Someone seems to take a great interest in keeping the rumour mill running. This time it was an unidentified source in Belgium which claimed that a merger between InBev and U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch is inevitable in the long run.

Germany’s Radeberger Group sells its Czech Brewery to Heineken expecting that the Czech premium brand Krusovice will benefit from Heineken’s global marketing and distribution expertise.

In June the European Court of Justice ruled that Systembolaget, the monopolist alcohol retailer, had no right to prevent citizens from importing alcohol from other EU countries.

This report summarizes the EBC Barley Field Trials for Crop 2006. It is based on the comments of the 4 regional chairmen, and is intended to highlight varieties tested that may be of interest to the malting and brewing industry.

A beer outlook

Where will the path of beer innovations lead to? What possibilities are already available now, what does the future hold? The desire to develop (or to have to develop) “beery” beverages today that consumers will request tomorrow involves many risks.

“It’s the money, stupid”

Money. It can’t buy you love, but perhaps a pint of beer in one of London’s more fashionable watering holes. At three pounds a glass, beer has become very “reassuringly expensive” indeed. No sarcasm intended. In a city where a broom cupboard can fetch GBP 180 000, pubs have become prime property. Or why should anybody be interested in the beer business if it were not for the value of pubs? The property developers love them because they know how to squeeze the assets, the pub companies love them because they like the steady cash flow. As do the bankers and investors who back the pub companies. The brewers are probably regretting the day they were forced to sell their pub estates. By the way, does anyone still care about the beer? Thank you for asking: That’s what the CAMRA guys are for.

InBev plans to sell its cafés

Belgian brewer InBev is seeking a buyer for its majority stake in real estate subsidiary ImmoBrew.

Measuring oxygen transmission through PET bottle walls remains the benchmark test for barrier equipment qualification. The Systech 8700 was originally designed to meet the challenge of faster and less costly OTR testing of ACTISTM treated PET bottles. When Sidel launched the ACTIS™ 48 machine, its high output, in excess of 30,000 bottles/hour, overwhelmed conventional methods for qualification and quality tracking, even relying on statistical sampling.

In its meeting held on 6 May 2007, the EBC Analysis Committee elected new officers as follows:

A new benchmark in beer filtration enzymes