I came across a website the today, while trying to read the Danish article, that had the ability to be translated into a variety of languages. I thought being able to reach a significantly wider audience seemed like a cool idea, so I did a little digging around and settled on a WordPress plugin, the Taragana Translator Pro. You can see it there in the right-hand sidebar under the heading “Translate the Bulletin.” Simply click on the flag representing one of the thirteen available languages, and voilà, it will reload the page in that language. You can then navigate to any post or page on the Bulletin and it will stay in that language. To return to English, simply click on the Union Jack flag.
The 13 languages you can now read the Bulletin in are:
Of course, I’m barely competent in English, so I have no idea how accurate the translations are. It could be complete gibberish for all I know. Anybody remember Monty Python’s Hungarian Phrasebook sketch? For all I know, every phrase could simply be rendered “my hovercraft is full of eels.” If you’re bilingual and fluent in one of the languages above, please take a look and let me know if the translations are reasonably accurate.
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Jon, from the Brewsite, predicted at the beginning of this year that 2008 would be the Year of the Beer Blog. He may be onto something. Charlie Papazian just started his own beer blog, the Beer Examiner; named not so much for what he hopes to write about, but because it’s hosted on the Examiner chain of newspapers website (with print editions in 3 cities and local news online in 57 cities). Papazian, of course, founded what is now the Brewers Association way back in 1978, and has naturally been paying closer attention to the brewing industry far longer than most of us. So it should certainly prove illuminating to follow along with his near-daily “examinations” of what’s going on in the beer world. Charlie’s perspectives are always worth hearing, and I was pleased I got a chance to sit and chat with him, and a few others, during one of the trade show buffet lunches last week. I must confess I was initially surprised that his new blog wasn’t associated with the BA, but he should be able to reach a much wider audience this way so I think it does make sense. Plus he can write his own personal opinions without having to worry about speaking for the Brewers Association.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Charlie. We’re glad to have you with us.
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Today is beer blogger extoradinaire Alan McLeod’s 45th birthday. Alan runs a good beer blog, called — curiously enough — A Good Beer Blog. I’m not sure what came first, the goodness or the blog. Anyway, though I’ve yet to meet Alan in person I feel as if he’s already a great, not just good, friend through our many conversations via e-mail and commenting on one another’s blogs. If you haven’t read his essay in the book Beer & Philosophy yet, rush right out and buy yourself a copy. Join me in wishing Alan the very merriest of birthdays. Cheers, mate.
Alan pondering the mysteries of Stonehenge at age 7.
A night with bald pate, circa 2002.
Contemplating a jump near Prince Edward Island a dozen years ago. Happily, he decided against getting wet.
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Tom Dalldorf, publisher of the Celebrator Beer News, is launching CBN Evening Brews, a weekly video show reporting on beer news. The format is similar to a television news show, with two anchors — Tom Dalldorf and Alison Cook — who take turns reporting the stories, which are culled from around the world. There’s also video interviews, stills and other material to enhance the stories. Toward the end of the over 15-minute show, Dalldorf does an editorial commentary about the drinking age. A new episode will be up on the Celebrator website each week.
CBN Evening Brews : April 14, 2008 from Celebrator Beer News on Vimeo.
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Here’s a fun project. Admittedly, it wouldn’t work very well in a lot of places, but it’s ideal for Montana. Journalist Bill Schneider has set out to visit and write about every brewery in Montana. His column begins today in the New West, which styles itself as the “Voice of the Rocky Mountains.” His first stop is Lewis & Clark Brewing in Helena and he also provides a good overview of his plan. The fact that there are only around seventeen breweries in the state helps, but it’s still a fun and worthwhile endeavor.
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On the off chance that there’s someone in the universe who hasn’t discovered the wonderfully useful Beer Mapping Project, I’m picking it as my Website of the Month for March. And it’s not just because I’m an honorary Captain in the BMP Army (I keep wondering when my sword will arrive) nor is because the General, Jonathan Surratt, and his lovely wife Robin, are two of the nicest people I’ve met (yes, I’m coming to Great Taste of the Midwest … soon).
It’s really because Jonathan has taken what’s essentially a simple idea and done just a terrific job of making it incredibly useful. The Beer Mapping Project has taken Google’s offer of allowing free not-for-profit use of their Mapping API and created maps to beer destinations. I remember when he was just getting started and little by little new cities were being added, seemingly daily. Today there are maps in eleven countries around the world, all fifty U.S. states and dozens of cities, including our own San Francisco map. Each map includes breweries, brewpubs, beer bars, beer stores and homebrew shops. There are also reviews, a forum, a way to create your own beer trips, and much, much more. The Beer Mapping Project is without a doubt one of the killer apps of the online beer community.
