No shit, buddy. You start starting a brewery and then you fall off the face of the blog? Way to show dedication. Hell, you showed up for the Session that you hosted and then.. what? Posted a few pictures of a half-done tattoo and fell into obscurity? Good work!

Okay. Touche. I’ve been absent. My bad. In truth, I’ve been working on a few articles and just haven’t had a chance to finish them up (though I did get one out – non-beer related – for Intrepid Media) and.. and.. I haven’t forgotten about you, internet. It’s not you, it’s me. I swear!

In fact, just to get things rolling again before I drop my bomb post about craft market dichotomy, let me give you a couple of posts from OTHER blogs that I’ve found interesting, lately.

Nate at Thank Heaven for Beer wrote a great piece yesterday about HR 4278 and why reduction of excise tax on small brewers is NOT a stimulus package, and why it is, actually, fair. This follows up another great post (with equally great discussion) about beer reviews and whether or not they’re legit if they used terms you can’t recognize.

Seriously – if you like to read about the craft beer industry, go read both of those pieces AND all of the comments. They’re well worth it. Thoughtful pieces, thoughtful commentary.

Ken at The Hop Press wrote a really neat piece about Sierra Nevada’s use of a Gas Chromatographic Mass Spectrometer w/ Olfactory to pick up really specific fruit flavors and aromas from new hop varietals. It’s a really fascinating piece. I enjoy the implications of what it means for the future of flavor in craft beer, which I would like to define as: “More awesome is yet to come.”

And as for me? You just watch and wait. And then take me to the cleaners in the comments on my next post.

Thank to everyone who took part in this month’s session. We had a lot of great response. It was great to see such a breadth of posts, and I was happy to see some people contribute who haven’t in a while. Here for your reading pleasure:

Mario at Brewed For Thought defines the “California Session Beer”, made with umph, but not too much.

The Beer Nut takes us on a small tour of two session beers: Hopback Entire Stout and Breconshire Night Beacon.

John/Devoid of Beertaster.ca talks about his favorite lawnmower beers.

Steph Weber, one of the many talented bloggers of the Hop Press posits that session beer is a personal definition, and tells us hers: easy to enjoy while chatting with friends.

Chris at Notch Session Ales gives us a look at his recent article for Beer Advocate magazine in which he says he wants to take the definition for session beer back from the 6% crowd.

Derrick at Bay Area Beer Runner likens session beer “great background music during an evening out with friends.”

Jay at A Beer in Hand (is worth two in the fridge) tells us about returning to his session stout after an affair with IPAs.

Lew Bryson goes to town at The Session Beer Project, puts some old demons to bed, and reiterates his definition a session beer in the face of the bigger burrito. You’ll never think of a ball-washer at the golf course the same way again.

Steve at All Good Beer hopes that craft breweries will continue to expand the session beer market, even though they’re not necessarily headline-grabbing beers.

Brian Yaeger, author of Red, White, and Brew says that if he had a lawn, he’d mow it with Anchor Steam. Well, no. He’d mow it with a riding lawnmower, but he’d drink Anchor Steam. He also waxes eloquent about the low ABV brews at this local hangouts.

Sean at Beer Search Party suggests that the reason that the Session Beer Train has not yet pulled into the station is because of America’s hypocritical self-view of over-consumption, or perhaps that many craft beer drinkers see session beers as “too macro.”

Tom at Lug Wrench Brewing asks you to be a rebel and go drink a session beer.

Someone at Beer Made Clear (there so many of you guys), who apparently has family neighboring mine in Northern Maine (yeah Fort Kent!) and tells a story of discovering Shipyard Fuggles IPA in during a session which he describes as “all-encompassing conversations which start with beers but end with opinions; on politics, culture or the nature of good and evil.”

Jon at The Brew Site gets back to the review and gives us a one of Gone Fishin Mild Ale, from Beer Valley Brewing.

Peter at A Better Beer Blog notes that session drinking is “essentially the guts of the craft beer movement” and hopes that craft brewers will start to “sessionize” everything instead of “imperialize” everything in the future.

Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer tells that old joke about the Englishman, the Belgian, and the Czech, notes that session beers are different for everyone and wonders whether the appellation “session” needs definition at all.

Seabass, from Natty Greene’s, posts from inside aussenhaus where he compares craft beer to coffee and wine, and notes that session beers are the greatest delight and the hardest to make, and defines session beer as “deliciously non-intrusive, self-explanatory, [and] a good companion in life.”

Alan at A Good Beer Blog notes that what is probably stopping craft beer from growing is the industry’s inability to take advantage of the session market.

Jim at Two Parts Rye approves.

Jay Brooks of the tells us not of session beers, but of the sessions themselves, and shares the story of the founding of his own regular session, The Philopotes Society.

And finally, my own post where I note that session beer, to me, is one that can be enjoyed without effort and that, yes, please, I would like some more.

