Truth is sometimes I turn these lists into a post so I have the links saved for more careful reading later.
Why Should Terroir Matter . . . from a speech by Randall Grahm. I don’t care about “saving” high end wines, but thought provoking. I suspect most of the time we should be happy [...]

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.
Drinkers in [...]

Let’s start out with what’s wrong with The beerbistro Cookbook. It’s too dang pretty to risk taking into the kitchen to refer to. This book is pure food and beer porn.
Before moving on to what’s right about the book I must offer a longer than usual disclaimer. Co-author Stephen Beaumont is a long-time friend of [...]

A few things you might have missed last week:
- The held the Iron City Brewing auction Friday and yesterday in Pittsburgh.
- Granted Equity For Punks might be important to the future of BrewDog, has led to considerable discussion about the value of the company, and certainly reminds us that no matter how much fun brewers [...]

Don’t forget that Beer 47 hosts The Session on Friday. The topic is “Beer Desserts.”
David Jensen writes “What beer desserts have you tried and liked? Disliked? What beer styles work well with dessert and which ones do not? Do you have any beer dessert recipes that you enjoyed and would like to share?”
All you have [...]

The May/June issue of DRAFT magazine has hit newsstands, though none I’ve seen. So now you can read the rest of the story from when I reported on beer in Italy back in October and December. Since I haven’t seen the print edition I don’t know what photos appeared with my words.
Perhaps the one at [...]

OK, it’s not the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley ($240 tasting menu, hard-to-get reservations, $50 corkage fee if you bring your own wine), but French Laundry Café & Market in Fenton, Michigan, has announced it will pour only Michigan beers.
In a press release, bartender Jon Foley says the restaurants’s nine handles will offer “the [...]

This is my contribution to The Session, today celebrating two years of beer bloggers (and now Twitter users) writing about the same topic on the first Friday of the month. Visit Musings Over a Pint for the roundup. To follow it “live” on Twitter head to that site and search for #thesession.
Today the theme for [...]

Given the sudden outbreak of tales about Italian beer (see below) and the reality I should save something interesting for a couple of print assignments I’m going to write a lot less here than I planned for Italian Beer Part II.
Instead I’ll steal an idea from this wine blog, which reviews wines using a single [...]

We’re far enough south in Italy right now that we’ve spotted the water buffalo responsible for Buffalo Mozarrella. I’ve learned that Italy grows 300 different kinds of chestnuts and that Italian brewers make at least 40 different chestnut beers.
More later, but if you need to read more about Italian beer now, check out Evan Rail’s [...]