Recently in Admin Category

I was going to write a beer review tonight, but since the web has apparently gone on strike, I figured I'd spend a little time talking about that instead. Many sites, including the likes of Wikipedia and Reddit, have instituted a complete blackout as part of a protest against two ill-conceived pieces of censorship legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Congress (these laws are called the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, henceforth to be referred to as SOPA and PIPA). I can't even begin to pretend that blacking out my humble little site would accomplish anything, but since a lot of my personal and professional livelihood depends on the internet, I suppose I can't ignore this either.

For the uninitiated, if the bills known as SOPA and PIPA become law, many websites could be taken offline involuntarily, without warning, and without due process of law, based on little more than an alleged copyright owner's unproven and uncontested allegations of infringement¹. The reason Wikipedia is blacked out today is that they depend solely on user-contributed content, which means they would be a ripe target for overzealous copyright holders. Sites like Google haven't blacked themselves out, but have staged a bit of a protest as well, because under the provisions of the bill, even just linking to a site that infringes upon copyright is grounds for action (and thus search engines have a vested interest in defeating these bills).

I won't belabor the point much further, but I will link to Kaedrin's official stance on Intellectual Property, Copyright and DRM, a post I wrote a few years ago on my generalist blog that I think is still relevant. An expanded version of this post you're reading right now is also up at my generalist blog, along with some other links and thoughts on the matter. Feel free to stop on by.

And if you're so inclined, perhaps your form of protest could be represented by a different kind of blackout. Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

¹ - Thanks to James for the concise description. There are lots of much longer longer and better sourced descriptions of the shortcomings of this bill and the issues surrounding it, so I won't belabor the point here.

Those who have attempted to leave a comment recently have no doubt found themselves facing a rather ugly error page despite the fact that the comment actually went through and was being displayed properly on the site. Sorry about that. In the short term, I've tried to make that error page a little more friendly so that you know what's what.

This has been a problem I've been running into lately and is probably the result of my host attempting to deal with the massive throngs of spam comments that were attempted on this site (and on my generalist blog) a while back. It's a 504 error, which is apparently something of a scripting timeout, and yeah, I know, you don't care.

So to make a long story short, if you submit a comment here, it should work, even if you get a weird page with an error on it. Also, I know it's annoying to have to log in with your Google or Wordpress (or whatever) account to leave a comment, but you can blame that one on the spammers too. I understand this is all a confusing state of affairs, and I assure you the appropriate person or persons responsible will be sacked. Unless that person is me, in which case, you're fucked because I'm pretty lazy about this stuff. I mean, come on, this beer isn't going to drink/review itself, amiright?

Update: Playing around with some Module Caching settings. You may see some funkiness on the site. If something seems wrong, I suggest panic.

As 2011 comes to a close, everyone and their mother is putting out top 10 lists and recaps for all manner of subjects, including beer. Here at Kaedrin, we're usually pretty lazy about it. Over on my generalist blog, I always put together a top 10 movies of the year list, but it usually doesn't come out until February. In that case, it's because I'm trying to catch up with movies on DVD/BD/Streaming/Torrents/etc..., but beer is a different matter entirely. For one thing, beer isn't released the way movies are, and while I've certainly had my fair share of one-off 2011-only brews, most of what I drank this year has been around for a while. So I've been lazily compiling a couple of lists, all based only on what I drank this year.

As such, this post will be an intensely personal affair, entirely dependent on my 2011 consumption. Almost everything in this post will be represented in my archives somewhere, because as a true nerd, I've done a pretty good job about documenting the beers I drank this year. Before I get to my top beers of the year, I thought I'd spend some time musing on the trends of the year. Not necessarily trends of the whole craft beer world, just my own personal tastes.

