Saturday’s Beer Fest put on by the Florida Brewers Guild was no exception.   Enhanced by gorgeous weekend weather, throngs of beer fans flocked to Centro Ybor in Tampa to enjoy Florida’s best, as well as some pretty great stuff from out of State.  Knowing that there were going to be large crowds and that there were certain brewers I wanted to make sure I spent some time with, I made a point to say hello to folks I knew early on.  Joey Redner and Wayne Wambles from Cigar City, Ben Romano from Zen Brewing, and fellow beer writer Mark Christopher from Examiner.com.  There were some beers I had been dying to try, but had been thwarted in the past for one reason or another, but I knew today would be the day I got my hands on them.  I was not disappointed.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

As I said, this festival is put on by the Florida Brewers Guild and run 100% by volunteers.  All proceeds go towards working for more craft-beer friendly legislation in Florida and putting our interests in front of those who can make the changes we need to grow the industry.  Every volunteer was helpful and cheerful, even in the face of the beer-thirsty hordes.

My list of “must-try” beers was short this year, at least as far as the “beers I know about and have never had before” list goes.  First and foremost was Midnight Oil from Swamp Head Brewing in Gainsville.  This was one that was raved about at the Stogie and Stout event a few weeks back, but by the time I got to them, they were out.  No such issue this time, and they did not disappoint.  With a silky, rich texture and a nice roasty malt body, the Midnight Oil earns high marks in my book.  I also had a chance to try their Big Nose IPA, which was delicious and their dry hopping and unique hop filtering process really made this an interesting and enjoyable beer.

The other “must-haves” on my list were the offerings of Saint Somewhere Brewing of Tarpon Springs.  All three are Belgians, and all three are very tasty, but my favorite was their newest addition to this line, the Pays du Soleil.  With bret and booze and tartness, this was a great find.  And as a bonus, I got to meet and talk briefly with Bob Sylvester, owner and brewer of Saint Somewhere.

Naturally, I visited with Cigar City again and tried the Tropical IPA (their Jai Alai aged with Papaya, Pineapple, Mango, and Acai) which I was very surprised to enjoy.  I am not normally one for fruit beers at all, but this didn’t taste like a fruit beer.   It tasted like a… tropical IPA… and was absolutely delicious.  Of course the Hunahpu Imperial Stout was available and was as great as ever.

So with those under my belt, I wandered the tables, trying new beers and some old ones, tasting new offerings from brewers I knew, and riding the wave of people through Centro Ybor.  Some of the beers were good, some not so much.  But there were a few gems among the unknowns that I really enjoyed.

Of the Florida breweries that I newly discovered, two stood out among the rest.  The first was the Bold City Brewery from Jacksonville.  While some of my friends enjoying the lighter beers raved about their Killer Whale Cream Ale, I preferred their Chinook IPA and the special 1901 Red Ale dry hopped with Amarillo hops.  Great flavor and bite and a nice surprise.

The other great find was Pensacola Bay Brewery from – you guessed it – Pensacola!  Brewer Mark Roberts and his son are actually in the process of getting up and running, but their Lil Napolean IPA stood out like a veteran.  With great balance and bursting with flavor, I expect great things from these guys and hope to see a lot more in the coming years.

From beyond the boarders of the Sunshine State many other great beers were available.   From Shipyard to Sierra Nevada, some of the bigger craft beer names were there and well enjoyed.  But the one that made the biggest impression on me was Hoppin’ Frog from Akron, Ohio.  Not only were their Mean Manalishi Double IPA and BORIS the Crusher Imperial Stout delicious, but owner and brewmaster Fred “the Frog” Karm was there himself, pouring beers and shaking hands.  Energetic and friendly, he then introduced me to his father and mother, who were also pouring beers and representing their son’s brewery.  Class act all the way, and some really great beer.

