Just in case you've spoken to the local Guinness rep recently [General]

2009 Jan 30
A former manager of mine just stopped by to tell me a quick story about a party he was at over the holidays.

The local Guinness rep - who reportedly was stone cold sober at the time - was telling everyone that Guinness gets its dark colour from

...

wait for it

...

The roasted HOPS!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Hari-kari time!

Dude, it's the roasted BARLEY!

Wow!

2009 Jan 30
Zym - Hmmmm, potential job opening? LOL

Seriously, I once knew a beer rep. he seemed to do ok financially... and well the perks (need we say more... beer, hockey tickets, golf tournaments).

2009 Jan 30
SHAME!

2009 Jan 31
that rep needs a swift kick in the arse

2009 Jan 31
All these Big Brewery Reps neeed is a youthful athletic look with a strong jaw line, pearly whites and valid drivers licence to drive the company van.

They do need to know how to hand out promotional posters and hats.

Anything else and they are WAYYY over qualified !!


2009 Jan 31
Captain C - Once upon a time these jobs went to real beer lovers (if they had a bit of a beer belly the better). Now the jobs seem to be going to the one's you describe, and if they have some sort of college biz diploma or marketing background all the better.

"The Man" says the trend he's beginning to see though is that the "perky" (if you get my drift) young women who once upon a time would be found at beer sponsored events (like Golf Tournaments) seem to have moved up the ladder and now do the restaurant house-calls. He says this bugs him because many of these gals seem to be being used just for "marketing" purposes, and don't really know a lot about beer in general... but then again since Molsons & Labatts have pretty much cornered the market on beer (and what products end up where... ie no real selection at your local pub anymore) I guess it is a matter of "how much does one really have to know about the product they are selling... and what makes it better than someone elses?". Those days (at least for now) seem to be gone.

2009 Feb 2
Ahhh yes, F&T ..... I remember being visited by a gang of 'Brahma Girls' on my fav patio last summer.

Three 'perky' scantly clad chicky-poohs piled out of a red Brahma Van with pails filled with Brahma Beers and ice. They also had trinkets. Then they proceeeded to hand out free beers as samples. And if you bought a second Brahma you got a trinket. Whoop-ty dew !!

The chicky-poohs probably tasted better than the beer but I'm not sure ... They wouldn't let me taste them.

Oh Well.

(And if you are reading this, Steve Beauchesne, my offer to become a Beau's Beer Rep still stands ... beer belly included)


2009 Feb 2
The real question is has anyone tried to roast the hops? I've dry hopped, regular hopped, etc, but roasting hops, sounds like it could be interesting, or a disaster... maybe it results in extra extra extra bitter? Anyone want to try it out and report back?

2009 Feb 2
Sounds like a disaster to me sourdough - like brown and shriveled.

2009 Feb 2
Q: What's brown and shriveled and lacks aroma units.

A: Zy's roasted hops !! Hehehe.

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Reference:

"The Gas Chromatagraph has helped researchers to identify more than 250 essential oil components in hops. Of these, 22 that have been reported to affect hop aroma in the literature have been divided into groups: Humulene and Caryophyllene Oxidation products, Floral-Estery Compounds, and Citrus-Piney Compounds. These 22 compounds make up the Hop Aroma Component Profile (HACP). Just as bitterness in beer is quantified using the Bittering Unit (BU), Nickerson and Van Engel propose that an Aroma Unit (AU) be adopted which is defined as 1 ppm (µl/kg of hops or µl/l of wort or beer) of the sum of the 22 HACP constituents. Thus if the AUs of a brewery's aroma hops changed, it would be a simple matter to calculate the change in the amount of hops needed to achieve the historical AUs of a given beer. How well do AUs correlate with actual 'hoppiness'? A commercial brewery's taste panel found that hop aroma, hop taste, and dry hop aroma correlated very well with AU's."

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Sorry no picture with this post. No pictures of brown shriveled hops could be found.

2009 Feb 4
OK branching off, I'm thinking all those essential oils in the hops, some how roasting and bubbling the off through the wort. Maybe as a secondary step like dry hopping (gas hopping). Of course you'd need actual hops, not pellets. I don't know sounds interesting to me, but you are right I'd probably be left with a stinky house, fuming family and undrinkable beer :)