About a month ago, we told you about the exciting Cocktail Contest that we’re sponsoring on the Magnificent Bastard website. The gist is, if you’re the one who submitted the original cocktail recipe that’s eventually selected to be "The Magnificent Bastard" you get lots of fame and glory, plus $500 to spend at our store.

There was an overwhelmingly positive response but the Magnificent Bastard found an awesome way to make it fair and make it work. After pre-screening the entries and performing an initial taste test, the 32 best entries have been selected for a single-elimination bracket tournament.

Check out the entries that made it and feel free to play along at home. When you scroll over the names on the bracket, their submitted recipe appears.

Act fast, as the games begin tomorrow, February 11th. A very lucky 5-person team will be doing the tasting and we’ll have a winner by Monday, April 5th.

TAGS [ MAGNIFICENT BASTARD | COCKTAIL CONTEST | CLASSIC COCKTAILS CONTEST | MB COCKTAIL ]

Move over Tactical Nuclear Penguin, there’s a new beer, brewed to steal your title and take over as the world’s strongest beer.

German brewery Schorschbrau has released Schorschbock 40, a whisky-like brew aptly named for its 40% alcohol by volume rate (TNP is a mere 32%). Now on sale in Scotland, it sells as a shot – an expensive one at that.

Only 40 bottles were produced (we’re sensing a theme with the 40 thing here…) and each one is signed and hand-numbered by the brew master. The ceramic bottles are sealed with wax and come in a wooden case with a window on one side.

This review by Gordon Tait of the Scottish Sun is almost comical to me. One drinker says it’s lovely and another says it’ll put hair on your chest. The reporter even refers to the craft brew as "liquid rocket fuel."

Now, I’d consider myself to be a pretty serious beer drinker but I can’t help but believe that this brew is all about the buzz (pun intended). I’m not sure I’ll ever get to try this brutally high-octane beverage – but I also think I’m ok with that. Heck, half a bottle of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA and I’m feeling pretty darn good – the Schorschbock 40 could definitely get me into trouble.

TAGS [ SCHORSCHBRAU | SCHORSCHBOCK 40 | STRONGEST BEER | BEER NEWS ]

Nationwide distribution of the brand new Samuel Adams LongShot Variety 6-Pack is scheduled to begin this April. You should be excited. I am!

The LongShot 6-Pack is the result of the 2009 American Homebrew Contest, in which the Boston Beer Company chooses 3 winning brews (2 from contestants and one from an employee entrant).

The winners get to brew alongside the Samuel Adams brewers in Boston. Their recipes are also bottled and included in the LongShot variety package, which is distributed all over the country for just $9.99. In 1984, Sam Adams’ founder, Jim Koch, homebrewed the first batch of Samuel Adams Boston Lager® in his kitchen. 25 years later, Koch makes an effort to recognize the most talented homebrewers for testing the boundaries and coming up with creative brews. This competition is a company tradition that began back in 1996.

Photo from The Captain’s Chair

This year you’ll sample 2 bottles each of New Hampshire resident Michael Robinson’s Old Ale, Ben Miller’s Barleywine (hailing from New Mexico) and Employee Homebrew Winner Jeremy White’s Saison.

There were over 1,500 entries to the contest and Koch judged the himself with help from Jason and Todd Alström of Beer Advocate, Jay Brooks from Celebrator Beer News, Julie Johnson of All About Beer, Bob Townsend from Southern Brew News and Tony Forder of Ale Street News. The winning beers were selected by style category and the criteria was based on the American Homebrewers Association Beer Judge Certificate Program guidelines.

To find out more about the beers and all of the details, check out the Beer Avocate write-up or the contest website.

If you’re a homebrewer, make sure to start thinking of ideas for the 2010 contest! We could be writing about your beer by this time next year.

TAGS [ SAM ADAMS | SAMUEL ADAMS | LONGSHOT CONTEST | BEER CONTEST | SAM ADAMS LONGSHOT | HOMEBREW CONTEST ]

Here’s the bitters truth (pun intended); if you’ve come to our site looking for a bottle of the classic Angostura Aromatic Cocktail Bitters in the last six months or so, your success has been has been entirely hit or miss. It’s not that our buyers are slacking; the world has been afflicted by a severe shortage of the distinguished drink ingredient. Some are even calling this cocktail world shake-up the "Angostura Apocalypse" – it’s that serious.