The crowd was pretty big, and of course there were the obnoxious minority who overindulged to the point of oblivion, but by and large the atmosphere was friendly and fun.  The weather could not have been better, and – most importantly – craft beer was recognized and celebrated.  My only regret is that I was not able to attend the Brewer’s Ball on Sunday, an exclusive event for the brewers and a select lucky few who are invited or get tickets. But next year… yes, I will be there.

Click here for pictures of the event.

Further down Central Avenue from the heart of Downtown is the St. Pete Arts District.  Small galleries and shops line both sides, and it is the home of the annual St. Petersburg Folkfest when many local artists gather to display and sell their work.  A few years ago a new restaurant appeared in the area with a Southern-themed menu and a fancier than usual look and feel.  Savannah’s offers a “blend of traditional Southern fare with exotic flavors, using fresh ingredients and special preparation to propel the cuisine of the Old South to the heights of contemporary gourmet cooking.”  I will tell you, the food is exceptional.   However, much to my surprise, so is the beer list!  The owners have seen fit to compliment their culinary offerings with not just mint juleps and a nice wine list.  And for this beer geek, the good folks at Savannah’s have done their homework.   Of the twenty craft beers available, eleven are from “south of the Mason Dixon line”.  Notable representations include Abita, Lazy Magnolia, and Dunedin Brewing.  In addition, some “imports from outside the South” include Stoudt’s, Flying Dog, Dogfish Head, and Stone.   The service is fantastic, and the wait staff is very helpful in offering suggestions to pair with the meal.

Just south of Downtown is the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida.  Established in 1965, the St. Pete Campus has thrived and grown over the years.  Tucked away in the campus is a local gem known as the Tavern at Bayboro.  Open now for over twenty-five years, this student favorite serves great sandwiches, soups, and salads at undergrad-friendly prices, and then compliments them with a small but quality offering of craft beer.  Eight taps and a wide variety of imported and domestic bottled beers give USF students a chance to have some craft beer love without having to leave campus.

A few years ago a little place opened up on Central Avenue that changed the game Downtown.  The menu was deceptively simple; tacos, burritos and the like with your choice of chicken, beef, pork, or fish.  Dinners were a bit more upscale, but it was still a casual vibe.  What raised eyebrows and caused a buzz was the food, and Z-Grille was the place to be.  Chef and owner Zach Gross created vibrant and mouth-watering flavors and served them up to the hungry people of St. Pete with his SoCal skater style and hard rock attitude.  And to top it off, he added a small but great selection of craft beers, six on draft and many more in bottles.  For a while, the location on Central changed its name to Zurritos, carrying on the same lunch menu and great beers, while the Z-Grille name moved to a full upscale restaurant a few blocks away.  Now, they are one again and still have the quality and style going strong.  I have had both lunch and dinner at Z-Grille, and both are excellent.  My personal favorite is the pork burrito, but you can’t go wrong with any of the offerings.  The craft beer rotates on a regular basis, but Zach is definitely in tune with the beer scene, hosting a Lagunitas Beer Tasting with Ron Lindenbush of the Lagunitas Brewing Company last month, and even having their own beer specially brewed!   Z-Grille is a must-visit for anyone spending time in St. Petersburg who enjoys great food and beer.

The next edition of the St. Pete Beer Scene will leave the downtown area and venture north to Pinellas Park and Largo to a few of my favorite places: the Cajun Café and Willard’s Tap House!

On the “Stogie” side of things, Los Blancos Cigar Company and El Primer Mundo set up tables and displays of their wares outside the brewpub, with cigar experts on hand to answer questions and educate the neophytes in attendance. Not being a cigar smoker, I can only assume from the happy faces and plumes of blue smoke that the stogies were a big hit.

But the night belonged to the beer, without question. With over twenty-five stouts, porters, and other dark ales to choose from, the only difficulty was deciding which to start with. The choices were as varied as they were impressive, and it became very clear very quickly that not all stouts are created equal, but everything I tried was fantastic.

