Add this to your calendar while you’re at it: Ohio Brew Week

July 12-18, 2009

Athens, Ohio

www.OhioBrewWeek.com

Jackie O’s Brewpub featured in the new edition of Backdrop Magazine

The Winter 08-09 edition of Backdrop Magazine just hit shelves today in Athens, Ohio. Pick up a copy TODAY! Meanwhile, check out this article about Jackie O’s from the recent edition!

By Will Strome
Backdrop Magazine
BackdropMag.com

Brewmaster Brad "B.C." Clark makes beer at Jackie O's Brewpub in Athens, Ohio.

Beer. Perhaps former syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry said it best, “Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.” It’s the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic beverage known to man and I’ll be damned if that’s to change anytime soon. Is it bad to say that beer has been a bigger impact on my college experience than TI-83 calculators, measuring beakers and history text books combined? Not at all because I’m not alone! Beer is as vital to the college scene as professors and the ridiculous excuses for missing class we email to them. I Digress. Unlike most college towns, Athens is fortunate enough to have Jackie O’s Pub and Brewery that crafts 18 different types of beer with 11 to 13 on tap at all times. Jackie O’s is one of the few genuine and always welcoming bars in Athens, with remarkably talented and gifted brew master, Brad “BC” Clark, working behind the beer scene to help set Jackie O’s apart from all the other alcohol establishments Athens has to offer…

Click here for the full article

Too good to pass up…

Saw this on Digg and couldn’t pass up posting it….

With Anheuser-Busch selling out to InBev, Sam Adams is the #1 independent, publicly traded American brewery

From HuffingtonPost.com…

NEW YORK (Fortune) — The pending acquisition of Anheuser-Busch (BUD, Fortune 500) has left some Americans crying in their beer over the loss of iconic brands like Budweiser to Belgian-based InBev. But the $52 billion acquisition is in keeping with this quarter’s surge of international companies buying U.S. players. In the second quarter, acquisitions of American-owned companies by foreign businesses tallied $130.2 billion, making it the highest total for any second quarter recorded and 29 percent higher than the 2007 period, according to research firm Dealogic.

In the beer industry, the merger leaves Boston Beer Co. (SAM) as the country’s largest, independent, publicly-traded brewery. Even with this new status, the brewery behind Sam Adams beer, founded by Jim Koch (pronounced “Cook”) in his kitchen in 1984, has less than 1% market share in the United States. Anheuser-Busch commands about 50 percent of the U.S. market.

Better late than never: pics from Brew Week Ohio 2008 and a cool old graveyard

Click the image below to see the full album

Some more from the album…

Lauren and I!


Interesting headstones

Busch League! Anheuser-Busch sells out to Belgium’s InBev for $50 billion

By Jessica Hall and Martinne Geller
Reuters
July 13, 2008
Click here for the original article

PHILADELPHIA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc agreed to a $50 billion takeover by Belgium-based InBev NV, a source familiar with the situation said on Sunday, creating the world’s largest beer maker.

The combined company will be called Anheuser-Busch InBev, said the sources, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. Anheuser will get seats on the new company’s board, the sources said, but it was not immediately clear how many.

Adding another dimension to any deal was Mexico’s No. 1 brewer Grupo Modelo (Mexico:GMODELOC.MX – News), which is 50 percent owned by Anheuser. The maker of Corona beer, which has the right to choose its partner, has not yet approved InBev for that role and the two brewers remain in talks, according to one person familiar with the situation…

Click here for the full story

How beer may have saved all civilizations

By George Will
NewsObserver.com
July 13, 2008
Click here for the original article
WASHINGTON – Perhaps like many sensible citizens, you read Investor’s Business Daily for its sturdy common sense in defending free markets and other rational arrangements. If so, you too may have been startled recently by an astonishing statement on that newspaper’s front page.

It was in a report on the intention of the world’s second-largest brewer, Belgium’s InBev, to buy control of the third-largest, Anheuser-Busch, for $46.3 billion. The story asserted: “The (alcoholic beverage) industry’s continued growth, however slight, has been a surprise to those who figured that when the economy turned south, consumers would cut back on nonessential items like beer. …”

Nonwhat? Do not try to peddle that proposition in the bleachers or at the beaches in July. It is closer to the truth to say: No beer, no civilization.

