Westvleteren 12, a product of Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus, topped the list of 50 best beers. The beer, a RateBeer Gold Medal winner, comes from a brewery that has “the smallest output of the Trappist breweries,” and is less available than a more popular Belgian Quadrupel like Rochefort 10.

Here’s the top 10, which were determined by over 3.5 million reviews. RateBeer says that they placed more emphasis on user reviews coming from tastings that occurred in the last year.

1. Westvleteren 12 – Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus
2. Närke Kaggen Stormaktsporter - Närke Kulturbryggeri
3. Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout – Goose Island Beer Company
4. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout – Founders Brewing Company
5. Rochefort Trappistes 10 – Brasserie Rochefort
6. Bells Hopslam – Bells Brewery
7. Russian River Pliny the Younger – Russian River Brewing
8. Cigar City Pilot Series Passionfruit and Dragonfruit Berliner Weisse – Cigar City Brewing
9. AleSmith Speedway Stout – AleSmith Brewing Company
10. Deschutes The Abyss – Deschutes Brewery

Personal favorite brewery Three Floyd’s had two beers in the top twenty – Dark Lord russian Imperial Stout at number 13 and their ass-kicking Dreadnaught Imperial IPA at number 17. Another personal favorite, Southern Tier’s Choklat came in at number 40.

Craft beer is on the rise, says RateBeer in a post:

Craft beer is at a wonderful stage. No longer are we competing for respect as a second class beverage. We’ve won respect. And the craft beer industry is enjoying great success. The number of craft brewers is still increasing markedly. Last year alone RateBeer new brewers increased a whopping 16%. And RateBeer is still growing rapidly, primarily in large US metro areas like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York and abroad in Australia, Sweden, Italy and Brazil.

RateBeer also awarded prizes in specific categories. Munster, Indiana’s Three Floyds topped the list of best breweries in the World 2012. The best new brewers category was won by anchorage, Alaska’s anchorage Brewing Company.

The opener on the Intoxicase Plus, pictured above, has a slim profile, but unfolds into a sturdy stainless steel bottle opener. The opener on the Intoxicase looks more like a traditional bottle opener, but protrudes further from the back of the case.

The cases are available for pre-order in the Intoxicase store. The Intoxicase is $25, and the Intoxicase Plus is $35. The Intoxicase app is available now as a free download.

The makers of the Intoxicase made a video detailing the cases’ design, and describing both the inspiration for the case and the testing that they put it through. Check it out below, then let us know what you think in the comments.

As pointed out by Geek Alerts, the drive in question is conveniently called the “Budweiser USB Drive with Actual Beer,” at least by the blog pointing it out. The product page at epromos.com simply lists it as the “Liquid USB 2.0 Promotional USB Drive – Beer Floater – 4 GB,” which makes the unofficial description the winner by default.

Creativity goes a long way.

It should be noted, however, that the “Actual Beer” descriptor is something of a misnomer. Instead of containing a sample fresh from the “King of Beers,” the drive actually contains what’s described as:

…liquid filled promotional USB drive made to look like beer complete with tiny floating beer foam.

So yeah, no beer.

As one would expect, the jump drive works in the same manner as other USB flash drives do — you plug and chug … the files you want to carry around with you, that is. In the case of the Budweiser USB drive, however, chugging the contents, while inviting, is probably not the best course of action, at least until the “liquid” masquerading as beer has been identified.

Another point of potential contention is these devices are not available on an individual basis, at least not from epromos.com. In order to acquire one of these frosty drives, you have to order them in bulk. Currently, the Budweiser jump drives are available in quantities of 25, 50, 100, and 200. The site recommends calling if an order exceeds these numbers.

With all of this Budweiser talk, I felt the following trip down memory lane would be appropriate:

And I’ve heard that Siri can provide hours of fun – just ask her if she wants to marry you, or where you can find some drugs or dispose of a dead body. Like I said, I’ve heard that she provides some interesting answers to creative questions…I definitely don’t know anything about having a few drinks and testing Siri’s capabilities.

But speaking of Siri and beer, the folks at RedPepper have developed a new way to utilize Siri: The Beeri bot.