One of the great things about any good beer event is getting to try beers you have never had before, either because they are not readily available or you just haven’t gotten around to it. There were lots of both in Dunedin on Saturday night. From the Brooklyn Black Ops and Dunedin’s own Cookies-‘n-Croon (made with actual Oreos!) to Terrapin’s Oak Aged Wake and Bake and Cigar City’s Barrel Aged Hunaphu Imperial Stout, there was something for everyone.

Some other highlights included:

• Harpoon Oyster Stout

• Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous

• Cigar City Cubano Espresso Maduro

• Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout

• Holy Mackerel Mack in Black

• Rogue Shakespeare Stout

• Shipyard Brewer’s Choice Brown Ale

• Swamp Head Midnight Oil Stout

• Oskar Blues Ten Fidy

• Left Hand Fade to Black

Beer events like this one also lend themselves to a better breed of beer drinker, too. Sure, there are always a few obnoxious people who are just there to get as drunk as possible (very possible, actually, with offerings like Dogfish Worldwide Stout and Avery Mephistopheles), but the vast majority are there to experience craft beer and the camaraderie it breeds. As with the best of events, I could – and did – stop and talk to strangers about their experience. Every one of them happily recommended their favorites, offered opinions on what they had tried, and discussed the event in general. Not a single complaint from anyone that I heard.

It was also a great event to reconnect with other beer enthusiasts I already knew. I got to spend a fair amount of time with several Florida brewers, distributors, restaurant and pub owners, as well as other beer writers. Joey Redner and Wayne Wambles from Cigar City Brewing introduced me to Luke Kemper and Craig Birkmaier of the new Swamp Head Brewing in Gainesville, I got to tip a few with Ben Romano of the soon-to-open Zen Brewing in Tampa, and share some beers with Justin Clark of Florida Micro Beverage, Dave Doble from Tampa Bay Brewing Company, and Mark Christopher, the Tampa Craft Beer Examiner. In addition, I was surprised by good friend Paul Unwin from the Cajun Café and Blaine and Chrissy Smith from Willard’s Tap House. Of course with great beer lovers come other great beer lovers, and I met a host of new people that I hope to tip a glass with at future events. From homebrewers (who brought their own samples to share) to beer collectors (toting special stashes) and just plain old beer lovers, this was a beer event to be remembered.

For more pictures, click here.

Well, St. Petersburg, Florida, is where I live, thousands of miles from “Beervana” and the likes of Bend. But this is a beer town in the making. Craft beer is on the rise here, and increasingly on the menu at restaurants and in bars around town. Where ten years ago the only craft beer one could find was a Sam Adams (not that there is anything wrong with Sam’s), we are now enjoying an ever-increasing flow of great offerings from breweries around the country.

St. Petersburg is the largest city in Pinellas County, located on the central west coast of Florida, across the bay from Tampa. It boasts a population of about a quarter-million residents, making it the fourth largest city in Florida. Founded in 1876 and incorporated in 1892, St. Petersburg has the honor of being the birthplace of the first commercial airline: a flight across the bay to Tampa in 1914 by the “St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line”. Surrounded on three sides by water, Pinellas County consistently is ranked as having several of the top ten best beaches in the country, and is a common destination for Northerners during the winter months. While the city has much interesting history in many areas, brewing and beer is sadly not one of them. There are no breweries in St. Petersburg proper, and only two in the county: Dunedin Brewery in Dunedin and Saint Somewhere Brewery in Tarpon Springs.

However, as the city has grown in the past two decades and moved from being a “God’s waiting room” community to an emerging cultural and intellectual center, the craft beer movement has taken root throughout the city and Pinellas County as well. We will begin our journey in the heart of St. Pete: Downtown.

Ask any Downtown resident or regular visitor where to find the best selection of beer, and invariably The Independent will be mentioned. Strictly a bar, there is no food at all, and the long narrow space can get very tight on busy nights. It is also a smoking bar (yes, Florida still allows it) so unless you want to sit outside in the limited seating, there is that to content with. That said, the beer selection is very impressive, focusing on more hard-to-find European offerings, but with a healthy selection of American craft brews as well.

