The photo on the left was taken at our destination last week — Zion National Park in Utah — and the photo at the top on the way there. Whiting Brothers businesses, motels and services stations, operated along Route 66 from 1926 into the 1990s (though their presence was severely diminished before the end). These [...]

The idea last January following a brief note about our travel plans for 2008 and 2009 was announce the blogging around here would be reduced. When I told Lew Bryson about this he laughed a might Brysonesque laugh, knowing full well how hard it is for me to keep my mouth shut. Well, the slowdown [...]

“A critic’s job, nine-tenths of it, is to make way for the good by demolishing the bad.”                     - Kenneth Tynan I tend to scribble things I come across — could be in a magazine, a book, on a menu — on scraps of paper. This one I’ve been carrying around on a breakfast receipt since [...]

The countdown to April 7 has begun. A good place to follow along is Maureen Ogle’s blog. It will be 75 years ago April 7 that breweries resumed shipping beer, albeit lower strength (3.2% alcohol) until Prohibition was repealed later in 1933. Thus the Brewers Association, Beer Institute and National Beer Wholesalers Association are promoting [...]

The Morning Advertiser reports that Coors has decided to close the visitor center, formerly known as the Bass Museum, at its Burton-upon-Trent brewery in order to save money. The areas that will close include the Museum, The Brewery Tap, the Gift Shop and all meeting rooms. The White Shield micro-brewery will remain open. Discussions will [...]

The Session heads across the Atlantic in April, with Stonch hosting Round #14 from his London stomping grounds. The theme is “Beer People,” and he explains: On Friday 4th April, the date of the next Session, I’d like you to write about people. Choose someone you know personally. That person might be a brewer, a [...]

Details from “Project Genome,” the study that revealed all about wine “image seekers,” help tie together last week’s posts about training robots to taste wine, coming up with a tasting vocabulary, and “discovery” in the marketplace. Beer companies should be just as concerned about “overwhelmed” shoppers as winemakers — maybe more, because beer is supposed [...]

I’m giving this comment its own post because it likely would go unnoticed at the bottom of an older thread. Technical information about brewing without hops fits more comfortably in a homebrewing blog, but I’ve mentioned gruit here and do have a category for ingredients. So if you have suggestions for Tom fire away — [...]

Welcome to the obligatory St. Patrick’s Day post. (Not to be a curmudgeon — Ireland, Irish-Americans, Irish pubs in Ireland, Irish-inspired pubs in America, Irish beers, Irish-inspired beers, St. Patrick’s Day parades . . . are all good things. But do we really need a drinks company passing around petitions to make it a national [...]

Merlot does not suck. Oh, sorry, this is a beer blog. But before returning to beery talk this wine fact just in: Merlot made up 20% of the wine purchases made by a group labeled “image seekers,” called that because they like to others to think they know a lot about wine, according to a [...]