Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
White Labs supplies yeast to breweries practically everywhere but they are also known for their education. Their tasting room and same beer, different yeast trials are well known and now they are “launching an online education portal”. Mostly for brewers these “videos are released every month and cover a range of topics.” But maybe the casual beer fan might enjoy while hunkered down at home. Check out the videos HERE.
The wine world has sommeliers and us craft beer geeks have ciccerone’s. And if you want to learn about craft beer from a certified ciccerone and really funny guy then head to the Craft Beer Class.
And when you are done watching the video, head to the main Drink Eat Travel site for food and beverage tidbits from the LA area. All good stuff.
One of your New Year’s Beer Resolutions can be to learn more about beer!
Even after a year filled with new beer and new breweries, there is still room to learn more.
That’s why I am excited to post today about an Oregon outfit that aims to teach and promote the great beer places in Portland.
The Oregon Beer Odyssey conducts “…. classes {that} aim to educate a broad audience about the diversity and quality of craft beer, both from the Northwest and around the world. In an intimate, small-group setting, customers can enjoy themselves, while sampling unique beers during one of our structured workshops. Our staff steward the events personally, assuring that customers’ needs are met and that these artisanal beers are presented with the class they deserve.”
There was a lot of technical talk at the Beer Bloggers conference. About 1/2 of it was over my head. I know my widgets from my meta tags and/or trackbacks. But that is the smaller mechanical issue. I was searching for something else.
I wanted to know if I was on the right track with this blog. And I think, I am. Am I there yet? No, and I have no timetable either.
I post what excites me about the craft beer world. Is it groundbreaking journalism? No. Is it a regurgitation of already posted news? Sometimes. But that is acceptable to me. Why?
I want this blog to show my passion for beer, breweries, events and the industry. Like a squirrel before a bottle of BrewDog’s End of the World gets shoved up it’s…(sorry), I enjoy searching for and bringing back beer nugggets.
There was alot of good advice about how long it takes to monetize your blog and the ways to do it. People carefully explained how to adjust posts to your readers desires.
To me that is not as important as bringing the world of craft beer to my reader(s) in a short but fun way. And when I highlight a brewery in Louisiana or Alaska, it may be a list of a couple beers pulled from the brewery website but I want to push this information in front of casual but curious craft beer drinkers and travelers. I started the 50 Beers from 50 States quest to learn more about our country’s beers but I also hoped to intrigue all of you enough to try something new or at least learn something new.
A question was posed (rather too critically and rather grumpily, to my ear), why blog about beer and why go to a conference about it? Apart from the obvious reason of meeting people with the same passion, I wanted to learn from other bloggers on how to best accomplish my goal. I could not ask readers to go on this search without doing some searching myself. (And I implore that everyone keep on learning).
What I am trying to say is that I want to challenge you, the reader, to drink better and more varied beer. And this blog will evolve to do that better.
That is what I learned.
I am a Craft Beer Drinker from New Brew Thursday on Vimeo.
..are you?
If not get out there and not settle. The message needs repeating. Be it from craft brewers in America or Canada.
Mikkeller started the trend (as far as I can tell) and now others are jumping on the bandwagon. There are citra hop IPA’s hitting the market from breweries like Kern River and now two other notable breweries are getting in on the action.
Bear Republic has the awesome Apex amongst other great IPA’s but the new one that caught my attention was…
Rebellion™
American IPA
ABV: 6.0% IBU: varies
Rebellion is a single hop pale ale brewed to showcase different hop varietals. Always brewed with the same malt base and IBUs, the character of the hop really shines through.
Then Terminal Gravity in tiny Enterprise, Oregon comes out with single hop DIPA’s! Using the “C” hops of Centennial, Chinook and Columbus.
Most of these are draft only so search for them.
Don’t be confused. This is not pairing craft beer with Chinese food. (That’s an idea for another day). No, this is a great beer tasting idea that the Belmont Station folks created. They rummaged around their excellent store and bier cafe, which you must visit. They pulled out some aged beers. What follows is a list that should blow your mind…
Stone Oaked Bastard 2006 & 2007
Stone Vertical Epic 07-07-07
Stone Vertical Epic 08-08-08
Stone Double Bastard 2006
Stone IRS 2006
Full Sail Top Sail 2008 & 2010
Full Sail Black Gold 2009
Full Sail Imperial Stout 2008
Full Sail Wreck the Halls 2006
Bridgeport Old Knucklehead 2009
Roots Epic 2008
Deschutes Abyss 2007, 2008 & 2009
Hair of the Dog Fred from the Wood 2006 & 2008
They named it Vintage Beer Dim Sum and each beer cost a different number of $1 tickets– from one to five tickets, depending on its rarity. Part of the proceeds went to charity.
This is a great idea. I am kicking myself that I did not think of it. You bought your tickets and the beer would come around. You could choose to use your ticket or tickets, or not. It wasn’t a tasting where you could feel cheated because you are the one choosing!
This is exactly how I am going to hold my next tasting event.