If you are looking for a fun and casual dinner, but want to be sure to have a good beer selection, visit Midtown Sundries. It’s a sports-bar type place with wings and sandwiches and what-not, offerings similar in style to an Applebee’s or Chilli’s, but several notches above in quality. Dinners include steaks and tuna fillet, chicken and ribs, all of which are very good. Recently, however, they took the leap and added a line of ten taps with nothing but craft beer. The offerings rotate, but some that have been spotted are Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA, Rogue Dead Guy Ale, and Bell’s Oberon. Put some of those next to the fantastic “Barbalo” wings and watch the Lightning or Rays, and you have a great night ahead in this smoke-free establishment.

The seafood-lover does not get left out in St. Pete. Downtown has a slew of options when it comes to the latest catch, but the newest on the scene is 400 Beach Seafood and Taphouse. More upscale than most in St. Pete, the food is fantastic. From the Cajun Fried Rock Shrimp or Goat Cheese Crab Cakes appetizers to the Sesame Seared Tuna with Passion Fruit Teriyaki or the Fresh Florida Grouper with Artichoke Crab Stuffing, there is no wrong answer when ordering here. The only hard part is picking a beer from the 25 taps and 30 bottle choices. Truthfully, only about half of each are real craft beer offerings, but that’s still good odds! You will pay more at 400 Beach, for sure. It’s a high-end and fairly fancy place, but you will find it is worth it.

There are many more good-beer-and-food restaurants in the Downtown St. Petersburg area that deserve acknowledgement. Next week I’ll take you to Southern-influenced Savannah’s, the Tavern at Bayboro, and personal favorite Z-Grille.

But what does the craft beer lover do on such a day? There is no generally accepted beer tradition for Valentines Day, so we are often left to figure it out on our own. To assist, I have taken the liberty of putting together some beer selections for the new lovers, the long time “collaborators”, and those not participating at all. After all, we in the craft beer community are very inclusive.

For those looking for the right beer gift for their sweetheart, there are plenty of great beers out there. Good craft brews are really an appropriate gift for ANY occasion, so you want to find something special for the Day of Romance. Here are some suggestions:

Starr Hill – The Love
Bell’s – Two Hearted Ale
Kuhnhenn – St. Valentines Irish Red Ale
Foothills Brewing – Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout (maybe not if it is a first date, though)

Then there are those of us in long-term relationships. Married, promised, life-partners, whatever. We have moved beyond the initial excitement and romance into something deeper and more passionate. We have learned about one another, discovered the art of compromise, and in many cases collaboration. It is in this spirit that I offer the following collaboration beers:

Sierra Nevada/Dogfish Head – Life and Limb
Dogfish Head/Sierra Nevada – Limb and Life
Mikkeller/Brew Dog – Divine Rebel Barley Wine
Avery/Russian River – Collaboration, Not Litigation (maybe something to be said there?)

The lonely-hearts and the nay-sayers do not need to go thirsty, however. There are plenty of ways to NOT celebrate or protest the day with great beer. So glower away with a glass of one of these choices:

Freetail Brewing – Broken Promise Pale Ale
Lafayette Brewing Company – Weeping Hog IPA
Great Divide – Heart of Darkness Stout
Alesmith – My Bloody Valentine (but please, do not take this one literally)

So raise your glasses, friends and lovers. Craft beer is good at any time, and there is a beer for every celebration.

Cheers!

Every year, we at Ratebeer.com release our “Ratebeer Best” list.  Unlike some competitions and “official” tastings, this list is determined by “Ratebeerians”: beer lovers from around the world who rate beers, comment on them, and inform other beer lovers about them throughout the year.  There are numerous factors that make this an important list, but some of the key components are the sheer volume of ratings (over 3100 members have over 100 ratings to their credit), true international representation among members, and the fact that most samples are done with commercially available beers and not at exclusive, special batch tastings.

