March 5, 2015
For the 10th year, the Edmonton International Beer Fest is returning, and like previous years, it’s bigger and better than ever.
This year, the event plays host to eight live bands, three beer instructors, and an estimated 25,000 attendees, something Sean Farmers, the owner and organizer of the event said seems like a far leap from the event’s humble beginnings a decade ago.
“We started at Dinwoodie lounge over at the University of Alberta. It went really well the first year, it sold out. We moved it to the Shaw Conference Centre, and it has grown immensely. Every year it grows and grows,” he said.
The event teaches people how to taste beer, how to pare it with food and how to properly appreciate the subtle differences in the roughly 300 different options available, but while the event could be considered a learning experience, Farmers said it leans more on the side of fun than academia.
“Beer is more than just beer. It is about the experience you have while you’re drinking it. You can appreciate it, you can try a bunch of different things. You can home in on the things you like,” he said.
“People aren’t going to turn their nose up at you if you don’t know anything. The whole idea is to take a traditional trade show, and combine it with a craft beer festival. There’s lots of education, there are about 300 different types, if not more.
“Over and above that, we have eight local bands, we try to support local music, and we have a craft beer village. It’s lots of local stuff, stuff that you can only get here.”
Adding to the festivities is the event’s beer school, which features three teachers, all sporting impressive resumes.
For food fans, an Amazon best-selling author, David Ort, will be on hand. Ort, who penned Canadian Craft Beer Cookbook, is an expert in pairing beer with food. His sessions will be called Beer 101.
For fans of seafood, the shucker king will be in attendance. Patrick McMurray, known as Shucker Paddy, and the record holder for shucking oysters, is also a beer fanatic. He will be teaching people how to pair and shuck at the festival’s beer school.
Farmers said having people like this in attendance is important because the festival is about more than just throwing back a few beers, it’s about the experience.
With that said, the main attraction is still, of course the beer.
“There’s lots of exciting things we incorporate. There’s an on-site liquor store,” Farmers said. “If people find something they like, they don’t have to find where to buy it. They can buy a six-pack and have it with their friends.”
Source: International Beerfest celebrates tenth anniversary
1. Beer drinkers live longer
Moderate drinking is good for you, and beer is good for moderate drinking. Everyone knows that if you drink too much, it’s not good for you. Let’s not pull punches: If you’re a drunk, you run into things, you drive into things, you get esophagealcancer, you get cirrhosis and other nasty conditions. But more and more medical research indicates that if you don’t drink at all, that’s not good for you either. According to numerous independent studies, moderate drinkers live longer and better than drunks or teetotalers. Beer is perfect for moderate drinking because of its lower alcohol content and larger volume compared with wine or spirits. And as that old radical Thomas Jefferson said, “Beer, if drank with moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.” And he didn’t need a scientific study to tell him that.
2. Beer is low in calories, low in carbohydrates and has no fat or cholesterol
For a completely natural beverage, beer offers serious low-calorie options. Twelve ounces of Guinness has the same number of calories as 12 ounces of skim milk: about 125. That’s less than orange juice (150 calories), which is about the same as your standard, “full-calorie” beer. If beer were your only source of nutrition, you’d have to drink one every waking hour just to reach your recommended daily allowance of calories (2,000 to 2,500). And nobody’s recommending you drink that many. The only natural drinks with fewer calories than beer are plain tea, black coffee and water. Surely, beer is loaded with those fattening carbohydrates, right? Wrong again. The average beer has about 12 grams of carbs per 12-ounce serving. The U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance is 300 grams of carbohydrates in a standard 2,000-calorie diet. In other words, you would need to drink an entire 24-pack case of beer – and then reach into a second case – simply to reach the government’s recommended daily allotment of carbohydrates. You’re better off munching an apple or drinking some soda pop if you want to carbo-load. Each has about 35 to 40 grams of carbs – three times the number found in a beer. Also, beer has no fat or cholesterol.
