TheBeerObserver

Isaiah Mustafa—aka the Old Spice Guy—is everywhere we turn: on our TV, in our movie theater previews and a gazillion Web sites. And now, the former NFL player’s announced that he scored a role in the upcoming Jennifer Aniston flick “Horrible Bosses.” How do we get your life, dude? Is it just the body wash? We’ll trade you any beer you want for a bottle of the good stuff.

Brewmaster Jan Nijboer of the Dutch ‘t Koelschip brewery says his new $45, 60%-ABV beer is the world’s strongest brew. The beer, dubbed “Start the Future,” eclipses Scottish brewery BrewDog’s 55%-ABV “The End of History,” which claimed the title only last week. [Reuters]

by Ryan Van Velzer

In March, Iowa’s legislature eased restrictions on high-octane brews, raising the cap on ABVs from 5% to 12%. Before the “beer equality law” passed, state-sponsored vendors controlled the high-gravity beer market, and Iowans could only sip imperial stouts and Belgian ales from out-of-state breweries. Now that the state’s brewing big, we asked eight Iowa beer makers to give us a taste of what’s on tap and what’s in the tank.

David Coy, Raccoon River Brewing
“The first beer I brewed after the law passed was a maibock. I probably bumped it up beyond where it needed to be, it’s 8.5% ABV, but I was in a celebratory mood. We’ve a got double IPA that I’m putting on tap tomorrow, El Bandito Loco. It’s going to be 9.5% ABV with 3 pounds of hops per barrel. After that, I’m pretty sure there is a Russian imperial stout in my future; that’ll be my winter warmer this year.”

Mike Gauthier, Court Avenue Brewing Co.
“I’ve got a Sahti on draft. It’s a Finnish farmhouse ale brewed with malted rye and juniper berries with a 7.5% ABV. I’ve been dying to make it since I drank one that Goose Island brewed 10 years ago. I’ve also got a double ESB in the conditioning tank right now at 8.6% ABV, but its still a little hot, probably won’t be ready to serve for another two or three weeks.”

Chris Priebe, Millstream Brewing Co.
“We’re playing around with a few different things and seeing what people like so that after a year or two, we can come out with bottles of what is most popular. Right now we’ve got weizenbock on tap. It’s a high-gravity dark wheat beer and it turned out pretty good; it’s about 8.5% ABV. After that, we’re looking at doing a fruit-flavored tripel, and we also beefed up our regular oatmeal stout so that’s 7% ABV now.”

Peter Ausenhus, Worth Brewing Co.
“I’m in the lautering stage of my second batch of Russian imperial stout, and I’m just about to start boiling; it will probably end up at about 10% ABV. The first beer that will be on tap is the Bar Belle Blond, a Belgian strong golden ale which comes out in August. I will follow that up in September with the Bison doppelbock, and I also have a real strong Scotch ale for this winter that I just want to age for a while.”

Joe Kesteloot, Peace Tree Brewing
“I’ve done two brews that are high-gravity; the first one I did right after the law changed was a Belgian-style blond that’s about 8.5% ABV. Then, I was really excited to do a double IPA at 9%; I released that one the 10th of July. We’ve had a lot of demand for it; we were reserving cases before they even went on sale. In winter, I’m probably going to do an imperial stout or a barrel-aged stout; if I go with the barrel-aged one, it won’t be done until the following year.”

Mason Groben, Madhouse Brewing Co.
“We’re a brand-new brewery; we just started making beer in February. We hope to add a high gravity beer in the fall. One of my investors has an acre of Mt. Hood, Centennial and Cascade hops growing, so hopefully my next beer will be a 100-percent Iowa-grown double-hopped American style IPA.”

Brad Knoke, Hub City Brewing Co.
“We’re just getting started on the high-gravity stuff. The one we’re getting ready right now is our 9.7%-ABV Russian imperial stout called The Midnight Express. We’re also working on a Belgian beer, either a strong ale or a dubbel, and we’re also working on a double IPA.”

Matt Guenther, Beck’s Sports Bar and Grill
“We have our Grizzlybock; it’s a doppelbock that’s higher on the scale than your average beer, around 7 or 8% ABV. It’s something darker, a kind of signature that not many places carry and our most popular with craft beer enthusiasts.”

