Tag Archives: procurement

90 Percent of American Beers Are Made by Just 11 Different Brewers – Eater

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The American craft brewing industry is undoubtedly booming, but the beer sector is still overwhelmingly dominated by just a handful of giants: 11 brewers produce 90 percent of all beer sold in the U.S, says MarketWatch.

The report points out that “[w]hen you look at the beer aisle and your local taproom’s beer list, it looks like a broad array of choices” — but giant corporations “are actually narrowing those choices through acquisitions and diversification.” Think, for example, of Anheuser-Busch InBev buying out craft brewers such as Chicago’s Goose Island and Seattle’s Elysian Brewing in recent years.

And while the latest stats on craft beer certainly look favorable — “We’re told that craft beer’s share of the market rose 17.6% last year, accounting for 11% of beer volume and $19.6 billion of the beer industry’s $101.5 billion in sales,” says MarketWatch — the reality is that still, “one of every five beers sold is a Bud Light.”

On the other hand, American craft beer exports are on a major upswing: 2014 saw a 35 percent increase in other countries’ thirst for U.S.-born craft brews, resulting in $99.7 million worth being exported last year (the leading consumer is Canada).

via 90 Percent of American Beers Are Made by Just 11 Different Brewers – Eater.

Are we losing Kimchee?

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The fate of South Korea’s kimchi industry rests on whether China considers it pickled or not.

When China reclassified the fermented cabbage dish several years ago, Korean exports of kimchi evaporated. As a pickled product, it did not meet China’s strict import hygiene standards.

Now, China has pledged to reconsider the designation, a concession that could pave the way for a new boom in exports since the two countries sealed a broad trade deal.

The episode over kimchi, a source of deep culinary and cultural pride in South Korea, reflects the sometimes complicated relationship that China has with its neighbors. As China looks to deepen its regional trade ties, such pockets of tension could flare up, creating challenges for its ambitions.

from: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/business/international/chinese-trade-rules-put-south-koreas-kimchi-industry-in-a-pickle.html

Watch the Reakted Video – http://nyti.ms/1JS2mVy

 

 

A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes – The New York Times

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BOARD THE BOB BARKER, in the South Atlantic — As the Thunder, a trawler considered the world’s most notorious fish poacher, began sliding under the sea a couple of hundred miles south of Nigeria, three men scrambled aboard to gather evidence of its crimes.

In bumpy footage from their helmet cameras, they can be seen grabbing everything they can over the next 37 minutes — the captain’s logbooks, a laptop computer, charts and a slippery 200-pound fish. The video shows the fishing hold about a quarter full with catch and the Thunder’s engine room almost submerged in murky water. “There is no way to stop it sinking,” the men radioed back to the Bob Barker, which was waiting nearby. Soon after they climbed off, the Thunder vanished below.

 

It was an unexpected end to an extraordinary chase. For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles across two seas and three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by the environmental organization Sea Shepherd, had trailed the trawler, with the three captains close enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships maneuvered through an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm, faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.

via A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes – The New York Times.

The Miracle of Preserves – The New York Times

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For as long as I can remember, I have had an unfathomably strong affection for pickles and potted meats and jellies and jams. I was thrown into the preserving pond early. I sat as a toddler, I am told, several summers running, in the cool shade of a tidy old trailer in Canaan, Me., playing with snails as the mobile home’s fleshy mistress, Louise, taught my mother to select cucumbers and beets and pole beans from a dense trailer-­side garden — packing them into heavy glass jars and then gently heating them in a worn tin pot.

I don’t think I ever tasted any of Louise’s many preserves. (‘‘Oh, they were terrible!’’ my mother tells me. ‘‘Horribly sweet.’’) The omission might help account for my obdurately romantic view of what the British writer Hugh Fearnley-­Whittingstall refers to as the ‘‘extended family we call by the rather austere name preserves.’’ All preserves strike me as good. They reach me at such childish, religious depths that I have wondered if, even before Louise’s trailer and my rapturous secondhand consumption of jarred delicacies in books, some supernatural pickle pot or jelly didn’t offer me a miraculous taste of itself in a dream.

If cultivating soil was what let humans settle, it was harnessing bacterial cultures that let us unmoor.

I have felt lucky, as a grown person, to discover that this thing I loved in innocent abstraction had real importance. Salting and drying meat and fish helped human beings to last through long winters, sea voyages and treacherous overland trails. If cultivating soil was what let us settle, it was harnessing bacterial cultures and sugar, salt, acid, fat, sun and wind to paralyze microorganisms and save food from decay that let us unmoor, discovering all the world that was not visible from our cabbage patches. Basque cider allowed seamen to cross oceans. Dutch pickled herring fueled the exploration of the New World. Vikings spread cod in the riggings of their ships to dry and stiffen in the cold wind, then traded on it as they battled through Scandinavia, the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Cheese was first a way of preserving milk; wine, of grape juice; sauerkraut, of cabbage; prosciutto, of pork. In this sense, all preserved things are additionally miraculous, in that they all are also ways of storing other things: part vessel, part content

via The Miracle of Preserves – The New York Times.

Seven Lobster-Buying Tips | Lucky Peach

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In “Lucky Peach #13: Holiday,” Peter Meehan wrote about his annual Christmas party—where, among many other things, he makes the lobster rolls from Jasper White’s book Lobster at Home. The front matter of the book, about how to shop for and kill lobsters, is succinct, spot-on, and very useful! We’ve published his rules for purchasing live lobsters below. (And after finishing that, you can check out his recipe for lobster rolls here.)

Source: Seven Lobster-Buying Tips | Lucky Peach

How To Make Chocolate | Lucky Peach

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It’s easy to forget that chocolate is a fruit. It’s born on a tree and undergoes several steps that transform the bitter, astringent seed into the rich, flavorful bars that we know.

Let’s take a little time to ponder the botanical story of chocolate and retrace the journey from its tropical origin. The cacao tree (officially, Theobroma cacao; theobroma translates as “food of the gods”), was classified in 1753 by Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus. The most recent genetic research points to the upper Amazon rainforests of South America—near present-day Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru—as its origin. It grows only within a narrow latitudinal band, between 20˚N and 20˚S of the equator. From its origins in South and Central America, cacao cultivation now spans the circumference of the globe within its tropical range. West African countries, namely Ghana and the Ivory Coast, currently provide about 70 percent of the world’s cocoa supply.

The cacao tree is fairly small, commercially bred to grow roughly 9 to 12 feet high. Like grape vines, cacao must often reach six to seven years maturity before producing a full yield of fruit. Its fruit, the cacao pod, develops from flowers that blossom directly from the trunk and thicker branches of the tree, reaching maturity in five to six months (thus sometimes allowing for two harvests per year). Each individual bean is comprised of an outer shell, the germ, and the nib. Conveniently, one pod’s worth of beans produces a 100-gram bar of chocolate.

via How To Make Chocolate | Lucky Peach.

 

Bun Nation Under God | Lucky Peach

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Some background about the miraculous bun that makes every burger better.

This feature comes from “Lucky Peach #10: Street Food.” Pick up a copy here!

If you’re looking for something to eat and seeking retreat from the scorching heat of the street in Salmiya, Kuwait, you might find yourself ducking into Al Fanar Mall. And in that mall you might end up eating burgers at the Shake Shack. And as your teeth sink into the soft bun of a ShackBurger, you will think, Just like home.

via Bun Nation Under God | Lucky Peach.