New Belgium releases a bad beer – on purpose

USA | On Earth Day (22 April), New Belgium shocked its punters by releasing Torched Earth Ale, a beer made entirely with ingredients available in a climate-ravaged future.

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The antimicrobial effects of hops

Technical Support | Hops “keep away certain putrefactions from beverages.” – a statement written by Hildegard von Bingen, in the herbal book “Physica“ from the 12th century [1]. In today’s language, this is equivalent to describing an antimicrobial effect that has been observed for centuries, not only in beer production but also beyond the brewing industry, primarily when gram-positive bacteria must be controlled or inhibited in biochemical processing, as feed additives or food applications.

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New team member Bernhard Chilla

Bernhard Chilla will be appointed as Market Insights Manager and author of the Brewing Raw Material Journal at RMI Analytics. He will join the brewing raw material markets information company on 1 December 2018, following Scott Casey, who decided to leave RMI in April this year.

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RMI Analytics Canadian Crop Tour 2017

On August 28th and 29th RMI Analytics conducted a crop tour of commercial barley fields and malting facilities in Central Alberta in Western Canada.

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RMI Analytics malting barley crop tour in Canada

On August 15 and 16, RMI Analytics conducted a malting barley crop tour in South Central Saskatchewan visiting commercial fields, trial plots, grain elevators and silos near Saskatoon. During the tour the barley harvest was just starting but the weather was holding up progress with heavy showers occurring on a daily basis. Crops that were planted early in the seeding period are more advanced and will be harvested in the coming days, but some later seeded barley is still up to three weeks away from harvest.

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The new hop cultivars from Hüll have a name

The Society for Hop Research from Wolnzach, Germany, announced in April that the following new hop cultivars signed in for protection according EU law now have received names:

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Anglia Maltings acquires GlobalMalt

Anglia Maltings (Holdings) Limited (AMH), on 17 February announced the acquisition of Tivoli Malz GmbH (Tivoli) and its subsidiaries GlobalMalt Group, based in Hamburg, Germany and GlobalMalt Polska based in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

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BayWa takes over full ownership of Evergrain KG

BayWa AG has acquired full ownership of Evergrain KG. The company, which is based in Hamburg, will now operate under the name of "Evergrain – a BayWa Company". BayWa already decided last summer to acquire a majority stake in Evergrain KG. After the anti-trust authorities have approved the transaction, the Munich-based trade and services company is taking full ownership of Evergrain, a company that is specialised in international trading with malting barley. With the take-over, BayWa is expanding its national and international specialities business and will take a leading role in the malting barley trade.

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New international calibration standard (ICS-H2) for HPLC analysis of hexahydroiso-α-acids

The International Hop Standards Committee (IHSC) announces the release of a new calibration standard, ICS-H2, for the HPLC analysis of hexahydroiso-α-acids.

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Wild hop takes top prize in Hop Awards

A wild hop variety discovered a decade ago in a Sussex hedgerow has been named overall winner of the British Hop Awards 2015, announced by the Institute of Brewing & Distilling (IBD).

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Viking Malt purchases Danish Malting Group

Viking Malt Oy and Carlsberg Group have on the 4th of Jan 2016 signed an agreement where Carlsberg sells its subsidiary Danish Malting Group A/S (DMG) to Viking Malt. Parties have also agreed about a long term supply of raw materials for Carlsberg breweries. The transaction is expected to be finalized following the approval of relevant competition authorities. This may take a few months.

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Eric Kneen Memorial Award 2015 goes to Germany

The Eric Kneen Memorial Award 2015 for the best paper published in the Journal of the ASBC in the previous calendar year went to an author team from Germany. The award was presented to the lead author Dr. Christina Schmidt by ASBC president Prof. Thomas Shellhammer, Oregon State University, at the annual meeting of the American Society of Brewing Chemists, which took place from 14-17 June 2015 in La Quinta, USA.