Team Definitely Savage Obviously Not Subtle

First, an apology goes out to the ladies of Team Definitely Savage Obviously Not Subtle. They were gracious enough to do a video interview with me in Pocahontas, Iowa (”The Princess City”). But after two hours of trying to convert the file outside my campground, I gave up.

Suffice to say the interview boiled down to this: 1) Beer is good. 2) Biking across Iowa with beer is even better. 3) You should be here. 4) If you’re not, be jealous.

A few more miles down the road I ran into the Wilson family of six — all on one bike. They were incredibly friendly and talkative when I pulled alongside them, despite the fact that they had to haul a bike, a tagalong and a trailer up hills. Greg Wilson told me that was still easier than trying to coordinate babysitters for all of RAGBRAI. They just passed 1,300 miles of training together when I met them.

The Wilson Family -- all 6 of them

In the tiny town of West Bend we came across the World’s Largest Grotto, a surreal sight in the middle of cornfields. And right next to thousands of cyclists holding beer. The massive structure had petrified wood and $14 million worth of stone. One cyclist remarked that “the priests must have been on acid when they built this.”

West Bend Grotto photo by Jeff Miller

I met a nomadic young engineer named Willy who has bike toured 8,000 miles in the last five months, including a zig-zagging 4,500-mile trip from New Orleans to San Francisco. His buddy, Brett from Denver, was riding with his dog Moxie Crimefighter in the back of his bike. Coincidentally, Willy went to a conference rival of my high school in Wisconsin. Small world.

“I hope I’m not offending you,” Willy said at one of our rest stops, pulling out a paper bag-covered bottle. “But I’m not drinking beer. I’m drinking 40 proof fortified wine.”

Today’s short 60-mile ride was a brutal 103 degrees with no cloud cover or shade, making the beer at the end especially crucial to our survival. Thankfully, we were welcomed into Clear Lake with shouts of “FREE BEER!” Never has those words sounded so sweet. Turns out, a local bought a keg for bikers to entice them to pay $10 for a shower. I think it was working.

Until tomorrow, I leave you with this mobile public service announcement.

While megabreweries like SABmiller and Sapporo suffer from declining sales, California microbreweries are gaining popularity. Craft brewers in California saw increased sales in 2009 and project sales to grow another 5.8 percent in 2010.

SABmiller, makers of Miller Genuine Draft and one of the world’s largest brewers, dipped 1 percent in sales during the first quarter while Sapporo Ltd., owner of Sapporo Breweries and manufacturer of Sapporo, predicts a loss of 600 million yen during the first half of the year.

We’ve talked about beer-worthy beaches and beach-worthy beers, and now we’re continuing with another summer-fun brew, Full Sail Spotless IPA. You can’t always discern a beer’s attributes by name alone, but in the case of Spotless, you get a pretty good idea of what’s going in your glass. This remarkably crystal clear (spotless, even), dark golden brew sports a creamy white head that just won’t fade. Through the popping bubbles, toasted bread notes ascend to the nose, accented by grassy, resinous hops and just a touch of orange. This bitter brew begins gently with a wave of toasted bread that spreads out on the tongue, eventually splashing up against a wall of rough bitterness mid-sip. Spotless is a fun, aggressive IPA with old-school bitterness that scrapes the tongue and throat, allowing only light sweet toffee threads to mingle with grassy, citrus hops in the back of the mouth. With a very dry finish that demands another sip, this brew’s not just a fine fit for summer, but an IPA worth sipping year-round. Too bad it’s only around until September.

It’s no secret we’re big fans of drinking games here at DRAFT. Not necessarily the belligerent kind, just something to pass the time. Thus, it wasn’t much of a surprise when the folks behind Arkeg wheeled their ridiculously entertaining game console and drinking station to our editorial offices.

With 69 pre-loaded games, a draft system designed for 5-gallon kegs and nothing to do on a slow Friday, we settled in for some fun. As a result, mid-year bonuses are officially frozen so we can save up to install one of these things in our conference room.

Here are the boys with their machine. Beer Pong?

Have you seen this thing around? If not, demand it! And for money-stuffed homebrewers, this is the perfect way to coerce friends into sticking around to drink your beer.

