Having a calm Monday?  You won’t be after you read about how a Budweiser distributor in Tennessee is bullying a small-time brewer.

The war for tap space has been going for a long time, but Calfkiller Breweing Company is being attacked on a whole new level.  From the brewery:

Grab your Kool aid kids and take a seat. Here’s the story of Calfkiller Brewing Company, and Budweiser of TN.
Once upon a time there was this little guy (Calfkiller Brewing Company). A very honest hard working little guy with a dream to make great beer that folks could enjoy. After many years of hard work this dream became reality. Slowly but surely the little guy was rubbing shoulders with the big guys in the market place. All was well…….or so they thought.

So what happened that was so outrageous?  Well:

Over the years the little guy has purchased used kegs from all across the country. A few examples would be unclaimed freight auctions, breweries that have closed, or keg companies that sell new, used, and refurbished kegs. Anyone can purchase these, and Calfkiller has done it as well. Everything from website sales to store fronts in public with huge signs by the road for everyone to see. LEGIT businesses! So Calfkiller has been using kegs like these from day one.
Smooth sailing and all has seemed well…..until about a month ago! That’s when the “Budweiser keg police” began trying to strong arm the little guy. Now no one is sure really why. Maybe they simply want the entire market. Maybe they simply don’t like the little guys. Maybe they got their first quarter reports for 2012, and noticed the little guy had taken a piece of their pie. The only thing the little guy knows for sure is the truth isn’t in them so it does no good to ask questions at Budweiser in TN.
So the big monopoly Budweiser has started walking in to accounts, and simply taking the little guys kegs! FLIRTING WITH SLANDER they have told business owners that Calfkiller had stole the kegs.

There’s not much Calfkiller can do, and even less that we can do.  But we can share it, spread the word, and turn this into a PR disaster for Budweiser.  A major multi-national corporation is bullying a locally-owned small business because they make better beer.

Last summer Tröegs in Pennsylvania announced a new brewery, moving from Harrisburg, PA to Hershey, PA.  Since then, construction has been moving along, and a couple of new videos are online that show how things are progressing.

Why should you be excited?  For starters, they make what I think is probably the best beer I’ve ever had (though I’ve been told that this year’s batch isn’t their best).  As of now, their distribution has been limited to around 3 hours driving around the brewery, but they have pushed beyond that into parts of Ohio.  With a bigger brewery, you should see more of it on the shelves in your favorite beer stores.

According to Troegs, who have always offered brewery tours led by the Tröegs brothers themselves and call the expansion “T2″, you’ll still be able to experience their brewing process up-close.

At three times the size of Tröegs current location, the new 90,000 square foot facility will give guests a glimpse at the fermentation process, packaging room and oak barrel-aging room, and lab. The addition of a pilot brewing room offers insight to Tröegs experimentation—where its famous Scratch brews are dreamt-up and made.

After yesterday’s news about the insane ABV restrictions on breweries in Mississippi, we were a little disheartened by the idea of beer regulations and the lack of common sense behind many of them.  But completely restoring our faith in common sense is this news out of North Dakota:

North Dakotans who make wine and booze already can get a state license to sell their beverages, and a Minot lawmaker wants people who make home-brewed beer to be able to do the same. …

Ruby says the license would let home beer brewers sell their suds. They could offer beer tastings and set up stalls at trade shows. They could also sell their beer to wholesalers for wider state distribution.

Good news?  We think so.  It means more revenue for the state, better beer for residents, and new opportunities for hombrewers.  This is the type of policy that could easily lead to at least one great new brewery — it will let homebrewers raise the capital, learn the business, and build and audience without needing to drop hundreds of thousands on equipment.  It lets breweries grow more slowly, and makes them an easier investment.

Every state should adopt something like this –  true nanobrewing that can lead to great things.

Penguins and polar bears, get excited.  Craft beer is about to hit Antarctica, courtesy of New Zealand’s Moa Brewery and The Tatty Flag, an actual Antarctic bar.

The team at Moa Brewery reckon a cold beer will be just as satisfying in the freezing Antarctic as it is on a hot summer day.

Their beer will get the ultimate test this year when 2000 bottles leave on a ship today for Antarctica, destined for New Zealand’s Scott Base.

Organisers of the shipment say it will be the first craft beer to hit the fridges in the base bar, called The Tatty Flag, which sells mass-produced beer including Tui, Speight’s and Heineken.

