This article is about more than beer:
The true apex of appreciation is the ability to locate the sublime in any style (not, of course, any beer). This means being able to pick up a glass of helles–or English mild or Belgian bière de table or even a characterful mass market lager (of which, admittedly, there are not a great number)–and find the flavors as pleasant and satisfying as when you heft a barrel-aged imperial stout.
The Beerviz site is an interesting visual recommendation system for beer. There are some good beers on the wheel but I don’t agree with their recommendation. Particularly funny is that if you like Pliny The Elder, there’s nothing else they can recommend.
Funny but un-surprising list of good beers for all new-parent-occasions:
There is no gold sticker for another successful notch in the calendar. But there is an imperial IPA, such as Lagunitas’ piney and tropical Hop Stoopid.
From the Boston Globe:
“It’s the kind of ale monks like to drink,” said Keeley, noting wryly that people “love the idea of monks brewing beer.”
That’s because they have a good track record. Yup. This is good news for my state.
My friend Ken, over at Drink IPA cleverly adapted Sifttter to log the beers he drinks each week. Ken probably drinks better beer than any of us and I like this idea. I won’t be putting them into Day One but logging to a text file sounds smart.
If you’re an Untappd fiend like some of my friends, this might be a good solution to own your own data in a format you like better than Untappd.
An interesting take on how the Beer-Check-In apps change the other behaviors around social drinking.
The time it takes to check-in and the impact that has on conversation
The usage of the app to check-in beers during festivals and provide a quick rating
The braggadocious attitude that the app encourages via social media
On point 1: I partially agree. Many apps take too long.
From Chris Shea:
There’s a very good chance that, if you’re reading this article, you’re college educated and probably white (just going by statistics). The thing you need to understand is that brewing is not glamorous or cool. It’s hard, crap work and it’s not very rewarding.
Dreams always look so much better from the outside. This is a great essay from the inside.
I love BeerGraphs because it is about two of my favorite things: Beer and data visualization. This latest post digs into the Untappd location data:
We use the geolocation data to calculate the distance between the beer rater and the brewery where the beer was produced and then store that number in our database. To my surprise, ratings that were made at or within 10 miles of the brewery received slightly below-average scores (3.
The Homebrew site on StackExchange is a nice alternative to sifting through homebrew forums. Don’t get me wrong, forums like HomeBrewTalk are chock-full of information. But the StackExchange answers are succinct and user rated which makes quick and accurate answers easier to find.
From the ABC News Blog:
In the end, they developed five craft brews – Salted Chocolate Stout with Peanut Butter (Peanut Patties); Belgian Dubbel with Cocoa Nibs & Coconut (Samoas); Peanut Butter Cream Ale (Do-si-dos); Peppermint Porter (Thin Mints); and Shortbread Golden Ale (Trefoils) – and sold out instantly at $6 to $9 each.
I do not abide peppermint in my beer, but the rest sound great.