When Brooklyn Tony from Team Brew Ha Ha gave me a RAGBRAI beer guide, it actually wasn’t the first time a dude on a bike handed me a beer guide while I was biking myself.

Actually, Brooklyn Tony handed me two guides — “one for your gumba” — along with a history lesson.

“Before Milwaukee was the brewing capital of the world, Brooklyn was,” he declared. “Brooklyn — and especially Williamsburg — was heavily influenced by German immigrants.”

Then he reached into his bike jersey and handed me a guide to the best beer stops during our weeklong bike tour of the state of Iowa.

But I couldn’t say he was the first biking beer guide evangelist I ever met, because Earl from Team Good Beer handed me his team’s guide a few miles back. Both were quintessential RAGBRAI moments of bonding with strangers over bikes and beer.

“Beer and biking go together pretty great, don’t they?” Earl asked me while we rode behind a guy in an Old Style jersey.

“They make the beer taste sweeter and the ride more rewarding,” I agreed.

“And the company better,” added Earl, who is part of a 24-member team at RAGBRAI.

Today we finished about 70 miles with about 4,000 feet of elevation and a few thousand beers along the way. Someone was even offering free beer to all 15,000 cyclists in the middle of a field on the side of the rural road.

And even if you don’t bump into a Tony or Earl, you can text “FATTIREIOWA” to 839863 to get text updates of where to find Fat Tire each day on the route. I was lucky enough the Shuttle Guy had it on ice when I arrived at camp

Tonight I’m hanging out in tent city in Storm Lake, home of the Beavers. Tomorrow’s route includes some optional mileage that would make it a century.

So of course I’ll do the longer version, because you know what more mileage means. More beer.

The other night I was in the middle of my normal routine, watching Seinfeld reruns while casually beer-bonging Utpoias and Tactical Nuclear Penguin, when a craving for something stronger hit. Sure, there was a day when 20% or 40%-ABV beers were startling, but that’s old news now. Why can’t someone make something really strong? Then I saw this:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/13537656[/vimeo]

Our friends over at Scotland’s BrewDog have done it again, only this time it’s a bit creepier: Over 50%-ABV? Check. Complete with stuffed squirrel? Check.

This limited-run (only 12 bottles made) Belgian-style blond’s infused with highland nettles and juniper berries, and probably burns the throat like a pint of hot magma. Called the End of History, this mega-brew stands as the last extreme-ABV beer BrewDog plans to release. We’ll see.

First the big news hit that Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione will host “Brewed” this fall on the Discovery Channel, and now this: a “popular lifestyle cable network” is looking for a brewer, professional or homebrewer, to helm a new beery show. Wannabe TV hosts take notice!

While much of the information at this point is still vague, a nationwide casting search is underway to find someone with “major credibility in brewing,” says the release, to host a show that focuses on the making and history of beer. Here’s what they’re looking for: Apply if you are “charismatic, witty, outgoing and have lots of information about beer and brewing.” Our collective moms are already sending in our applications.

Interested in taking a shot? Send your name, occupation, contact phone numbers, email address, a recent photograph of yourself, a video and your dusty resume to foodhostcasting@gmail.com.

I figured it was a good time to pack up the bike and grab the first shuttle outta Dodge because THE ENTIRE CITY OF MILWAUKEE IS UNDER WATER.

The Great Milwaukee Flood of 2010 chose a really bad time to hit one day before I departed to Iowa for the legendary Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, aka RAGBRAI.

I spent 15 hours yesterday gutting our completed soaked first floor, including all of our carpeting and dining room floor. Check out freaking insane video of a city street turned into a Class III rapids in front of popular liquor store Otto’s.

The good news is after all that, a beer has never tasted sweeter.

Fortunately, we had friends and family come to our rescue, and we’re safe and sound. My wife, 12-week old daughter and I will be staying with my in laws for the forseeable future, and now there’s nothing to do but hope the fans and dehumidifiers work their magic while we wait for the place to dry out completely.

There will be plenty of work ahead, but for now RAGBRAI will be a welcome diversion for awhile. If it ever stops raining.

For the uninitiated, RAGBRAI is a massive week long party on wheels that rolls through Iowa each year. Beer, burgers, homemade pie, fresh corn on the cob and conveyor belts of pancakes power some 15,000 of cyclists from the Missouri River to the Mississippi River. It is a traveling circus that just happens to be surrounded by corn fields and pig pens.

