Under the right circumstances, the flavor of a beer you consider ordinary will strike you as extraordinary.  Most recently, this happened to me with Hitachino Nest White Ale, a 5% ABV ale brewed by Kiuchi Brewery in Ibaraki-ken Naka-gun, Japan. This beer is a subtle beast, with mild flavors of orange peel, coriander and white pepper […]

I humble-bragged the other day that I have been invited to be a regular contributor to the The Today Show’s food blog.  My first post appeared this morning, a “beer brawl” between New England and New York in honor of the Super Bowl.  I’ll admit that this is certainly not the most original post idea, […]

. . Behold our future overlords, the Nano Quadrotors.  While I’ll admit that this is very cool, I can now plainly see a day in the not-too-distant future where the “intelligent” little gadgets we create wind up snuffing us out (especially as we get fatter and dumber while out technology becomes free-roaming and autonomous).  It […]

Let me start off by admitting that I love good branding.  I appreciate products that project a fully realized vision, from the packaging to the nuts and bolts inside.  The easiest (and these days the most clichéd) example here is Apple, which creates a lovely and cohesive brand experience from the store where you shop […]

I’ve recently been asked by the folks over at the Today Show to do some beer posts for their website. My first thought was to write a manifesto about why craft beer is the World’s Greatest Beverage – I figured it’d be a good tone setter.  They figured differently, and instead suggested I do a […]

As some of you may know, I’ve spent the past week taking care of our mom and helping her move from Wisconsin to Michigan.  She needs hip surgery and is to the point where she can’t really walk, stand or do anything on her own, so I had to stay sharp day and night and […]

I’m not sure if this is cool or cringe-worthy, but I’m leaning towards cringe-worthy.  There’s something about the whole process that makes me sightly…uncomfortable.

Everybody loves babies, and quite a few folks like to drink.  Put these two things together, and you get drunken babies, an almost irresistible marketing force. 

Other kinds of nerds have discovered what beer geeks have known for a long time: Brewers yeast is an amazing little critter.  In the world of brewing, yeast is a major factor in the character and potency of a beer.  In the world of science, it is an industrious single-cell organism that is sometimes called […]

Beer shipments in the U.S. slipped an estimated 1.4%, or 2.9 million barrels, from 2010 to 2011, according to recent newsletter published by Beer Marketer’s Insights. Of course it was the Big Boys who took the hit, with Anheuser-Busch InBev shipments slipping 2.9% and MillerCoors seeing shipments fall 3%.  Imports didn’t fare any better, as […]

Every once in a while, I’ll be heating up something in the microwave and wonder, “how come they haven’t invented the same thing for making stuff cold?”  Well it looks like I wasn’t alone in those thoughts, as Korean appliance powerhouse LG is adding a new feature to some of their high-end fridges – the […]

I imagine it’d be a lot of fun to hang around with Gary Busey for a few hours.  He’s nuts, sure, but his manic energy, awesome stories and larger-than-life character would make for an interesting evening indeed. I also imagine I’d be happy to see him leave at the end of the night, after he’s […]

An outfit called Research and Markets has just released a report tracking what folks have been saying about “popular” brands of beer across social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc., over the past 12 months. What counts as a “popular” beer brand you ask?  Here’s the list used to generate the report: 

There’s an interesting article on the Denver Edition of Westworld.com about an unnamed restaurant in Colorado’s Lower Highlands that was serving “contraband” beers from New Glarus. The bar manager Mike Henderson hails from Madison, Wisconsin, and has a pipeline back to the land of cheese and sausage that allows him to get a steady stream […]

In November, we reported that Magic Hat founder Alan Newman had signed on with Boston Beer (the makers of Sam Adams) and was given a clean sheet of paper to help expand that company’s craft beer offerings.  Newman’s subsidiary has been dubbed “Alchemy and Science” (Alan clearly loves magic) and has just made it’s first […]