Category: Beverage Industry News
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Neon Beer Sign Exhibition Opens in L.A.
Neon on Tap: A Historical Retrospective of the Great American Beer Sign, is now showing at the Museum of Neon Art in downtown Los Angeles, California. Approximately 20 beer-company signs, manufactured from the 1940s to the present, are featured in the exhibition. Kim Koga, the Museum’s director, had wanted to curate a beer-sign show for years, but when the museum acquired a Haufbrau sign from a 1950s Oakland restaurant earlier this year, the stage was set for the exhibition. The sign depicts a brewmaster pulling a tap and filling a mug, is a double-sided, animated design, built from thicker-than-normal neon tubing (15mm rather than 12mm-13mm), and serves as the exhibition’s centerpiece, around which small, often rare, brewery signs are arranged. Beer signs went into large-scale mass production in 1933, after the end of Prohibition, when assembly-line production efficiencies, and production innovations in materials and electronics made new neon designs possible. Neon on Tap has glass and metal signs, as well as plastic specimens, and features an old-fashioned Bakelite sign from the former Cleveland-based Leisy’s Brew Company. There are signs appealing to specific geographical regions, like the Miller sign featuring a glowing neon Golden Gate Bridge. Koga thinks it may be the first show of its kind, and has tried to feature a variety of beer neons. “Of course, we could have filled the museum with Bud signs, but we limited ourselves to two,” she said. Neon on Tap: An Historical Retrospective of the Great American Beer Sign is now at Museum of Neon Art in downtown Los Angeles. Phone (213) 489-9918. Closes April 3, 2005. It’s on the web at Neonmona.org.
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Craft Brewer Earns European Beer Star Medal
Last Thursday at the BRAU Beviale 2004 in Nuremberg, Germany, Victory Brewing Company’s Prima Pils was awarded the Bronze Medal in the Bohemian Pilsner category in the European Beer Star Competition. Invitations to this professional judging are seldom extended to American breweries. Winning a medal in this European competition is a rare honor for any U.S. beer.
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Lightning Strikes New Belgium Brewery
One afternoon this August, while I was brewing, a thunderstorm blew in
suddenly. There was a clap of thunder so loud that I jumped. Pressing my
nose to the screens in the brew office windows, I sniffed the air for ozone.
I was frightened by the intensity of the thunderclap. It began raining. I
shrugged it off and kept brewing.
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Mondavi Sells to Constellation for $1.36 Billion
Well no, it’s not beer news. But it is alcoholic beverage news – and big news at that. Robert Mondavi Corp., announced last week that it had agreed to be sold to international giant Constellation Brands Inc. in a historic $1.36 billion deal.
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Bud joins caffeine crowd
Anheuser-Busch is launching a new product under the Budweiser label that will be infused with caffeine, guarana and ginseng – a combination it promises will be both lightly “sweet and tart.” This is the second beer with caffeine – following MoonShot, which recently hit a limited number of East Coast markets.
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Beer Journalists honored
The Association of Brewers honored the work of four journalists who have covered the flavor and diversity of American beer in awards handed out during the Great American Beer Festival. The awards, sponsored by Rogue Ales, were given to Realbeer.com editor Stan Hieronymus for a story titled “For the Love of Hops,” to James P. DeWan for work that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, and to Lisa Morrison for a column that appeared on the Internet Broadcast Systems network. The Association also recognized the work of veteran beer journalist Michael Jackson with a Distinguished Service Award.
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