I rode four days of it a few years ago and was blown away not just by the size and scope of the event, but by the amount of beer consumed. Today will be no exception.

This morning our Shuttle Guy bus gets into Sioux City for Day 1 and the expo, and to kick things off Tim Hynds from the Sioux City Journal was kind enough to write a beer guide for all the visiting cyclists. That’s how you get RAGBRAI started right.

On the ride, several teams get custom jerseys and give themselves a beer-theme team name. It’s my goal to be on the lookout for them all week and blog about it daily here.

Jeff of Team Beer Me

It didn’t take me long to find one during our 10-hour bus ride from Chicago to Sioux City. My seatmate,Jeff, will be experiencing RAGBRAI for the first time via Team Beer Me. They made Fat Tire their unofficial sponsor and logo.

(Random side note: Jeff is from Fighting Irish football hero Rudy Ruettiger’s hometown of Joliet, Ill., and his dad wrote Rudy — you know, that Rudy — a recommendation letter to get into Notre Dame. These are the kinds of stories you hear on RAGBRAI.)

I’ll post here daily, but if you want to get updates from me throughout the day, follow @thebeerrunner on twitter.

See you in Iowa.

1. Fantasizing about the beer you’re going to drink when you’re done is what gets you through the final miles of a hard run or bike ride.

2. You judge a race director’s performance in part on the quality of beer he or she offers at the finish line.

3. You’ve cured a hangover with a run.

4. You’re in way better shape than your drinking buddies (unless they’re also beer runners).

5. You consider hops part of carbo loading.

6. You’ve calculated your recommended daily beer allowance.

7. You’ve thought about quitting your job for some nomadic beercycling.

8. A certain Todd Sneider tune is the power song on your iPod.

9. You subscribe to both DRAFT and Outside magazines.

10. When planning a destination race, you take into account not only the views on the course, but what local breweries are in the area.

11. You reserve a bottle of something extra special as reward for a PR.

12. You’ve been profiled on this blog.

13. You forwarded this list to a fellow beer runner.
What did i miss? Let me know any other common beer runner traits in the comments.

In our July/August issue, we named a few outstanding restaurants with killer whiskey lists. Want to skip dinner and head straight for the booze? Pull up a seat at one of these tried-and-true whiskey bars.

EXTON, PENN.: The Drafting Room
This taproom in suburban Philly gives equal billing to Scotch and beer: Pints of Left Hand Good Juju Ginger and Petrus Aged Pale Ale share table space with lowballs of 21-year-old Glen Garioch.

OREGON CITY, ORE.: Highland Stillhouse
The 300-bottle-strong whiskey list at this Portland-area pub is nothing short of impressive, with five finishes of Arran Single Cask, a 13-year-old Carigellachue and a 17-year-old Old Pulteney.

NEW YORK CITY: Brandy Library
Don’t let the name fool you: Sure, there’s a mouthwatering list of brandies, rums and other liquors, plus a “spirit sommelier” to boot, but there’s no denying the 21-bottle whiskey menu with offerings like a 21-year-old, 105-proof Edradour and a $220 glass of 40-year-old Tomatin. This is a serious place for serious drinkers; the minimum drinking age is 25, vulgar language is prohibited, and there’s a host of other house rules that keep the place classy.

SEATTLE: F.X. McRory’s
Upwards of 750 bottles of booze (including 135 bourbons) crowd the shelves at this iconic West Coast whiskey bar, conveniently attached to a steak-and-oyster house. The only thing more famous than the bar’s whiskey library is the LeRoy Neiman painting on display; ask a staffer to share its story.

CHICAGO: Duke of Perth
Killer fish and chips, a small but smart list of British beers and a friendly, knowledgeable staff seals this Scottish bar’s place in our hearts. Best of all, it eschews a mile-long list in favor of a well-edited selection of classics like port-wood Balvenie and Bruichladdich Islay.

LOS ANGELES: Seven Grand
L.A. isn’t all foofy cocktails: This genteel tavern plastered in taxidermy pours 300 whiskeys ranging from Auchentoshan to Yamazaki, lights bourbon-dipped cigars and hosts live jazz and blues three nights a week. And even whiskey purists dig the Rye Manhattan.