Using an RC truck, a Twitter account, and Siri, they developed a physical/virtual hybrid Rube Goldberg device of sorts that in the end, produces a nice glass of beer. All you have to do is ask Siri to pour you one.

Here’s how they did it:

First, they made a Twitter account @beeribot. Then, they used the tweet via text message ability to tweet out “could you pour me a beer” from that account.

The Beeri device is the RC truck. It’s strapped with a beer and aimed at a “puncture wall.” They “rigged her up an Arduino Uno w/ WiFi shield and set it up to poll @beeribot’s stream via the Twitter REST API every 10 seconds.”

When Beeri sees a new Tweet containing the word “pour” she triggers the sequence of preprogrammed pour commands (go, stop, adjust) that interface with the truck’s circuit board to control her movement. Her route is preprogrammed (drive straight) until her two proximity detectors sense her moving away from the puncture wall after impact. This allows her to halt the driving sequence and adjust to a 6 inch depth in order to get the beer to enter the funnel.

And the tasty, tasty beer funnels into the glass sitting below. Check out the process:

Beeri from redpepper on Vimeo.

Yes, I know the yield is low. But come on, you’ve gotta credit the vision. If Siri really wants to be my personal assistant, she’s gotta know that there is no way to help me out more than pouring me a beer. And that’s a fact.

If beer isn’t on the top of your priority list, this concept still has potential. The basic structure of setting up the Twitter account and using Siri to activate a device with the text-to-tweet functionality is pretty neat. You could wire the device to do other things besides popping open a can of beer.

But really, why would you want to?

If you aren’t familiar with Dogfish Head, they are a great brewery that makes kickass beer. They started small, but have grown to be one of the top craft breweries around. Their motto is “off-centered ales for off-centered people,” and they don’t disappoint. Their beers, especially their line of IPAs, are some of the best around.

For URKontinent, various Google employees joined the project basically to coordinate and organize the information gathering. Those ideas were then fed to the brewers at Dogfish Head.

Google grabbed beer ideas from their offices all across the globe, and they also received input from the rest of the online community. The project coordinators used tools like Google moderator to get suggestions and feedback from Googlers across the world.

WebProNews has received this statement from a Google spokesperson -

We encourage our employees to pursue their interests—whether they are training for a marathon, inviting their favorite author to speak, or creating the perfect cafe latte. Similarly, the project with Dogfish Head brewery was a Googler-driven project organized by a group of craftbrewery aficionados across the company. While our Googlers had fun advising on the creation of a beer recipe, we aren’t receiving any proceeds from the sale of the beer and we have no plans to enter the beer business.

According to the mini-documentary, some of the Google guys even helped brew the beer.

Here’s what you can expect from the beer:

It begins with Pilsner, Munich and Chocolate Malts and Belgian Dark Candi syrup. Then we add unique ingredients from around the world. Wattleseed from Australia imparts a chocolate, coffee, and hazelnut taste to the beer. Toasted Amaranth from South America gives it an earthy, grainy flavor and a little additional roast flavor. Green Rooibos from Africa contributes a floral aroma and slight astringency. Myrica Gale from Europe supplements the bitterness from minimal hopping. Hive Plex Honey from California adds a subtle sweetness while maintaining the dry finish

This isn’t the first time Dogfish Head has tried the worldly beer concept. One of their older brews is called Pangaea and includes ingredients from all 7 continents – water from Antarctica, Muscavado sugar from Africa and Crystallized ginger from Australia.

Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione says they are very proud of the beer. “This beer is a valentine to boot-strapping creative entrepreneurs in all kinds of industries all over the world,” he says.

The beer went on tap at the Dogfish brewpub in Rehoboth Beach on Tuesday. They say they have plans to bottle it up and distribute the brew in the coming months.

Yesterday, the craft beer people celebrated International IPA Day. Buzz for the holiday honoring the India Pale Ale was spread through social media, especially Twitter. Two beer enthusiasts with mild Twitter followings successfully got #IPADay trending in multiple cities on Twitter- a truly homegrown effort.

