musing

The beer menu at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque: Corona, Miller Lite, Tecate, Dos Equis, Marble (local brewery, both the India Pale Ale and the Wildflower Honey Wheat).

No local wine.

Alas, at intermission of “Bless Me, Ultima” last night most people seemed to be ordering wine or coffee.

As I wrote last week in posting the Wikio rankings, bloggers sure like to blog about blogging. Sure enough, madness followed back-to-back posts by Andy Crouch (shouldn’t it amuse us all if those vault him into the top spot next month?). Too many “why I blog” posts followed to link to.

I already wrote my mission statement five years ago, so I acted on the fact I had nothing new to say by saying nothing (it doesn’t always work that way.) Until I read a monstrously long John McPhee interview in the Paris Review.

Like maybe 10,000 words into it you have this exchange:

I suppose one of the hard things for a young writer is to learn that there’s no obvious path.

MCPHEE

There is no path. If you go to dental school, you’re a dentist when you’re done. For the young writer, it’s like seeing islands in a river and there’s all this stuff you can get into—where do you go? It can be a mistake to get too great a job at first; that can turn around and stultify you. At the age of, say, twenty-one, you’re in a very good position to make mistakes. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four—each time the mistakes become a little more costly. You don’t want to be making these mistakes when you’re forty-five. But the thing is, in steering around all those islands, and finding currents to go around them, they’re all relevant.

Do you worry about outlets diminishing for writers?

MCPHEE

I’m really concerned about it. And nobody knows where it’s going—particularly in terms of the relationship of the Internet to the print media. But writing isn’t going to go away. There’s a big shake-up—the thing that comes to mind is that it’s like in a basketball game or a lacrosse game when the ball changes possession and the whole situation is unstable. But there’s a lot of opportunities in the unstable zone. We’re in that kind of zone with the Internet.

But it’s just unimaginable to me that writing itself would die out. OK, so where is it going to go? It’s a fluid force: it’ll come up through cracks, it’ll go around corners, it’ll pour down from the ceiling.

So two thoughts.

First, I wouldn’t say that Emily Sauter has things totally figured out, but head over to Pints and Panels to see her “beer reviews in sequential tradition,” otherwise known as cartoons. This weekend because I was clicking to read a variety of blogs I’ve never seen before because I was following the Beer Bloggers Conference on Twitter I was struck by how some blogs are a whole lot different, some not so much.

Pints and Panels, which I’ve been following since meeting Em at the Great American Beer Festival, falls into the former category. But that’s not the point. That Em and most other bloggers have more future than I do (geez, that looks dreary in black and white, but isn’t meant that way) doesn’t necessarily mean they see it more clearly than I (already feeling better), but they are going to be around for more of it (shoulders sag). And they are going to find different currents.

Second, the beer analogy (this is a beer blog, after all). You should already have it figured out, but one example. Only hours before Will Meyers of Cambridge Brewing brewed his first beer using a “sour mash” other small-batch brewers were telling him he was crazy, that he’d destroy his brewery. If you’ve ever tasted Cerise Cassée you’re glad he didn’t listen.

Guess I’ll have to try harder.

Wikio ranks Appellation Beer No. 2 among US beer blogs in its November listings. This is only the second month for the US rankings, and just like last month Beervana is No. 1. I know this because the folks at Wikio sent me a sneak preview, which I’m sure you’d rather look at than my commentary. Seems pretty interesting just days before the first Beer Bloggers Conference. (Commentary will follow.)

Beer

Ranking made by Wikio

Jeff Alworth of Beervana offered a good look at the methodology last month when he showed up in the top spot. Take the time to read it, and consider his caveat: “no one reads beer blogs.” Obviously he means “hardly anybody” because he, like I, appreciates that you are reading us.

Pete Brown has been recapping the UK rankings for more than a year. This has led to interesting conversations across the way, given that if there’s anything beer bloggers like writing about more than beer it’s beer blogging.

I particularly appreciate that Martyn Cornell of Zythophile (No. 5 this month in the UK, with a bullet) asked one set of good questions, then still more.

But to return to the US rankings and the upcoming Beer Bloggers Conference. I don’t know if these ratings will be discussed, but I do know there are seminars on things like SEO that you can see here (that’s “search engine optimization”). All this will surely make the Wikio rankings dynamic and interesting to watch . . .

. . . if you consider navel gazing a sport.

That Olde English 800 3.2 tops the list of the world’s worst beers at Rate Beer got a little press this past week, but that Olde English 800 sucks hardly ranks as news. Even if it does have its own Facebook page.

Back in 1978 James Robertson gave Old English (note the difference in spelling) 800, the version brewed at Ortlieb in Philadelphia, a hefty 12 in The Great American Beer Book. Not the worst (Fischer Pils received a 4, and there were many in single digits), but poor by any measure. And these numbers were earned in carefully conducted blind tastings (multiple tasters, highest and lowest scores tossed out, various adjustments made).

I wouldn’t have bothered were it not for the opportunity to pass along this drinking note: “One of the beers more like a ‘pop’ wine, strong aromatic flavor that is overdone. Too sweet for a beer drinker. Nor can I think of any food that would go with it.” (Not even a food pairing could save it, Alan.)

Nonetheless MillerCoors has seen fit to keep it alive, and to even brew it to a variety of strengths. You can have my invitation to that blind tasting.