It was a coolish afternoon on Saturday, and I found myself at work.  We just moved offices and I needed to get set up.  After a week of living with limited functionality I needed to take some time to unpack fully and set up my new workspace.  I also have a number of deadlines bearing […]

Coach Boone and Youst from the classic Disney film “Remember the Titans”.  This was a great movie, albeit a little sappy but tells of an interesting time in our nation’s history and how sport brought together people of different ethnicities and socioeconomic strata to fight for a common goal.  Blah blah blah.  The good thing […]

I’ve said it before and will say it again – timing and mood matter with beer. You can have a great beer when you’re not in the mood for it, and most of its charms will be lost on you.  This happened to me a few times by the tail end of GABF, when I […]

Sunday Afternoon I had the pleasure of cracking open a 2010 Old Stock Ale from North Coast Brewing.  This is an old style English ale that is just beautifully crafted and a real treat.  It is 12.5% ABV with all the flavors in the glass beautifully integrated to where I didn’t even notice the alcohol. […]

New Jersey is hot right now, and for all the wrong reasons.  It started several years ago with the Sopranos, which had redeeming editorial value even though it showed New Jersey as a hot bed of mob activity.  Allegedly.  As they say in these parts, the Mafia doesn’t exist.  Got it? But recently things have […]

Today is the first day of Fall!  A great time of year, my personal favorite.  Crisp and sunny days, bright colors and cooler temps.  What is not to love.  And of course this is the unofficial time when the beer community jettisons their pilsners and lagers in favor of more hearty offerings like stouts, porters, […]

With a beer name like “Crotch Sniffing Bastard” and explanation is due.  It goes like this: when Ben, the Laughing Dog the brewery is named after, was a pup he used to like to say “hello” by sticking his nose in your crotch and giving a good sniff.  One of their friends coined the term […]

As many of you know, I’m a fan of most everything Founders brews. You might also be aware that I’m a sucker for any beer that swings for the fences or draws outside the lines. So you can imagine how much I enjoy Founder’s Nemesis. Each year it’s a different beer bearing the Nemesis name. […]

What is it with the names of these two Pale Ales that use Belgian yeast?  Why do they have to be so contrary?  Raging Bitch sounds like a lady to be avoided (I could use names here but I don’t need that kind of heat!), and Verboten is German for “Forbidden.” Both names make it […]

The Malted Muse is a website “dedicated to the exploration of all things whisky” and they recently gave our podcast a fairly glowing review. This is surprising on a few levels.  First off, I’m amazed that anyone is actually listening besides our mom (hi mom!).  But what I find even more interesting is that the […]

As many of you know, I have not been real keen on Whisky (without the “e”) or Scotch Whisky as we call it here in the States.  This has to do with an incident I had in College which has made the strong peaty flavor of whisky off putting for me.  But through this blog, […]

You know Gary Coleman really had it great in the 70s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes.  He had his older brother Willis to run interference for him and a new kinda hot sister that was rich, and a new dad that was a disciplinarian, but loose with the purse strings.  “OK, Dad…I’ll take my grounding like a […]

Sometimes new and old come together in interesting ways.  Take for example this photo with a very modern piece of deathstar art with an obviously very old building in the background.  The juxtaposition makes us both intrigued and uncomfortable at the same time.  Well that is kind of how I feel about the collaboration between Schneider Weisse […]

You know when you’re just sure that something is gonna be great and then it turns out more awful than you could have imagined?  I’ve experienced this a few times in life.  There was that gorgeous redhead that was great in small doses but just horrible after 10 minutes of conversation.  Then there was the […]

You know what I hate?  I hate it when people are just too subtle.  Like when me and my wife were dating, well actually before we began to date, she said she practically had to hit me over the head to get me to respond to her very subtle advances.  Good thing she is persistent. […]