Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Beer and soccer score together in Brazil

May 26 2014 at 08:00am
By Laura Bonilla Cal

Bloomberg

Bartenders serve beer at a bar in Petropolis, Brazil. A study released this month by Nielsen and Kantar Worldpanel forecast a 37 percent increase in Brazil's beer consumption during the World Cup and total sales of R8.3 billion during the four weeks of the tournament. Photo: Bloomberg

Rio de Janeiro - Beer and football make a powerful team in Brazil, which is bracing for a drinking bonanza when it hosts the World Cup.

The passion for football is well-known – it has won the World Cup five times.

Brazil is also the third-largest beer producer, brewing more than 13 billion litres of the stuff last year. Such is the country's love of the beverage that you can even buy beer-flavoured ice cream.

When the sun is baking the sidewalks off Copacabana beach, the first reaction seems to be to order a beer that Brazilians always say arrives "stupidly" cold.

A recent survey commissioned by brewing giant Ambev, the country's largest company by market value, asked Brazilians to list their national passions. Seventy-seven percent named football; 35 percent said beer.

Now brewers are anticipating a beer boom during the World Cup, which Brazil will host from June 12 to July 13.

A study released this month by Nielsen and Kantar Worldpanel, commissioned by the São Paulo Supermarkets Association, forecast a 37 percent increase in beer consumption during the World Cup and total sales of 1.8 billion reais (R8.3bn) during the four weeks. During the 2010 soccer World Cup in South Africa, beer sales in Brazil increased 15 percent.

As it is favourite to win again and the tournament is expected to draw 600 000 foreigners, there is plenty to celebrate. One in four beers consumed in Brazil is linked to football, before the match, around the television or in post-game celebration or mourning, according to a study by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a Brazilian economics institute.

Football and beer have a powerful influence on government policy.

The government ordered a beverage tax hike just before the World Cup, but in the face of brewers' protests President Dilma Rousseff's government shelved the increase until after the tournament.

The government also backed off a ban on alcohol sales in stadiums, imposed several years ago to tackle violence at matches. After a drawn-out fight, football's governing body Fifa won an exemption for the World Cup, upholding its multimillion-dollar sponsorship deal with Budweiser, a brand owned by InBev, the firm born from a 2004 merger between Ambev and Belgium's Interbrew.

Ambev, which has 70 percent market share in Brazil, is seeking to deepen the links between the national drink and the national sport. It is using the tournament to try to convince fans to become paying members of cash-strapped domestic football clubs.

Despite Brazil's legendary players and their international success, the Brazilian league has withered in recent decades. Most clubs are still managed as they were a century ago and have huge debts.

"Brazil is among the largest economies in the world, its team is among the greatest, but its league is not, it doesn't have strong local football like Spain or Italy," Marcel Marcondes, a corporate marketing manager at Ambev, said.

Ambev says it wants to help clubs enrol more members and increase income so they can buy the best players.

It is not about selling more beer, according to Marcondes.

Ambev has partnered with more than a dozen other major companies to launch a programme that offers fans discounts on more than 1 000 products and services if they become members of clubs.

In just over a year the "Movement for a Better Football" programme has helped sign up more than 720 000 members at 49 clubs, bringing them $45 million (R463.5m).

The goal is to reach 3 million members by 2020, which would mean an extra $542m a year for clubs. "Brazilian football is starting to discover the power of the fans to attract companies. The best stakeholders in the clubs are the fans, their most faithful consumers," said Erich Beting, an expert in football marketing and director of sports news site Maquina do Esporte.

Helping Brazilian clubs to keep more players at the peak of their careers could be good for Brazilian beer and football alike. "The stronger Brazilian football is, the more moments there are to get together with friends around football, the more beer people will drink," said Pedro Trengrouse, a UN consultant on the World Cup.

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/business/international/beer-and-soccer-score-together-in-brazil-1.1693623#.U5c1C1fo5_M

Sunday, June 1, 2014

How beer can help you stay healthy

You may have heard cooking meats at high temperatures creates carcinogenic compounds in the form of char.

A recent study found that marinating meat with beer can cut down on the char build up.

Chef Robert Brener says, "Dark beer worked the best, but you could use any beer, lighter beers, and non-alcoholic beer worked as well."

