More Ground to Break: Inaugural Women + Beer Advance

Women Enjoying Beer, an independent, consumer based research and education company based in Ashland, Oregon will host an inaugural Women + Beer Advance this August 2 – 4 at 4 Daughters Irish Pub in Medford, Oregon.

This event offers an educational opportunity for women to advance their enthusiasm for beer, build connections with other women who enjoy beer, and to have fun while learning more about beer.

Tapping into their love of beer, Ginger Johnson and guest speakers will create a collaborative conference celebrating beer in all forms. Guests include Lisa Morrison (The Beer Goddess), an appearance by Julia Herz (Brewers Association), and a screening of The Love of Beer with documentary filmmaker Alison Grayson.

The Women + Beer Advance kicks off on Thursday evening, August 2, with a Beer:30 social (location pending).  On Friday, August 3 and Saturday, August 4, attendees will experience a wide range of social activities and educational seminars including Beer & Food Pairings, Recipes for Cooking with Beer, the Economics of Beer, Beer Tasting Exploration, a discourse on ingredients and how they are used to create beer, and a pub walk.

Premium and Regular pricing information is available here.

Join Ginger Johnson and the crew of Women Enjoying Beer at 4 Daughters Irish Pub in Medford for these enlightening sessions.

Early registration is available through June 15 and regular registration up to the opening of the event at http://womenenjoyingbeer.com/events/.

For further information please contact Ginger Johnson in Ashland, Oregon at Ginger@WomenEnjoyingBeer.com  or 515-450-7757 or Emily Engdahl in Portland, Oregon at Emily@WomenEnjoyingBeer.com  or 503-502-1689. To place it on a local calendar contact Kat Blaisdell at Kat@WomenEnjoyingBeer.com

This press release and other media information can be found at WomenEnjoyingBeer.com/media-kit/

Women Enjoying Beer (WEB) is in the business of developing and serving the female beer consumer.  WEB partners with the beer industry to help it grow by authentically and accurately marketing to the female beer enthusiast.  WEB also works with women directly to encourage their beer enthusiasm.  WEB does this work through marketing, focus groups, workshops, and events.  For more information about Women Enjoying Beer and its focus on prime opportunities, please visit WomenEnjoyingBeer.com or Facebook.com/WomenEnjoyingBeer

Alison's Love Of Beer

Bagdad Theatre, cite of the premier

Enjoy this photos from Alison Grayson’s world premier of her documentary, The Love Of Beer. It’s an honor to be in the film and such great company created by such a talented and thoughtful woman.

Look for a screening near you soon – or better yet: make a beer and film trip out of it. Film = education.

Julia Herz, Ginger, Alison Grayson, Lisa Morrison

Celebrate your love of beer today – Cheers!

Ginger & Teri Fahrendorf share a laugh prescreening

Stage call: for all women in the audience involved in beer

Alison and MC Lisa Morrison

All Ale The Ladies Beer Pledge

It takes so little to make people happy.

Quality beer, lively company, fun atmosphere, and terrific hosts. When I say ‘little’ I don’t mean minimally or small things. It’s the effort part. Let me explain.

If you’re going to do something, then you’re going to put effort into it, right? And if you’re going to put effort into it, you may as well make sure you’re doing yourself, the effort and all related resources to good use. Otherwise, don’t bother. Plus – women don’t like half-baked attempts.

All Ale The Ladies 2011, The Black Squirrel (DC)

At the All Ale The Ladies event Sunday last (6.5.11) in Washington DC, everything was spot on. Yes, it was crowded (how many dozens of women wanted to come that got turned away!?). And the energy was off the charts!!! The energy compensation alone made the squished-in-a-small-space-college-party-feel totally acceptable.

It was a distinct pleasure to be a featured guest speaker – in great company, might I add – as well. In honor of the women in attendance (and a few sporting men), during my brief spotlight turn I spontaneously had the entire room raise their right hand and pledge:

“I am a Woman/Who enjoys my beer/

And no one else can tell me/What beers to like or drink.”

It’s almost needless to say that there was a huge and uproarious ‘Cheers!’ to the pledge when we were done.

Really, it’s simple: get engaged participants in the same room (women), serve them right (fresh quality beer and food), take care of them (service again), thank them for coming (external customer experience), thank the generous hosts (internal customer experience), talk about beer (education), treat them with respect as consumers (no-brainer for too few), and you’ll hit it way beyond out of the park. Try the next county.

My sincere gratitude goes out to the following for inviting me to be part of this event. And for putting together and executing such a successful and impactful evening of Women in Beer:

Thanks from the bottom of my glass and heart! Hope to see you all sooner again that later.

