Travel by the Pint: the Blog

Is nothing sacred? Due to large numbers of people being injured by pint glasses, the British government is looking at plastic or possibly a plastic-coated option to prevent shattering, says the BBC. Lowering the Bar has more information along with some fun statistics of other things that seem to injure a lot of Brits. For instance, citing The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, “Almost 1000 cases [of injury] are recorded under the category ‘Cardigan sweater’.”

I’ll wear a plastic cardigan if I can keep my glass pint.

Some interesting beer packaging designs from The Dieline:

- Broken Bones (concept)
- Lucky Bucket (see number 7)
- Osjecko Pivo

And it looks like our old friends at Grizzly Peak in Ann Arbor, Michigan — Season 1, Episodes 13 & 14 — are getting into bottling (from LovelyPackage):

- Northern United Brewing (Grizzly Peak and North Peak)

North Peak, located in Traverse City, Michigan, will be featured in a pair of Travel by the Pint episodes later this season.

Launch ad campaigns, not missiles! North Korea has launched a new ad campaign for their locally brewed Taedonggang beer. The BBC has an article about it here, although I’m having trouble getting the video to play here. Maybe you’ll have better luck.

How I’d love to have a bottle of this for the ol’ collection. I’ve been to South Korea — where Taedonggang is sometimes available — but don’t recall ever seeing it. Hite seemed to be the most popular brand. Fairly mild but quite drinkable and very welcome alongside a slab of kalbi.

Kalbi cooked at the table in Daegu, South Korea (bottle of Hite at top center)

Grab a hanky and prepare to get a warm, fuzzy feeling about the craft brewing industry…

“I am a Craft Brewer”

Friend of this site and unofficial, off-site beerologist, Chad Case, has been bugging us asking us nicely for a Travel by the Pint ringtone for his iPhone. Awesome idea! And so we’ve created one and made it available for download from the Merchandise and Free Stuff page of our site.

If you have an iPhone and a Mac, just double-click the downloaded file and it will be added to the ringtone library in iTunes. After syncing your phone, the ringtone should be available through your settings app. If you have some other kind of phone or are on a PC — consult your manual or someone under the age of 15 for instructions.

Tonight, we popped the caps on our first two bottles of home brew — which Sally has christened “Doobie Blonde” in honor of the suspected doobie-smokin’-hippies that built our beloved house back in the early ’70s.

Our expectations were low. After all, how could a kit beer actually be good? We were pleasantly surprised. Not only did the whole experiment work (it feels a bit magical to actually make beer) but it’s not half bad. Pretty good, in fact. We’re definitely energized to try another batch and make our way toward an all-grain brew. For the record, this kit came from Homebrewers Outpost and I wouldn’t hesitate to order from them again. In fact, I see they have some all-grain kits…

A couple of beer-related links I ran across this week: it seems that Pyramid Breweries has a new logo and updated packaging (via the Brand New blog). And Manolith has posted a graphical timeline of the history of beer.

If you watch the AMC series, Breaking Bad, you may have noticed that Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank, is a homebrewer. It was revealed in this week’s episode, “Breakage” (season 2, episode 5).

We had received some inside information about this while interviewing brewmasters in Albuquerque last month for season 2 of Travel by the Pint. Breaking Bad is set and filmed in Albuquerque and, as luck would have it, one of our interviewees was the consultant for Hank’s “man cave” homebrewing set up and even gave the film crew a crash course in brewing at his brewpub.

More on that in our second season so — as always — stay tuned.

Niki Brown posted an interesting assortment of beer packaging on her Design O’Blog.