Beer Geek Weekend: FFFXV and FOBAB 9

The second weekend in November, I hit a double header of beer tastings in the Chicago-land area: The Three Floyds XV Anniversary Party and the 9th Annual Festival of Wood and Barrel Aged Beers.

My write-up for the Dayton City Paper ran this week, and you can see it here.

Three Floyds was frustrating, as we stood in line for about 3 hours, just to buy our beers. It's true what they say about FFF events being very poorly organized. The last hour or so was fun, but then we had to rush off to get to FOBAB. Still, brought home a bottle of Baller Stout and a case of Zombie Dust, the FFF American Pale Ale that is simply amazing.

FOBAB was fun, as always, with a lot of crazy beers (see the

highlights in the article). This year, my media pass let me "backstage" to talk to some of the brewers and organizers, which was cool. (It also got me taller pours of the samples, which I probably, in retrospect, didn't need). I'll be back there next year, although I think I'll stick to a single event next year!

Take Your Friends To Beer School

It's getting colder, and that means indoor activities. Try hosting a beer tasting. See my latest Dayton City Paper for tips.

Portland, Oregon Trip

My wife and I want to Portland for a long weekend earlier this month. I wrote up the trip in a recent Dayton City Paper article, which you can read online.

Lucky's Taproom

Cool article in Dayton Most Metro about Lucky's Taproom and Eatery. I've known Drew through his sister Laurie (who is an old friend of my wife, Gina). G and I were very excited to hear about Drew opening his own place. Even more excited when we checked it out. Great decor, awesome food (I'm lactose intolerant, so the vegan options are really cool--you don't find that much in pub food), and the beer list is always amazing. And while I like live music, it's nice to also have a place where you can drop in any night of the week and not have to fight to be heard over the band.

Also Friend Lucky's on FaceBook to see specials, etc.

Where The Hell Are All The Brewpubs?!?

Check out my recent article from the Dayton City Paper exploring why Dayton has a drought of brewpubs and how we might get the tap flowing again!

Very cool interactive graphic depicting different...

Very cool interactive graphic depicting different beer styles in relation to each other. Check it out. Beer Style Infographic - Vin's Gadgets View or comment on Kevin Gray's post » The Google+ project makes sharing on the web more like sharing in real-life. Join Google+

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Beer Golden Age Infographic

William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill, co-authors of Craft Beer, posted an interesting infographic in Co.Design on Friday confirming that we are indeed in a golden age of beer. Some interesting tidbits:

• Outside of the Prohibition period, 1978 marked the lowest number of American breweries (44) since around 1810.
• In ~30 years since, we've added 1551 breweries in that time.
• The peak in 1873 (4,131), although it seems unlikely that we'll ever hit that number again, given that there were likely a lot of breweries because many of them were small and didn't have the distribution channels we have now. Output was tiny (under 12 million barrels).
• Today's breweries output about 200 million barrels annually. That number has stayed static since the 1980s, but a higher proportion of that number each year is coming from small craft brewers.

(thanks to Jonathan for the link)