I don’t really understand how facebook works, but apparently users have been using a facebook application called beer wars to rate and promote their favorite beers. The beer wars people describe it as follows:

In case you don’t already know, Beer Wars is a cool new Facebook app that allows you to nominate:

- the beer you’re drinking at the moment and
- your top three all-time favourites

Then, look on as word spreads, and thousands…..millions of other beer drinkers the world over go into battle.

View beer preference statistics as they unfold. Find out which are the top listed beers among your friends, your city, your country, and worldwide!

Again, I don’t pretend to really understand it, but if you’re a facebook user check it out and let us know what you think.

image from beer wars

Post from: EveryJoe

Wouldn’t the Stout win?

Last weekend I managed to finally make it to the new incarnation of the Dock Street brewpub, which is pretty pathetic considering I had planned to go when they first opened. For those who don’t know, Dock Street was a Philadelphia-based pioneer of micro-brewed beers back in the 80s, at one point vying with Sam Adams for tops in the market.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I expected a slightly too slick and slightly too large brewpub along the lines of a Triumph or the former Dock Street locations in Center City Philadelphia. This one has a much more down-to-earth and slightly gritty feel. Don’t get me wrong, the furnishings were clearly carefully picked out, and the brewing equipment gleams brightly in the corner of this spotlessly renovated old firehouse. Underneath it all, though, there’s an interesting and varied public enjoying beers and food from bartenders well-versed in the beers they are serving.

The beers, too, were quite well brewed. There were five of us, all seasoned beer drinkers , and we tried every beer on the list. It was easy to reach a consensus on the beers – our favorites by a long shot were the Rye IPA and the Imperial Outmeal Stout. Be forewarned, though, there was a one to two hour wait for a table, so if you’re hungry be prepared to sit at the bar or wait.

All things being equal, the new Dock Street’s new West Philadelphia brewpub was my favorite Dock Street brewpub experience yet.

image from malcolmxpark.org

Post from: EveryJoe

A Dock Street

As a beer lover, I’ve often considered brewing my own beer. The possibilities seem endless – brown ales, pale ales, stouts, fancy Belgian-style beers – all for a little effort and at a significantly lower cost than the same number of cases of beer. That, and I’d truly understand and know my beers.

Then I looked a little closer, at a whole lot of cleaning, lugging pots and bottles around, more cleaning, stirring and mixing, more cleaning, some sterilizing for good measure. You get the idea. It was the thought of sterilizing a whole bunch of bottles that finally persuaded me not to try brewing, but I still feel as though my beer education is lacking something as a result.

If, after reading that, you’re still interested in brewing, the good news is that there’s a very comprehensive looking (and FREE) guide to brewing available on the internet. Even better, if you decide you like it and get sick of waiting for your inkjet to laboriously print that puppy out, you can buy a copy of the entire book as well.

If you’ve brewed using this guide, let me know, or if you can recommend other online brewing sources throw it in a comment for the rest of us.

Post from: EveryJoe

Learning to brew for free

A few weeks ago I had a delightful lunch with my wife at the Belgian Café, a delightful new Belgian bar in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia (kind of a Monk’s north, for those who know the popular Belgian bar in Center City Philadelphia. When Monk’s moved in to the former 16th Street Bar and Grill I was pleased by the new pub while mourning the old. The same applies here – the Belgian Café replaces the recently closed Tavern on Green, a great funky bar with a good selection of both wines and beers.

But I digress. I may talk about the beers we actually had later, but for now I’m going to talk about one we didn’t. One beer which sounded intriguing was the Rodenbach Grand Cru, but on second look I realized that a true Flemish sour might be more than I bargained for (and, after a taste, it was). Looking at the menu, I realized that I really didn’t know what “Grand Cru” meant with respect to beer, so that was going to be today’s post. That is, until I found this interesting article from 2000 relating to the possible demise of the Rodenbach Grand Cru.

Whether I liked it or not, it’s nice to know that this unique beer survived the forces of beer homogeneity. Now, if you know what “Grand Cru” means please let me know.

image from the Rodenbach Brewery website

Post from: EveryJoe

The Cru brew survives

In case you missed it, yesterday’s post was my attempt at finding the appropriate beers to match a wonderful menu put together by Tracey of foodie obsessed. Those who prefer wine will find a their pairings on Farley’s post at Behind the Vines.

In researching and considering my choices for yesterday’s post, I found a number of good articles on pairing beer with food, so I thought I’d share some of those with you today:

So, there you go, if you don’t like my pairings, or if you have something else in the basement you’ve been dying to try, give those a shot and let me know how it goes.

image from viator.com

Post from: EveryJoe

More beer with food

Ok, this is going to be the last gift post of the year, since if you don’t finish your Christmas shopping today you need to get off the computer and get to the store. Let’s face it, after today no one’s going to deliver anything you order in time for Christmas anyway, so it’s bricks and morter for anything you’ve got left.