3. Beer improves your cholesterol
Beer not only has no cholesterol, it can actually improve the cholesterol in your body. In fact, drinking beer regularly and moderately will tilt your HDL/LDL cholesterol ratios the right way. You’ve got two kinds of cholesterol in your system: HDL, the “good” cholesterol that armor-plates your veins and keeps things flowing, and LDL, the “bad” cholesterol that builds up in your veins like sludge in your bathtub drain. Beer power-flushes the system and keeps the HDL levels up. According to some studies, as little as one beer a day can boost your HDL by up to 4 per cent.
4. Beer prevents heart attacks
If you want to get a bit more cutting-edge than vitamins, beer has other goodies for you. You’ve heard of the French Paradox, how the French eat their beautiful high-fat diet and drink their beautiful high-booze diet and smoke their nasty goat-hair cigarettes, but have rates of heart disease that are about one-third that of the rest of the world? It’s been credited to red wine and the antioxidants it contains. Hey, guess what else has lots of antioxidants, as many as red wine? Dark beer! According to the American Heart Association, “there is no clear evidence that wine is more beneficial than other forms of alcoholic drink.” One study profiled in the British Medical Journal in 1999 said that the moderate consumption of three drinks a day could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease by 24.7 per cent.
5. Beer helps you chill
The social aspects of moderate drinking are solidly beneficial to your health. In other words, to get out every now and then and relax with your buddies over a couple of beers.
So that’s it. Drink beer. You’ll live longer and be happier. You won’t get fat. In fact, you may weigh less. You’ll boost your metabolism, improve your health and reduce your risk of clogged arteries, heart attack and cancer. What more could you want?
Source: Reasons beer is not bad for you
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Beer makes men smarter.
So say researchers at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
They found that men with a couple beers under their belts were actually better at solving brain-teasers than their sober counterparts.
To reach that surprising conclusion, the researchers devised a bar game in which 40 men were given three words and told to come up with a fourth that fits the pattern.
For example, the word “cheese” could fit with words like “blue” or “cottage” or “Swiss.”
Half the players were given two pints. The other half got nothing.
The result? Those who imbibed solved 40% more of the problems that their sober counterparts.
Also, the drinkers finished their problems in 12 seconds while it took the non-drinkers 15.5 seconds.
“We found at 0.07 blood alcohol, people were worse at working memory tasks, but they were better at creative problem-solving tasks,” psychologist Jennifer Wiley reported on the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (FABBS) site.
Wiley conceded that her findings run counter to popular belief that alcohol hinders analytical thinking and muddies the mind.
“We have this assumption, that being able to focus on one part of a problem or having a lot of expertise is better for problem solving,” says Wiley. “But that’s not necessarily true. Innovation may happen when people are not so focused. Sometimes it’s good to be distracted.”
It may also help explain why raving drunks like Ernest Hemingway, John Cheever or Charles Bukowski were able to write their books.
“Sometimes the really creative stuff comes out when you’re having a glass of wine over dinner, or when you’re taking a shower,” Wiley said.
DRINKING IN MODERATION TIP
Researchers also found that men are more likely to solve a problem when working in groups of three rather than two.
“In groups of two, we tend to be more polite, not to confront or ask questions,” Wiley said. “But when you respond to a question in a group of three, you’re not confronting, you’re speaking up for the whole group.”
Source: Study conducted says Beer makes men smarter
If beer only conjures up images of frat boys pounding cans of the cheap stuff or doughy sports fans reveling in the alcoholic refreshment before, during, and after a big game, think again. Beer has come a long way, baby, and many of the preconceived notions about the beverage are decidedly unfair, as evidenced by the following 11 fabrications.
