It’s been well-documented in this space that I have a problem with hipsters. There’s something about those people and their “fixie” bikes and their trucker hats and their ironic facial hair and their koi fish tattoo sleeves and they’re lumberjack shirts and their love of Pabst Blue Ribbon that makes me want to expose them [...]

. Here’s something you don’t see every day, and probably with good reason.  This older gentleman seems very fond of chainsaw, using for the somewhat (in chainsaw terms) delicate task of removing the cap off a bottle of beer.  Well at least he’ll never be frustrated by those silly Churchkey Can Co. cans Don wrote [...]

Homebrewing for special occasions is more common than I thought.  I realized this as I started doing research (which should be a four letter word) for this week’s Today Show article, which is all about guys who homebrewed for their own weddings (you can find it here). I stayed on the topic of brewing for [...]

If I were to ask you what beer has the strongest brand equity in America, you’d probably grimace a bit and reply with a dejected “Budweiser.” And I say, “nope.” “Coors Light, then,” you might say. “They have those stupid frozen train ads during football, where they blast through neighborhoods, probably running down pets and [...]

My post this week for the Today Show Online is about how I went a little nuts when I saw that out of 39 entries, Coors Light won gold at the World Beer Cup for “American-Style Lager or Light Lager.”  I know the big boys have been winning this category for years, but it still [...]

I’m in full-on get-in-shape mode right now.  I’m waking up at the crack of dawn to work out, I’m watching what I eat like a hawk, and I even got one of those Nike+ Fuelband gizmos to remind me to get off my ass and move around. On the beer front, I’ve gotten very rigid [...]

My most recent post for TODAY.com is about the Big River Brewing Company at the Boardwalk Hotel in Disney World.  I was down there last week with the family, and Big River was a life saver – a lush desert island of craft beer in an otherwise barren sea of industrial light lagers. While I [...]

Good news for beer nerds trapped in the Magnolia State – starting July 1st, you’ll be able purchase beers with up to 8% alcohol by weight (roughly 10% ABV) without playing Smokey and the Bandit and making a run to Alabama or Louisiana (or eBay). The previous limit was 5% alcohol by weight (about 6.25% [...]

Hype can ruin a beer, because few brews can live up to the expectations heaped upon them by mad beer geek love.  Hype ruined Pliny the Elder for me, and it screwed up my approach to sour beers – had I know they tasted like week-old laundry left in the washer, I would’ve expected less.  [...]

For this week’s Today post, I explore whether or not Sam Adams kept intact the home brewed essence of the winning LongShot recipes when they ramped them up to an industrial scale. As part of preparing that article, I did email interviews with this year’s winners, but only used a few snippets in the actual [...]

Believe it or not, Jim and I do take this blog pretty seriously.  We really enjoy ourselves here, but we also have to put up new and semi interesting things for you to read in order to get the conversation we love going.  This week the wheels have fallen off of the blog, and it [...]

Our pal the Beer Poet shared an interesting link with us on Twitter this morning.  XXXX Gold Brewing Company in Australia has decided that a mancave isn’t a good enough place for dudes to escape the fairer sex – they need an entire island. Starting this October, the brewer will be holding contests for the [...]

This study by the FABBS Foundation (which is short for something, I’m sure of it) has been making the rounds over the last week.  In a nutshell, it shows that men with a blood alcohol level of 0.07%, or a couple of beers worth of booze on board, performed better at “creative problem solving.” This [...]

We rarely get political here on B&WB – how you choose to vote and what candidates you support is your own business.  But there’s a serious matter that has come to our attention, one that has been called perhaps “the most important election of our time!*

Beyond TODAY is an extension of our weekly column for the TODAY Show food blog. Over there, I explore why The Simpsons features such a bad beer if the show takes place in Oregon. Over here, Don has a recommendation for Homer and his buddies – switch to Hop Valley!  Click here to check out [...]