While yesterday was the first annual celebration of #IPADay, today’s beer holiday has been around since 2007.

International Beer Day is another grassroots internet holiday that has grown to prominence. “Happy International Beer Day” is currently a trending topic on Twitter. According to the IBD site, they reached the top Google search trends list last August 5th. They say that there have been International Beer Day celebrations in 23 different countries. Apparently, people love a holiday that glorifies beer drinking. Go figure.

IBD was founded by Jesse Avshalomov (@allforJesse) and Evan Hamilton (@evanhamilton) 4 years ago. The purpose of the holiday, according to the IBD website, is threefold.

The purpose of IBD is threefold:
1) To gather with friends and enjoy the deliciousness that is beer.
2) To celebrate the dedicated men and women who brew and serve our beer.
3) To bring the world together under the united banner of beer, by celebrating the beers of all nations and cultures together on this one remarkable day

Sounds like something we can get behind, right?

Though the folks behind #IPADay said that the celebration was for everyone, not just IPA drinkers, IPA’s most likely ruled the night. Tonight (on a Friday, as it would happen), IBD looks to be the universal toast of anyone enjoying a beer – whether it be a robust, complex craft beer or yellow beer, the point is that it is beer.

And to honor the special day, here are few of my favorite beer-related YouTube videos. First, this classic video of a guy who just wants more beer. The only problem is that he can’t really stand up. I prefer this version, with the awesome Clint Mansell score in the background.

Next, this is a really interesting beer commercial from Australian brewers Hahn. Not sure why I like it so much, but enjoy –

Now, watch Harry Potter dominate a pitcher of beer in 5 seconds!

Finally, beer pong trick shots. There are a lot of these videos out there, as this trend blew up a couple of years ago. But this is one of my favorites –

Happy International Beer Day!

Today, August 4th is International IPA Day, or as it is tagged in social media, simply #IPADay.

This year marks the first time that #IPADay has been celebrated. It is the brainchild of self described “beer evangelists and social media personalities” Ashley Routson (@TheBeerWench) and Ryan A Ross (@RyanARoss). This is not a corporate sponsored event, but a grassroots social media effort to celebrate craft beer, says Routson on her blog. She runs the beer blog Drink With The Wench.

The point of #IPADay? Besides celebrating the intense, hoppy, malty flavors that comes from a great IPA, it is about advancing craft beer through social media in the same way that wine has been helped by the new technology. Routson asks why the craft beer people are slow to adopt a strong social media presence? She cites the wine community and their #Chardonnay day and #cabernet day and asks why not us?

The moral of the story is such: I love what social media has done for the advancement of wine and I wanted to see the same thing happen for craft beer. Period. End of story. If you want to see wine’s social media impact continue to exceed that of craft beer, by all means, reject IPA Day.

International #IPADay is an event geared towards making craft beer more accessible to the masses. Please encourage all of your non-beer drinking friends to take a break from their normal beverage routines to join the worldwide craft beer celebration on August 4th! This is a time for education and advocacy! We should all set out with the goal of converting at least one person, if not the whole world of drinkers, into craft beer lovers!

The way you can participate (and the way that I will be participating later this evening) is by sharing photos, videos, tweeting, Facebook posting, blogging, etc. while using the hashtag #IPADay. Oh, and of course by drinking – a nice robust IPA, if you can.

The event has a page on Eventbrite, and it lists the host breweries, social media sponsors, and featured bloggers.

For and event created by two people with a little over 10,000 Twitter followers between them, #IPADay is rocking Twitter today.

A quick search on hashtags.org shows a huge volume of tweets with the #IPADay tag rolling in every couple minutes. The hashtag is trending currently in Chicago, Raleigh, and Denver.

And local brewpubs and craft beer stores have adopted the new holiday. In Lexington, for instance, local craft beer store and drinkery The Beer Trappe is pouring some special IPAs tonight in honor of the day.

Hopefully it will catch on enough for Google to add it to their search results as a “special occasion.” They just recently began adding specific dates to the top of search results when you search something like “national popcorn day.” Hopefully, next year when people search “international IPA day,” August 4th will pop up in bold at the top of the results.

