They’ve already got a wealth of prizes lined up, so get your entries in. I’ll see what I can find, but I’m oh-for-two in this event and I expect you can do better (thus the invitation to “kick my butt”).

Here’s a photo I won’t be entering, taken in July at Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal shortly after the pub opened on a weekday afternoon.

As you’ll see if you visit Alan or Jeff’s blog it looks way too much like last year’s winner.

UK upstart BrewDog’s “Beer Rocks - Brewing up a Revolution!” is worth a look, but the idea of brewing a “democratically designed” beer isn’t totally new.

Case in point. Flying Dog Brewery’s Open Source Beer Project.

Back to BrewDog. This is different than Open Source, Beer Rocks voting has begun, and you might decide the winner. So go click for Black IPA (OK, sorry for campaigning so close to the voting booth).

As a total aside, we saw BrewDog beers a couple of weeks ago in Rome and several months ago in Jasper, Alberta (as in Canada). The revolution seems to be pretty widespread.

One thing about moving outside your comfort zone, ordering beers in languages you don’t speak and knocking back what the locals drink even if you might never have heard of the beers . . . you come across both. (Same with wine, which can be even more confusing in “emerging” wine countries like Croatia and Slovenia).

While I consider this question myself I’d like to hear your opinions.

And, no, “both” is not an acceptable answer. You have to pick one.

Do you think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken?

Please leave a comment.

It would seem I’m struggling to find the balance (struck earlier in this non-contest ) between easy, at least for some, and impossible to identify. But I will keep trying.

I little research should make it possible to figure out the country. The location (city and actual drinking spot), well it helps if you’ve been there.

And a hint: Sometimes you can’t get a Corona. And that’s OK.

Quick class, what does that date mean to beer drinkers?

Sean and Nico, your hosts, write: “At the 21st Amendment Brewery, the repeal of Prohibition means we can celebrate the right to brew beer, the freedom to be innovative, and the obligation to have fun.

“What does the repeal of Prohibition mean to you? How will you celebrate your right to drink beer?”

As usual, all bloggers are welcome to participate. Just post on Dec. 5 and drop them a line.

Instead I’ll steal an idea from this wine blog, which reviews wines using a single picture instead of traditional tasting notes. The new wave of Italian beers can’t be represented by a single image, but I’m suggesting this is a start:

The photo was taken at Pompeii. I didn’t choose it because it expresses something “classic,” but because of the balance and texture it shows. Those components are essential in any beer we might call exceptional. One complaint about the big hoppy beers that emerged in the United States and now the sometimes offbeat beers of Italy is that the colors sure are bright but they often clash.

Not every Italian brewer has it figured out, but there are enough to set a good example for the others.

Here’s one example. KeTo RePorter from Birra del Borgo, located about 70 kilometers east of Rome. The beer is a rich porter spiced with tobacco leaves (added during the final two minutes of the boil). Several other Birra del Borgo beers are available in the United States, however this one has had a little trouble getting label approval . . .

Anyway, perhaps we should considered the power of persuasion, but KeTo seem to have a little pipe tobacco sweetness in the aroma and flavor and surprising spicy notes that set it apart from other porters. You may or may not like this, you may or may not think it is worth the price, but Italian small-batch brewers must ask more for their beers (they are spending 40 to 50 percent more than large brewers for ingredients) so they better be offering something different.

That’s the easy part. Balance and texture are the things not even a volcano eruption can destroy.

Further reading

As noted last week, Evan Rail’s New York Times article nicely captures what is happening in the north and the beer/food connection in Italy. And Charlie Papazian, one the heals of Salone del Gusto in Turin, offered a whole series of posts on Italian beers. (Start here.)

Since like Papazian I noted that finding craft beer in Italy is still a challenge in some areas, such as Florence and Venice, I must agree that sometimes you have to work to find these beers. However, after I wrote that post I learned that 300 bar/pubs in Rome serve craft beer and that a growing number of bars, led by the pioneering Ma Che Siete Venuti A Fa’, specialize in flavorful beer.

Also, I have to correct Papazian when he writes, “Are any beers being exported to places like the USA? Very, very few.” If you live in the right parts of the United States it is easier to find a range of Italian small-batch beers than in most cities in Italy. Importer B. United International has a dozen Italian beers in its portfolio, listed here.

I haven’t seen this video, assembled in 1995, in some time and fully expect it will be dated. In a good way.

Tom Hennessy, one of the founders of Il Vicino in Albuquerque, put it together, featuring New Mexico microbreweries that were small and smaller. And in many cases not survivors.

It originally had a subtitle along the lines of building a brewery for “less than $20,000.” That notion’s obviously dated, and it’s a heck of a lot harder to start a brewery these days with used “re-purposed” equipment, so I wouldn’t suggest this is the video you need if you are dreaming of starting your own brewery. (Additionally, Hennessy was always quick to point out the idea might have been to get started on the cheap, however the bigger plan was to use the profits to buy “real” equipment.)

If you care about American small-batch brewing it’s worth owning even if you don’t live in New Mexico (we do, although we lived in Illinois when we first saw the video). It captures an important bit of history from a time when a lot of small breweries opened on a shoestring. Some became rip-roaring successes, more didn’t make the cut. Big picture: It’s important to hear the voices of those who don’t succeed as well as those who do.

Maybe more important, I remember grinning a lot the last time I saw this video. I look forward to seeing it soon and grinning some more.

Chatter continues here and there about the possibility of a beer blogging conference, mentioned here a while back, and also opportunities for bloggers to work together. So a couple of quick thoughts:

* It won’t happen over night, so maybe we begin with regional meetings as suggested here by Alan.

* Such meetings would be facilitated by the Google group suggested and quickly created by Jonathan Surratt. This is something that would help us all every day of the week. It would also make it easier, for instance, for five bloggers to discover they’ll be at the Great Taste of the Midwest and arrange a meeting. Or perhaps a group Twitter effort. One note I read from the American Wine Bloggers meetup is that everybody was twittering.

* If we all end up at a American Beer Bloggers Conference the event will be a reflection of the beer blogging community, and while our blogs have a lot in common with wine blogs I think the agenda would be much different than at the wine conference. One of the best posts out of that one came from Steve Heimoff (be sure to read the comments as well.). I like wine and I like wine blogs, but one of the joys of life is that beer and wine are different. There’s no reason beer and wine blogs shouldn’t be as well.

Do you think you know where in the beer world this photo was taken? If you’ve been there and see a bartender pour beers for this sample tray and deliver it to a table you should remember.

In case you aren’t familiar with this almost weekly feature, here’s the background. It’s not a contest to see who can answer first, but intended to show you a few photos from our journey and to inspire some comments.

The weekly hint: This picture isn’t particularly new, so don’t be thinking it was taken in Italy. On the other hand, it wasn’t shot in the United States.

I just plain missed The Session #21 and the obviously provocative topic: Name you favorite beer.

I was prepared to pick that magic, but now I don’t have to because Friday came and went while I was tracking down still more Italian small-batch beers in Venice.

See what everybody was writing — sometimes picking a favorite, often times not — in Matt’s roundup.