Fat that drips from the meat causes flare-ups, which can contribute to those carcinogenic chemicals.

Chef Robert Brener of Johnson and Wales University recommends leaner cuts of beef.

Brener said, "My personal favorite is skirt steak, and it's very inexpensive because nobody uses it, but it's really delicious."

Expand your Memorial Day menu beyond burgers and dogs by loading the grill with veggies like asparagus, lettuce and peppers.

Try grilling fruit like peaches and watermelons to intensify their sweetness and add a smoky flavor.

Experts also recommend cleaning your grill thoroughly before you start grilling.

Grilling With Beer Reduces Carcinogens

Shutterstock

Anyone firing up the grill this weekend for the unofficial start of the backyard cooking season should take note. Meat marinades made with beer significantly lower the amount of cancer-causing byproducts that result from cooking pork with charcoal, food chemists in Spain and Portugal report.

We repeat: pork + beer > pork - beer. Science, 1. Cancer, 0. Thank you, food scientists.

We're not sure why you'd need to know more than this information, but click through to learn more.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are compounds released from the incomplete burning of wood, charcoal, fossil fuels or any other organic substance. It is a family of compounds comprised of more than 100 chemicals, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and many are released into the atmosphere by forest fires, volcano eruptions and automobile emissions.

They are also present in grilled meats as a result of the cooking process.

Along with multiple health and reproductive problems seen in animal trials, the ATSDR reports: "The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that some PAHs may reasonably be expected to be carcinogens. Some people who have breathed or touched mixtures of PAHs and other chemicals for long periods of time have developed cancer. Some PAHs have caused cancer in laboratory animals when they breathed air containing them (lung cancer), ingested them in food (stomach cancer), or had them applied to their skin (skin cancer)."

Studies have connected eating chargrilled meats with a higher incidence of colorectal cancer.

Now University of Porto and University of Vigo scientists have put their analytical abilities to this pork chop travesty and come up with a solution that many will appreciate.

They tested meat marinated for four hours in pilsner, nonalcoholic pilsner or black beers on PAH formation and compared these results against carcinogen development in meat that was not marinated. They then cooked all the pork to well done (another travesty, but that's for a different story). The result: Black beer marinades inhibited PAH development by as much as 53 percent compared to meat that wasn't marinated; nonalcoholic pilsner inhibited PAH formation by 25 percent; and pilsner dropped formation of the harmful compounds by 13 percent.

Beer Review: New Belgium's Shift

Shift Pale Lager, New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins

Style: American Pale Lager

ABV: 5 percent

Serving Type: 12-ounce can

Malty? Hoppy? Light hops

Reviewed: May 2014

By the looks of it, the folks New Belgium Brewing have been busy. The company is in the middle of building a second brewery in North Carolina, and every time we make a trip to the liquor store it seems there's something new from New Belgium on the shelves—Snapshot, Rampant, Spring Blonde, Summer Helles. Which means the brewery's two-year-old Shift Pale Lager isn't all that new anymore. What has changed is that New Belgium switched to packaging Shift in 12-ounce cans, instead of the 16-ounce tallboys the brew debuted in. The change prompted us recently to pick up a sixer.

The idea for Shift was born from the New Belgium tradition of sharing a beer with your colleagues after your shift at work. (Read: a "shift" beer.) It is one of the only New Belgium brews never to land in a bottle—it is available in cans or on draft only. What's more, at the time it was released, Shift was one of the first beers in the U.S. to be brewed with Nelson Sauvignon hops, which "evoke a Sauvignon grape-like quality." Indeed, Shift is not overpoweringly bitter, but instead has a subtle fruit flavor and a crisp finish—a fitting end to the workday.

Would we buy it again? One 5280 editor describes Shift as the "perfect park beer." We think you'll agree. Perhaps a good fit for your next trip to Wash Park, because, well, it's still cool to imbibe there.

The Beer Spectator: IPAs vs. Lagers

Most American craft breweries make an India Pale Ale. They're difficult to master, but they allow brewers to distinguish themselves through personalization.

With the explosive growth of IPAs since the 1990s, it's easy to forget that craft beer only comprises approximately 8 percent of total beer volume in the U.S. Thus, many who do not follow the craft beer market closely do not realize its accelerating growth.

