Shoes Used To Prevent Beer Glass Theft

While the beer is famously good in Belgium, for some tourists it would seem the drink itself is not
enough. Bars and cafes in the country’s most picturesque cities complain that tens of thousands
of their stylish glasses are being lost to souvenir hunters every year. But the purveyors of
Belgium’s most famous cultural artifact are fighting back, in some unorthodox ways.

Philip Maes, the landlord at the Bruges Beerwall cafe, overlooking the city’s central Groenerei
Canal, has invested in security alarms which are attached to the stem of each of his glasses.
“We have lost at least 4,000 [glasses] every year,” Maes said. “Especially the tourists liked to
walk with them. For some reason, some customers think that when they pay for something to
drink, they get the glass as a present.”

urther to the east of the country, in Ghent, the Dulle Griet, a bar offering 500 different types of
beer, has gone one step further to guarantee the safety of its most prized glasses. “Anyone who
drinks our house beer must hand over his shoe,” Alex Devriendt told the Belgian daily newspaper
the Nieuwsblad. “We then put them in a basket that we pull up against the ceiling. The basket has
now become an attraction, but for us it remains a guarantee. [The glasses] are quite expensive
because we have them made especially.”

Belgian beer glasses come in an array of different shapes and sizes, from goblets and
chalices to flutes and so-called tulips, designed for beers that taste best when they
have a voluminous foam head.

It is claimed that a favourite for the tourists in Bruges are the glasses bearing the insignia of the
Brugse Zot, the city’s only central brewery.The family-run company provides them to the bars
for free as a way to market its product, but it admits that this comes at a hefty price. “Every
month we have to deliver a thousand new ones here in Bruges,” said Jan Paillaert. “Glasses
are a necessary evil for brewers. They are our business card, so you want every cafe to have
them all the time. But it costs you money when people start walking with it. Hotel bars are even
worse than cafes. A lot more disappear there.”
Feature News  
from  beernexus.com
Edited by Jim Attacap
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Glitter Beer

Green beer was out and Glitter beer was in for
this just passed St. Patrick's Day..The "glitter
beer" trend that started with breweries in
California, Colorado and North Carolina and now
seems to be spreading throughout the Southwest
USA for everyday drinking. The beers are given
that extra sparkle by adding food-grade, edible
glitter to a batch of beer or added to each
individual pint."This is the same type of glitter
used in baking and decorating cupcakes," said
Four Day  Brewing's Brook Killey who helped
start the trend.

there is a difference between non-toxic glitter
(like that used in arts and crafts) and edible
glitter which commonly includes ingredients like
sugar, acacia (gum arabic), maltodextrin,
cornstarch and color additives specifically
approved for food use.  Edible glitter works best
in alcohol, she said, because it doesn't dissolve
even though it's made of sugar. It does break
down in your digestive track

Brewery For Sale

Green Flash Brewing has put its Virginia Beach
brewery up for sale The company is auctioning
off the facility and all assets, including their
complete tasting room to the 50 barrel brewing
operation.The brewery and tasting room is a $20
million investment in the city.
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Pastrami Pilsner

As a classic deli menu item, pastrami needs
little in the way of introduction. It is smoked and
spiced meat that requires just a couple of slices
of rye bread and perhaps a slab of mustard to
be enjoyed. But a pastrami beer?

Leave it to Shmaltz Brewing Company, a Jewish-
themed craft brewer based in Clifton Park, N.Y.,
to deliver deli in a bottle, so to speak. The idea
for the beer emerged last year when Shmaltz
looked to create a special brew in collaboration
with Barcade, a chain of craft beer-centric bars.
.
The brew is simply an “experiment with a wild
array of flavors and ingredients,” such as kosher
salt, cracked black pepper, mustard seed,
ground caraway seed and horseradish. In other
words, the team took pastrami spices but didn’t
exactly dump a sandwich into its beer-making
equipment. No real pastrami is used.

BeerNexus has tasted the beer and its flavor is
more subtle than expected - and that's a good
thing. Think of this as a refreshing pilsner with
a pastrami aftertaste. Not bad at all.

You can pair the beer with pastrami, but the
Shmaltz team suggests trying it with any number
of savory food items, from carne asada to Indian
samosas. The beer is available in 30 states