TheBeerObserver

Jesus Christ that's good beer!

I've been attending software industry trade shows for ten years and can say, unequivocally, that they don't hold a candle to beer industry trade shows.  Wish I could have gone this year...

Spring eventually arrives each year in New England, albeit 4-6 weeks after the Red Sox season starts and about 8 weeks after I've had enough of snow & cold - despite my beer gloves.

Once it does warm up, though, my mind switches to one of my favorite beer styles - German Hefeweizen. "Hefe" means yeast, "Weizen" means wheat. Hefeweizen is a top fermented, unfiltered, bottle conditioned wheat beer with a noticeable yeast sediment and a cloudy appearance.

Megabrewer vs microbrewer, Budweiser vs Dogfish Head, adjuncts vs 100% barley.  On April 16th, in select theaters across the country, Beer Wars will be featured for movie-goers.  Beer Wars is a Ben Stein narrated documentary that will provide details on the tactics that brewers of all sizes are using to win your palatte (and your dollars).  Check out the site, www.beerwarsmovie.com, to watch the trailer and join the discussion. 

I'm flying home from San Francisco after attending the Open Source Business Conference this week and I've got to rave about flying Virgin America. They've got TVs, leather seats, power at every seat and, best of all, wifi on board!

I've spent many hours this month working on planes, but my two cross country flights between Boston & SF have been super productive because I've been online the whole time. What a concept - why has this taken so long?

As a beer lover residing in New England, drinking beer in cold weather is a fact of life. While nothing beats a cold refreshing beverage freshly pulled out of an ice cold cooler at the beach, the fact of the matter is we New Englanders spend weeks enjoying beers on the beach compared to the months we spend hunkered down drinking beers during the cold cold winter.

National Public Radio aired a piece on the state of the brewery business today--if you get a minute read the article here.  Not surprisingly the beer business weathers the recession better than most industries, with consumers choosing more domestic brands over imports.  I think professional brewers, analysts and other industry watchers would have been able to confirm these trends in past recessions, but it's good to see them holding true now that we are in the 'dark times.'

Wall Street in crisis as stock prices plunge. Businesses large and small closing their doors forever. Millions of Americans out of work, losing their homes…Headlines from CNBC or Bloomberg News? Well, yeah. But the scenario above is also the setting for one of the epic masterpieces of our culture, John Steinbeck’s 1939 classic, The Grapes of Wrath.

One of my favorite beer moments of the year is the release of Anchor's Christmas Ale. During the 1990s when I was brewing for a living, I would annually buy an extra six pack to cellar in the basement in order to compare vintages. Each year's recipe is unique and this was one of the beers that would hold up for a few years.

All was good until my cellar started expanding - and then I had kids.

NYC food and drink email service Tasting Table recently posted an article on a new trend in craft brewing - canned craft brews.

Beers available in cans include: