Response to the Daily Pull’s question of whether it’s craft if a beer is brewed by someone else.

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There is a nice post about Beer-Evangelism over at the New School Beer Blog. It is about Ben’s attempt to show some of Portland’s finest beer offerings to people who did not necessarily like or care to drink beer. My comments are a nice anecdote to the blog post, but I’ll also copy and past [...]

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Inspired by the beers history, Slow Beers is making Heather Ale for the Mythical State of Jefferson exhibition and Open Engagement Conference in portland.

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As an observer of the craft beer industry and a consumer of their wonderful products I have very much felt the collaborative nature of these businesses. It often seems like local brewers aren’t out to get each other and steal the market; they just want to make quality products and share them. This collaborative economy makes customers feel a part of the community and it grows interest so that no market stealing is necessary.

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Today I saw an interesting post over at A Good Beer Blog. Taking a quote from Zythophile, he thought through it’s meaning and wrote a few nice paragraphs. Go check it out. Here’s the quote:

“It’s not said often enough in this argument: we drink because we enjoy it, and the overall happiness that brings to society, I would suggest, vastly outweighs any disbenefits.”

And in reply:
“…If we are thinking about good beer we should also take an interesting in increasing and sharing the benefits while reducing easily identifiable harm – including those harms short of full bore alcoholism. When I think about this blog writing and the thousand of you who I am told read my posts every day I sometime wonder if I have encouraged anyone into a habit that is harmful rather than convivial. I am not satisfied to think of the statistics…”

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Last night I attended the Scottish Pub Sing, led by the Portland Revels, at Lucky Lab in Portland, Oregon. It was beautiful hearing everyone sing songs and while we all drank together. Having a group of people sing together like this reminded me very much of church and just further solidified in my mind that the pub is really a wonderful social center, and good beer is an important element in bringing people together.

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This is a video from Hot Knives, a group of bloggers devoted to elevating vegetables and drinking good beer. They’ve put together a book that has 21 or so of their favorite writings from their blog. It looks like a pretty nicely packaged book and it comes with a URL where you get a mixtape of music that “goes well with the beers.” A pretty exciting package I think, combining good design, craft, and beer. They even have a review of the 20th anniversary Heather Ale from Williams Brothers on their site (which is one of the beers I most look forward to on an upcoming art trip to Glasgow), and it seems like their logo was inspired by Scotland’s BrewDog Micro Brewery.

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Where can I find good beer in New York City? On my last trip I made a few stops that served local microbrews including Sixpoint Craft, Captain Lawrence and Kelso of Brooklyn. I even visited Sixpoint, in the Red Hook district.

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Christmas Holiday cheer with beer bottles. Creative uses for beer bottles.

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My homebrewing group supports my field research and artistic activity by buying-in on the beer we brew. I’ve made Christmas beers for the holiday season to give as gifts.

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2009 Abyss in one hand, remote control in the other. The other night I paired Deschutes Brewery’s The Abyss beer with The Abyss science fiction film. It’s The Double Abyss! So, do the two go together? The movie does indeed bring you to a dark place, well below the surface of the earth where there is no light, just dark. You get a sense of being claustrophobic as you watch it. The Abyss beer does provide some of the darkest, thickest beer, you can find but the flavors open up up as you sip it, revealing layer after layer of rich complexity – quite the opposite of claustrophobia. The movie makes you cold, knowing the people are so far down underwater that there would be very little heat. The beer is 11% alcohol, an imperial stout, if my memory serves me, so it warms you right up. That’s a good combo. The movie is a very long one so if you wanted to drink a full beer you would need to sip it. And the beer is definitely made for sipping, but I can’t imagine drinking the whole thing in one 3 hour sitting. I would say make sure a couple friends are with you and sip very slowly. But a beer with such high alcohol volume just serves to increase your tiredness during a slow movie, so by the end of the movie you will likely be asleep. If you’re wanting to watch the full movie, I recommend a different beer.

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Some upcoming down-to-earth-science fiction includes the Leonid Meteor Shower, the utopian vision of Sam Adams Brewery and Jefferson State Brewery, and the Science Pub at McMenamins through OMSI.

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History by the Glass: Portland’s Past and Present Saloons, Bars, & Taverns by Paul Pintarich. Looks good, but might be time for an updated edition considering Portland’s booming beer and bar industry in the last 25 years.

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Portland’s Bermuda Triangle is Horse Brass, Movie Madness, and Belmont Station. The perfect, walkable, place to lose track of time, enjoy beer and science fiction, and bring something home for later.

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If you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay Area in the next year, I would recommend attending the 99 Bottles of Beer Exhibition at the Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley. The collection is dedicated to “Global Brewing Traditions: 2500 BC to Present” exploring the both the similarities and broad differences in a world [...]

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