Here’s a whole slew of fabulous pictures by Heather McAndrews to enjoy.

Beer Is Not Wine CBS!

I feel ultra compelled to share the following with you.

As a member of the Brewers Association, one receives a daily Monday through Friday e newsletter chock full of great information, conversation, happenings and so on. Horst Dornbusch posted this spot on piece this week.

This, sadly, made me laugh out loud - and then get slightly pissed off.  ‘To wit’ indeed Mr. Dornbusch.

I’m in your camp and wanted to share it with WEB followers. If you agree readers, SPEAK UP !! Call CBS, NBC, FOX, whoever demand accuracy and proper representation and get them to realize Craft Beer is NOT a novelty nor nearly this ridiculously monochromatic. You get the idea. Act and we shall all receive.

Here it is.

“Mainstream Media Still does not (!) Understand Beer

Beware of false saints!

I followed Julia Herz’s link to http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/03/earlyshow/saturday/main6643411.shtml?tag=pop in BA Forum Vol. 16-0706, which guided me to “CBS Early Show features wine expert Ray Isle talking up ‘Beervana’ in Portland, OR.”

While it is commendable that organizations like CBS have begun to recognize the existence of craft beer as an important part of our culture, I believe the piece behind the link shows how far we still have to go in educating the media and much of society about craft beer. To wit:

* Why on earth does CBS need a “wine expert” to showcase craft beer? As if there weren’t enough brewers or beer journalists who could have lent a (competent) hand!

* And then there was this zinger in the write-up: “Rogue Dead Guy Ale: This is a darker, more intense style of ale (technically, it’s a German style called a Maibock).” This is inexcusable (even though in Texas, equally inexcusably, a Bock must be called an “ale” by law). I really must tell my friends in Munich about this American “Bock” innovation! With such brew-technical nonsense, Mr. Isle has shown himself to be a mere vacuous pontificator, a false saint!

* A quick look at his food pairings, too, reveal Mr. Isle’s rather unsophisticated understanding of beer: He singles out as suitable pairings “grilled seafood, raw oysters, that sort of thing;” “chicken, potato chips, pretzels, you name it;” “hamburger;” “anything from fried shrimp to French fries;” “sausages on the grill, barbecued ribs, that kind of thing.” How pedestrian and utterly predictable!
“That sort of thing, that kind of thing, you name it,” and—who would have thought—hamburger, pretzels, and fries (!)…such is the august advice from a culinary “expert.” To me this is proof that there is still a huge wall of ignorance about good beer out there that we must not tire to tear down!
Horst Dornbusch
Cerevisia Communications
West Newbury, Massachusetts

Terroir

All About Beer has a really informative, good to read article this month entitled  How Does Your Beer Taste? And How Do You Taste Your Beer?

Terroir in our beer

Part of what we taste involves terroir.

Terroir has been a term long used in the wine world. It’s starting to be applied in the beer world too – as it should be.

Terroir is defined by dictionary.com as, well, it’s not there. Heck, the spell check in WordPress doesn’t even offer it. Hmmm…so let’s go to Wikipedia (there’s a message right there).

Wikipedia states, according to its aggregate style information:

“Terroir (French pronunciation: [tɛʁwaʁ]) comes from the word terre “land”. It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon particular varieties. Agricultural sites in the same region share similar soil, weather conditions, and farming techniques, which all contribute to the unique qualities of the crop. It can be very loosely translated as “a sense of place,” which is embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the manufacture of the product.”

It goes on:

“The definition of terroir can be expanded to include elements that are controlled or influenced by human decisions.”

Finally I’ll clip this snippet “Terroir in other drinks”. Yet – alas!! No even a hint of a mention of beer.

Curious since terroir is all about the influence of where the ingredients were grown or raised. Beer has 4 primary ingredients. The water, grain, hops and yeast will all contribute so many flavor characters, and arguably all 4 could plainly exhibit their own terroir. Is that terroir to the 4th power?

Julia Herz has talked about Terroir per beer. We should all be listening to these ideas.

Tasting goes well beyond the obvious. That’s why you should savor your beer.

Even if it’s hot and you have a great session beer in front of you. It has its own terroir so take at least a few sips and give it the opportunity to expand your thinking and please your taste buds before it simply quenches your thirst.

Toasty Brewer

Julia Herz (l) BA & Larry at the Craft Brewers Conference

I’ll take the opportunity today to highlight My Fine Husband, Larry Chase. He’s a professional brewer, is truly passionate about quality clean tasty beer and I love him for it (among other reasons).

The Brewers Association offers many benefits – among them featuring various members of the brewing community on site. Like here.

Good man, good beer, good dogs (see the picture). Good life.

Lucky me.

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