The good news is that there’s one weekend to go before Christmas, so why not combine gift buying with a visit to your favorite microbrewery for some swag? For those of us around Philadelphia, that means the really cool merchandise at places like Dogfish Head and Flying Fish, to say nothing of the fine beers at Victory or the traditional flair of Yuengling. My wife has the really cool Flying Fish earrings pictured above, and shopping at a brewery sure beats going to the mall.

For those of you elsewhere, this article recaps some of the best gift ideas for the beer lover, including Dogfish Head’s beer buckle bottle opener, so get out there and get shopping. Oh, and have a pint to celebrate when you’re done.

image from Flying Fish Brewery

Post from: EveryJoe

Last gasp for the late buyer

It’s coming up on that time of year, and I’m here to help with a list of gifts for the beer geek in your life. Now, it’s not really that hard to come up with gift ideas for your malt beverage-drinking friends, and I’ve already suggested a few possible gifts (glasses and the “lagerhead” come to mind). Over the course of the next month, however, I’ll suggest a bunch more, so if you love beer or someone who does you’ll need to stop in frequently! 

My first suggestion is one which beer lovers will look at with some scepticism, but bear with me – if you’re determined to get a gift which keeps on giving, but you don’t know beer from broth, a beer of the month club can be a fun way to go. Sure, on a per-sixpack basis it’s absurdly expensive, and you may well end up with some mediocre beers in the mix, but you also can discover some nice beers in the process, and it’s always fun to open the box to see what’s there. Best of all, your beer lover gets a new gift every month for the next year, thereby remembering your generosity and feeling guilt over the schlocky gift he or she bought you.  

I think mine was the beer of the month club, but there’s also a micro beer club and others out there. If you’ve joined one of these and you love it (or hate it), let us know!   Image from beer of the month club 

Post from: EveryJoe

Gifts for the beer geek

So, I haven’t written about our decorating style because, well, decorating is not one of my priorities in life. There is one decorating decision we made some time ago which I both enjoy and regret, and which is actually relevant to this blog.

You see, long ago when we first bought our house we decided to decorate the backsplash in the kitchen with beer bottle labels. That was almost ten years ago and, many cases of beer later, the backsplash was completely covered with a joyous assemblage of beer labels. The funny thing is that it’s also covered with memories, from the first good beers we enjoyed in this house of ours, to the Presidenté lager from our honeymoon cruise, to a host of different beers enjoyed with my wife and friends both here and overseas. There’s the Dittmarscher from our Christmas in northern Germany, the Flensburger Pils I drank with Tom in Frankfurt, and some morally suspect labels another friend, Jochem, brought back from Slovakia. Hell, there’s even a Miller Genuine Draft label my friend Don brought to the house, and which I put up because he wanted me to. Of course, it’s in a very inconspicuous corner (I have a reputation to worry about), but it’s up.

Unfortunately, at some point we made the decision to extend the beer labels past the backsplash to the large wall next to the stove, which was a big mistake. First, it’s actually a royal pain to cover even a small area with beer labels, let alone a big area. Second, my kids really love to peel beer labels off the wall, so it was beginning to look ratty around the lower edges.

In any case, for a variety of reasons we’ve decided the beer label backsplash had to go, and go it did. It’s a sad day for us, but fortunately I have a great idea – I’m going to document it in photos before we take it down, and the beer label backsplash will live on in framed photos in our new, more mature kitchen.

So, if any of you in cyberspace have good ideas involving beer labels or other paraphernalia leave it in a comment. Our great beer Christmas decorations will be a separate blog …

Post from: EveryJoe

Passing of an era

It’s been a rough ride for Colorado thus far in the World Series, so I thought I’d give them another chance by comparing the strength of beers from Colorado with those of Massachusetts (much of which, let’s face it, is a suburb of Boston anyway). Now, both states have a lot of good brewpubs, but for those of us sitting elsewhere, that’s not very useful right now, is it? So, here goes.

Looking at the Colorado brewer’s guild list of breweries, I see a few that I recognize and two that I’ve quite enjoyed. One is Left Hand, which I’ve already praised enough on these pages. The other is Flying Dog, a Denver-based brewery.

On the Boston side of things, the 800 pound gorilla is the Boston Beer Company but, truth be told, I’ve never had a Sam Adam’s beer of which I’ve been truly enamorerd, and many I genuinely don’t like. I have to give them some credit for helping jump-start the nascent East-Coast microbrewery movement back in the day, and there was a time that a Sam Adams was a good fallback in a world of bad beer, but that day is thankfully long gone. Surprisingly, a list of other Massachusetts beers turns out to be surprisingly weak on strong beers, at least which are known very far outside of the Commonwealth. In fact, other than Tremont, I don’t know as I’ve had any of them.

Now, in fairness, one could include the so-called “Red Sox Nation,” which would bring in a host of good New England breweries to add to the competition. We’re not going to do that, so I’m pronouncing Colorado the winner of this World Series. C’mon folks, let’s hear some other opinions out there.

Photo from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Post from: EveryJoe

World series of beer

Post from: EveryJoe

Augustiner