• Stouts - When I began beer blogging a little over a year ago, I wasn't much of a fan of stouts or porters. But I forced myself to try some, and the more I tried, the more I enjoyed, especially when it comes to imperial stouts. There are still some varieties that I don't love, particularly stouts that emphasize coffee flavors (I'm looking at you, Founders Breakfast Stout), but I've really come to enjoy strong, dark beers over the last year.
• Barrel Aged Beer - In particular, bourbon or scotch barrel aged beers have become a bit of an obsession (wine barrel aged beers with wild yeasts/bacteria are a different story, see below). One sure-fire way to trick me into buying your beer is to make a bourbon barrel aged version. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to cattle calls or paying through the nose, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops for beer this good. I know some folks think bourbon barrel aging has gone too far, and there's something to be said for harnessing a balance of flavors (which some barrel aged beers emphatically do not accomplish), but I think my tolerance for bourbon/scotch flavors is higher than most. I kinda love these beers. This is something that I imagine will continue to explore through 2012...
• Aging/Cellaring Beer - As evidenced by a few recent posts, I've been toying with the concept of aging beer in my basement. Conditions are apparently not entirely ideal down there, but I tend to buy more than I can drink, so sometimes this happens by accident. I intend to cover the subject in more detail in a separate post (including a list of beers I'm currently saving), as it's an interesting practice.
• Homebrewing - I brewed 5 batches of beer in 2011. This roughly translates to once every 2-3 months and even that has left me with 3-4 cases of beer in my basement. I think my next step is to try making smaller batches more frequently. Speaking of which, I should really get cracking on my next batch!
• The Discovery of Barleywines - I never quite knew what to make of this style, and owing to the extremely high ABV, these aren't exactly every day beers, but some of my biggest discoveries and surprises this year were barleywines. I don't expect to go crazy with the style in 2012 - again, very high ABV beers require certain circumstances - but I'll most definitely be exploring the style a little more in 2012 (and hey, the style often gets the bourbon barrel treatment, so there's that too!)
• Sour Experimentation - I've really only gotten my feet wet with my exploration of sour beers. I've enjoyed a lot of what I've had, but only one has really knocked my socks off (the Sierra Nevada ExPortation). Expect more exploration in 2012, though I can't say as though these beers have really captured my imagination the way other styles have.
• Finding my White Whales - When I started this blog, I was a little frustrated by reading about beers I could never find anywhere. Well, somewhere along the way, I started to get a sense for how to find me some white whale beers. My list of beer purveyors has increased significantly over the year, and the ridiculous PLCB rules notwithstanding, Philly is a pretty bitchin beer town.

Well, there you have it. It's been a great year, filled with a ton of great beers. So great, in fact, that I couldn't quite bring myself to put together a top 10. I mean, seriously? I wrote somewhere on the order of 170 posts this year, and some of those contained multiple beers (including some with 10+ beers), meaning that I have somwhere on the order of 200-250 beers to choose from. Narrowing the list down to 30 was hard enough. All of the below beers have been reviewed, and I'm linking to each one. They're all at least an A- on my grading scale, and they're being listed from best to "worst", though I'd like to emphasize that the order is relatively fluid in my mind. Some of the beers on the bottom of the list could easily float up towards the middle or even top of the list, depending on my mood... Indeed, I could probably add another dozen beers to the list with no real problem. So take it with a grain of salt and if you want to see more, check out the A- archive.

Bottom line, though, is that these are all exceptional beers in one way or another.

1. Trappistes Rochefort 8 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
2. Harviestoun Ola Dubh Special Reserve 40 (Old Ale)
3. Avec Les Bons Voeux de la Brasserie Dupont (Saison)
4. BrewDog and Mikkeller Collaboration: Devine Rebel (Barleywine)
5. Victory V-Twelve (Belgian Specialty Ale)
6. La Trappe Quadrupel (Quadrupel)
7. Ommegang Rare Vos (Belgian Pale Ale)
8. The Bruery Autumn Maple (Belgian Fruit/Vegetable Beer)
9. Ommegang Three Philosophers (Quadrupel)
10. Trappistes Rochefort 6 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
11. Iron Hill Kryptonite (Double India Pale Ale)
12. Trappistes Rochefort 10 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
13. Victory Dark Intrigue (Imperial Stout)
14. Chimay Grand Reserve (Blue) (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
15. Sierra Nevada ExPortation (American Wild Ale)
16. Allagash Big Little Beer (Belgian Pale Ale)
17. The Bruery Mischief (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)
18. Cape Ann Fisherman's Imperial Pumpkin Stout (Pumpkin Ale/Imperial Stout)
19. St. Bernardus Watau Tripel (Tripel)
20. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout (Imperial Stout)
21. St. Bernardus Prior 8 (Dubbel)
22. Pretty Things Baby Tree (Quadrupel)
23. Russian River Pliny the Elder (Double India Pale Ale)
24. Uinta Cockeyed Cooper (Barleywine)
25. Lost Abbey The Angel's Share (American Strong Ale)
26. Lagunitas Hop Stoopid (Double India Pale Ale)
27. Mikkeller I Beat yoU (Double India Pale Ale)
28. La Chouffe (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)
29. Dogfish Head Burton Baton (Double India Pale Ale)
30. Victory Hop Wallop (Double India Pale Ale)

