| JUN/JUL
2006 | COLUMNS | HOP CAEN
Heard It Through The Hopvine
By Hop Caen
Send any items you might have to hopvine@celebrator.com.
"Beerfest,” the movie:
I'm not joking. (As regular readers will attest, I never joke.)
This is a real movie and should be released (along with the
protagonists) this summer. It features a beer storyline that
goes something like this: Two American brothers discover a
centuries-old secret drinking competition on a visit to Germany
(which the Celebrator didn't know about?) and return a year
later with their own team of insatiable frat-boy chuggers
determined to drink the hometown boys under the table. Think
Olympics meets Oktoberfest and let the hilarity begin. I think
I'll wait until “Beerfest” is double billed with
“Barfly”…
Longtime Ashburn, Va., brewer Jerry Bailey
finally did the deal with Marketing Director Terry Fife and
a partner to keep the iconic Old Dominion Brewing in Virginia
on track after Jerry "retires." He started the brewery
as a way to escape his government job. Now he's wondering
if Old Dominion was doing better than he thought, since the
recent arrest of his longtime bookkeeper for felony embezzlement.
Seems that more than $100K went missing over a five-year period.
That would buy a lot of Old Dominion brew at Jerry's ex-employee
price…
Czech, please! Wearing only his gold necklace
and grasping a large beer, a young Russian businessman kicked
back in an herbal beer bath, the hot new concept that is all
the rage in the Czech Republic. The "therapeutic"
beer spa is wildly popular with wealthy Moscovite spa lovers.
"We Russians love natural products. Here, the beer is
the best quality, brewed in the old style, without any chemicals,"
the Russian explained with enthusiasm. The Marianske Lazne
spa in west Bohemia is the country's first "beer spa"
and is located in the town of Chodova Plana. Owners of the
town's Chodovar brewery started the beer baths to cash in
on the success of the spa resorts in the area. Slightly sulfuric
mineral bath water is mixed with dark beer (classical lager
was tried but didn't smell too good) and aromatic herbs. Clients
are given free beer to drink during the session, which costs
550 koruna (around 20 euro). Drinking from the actual bath
is frowned upon … Also worth Czech-ing out is a new
Czech beer specifically brewed to ease the discomforts of
menopause. The low-calorie, low-alcohol beer contains heightened
levels of phytoestrogen, a plant form of the hormone estrogen,
often lacking in menopausal women. Regular beer (possibly
barley wine) is suggested for the husbands of menopausal women…
They Hate Our Freedom AND Our Beer Dept.:
An alleged al-Qaida terrorist plotting a bomb attack on Britain
told accomplices to sell contaminated beer at soccer games.
He was also planning to sell poisoned hamburgers from street
vending stalls, according to an FBI informant. I wonder if
these people realize what the consequences are of messing
with a nation's beer and hamburgers … A Norwegian woman
thought she was in heaven when beer instead of water flowed
from the faucets in her apartment in west Norway. “I
turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks, and beer
came out,” Haldis Gundersen told Reuters from her home
in Kristiansund. “We thought we were in heaven.”
Beer in Norway is among the most expensive in the world, with
a 0.7 pint costing about $7.48 in a bar. It turns out that
a plumber in an adjacent pub had confused the plumbing…
Live longer — drink beer! Irene Alice
Goguen has a secret potion for longevity. "Drink beer,"
she said. "I did. I'm still living." Goguen celebrated
her 100th birthday this spring and joked that she enjoyed
a beer now and then while she and her late husband, Jack,
owned a bar and restaurant. But her husband never drank, she
said. "We sold beer over the counter for years, and he
never drank any of it," said the surviving widow. Hmmmmm…
Beer Saves Car-Crazy Culture: Coors Brewing
Company and Merrick & Company are using beer waste to
process 1.5 million gallons of the gasoline substitute called
ethanol. Across a sliver of Clear Creek that cuts through
the Coors brewery, a maze of stainless steel pipes rises amid
the delightful aroma of beer. The plant distills residuals
from beer-making and has been such a success, according to
officials from the brewer and the engineering company, that
a second, $2.3 million plant will open later this spring on
the same site. This will double ethanol production, partly
through inputting millions of gallons of spilled Coors, George
Killian's Irish Red and other beers directly into the process
via an underground pipeline. New Coors slogan: "It's
NOT the water — it’s the ethanol!" …
Punk legends Dead Kennedys canceled an American show because
it was sponsored by Coors. In Los Angeles last fall, Coors
was behind the gig at the Grand Olympic Auditorium, so the
band axed the gig. Band guitarist East Bay Ray added: "Dead
Kennedys have always been wary of corporate sponsorship and
steer clear of lending our name to promote a product."…
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