Book, Book, Podcast, Blog

The Friday roundup begins with a pretty cool offer. My hometown bookstore, Powell's, is offering signed editions of the Beer Bible for pre-order. I found this slightly amusing, since they haven't consulted me about that. But anyone who knows Powell's knows how important it is to the city and I will be happy to sign as many books as they want to sell. So if you're looking to pre-order and you don't live in town, sign up now.

While we're talking Beer Bible, let me point you to the new Facebook page for the book. I'm not sure why we do this, but we do, and I have done it. I will use it as a clearinghouse for dates on the for upcoming book tour. So go like that and follow along if you feel inspired.

Next, we have the latest Beervana Podcast available. This is the first of a two-parter that will revolve around the Oregon Brewers Festival. Even if you don't live nearby and have no plans to go, you may still find it interesting. We're using the current event as a way to chart the change in beer over time, looking at this year's list and comparing it to the one from a decade ago. Big changes, and I think they represent trends in brewing writ large.



Finally--and directly related to that concept of changes in beer--is my latest All About Beer post.

For the average consumer, “IPA” is completely disconnected from the historical style—it just means juicily hoppy. So when you attach it to any other adjective (session, white, Belgian, etc.), all it does is designate the presence of the juicily hoppy character. So yes, if Ben made a 4.8% lager made with pilsner and Vienna malt, infused it with that juicy hoppiness, he could probably call it a helles IPA. (The helles part would be a lot more confusing than the IPA.) But the implicit point in his question is evident—by the time you’re making a helles IPA, you’ve stretched that poor adjective so far it hardly has any meaning left.

Have a good weekend--

My Facebook Experiment

I wish to alert you to a new experiment that is roughly 23 hours old. Yes, I know the word "Facebook" is in the title, but please don't let that dissuade you--read on.

As a good-beer fan and beer blogger, I end up tasting a lot more beers than I review. Even the ones I do mention on the blog sometime don't get reviewed until weeks after I taste them. Yesterday, in one of those increasingly rare moments of insight, my old brain had a thought: why not kill two birds with one stone and post short capsule reviews of these beers on your Beervana Facebook page? That way you 1) don't lose the opportunity to comment on the beers you try, and 2) give your vestigial Facebook page new reason for being.

As many people have discovered, the imperative "YOU MUST HAVE A FACEBOOK PAGE" runs almost instantly up against the question: "But why?--I already have a blog." In this stroke of insight, I have discovered a way to use the FB page that won't function merely as a drain on the thing it is ostensibly supporting. Ta da! Damn, I told my old brain, you're not completely useless to me after all.

So there you have it. Go have a look>>