What do beer bloggers need to know (more) about?

Where in the beer world?

As Alan reported, Elle Potter has been sending out very nice personal invitations to bloggers who have not yet signed up to attend the third Beer Bloggers Conference next month in Indianapolis.

Way back when the BBC was picking the host city for the 2012 I recall indicating that I would attend a conference in St. Louis, Austin (because I told one of the potential local hosts I’d speak, they have barbecue and we can visit relatives) or Indianapolis (only 250 miles, more relatives, who might even let me bring a sleeping bag and toss it on the floor at Sun King Brewing). But then they scheduled it at a time we already have plans, making my decision easy.

However, since Elle wrote “having your feedback what might be keeping you from joining this year helps us as we grow with the beer blogging community’s needs in mind” I took a look at the agenda. It’s obviously a great party, and that’s good enough reason to go. But I don’t see much in those content sessions that might improve the quality of the content that appears here. Call me old fashioned but that’s how I’d justify signing up for the party.

So my question for you, although I’m not sure I actually expect any answers, is what should beer bloggers learn in order to get better at blogging? Not better at making money from blogging, or at least scoring free beer. Not better at organizing beer events. Better at regularly publishing posts you want to read.

(OK, the photo has next to nothing to do with the post, but I was looking for a quick party image and this photo taken at the cafe across from the Achouffe brewery in Belgium filled the bill.)

Don’t forget The Session #64: Pale Ale

The SessionThe Session #64 will be in session tomorrow (or June 1, 2012 if you aren’t reading this on May 31).

Carla Companion, the Beer Babe, will host. The topic is Pale Ale. Find two of them, drink them, write about them. It’s that simple.

We’ll be traveling and focused on things other than beer (or at least writing about it). I almost feel I should apologize for being absent, but I look forward to reading the recap next week.

Extreme. Soul. Are we talking about wine or beer?

A) Wine Enthusiast writer and noted blogger Steve Heimoff asks if a wine can have soul.

Perhaps it’s our more jaded, cautious age that does not permit me to do so, in quite that fashion. I find certain wines “fabulous,” “fantastic,” “stellar” and the like. But anthropomorphising wine isn’t my style. On the other hand, “soul” is just a word. I’ve enjoyed many wines that gave me such “a sensorial onslaught as to capture [my] complete and undivided attention.” Whether or not they had “soul,” I will leave to others to determine.

I wouldn’t call soul just a word. Quite honestly, more than six years after I added the tagline “In search of the soul of beer” here I’m still looking and occasionally wondering just what that means. But there’s more to it than trying to find “stellar” beer.

B) If you’ll recall, I’m a fan of Wine Wars, in large part because the book takes the “sideways” view. Author Mike Veseth has announced his next book will be called Extreme Wine (Honest to goodness, I typed beer right after extreme; pure force of habit.)

Where Wine Wars probed the center of the world wine market, Extreme Wines focuses on edges based on the same theory that wine lovers use when they tilt their glasses “sideways” and analyze the liquid’s rim: the forces of change first make themselves visible at the outer limits.

This, of course, is good reason to consider the role of extreme beer. In fact, this table of contents is just waiting for somebody to replace the word wine with beer. And maybe throw in the words barrel-aged, Brettanomyces and hops.

1. X-Wines: In Vino Veritas?
2. Extreme Wine: Best and the Worst
3. The Fame Game: Most Famous, Most Forgotten and Most Infamous
4. Sold Out: Rarest, Most Unusual and Most Ubiquitous
5. Money Wine: Cheapest, Most Expensive and Most Overpriced
6. Extreme Wine Booms and Busts
7. Extreme Wine People
8. Fifteen Minutes: Celebrity Wine
9. [The Medium is the] Message in a Bottle: Television, Film and the Web
10. Around the World in 80 Wines: Extreme Wine Tourism
11. Extreme Wine by the Numbers
12. Tasting Notes from the Edge

The Session #64: Woohoo! A return to style

The SessionCarla Companion, the Beer Babe, has picked the topic for The Session #64 and it is Pale Ale. Find two of them, drink them, write about them. It’s that simple.

The Session has taken many twists and turns since the first one in March of 2007, many of them delightful. But I never would have predicted 64 gatherings in that a) we’d still be doing this, b) we wouldn’t yet have focused on pale ale.

Looking back at Jay Brooks’ archive I see we’ve also somehow overlooked IPA. Oh, my.