It's no Beer Samizdat 100, but it's a start! Hopefully, it will be up to 50-60 beers by next year... In any case, this concludes my 2011 beer wrapup. Still a few more beers to be drunk, and I need to figure out a beer that fits New Years, but I'll include those in next year's recap (like I did above with Dupont's Bon Voux). Here's to a great 2012.

Today marks the one year anniversary of Kaedrin Beer Blog. To celebrate, I'm drinking a homebrewed saison (I should review it sometime, but that time is not now) and taking a look at some statistics:

• 152 total posts (not quite 3 a week on average)
• 27 posts about IPAs, making that the most talked-about style on the blog. The runner up is Stout, with a whopping 21 posts. In both cases, the numbers are inflated since I don't break out double or imperial varieties and so on, so it's perhaps unsurprising that those two styles are posted about the most often. After them comes Saison (14), Belgian Strong Dark (13), Tripel (11) and Wheat (11, though I also don't make a distinction between Belgian Wit, Hefeweizen and other various styles)
• 13 posts about Victory Brewing, which is unsurprising as they're my favorite local brewery. Local brewer Yards comes in second with 9, and another local, Weyerbacher, has 8. Also at 8 is Ommegang, while Russian River and Dogfish Head are both at 7.
• 96 posts about beer from US breweries, significantly outpacing the runner up, which is Belgium at 29 entries. Things trail significantly after that, with the UK coming next at 11, but 6 of those are also categorized under Scotland (meaning that I post more about Scottish beers than English beers!)
• 51 posts featured a beer rated B+, which was by far the most common rating. B and A- both have 34, while B- has 25 and the big A has 24. Fortunately for me, the least common rating is F, with just one lone entry. I suppose you could take this to mean that I'm overrating a lot of beers, and perhaps that's true, but it's not like I'm trying to find bad beer, after all. And I've only rated 3 beers A+, so there is that too.

Damn, I drank a lot of beer last year. It's probably something that I should tone down a bit. While I think it's clear that I love beer, it's also not particularly good for me from a health perspective. Don't get me wrong, I'll still be drinking a lot, but if all goes to plan, the next year won't see quite as much drinking.

In my first post a year ago, I mentioned that the primary purpose of the blog was really to help me keep track of what I drank and how well I liked it. I also noted that I was pretty unsophisticated about my beer consumption and that my palate wasn't particularly sharp. I'd like to think that I've come a long way since then, but I think I still have much to learn. In a more general sense, my purpose for blogging is to learn, and I feel like I'm making progress on that front.

I can say that I've written many more beer reviews than I was initially expecting. I try to spice them up with general notes about the style or screenplays or whatever, but ultimately, most posts fall into the familiar beer review format. Perhaps if I drink less this next year, I'll spend more time writing or posting about beer in a more general sense. I've got a few ideas for interesting posts, but they will take some time to write (more than most entries at least), so I still expect the majority of posting to be reviews. This may not be the most interesting thing in the world for everyone, but it does get me towards my goal of blogging, as writing about beer forces me to think about it in a more thorough fashion.

All in all, it's been a good year. I don't see my posting slowing up any, and I already have lots of beers in my "cellar" (i.e. my fridge) that I'm sure will be interesting. I'm going to wait until the end of the year to do a top beers post, or to post about my best posts, but for now, look for some additional seasonal beer reviews coming up...

