WARNING:  THIS IS A RANT This past Sunday my wife and I made the trek to Ann Arbor, MI to so I could pick up a few bottles of Jolly Pumpkin's special release of Perseguidor (review coming soon).  My wife stayed in the van with our kids while I joined the line that was already of formidable size by 11:50.  Thought I to myself, "This will only take 1/2 an hour." Wrong. Nearly two and a half hours I finally paid for my beer.  A hundred or so people in front of me, most of them paying with credit card, and only one cashier made for quite a wait.  I really have no complaint with Jolly Pumpkin for to reasons:  1) Perseguidor is worth the wait, and 2) The line moved slower because Captain Ron made it a point to chat with every customer.  I have to say, Captain Ron is extremely kind and easy to talk to, as well as knowledgeable in all things beer. No, my complaint lies in the troop in front of me.  Let me air a few frustrations, and let me know if I'm off base, especially regarding my last complaint. First off, the smoke.  I'm not a smoker, but ...

It's rare that I jump into the fray on "hot news" where the blogosphere is concerned.  Put simply, everything that needs to be said has generally already been said on a given topic.  However, certain writing will occasionally raise my ire to such a degree that it simply merits a response.  So, I'll capitulate from being ensconced in my ivory tower by coming down and opening myself to critical comments by defending a craft brewer.  Who would of thought anyone would actually have to do that? As you have no doubt heard, BrewDog has now made the world's strongest beer at 32% ABV.  Of course, if naysayers would have it, it's not technically beer at all.  More on that in a moment.  My real problem is not with intelligent dialogue on the topic, it is with dismissive and percile logic used on posts like the one that has elicited my response. The amount of assumptions and lack of thorough intelligence is singularly lopsided as far as this gent is concerned.  Roger Protz is apparently the world's leading beer authority and a very intelligent fellow, but what he wrote will not do and is not enough to convince anybody who is not already of his disposition. ...

Let me be clear.  I refuse to denigrate (i.e., blacken...pun intended) the reputation of the Bruery.  Their beers are first rate and high class.  My aim is not at all to criticize them in this post.  I will certainly make some critical statements, but they do not reflect my thoughts about the Bruery itself. ***WARNING*** this is a rant. Do you ever attend beer events?  If you have been to one, you will probably know exactly what I'm talking about.  If you haven't, prepare yourself to eventually meet some of the people I'm about to describe. What the hell is wrong with people?  Seriously!  Like many others, I'd been planning to attend the Black Tuesday festivities for some time.  All is well and good.  Through personal correspondance, website information, and personal admonition, it was pretty easy to ascertain that Patrick and company did not want visitors to show up to the brewery until 4:30 or after.  It was courtesy to their neighbors that ilicitated the request from the Bruery.  But some people are simply habitual line steppers...literally (but more on that in a moment).  Sometimes the thing that makes beerfests, events, and occasions horrible is the people that show up to them. As an ...

Alcohol laws are a confusing bunch, as they are usually based on pragmatic reactions to social evils and aren't well thought out.  We see this in every sector, not just in the realm of booze.  In fact, just the other day I read an article in which some lobbyist group, while applauding the recent federal concern and proposal to make cell phone usage and texting illegal, said that our reps in Washington weren't going far enough, but needed to impose fierce penalties on folks eating, brushing their teeth, phat sitting, and anything deemed distracting.  The social ill:  accidents caused by distracted driving.  The solution:  Intervention and government micro managing.  Well shoot, why don't we just have the Government drive our cars for us? Extreme interventionism, while well intentioned doesn't always work.  Does anyone remember the prohibition, Al Capone, and Bugs Moran?  The problem:  prevalent drunkenness.  The solution:  Industry interventionism (prohibition)  The result:  Drunkenness (still), organized crime, lost tax funding, and an increase in home brewing (hey, at least SOMETHING positive resulted!) And here I must insert the obligatory disclaimer.  I am not advocating any political/partisan opinion (I try to remain aloof on this site) nor am I advocating anarchy and/or suggesting that ...

You are in for a rant...sort of. Topic: The Beer Belly Myth I'm sure you've read an article or two in the past year or so, or at least seen a triumphant twitter update, that exuberantly claims defeat to an age old myth, the beer belly.  Citing a British study on Czech men and woman that states, "They found no link between the amount of beer they drink and the size of their stomachs. Writing in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, they said claims people are obese because they drink too much beer are wrong," many beer authors breathed a sigh of guilt-relinquished-relief and proudly declared to the world that their beer belly must come from unknown origins; perhaps genetics, constipation, a tapeworm: anywhere but from beer. Am I the only one not buying this? It seems much easier to say, "I'm just a little chubby," than it is to say, "I drink too much beer." Now, I'm not MD...I don't assume to possess a detailed knowledge of the gastro-intestinal workings of the human body, energy absorption, etc., but I did ace health class in high school, I do enjoy beer, and I am a not so proud proprietor of a...*gasp*...beer belly. (Those are ...

Striking a balance between the new wave of exciting extreme beers and the beers that made them possible can be a task.  Hype, hypersensitivity, and a attitude of lament can make one upset about what he or she hasn't had.  I'm as guilty as anyone, so I'm not pointing the finger.  But isn't it singularly odd how the wider frame of technological advance and the like affect our dispositions?  Think about it: aren't we normally looking for the latest and greatest gadgets?  One begins to feel a bit like Brave New World is happening right under our noses.  Are we doing the same thing with beers?  To quote Homer Simpson, "Our gastronomic capacity knows no satiety."  But maybe that is what happens sometimes; the shear inundation and bewildering variety of beers simply washes us away.  I'm tired of the illusion that I can keep up. What can be done?  I think an appeal should be made here--an appeal for the classics.  Sure, I realize that advances in beer technology, malting, and curiosity drives forward the mechanism of beer styles.  The classics exist because people ventured out.  The same amount of breakneck speed that we have today does not apply, in the ...

I am not a patient man.  My family, friends, and the guy going 10 mph under the speed limit whose bumper I am riding will verify this, should you have any doubts.  So, a few weeks ago as I typed samueladams.com into my web browser, I shortly became incensed as the site asked me my age not once, but twice ,just to make sure that I was actually 21 years old. I am on my lunch break here guys...those precious 2.5 seconds I just wasted could have been put to a better purpose...like daydreaming about beer... Having recently contemplated the intricacies (and oddities!) of the U.S. Drinking Age, I began to ponder why a beer website, such as Sam Adams needed such strict age checking before visiting their site.  Is it really necessary?  I mean, Samuel Adams does not sell any of there fermented product on their site (although they do offer a pretty rad Ski Lift Beer Tray...which I must have).  Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but the brief and markedly credible research I've done has shown that even sites selling beer do not legally have to verify age upon entrance to the site, only upon checkout. Consider this...it would be ...