1. BEER SHOULD BE SERVED “ICE COLD.”
All of those neon ice cold beer signs are actually bad news for beer drinkers. To properly enjoy their beer, it should be served at 44 degrees Fahrenheit (with a little leeway depending on the type of beer you’re drinking—a barrel-aged Stout, for example, should be served only lightly chilled). The reason is that taste buds become dead to the taste of the drink when it is served any colder, which means you’re not really tasting anything or getting the most enjoyment out of your beer.
2. FROSTED BEER MUGS KEEP IT CLASSY.
Piggybacking on the falsehood that beer should be guzzled cold, it also shouldn’t be served in a frosted beer mug. Would you serve wine in a frosted glass? No (and if the answer is yes, there are no words…). An intensely cold beer mug will also numb your senses to the taste of the beer.
3. ALL DARK BEERS ARE HEAVY.
If you’ve been avoiding dark beers because you fear their intensity, you’ve been sorely misguided. “People naturally assume they are heavier,” says Hallie Beaune, a rep for Allagash Brewing Company and author of The Naked Pint: An Unadulterated Guide to Craft Beer. “I think it’s that connection to Guinness, which promotes itself as creamy and almost like a meal, that’s the feeling they give in their commercials. For a lot of people that’s the first dark beer they’ve had so they assume they’re all similar when, really, dark beers are just dark because of the roast level of the malt that’s used in the beer.”
4. GUINNESS IS INHERENTLY FROTHY.
Sure, Guinness is served all creamy and delicious-looking, but Beaune explains it has less to do with the beer itself and everything to do with the tap most stouts use, which has more nitrogen than the standard tap (generally a mix of nitrogen and CO2). To deliver all that frothiness, a stout faucet, which has a long, narrow spout, is used.
5. DRINKING BEER FROM THE BOTTLE IS THE BEST WAY TO ENJOY IT.
Sure, a bottle may look more refined than a can, but it’s still not the appropriate vessel. “Drinking beer from the bottle is another no-no, mostly because what you taste comes from your olfactory senses from your nose, so if you take a sip of something from that kind of bottle your nose isn’t participating at all,” says Beaune. “It’s too small for you to get a whiff of the beer. Just like if you were drinking red wine out of a wine bottle, you wouldn’t really be able to evaluate that wine.”
6. BEER IS TOUGH—YOU CAN STORE IT ANYWHERE.
Think again—all beer should be stored in a refrigerator. It responds best to cold, dark storage.
7. SKUNKY BEER IS JUST A CUTE NAME FOR BEER GONE BAD.
There is actually a reason why seemingly rancid beer is termed “skunky.” “Light can hurt beer—they call it lightstruck,” says Beaune. “The light interacts with the hops in beer (the four ingredients in beer are malt, water, hops and yeast), and it can actually have this chemical reaction that creates a smell that’s the same as a skunk gives off, which is why you hear about skunky beer.”
8. ALL BEER BOTTLES ARE CREATED EQUAL.
Darker bottles are important. Clear or green bottles may be pretty, but they’re not doing much to protect your beer from light. Dark beer bottles work best to help retain its intended flavor.
9. CANNED BEER MEANS CHEAP BEER.
Cans are actually a great way to protect beer, but in the old days they would often give the beverage an aluminum taste. “Most of the cans the craft breweries are using nowadays have a water-based liner so the beer isn’t actually touching the aluminum,” says Beaune. “It can be really good for beer. Cans heat up and cool down very quickly, too, so you obviously want to keep them cold.”
10. BEER IS SIMPLER THAN WINE.
You’ve got your four ingredients—malt, yeast, water and hops—what could be more basic than that? Manipulating those ingredients in various ways will give you different varieties, but breweries are doing some really cool stuff by adding flavors you’d never dream would work so well in beer. “A lot of the flavor in beer comes from the malt or the hops or yeast, but then there’s all of this freedom in beer,” says Beaune. “We did a beer at Allagash called Farm to Face, which is a pretty tart and sour beer. We added fresh peaches to it from a local farm. You can’t do that with wine—you can’t add peaches. People add everything you can imagine to beer like pineapple, coconut, every fruit—there are no rules. That’s one of the fun things about beer, it’s a lot like cooking, you can add rosemary, you can add whatever you want. Everybody experiments. It keeps the beer world really interesting.”
