Brew News: Beer Making Goes Single Serving

Philly gets its own beer non-profit, Nebraska brews an indigenous beer, Starbucks loses its beer chasers, you can now brew single-serve beer and restaurants can brew in-house. That’s the latest craft beer news. Read on for full details.

Philadelphia: America’s first beer city

While beer meccas such as Portland, Denver and San Diego often top the “best craft beer cities” lists, there’s no denying Philadelphia’s rich brewing history. As Forbes points out, a marker in the Northern Liberties neighborhood denotes the spot—or thereabouts—where John Wagner brewed the nation’s first lager beer. The City of Brotherly Love continued their reverence for beer launching the country’s first beer week almost 10 years ago. Now the city has become the first to unveil a non-profit dedicated to the city’s love affair with craft beer. Philly Loves Beer looks to expand the Beer Week concept throughout the year hosting myriad events geared toward promoting local craft beer culture. “Our mission is to promote Philadelphia’s diverse beer community both through our 10-day festival and throughout the year with our calendar of events and through social media promotion,” according to the organization’s website. The Philly Loves Beer board is made up of 17 movers and shakers in the local beer scene.

Nebraska: A homegrown beer

Nebraska—the home of corn, runzas and, well, corn—will tap its first all native ingredient beer thanks to the brewing minds at Boiler Brewing Company. While the Cornhusker State is not known for producing at least three of the essential four ingredients in beer, through a series of fortunate events, the Lincoln-based brewery was able to locally source Cascade hops, barley and water along with an adjunct in the form of aronia berries (think chokeberries). The story behind the yeast is more intriguing. Back in 2011, an entry in the Lincoln Lagers Hombrew Club “Big Brew Day” was accidentally infected with a wild yeast strain. The result was delicious. The strain was isolated, propagated and revived after five years in a freezer. The end result is Nebraska Native that will be tapped later this month. “You can only be the first one time,” brewer Tim Thommsen told KETV Omaha, “and for me this is kind of like landing on the moon.”

Seattle: Beer out at Starbucks

While coffee-infused beers are gaining in popularity, if you enjoyed your pumpkin spice latte with a craft beer kicker, Starbucks is no longer the place for you. The Seattle-based coffee purveyor announced that it would be doing away with its “Evenings” program that featured beer along with wine and small plates. The program, which had been rolled out at more than 400 locations, will be somewhat replaced by the company’s Roasteries concept. Roasteries will prepare the chain’s line of high-end Reserve beans in-house and locations will offer the latest in coffee serving techniques such as pour-overs and syphons along with alcoholic offerings. Starbucks will open another 20 Roasteries in various locations across the globe.

National: Single-serving beer

“It’s very clever,” says Tyler Durden in Fight Club upon hearing his seatmate’s shtick on our single-serving community. “Clever” is one way to describe Keurig and A-B InBev’s plan to launch an in-home appliance for creating “beer, spirits, cocktails and mixers.” Not content to dominate the single-serving coffee market, the latest plan aims to bring Keurig into the “realm of the full adult beverage category.” The system builds on the technology developed for Keuirg’s no longer in production KOLD soda system. “We are excited to partner with AB InBev to develop a new system for the adult beverage category,” said Bob Gamgort, Keurig Green Mountain CEO, via a press release. “We look forward to combining our capabilities and technologies to deliver innovation for consumers.” It will also provide the perfect excuse for showing up inebriated for work. “Doh! I accidently picked the Irish coffee pod…”

National: Restaurants and bars to become breweries?

Will tech disruption render brewers as obsolete as cab drivers, travel agents and video store clerks? Hopefully not. But the aforementioned Keurig backed in-home beer makers does put the power to create alcoholic beverages in consumers’ hands. And now, PicoBrew looks to give that same ability to restaurants and bars, revealing plans for “commercial craft beer brewing appliances” going by the alias, Indy. “Our early prototypes of commercial-scale craft brewing equipment have garnered considerable interest in the industry,” said Dr. Bill Mitchell, CEO of PicoBrew, via a press release. “In 2013 we pioneered the production of great craft beer at home with our award winning Zymatic and this year made it even more convenient and affordable with our newly released Pico, so it just makes sense that bars and restaurants would want to take advantage of our technology for their own hyperlocal production of custom craft beer they serve.” The device can brew anywhere from five to 15 gallon batches with a “grain-to-glass” lag of only a week. PicoBrew teamed with more than 150 breweries to gather recipes for the new device though proprietors will have the ability to brew unique brews.