Follow up on Elk Grove Brewery closing…Couldn’t reach their prizewinning brewer Bill Wood and the owners Tammy and Chris Correa  are referring callers to their attorney, Matthew Eason in Sacramento. It wasn’t just the national credit crunch of the last couple of week that felled Elk Grove Brewing, Eason said.

• “Elk Grove has been brutalized by the mortgage foreclosure crisis,” Eason said. “You can pretty much down any street and see what I mean, see all the empty houses. The foreclosure rate in Elk Grove is one of the worst in the nation.”

All the restaurants in Elk Grove are just about finished, Eason said.  Elk Grove Brewery hasn’t filed for bankruptcy yet, he said. But it’s pretty much inevitable.”

Sayronora baby. We’re gonna’ miss you. Hint if you live out there on Hwy. 99, I highly recommend Valley Brewing, 157 West Adams Ave. in Stockton. Champion brewer, wild and interesting beer.

Keeping things on a dire note this afternoon...Is it the end of the road for pubs in Ireland? Consider this from BBC Online:

• Author Turtle Bunbury went to all 32 counties in Ireland, and visited more than 700 pubs. Although he couldn’t manage a pint in every one, he got a real taste of Irish pub culture in the new millennium.

• “It’s an endangered species - the traditional old-style Irish pub,” he says.

READ THE WHOLE STORY BY MARK SIMPSON  ON BBC ONLINE…

But enough downer news for one day….Ahhh. Just one more. Anheuser-Busch has scheduled the stockowners election on their “merger” with InBev for Nov. 12.

• Anheuser-Busch shareholders of record as of the close of business on Oct. 3 are entitled to vote at the special meeting, which will be held at noon on Nov. 12 at the Crowne Plaza Meadowlands hotel in Secaucus, N.J. Additional information concerning the special meeting and the transaction will be in the Anheuser-Busch definitive proxy statement, which will be mailed by Anheuser-Busch to its shareholders later this week.
• As announced July 13, the board of directors of Anheuser-Busch unanimously recommends that Anheuser-Busch shareholders approve the transaction with InBev. Closing of the transaction is subject to approval of shareholders of both companies, necessary regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. On Sept. 29, InBev shareholders approved the combination

Video update…The Beer Geek — That is, Chris Nelson and Merideth Canham-Nelson have just returned from Oktoberfeset in Munich. They have their new video up. Follow this link to the site.

Also, if you haven’t tuned into the Celebrator Beer News “Evening Brews with Celebrator Publisher Tom Dalldorf and Allison Cook. They do a new episode every couple of weeks, start with a beer of the day, which they sip during their show.  They stroll through the beer-related headlines of the day and cover happenings and events. For instance, this summer, they visited Gordon Biersh co-founder Dean Biersch’s new Hopmonk pub in Sebastopol.  Check ‘em out. I do on a regular basis.

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