Or rather, gone movie watchin'. I'll be heading to Austin, TX for Fantastic Fest, so expect posting to be light for the next week or so. Fantastic Fest is a genre film festival (lots of horror, SF, action, and just plain weird stuff) and it's held at an Alamo Drafthouse. I've never been to one, but damn, a movie theater with good beer available? Near as I can tell, they've got lots of local Texas beers available - stuff from Live Oak, Independence (including a series of beers called the Brewluminati), (512), Jester King, Thirsty Planet, and presumably lots of others. And that's just at the theater. So there will be some beer bloggery resulting from this, maybe even while I'm there.

If anyone's got any Texas beer recommendations, leave a comment. I'll try and find some (and maybe even smuggle some home). See you soon.

Update: Had some trouble with the commenting system, but everything should be working now!

Again Update: Just FYI, I've been keeping track of my beer dorkery on untappd. Will try to get a recap up on the blog towards the end of the week! So far, so good!

Greetings.  My name is Mark, and I like beer.  I've always liked beer, but only recently have I begun to really plumb the depths of the beer world.  Sure, I had some craft brews here and there over the years, but living in PA means I have to deal with PLCB, which means the only places I can really experiment at are bars, and most bars around here have crappy selection (especially out here in the suburbs - it would be nice to live near a Monk's or a Eulogy, but I have to make do with what I've got).  Otherwise, experimentation means buying a ridiculously expensive case of beer that I'm not even sure I'll like.

In any case, I've recently become acquainted with the joys of violating the US Constitution (Amendment XXI, Section 2) by purchasing beer across state lines and bringing it back to PA (thank you, Delaware, for having awesome liquor stores with great beer selections).  I started my little interstate crimewave earlier this year and have burned through a pretty large selection of beers. I've even discovered a place relatively close in PA that has a great beer selection, but I kinda like being a scofflaw in this respect.

Of course, I'm having trouble keeping track of what I'm drinking and how well I like it. I've kinda been spamming my forum with posts on the subject, just in an attempt to keep up, but I don't want to bore my friends with it if they're not too interested. I've been blogging for over 10 years at this point, but it's always been something of a generalist endeavor, so I figured I could give a niche blog a chance. I'm not that familiar with the rest of the beer blogs, but I'm starting to read around and I figure a niche blog will have a better chance fitting in than if I rolled the occasional beer post out on my other blog.

At this point, I should inform you that I'm pretty unsophisticated about my beer consumption. I like to think that I have pretty good taste, but my palate is nowhere near as attuned as some others seem to be. I read the reviews on Beer Advocate and wonder where on earth these people are getting these smells/tastes from. Speaking of which, I hope this blog never gets that dry and boring. BA is a wonderful resource, but it also kinda sucks (a topic for another post) and a lot of the stuff there seems to take the joy out of drinking beer. It's like they think I should drink a beer whilst sitting in a dark isolation chamber, cleansing my palate after every sip, and writing pages of notes in some sort of formal code.

So look, I'm going to drink beer in less than ideal conditions. Sometimes I'm going to be out at a bar and in no condition (read: drunk) to accurately convey my thoughts. Sometimes I'll smoke a cigar whilst imbibing. Most of the time I'm going to be drinking while consuming salty snacks and watching bad horror movies. I'm almost always going to compare a beer to others of a similar style. I don't know why, but I almost never see that in reviews anywhere - comparative reviews should be more common. Context matters, but that's a problem easily solved through acknowledgement (and it's another big reason why the reviews at BA kinda suck).

All of which is to say that I'm most likely going to make an ass of myself on this blog, but that's kinda why I blog in the first place. I blog to learn, and a big part of that will be making mistakes. I'm not pretending to be an expert here, I just want to gain a better understanding of the subject by describing what I'm drinking and how it's making me feel. Writing has always been a good way to accomplish this sort of thing, so here we are. At some point, I'll probably be trying my hand at homebrewing, which I'll most likely be documenting here as well.