Those who don't drink beer, or don't care to explore any brews outside of the lager category, dismiss or ignore these releases as disgusting or elitist. Indeed, even feminist blog Jezebel, which prides itself on rejecting stereotypes, bills IPA drinkers as bros "rich enough to afford fancy beer."

These views are errant, as even now the IPA category is expanding back to its birthplace.

As the craft beer revolution has spread beyond America, so has the taste for IPA. Britain is undergoing a brewing revival alongside a foodie revolution, based on local produce and artisanal methods. Much the same is happening in other rich countries around the world, where breweries are springing up to serve up craft beers. Indeed, IPA has come full circle. Many British craft brewers are using new IPA recipes imported from America for their brews but again adapting them for local palates.

Clearly, the American craft beer market has successfully made an impact on the global beer market. I'm proud to live in a country where I can buy hundreds of different types of IPAs.

Interestingly, the Economist set up a somewhat false dichotomy between lagers and IPAs, as if the two were battling against each other for bar space.

Pale lagers dominate the world market, as they're easy to drink in any season. Money follows the crisp, cold, and relatively tasteless brews of Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller, Molson Coors, and a multitude of smaller regional lager brewers.

Can IPAs challenge the dominant position of these three behemoths, along with all the others? Probably not. But it's wrong to consider the two types in competition when there is no real war. Cheap, light lagers appeal to all different kinds of drinkers, while IPAs are acquired tastes.

This is great news for American craft brewers and for drinkers of fine beer everywhere. But, just as it's not wrong to enjoy cheap lagers, it's also not right to convert every beer drinker to the side of IPAs. There's definitely room in the middle.

Unfiltered beer: would you drink a cloudy pint?

The Spring Haze beer festival is a celebration of unfined beers. But will the style dubbed 'London murky' ever take off, or are we hardwired to demand a crystal-clear pint?

Unfined beers are opaque on a spectrum from hazy to milky. Photograph: Alamy

Ask most real ale drinkers, particularly northern ones, what the perfect pint should look like and you will get a clear answer – literally. Said pint should be transparent, sparkling, a crystal-clear beer topped with a tight white head as smooth as virgin snow on a bowling green. I'm getting thirsty just typing that.

Yet drinkers at this weekend's Spring Haze festival (free, 23-26 May) would scoff at such tradition. Held at the Gun pub in Docklands, London, SHF will showcase 30 "natural and unfined beers" from cutting-edge breweries such as Kernel and Brew By Numbers. Far from clear, these beers are opaque on a spectrum from hazy to weak, milky tea. Such is the growth in unfiltered craft beers that this style has been dubbed (mainly by its detractors) as "London murky".

On the continent, none of this would be an issue. Many wheat beers are designed to be served cloudy with yeast – some Belgians even drink the yeast from the bottom of bottled-conditioned beers as a kind of "dessert". The unfiltered, fresh versions of Czech lagers (Budvar's unpasteurised yeast beer is available here too) are considered to be top of the hops.

However, for drinkers who grew up believing that cloudy beer was suspect – badly kept, too warm or the dog-end of the barrel that was going to make you sick – the idea of drinking soupy ale is proving divisive. We drink with our eyes and, for many beer enthusiasts, opaque ale just doesn't look right.

So why is it becoming such a "thing"? Taste, of course. Cask and craft keg beer ferments in the barrel. In one way or another, it is primed with yeast so that it continues to carbonate after dispatch. In order to clear that beer of yeast before serving it, isinglass or finings (chemically prepared fish guts) are added. As the beer settles, the finings bind with the yeast, fall away and the beer "drops bright".

The problem with that, as far as unfined advocates are concerned, is that those finings also bind with proteins and hop oils and suck flavour out of the beer. Not only is "natural" beer vegan-friendly (some claim that drinking the yeast has health benefits, too), it is also more vivid and flavourful.

"Without question, it intensifies aroma and flavour," says Justin Hawke of Moor Beer. "Whether that is to someone's tastes is another question. A traditional ale drinker who drinks delicate beers is going to taste one of those hoppy, unfined IPAs and not be able to cope with the way it looks and tastes. It's alien to them. But you can't argue that it's not more flavourful. Basically, the London brewers are trying to up the flavour threshold. And, from my perspective, it improves the visual appeal. Unfined beer has this beautiful, attractive opacity, as long as you're not brainwashed into thinking that beer has to be clear."

