TTB Label Approvals

With a little help from the folk at ratebeer.com, I was able to figure this out. Our lovely buddies at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), the federal bureau that regulates all things related to alcohol, have a website dedicated to alcohol label approvals. You can search the site for all of the latest approvals, and find out in advance, what the breweries are planning. It's just an interesting little tool to have and be right on top of the newest and best beers.

When you load the search for the site, to do a search for beer labels, enter numbers 900-909 or 950-959 in the "Product Class/Type" fields, then tweak the date fields to your likings. You'll get a list of label approvals/applications, click on the "TTB ID" link to go to the beer, then click on "Printable Version" and you can see what the label looks like.

Thoughts on the environment

I was cruising around on Sierra Nevada's site. One of the coolest things I have seen is their commitment to helping the environment. It appears this company is spending a lot of capital to really improve their environmental impact. Not something that is entirely feasible for smaller breweries at this point, so its good to see a major brewery really taking the lead on this.

Just a quick preview, they have a link that you can see the real-time production of their solar cells. They recycle EVERYTHING. They ship beer in bio-diesel powered trucks. They recylce CO2. At least if these programs are only experimental, its moving in the right direction.

A list of almost every brewer on the web!

I saw this and I was just like...wow! I've been trying to build up a list of links, but I'm nowhere near this far...I've got maybe 50 links, I'll have to update my favorites now. This is just crazy...one stop shopping!

BTW...old news, probably nothing to see here.

Someone took my comments out of context. I didn't mean to come across as harsh as this individual thought...my appologies and you can read the comments here.

Also...posting derogatory comments...they'll be deleted, eventually. There were some on here and due to my absence, not sure how long they lasted. So I whacked them...same with advertisements they'll be whacked. There are a bunch of tools on the web who will take the time to make a jerk-off comment or trash someone but too cowardly to leave their name and identity. At least if I trash someone, I'll sign my name to it, not that I'm in the business of being a jerk-off though.

Sorry if anyone was offended.

Pictures of Beer

As exciting as beer is to drink...it can be just as exciting to look at. Here are two sites with plenty of pictures of beer and brewpubs.

Session Beer

Imppy Stout, Quad, Imp Stout, Imp Stout, Imp Stout, Barley Wine, Imp Stout, Imp Stout, Imp Stout, Belgian Strong, Barley Wine, Quad, Imp Stout, Double IPA, Barley Wine, Belgian Strong, Fruit Beer...huh? Go to Ratebeer.com and look at the top 50 beers for 2008 and you'll see a lot of the same thing until you hit #17, a fruit beer as classified, but look closer and its an eisbock.

Not to say these beers are bad, I'm sure they are quite nice, but who's to say that a beer under 5% ABV isn't a good beer? There are plenty of them and that's just one message that Lew Bryson is trying to get out over at his session beer project (SBP) blog.

As a chronic Ratebeer user, I'm a big fan of this. I want to see different beers start to breach those ranks and I'd like it to be session beers. As most of the drinking public knows already, those are the beers that are go-to beers, the stand-bys, the old reliables. It's a drinking man's beer. You can buy a case of them for cheap, they'll last you the evening and you'll have change left over for a bottle of tylenol...and its GOOD BEER!

Play Nice

I hate to see crap like this. It's just giving lawyers a job and paycheck. I despise lawyers. Who cares if there are two similarly named beers.

Gonna hafta git me one of these.

This is very cool. I'm sure it is not cheap, but very, very cool. These guys are out of Philly too.