For those lazy weekend mornings when you just want to stay in bed and catch up on a little reading – Weekend Reading is a weekly (ahem, usually) post with the articles I’ve enjoyed in the past seven days.
Forbes | Eat Your Beer: Why A San Francisco Startup Is Making Granola Bars From Spent Brewing Grains
I am aware of lots of breweries who don’t let their spent grains to go waste and instead provide it for farmers to feed cattle. I love this article’s focus on the small company Regrained who are using spent grain from breweries to make granola bars.
We believe we should all be able to have our beer…and eat it too.
From the ReGrained website
If this kind of thing puts a big smile on your face, pop into Monk Craft Brewery Kitchen in Fremantle where head chef Mitch Mitchell is always putting their breweries spent grain to good use, most prominently in the form of his spent grain sourdough.
Draft Magazine | Renegade Brewing Co. owner Brian O’Connell talks beer festivals, drinking local and what it means to be a renegade
What I love about breweries and the stories behind why they opened is that I have never heard someone say, “I opened a brewery to make a pot of cash”. Brian’s story is just a fun, passion filled and wonderful as any other story I have heard. I particularly like the recollection of the day he realised he had to give it a shot.
I cancelled the meetings I was supposed to go to, rented a car and drove three hours out to the Delaware coast and spent the day at the Dogfish Head Brewery.
His approach to beer festivals is also of interest, not that we are reaching the same kind of numbers that the US are but being one brewery amongst a field of them begs the question as to how valuable they are for the breweries themselves, maybe is more than one way to get exposure?
Australian Brews News | Bridge Roads sets up authenticity campaign
A really interesting media release from Bridge Roads Brewers (VIC) to introduce new symbols to appear on their packaging and communications. There is this on-going debate as to whether the term “craft beer” is relevant, the can of worms really opens up when you start asking what the term means, how it should (if it should) be defined. This approach from Bridge Roads embraces the word “craft” and gives the drinker an idea of what it means. Maybe it even encourages questions from the drinker, like questions on owns others beers you like, do some breweries brew off site and, most importantly what does that mean?
The team at Bridge Road Brewers are proud of what they do and the beer they make. The symbols were developed by the team, asking themselves; what is it that makes us different? And what do I expect from the craft beer I drink?
Wall Street Journal | Line Them Up: ‘Crafty’ Expats Stir Up the Vietnamese Beer Scene
As always I really enjoy reading about the craft beer scene in other countries outside of Australia and the US, this article on Vietnam’s emerging craft beer scene, what is driving it and its growth potential is super interesting.
BrewDog | DIY Dog
This is pretty epic. Scottish craft brewery BrewDog, known for excellent beer, making a lot of noise and stuffing a beer bottle into a taxidermy squirrel, have just released their entire back catalogue of beer recipes and story along with a guide to home brewing. Like I said, epic. Even if you don’t home brew, this is a great document to download and get all beer geeky on.
