This is my contribution to the Session #37: “The Display Shelf: When to Drink the Good Stuff” or, if you prefer, “Raid the Cellar.” Visit The Ferm for links to more posts.
Is there a perfect beer for every particular special moment? Is there a time in every beer’s life when it tastes better than it [...]

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 [...]

Pardon that the example of how this could work comes from the wine world — making it my second wine originated post in two days — because it’s very beer relevant.
Also, as Ed Carson pointed out with his comment about the rather dense posturing about the brain and wine that there’s a danger of violating [...]

“Our brain has been designed to believe itself, wired so that our prejudices feel like facts, our opinions indistinguishable from the actual sensation.”
This link goes to a discussion about wine and numbers and might remind you about previous discussions about the value of blind tastings. Nonetheless if you cross out wine and pencil in beer [...]

This post begins, as perhaps all blog posts must from this day on, with disclosure. I did not pay for the bottle of beer that I’m about to write about.
BrewDog in Scotland brewed it. Katrina Taft from the Rose Group arranged for it to be sent to me. A friendly UPS guy delivered it, the [...]

They both drank the fresh hop beer from Deschutes Brewing (in Bend, Oregon) called Hop Trip. One in Pennsylvania, the other in Oregon.
Lew said.
Jon said.

Rick Lyke pointed out earlier this week that Amazon is already taking orders for 1,001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die — a book he, I and many others contributed to — although it won’t be available until March.
Turns out there are 1,000 beers to try before then. Ben McFarland’s World’s Best Beers: 1000 [...]

I’m writing about Stone Vertical Epic Ale 09.09.09 because the brewery sent me a bottle. That doesn’t mean I’ll blog about the next beer that shows up at my doorstep, or even that we’ll drink it. (At 8.9% abv and in a 22-ounce bottle this is definitely a “we” beer.)
If it were just kind [...]

I really shouldn’t admit how fascinating I find most of the numbers Ron Pattinson assembles.
The particular series that has me on the edge of my seat right now are the posts like these: assessing beer quality and Barclay Perkins Porter and Stout quality in the 1920’s.
These provide some hint if quality was [...]

I was first exposed to the concept of Lupulin Threshold Shift* when Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker collaborated on an online presentation, about hops of course, for Brewers Association members. I’ve since seen it on Russian River apparel and heard real live human beings use the words “Lupulin [...]