Following a shutdown at the sole manufacturer, a struggling firm in Trinidad and Tobago, Angostura has been extremely hard to find. That firm, the House of Angostura blames a shortage in ingredients and "financial restructuring" and it has been reported that the Caribbean conglomerate who owns the company was hit by a liquidity crisis and had to be bailed out by their government early last year.

The toughest part is, you can’t just stop and start production of bitters over and over again– it’s an intricate process and it takes time. Angostura is made from a secret recipe of herbs, barks, roots, spices and rum – so it’s impossible to duplicate and they need to be continuously in production.

Here in the US, it’s estimated that we drink about 750,000 four-ounce bottles of Angostura each year, so not having any coming in is causing quite a stir. Here at KegWorks, we’ve been known to take extraordinary measures to get our hands on any Angostura that we can find and we’re actively seeking it out, all the time. Our stock has been somewhat random and sporadic, so we wanted to make it easy for anyone looking for Angostura to know when we have it available.

Whenever we score more bottles, we’ll let you know via our Facebook Page and Twitter account – so become a fan and/or follow us to stay informed.

In the meantime, you might want to consider trying out some of the alternatives available. Try Peychauds Aromatic Cocktail Bitters, Fee Brothers Old Fashioned Aromatic Bitters, Urban Moonshine Original Organic Bitters or Angostura Orange to keep your cocktails full of flavor.

Questions? Feel free to ask via comments. Otherwise, we’ll keep you posted and do our very best to keep your bar stocked.

TAGS [ ANGOSTURA | ANGOSTURA SHORTAGE | COCKTAIL BITTERS | ANGOSTURA BITTERS ]

Good drinks mean a lot to us. To prove it, we’re giving away a $500 shopping spree.

All you have to do to win is invent an original cocktail worthy of the name "the Magnificent Bastard."

To get a better idea of what we mean by that, you’ll have to check out the Magnificent Bastard website.

Make sure to take special note of the Cocktail Channel and after a few minutes of reading, you should have a solid idea of the Magnificent Bastard’s M.O.

Check out all of the contest details here, grab your jiggers, shakers, bitters, mixers, garnishes and booze and get to work!

Good luck! May the best cocktail win.

TAGS [ MAGNIFICENT BASTARD | COCKTAIL CONTEST | MB COCKTAIL CONTEST | KEGWORKS COCKTAIL CONTEST ]

I know that keeping beer cold in this weather probably isn’t on the top of your list for winter, but where do you live, in an outdoor cave? You can always use some beer koozie goodness!

Koozies have come a long way since the days of big, hard, clunky foam… to a sleek, neoprene zippered jacket. Keeping your beer cold for consumption while watching the Big Game, a huge race, or even a college bowl game is important, plus you know which one is yours and which one is your weird relative’s beer, (you know, the one you’re not really sure what part of the family tree he’s from).

Anyways, if you’re one of those naysayers that thinks they would drink a can before it gets warm, get a Hops Holster. This beer can belt will keep you in business until the 4th quarter, or until the ambulance comes to pick you up after you reload it a couple of times.

Happy cold beer to you!

TAGS [ BEER KOOZIES | BEER CAN KOOZIE | BEER BOTTLE KOOZIE | BEER COOLIE ]

Here in Buffalo, we love our hockey. When the U.S. Olympic Team was announced during the Winter Classic on New Years Day, I wasn’t surprised to see Upstate/Western NY natives Patrick Kane (Buffalo), Dustin Brown (Ithaca), Brooks Orpik (Amherst) and Ryan Callahan (Rochester) make the roster. There’s no doubt that we’re into the game around here but I don’t think that anyone would argue with me for saying that Canada has more hockey fans. Canadians have a different kind of love for the sport, a love we admire and a love we respect.

When Team USA beat Team Canada 6-5 in overtime to win the World Junior Championships last week, I was a bit surprised and of course pretty pumped. When I realized what the tournament did for Canada however (it was played in Saskatoon), I was in awe. Total revenue from the tournament was more than $24 million!

Photo: The Canadian Press

Just to be there cost fans $200 - $500 per person (making about $15 million in ticket sales) but concessions also generated $1.6 million, with more than $1 million in beer sales alone. Whoa.

It’s estimated that they sold around 144,000 beers during the game.

If they’re able to sell that much beer over there, they should look into installing a few ExactPour systems. Who knows, next year they could sell $2 million! Cheers, eh?

TAGS [ WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS | HOCKEY BEER SALES ]