The beer in review....2010

It has been an interesting year with a good deal of time spent in the air, in the airports and in beery places round this wonderful planet of ours. So as we near the end of year, I often take time to reflect on some memorable places or beers that I deem special. To me there is something special about enjoying a beer in a place that does not normally favor or keep a style of beer, due to the location/culture. What I am referring to is the ability to enjoy a Belgian Duvel in the night light of Hong Kong's Kowloon Bay. The beer is tasty after a long day of meetings for sure, but it is the fact that we are thousands of miles away from Belgium. To me this means the craft beer culture is thriving, its permeating the hard and fast macro lager culture with the cunning of "007". Take for instance good ole Wisconsin... It used to be you walked into a local "Sconie" tavern and you asked for a beer, the Keep gave you the single tap he had on (likely a Bud, Miller, Coors or if you were lucky Lienie's). Nowadays, people are educated, palates refined and careful about what they bring to their mouth. We are living in a Renaissance of sorts and some of us are blind to the fact. Many of the wandering pub/tavern crowd do not realize how this came to be. It took the hard work and preaching of craft beer lovers, homebrewers and pub owners to realize the change to come. We live in a land and a world where information travels at the speed of the inter-webs... People blog, they rant, they critique....but most importantly they spread information as a collective whole as to what people are drinking. Take time this Christmas season to ask a beer lover, a pub owner or a homebrew buddy as to what they recommend for a craft beer. Try something you have not graced your lips with before. It may allow you to realize what is happening in the great foamy cosmos of the beer knurd's universe. But most importantly it will allow you to take another step on this beery journey of life.

I bid you a Beery Christmas and a Hoppy New Year... Take time to realize the important people in your lives and let them know that they are loved.

Beer Well,

Stefan