Conventional wisdom is that during an economic downturn, recession or — let's just say it out loud — depression, that certain businesses are not as challenged, usually ones that provide things that are either absolute necessities (food comes to mind) or make products people have decided f… Read full post »

Back in August, I called one of my posts The Audacity of Hops. It was about Oskar Blues taking the iconic Barack Obama poster and turning it into one for Dale's Pale Ale. It turns out a homebrewer in Washington DC, whose day job is as a paralegal at the Department… Read full post »

With a week to go before the U.S. Presidential election November 4, I thought I'd share one of my favorite quotes by our 16th President: Abraham Lincoln.

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The… Read full post »

The phrase "love thy neighbour as thyself" appears at least seven times in the Bible, from Leviticus 19:18 to James 2:8. It's a pretty important tenet of Christianity and, according to All About God, it was Christ's answer to religion.

Love thy neighbor was, in part, Jesus' answer when the… Read full post »

Remember those iconic "whassup" Anheuser-Busch ads from almost a decade ago? Advertisers love it when a catch phrase works its way into public use outside the original advertising because it spreads the meme far wider than advertising alone can ever manage. Whassup was one of those catch phrases that… Read full post »

The decline of the British pub has been much lamented in the UK press recently, with statistics thrown about on the order of 36 pub closings each week. A British publican friend tells me, however, that he thinks those numbers are overblown and that it's the badly run ones that are… Read full post »

Senator Barack Obama holds a commanding lead over Senator John McCain – 10,238 votes (55 percent) to 8,411 votes (45 percent), as of October 21, in The Flying Saucer Draught Emporium’s 2008 Presidential Election Poll.

The Texas-based restaurant chain kicked off its poll in early September,… Read full post »

Sixpoint Craft Ales in Brooklyn, New York has released an IPA (or India Pale Ale) called Hop Obama, though at 42-44 IBUs it doesn’t sound like too much of a hop bomb, at least not to my extreme west coast hop sensibilities.

In case you didn't know, a hop bomb refers… Read full post »

Half Moon Bay Brewing, on the coast of California near Pacifica, has come up with a unique way to decide the election. Their beer line, named Maverick's, has taken their popular Harbor Light Ale, which their website describes as "a light colored beer brewed with European malt and hops, lager-like fla… Read full post »

People keep calling me names (or at least disparaging the things I keep writing) for pointing out the connection between John McCain and Anheuser-Busch, as if business and politics together is merely coincidental. Sorry boys and girls, but I will never believe that business intruding into poli… Read full post »

This is another of my slightly off-topic rants, and I hope you'll forgive the intrusion of politics once more into what should be all about the beer, but with a very important election just around the corner I just can't help myself. Tonight is the final debate between the two major-party… Read full post »

As a professional beer writer, I know I tend to be in the minority in my take of whenever beer is featured on national network television shows, because I feel that when it's not done well, more often than not, the poor information spread out to unsuspecting viewers does more damage… Read full post »