The development of civilization depended on urbanization, which depended on beer. To understand why, consult Steven Johnson’s marvelous 2006 book “The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic — and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.” It is a great scientific detective story about how a horrific cholera outbreak was traced to a particular neighborhood pump for drinking water. And Johnson begins a mind-opening excursion into a related topic this way:

“The search for unpolluted drinking water is as old as civilization itself. As soon as there were mass human settlements, waterborne diseases like dysentery became a crucial population bottleneck. For much of human history, the solution to this chronic public-health issue was not purifying the water supply. The solution was to drink alcohol.”

Often the most pure fluid available was alcohol — in beer and, later, wine — which has antibacterial properties. Sure, alcohol has its hazards, but as Johnson breezily observes, “Dying of cirrhosis of the liver in your forties was better than dying of dysentery in your twenties.” Besides, alcohol, although it is a poison, and an addictive one, became, especially in beer, a driver of a species-strengthening selection process.

Johnson notes that historians interested in genetics believe that the roughly simultaneous emergence of urban living and the manufacturing of alcohol set the stage for a survival-of-the-fittest sorting-out among the people who abandoned the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and, literally and figuratively speaking, went to town.

To avoid dangerous water, people had to drink large quantities of, say, beer. But to digest that beer, individuals needed a genetic advantage that not everyone had — what Johnson describes as the body’s ability to respond to the intake of alcohol by increasing the production of particular enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases.

This ability is controlled by certain genes on chromosome four in human DNA, genes not evenly distributed to everyone. Those who lacked this trait could not, as the saying is, “hold their liquor.” So, many died early and childless.

The gene pools of human settlements became progressively dominated by the survivors — by those genetically disposed to, well, drink beer. “Most of the world’s population today,” Johnson writes, “is made up of descendants of those early beer drinkers, and we have largely inherited their genetic tolerance for alcohol.”

Johnson suggests, not unreasonably, that this explains why certain of the world’s population groups, such as Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, have had disproportionately high levels of alcoholism: These groups never endured the cruel culling of the genetically unfortunate that town dwellers endured. If so, the high alcoholism rates among Native Americans are not, or at least not entirely, ascribable to the humiliations and deprivations of the reservation system. Rather, the explanation is that not enough of their ancestors lived in towns.

But that is a potential stew of racial or ethnic sensitivities that we need not stir in this correction of Investor’s Business Daily. Suffice it to say that the good news is really good: Beer is a health food.

So let there be no more loose talk — especially not in summertime — about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Or, less judgmentally, and for secular people who favor a wall of separation between church and tavern, beer is evidence that nature wants us to be.

InBev May Pursue Hostile Takeover After Anheuser Busch Rejects Buyout Offer

I visited the Drudge Report today and saw a headline linking to the following story:

By Jonathan Birchall
Financial Times – FT.com
June 26, 2008
Click here for the original article

InBev, the world’s largest brewer, said on Thursday it was preparing to launch a hostile bid for Anheuser-Busch, following reports that its US rival was preparing to reject its $46bn bid for the maker of Budweiser and Michelob beers.

In a court document filed in Delaware, InBev said it was preparing to launch a proxy battle seeking the removal of Anheuser’s entire board, citing “delays and apparent plans to attempt to block the acquisition”…

Which got me thinking…. what exactly IS a “hostile takeover”? I’ve heard of it before but never knew exactly what it was… so here goes:

From WiseGeek.com:

A hostile takeover is a type of corporate takeover which is carried out against the wishes of the board of the target company. This unique type of acquisition does not occur nearly as frequently as friendly takeovers, in which the two companies work together because the takeover is perceived as beneficial. Hostile takeovers can be traumatic for the target company, and they can also be risky for the other side, as the acquiring company may not be able to obtain certain relevant information about the target company.

