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 generally think about food and wine more than beer — that knows less about beer than the people who hang out here. So excuse me if I look at their stories and think “not enough new here to point to.”

The latest email is about a video in their “The perfect” series. We’ve had the perfect fried chicken, the perfect chocolate chip cookie. By god, let’s find the perfect beer.

The choice is Russian River Supplication. Maybe it is perfect, but I like Temptation better. So where is the the in the?

I should also point out that for a year I owned the domain name “myperfectbeer.com.” I let it go and as far as I can tell nobody claimed it. Does that mean there is no perfect beer? Certainly if there is one there must be two and if there are two . . . you can see where I am going.

Watching the video I had one other thought. There are different cherries in some of those barrels. So if Vinnie Cilurzo is still experimenting how could what is already in there be perfect?

Perhaps I’m just being crusty. But why would Lessley Anderson complain? She wrangled a link out of me.

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 this magazine, which could be found occasionally at the random Barnes & Noble. I think I last saw it in Prague last November because Evan Rail brought a few copies along when we met for dinner.

Just two things before I get back to “long form” writing (“Brewing With Wheat” and today I’m writing about the epic battles between bakers and brewers for control of wheat production — OK, it’s not really that sexy):

– Adrian concludes that magazines devoted to beer have no future in the U.K. and that “makes me think that maybe this is the end of beer-writing as we have known it since the 1970s. We are all beer bloggers now.”

– Therefore it seems like a good time to point to a post from Alice Feiring, a wonderful writer who happens to specialize in wine.

He wrote, “As I’ve been saying for a while now: blogs didn’t kill journalism. blogs killed writing. The art of writing is now essentially fully devalued. It’s a hobby.”

Think of it before you jump all over us. The popularity of the blog has reduced writing to a 500-word postage stamp norm, and usually given away for free. For free. Free, the industry standard. While a digest of words can be a fun exercise in craft, the indulgence the 2000- to 5000 word article was nirvana.

and (edited for length) . . .

Oh, to once again be paid to fret and angst over the specific word and nuance. To work with an editor, to banter back and forth and develop and like a dancer stretch for that point on the stage with utter conviction.

I long for the days when there was craft, there was grammar and there was poetry . . .

And so bloggers who have jobs that pay the bills other than writing, please take no offense. No offense is meant. But this is a lament, from those of us who have bet our lives on the written word, for those of us who have no fall back plan (actually, journalism is my fall back for fiction) whether the subject is art, music, politics, literature or wine, our lives are changing. No one goes into writing to make pots of dough.

At a time when American beer commands more respect than it has in its history there are, thankfully, a growing number of publications focused on beer. And we’ve got cleverly written blogs rich with beer citizen journalism.

Sure the grammar could get better (and we won’t even start on the poetry . . .) But I’d like to think we’re at the beginning of beer writing as we will know it, and I’m not even sure what form that might take.