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. I have been vociferous in my praise and appreciation for the tremendous craft brewery scene in the city I currently call home. It’s robust enough that I can sometimes lose sight of the fact that similar bounties are being brewed up all over the place, including my native state, which has its own storied history with beer, after all. Luckily, I’ve had regular trips to my dairyland homeland every spring and a batch of … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: 3 Sheeps Hello, My Name is Joe

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. There was a legend around Point Bock, the seasonal offering from the longtime brewery in my beloved college town. It was the common fallacy surrounding bock beers, that they were fashioned from the muck dredged up from the bottom of the regular yearly cleaning. The bock’s dark color and muddy fulsomeness — completely the opposite of Point Brewery’s usual crisp lager — fed the myth nicely, as did the constant storytelling of those who insisted … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Point Bock

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. That monkey has the right idea. 21st Amendment is one of my favorite breweries (non-local division), and this beer — by the packaging, anyway — is a spiritual sequel to Bitter American, one of the first brews I wrote about in this series, so I should theoretically have plenty to write. Given my day, though, all I feel compelled to offer is a reiteration of that opening sentence: That monkey has the right … Continue reading Beers I Have Know: 21st Amendment Brewery Down to Earth

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. I’m very pleased that I live in a place that has been dubbed Beer City, U.S.A. More than that, I’m excited that the community continues to live up to the title, years after the sponsor of the annual vote gave up on the process, presumably in part because they got tired of this little North Carolina mountain town winning every year. Among all of our other craft brewers, modest and ambitious, comes arguably the … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA