Beer

(Lexington, KY) – West Sixth Brewing announced on Tuesday that it is being sued by Magic Hat’s parent company for allegedly copying its #9 beer logo. West Sixth has responded, in part, with a lengthy blog post and petition as well as acquiring the NoMoreMagicHat.com domain name. Because the West Sixth website is ill-prepared for the traffic it has received over the past hour, we’ve taken the liberty to re-post below. — Hi. We’re West Sixth Brewing, a socially-conscious craft brewery that opened last year in Lexington, Kentucky. You can read more about us here and here. We’ve had a great first year! Since opening last April, we’ve expanded our brewery a couple of times, added a second canned beer to our lineup, and have given over $10,000 to local charities in our area. Unfortunately, our success has also made us a few enemies. And this week, one of those enemies got so mad, they decided to try and force us out of business by filing a silly and frivolous lawsuit against us. Before we go any further, we do want to let you know that none of this will affect in any way our ability to continue brewing the great beers that you all have come to love. So, don’t worry about that at all! Magic Hat is a brewery originally based out of Vermont. While they have some craft roots, they’ve been bought and sold a couple times since 2010, and are now owned by a company called Cerveceria Costa Rica. They’re claiming that we intentionally copied their logo, and that has caused them “irreparable harm”, enough that they’re asking for not only damages but also all our profits up until this point (little do they know that well, as a startup company, there wasn’t any, oops!). Now, we all know that their claims are just a little bit silly: Our logos were professionally designed by a designer in Lexington called Cricket Press who has a long history of fantastic and creative logo designs. Their federal trademark is simply for the text “# 9”, and our logo contains neither a “#” nor a “9”. (our favorite part of their argument is where they call a 6 an “inverted 9”. Yeah, and did you know that a “p” is just an inverted “d”? They’re totally the same letter!) Finally, our logo includes the words “West Sixth Brewing”. We think that makes it pretty clear. We’ve talked to several lawyers, and they all agree there’s no legal merit to their lawsuit. And they’ve got fancy legal council out of New York, so they must be hearing the same thing. In fact, we tried to reach out to them individually to see if there was any way to resolve the amicably, but to no surprise, no one ever called us back. So, they clearly have another motive – which must be to make us spend so much money defending our actions that we have no other recourse than to cave to their demands. Why would they do that? After all, they don’t sell all that much beer here in Kentucky. We don’t really know – although we have our suspicions. There’s clearly been someone in Lexington spreading the rumor that we were “about to get sued” – I even heard it from a checkout clerk at the grocery store! So, we’re guessing that someone in the area is prompting the lawsuit in order to try and hurt us locally. We think it’s bad business to roll over. After all, we’ve spent a year defending our brand, and we’ve heard from tons of folks how much they love our logo. We’re going to fight. And, we could use your help. How can you help? First, drink some West Sixth Beer. Come by the taproom for a pint! Ask for it on draft at your favorite restaurant or bar! Buy a 6-pack! You’ll enjoy the beer, and we’ll fight even harder on your behalf. Second, will you sign our petition on the right to tell Magic Hat “No More” and drop their lawsuit? We plan to boycott their beer until they do, but will gladly toast them with a #9 when they drop it. When you sign the petition below, it will send an email with your comments to Kimberly Markert, the person who signed the lawsuit! If you’re a retail

A few months back, Laurelwood made the bold decision to scrap a big part of their regular line and offer more one-offs, including a rotating pale ale. They also added a cask engine. Unfortunately for me, it seems like some hop titan is always on cask, so I have mostly skipped it. Yesterday everything came together, however, and they had the current pale ale, a 4.5% charmer weirdly called "Nail Pale," on both keg and cask. Perfecto! If you want to understand the mysteries of packaging chemistry, I recommend conducting the following experiment. Go to Laurelwood and get a pint of this beer in both forms. They look the same, except that the sparklered cask pour has a tighter, more mouse-like head. It might have been a touch cloudier. But put your nose over the beer and the differences present themselves. The icy keg pour has little to offer in scent, whereas the cask offers a vivid resinous pine perfume. Warmth encourages volatile aroma compounds to lift off the beer.When the beers enter the mouth, the differences get even more obvious. At 30 BUs, Nail Pale is probably about five too many for a 10 Plato beer. On cask, it's okay, though. The architecture of the malt, mildly sweet, bready, and soft, cotton the hop zing. And the hops, for their part, are full of juicy flavor. The brewers must have added some salts, because it has a London-like minerality that stiffens the finish. On keg, all the flavors are present, but it's as if they beer has been pulled taut so that they're in very sharp focus. The carbonation both diminishes the malt's flavors and soft mouthfeel and sharpens hop bitterness. On cask the beer teeters on the edge of balance but on keg it falls into hoppy imbalance. What feels full and lush on cask seems thin on keg. Last week we talked a lot about balance and hoppiness. In my comments, I should probably have admitted that the crime of overhopping is far more common than underhopping--at least on the West Coast. That gateway misdemeanor leads to certain felonies, like misusing cask engines. A cask isn't ideal for every beer, and they rarely work with big, hoppy ones. Cask ale is different, but you have to be willing to appreciate the benefits it offers. Souping up hops is not among them. It's only with a beer like Nail Pale that you can begin to see what casks can do for a beer.

The Brewer and the Beer Geek visit Washington, D.C., to talk about the old-school art of seasonal brewing, and Terence shares his "have citrus, will travel" philosophy of fitness as they explore the latest collaboration ale: Ovila Abbey Saison with Mandarin Oranges and Peppercorns. via YouTube | Sierra Nevada.

Portland, OR – The 3rd annual Portland Fruit Beer Festival will be held on June 8th and 9th during Portland Beer Week and featu…The post 3rd Annual Portland Fruit Beer Festival – Beer List Announced appeared first on thefullpint.com.

Summer's right around the bend, so that means it's time to start getting outdoors and enjoying the warm weather. That's why we're combining two of our favorite things: craft beer and bicycling! Thankfully, there's already a great site for just that very thing: Beercycling! For anyone unfamiliar with Beercycling, the concept is simple (and awesome): you want to tour the greate beery desinations of Europe. Well, what better way to do so than a guided tour where you're biking across the countryside! This is such a brilliant idea, I've been wanting to go on one of their adventures for quite some time. So, we've teamed up with the fine folks at Beercycling to bring you the Summer's first beertography contest! The idea is as simple as could be. All you have to do is take a photo of something that inovlves both beer and bicycling (see the excellent example from Beercycling above, hah!) and hashtag it #beercycling. You can submit via the twitter hashtag or the instgram hashtag or you can upload your entries directly to the Beertography Facebook Page. If you'd prefer to submit via email, you can do so by emailing it to beertography@gmail.com with the subject "Beercycling Contest". We're going to award three prize packs to the three photos we think best represent both craft beer and bicycling.These prize packs will include a Beercycling T-Shirt (both Men's and Women's varieties available), a 33beers tasting journal, Beercycling stickers/postcards, and a Belgium beer style guide, created by Beercycling. Also, anyone that submits an entry into this contest will be granted a discount for a 2013 or 2014 tour through Beercycling. Honestly I might have to submit myself! So get to it! This contest is officially open NOW and will close at 11:59pm on June 4th. Be sure to check out and follow Beercyling's Twitter, Instagram and Facebook Page for all the latest info!

Mobile, AL – There are still a limited number of seats available for Fairhope Brewing’s inaugural beer dinner at True…The post Fairhope Brewing Beer Dinner At True Midtown Kitchen appeared first on thefullpint.com.

Boulevard Brewing brewmaster, Steven Pauwels, talks all things Saison-Brett. The beer’s release is coming very soon. via YouTube | Boulevard.

Brewers from Troegs Brewing, Devils Backbone Brewing Company and The Church Brew Works Black Rye IPA talk about their Philly Beer Week collaboration beer. via YouTube | Philly Beer Week.

For the second and final video beer review, which switch from hops to yeast as the focus as we tackle an entry from the Mikkeller Yeast Series 2.0 …..

(Boston, MA) – Backlash Beer Company appeared on the Seacoast Beverage Lab podcast on Monday night. A few notes… - Currently contracting but going to start thinking about opening up its own brewery - Planning to make saison year-round - Starting new Double IPA series / Will take grain bill from Salute and apply to new beers using hops like Galaxy and Mosaic / Geared heavily toward draft but bottle as well - Sales are 50/50 split of draft/bottle - QR code on label directs drinker to mobile review site that submits alerts to brewer’s phone (note: similar setup is free using Google forms)