Now that I have your attention. . . . The folks at Chow.com seem to feel compelled to email me every time they post a story about beer. I find that strange because presumably what makes them different is they are discussing beer in an intelligent manner with an audience — folks who might be [...]

In commenting on the demise of the British-based magazine Beers of the World writer Adrian Tierney-Jones has written such a lovely headline that I have to find an excuse to repeat it: “Beers Of The World finito: the end of beerwriting as we know it?” If you live in the U.S. you likely never read [...]

You may have seen mention in various blogs about an upcoming book, called “1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die.” To the best of my knowledge (based on the fact I’ve written the profiles on a few of the beer included) each beer will get its own page. That makes for a fat book. [...]

Guess I should have thought of this before we started our adventure. I could have packed a bottle of locally produced India Pale Ale and hauled it around for 14 months, in the RV, on the plane to and from Europe, in our leased car. More than 60,000 miles, lots of bumping about, plenty of [...]

Apologies, but I have to point something else out that bugged me watching Beer Wars. When you left the theater did you think that Moonshot was the only beer laced with caffeine? (Excepting the 849 coffee beers out there; mmmm, Meantime Coffee.) Not true. There’s also MateVeza Yerba Mate gold, and now Yerba Mate IPA. [...]

Here’s an interesting statistic from the Wine Market Council: 15 percent of Americans drink 91 percent of table wine. What do you think the numbers are for “craft beer” (however you define it, but let’s not start)?  

While others were watching their brackets get busted in overtime Friday evening I was reading “Six Thousand Year of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History.” Why? Because a book about brewing with wheat should include the role wheat has played in various cultures where people drink beer. It’s not exactly light reading, so maybe I [...]

Last week during The Symposium for Professional Wine Writers New York Times chief wine critic Eric Asimov called for an end to tasting notes. At least if I read blogger Alder Yarrow (Vinography) correctly. Yarrow, who is one of my favorite wine writers, nicely recaps Asimov’s presentation called “The Tyranny of the Tasting Note,” mostly [...]

History should not be a moving target, but sometimes it seems awfully hard to pin down. I was already thinking about this before we visited the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, yesterday. I’ve been sifting through a bunch of stories about Belgian White beers pre-Pierre Celis and many contain altogether different facts. So two [...]

I do like the sound of bottle of beer being uncorked, the pop followed by the lively sound of carbonation, or perhaps . . . “Oh, bleep, we’ve got a gusher.” Not to harp on the beer versus wine thing but that’s one thing beer has over wine (Champagne excepted). I thought about this a [...]