And the Winner is...

A big congratulations to Giancarlo Annese & Sarah Tobol from BeerUnion! They swooped in mere minutes before the deadline with a great smattering of Founders Beertography. The entry above was selected as the winner for its ability to make you thirsty AND haunt your dreams at the same time. I also really enjoyed their photo below, mainly because I recognize the color of the neck labels of Founders and therefore know this is a pretty darn impressive group shot.



Thanks to Founders for the prize pack donation and Special Thanks to all those who submitted entries. Keep your eyes peeled for the next beertography contest coming later this Summer! And if you have a brewery you'd like to suggest as the focus of the next contest, let me know!

In the meantime you may have noticed that there hasn't been a Beertography of the Week. This will be remedied early next week and all submissions of the past few weeks will be considered. Also, I'm happy to announce that beertography now has a Facebook Page that you can like if you feel like doing so. Also if you like the Facebook page, you'll be able to upload your beertography at any time! So lets review the options for beertographizing:

- via email at beertography@gmail.com
- via twitter, just use the #beertography tag & mention me if possible
- via facebook, upload directly to the page

Beertography Contest featuring Founders Brewing Company

Exciting news to start summer! We're having our first Official Beertography Contest! If you've been following our Beertography of the Week series, then you already know exactly what we're looking for. The twist here is that all of the entries must feature Founders Brewing Co. in order to be eligible. The winning selected entry will receive a Founders Brewing Prize Pack of brewery gear! We will accept entries for this contest from today, Monday June 6th until 11:59pm on Sunday June 19th and the winner will be announced by Wednesday June 22nd.

What are you waiting for? You should have already taken some Founders beertography by now! Check out these great examples straight from Founders' website!

Rules:

All submissions must be emailed to beertography@gmail.com with the subject line Beertography Contest before 11:59pm on Sunday June 19th.
All photo submissions must somehow feature Founders in order to be considered.
We're looking for a combination of most creative along with best photography here.
Winner will be announced on or before Wednesday June 22nd.
While I'd love to accept worldwide entries, the prize pack is only available to US residents.
Please also be sure to share your photo with Founders directly by uploading your submission to their Flickr page!

Any questions? Feel free to email or comment below. Good luck!

Beertography of the Week - April 20th

This weeks' #beertography comes to us from Jim Frasch (@JFrasch) and features the elusive and highly-regarded 2011 Founders KBS (or Kentucky Breakfast Stout). This stout is brewed with a hint of coffee and vanilla then aged in oak bourbon barrels for over a year. At 11.2%, this is a slow-sipper. But you'll want to take your time anyways as even if you've been able to find it, because its just that good.

Here's Jim's report:

I took a chance and stopped at Bottle King in Glen Ridge, NJ. Asked one of the employees he had no idea what I was talking about. He disappeared into the back room, and emerged 5 minutes later w/ 1 bottle, wouldn't let me have more than that. I joked with the cashier about buying insurance for it, and she said "oh, so this the special one they just told us about".

I've heard a lot of similar stories of KBS findings in NYC and NJ. Most places knew what they had and enforced a 1 bottle per person limit, while a few others did not and let people walk out with an entire case. Chances are 99% of the bottles that made it to our area are gone by now, but there are probably still kegs around. Just this past week, The Iron Monkey in Jersey City tapped 2 kegs of KBS.

If you haven't had this beer yet, definitely keep an eye out.

ALSO! You can now submit your beertography directly through Twitter. Just tag your photo with #beertography and i'll select the best to feature on the Beertography of the Week. If you prefer to email it, its beertography@gmail.com.

Beertography of the Week - April 11th

This week's BOTW comes to us from the folks at BeerUnion, a great NYC/Boston Beer Blog. Those with a keen eye may have been able to tell right away what the photo is, but for those who cannot, this is a comparison tasting between Founders Brewing KBS 2010 and 2011.

What were their findings, you ask? Why not head directly to the BeerUnion themselves for the answer:

Upon comparing the 2010 and 2011 versions we found that they were a bit different. Founders may have tweaked the beer a little and it made it even better. We had heard some complaints last year that the bottled 2010 KBS was too carbonated and found that the 2011 was noticeably less carbonated and had a more silky mouthfeel. The chocolate, coffee and of course the bourbon are present in both versions. We thought the 2010 could still use more aging while we thought the 2011 was ready to drink right away.

Glad to hear the 2011 is delicifying (that's a word, right?) right away where the 2010 might still need some time to sit. I've actually got 1 remaining bottle of 2009 sitting around that I may just have to cracked and do a three year vertical. Then I will curse myself a year from now for not having the '09 anymore once the '12 is here.

