As November approaches, I’m noticing more and more winter seasonal beers showing up in stores around town. While darker, high alcohol beers tend to dominate the shelves during the holidays, there is a lot of variety on what’s available. There are hundreds of lists out there on the web on what the best winter beers are. Instead of creating another list myself, I wanted to get a pulse from you Blog About Beer readers on…
This time next week I’m going to be in Las Vegas for a few days for Blog World. Basically if you haven’t heard of it, Blog World is a conference for bloggers and new media related businesses. This will be my first time at the conference, and I’m hoping to make some good connections and learn some new things to make Blog About Beer even better. If you’re going to Blog World let me know…
Craft beer and the state of Oregon go hand in hand. With so many great beers coming out of the state, which ones should you drink? If you’re not located close by, here is a list I put together just for you of 10 Oregon beers you need to try. Some you may be able to find in your local bottle shop, while others you will probably only find if you come visit or get…
There is something glorious about watching sharks devour whatever is in their path. They are incredible animals that seem so full of mystery, power, and beauty all at the same time. Every year the Discovery Channel puts together Shark Week, which is 7 days full of shark packed TV. Today we are in the middle of shark week and I figured it is necessary to share some good beers that should be in your hand while watching…
I’m just back from a successful, if not wet and chilly, Kate The Great Day at the Portsmouth Brewery in beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And what a wild & crazy morning it was. Josh Christie (of BrewsAndBooks.com fame), a few mutual cohorts and I piled into the car this morning around 3:50am and departed from Portland en route to Portsmouth for The Portsmouth Brewery’s Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout – the beer which is…
In case you missed the BeerAdvocate.com Extreme Beer Fest (EBF) this year — don’t worry, so did I — the folks at FloridaSPL.com shot some video interviews with a few of the brewers on hand discussing the extreme beers their brewed for the festival. Watch them and feel like you were there. Or even more bummed that you missed it. Either way, they’re good for a watch (more related videos linked at the end of…
I’m a sucker for lists. The Top 10 This, the Best 5 That. So I had a bit of fun when I got my hands on the latest issue of Beer Advocate magazine (yes, they have a magazine. And it’s actually pretty good. I’d never pay for a subscription, but if you can find one of their free drop spots, pick it up) a few days ago which includes six “top 25” lists in the “Beer in Review” section. The lists are the “All-Time Top Beers on Planet Earth”; the top 25 “Most-Wanted Beers”; the “Top Beers That Get No Respect” — these are the 25 worst-rated beers on the BeerAdvocate forums and include the likes of Bud Light (1), Natural Ice (15), Icehouse (20) and Crazy Ed’s Cave Creek Chili Beer (7) — the “All-Time Top Brewers” (which should read “breweries” in my opinion and not “brewers”, since they list the breweries themselves and not the names of the people who formulated each recipe, etc.); the top 25 “Places to Have a Pint” (which includes Maine’s own Ebenezer’s Pub (1) in Lovell, and Novare Res Bier Cafe (21) here in Portland); and lastly, the “Alstrom Bros’ Top Beers” which “made us stop, think and drink in 2009”. Six of which were brewed in New England, and two of which here in Maine (Vagabond from Allagash and surprisingly, Local Harvest from Sebago).
Cross-checking the lists with my own drinking experiences, I’ve personally had more than half (14, if my count is right) of the “All-Time Top 24 Beers on Planet Earth” and 8 of the “25 Most-Wanted Beers”, including the top 3. Not bad since probably 80% of the beers and the breweries on all of these lists (except the list of swill) aren’t available in Maine. Here are the All-Time Top 25 and the 25 Most-Wanted (after the jump… just click it). How many have you had?
The February issue of Maxim Magazine hit the shelves late last week and for once included an article worth reading which wasn’t about hot girls. It was however about beer. The four-page spread was a run down of what Maxim decided are the 25 Best New Beers in America. No real explanation of what “new” means, since some of the beers on the list are decidedly not all together that new but it was a…
There’s a great piece over at Chow.com entitled “The Beer with the Green Label” (and no, not ‘green’ as environmentally-friendly, although they do plenty of that too) which describes the sort of fall from grace that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has seen among beer aficionados across the country and how the brewery has been dealing with the backlash. It’s an interesting point being made — not that anyone thinks that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is…
T’is the season for holiday ales. And a fantastic season it is. One of my favorite annual holiday beer traditions is the “Our Special Ale” which is produced annually from the folks at Anchor Brewing Co. in San Fransisco. Amazingly, they’ve been brewing their Christmas Ale every year since 1975 and every year the recipe for this beer is completely different; as is the tree featured on its label (check out all of the trees…