In light of an ongoing aggressive TV campaign by Anheuser-Busch that seeks to divide Budweiser drinkers from those who choose craft, how will craft brewers respond? Not with television advertising of their own.

In the coming year, only three craft brands are currently committed to TV advertising: Boston Beer Company, Boulevard Brewing Company and Matt Brewing Company, which has recently announced a new multi-platform campaign including TV advertising.

A survey of the top ten producers on the Brewers Association list of independent brewers found that Boston Beer, New Belgium Brewing Company and Boulevard are the only three to have run TV ad campaigns over the past 12 months. 

"We've made a couple forays into television and it's been fun for us, exciting for our partners, and fairly expensive," said New Belgium’s Director of Public Relations Bryan Simpson, referring to the “Want A Beer” campaign launched in late 2013 in 12 regional markets. "These days we're still looking to video for great storytelling opportunities, but we like the digital online space for focused reach and deeper engagement. It's a little more cost-effective and generates a two-way dialogue with beer drinkers, which is just how we like it."

Whether you’re looking for a reason to travel or you just want to add another fantastic beer event to your itinerary, here’s a sampler of the top 20 beer festivals from around the world.

Photo Credit: Great British Beer Festival

January

Great Alaska Beer and Barleywine Festival – What better way to make Alaskan winters a little more warm and inviting than with immense imperial IPAs and beastly barleywines? This Anchorage event is the jewel of Alaska Beer Week and features some of the heftiest regional brews available in a brewpub-filled city with easily navigable streets.

February

If not, you’ve certainly run across its most well-known brews: Purple Haze, a wheat beer brewed with raspberry puree, and Turbodog, a dark, swampy brown ale with a rich malt character.

The brewery has been turning out Cajun-tinged beers since 1986, when two homebrewers, Jim Patton and Rush Cummings, helped pull together enough cash to launch the first craft brewery in the Southeast. Since then Abita, which is currently sold about 40 states, has become the beer of New Orleans, for many as synonymous with the eccentric city as Mardi Gras beads or muffuletta.  

But since Abita lies roughly 40 miles north, many visitors to New Orleans don’t make time to stop by for a tour. Big mistake. With a plush tasting room that was added in early 2008, the brewery has made it on to the list of must-see attractions for any fan of the Crescent City, well worth the trouble of trekking across the massive lake.

 Plunked next to a mobile home park near tiny Abita Springs, population 2,409, the brewery is an unmistakable ode to its home state. “We have tried from the very beginning to be a part of the culture of Louisiana,” said David Blossman, Abita’s president and one of the original investors in the brewery. “It’s easy to say that, but it’s harder to actually be it.”

Serves 8

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Season veal cheeks well with salt and pepper. Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

In a large, deep, heavy-bottomed frying pan over medium-high heat, heat oil until very hot but not smoking. Add veal cheeks and brown on all sides.

Remove meat from the pan and drain excess oil. Reduce heat to medium and return cheeks to the pan along with rosemary, thyme, juniper berries, garlic, beer and vinegar.

In a separate medium saucepan, bring veal stock to a boil and pour over cheeks.

Cover the pan with a lid or foil and continue to cook in the oven for six hours or until a knife passes easily through the cheeks.

This is the 3rd of our Tsingtao recipe series from Chef Martin Yan.

Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined

Salt and freshly ground white pepper

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

2 ginger slices, finely shredded

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 stalk lemongrass, trimmed and minced

3/4 cup clam juice

1 cup Tsingtao Pure Draft beer

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce

2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

1 green onion, minced

Instructions:

The Gose style started in a place called Goslar, in Germany, where minerals from the nearby Harz Mountains provided the River Gose with a tangy, mineral quality that the locals described as “copper water.”

This water provided the base for what would become Gose, a light, tangy, and salty beverage spiced with coriander that had the Bavarian region of Saxony buzzing as far back as 1239, the year of the first recorded mention of Gose from one Duke Otto von Braunschweig.

Gose was especially hot in Leipzig, capital of the German state of Saxony where, at the height of its popularity, at least 80 licensed Leipziger Gose houses served the briny suds. Things were groovy for Gose from 1738 until the early 20th century, when Germany’s geopolitical affairs detracted from time that might have otherwise been spent enjoying the delightful sour-wheat concoction.

By the end of World War II, the last remaining Gose brewery had ceased production, and save for one small brewer in Leipzig from 1949 to 1966, the venerable Gose had ceased to be, and it took twenty years for a man named Lothar Goldhahn to revive the style at the Schultheiss Weissbier brewery.

A couple decades later, Gose has finally regained a firm foothold both in Germany and America.

“I’m not the type of person who can sit still,” says Jorge Guzman, the executive chef of Surly Brewing’s new brewpub in Minneapolis. “I always have to be doing something.”

For Guzman, that something has always been cooking. More recently, he has become part of the movement taking brewpub menus to a new level of sophistication.

“I’m from the Yucatán,” he said with conviction, “and for me nothing compares to that cuisine. It’s distinctive from the rest of the country. It is very deeply rooted in Mayan cooking with influences from Danish and Lebanese scattered throughout. I’ve always remembered that food and the women who cooked it.” 

Guzman moved to St. Louis as a boy, where he eventually got a job in the kitchen at Chez Leon French bistro at age 15. It was there he got hooked on the family atmosphere of restaurants and the culture of cooking. He would go on to flame burgers in college and attend the Culinary Institute of America in New York. He landed in Minnesota, where he worked in the kitchens at Red Stone, Tejas, Corner Table, and Solera before joining the team at Surly Brewing.