning. Instead I woke up to a splitting headache, a kink in my neck, and the disapproving glare of my wife. All of which are, in retrospect, the appropriate consequences for sleeping with three bombers of Rogue’s Brutal Bitter under my pillow.

Tags: beer fairy, oberlin college, free beer, anonymous awesomeness, benevolance

Gizmodo just posted an article, Beer-Brewing Bender is How Bender Would Want to Exist, about Simon Jansen’s newest creation — a Bender replica that houses a fermenter. From the Gizmodo post:

Inspired from a Futurama episode in which Bender did actually brew beer (Season 3, Episode 12: The Route of All Evil, for those of you keeping track at home), this contraption is a labor of love that’s been under construction since this summer. It’s really a work of art, looking like it stepped right off the screen. Inside its stomach is the brewing mechanisms and in its head is a functioning computer that plays Bender sayings on command. It even features a cigar that lights up thanks to a handy pen light/felt contraption. And, of course, it brews beer in its belly, which makes it that much better. Totally worth six months of work if you ask me. Be sure to check out the website to see all the detail that went into making Beer Brewing Bender a reality.

In addition to the unfortunate placement of the fermenter’s spout, it’s too bad Simon went “high-tech” with everything but the brewing equipment. Imagine how cool a converted keg Bender would look. Anyway, I prefer my robots to be drinking beer rather than making beer…except when they overdo it. I spilled beer on my carpet last week and I swear the Roomba is starting to neglect other areas of the room. Last night it started brawling with the Xbox and fell asleep under the christmas tree. Looks like it’s time for another Roomba intervention!

Be sure to check out the making of Bender here.

Tags: beer robot, bender, futurama, beer bender, brewing robot, homebrew, diy

Business Week ran an interesting article today by Lauren Shepard on an increasingly common circumstance successful craft breweries are finding themselves in. With the recent surge in interest for craft beers, what happens when your “art” becomes a business? From the article:

“When this industry started, it was started by a bunch of engineers and home brewers,” said Alan Newman, chief executive of Vermont-based Magic Hat Brewing Co. The brewers that have grown “are the ones that have either made the transition themselves to learn how to be more savvy business people or created a partnership with someone who does.”

Smaller breweries — from the Colorado-based New Belgium Brewing Co. to Washington-based Pyramid Breweries Inc. — are all becoming more knowledgeable about the business of brewing, sparking even more growth in what’s now the fastest growing beer category.

The biggest beneficiary of the emergence of the craft brewer as executive may wind up being the consumer as more companies use their new skills to secure distribution contracts that allow them to offer their brews to a wider audience.

The business know-how is also helping brewers negotiate supply contracts for ingredients — a necessity in a period of sharp price increases for commodities and packaging materials.

The change couldn’t come soon enough for beer lovers, who are increasingly looking to the craft beer category instead of the domestic brews to quench their thirst.

I think of of the most interesting aspects of business is when a product that you designed/developed/created reaches the tipping point of popularity and changes from “your thing” to “the people’s thing”. At what point are you, as the creator, able to let go and just manage the business which comes from the product, treating the product you once slaved over as nothing more than a widget that produces income? I have tons of respect for those people, like Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Alan Newman of Magic Hat who were able to make the transition from “artist” to “manager” successfully, still keep it about the beer, and continue to produce great products.

Tags: craft beer, business, success, Business Week, Lauren Shepard, Dogfish Head, Magic Hat