This is my second pick for “Website of the Month,” which I started featuring on the right sidebar last month, because I get so many link requests, and because I have so many in my blogroll, I wanted to highlight the best ones I come across.
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I confess that when the e-mail came across my screen from Forbes inviting me to take a look at their choices for America’s Best Beer Bars that I was more than a little skeptical. Forbes has managed to mangle beer stories a number of times since I’ve been monitoring the mainstream media’s beer coverage, but this was from Forbes Traveler, a subdivision that, according to their e-mail, “focuses on the ultimate travel experience and [for which they] create features to keep [their] users up to date on the best vacations and newest travel trends around.”
In their latest feature, they set out to pick “The Best American Beer Bars,” no small feat. So there was a certain amount of schadenfreude that made me check out their list, expecting the worst. What I found was a pleasant surprise. I’ve been to seven of their ten choices, and was very familiar with all but one of the remaining three. And by personal knowledge or reputation, I’d say they put together an astonishingly good list, as these things go. And while there is plenty of personal bias that might cause any of us to wish they’d substitute this one or that one with a personal favorite, it’s hard to really quibble with any of these bars as being deserving. The one I would personally substitute is Monk’s Cafe (Philadelphia, PA), with which I’d replace the Brick Store Pub, but only because I’ve never heard of that one. It may very well be a fine place. It does appear as #16 on Rate Beer’s Best Beer Bars 2008 and #49 on Beer Advocate’s list of the Top 50 Beer Bars from 2005. And it came in at #2 on the Beer Mapping Project’s Highest Reviewed Locations, though it’s worth noting that #1 was Monk’s. There are also plenty of other great places that I’d wrestle with, too, like O’Briens or the Liar’s Club (both in San Diego), Lucky Baldwin (in Pasadena) or the Standard Tap (in Philly).
The Forbes’ choices are also accompanied by a nice story about the recent gains craft beer has been making in terms of both success and respect. The ten bars are listed below in the order they appear in the slideshow, which has photos of each bar along with what makes them special and useful contact information. I’m not clear if they’re meant to be in any particular order or not, but all in all a good list.
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If you live in the Bay Area or are planning to be one of the nearly 16 millions travelers who visit us each year, then have I got a useful website for you. Beer By BART began less than a year ago, created by two San Francisco natives, Steve Shapiro and Gail Ann Williams. The site is a labor of love for the pair, who I was fortunate enough to meet at the Bistro’s Double IPA Festival yesterday.
Since mass-transit is all but non-existent where I live (and where the annoyingly self-centered NIMBY ethos keeps anything from improving), I hadn’t run across this before. But in many parts of the Bay Area, BART is a convenient and relatively inexpensive alternative to driving. In these days of draconian laws brought on by overzealous neo-prohibitionists, this a very valuable resource. So far, there are thirty places mapped out with all the information you need to get from a BART station to your destination, including how long your walk will be from BART. For each 
it’s roughly one-quarter mile. If you see four shoes on a listing, you know it’s about a mile to the brewpub or bar. The list on the main page is divided by station, and the list is starting to include what bus to take to get you to a slightly more remote, but worthwhile place. Nice job!
This is my first pick for “Website of the Month,” which I’ll begin featuring on the right sidebar. I get so many link requests and have so many in my blogroll, that I want to highlight the best ones I come across.
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Business Week online yesterday had an interesting article entitled Micro Beers Brew Up Big Business, with this promising subtitle: The brewing industry is becoming more consolidated, but for aficionados in the U.S. there has never been a better time to drink—or make—beer.
Typically, Adam Smith’s ghost is invoked and misapplied to suggest that “markets do work over time” and that’s why “[t]hroughout the 20th century local and regional breweries in the U.S. closed by the thousands as improved transportation and the economies of scale led to increasing consolidation” and that today because of it “the [beer] business is dominated by a handful of industrial-scale giants.” Smith, for anybody who’s actually read what he wrote, would have been appalled by the consolidation of so many industries. Even in his day, he thought large corporations were dangerous and needed to be kept in check. Conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke, of all people, has a book out right now called On the Wealth of Nations, that offers a witty overview of Smith’s famous work.
That annoyance aside, what follows is a quick overview of the last 35 years in beerdom and his choices for 10 absolutely top-notch winners. From the text, I assume he attended GABF last year as he confesses to not trying all 1,884 that were poured at the festival. So while others who’ve picked up this story are saying they’re the “Top 10 Best American Beers,” the author himself is not saying that. They’re just ten great beers that he did manage to try, though in a remarkable coincidence each of his ten is available in a bottle.
