Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Suggested websites to visit to further your beer education.
Readers of this blog will know that I rarely post infographics. There has to be some there, there for me to do it. Well….
Civixplorer compiled the below infographic on top selling beers across Europe and though some come as no to moderate surprise, it is fascinating to see what the smaller and less talked about countries drink. Since my geography is woeful, I found it of help to have a second map of Europe handy so I could match country name to beer.
The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday was the long running monthly digital get together for beer bloggers around the world to write about a single subject of beer-y interest.
The series was on indefinite pause at the end of 2018 but was re-started in 2025. (Though I missed hearing about it until this month) I hosted twice in the initial run and participated many more times and my contribution is below ( in italics) from the writing prompt of beer critique. See the full assignment HERE so you can ponder your own response.
You can also go back and read past musings HERE.
There are some Session themes where the response just flows and others that are tougher nuts to crack. For March the assignment of a critique stymied me. Partially because the poser of the question, Matthew Curtis from Total Ales seemed to be looking for a certain type of response within tight parameters. (and even reserved the right to not add to the after party round-up if the brief was not met.)
After reading the instructions and reasoning behind the topic a few times, I could have done something new in my jocular, pointed and opinionated style or expanded on a past post to shoe-horn it into the Session but neither felt right to me because I think my idea of criticism and critique and when and where it should be used seems to be different from Curtis.
That is all to say that after consideration, I am going to pass and come back for the April subject of conversation.
We do need to hold breweries and craft beer to the mark and readers of the this blog have read my past takes and there are more constructive criticisms to come. In three days time, I will post my thoughts on brewery social media posts. And I will be reading what others have come up with this month because it is bound to be thought provoking.
The Craft Beer Channel on YouTube has recently dropped two new videos revolving around their new self-assigned task to get cask ale recognized as a UNESCO historical landmark.
Check out the new cask episodes starting with Bitter Not Boring – Part 6.
I have watched the growing women’s sports bar movement happily and now there is a documentary about it that you can watch as well, called Untapped.
Fellow Angelenos should check out Watch Me Sports Bar as well.
Looks like Anaheim based Villains Brewing is taking over another San Diego brewery space, this time in the East Village.
You can read all about the news HERE at San Diego Beer News who broke the story last month. We might be in for moves like this as some breweries falter but leave behind a built out space.
Well before the pandemic, well before Nazi Musk bought it, I had seen enough of Twitter. (If you call it X, I can’t help you.) Considering that I barely saw the tip of that nasty iceberg tells you the distaste I found.
After that, I was hesitant to jump to whatever the next ship was preferring the still troublesome but less loathsome Meta twins of Facebook and Instagram. But I thought that I should check out the latest big thing in Bluesky to see if craft beer fans might find community and information there.
But for me, there just isn’t much there. I want beer news and beer views but if you type in Firestone Walker there is no official account, just random people who have mentioned 805 or tires. I searched for a few L.A. breweries and nothing. Yes, there are beer writers and cool people there like the North American Guild of Beer Writers but the whole set-up is not intuitive with loads of dead ends and separates items into groups instead of letting me curate stuff. One is called BeerSky which seems to link mostly to posts about beer pong.
Maybe I am just not built for this or Twitter. Your mileage may vary but it is not helpful to me.
Spent grain from the brewing process ends up in the bellies of happy farm animals in the best case scenario but what if, we gave the piggies a break and instead used that as a natural insulation in houses?
Take a watch of this video HERE and see how that works.
There is a lot of draining news from inside and out of the craft beer world but it is not all bad out there and Hop Culture has turned the spotlight onto some people who are really making waves large and small but all for good.
Read it right HERE and then tell me you do not want to go to the Barrel & Flow Festival or have a truly pastry driven beer from Brown Girl’s Brews.
While reading the latest edition of Imbibe magazine with their 75 movers and shakers in beverages, I quickly noticed a glaring tilt. Over 30 of the people and places featured were in the realm of cocktails while both wine and beer hovered around 10. If you add in distillery and spirits the total rises to easily over half.
I am not against cocktails or any of the specific bars at all nor do I require an even count across all beverages but damn that is glaring and it makes me wonder if anyone in the room brought it up..
It does track with media spotlighting tendencies though. When something is uncool, and craft beer is uncool at the moment, instead of building it up, the common practice is to ignore it and heap praise on what is cool.
When the San Diego Beer News makes a recommendation, I tend to listen. And listening is the key word as there were two recent podcasts highlighted….
I found I Like Beer in my Overcast app and you can check out the Beer for Breakfast show HERE.