"Sapporo" news and stories

With the Year of the Rabbit right around the corner, it's the perfect time to break out the chopsticks and dive into some delicious Chinese food. But which Asian beers best complement your pile of pot stickers? Here, find beers paired with some of our favorite dishes from KitchenDaily's Chinese New Year menu and other standbys -- General Tso's and wonton soup, anyone?

Black Bass with Chili Sauce and Scallions
The crispy entree's spicy-sweet heat (fans of General Tso's chicken take note!) is best matched with a prickly, thirst-slaking pilsner such as Tsingtao, which boasts a bit of lingering malt sweetness. The low, 4.8 percent ABV means you can easily kick back two or three. Tsingtao would also snuggle up nicely with a hot-and-sour soup.

Pork and Scallion Dumplings
These plump, juicy specimens are best served with a beer that'll cut through the rich and fatty juices. I like the Sapporo Premium Beer, a fizzy and food-friendly Japanese brew that closes light and crisp. Sapporo won't rock your world on its own, but it's a fine addition to a dinner table.

Yes, "space beer" sounds like something you'd find in one of the more PG-13 rated episodes of The Jetsons, but unlike The Jetsons, space beer is now a reality. (Sorry if I burst the bubble of any Jetson diehards out there.)

However, I'd be doing readers a great disservice if I didn't toss the word "kinda" in somewhere. Here's what went down: Sapporo has brewed and bottled a product called "Space Barley" -- a beer "brewed from barley cultivated in the International Space Station in 2006."

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not 100% buying what is so intergalactic about this beverage. Is my logic flawed to think this is equally ridiculous to a former astronaut giving birth and declaring her child a "space baby?" I mean, the barley seeds came from planet Earth, right? And then the beer was brewed on Earthly soil, correct?

I guess there is just no magic or sense of wonder left in me anymore. Call me when they brew something out of moon rocks.

[Photo Credit: sapporo.com]

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When I think of my mom, two things usually don't come to mind: beer and Frank Zappa. Which made it odd earlier this week when I opened an email to find she had sent me the following quote: "You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

Now, I'm not a big Zappa fan and have never heard this quote. I'm guessing that puts me in Group A of two possible groups, with Group B consisting of huge Zappa fans who have heard this quote a million times. But the quote did get me thinking that there are a number of countries that I associate with one specific beer. Yes, I realize they have more than one beer, but every time I think of said country, one specific beer immediately pops into mind trumping all others.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not saying these are the best beers each country has to offer, or even a list of my favorite international beers, but for this week's Slashfood Ate beer edition, I present the 8 countries that through experience and marketing I most associate with one specific beer.

See the list after the jump...

It's not as cool a it sounds. They won't be brewing the beer in space, or even using ingredients grown on space. Sapporo brewers are going to use barley grown (on earth) from seeds that spent time on the International Space Station.

The Japanese beer company said they expect to get about 100 bottles from this batch, but they won't sell it. I say, why even advertise that? Why get our hopes up in the first place? Even if it wasn't brewed in space, it's still pretty neat. Maybe this will lead to bigger batches, though, that Sapporo actually will sell. All I know is that I want space beer.

[Via RealBeer]

Even though it's been sold in Japan for more than 50 years, Coca-Cola has only just received trademark recognition for its iconic bottle. The elongated hourglass bottle became a registered U.S. trademark in 1960 and is honored by Russia and China, among other nations.

Coca-Cola began fighting for Japanese trademark registration of its "contour bottle" back in 2003. Other shapes associated with pop culture and American food, notably Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders, have won Japanese trademarks. What made the Coke case different is the fact that its bottle has no lettering whatsoever. In fact, it's the first bottle sans lettering to receive a trademark in that country.

For some reason this case begs the question: Is Sapporo's silver 22-ounce can a registered Japanese trademark? If not, it should be, I find the tapered can as evocative and iconic as Coca-Cola's classic bottle.

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