Me? I'm torn. I can't deny the aesthetic appeal of the perfect clear pint. But I also realise that is a rather daft, inherited prejudice. Moreover, this criticism of "London murky" (the argument is that upstart hipster brewers are using the excuse of making raw, natural, big-impact beers as a cover to chuck out haphazard, unbalanced rubbish) seems to spring from a general cynicism about the febrile creativity of the craft beer scene, rather than objective fact. I think you have to judge on a beer-by-beer basis.

The last unfiltered beer I drank, Beavertown's 8-Ball Rye IPA, certainly looked unappetising, like a half-pint of brown soup. However, if you like a lot of complex flavours in your beer, you couldn't fault it. From its background smokiness and spice through its almost fizzily sour mid-range (due to the higher yeast content, presumably?) to its top hop notes of tropical bubblegum, Citra and astringent bitterness, this was a big mouthful. You might find a beer like that too busy. But it was a persuasive argument for unfiltered beer.

Clear, natural beer would be the ultimate goal, which Baseline Brewing's Julian Spender claims he has achieved. The Sussex brewer uses a yeast (he won't say which, but apparently several unfined brewers are on to it) which, if he leaves his beer to settle for an extended period, and pub owners treat his casks right, collects in a tight sediment at the bottom of the barrel without any filtering.

"As a result, my beer is pretty damn clear," he says. "It used to be really hazy and it was a problem. I was pushing mud uphill: the majority of drinkers, before they even sip that pint, hold it up to the light and if it's not crystal clear they think there's something wrong with it. I'm guilty of it as well. I don't like beer that's really cloudy unless I know it's supposed to be, such as a wheat beer."

source:http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2014/may/23/unfiltered-beer-cloudy-pint-unfined-london-murky

Expensive beers get some price cuts at Marlins Park

Marlins Park, home to the most expensive beer in baseball at $8 according to BusinessInsider.com, trimmed its prices on Friday to $6 for fans willing to walk over to the stadium's bars.

If fans go over to the regular concessions, it will still cost them $8 for the same 16-ounce beer. Part of the new push to make beer more affordable includes a special Happy Hour on Fridays where between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. beers cost only $4 at the Budweiser Bow Tie Bar.

"We're always taking a look at all our concessions — what we offer, the size of our offerings, the price of our offerings," team president David Samson said.

"We felt there were two opportunities with beer we wanted to do. We wanted to see if we could get a lower-price beer, which we got. And we wanted to see if we could do a happy hour — because we want people to get out here before the game starts."

According to BusinessInsider, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Cleveland Indians sell the cheapest beer in the majors at $4, the Los Angeles Angels sell the cheapest 16-ounce beer for $4.75, and the Boston Red Sox sell a 12-ounce beer for $7.75.

Baker peeved

Marlins utility man Jeff Baker used the word "foolish" to describe the throw pitcher Henderson Alvarez made to him at first base that pulled Baker off the bag and got him hurt in Thursday's 4-3 win over the Phillies.

Baker bruised his right shoulder after he collided with Domonic Brown, who hit a hard comebacker to the mound that Alvarez stopped easily but took his time throwing over to the bag for the putout. Baker had to stretch out and into Brown to make the cach.

"We lucked out he wasn't running as hard or he could have separated my shoulder," said Baker, who was still expected to be available to pinch-hit for the Marlins on Friday. "That can't happen. ... You have to go after it."

Marlins manager Mike Redmond agreed. "I think we got to do a better job fielding the ball and getting rid of it," Redmond said. "... Nobody should get hurt on a comebacker.''

• Marlins top prospect Andrew Heaney made his Triple A debut on Thursday and pitched well, striking out seven and giving up just one earned run on seven hits over five innings. The left-hander took a hard grounder to the shin in his final inning but was fine according to Redmond. Heaney threw 84 pitches and 56 went for strikes.

Although most top prospects nowadays make the leap to the big leagues straight from Double A, the Marlins wanted Heaney to face some more experienced hitters, Redmond said.

• Redmond said second baseman Rafael Furcal (hamstring, groin) is on pace to start playing in extended spring training games on Monday