There are, of course, some world class beers on his list — Anchor Liberty definitely deserves to be there — and a few head-scratchers (not that I’m naming names) but this is the sort of list that no two people will ever agree on. There’s also a slideshow showing the bottles and labels to all ten beers.
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If you did a search for the Bulletin lately, using Google or Yahoo, or any of the common search engines, clicking on the results would take you to a Web Pharmaceutical company. A big thanks to Keith Brainard, who first brought this to my attention almost two weeks ago. After determining that someone had hacked into my website and inserted an insidious script, we tried to remove it, but it kept coming back. It turns out that there was some even more pernicious code that kept re-inserting the script every time you removed it. Today we thought we finally solved it and I upgraded my software to — hopefully — make it more secure and make sure this doesn’t happen again but the code instead ended up bringing down the website for the better part of today. Obviously, we’re back up again but missing everything I’ve written since January 25. And I still have to try upgrading the software again. Hopefully, things will be back to normal in a day or two. Thanks for your patience.
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Remember the television show Futurama? It was the Simpsons’ Matt Groening’s other animated series that ran on Fox for four seasons beginning in 1999.
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There was a robot — or perhaps more accurately a “foul mouthed, cigar smoking, booze drinking, shiny metal arsed, bending robot” — in the show whose name was Bender. Besides his name and the character’s predilection for going on one, you may be asking yourself what that has to do with beer? Well, even though the show was canceled, like many such shows it has a pretty good cult following. There are fans, of course, and then there are fans.
One such uber-fan, Simon Jansen, in New Zealand, if not an engineer by trade then one of the most impressive hobby engineers I’ve encountered. He’s also a sci-fi fan generally and it appears he started his website with the extremely impressive Star Wars Asciimation, which is the entire Star Wars movie done in Java using nothing but ASCII art. For those of you new to the web, ASCII art is pictures created using nothing but the characters that can be found on an ordinary keyboard, which were used in early e-mails before graphics became ubiquitous throughout the internet. |
Those emoticons, like ;-) for example, are a simple, though enduring, form of ASCII art. But they can get extremely complicated and detailed, too. Check out the Great ASCII Art Library for hundreds, if not thousands of these.
Okay, so as usual I’m veering off on a tangent, back to the Bender. Last summer (his winter) Jansen was challenged by a friend to make an actual Bender robot. Jansen also took as inspiration a third season episode, The Route of All Evil, in which while the main plot was going on, there was a subplot involving the two characters, Fry and Leela, along with Bender himself where they undertook to “brew beer inside Bender, treating the robot like an expectant mother.” Jansen reasoned that “just having a Bender that doesn’t do anything would be a waste of time so mine shall be used for a practical purpose. One Bender himself would be proud of. I’ll use him to make beer!”
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The Bender Brewer Project, as it’s known, took over six months to complete and yielded its first brew last week. The website includes four pages of detailed information showing every step of the way with copious photographs of the various stages along with diagrams and source code. But for my purposes, it gets really interesting in mid-December on page four when the brewhouse went online, so to speak.
Basically, it’s only a rudimentary homebrewing kit but you have to admire the sheer amount of work and effort to take this project from drawing board to actual robot that produces beer. His initial specific gravity was 1.034. In early January, the beer was ready to bottle and he had his first taste f it, describing it like this.
How odd and cool is that? |
Bender with brewing system inside. Reminds me a bit of the Wizard of Oz’s Tinman, but this time he’s wishing for something different. “If I only had a beer!”
Bottled on January 2, the new robot-brewed Bendërbrau, with labels designed by Jen, one of Jansen’s friends.
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All of us at the Brookston Beer Bulletin — okay me — would like to wish you and yours a very Happy New Year. 2007 was certainly an interesting year and never dull with plenty of ups and downs to keep us on our toes. Nobody knows with any certainty what 2008 will be like for the beer industry, but I’ll be here for my third straight year of ranting about it, er .. analyzing it, online. I hope you’ll join me on the adventure that 2008 will surely be.
Toasting you a Happy New Year with one of my favorites:
Here’s to the four hinges of Friendship—
Swearing, Lying, Stealing, and Drinking.
When you swear, swear by your country;
When you lie, lie for a pretty woman (or handsome man);
When you steal, steal away from bad company;
And when you drink, drink with me.
The Brookston kids, Alice and Porter, can’t help but getting in on the act of wishing everybody a Happy New Year.
Here’s to those who love us,
And here’s to those who don’t,
A smile for those who are willing to,
And a tear for those who won’t.
Here are more of my favorite toasts. Let me know your favorite ones.
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