An Update November 3, 2011

This blog has been quiet for a while, but not for lack of beer in my life.  Perhaps there is too much good beer in York– it is everywhere, making blogging about it a bit overwhelming.  Just yesterday I walked to my optometrist and smelled that boggy bakery smell of a working brewery– York Brewery [...]

The Lovibond Hop Flower Necklace June 4, 2011

So, I haven’t been blogging about beer lately as I have been busy trying to make some actual money using my skills.  Imagine! I have been making jewelry and selling on Etsy, which is a wonderful platform promoting handmades.  It’s a whole booming micro-economy, I tell you.  My shop there is called Feral Strumpet In [...]

Gifts for the Beery People in Your Life May 8, 2011

I’m sure you have coworkers, friends and relatives who share your love of beer.  What do you buy them for their birthday or as a thank you or just a dude-you’re-awesome present, besides more beer?  I’ve carefully combed the hand-made Emporium of Etsy to find the best beer-related gifts from small makers.   Here is a [...]

Solstice Gruit wins my GBBF beer of the year August 4, 2010

It was another whirlwind GBBF Trade Day. As I stood in the queue, which was much shorter on the Non-CAMRA member side, I felt a bit exposed, lost amid a sea of serious Beer Blokes. What was I doing there? I thought to myself. And then the two men in front of me from Oxford [...]

Suffer the children, for the Old Brewery belongs to such as these May 13, 2010

Last weekend I met Chris at the Old Brewery in Greenwich, a place I’d been eagerly waiting to visit since I’d heard plans of its construction a year ago.  I am a fan of Meantime’s beers, and what Alastair Hook the brewer has done in redefining historical beers is truly exciting. With the Old Brewery, [...]

Hop Pop February 17, 2010

I’m giving up beer for Lent.*  The irony of posting this on my beer blog isn’t lost on me. My health has been poorly for weeks– I haven’t been able to drink much beer lately at all.  It’s strange to have a hobby that is, at least for me, really dependent on my body participating [...]

ACHTUNG! SCHNEE! January 7, 2010

Lately I’ve been wondering where that famous British grit has got to. There certainly isn’t any on my hilly road which is now an ice slide. This picaresque weather has brought Britain to its knees. In the words of my friend Steve, if the Nazi’s would have sent snow we’d all be speaking German now. [...]

What Survives December 23, 2009

Near Finsbury Park Station there’s a boarded up old pub, a matte lapis facade festooned with a remnant of London’s disappeared beers: Meux’s Original London Stout.  In every corner of London a mysterious detail hides a story; to note them is to chase ghosts.  Ghosts of the drowned; of the sudden, absurd death.  Even death [...]

Ich gehe nach Berlin October 30, 2009

November 9th marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will be going.  I will be drinking to it and to my own Cold War childhood.  The fall of the Berlin wall had profound meaning to me as a uber-politicized teen who raged through the Reagan years, plagued by nightmares of [...]

Hop Tonic October 23, 2009

My best friend in college happened to be Irish and once when I had a cold he offered me his cure-all: a pint of Guinness and a raw onion.  Did it work? Why yes.  My guess is it was the raw onion that really made you want to be better so badly that you decided [...]