À votre santé,
Erik

One year ago, I started this blog thanks to the advice of my great friends who told me, “We’re sick of hearing you rattle on to us about beer. You should go start a blog and have an outlet elsewhere… where we can’t hear you.”

In blog years I think that means the blog is a teenager. It sure does talk back to me enough. Sheesh.

Anyway, I know I said some of this a few months ago on my 100th post, but, thanks for coming by and reading and, most importantly, thanks for coming by and commenting. Discussion and debate are the seeds through which our future is grown.

Now help me celebrate by going and drinking a great beer.

Cheers!

Sometime last summer, I got an e-mail from this guy Kevin. I didn’t know who he was. He was a fan of North Carolina beer and had an eye on this website called Know Your Brewer. It was a site that I had run across before – it was something that had been put together at the tail end of Pop the Cap by Sean Wilson – the guy who put PtC together – as a site to highlight North Carolina beer. Kevin had noticed that there wasn’t much movement on the site and had a few ideas about how to get things rolling again. I’ve never been quite sure about why he decided to include me on the e-mail (among a few others who I DO understand, because they’ve been involved in the beer scene – @Geistbear and another local beer guy – who ended up being too busy to be involved at the time). It turned out to be me, Sean, and Kevin sitting at a bar sort of brainstorming ideas of how to highlight NC breweries.

A few weeks later, the North Carolina Brewers Guild spoke up. They were interested in pulling the content that Sean had originally put into Know Your Brewer into their domain, NCBeer.org. They needed someone to manage the creation of content and help move the site forward. Sean was busy (and still is) with the launch of his own brewery, so he sent a message out asking if anybody was interested in stepping up. I jumped at it, and have been working for the Brewers Guild managing their website, its content, and whatever else they need – alongside Rob Ulick who has been in-freakin’-valuable and fantastic – ever since.

In the meantime, Know Your Brewer went a little vacant. A lot of the content that had originally been created got moved over to ncbeer.org. A lot of the traffic moved, as well. But I had an idea sort of banging around in the back of my head and I pitched it to Sean.

This Know Your Brewer idea was a good one. I had really enjoyed reading the interviews on the site, and I was a little sad to see it die. What if, I asked, we took the time to move this nationwide? Wouldn’t it be cool if we could celebrate breweries everywhere? One of the things that had struck me ever since I started getting into the craft beer industry is just how nice the people are. It might be the friendliest industry I’ve ever had the pleasure to be a part of. There’s camaraderie in the place of competition. What’s more, like any small business, the people involved are very much the epitome of their own brand.

Every brewery has its own story that each day and each beer become sentences, paragraphs, and chapters of. The people that work there are characters in their own storyline. Customers – beer geeks – tend to get wrapped up in the story of the brewery and in most cases (high profile breweries aside) don’t get the chance chance to know anything about the greatest protagonist: the brewer. That, I said to Sean, is what I’d like to see. We’re such a young industry, we’ve got so many good people with so many good stories – someone should be telling them.

For whatever foolhardy reason, Sean agreed; we’ve been moving forward ever since. He’s been an idea machine and – let’s face it, it was his site. That he was gracious enough to allow me to descend on it with my idea was wonderful. That he jumped in feet-first with brainstorming and hard work whilst in the midst of starting a business is beyond awesome.

It’s been a little rough to get moving at times. Neither of us really have the time to dive into another project that we’re not getting paid for. The site needed a pretty hefty redesign and, most importantly, it needed content. I started contacting breweries in every place that I was traveling in the winter and coming up in the spring and trying to arrange interviews. We asked a friend of mine that I met through Intrepid Media, Russ Carr to give us a hand with the design and then we set out to recruit writers. Kevin Myers, the guy who sent me the e-mail to start this insane chain into action, was one of the first people to sign up. His interview with Josh Brewer of Mother Earth Brewing will start off our second week. The reason that Know Your Brewer looks as snazzy as it does is due 110% to the hard work that Russ put in. I owe Russ lots and lots of beer.

The reason that we have good content queued up is because we’ve had some really great writers step up and volunteer to throw some stuff our way. Nobody’s getting paid to do any of this. We’re all working through this as a labor of love to tell the stories of some pretty admirable men and women.

Take the time to head over to Know Your Brewer and read a little bit about Brian Connery, Senior Brewer at Dogfish Head – a really nice guy who took time out of his schedule two days after Christmas, to get interviewed by me at the end of his work day. He’s dealt with me badgering him over the past few months, promising that this content was going to go up sometime and, oh by the way, would you mind answering this other thing, too?

I hope you enjoy reading about his background and about why he loves his job so much. Later on the week, you can read a great recipe that he made up using two Dogfish Head beers that I’ll actually be cooking up in my kitchen this evening.