What’s most amazing about this is that at just one Antarctic base, nearly 30,000 cans of beer are consumed annually. That seems like an astounding amount of beer for a place for such a remote outpost.  But, I suppose there’s not a lot else to do, and it’s damn cold, so you had might as well drink.

Also interesting are the packaging concerns, because you can’t simply haul the trash to the curb for the garbage men every Tuesday morning.

The beer headed for the base is the first to be bottled in plastic by the company.

The beer has been put in 600ml bottles, designed to be lightweight, reusable and recyclable, because all rubbish is brought back to New Zealand.

They still believe their beer tastes better from glass, but say they will not hesitate to do another plastic run if the need arises.

The specially made labels feature an “Antarctica Edition” logo along with a silhouette of seals and penguins.

Travel writer Doug Lansky highlights a survey of 3,400 beer drinkers from around the world, asking them which country makes the world’s worst beer.  The winner?  The United States, by a lot.

According to Lansky, 36.2% of beer drinkers from 99 countries ranked the U.S. as the worst beer producing country, which dwarfed the 6.9% who said China.  The American rating was actually 7% worse than last year.

The full list is below, but don’t panic.  Even considering Germany or Belgium, the reality is that American beer drinkers enjoy what is probably the best beer selection anywhere in the world, and those beers are produced by other Americans.    What this survey seems to show is that American craft brewers aren’t distributing — and more than that, it means is that they’re not marketing — overseas.

For now, that’s just fine.  The American craft beer market still has plenty of room to grow (even though the overall beer market has been drug down by the dead weight of the major macrobreweries), and when that market has been satisfied, I think you’ll see plenty of craft brewers distributing much more widely.  Most craft breweries don’t even distribute nationally yet — a frustration that keeps someone like me from enjoying a New Belgium’s Fat Tire on a regular basis.

The real problem with this is that the rest of the world sees American macrobreweries the same way American beer lovers do — not positively.  With their marketing budgets, distribution networks, and business deals, they have absolutely decimated the reputation of American beer across the world.  In 10 or 20 years, should Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada want to seriously market and distribute in China, India, or across Europe, what kind of negative preconceptions will they be up against?  How badly will it hurt their ability to sell and expand?

Clearly, American craft breweries have shown an admirable tenacity while battling the macros on their own turf.  And by all accounts, they’re winning.  Can they do that across the globe when the time comes, if it comes?

As promised, the list of nine is below.  It’s actually not a terrible list, with the exception of the US and UK.

The Worst Beer Producing Countries in the World (from Dough Lansky)

1. United States, 36.2%
2. China, 6.9%
3. Italy, 6.9%
4. France, 3.5%
5. Mexico, 3.5%
6. United Kingdom, 2.8%
7. Australia, 2.4%
8. India, 2.4%

Who knew that the movie Smokey and the Bandit was about beer?  I didn’t, and neither did Boing Boing author Maggie Koerth-Baker, who, for some reason, was curious enough about the movie to find out.

Here it is…

So last night, while attempting to explain the plot of Smokey and the Bandit to my husband, it occurred to me that I didn’t really understand the back story that spawned this, one of my favorite childhood films. Why did Bandit and Snowman (and Fred) have a long way to go and a short time to get there? There was beer in most parts of Georgia by the 1970s. And even if you were trying to get booze to a dry county, why start in Texas and only give yourself 28 hours?

Thanks to Wikipedia and the very helpful Stephan Zielinski, I discovered the awful truth—Smokey and the Bandit is centered around America’s brief love affair with Coors Banquet Beer.

All that work, for Coors? It’s true. Wikipedia explained that the beer wasn’t available East of Oklahoma at the time. But I didn’t get the full extent of what was really going on until I read a 1974 Time magazine article sent to me by Zielinski. If, like me, you didn’t begin drinking until the late 1990s, this is going to come as a shock, but, once upon a time, Coors was apparently the best American breweries had to offer.

She goes on to excerpt the article from Time, which mentions that Presidents Ford and Eisenhower, along with Paul Newman, loved the stuff.  It turns out that there were real bandits, and since the unpasteurized Banquet Beer was only available in the west, near the Coors brewery in Colorado, those on the east coast who wanted it, and particularly those who wanted it in a dry county in Georgia, had to get it off a refrigerated truck.   Coors Banquet Beer, coming long before the craft beer movement, was the first of its kind.