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 [...]

So let’s get right to this World Cup football thing. Story in Yahoo! Sports (thanks to Neal Stewart) points out the financial benefits for sports bars and large breweries. This video from Freetail Brewing in San Antonio (which is approaching 50,000 views on YouTube) indicates they are more widespread. My local brewpub (Turtle Mountain Brewing) [...]

Last Wednesday, just hours after arriving in Chicago for the Craft Brewers Conference, I dutifully posted a photo of Halltertau hop queen Mona Euringer, linked it to via Twitter and Facebook and after that pretty much went back to 1998 or some other CBC in a different technological era. Blog? Tweet? I didn’t even attend [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]