Admin

Anniversary

by

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…

Gone Fishin’

by

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.

fantastic fest

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!

Introduction

by

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.