Sometimes we are our own context, meaning what you bring to a glass of beer influences what you take from it. Rick Lyke writes about a 7-year-old bottle of Schlenkerla Urbock, his daily drink Monday, that opened with a big smoked ham nose. A fellow taster from Wisconsin taster said it was like smoked sturgeon. [...]

The current (February 15 & 22) of The New Yorker magazine includes an article by Malcom Gladwell called “Drinking Games” that tackles a bit of drinking and culture. Unfortunately it’s not one the magazine chose to make free online, but you can read the abstract here. Hey, it’s The New Yorker and Gladwell, so ideas [...]

Four Innovation Lessons from Anheuser-Busch. (Thanks to Lager Heads for the, well, heads up). It’s popular to write that [fill in the name of a large brewing company] could replicate any beer in the world if it really wanted to. But could it? Would its corporate culture let it? Think of any innovative beer you [...]

Tom Cizauskas has posted the roundup for Session #36: Cask-Conditioned Beer. Be sure to make to all the way to the end and the links to all the non-bloggers who Tom prodded into contributing. Don’t miss his own post about local hops for local beer.    

The United States became a net exporter of hops in the 1870s, so somebody must have liked varieties grown in America. In fact, exactly 100 years ago the U.S. exported 10.5 million pounds of hops and imported 3.2 million. Eighty percent of the exports went to England, while almost all the imports came from Germany [...]

Polish homebrewers established the Polish homebrewers’ association (Polskie Stowarzyszenie Piwowarow Domowych) last week and made this wonderful video (with subtitles). Thanks to I might have a glass of beer for spotting this.

In still another story about gloomy beer sales that focuses on the largest brewers BusinessWeek provides this eye-opening number: “One segment of the beer industry that has resisted the recession is craft breweries, increasingly popular for flavorful beers made in smaller batches. According to data from the Nielsen Co., craft or microbrew sales rose 12.4% [...]

Exhibit A Porter City Tavern in Raleigh will now serve only North Carolina beers on tap (tip of the hat to Geistbear). Exhibit B Artisinal Imports current newsletter makes a case for diversity. In case the link quits working or you don’t want to take the time, a few highlights: “In Minneapolis there has been [...]

SirRon at The Ferm has announced the topic for Session #37, so we begin the fourth year of first Friday drinking with marching orders to write about “The Display Shelf: When to Drink the Good Stuff.” The explanation: “The topic is open ended and the rules of The Session are close to nil. You can [...]

This is my contribution to Session #36: Cask-conditioned ale that involves actual drinking of beer. Host Tom Cizauskas has the recap (plus plenty himself). I also wrote a little about cask ale in U.S. 15 or so years ago and posted an additional story (from 1997) in The Library. This seems like a good Valentine’s [...]