Global Food Shortage Affecting Beer

The food shortage is in full effect around the world. Riots are expected. Mud pies are being sold and Oh Noes! American craft brewers are now reformulating their recipes to cope with rising hop prices.

Ian Ward, president of Brewers Supply Group in Shakopee, Minnesota -- the nation's largest craft brew supplier -- says things are only going to get worse. "That's the crisis that brewers are finding themselves in," Ward says. "They're having to review their recipes. The crisis really hasn't hit hard yet."

The hop shortage became noticeable around July, when a market glut and hop reserves stored in extract began dwindling.

The bulk of U.S.-grown hops are produced in the Yakima, Washington, area. Farmers weren't getting a profitable return and got out of the market, switched crops or went bankrupt. The same was happening in Germany, the world's No. 1 hop-growing country.

In the United States alone, there were an estimated 515 hop growers in 1950; 75 in 2000 and just 45 today, Ward says. In 2006, about 2 million pounds of hops were destroyed in an S.S. Steiner warehouse in Yakima, equaling about 4 percent of the U.S. hop crop.

All the while, beer sales are increasing worldwide by about 1 to 2 percent annually. The craft brewing industry is growing yearly by 12 percent. That economic reality is pushing hop growers back into the fields.

Anybody noticed any differences in price or taste?

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Drinking Philly

• Philly Beer Week starts today. There are over sixty events scheduled over 10 days with meet and meet and greets with the brewers, pub crawls, specially paired beer dinners, drink specials and more. Be sure to check the calendar to keep up to date with all of the events.
• Phoodie.info is Philebrity's new food and drink blog.
  
• Philadelphia Brewing Company beer debuted on Wednesday at a number of local bars.
• First thoughts, not bad, a bit more expensive than I had hoped but similar in price to Yards etc.
• Check this article detailing PBC and the revitalization of brewing in Philly.
  
• This Saturday and next Saturday bus your way around 15 different Irish bars from 12:30 - 5:30 for Erin Express.
  

Higher Wine Prices Boost Drinking Pleasure

According to researchers at Stanford, people will trick themselves into thinking a wine tastes better if they know it cost more.

The researchers said that when 20 adult test subjects sampled the same wine at different prices, they reported experiencing pleasure at significantly greater levels when told the wine cost more. At the same time, the part of the brain responsible for pleasure showed significant activity.

This is kind of a "Duh!" study but still interesting nonetheless that it has been confirmed.

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Edible Cocktails

Photo courtesy of neatorama

Yes edible cocktails thanks to Dave Arnold, the head of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan. David had developed a technique that will turn a pickle into a martini.

Arnold cuts peeled cucumbers into spears and puts them in a Mason jar filled with an 8-to-1 mixture of gin and vermouth. He also adds a touch of simple syrup to counteract the cucumbers’ inherent bitterness. The Mason jar is then placed into a vacuum machine, which removes the air, collapsing the cucumbers’ air pockets...
When the vacuum seal is broken, the martini mixture rushes in to fill the spaces in the cucumber where the air used to be.

Just imagine how many martinis she is holding in that picture. Oh and if anyone wants to buy me a Gastrovac for Christmas, email me and I'll send you my address :) It sounds like you could then make all sorts of edible cocktails. So many possibilities. Mmmm.

Also, if there are any pickle lovers, looking for their soulmate, I think I found your perfect match: Miss M Pickles

Edible Cocktail, The

Edit: Alternatively I might just get the Reveo, not quite as cool as the Gastrovac but quite a bit cheaper.

Wong Wong Bitches

So its motherfucking “Restaurant Week” and what does that mean? Multi Faceted Casi G gonna review a whole bunch of places I have never eaten at but will just reference my first impressions by standing outside and hating the shit out of some yuppies. Like for real I have been in Chicago for the past two weeks in yuppie hell and like I have all this boiled up rage ready to explode. Like seriously I got kicked out of the Cubs game for almost fighting this dude cause I spilled my $7 beer on his fucking martini all over print embroidered khakis from J- Crew that I was trying to buy off of him (if anyone reading this gots a pair I need these in my life). Then once they threw me on the street my friends decided to stay in the game since the tickets were $60 and the only thing for me to do was to throw alcohol on the fire. So I went into a bar and did shots and I tried hollering at these yuppies from Schaumburg and they stopped talking to me so I told them that secretly I was a bigger White Socks fan. Yeah I am so mad in the streets right now.

