We’re headed north in the morning (attention burglars: somebody will be watching our house), eventually to Montana and Wyoming because my brother’s son is getting married in a week. While we’re off looking for cowboy neon signs hanging on old bars (maybe even old saloons) here are a few links I’ve been meaning to pass [...]

The headline across the bottom of Details magazine caught my eye today at Borders. “Artisanal America: How Handmade and Homegrown Became the New Consumer Religion.” The story itself is even online. Sure enough, the cute timeline that runs above the story has a picture of beers from Anchor Brewing and a note that in 1965 [...]

Drinking note of the day (not really a new feature, so don’t expect one tomorrow): From The Gourmet Guide to Beer by Howard Hillman (1983). Hamm’s (U.S.A.) 2 mugs (out of five) “Born in the land of sky blues waters,” says the motto. Pale yellow color. Innocent nose and palate. How’s that for concise?

I think the Lagunitas glassware pictured on the left has been around a while. However it’s just now that I’m looking at a press release dated 3.5.10. It arrived yesterday and it made me laugh out loud. So I will pass it along without comment, other than to note I hope you enjoy it as [...]

This week New Orleans hosts Tales of the Cocktail. We went last week. Not because we have anything against cocktails, but because that’s when the birthdays fall. In fact, we drank hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s and cocktails at the Carousel Bar in the Hotel Monteleone. We also had pretty good wine with dinner at Irene’s [...]

Perhaps Vince Cottone was not the first to use the words “craft” and “beer” together, but in his 1986 “Good Beer Guide: Brewers and Pubs of the Pacific Northwest” he put definitions of “craft brewery” and “true beer” into words when nobody else did. Cottone — who today runs Sound Systems, a company that offers [...]

Today only BeerBooks.com is selling every one of its books for 40 per cent off. So what are you doing here? Go order some books. They don’t even have to be by me. Support a beer author. Support an independent beer-centric store.

Does anybody know?  

“Brewers make wort, yeast makes beer.”    - A veteran brewer or a clever yeast salesman Saint Arnold Brewing in Texas just announced a ‘Moveable Yeast’ series of beers, quarterly releases with the first in August. From the press release: “The concept behind the Movable Yeast series is to focus on the flavor contribution of yeast. [...]

The Wallace Brothers have posted the recap for Session #41: Craft Beer Inpsired by Homebrewing. And Derrick Peterman, who these days is calling his blog “Ramblings of a Beer Runner,” has issued marching orders for #42: “A Special Place, A Special Beer.” I ask that you write about a special place in your life, and [...]