Not that this annual ritual is without controversy: the presence of seventeen Imperial Stouts in the top twenty best beers in the world is more than a little eyebrow raising to some of us.  But in the spirit of fairness, there are multiple categories for style and locale, as well as beer bar, brewpub, beer store, and beer restaurant.  Historically, Florida has had a limited presence on these lists, but not anymore.

Scoring in a huge way was Cigar City Brewing.  Coming off their gold medal at GABF, Joey Redner and Wayne Wambles took home the top spot for American beers with their Bourbon Barrel Aged Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout, which also took third best beer in the world.  But they didn’t finish their accolades there.  The boys from Tampa grabbed five of the top fifty beers in the United States, the top four spots in the Brown/Mild ale list, were rated number three in the World’s Best Brewer list, and were ranked in the top fifteen of the Best Breweries to Visit.  Not bad for a newcomer to the game, eh?

But Florida also made a dent in several other categories, putting to bed the myth that we are still a “wasteland”.  In both the Best Beer Bar and Best Restaurant for Beer categories, Florida had a strong showing, especially considering this was an international category.  Orlando, Sarasota, and the Tampa Bay Area were listed alongside the likes of Antwerp, London, and Prague and in the company of fellow American cities Seattle, Asheville, and San Francisco.

In the Best Beer Bar category, Florida was represented by:

4. Redlight Redlight, Orlando

16. Abbey, Deland

17. Oldsmar Tap House, Oldsmar (Tampa Bay)

44. Cock & Bull Pub, Sarasota

In the Best Restaurant for Beer category:

15. Café Tu Tu Tangos, Orlando

21. Mr. Dunderbaks, Tampa

26. Datz Delicatessen, Tampa

33. Mellow Mushroom, Brandon (Tampa Bay)

While it doesn’t get as much attention as it should, where would we be without our retailers?  Florida grabbed some honors here as well:

7. Knightly Spirits – Hiawassee Rd, Orlando

32. Kingdom Liquors, Brandon (Tampa Bay)

Of course, there are those that say this system of ranking and rating is skewed and unfair and whatnot.  Usually by those who do not appear on the list.  That said, there are LOTS of beers, breweries, brewpubs, bars and the like that could certainly have been listed.  And the list will be different next year.

On a personal note, I am pulling for a few local names to make next years list in the Beer Bar and Reastaurant for Beer categories.

• Cajun Cafe on the Bayou – a personal favorite with a phenomenal beer selection put together by a true beer lover.
• Willard’s Tap House – Only open a couple of weeks and already a great feel and excellent tap list
• Tampa Bay Brewing Company – A fantastic brewpub in Ybor City.

So, who will be the new sweetheart brewery that everyone is talking about in 2010?  Is there a new beer bar in your town that has a chance?  Is there a store whose selection makes you quiver with excitement when you stand back and gaze lovingly upon the offerings therein?  Did they make this year’s lists?

Did you rate them on Ratebeer.com?

Fermenters

I loved craft beer long before I ever picked up a stirring paddle. But when my roommate decided he was going to brew beer, I was all for it. “Free beer!” I thought. And while it was not great beer his first time ‘round, it was better than any of the keg party swill that we were so often subjected to. The more he began to brew (and the better he got at it), the more interested I became. I watched what he was doing, and looked at the recipes. While I knew conceptually what went in to brewing great beer, I had never seen it in action (and he was using mostly extract at the time).

A few years later, after I had moved to Florida, I began to brew my own. It was then that I really began to understand the ingredients and what they could do. A change of hops, a variation on the boil even, and you could change the beer you made! It was thaumaturgy made real! The more I brewed and experimented, the more I realized that it influenced my own enjoyment of craft beer. Nuances that had been lost on me before were suddenly laid bare. I found myself slowing down and savoring specific flavors of malts and hops, analyzing the brews not only as a whole experience, but breaking them down to their parts. It deepened the experience and only drove my interest further.

