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Europe/Russia
Groupe Castel, originally a wine business, was founded in 1949 by nine brothers and sisters and is still run by its founding president Pierre Castel, 84. It branched out into beer and soft drinks in Africa, the Caucasus and Vietnam. The breweries in Vietnam and Azerbaijan have since been sold.
Europe/Russia
As a Bavarian I have always found it an embarrassment to visit Bavarian-themed restaurants wherever I travelled. Most of them tended to overdo the Bavarian oompah experience as if the Oktoberfest was the only place Bavarians will go to have a good beer and suck in the atmosphere. I won’t tell you what I let myself in when I visited Mader’s and Karl Ratzsch’s in Milwaukee years ago. In the 19th century Milwaukee probably had the largest number of Bavarians away from home. And the places looked it. Hadn’t seen a pot of paint for decades. Being a journalist, I put these two visits down as “interesting experiences”, best never to be repeated.
Europe/Russia
By the time the recession ended earlier this year, GDP was 15 percent below its peak, unemployment had reached 13 percent and the cost of rescuing Ireland’s banks had soared beyond initial estimates.
Europe/Russia
Mr Nusmeier defended Heineken’s decision to instantly pass on to customers in the first half the burden of a 200 percent increase of Russian excise duty. The price increases cost Heineken a loss of volume that exceeded the overall 9 percent market-volume decline resulting from the duty increase.
Europe/Russia
It’s amazing how much a brief fling can cost … even if it only lasts five seconds.
Raw materials
The weather conditions this year had a substantial effect on the spring barley throughout Europe. The harvest is going to be smaller than it was expected. There are going to be problems with the crops that were harvested late. One will probably expect a shortage with malting barley in Europe next year at the latest.
Europe/Russia
Once viewed as a poor substitute for its intoxicating rivals, lower strength beers have shrugged off their party-pooper image to become a stellar performer in a declining beer market.
Europe/Russia
Carolans is an Irish cream liqueur with a total volume above 600,000 nine-litre cases sold in more than 60 markets. 60 percent of the brand’s sales are in the United States. The same could be said for Frangelico, a premium Italian hazelnut liqueur. The U.S. accounts for 50 percent of the brand’s sales.
Europe/Russia
In case you ever wondered how beer supply works in these huge tents which seat over 8000 people each – well, this is what Paulaner has come up with. Its new tent is the first with a central beer supply. Beer is stored in only three tanks (total capacity 840 hl) which feed an underground beer line, which supplies five tapping stations. The circular line is 240 metres long and has a diameter of 10 cm. The pressure is 1.5 bar. The new line allows 15 litres of beer per minute to be served at each of the 11 taps. That’s 9,900 mass beer per hour and hopefully enough to keep thirsty visitors happy during peak times.
Europe/Russia
When it comes to doing politics, Bavaria’s anti-smoking legislation can only be called a blunder. Without warning or public pressure, the Bavarian coalition government in January 2008 introduced a blanket ban on smoking in public buildings, hospitals and pubs. Yet to mitigate its effects, the new law temporarily exempted beer fests like the Oktoberfest from it. As could be expected, media commentators accused the government of weasel politics and called critics into action, who immediately set out to organise a plebiscite on the issue. Although on 4 July this year only a minority of Bavarians cast their vote in favour of a strict ban of smoking, the anti-smokers’ lobby won, which meant that as of 1 August 2010 the exemptions for the Oktoberfest had to be scrapped.
Most Read
BRAUWELT on tour
Most Read
BRAUWELT on tour
