Fodder for thought and a photo just for fun: * The obligatory ST. PATRICK’S DAY IS COMING! ST. PATRICK’S DAY IS COMING! story from The Street delves into the wonders of nitrogen dispense. I’m linking to the third page of the story because of a gem of a concluding quote from Fergal Murray of Guinness: [...]

The always interesting Matt Kramer uses the news that Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Starbucks and other coffee vendors are embracing lighter roasts to point out America’s tastes are changing. Not a shocking conclusion, but it goes directly to a wine bottom line. As the marketing mavens of Starbucks have discovered, the American palate is seeking [...]

Well into a review of Geroge Taber’s A Toast to Bargain Wines: How innovators, iconoclasts, and winemaking revolutionaries are changing the way the world drinks Mike Veseth at The Wine Economist wonders about what constitutes a bargain. He draws the line at $10, which is a good thing I believe since this allows him room [...]

You have any idea how many books Oxford University Press published in its “companion” series before it got around to beer? A lot. Heck, The Oxford Companion to the Brontës is 640 pages. There’s The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television and The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the [...]

Following up on last week’s discussion of “dank” and the need for meaningful beer descriptors. Gourmet magazine “looks at marijuana’s culinary trip from wacky weed to haute herb.” We aren’t just talking about wine that smells like weed. In wine country, pot-infused wines are the open secrets that present themselves in unmarked bottles at the [...]

Can you name the most influential (living1) beer writer in the world? I couldn’t even begin to try. But right now you could make an argument for Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver — given the attention being lavished on The Oxford Companion to Beer, the four-pound beer book that is a top seller at Amazon. [...]

The latest Gallup Poll screams the news from the mountain tops. DRINKERS PREFERENCE FOR BEER FALLS 5%. And, as in 2005, wine gains. So now 36% of drinkers prefer beer (that will be down to 1% in seven years if beer continues to lose 5% per year) and 35% favor wine. Lots of numbers that [...]

If I’m going to finish a book or magazine article (or blog post, for that matter) I expect the author to tell me something new or provoke me to consider something I thought I knew about in a different way. (Of course it should be well written and focus on a topic that interests me. [...]

Can you imagine two wine drinkers sitting in a cafe arguing about monoterpenes1 and asking the bartender to drag a copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine from the the bookshelf to settle a bet? Me either. However, I can envision The Oxford Companion to Beer on top of a bar, it’s otherwise elegant cover [...]

This is a “map cartouche of one of the Western Hemisphere’s earliest recorded recipes (for a form of beer).” It was taken from from America, a map by Jodocus Hondius (Amsterdam, 1606). Seems like a poster that would sell well in homebrew shops. You’ll find it here, along with dozens of other images from the [...]