Companies are bought and sold on a daily basis. There are two types of sale agreements. In the first, a merger, two companies come together, blending their assets, staff, facilities, and so forth. After a merger, the original companies cease to exist, and a new company arises instead. In a takeover, a company is purchased by another company. The purchasing company owns all of the target company’s assets including company patents, trademarks, and so forth. The original company may be entirely swallowed up, or may operate semi-independently under the umbrella of the acquiring company.

Typically, a company which wishes to acquire another company approaches the target company’s board with an offer. The board members consider the offer, and then choose to accept or reject it. The offer will be accepted if the board believes that it will promote the long term welfare of the company, and it will be rejected if the board dislike the terms or it feels that a takeover would not be beneficial. When a company pursues takeover after rejection by a board, it is a hostile takeover. If a company bypasses the board entirely, it is also termed a hostile takeover.

Publicly traded companies are at risk of hostile takeover because opposing companies can purchase large amounts of their stock to gain a controlling share. In this instance, the company does not have to respect the feelings of the board because it already essentially owns and controls the firm. A hostile takeover may also involve tactics like trying to sweeten the deal for individual board members to get them to agree.

An acquiring firm takes a risk by attempting a hostile takeover. Because the target firm is not cooperating, the acquiring firm may unwittingly take on debts or serious problems, since it does not have access to all of the information about the company. Many firms also have trouble getting financing for hostile takeovers, since some banks are reluctant to lend in these situations.

Hope this helps…!

New Study Links College Drinking to Heart Problems

From CNN’s Sanjay Gupta
with reporting by Shahreen Abedin
Click here for the original story

In many ways, I was a pretty typical pre-med student. I studied hard with hopes of becoming a doctor, and on the weekends I drank socially with good friends. As I got older and passed through medical school and residency, my thirst for alcohol waned considerably. As it turns out, that may have been a good thing for many reasons. I didn’t know it at that time, but drinking heavily, even as far back as college, could have increased my risk of heart disease.

New research from the American Heart Association (AHA) reveals that college students who drink excessively can double their levels of something known as C-reactive protein (CRP), a biological marker for inflammation that has been associated with a higher chance of cardiovascular problems. The study asked 25 college students to complete surveys assessing CRP risk factors such as smoking, medication use and alcohol use. In case you’re curious (I was), heavy drinking was defined for the purpose of the study as three or more alcoholic drinks at least three days a week or at least five drinks two days of the week. Compared with those of moderate drinkers (two to five drinks at a time, one or two days a week), the CRP levels of heavy drinkers were more than double, placing them in the zone associated with a moderate risk of heart disease.

It is not clear yet whether drinking heavily during your college years means you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the line. To answer that, a long-term study would have to follow students once they entered middle age. Still, the concern is significant because some studies do suggest a carry-over effect between past CRP levels and future heart disease.

“If C-reactive-protein levels are predictive of a future risk of heart disease, then students might be beginning a dangerous pattern, [and that’s a] reason to be concerned about college-age drinking,” warns Elizabeth Donovan, the (apparently precocious) undergrad who co-authored the study. Donovan is studying biology and nutrition at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., and collaborated on the research with adviser Amy Olsen, a professor of nutrition.

Dr. Robert Bonow, a Northwestern University cardiologist and member of the AHA, isn’t as sold on checking your levels of CRP. He reminds us that lots of things can cause the number to fluctuate. Besides an illness like a simple cold, other factors—including being overweight, smoking or having diabetes—are also known to raise CRP levels. Bonow’s best advice is not to worry so much about past college drinking and focus instead on controlling current drinking and other variables.

I was surprised to find, though, that becoming a teetotaler is not necessarily the answer to a healthy heart in the future. This research and other studies that have looked at CRP levels in older populations found that nondrinkers (those who have one drink or less a week) actually have higher CRP numbers than those who drink in moderation. Somehow, moderate levels of alcohol may actually help protect against inflammation. And alcohol is known to reduce blood clotting. Also, if you’re drinking red wine, there are additional beneficial chemicals in it, such as tannins, which slow down atherosclerosis, and resveratrol, which has been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects.

With that information in hand, I plan on asking my wife for a hall pass to go out and have a couple of drinks with friends tonight. “It’s for my heart, I swear,” I’ll tell her. With two daughters, a lawn to cut and a dog to walk, I am not optimistic about her response.