On some other shit I always try to go to this place called Jenny's Noodle House in Chicago when I am there but this time I wasn't really hanging out in that area so I didn't get to go. On the way home from the airport I got off the train in Chinatown here in Philly and went to get a bowl of noodles. It was nice to be back in Philly where the fixies don't have front brakes (fucking Chicago hipsters are bullshit by the way, Philly hipsters would so win in a fight of BO, all around fixie mastery [frame colors, handle bar insanity, bike trees and above all no front brakes], and the "better than thou" yes I work at this store but I am still not gonna help you attitude), the hipster hair cuts have that really hard edge angle to them, and I could buy a lager for the $2 holla. So I was in the mood for some Chinese food and I stopped off in one of my favorite spots, Wong Wong Noodle House Sucka (p.s. I like to add words to the end of Chinese Restaurants just like when people open their fortune cookie and put "In Bed" on the end of the saying).

So I pop up in that bitch and dude in the window is forever cleaning that window when I come in. I always feel like all that soap and water on the window is gonna fuck up that crispy nasty ass duck you got all strung up. But fuck if I know cause when you order the wonton soup with chicken and pork, the old jawn waitress yells some shit in Chinese and dude starts choppin the shit up. Normally I eat by myself and try to holler at the waitress but tonight I wasn't really feeling this woman so I do my next favorite thing which is to wonder about the different lives people are living and generally try to profile them and make my life seem so much better. Or if I think they are living better I try to analyze what they got that I don't have.

Needless to say my fellow peoples eating at Wong Wong were not that interesting. Usually there is the Chinese dude sitting in that corner table who orders all in Chinese and basically wants to be smoking while he is eating. I make it a habit to categorize these dudes as the Chinese Mafia and he really wasn't that interesting. I moved on to the center table where it was an American Chinese family eating. Now I say American Chinese cause it looked like the mother and the father where both Chinese immigrants and were either first or second generation. They were sitting with their daughters eating dinner and they had this silent reserve about them, like they weren't really happy with the situation. So I shifted my gaze to look at the daughters who were in their late 20's or early 30's. The first daughter was sitting there reading a book in Chinese and half heartedly referencing the table and the conversation, she was a little older I think. Then the second daughter was kinda of a heavy set who looked like she gained a lot of weight during pregnancy and just never lost it and was doomed to tight clothes the rest of her life. She was sitting next to her mixed Chinese and black son. He was having trouble sitting since he was probably 5 and was in that I am too big for the kids seat and too small for a chair. He was making a lot of noise kinda trashing about trying to eat. He basically had to sit on his knees and kneel and eat with a fork and it seemed like there was a lot of confusion why this kid was flippin out.

The Grandfather keeps staring at the kid and staring back at his daughter and there was this weird dynamic of discomfort and distrust hovering around the table. I couldn't help but think the family had lived in the Trestle Town while growing up and the one daughter fell in love with some dude and had a kid but hasn’t married her yet. While the sister went on to CCP and did decent enough in class to move to Temple and is now a mid level manager working at an insurance company in Chinatown that only serves Chinese people. Now the parents have been pushed out of the area by the recent development and have moved to the North East to cheaper rent while the daughters have moved to South Philly. Now even though they all live in the city they rarely see each other and try to get together every once in a while to revisit their family values and heritage by sharing a plate of soy chicken and roasted spare ribs. While the meal slowly drags on there is little conversation except for the constant scolding of the kid and the grandmother talking to the woman behind the register. I sat eating watching them until they got up to leave and walked away. Not once did I see them smile or ever remotely look like they were having a good time in each others company.

I sat twirling my spoon in soup looking at my phone and thinking about my place in this world. What decisions did I make that lead me to this Chinese restaurant at 9:50 on a Thursday night? Why the fuck am I not sitting in a hut in Moldova eating meat on a stick? I was in a downward spiral of despair. It was then I saw an indy person picking up some take out with one black and one white pair of mismatched vintage hightops that he must have scored in Delaware on a liquor run, that the night changed. I was dumbfounded by this dude and as quickly as it came into my life it left out the door with some food. I got up to pay and walked by the window that the Chinese dude was still cleaning only to see this kid riding by on his fixie with his hoodie up on the phone. It gave me a sense of purpose in my life so I bought a 12 pack to go from Pho Calle and rolled up a Lager in PW and started drinking as soon as I was on the street.

Wong Wong Chinese Restaurant