In turn, new ideas arose for my own home brews. What if I added this to the boil? What would happen if I switched the

Lost Grain IPA, brewed in 2009

yeast in the recipe for another strain? This two-way education opened ideas for my enjoyment and exploration of beer as well as my creation of my own home brews.

Home brewing is not a way to save money on your beer supply, as any true home brewer will tell you. Like any hobby (or obsession) there are always new “toys” and ingredients, and there are always new ways to upgrade your rig, expand your output, and build your own beer cave. But really, as craft beer lovers, saving money on beer is not usually high on our list. We gladly pay a bit more for what we love, and know that most of the time it is absolutely worth it. You won’t see one of us knocking back a case of 90-Minute IPA or Dales Pale during the Superbowl or Stanley Cup Finals, because we tend to prefer to enjoy our beer. But I digress…

Homebrewing – if it is something you are interested in – is not only a great hobby and means to be creative with something you love, but can also enhance your enjoyment and understanding of craft beer. There are numerous references and places to look if you or someone you know is interested in home brewing, and some of the best can be found among the featured writers of the Hop Press.

Here are some recent articles by the Hop Press Gang that I highly recommend:

• PJ Hoberman – Starting to Homebrew

• Steph Weber – Add Some Spice to Your Life with Chile Beer

• Brian Cendrowski – How to Put the Coffee in a Coffee Stout

Okay kids, grab your taste buds and your Walt Whitman. Carpe Diem!

As you have been learning in our educational series, there are four primary ingredients to beer: Water, Barley, Yeast, and Hops. It is my pleasure – and honor – to talk to you about my favorite ingredient: the hop.

A hop cone.

Hops are the female flower clusters – commonly called cones – of the humulus plant (Humulus lupulus). The hop is part of the family Cannabaceae, which also includes the genus Cannabis (yes, kids… THAT cannabis.) They are used primarily as a flavoring and stability agent in beer, though hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. The first documented use of hops in beer as a bittering agent is from the eleventh century. Prior to this period, brewers used a wide variety of bitter herbs and flowers. Dandelion, burdock root, marigold and heather were often used prior to the discovery of hops. Hops are used extensively in brewing today for their many benefits, including balancing the sweetness of the malt with bitterness, contributing a variety of desirable flavors and aromas, and having an antibiotic effect that favors the activity of yeast over less desirable microorganisms.

The hop plant is a vigorous climbing herbaceous perennial (and wouldn’t that be a great name for a band? The Vigorous

Hop rows

Climbing Herbaceous Perennials?), usually grown up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden or hop yard. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types being used for particular styles of beer. Most hops are used either for bittering (added earlier in the boil) or aroma (added later in the boil.) Some can be used for either depending on the balance of alpha (bittering) and beta (aroma) acids in the hop oil. Flavors and aromas are often described with words like “floral”, “citrusy”, “spicy”, and “earthy”. The timing of the addition of the hops – both aromatic and bittering – can greatly affect the final outcome of the beer, which is why there are so many different variations even within the same beer styles. India Pale Ales, traditionally higher in hops and IBUs (International Bittering Units, the standard measure of a beer’s bitterness), are not all created equal and can run the gamut from “mildly spicy” to “oh my god the enamel is peeling off my teeth”.

Pliny the Elder

The first recorded reference to hops was by Pliny the Elder (there is a beer popular among craft beer lovers that bears his name) in his Naturalis Historia and the first documented instance of hop cultivation was in 736, in the Hallertau region of present-day Germany. It wasn’t until the thirteenth century in Germany that hops begin to start replacing the use of gruit (a combination of herbs like heather, mugwort, and carroway) for flavoring. In Britain, hopped beer was first imported from Holland around 1400, but hops were initially condemned in 1519 as a “wicked and pernicious weed” (another great band name, I might add). In 1471, Norwich, England actually banned the plant from the use in the brewing of beer, and it wasn’t until 1524 that hops were first grown in southeast England. It was another century before hop cultivation began in the present-day United States in 1629.

