Got a caption for this photo of brewing professor/author Charlie Bamforth taken during a food-fashion-themed cookout?
If you can do better than this . . .
“A kiss of tannin; a kiss of hops… brightens, rather than bitters.”
“Both of Charles’ students get an A, for Alcohol.”
. . . then scoot on over to the Cambridge University Press […]

At the risk of poking the hornet’s nest — I don’t have a category here for “ethics” and not really criticism per se — I must pass along this story. Seems like a better deal than a trip to St. Louis.
From the UK wine magazine Decanter:

Wine magnate Bernard Magrez has outraged a group of journalists […]

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 18-month […]

So would you pair Palo Santo Marron (shortened to Palo Santo for the rest of this post), the latest release from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, with popcorn?
Probably not, but it is tempting simply because the beer comes with a movie. Dogfish Head has enclosed “Take Time” with the first 10,000 four-packs of Palo Santo with […]

Until robots take over our tasting world we’re left to consider how to communicate the aromas and flavors we experience with beer.
A review of “Perfumes: The Guide” in the current New Yorker magazine makes that point.
The words and the references are really useful only to people who have had the same experiences and use the […]

Don Barkley, arguably the closest active link to America’s original microbrewery, is returning to small-scale brewing. The North Bay Business Journal has the scoop.
Visionaries from Mendocino County are looking to break down the walls between fine wine and craft beer in wine country. Don Barkley, a legend in U.S. craft brewing, left his post as […]

Call it a beer mindset, but when I saw “Budometer” I thought beer.
Turns out the test you can take at the Wall Street Journal or here (”get your buds done”) is designed to help you discover what kind of wine taster you.
But before moving along, consider that the guy behind this, Tim Hanni, “is on […]

This is a story overtly about wine, so you might not care, and about trends, so you might not care.
Rather than revisiting the discussion about if we want our beer hip or sick I will simply argue that trends matter because they may determine what’s available for us to drink. After all, hipsters managed to […]

Now some Monday afternoon musing (because I just came across this).
This is how the Times Online leads the story: “Restaurants charging inflated prices for wine could be doing their customers a favour. A study has found that people who pay more for a product do enjoy it more.”
This was in fact serious research at the […]

Last night we ate leftover smoked meat and drank Southern Tier Choklat. One, then the other. No pairing involved. Sometimes you just want a beer, maybe even a strong one.
Choklat, an 11% abv imperial stout infused with dark Belgian chocolate, qualifies on both counts. It’s one of the beers I’ll be writing around 85 words […]