This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another.

The first time I got my hands on a copy of Isthmus, the independently weekly newspaper published in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, it shifted my perspective of what was possible in media on its axis. It happened in a high school journalism class in a clear effort by the teacher to make us consider what an alternative approach to journalism might look like and how it could have a seismic affect on a community that was attuned to it. I had probably seen copies of it before. If I had, I probably didn’t even consider it as something that might be for me. If so, was I ever wrong about that. It was a big, thick slab of a paper at that time, and I worked hard to get a copy every week after that and tore through its informed, deeply fact-based, deliberately challenging pages.

These many years later, Isthmus endures, even if its size and frequency have been reduced because of a brutal ravaging of their ad sales. Enough of my fellow Madison residents understand it to be a valuable cultural institution that there are all sorts of extra support efforts that take place. The finest and frostiest of these is the recent release of Above the Fold, a delicious hefeweizen made with New Zealand hops. Brewed by Working Draft Beer Company, the beer is complex and delectable, and a portion of the profits generated from its sales goes back to the publication that inspired it. I couldn’t be more pleased to do my part for local journalism.

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Beers I Have Known” tag.