Thanks again BeerUnion! Make sure you follow their blog. And if you have any fun/cool beertography you'd like to submit, send it to beertography@gmail.com and maybe we can feature you're great shot. Cheers.

Yesterday Was A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day. Normally I'm supposed to show up for my job at 9:30am. Since I knew that it was going to be Founder's release date for their very limited brew Kentucky Breakfast Stout, work was going to have to wait.

A few weeks before I had contacted a couple of local liquor stores known to carry good craft beer. Two out of the five or so that I contacted claimed they would be receiving at least 1 case oft-sought-after KBS. In fact, the store that's a mere 2 blocks away from my apartment in JC excitedly told me that they'd be getting 2 cases and there would be no bottle limit.

Cut to Monday morning. I show up to my local place as they open at 10am and they don't have any. They had received a shipment of just 1 case, but it somehow was nowhere to be found in the store. They did have the Nemesis however, so I bought my consolation beer and brought it home. I also left my name and number in case they stumbled upon any more KBS, as they said they still had some logged in their computer system. I suddenly realized that Super Buy Rite near the Holland Tunnel had said that they'd have it first thing Monday. Its about a mile walk from my place, but I called and they had it so I was off.

I met the beer manager, Joe, who was a great guy. We excitedly discussed KBS and how his store was already quite possibly the best beer store in NJ. I bought my 2 12oz bottles (the limit there) and was on my way to work. Later in the day, I got a call from my local place and they had one 4 pack with my name on it waiting for me once I got out of work. When I got there to collect my "winnings", I found out that at least some of their KBS was sold via their online system, which I didn't even know existed. I'm willing to be the rest was set aside to let the employees have and I just got lucky that one was left to buy afterwards.

All in all, 6 bottles of Kentucky Breakfast, 4 bottles of Nemesis = good day.

Midwest Trip Part 3: Woodman's Food Market, New Glarus and Founders Brewing Company

We left Minnesota Sunday afternoon with an end-goal of getting to Founders Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, MI by midnight. We very much wanted to make a stop at Woodman's Food Market in Madison, WI, based on excellent BeerAdvocate reviews and the fact that they claimed to have a wide array of New Glarus beers that aren't available outside of Wisconsin.



I've already posted about it, but Woodman's is HUGE. Huuuuuuuuuuge. With limited time, we had to quickly peruse through the vast selection to find the best beers we wouldn't be able to get at Founders or Bell's, which unfortunately made us skip over the Bell's Consecrator Doppelbock which wasn't available at the Bell's General Store. Either way, we purchased a large amount of New Glarus including 12oz bottles of Dancing Man Wheat, Fat Squirrel Ale, Unplugged Bohemian Lager, Unplugged Imperial Saison, and 750ml bottles of Wisconsin Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart. That's a lot of beer! We were immediately concerned about how we were going to be able to fit Bell's and Founders into the car too. But we pressed on.



We arrived at Founders just after midnight. As much as we loved Three Floyds, Founders was an even cooler place. First of all, it's gigantic. It has to easily be 10 times the size of FFF, with a huge bar, outdoor seating and a stage for bands to play on. Unfortunately (I feel like I've had to use that word quite a few times in this series), we got there after the kitchen closed, so we were not able to partake in the supposedly awesome pub food. But what a great space Founders is. It definitely made me want to move to Grand Rapids. Oh, did I mention they have insanely awesome beer? Check out their tap list while we were there (click to embiggen):



Kentucky Breakfast Stout!? Quite possibly my favorite beer of all time. CANADIAN Breakfast Stout?! Crazy. Having either of these beers on tap is pretty much once in a lifetime opportunity for an east coaster.



I started with the Canadian Breakfast Stout, which was A+ (BeerAdvocate users seem to agree) and then had the Sweet Darkness and the Maple Mountain Brown. I also shared with Jeff, who had the Kentucky Breakfast Stout and Bourbon Barrel Aged Red's Rye. The only real problem we had with this wonderful experience was that our palates were blown out by the second beer. That doesn't mean they weren't great though.



I think we left sometime around 1:30 or so, and it felt like we were the only people left in there. We got some Double Trouble and Porter to go, mainly because the other beers they had to-go are usually able to be found in NJ. We crashed for the night at the Radisson in Grand Rapids and geared up for one more day of driving and one last beer destination: Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo, MI.

Midwest Trip Part 4 coming soon!