Where do you go to sip the brown stuff? Tell us below.

Canadian beers like Kokanee lager and Kokanee Light will stay fresher, longer thanks to the first bottle cap innovation since the twist-off introduced in 1984. Vancouver-based Columbia Brewery announced yesterday that it has developed the Glacier Seal, an oxygen-absorbing liner within the cap that bars the gas from entering bottles and spoiling beer’s flavor.

“The Glacier Seal Cap is an example of our absolute dedication to ensuring Kokanee stays as fresh as possible until you drink it,” says Mike Bascom, Kokanee’s marketing manager. “The Glacier Seal essentially locks more oxygen out of the beer bottle and keeps Kokanee’s ‘glacier fresh’ taste in.”

Columbia Brewery conducted testing on samples of bottled beer that had aged at least one month and found that the oxygen levels for Kokanee capped with the new Glacier Seal were so low, they registered below 5 parts per billion (ppb) total package oxygen per bottle. Another product without a similar liner had much higher oxygen levels, averaging upwards of 55 ppb total package oxygen per bottle, or 90 percent more than Kokanee.

Are you ever halfway through a bottle of beer only to find cruel cosmic forces tearing you away? No? Then I applaud your commitment to finding sweet bliss at the bottom of the bottle. For those of us who’ve just settled down with a cool bottle, only to be ripped away by pressing chores, phone calls from relatives or work, there is a way to save your beer. Beer Savers ($8, six-pack), a food-friendly, reusable silicone bottle cap keeps beer temporarily fresh while you swiftly demonstrate your skills in responsibility. Now, if only BP had thought of something like this.

Got any other sure-fire ways to save a beer when your significant other declares it’s Home Depot time?

Seems like you’re doing something wrong if you run 19 miles on a 13.1 mile course. But I just did that, and it was one of my favorite races ever.

It actually had nothing to do with the wine at the end.

Lagunitas as the Wine Country Half Marathon

Since March I’ve been coaching the Wisconsin chapter of Team Challenge, a half marathon training group raising money for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. This morning about 1,000 Team Challenge members from around the country met in a vineyard to run the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon.

Many of these runners are racing because a loved one or they themselves have Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis, an irritable bowel disease beset by random and severely painful flare-ups of the digestive tract. There currently is no cure.

In one case, one of my runner’s training was disrupted when his son accidently destroyed his medication, and he fell behind on treatment. Another runner — who has one of the most positive attitudes of anyone I’ve ever met — was told by her doctor last year that she needed her colon removed. Thankfully, her condition has improved and she hasn’t needed surgery.

Many join the team because they’re raising money to find a cure, not because they necessarily like to run. Several are first-time racers, and some have never really run before.

At the first practice I told everyone we were going to run easy for 30 minutes. We would have to go slow to build up to 13.1 miles.

One runner later confessed to me that his mouth dropped open when I told him we were running for 30 minutes. I need to train before running that long, he thought. The first few practices were tough. Some runners later told me they couldn’t move the rest of the day after our progressively longer Sunday runs.

But as any runner knows, something happens when you faithfully put in your miles, bit by bit. One day you go out to run and realize you feel better than you ever thought possible. You may even wake up some morning to find you actually enjoy running.

Finally race day was here, and my job was to run back and forth on the course to run with as many teammates as possible. It was a unique challenge that required me not to run for time, but to cover as much distance as possible.

In reality, we coaches were incredibly lucky. I got to keep crossing the finish line over and over again, the best part of the race. And I got to see the look on people’s faces as they realized what they accomplished.

As a nationwide group, Team Challenge raised $2.2 million in this one event alone. I won’t soon forget the sea of orange Team Challenge members rallying around the finish line to bring home the final finishers. This is one of the most inspiring events I can recall.

Then the party began. They gave each finisher a wine glass, and you took that around from table to table for wine tastings. Yes, I had some finish line wine.

But then I found the lonely keg of local Lagunitas IPA, and immediately changed course. It’s one more reason to come back next year with Team Challenge.

