A trifecta today of stories about the role breweries play in communities: – Dale Katechis, founder of Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, Colo., has been selected as the recipient of the Colorado Restaurant Association’s Cornerstone Humanitarian Award. The award is sponsored by the National Restaurant Association, and Katechis will be considered for the national Cornerstone [...]

Sierra and I made a home school field trip yesterday to check out a small operation a few hours to the north, virtually on the banks of the Rio Grande, where a couple of guys are growing all manner of organic foods at 5,800 feet. Included are many varieties of hops, most of them apparently [...]

Last month I suggested it would be fun to conduct a Miller Chill Challenge, having participants taste Miller Chill, drinks (such as Chelada) with recipes Corona is promoting and the new Budweiser (and Bud Light) pre-mixed Chelada’s. The tasting has been postponed, and likely canceled, due to lack of interest. The people I hang out [...]

Here is a wonderful paragraph posted this weekend by Ron Pattinson at Shut up about Barclay Perkins: Honest beer is what I want. Beer that can look me straight in the eye and not flinch. Beer with heart. Beer that’s like an old friend. Beer you can sit and drink by the pint in a [...]

On the Monday after the Great American Beer Festival I won’t necessarily be writing about the festival. I’ve signed up for Blog Action Day. On October 15th, bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone’s mind – the environment. Every blogger will post about the environment in their own [...]

The Wall Street Journal, which charges to read most of its online content, is giving away a beer story tomorrow (Friday). After reading “When Beer Takes on Vintners’ Airs” you’ll likely wish they were giving away the beer instead. Yep, another indication that barrel-aged beers are hot. Can a reality show be far behind? (“Hilda, [...]

Had Coors Blue Moon White been a folk artist in the 1960s would it have been Peter, Paul & Mary? Wait, before you flip the dial, consider these alternative questions: – Was the group P,P&M more like Pete Seeger or Trini Lopez? – Is Blue Moon White more like a so-called craft beer or mass [...]

Last week I casually used the term “gastropub” pub in referring to a series of stories about beer and cheese in the Boston Globe and didn’t give it further thought. Today Stonch writes about the Time Out search for London’s best gastropub, and this time I paused. The word merits an entry in Webster’s New [...]

Jack Curtin laments that he would have liked to have been in San Francisco this weekend for the celebration surrounding the Toronado’s 20th anniversary. Agreed it would have been fun, but not where I would most liked to have been yesterday. Nor was the Great British Beer Festival. First choice would be the Great Taste [...]

The authors of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think also have a little bit to say about mindless drinking – in this case wine. And it seems like the results of one study could be relevant to beer. The recent story: Forty-one diners at the Spice Box restaurant in Urbana, Illinois were [...]