Best Tasting Spirits 2015 Trends of the Year
Best Tasting Spirits 2015 Trends of the Year is our take on what’s driving change as we say goodbye to 2015. It may be easier to create a cool product than to take a perceived dud, and make it cool again. That is exactly what happened with canned beer. This is not the first rodeo for canned beer. It was once the golden boy for brewers nationwide. The first canned beer was produced in 1935 by the American Can Company who partnered with the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. Previous attempts to can beer had failed until American developed a tin can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the beer from reacting with the tin. Partually driven by the fact that canned beer did not require a deposit, like bottled beer did, 200 million canned beers were sold in 1935. Canned beer remained cool for several decades. Beer can collections replaced baseball card collections as boys became men. Somewhere along the way canned beer became the vessel of choice reserved mostly for discount brews like 30 packs of Keystone Light. While major brewers like AB and Miller still canned some beer, consumers overwhelmingly preferred glass bottles. That all changed with the craft beer revolution. Read more 
Best Tasting Spirits 2015 Ingredient of the Year
The Best Tasting Spirits 2015 Ingredient of the Year is Hops. While some may say this is several years late, my argument is, this is my first year of awards, and hops are still the most influential ingredient of 2015. Hops were first introduced into the brewing process of beer to balance the sweetness of malt. Hops also provided a natural preservative and their use resulted in less spoilage than the herbs they replaced. While used in all beers, IPA’s, Indian Pale Ales, are most responsible for the increased demand and price of hops. The IPA name comes from a brew developed by English brewers in the early 1800’s that added additional hops to with stand the long boat trip to India. Since then American craft brewers have built an entire movement on this small flavorful flower bud. Anchor Brewing is given credit for crafting the first modern IPA when they released their Liberty IPA. Vinnie Cilurzo the owner and Brew Master at Russian River Brewing Company was the first to make a double IPA when he was a brew master at the Blind Pig Brewing Company. Dogfish Head developed a continuous hopping process used to craft their 90 Minute IPA. These are just a few of the innovations that have resulted in 4144 breweries now in the US. This exceeds the previous record of 4131 set in 1873. Read more