Stein beer, a traditional German process of brewing beer that uses hot granite to boil wort, isn’t easy to come across these days. Aside from those who live near Boscos Brew Pub’s four Tennessee and Arkansas locations, where they make the year-round Famous Flaming Stone beer on scalding pink granite, stein beer’s elusive to most. To those who live within Port Brewing’s distribution: Consider yourself lucky. The team at Port fired up pieces of granite to brew Hot Rocks Lager, a German-style stein beer that’s a surprising summer refresher.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tebhCcEQb3o[/youtube]

Have you tried Hot Rocks? What did you think?

The team at Port Brewing fired up pieces of granite to brew Hot Rocks Lager, a German-style stein beer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tebhCcEQb3o[/youtube]

Have you tried Hot Rocks? What did you think?

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) has effectively squashed homebrew sharing by arming itself with an old law. Statute ORS 471.403, part of Oregon’s Liquor Control Act, bans the production of alcoholic beverages by any person or party without a license, but it “does not apply to the making or keeping of naturally fermented wines and fruit juices or beer in the home, for home consumption and not for sale.” The agency recently began literally enforcing the “home consumption” clause, putting an end to homebrew club tastings, amateur beer competitions and gifting suds to friends.

A July 2 post to the OLCC’s official blog states that a review of the law was spurred by several requests for information about legal compliance by homebrew competition hosts, including the Oregon State Fair. The agency says homebrewers lose the law’s exemption to brewing craft beer without a license when the brew is consumed outside the home.

“The Department of Justice’s guidance certainly requires us to look at the competitions in a different way than we have before,” says the post. “It’s completely understandable that home beer and wine makers would be disappointed. …The OLCC is already working with Representative Mike Schaufler and Senator Floyd Prozanski to draft language for legislative consideration in the next session. We ask that those people who are concerned with this issue help us gain support and cooperation from the legislature to get the law revised and in effect in time for next summer’s fair season.”

Deschutes Brewery, based in Bend, Ore., has already canceled a homebrew event.

Gary Fish, president and founder of Deschutes Brewery, said:

“The real story is that Deschutes Brewery contacted the OLCC to ensure that a homebrewers forum we were planning during American Craft Beer Week was legal,” says Gary Fish, the brewery’s founder and president in a statement today. “After a three-minute conversation with an OLCC representative, we were told that the agency would call us back with further information. This never happened, and the planned event was dropped as a result. The bottom line is that we were attempting to create an event celebrating homebrewing, and our roots in this culture. …We hope that these OLCC laws will change in the near future, as recent coverage has suggested, and that homebrewers can continue to share their creations with the world.”

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that Rachel McIntosh, an organizer of the Deschutes County Fair, said that unless she’s explicitly notified by the OLCC that beer and wine contests are out, the fair would continue accepting entries for the fair’s annual competition.

UPDATE:
In phone and email discussions with Christie Scott, Public Affairs Specialist
for the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, she made the following comments:

“ORS 471.403 is not an OLCC law. It is a statute, written by the elected legislators that all law enforcement are required to uphold. There are many statutes written by legislators that enforcement agencies are required to enforce.

“Also, the OLCC is supportive of home brewers. We recognize that the homebrewers and winemakers get their start at local contests. With the support that they garner, many have gone on to start their own small businesses here in Oregon and contributing back to our local economy, which is why we are working with legislators to fix the statute in 2011. In addition, we have asked the Department of Justice to search all current laws to see if there is a legal alternative to holding these events for this summer’s fair season.

“Elected officials created this law many years ago; it’s not something that ever popped up on our radar before, because we’re looking at the licensed areas [of festivals], not in the exhibition hall looking at the bottles with blue ribbons, or homebrewers, because they aren’t required to have licenses. When people started asking questions this spring, we saw that it was a much larger issue than what we had realized. It’s not a new interpretation to an old law, as this is the first time we’ve asked the Department of Justice to interpret this. We, as an agency, can’t interpret laws; we have to go through the department of Justice.

“We also immediately started working with legislators to get this issue changed, and our agency hopes to get this pushed through right away. I believe Senator Floyd Prozanski and Representative Mike Schaufler are going to cosponsor the bill and push that through. Prozanski himself is a homebrewer.”

Japan’s All Nippon Airways will be the first airline ever to serve beer on tap, reports BornRich. After installing special tap systems, the carrier will be able to pour 20 servings of beer on domestic flights only (40 servings on Tokyo-Okinawa flights), and each glass will cost 1,000 yen, or about $11.30.