I hope, too, that I can get back to writing here on a more regular basis. Know Your Brewer has been taking up so much of my attention lately that Top Fermented has only gotten a few rants from me. Look for more in the upcoming weeks – when I’m not typing out my interviews for KYB.

And finally, I hope you’re moved to take the time, go talk to a brewer, and write it up to submit it to Know Your Brewer. We will always be in want of more content, but with 1500 breweries in the U.S. and more opening every day, there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be swamped with it. If you’re interested in contributing, send a message over to info@knowyourbrewer.com and we can get you hooked up.

Enjoy.

Tonight! Tonight’s the night!

Back in December, I hooked up with five other beer bloggers to have a brew off. The idea? Everybody makes the same recipe, but we each get to change one thing.

We made a stout, and sent it out, and all that’s left to do is drink. We’ll be having a 5-way conference call this evening over the internets, which will be recorded and shared as a podcast for anyone who’s interested in listening in later. At the same time, keep an eye on this post – any tweets made with the hashtag #brewoff will show up here. Stay tuned to find out if my beer got everywhere and still retained carbonation! [ducks]

Finally, watch this space for a bit of live-blogging as we go.

7:56 PM: Just blew my eardrums out testing my headset with Skype. Now, for the entire call I’m going to be saying, “WHAT? WHAT?!”

8:18 PM: Just set up a video chat room at http://tinychat.com/brewoff. Not sure how many of the bloggers will join me on it, but it’s there. If you’re not one of us 5, I’ll restrict you from broadcasting your own audio/video in the room, but you can watch and type.

8:45 PM: Possible monkey wrench. Just got a DM from @HopfenTreader: “I don’t have your beer yet ???” Uh-oh.

8:59 PM: Just connected via Skype to le conference call of champions. Being recorded; using my podcasting voice.

9:06 PM: And we’re rolling!

9:09 PM: Here’s the tally of what was added/changed to the beers.

Joseph: Toasted Oats in place of Flaked Wheat
Aaron: Lactose (1/2 lb added, last 5 mins of boil)
Derek: Molasses (~12oz added, last 5 mins of boil)
Erik: Abbey Ale Yeast in place of Wyeast 1056
Nate: Maple Syrup (~16oz added, last 5 mins of boil)
Peter: Bourbon Barrel (half of the batch aged in an oak barrel that had been soaked with whiskey, then half batch blended back into whole batch)

9:18 PM: Just tried Jospeh’s – probably closest to the base style out of all of us. Nice sweet slightly roasty flavors. Really, nice and drinkable. Going to be hard to comment on differences until we get into some of the others.

9:22 PM: Aaron’s beer is a lactose beer. I am lactose intolerant. I’m not drinking much of this so that I can.. y’know.. digest it. It is absolutely amazing how much different this is from the beer prior to this. Good. Maybe a little sour. I’m not a huge man of milk stouts in general, so I’m not going to comment on quality, but I can comment on the fact that it’s a BIG ol’ lactose beer.

9:29 PM: Just popped mine open. Low carbonation, which is a shame. I was running out of CO2 when I put everything together. Good, just low carbonated. The abbey ale yeast makes an incredible difference in the flavor. It’s a VERY different beer from Joseph’s. Peppery notes abound, not as many of the esters as I would have expected. I wonder how much is getting lost on the roast.

9:37 PM: Nate’s maple syrup beer. You can really smell it on the nose – doesn’t really come through as much on the flavor. Solid beer. The base style is there, and picks up a lot of nice fruit flavors, some from the yeast that Nate ended up using, but I imagine you’re picking up some fruitiness from the maple syrup post-fermentation.

9:44 PM: Derek’s molasses stout – big.. just.. huge wonderful sweet nose. Nice caramelly flavor on the beer. The molasses really comes through. Just a fantastic beer, and really well-balanced.

9:49 PM: Peter’s Bourbon Barrel Stout – wow – just a ton of oak. Peter put half the batch in an oak barrel with bourbon in there. The oak is really prominent to me – bourbon notes are very subtle. Over all, great beer, would probably be brilliant with aging.

9:55 PM: We just decided on Derek’s molasses stout as the “brew-off winner” – fantastic beer. 12oz of molasses, said he, at the end of the boil. Do it. Great freakin’ beer.

11:15 PM: I just made it back around to Joseph’s Toasted Oats stout. I don’t if it’s the fact that it’s warmed a little or that my palate has gone out the other side of “shot” and back again, but it’s a totally different beer this time around, and with the experience of having drunk all of these other beers all night, I have to say that I quite like it. I think now that it’s warming I’m picking up a little more diacetyl from the oats. There’s a nice butterscotchy undertone that’s really pleasant in the same way that the caramelly sweetness of the molasses beer was. I’ll make a recommendation for the toasted oats as well. Nice addition well done.

As a wrap-up, I’ll be serving my version at tomorrow’s homebrew fest and picking up people’s opinion’s there.