Today, hops are grown across the globe, and different regions boast different varieties and hybrids. There are over thirty hop varieties, and most beers use a specific combination of several different types in their recipes. Craft beer drinkers who like heavily hopped and bitter beers are often referred to as “hop-heads” and the beers they love as “hop-bombs”. Some of the heaviest hopped beers claim as much as 200 IBUs (and one claiming a “theoretical IBU of 2007”), but most of the commonly available, high IBU beers come in around the 90 to 100 IBU mark.

So let us raise a wonderfully bitter toast to the wicked and pernicious weed that gives beer its wonderful bite and kick; the glorious hop.

Cheers!

I am not a big follower of popular trends and what is “in”.  I am a bit of a curmudgeon in that I like the things I have always liked, and really don’t care what others think about it.  I still enjoy a good pint of Guinness on a nitrogen draft (and don’t think the Guinness 250 is any good at all), I still buy Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on a regular basis, and have not found many lagers that I genuinely enjoy.  And dammit, you kids get off my lawn!

That said, I do follow trends in the beer industry in terms of what brewers are doing.  I am always interested to find out where their creative processes have led them and what sort of innovation and “out of the box” thinking they are going for.  But different does not always equal better or even good.  The Most (or least) of something is not always the best.  It seems many people are always looking for the Next Big Thing.  Maybe getting older is teaching me that while there is something to be said for new and shiny, a lot of times the old and worn is still pretty damn good.

In this new year I am hearing a lot of talk about what the new trends in craft brewing might be.  Bigger beers.  Stranger beers.  Beers so light you can’t even taste them or so heavy they defy the laws of physics.  But what I find interesting when I read what my fellow beer lovers and writers are looking for in 2010 is that by and large what we are wanting is normalcy.  Consistency.  Good tasting, not-quite-as-strong, quality session brews that we can sit around and enjoy several of without having to call a paramedic.

In some sort of cosmic alignment, the Hop Press Gang is a few articles into a Beer School series discussing the basics of beer.  We will each take a different aspect of the topic from the ingredients to the process to the serving of our favorite beverage, and I think that within that education comes a better appreciation for the “boring” beers that often get forgotten among discussions of uber-ABVs and caustic-level IBUs. To take something so simple at its core and make something so enjoyable… well now that is what I call art.

First on most peoples’ minds these days is the economy. Unemployment rates are at record highs, political infighting seems to stall important reforms, and good ideas get derailed by unrelated arguments and grandstanding. We all have our positions and opinions on nearly every issue, but at the end of the day we want the same thing. A job that pays us a fair wage or more, a place to live that is clean and safe, and good health for ourselves and our families. For craft beer lovers, one more thing gets added: continued brewing of – and access to – good beer. One might place that under “pursuit of happiness”, but regardless, it is a real and pertinent issue.

In 2010 we could very well see legislation introduced that will help or hurt our favorite American craft brewers. As supporters of the craft beer movement – and as citizens of this great country of ours – we have a responsibility to not only be aware of said legislation, but let our representatives know where we stand on these matters. There were some bills introduced in 2009 that appear to be shelved until someone takes them up again next year.

Some examples:

H.R. 4278 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a reduced rate of excise tax on beer produced domestically by certain small producers.

H.R. 836 and S. 1058 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to reduce the tax on beer to its pre-1991 level, and for other purposes.

Obviously, these bills are all tax-related, but they are designed to help the small business owner (i.e. craft brewers). They are other bills out there, and no doubt more will come up in the new year. At the state level, similar battles are being fought over distribution, alcohol content, packaging, zoning, and so on. I encourage everyone who cars about their craft beer to find out what is going on in your own community as well as be aware of what is happening at the national level. These artisans provide us with the thing we love all year round. We owe it to them to support them in every way we can.

So let’s make 2010 the year we give back to those that give to us: the craft brewers.