Birraire - Beer Blog

The celebration of the Barcelona Beer Challenge - hereinafter BBC - awards ceremony , which until now had always been held during the weekend of the Barcelona Beer Festival, took place this past Wednesday and Thursday remotely, through YouTube Live, in response to the confinement limitations due to Covid-19. Beyond the impact of the BBC at an international level, the relevance of this event for our industry, at national level, is undeniable. That is why I wanted to take the opportunity to sleep very few hours last night and make some reflections on the results . Let's go there.

Europa Press published yesterday the piece of news that had been rumoured for the last weeks among people in the scene: Heineken acquires 51% of Madrid-based La Cibeles brewery . Founded by David Castro in 2010, the year in which the microbrewing scene in Madrid was almost identical to that of the late 90s in Barcelona, with little more than imported beer as an alternative to the major national brands, La Cibeles soon achieved notoriety and was a source of excitement for the few beer enthusiasts with concerns beyond the eternal cañita de Mahou . "The ownership and independence of a company are secondary to a fundamental value such as consistency"

Saturday afternoon at the Barcelona Beer Festival 2018. In a joint effort between the Catalan Tourism Board and Beer Events - the company behind the Barcelona Beer Festival - the Craft Beer & Gastronomy route was designed for the attendance of key people in the dissemination of beer culture. The main idea was to let leading writers and bloggers know more about the richness and gastronomic tradition from which we part as a country, with a special emphasis on the incipient microbrewing industry, which in recent years has begun to reap the fruits of its labours, shining both within and beyond our borders. 'I am proud to see how leading authors position themselves enthusiastically before what's been slowly brewing since the early 90's, with the contribution of many people'

This morning, the Gremi d'Elaboradors de Cervesa Artesana i Natural de Catalunya - Union of Craft and Natural Beer Producers from Catalonia, known as  GECAN - and the Barcelona Beer Festival have presented the report Estat de la Cervesa Artesana a Catalunya 2016 - State of Craft Beer in Catalonia 2016 -, a study that compiles and talks about data collected from a survey of eighty-two questions, asked to 95 of the breweries in the territory. The key aspects of the report relate to the location of the companies, the production in volume and variety, the size of the businesses and the occupation generated, distribution of the sales or lines of action for the future. "The 1% threshold has been exceeded: one of every hundred beers consumed in Catalonia is craft"

The shiny Mahou factory, in Alovera. I suppose it is not hard to guess that the great brewers do not produce their new recipes with their usual equipment. One of the things I saw from afar, which was not much emphasised during my visit to the facilities of Damm back in 2011, was a 10 Hl microbrewing plant - so huge at that time - in which they produced experimental batches for the development of recipes. I asked about that small facility, but it was far from the elevated catwalk through which the whole visiting group was moving , and I got little information about it. It was not until December 2016 that I was able to get my nose into a similar facility of another large Iberian brewing holding, such as Mahou-San Miguel (MSM). “Ater the visit to the Pilot Plant, I understood that Nómada are still gypsy brewers”

Article by  Mikel Rius  - Director of the Barcelona Beer Festival Translation from Spanish  by Joan Villar-i-Martí For the second consecutive year, I am glad to return to this blog to share a few thoughts on the publication of the Socioeconomic Report of Cerveceros de España for 2016. If you feel like it, you can review the notes published last year in this same blog , or even an article written in the distant 2012 and published in Cerveriana blog . It has been a good year for industrial brewers : a 4.3% increase in production - up to 3,650 million litres - is undoubtedly an excellent figure. The main reason reported is the growth of tourism , together with a really curious fact: 99.5% of foreign visitors over the age of 18, almost the entirety, consume beer during their holidays in Spain. Worthy of a Trivial Pursuit question. "The study falls short, it lacks data in many areas. This is a job that we have to do from within the craft sector"

It was Arriaca who last year came out with the first cans of craft beer from the Iberian Peninsula. There were bets, talks and rumors of all kinds around which would be the first microbrewery to do it, and finally it was this brewery from Guadalajara to hit first, contrary to forescasts. The visibility and availability of the brand has grown exponentially, as well as its reputation thanks to the quality of their beers. In turn, once the pole position of the craft cans was obtained, the sector relaxed , and those projects that sounded more imminent seem to have taken more time to plan this relevant change in their processes. " The emergence of new cans is nothing but proof of the continuous growth of the sector "

'Bring a cold one, baby' - Images from  Birrantic - It may have happened to many of you. Even without bad intention, it is recurrent to see sexist behaviours in our day to day, when we interact with other people. In fact, sexism is a phenomenon that is fully settled in our society. And as a social ecosystem, the beer scene of our country is also subject to of such attitudes. Advertising helped to create the collective idea that beer was a drink for men, relegating women to simple servants and decorative objects available for the enjoyment of the virile drinker. It mustn't have helped, either. JC: 'The belief that the brewer is automatically a man, is like assuming that the CEO of a large company must be a man'