Countless burgers will be grilled, steaks will be marinated and beers will be consumed as we celebrate not only the military but all loved ones who have passed. Hopefully, the weather where you are allows for outdoor fun. My forecast looks a little iffy.

If you are looking for ideas for great food and drink, it would help to follow some Twitter accounts that provide you with recipes and tips for the big day. I’ve compiled a list of some of the best and most frequent tweeters from the food category that can assist you in your Memorial Day festivities.

I’ve only included food institutions and publications instead of personal accounts of known foodies, as they tend to also tweet personal stuff. This is about food. So here goes:

Drink Craft Beer – what’s Memorial Day without some quality brews?

Yummit – food facts and recipes from a smaller source.

All Bacon – well, the name says it all. Essential.

Bon Appetit – a staple in good dining. Recipes, lists, and advice for food and drink.

CHOW – recipes and cocking know-how out of San Francisco.

LA Times Food – recipes and reviews from the staff.

Wine Recipes – if you’re sick of beer, check out this feed for wine suggestions as well as recipes involving wine.

SAVEUR – NY based magazine and food authoirty. Uses hashtag #testkitchensmellslike, fills me with intense jealousy.

When it comes to marketing strategy, however, it often seems like beer companies focus on being entertaining at the expense of being strategic. With campaigns that seem to change almost monthly and taglines that rarely last for more than a football season, it is easy to dismiss beer marketing as irresponsible spending to promote a high margin product. Is there more to beer advertising than 30 second eye candy and girls in bikinis? Here are a few popular marketing campaigns for beer – along with their corresponding marketing strategy that may yield some surprising lessons …

1. Be Unique (Red Stripe Beer)

If you have ever had a Red Stripe beer from Jamaica, you know that it has a very unique bottle shape, shorter and stubbier than most others. The bottle sets the beer apart more than anything else, and this fact is brilliantly parodied in this ad featuring their central spokesperson – the Jamaican guy who loves nothing more than celebrating what beer can do with his trademark expression of Jamaican joy: "Hooray Beer!"

2. Demonstrate Loyalty (Bud Light)

The ad for Bud Light below follows the model this beer company has focused on for nearly every Super Bowl and football season – forget about your product features and focus on the simple message that guys will do almost anything for your beer. The strategy which seems buried in most of their ads is the unwavering loyalty that the guys in their ads have for Bud Light. They will build houses out of it, jump out of planes, and even walk around naked for a day just to get more of it. It is easy to argue that the name of the beer involved is entirely forgettable, but the ads stand out for being entertaining.

3. Create Associations (Estrella Damm)

A popular ad for European beer Estrella Damm – this campaign features a few ads which tell the story where the beer plays a supporting role and one of the tagline reads "Good times never end when you have something to remind you of them." Another ad features a growing relationship between two fellow travellers. While the taglines don’t exactly roll off the tongue, the entire campaign creates stories that associate the beer with the common memory of moments like a short term romance on a backpacking trip through Europe that many of their target audience will remember nostalgically, and one that many people won’t be able to help sharing.

4. Foster Aspirations (Dos Equis)

Probably the most popular campaign of the list, this inspired marketing from Dos Equis creates a persona for the Most Interesting Man In The World who, by his own admission, "doesn’t always drink beer, but when he does he prefers Dos Equis." The image of this man is who every guy wants to grow up to be, and works because it places Dos Equis in a typically uncontested space as the choice for a more mature and refined guy versus an infantile male trying to relive lost days of keg stands and beer pong from college. That and irresistible lines like "he lives vicariously through himself" help position Dos Equis as the more aspirational choice in beers.

5. Reinforce Perceptions (Heineken)

The thing that European beers have always used to promote themselves against other brands is the sense that they are a more upscale and respectable choice when you go to a bar or similarly public place. Heineken’s recent campaign takes this message and replays it with the powerful tagline – "give yourself a good name." The ads feature guys making bold decisions (like drinking with the scary bosses’ daughter) and congratulating them on their choice. It helps reinforce the message that what beer you choose says something important about who you are, so choose well.

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