11. BEER WILL GIVE YOU A BEER BELLY, COCKTAILS WON’T.
Sure, anything in excess will contribute to weight gain, but beer is hardly the most calorie-laden drink you’ll find in a bar. Much of the flack beer gets (i.e. the “beer belly”) goes back to the fallacy that beer is particularly heavy. “Most glasses of wine are pretty high in alcohol and a lot of cocktails are way higher in calories,” says Beaune. “If you drink a margarita that’s one of the highest calorie things you can drink.”
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
Source: Common Misconceptions about Beer
Even though I’ve never chased a sip of creamy beer with a a few squirts of cock sauce, I know Sriracha is going to make it better. Hot sauce makes everything better. Just to make sure, though, I poured myself a glass of Rogue Sriracha Hot Stout Beer.
Not that beer needs improving, mind you, it is a Fine and Good thing on its own. But I’m one of those uncultured eaters who puts hot sauce on everything (OATMEAL?!?!) so that my tongue can’t register flavor unless I’ve doused my meal in some caustic red stuff that measures death on the Scoville Scale.
Made by the free spirited brewers at Oregon’s Rogue Ale house, this brew is basically perfectly designed for me. I’m more of a pale ale guy, so I always find stouts a little flat and syrupy for my taste, and Rogue’s beer succeeds in kicking up the flavor to something a little more interesting.
When I first pulled the bottle out of the fridge it was a little too cold, I could only barely glean the spice in the aftertaste. As the beer warms up a little bit you can taste the bite all the way through.
Though my colleague Adam described the flavor as “like squeezing a Sriracha into a good porter,” I don’t entirely agree. Sriracha is wonderful stuff but the flavor isn’t exactly subtle, and I wouldn’t say the spice or flavoring totally overpowers the the stout. It’s got a nice tingle throughout.
Right now I’m about 3/4 of a way through a 750mL bottle, and I’m not regretting it at all. It’s a slow sipper of a beer-you don’t want to drink this too fast any more than you want to plow through a enchilada stuffed jalapeños and covered in green chili sauce. I’ve got another bottle under my desk, and I don’t know that I would necessarily want to dive in for another round. This is a nice novelty, but not a get drunk beer. Or even a drink multiple beer. This is a drink one beer, pound your chest two times, and move on to something else beer.
Even as I write this I can feel my heartburn kicking in. It hurts. I like it. Confirmed: Spicy beer is good.
Source: Hot Sauce Makes Everything Better, even Beer
There are many different ways to host an amazing beer party, but there are a few things that you should always keep in mind while planning one. There will be two key ingredients to every party these are: the beer and the people. You will want to take your time with the first one.
There are literally thousands and thousands of different beer brands, and hundreds of varieties as well. A true beer lover will always have their preferred style and brand. However this is not a party for one, so the first rule when selecting the beer for a party is now your audience. You will want to have varieties that your guests enjoy or that you think they will enjoy when they try them.
While it is true that some people can just guzzle down any type of beer you want to keep an open mind while planning your party. You will want to select a variety of beers that will give people the opportunity to test and experiment with their palate. They will enjoy this new experience and probably thank you for it as well. It is important not to feel bad if you make a selection that someone does not enjoy as much because all of our tastes are different. If this happens just pass them a different one.
The second key factor to an awesome time is the people. When planning this type of party you will want to invite those over who you know will enjoy beer tasting. This will give them an opportunity to expand their horizons and try new things. In the end you can invite who ever you want as long as they are coming in with an open mind and anxious to have fun. Remember to have a fridge, mini fridge or cooler available to place your beers in. it is very important to keep the beers cold!
There is nothing like a nice cold beer and good company. So relax and open your first beer because you are about to have a great time!
