I recently bottled a maple brown ale, which I'm really excited about. I haven't brewed with maple syrup before. I also added a bit more syrup for the bottle conditioning. The flat beer, before conditioning, was very tasty. I can't wait to see how it matures ( Read more... )

Yes, these lists are way late, but I need to post them to close out the year of beer sampling. I ended the year with 415 beers, 298 of which I never had before. That's 72%! The exploring was good, and I made some discoveries about how my taste in beer has been changing over the years. I continue to seek out new beers and to take notes, but never ( Read more... )

I just updated my beer list and discovered a few things. There are lots of beers that I enjoy and can get easily enough that I assumed were already on my list and aren't, including the Fraoch that I turned down this weekend :( I also discovered that I'm only 22 beers away from hitting 400, so I think I will go for it. I have 7 new beers in my ( Read more... )

I met my 365 Beer Challenge on Tuesday night at a book launch/birthday event organized by my friend, Tammy. My 365th beer, Peak Organic's Maple Oat Ale, was tasty but not milestone-extraordinary. Maybe I should have ended (rather than started) the evening with the cask-version of Ola Dubh Special 30. It's expensive price tag and rich, whisky- ( Read more... )

I've finally updated my beer database for the first time since mid-August. In August I had 20 beers, 17 of which were new. This count is a little pathetic considering D.C. Beer Week occurred that month. I only participated in one event - a beer and food pairing with Brooklyn Brewing Co and craft cheeses from San Francisco-based Cow Girl Creamery.

( See the list )

My drinking buddy, Tammy, posted an interesting article outlining the difference between a beer geek and a beer snob ( Read more... )

Today I sampled my 265th beer (Dogfish Head's Festina Peche). That averages to about 35 beers a month, which wasn't the reality at all! The big NZ push in January (50 beers in 2 weeks!) really gave me a leg-up. In fact, there were only 3 months in which I sampled a beer for every day - Jan, Feb and June. The slowest month was May - only 18 beers, ( Read more... )

Some friends who blog beer for the local weekly started discussing what their last beer on earth would be. What a hard choice! At the moment I were to realize this was my last beer on earth, would I want it to be the tastiest? most alcoholic? most sentimental? Maybe I need to start stocking a "final beer" in my emergency preparedness kit, just in ( Read more... )

In March I sampled 25 different brews, 10 of which were new. My beer sampling slowed down quite a bit, and I'll explain in another post some of the reason for this.

( See list )

Just because it doesn't feel like a round-up unless I'm posting a list, and because the web page is still under construction, here are the beers I've sampled so far this year. New ones are in bold text

( See January list )