...containing notes from beerme.com that don't seem to fit anywhere else.
October 8 through October 14, I'll be visiting Konstanz, Germany, on the shores of the lovely Bodensee. Breweries seem to be pretty sparse in that part of the country. Are there any Beer Me! readers in the area who would like to meet up and show me where the good beer is to be found?
I'll have the good fortune to find myself in Vancouver BC for a week, starting Saturday the 16th. Got any recommendations for brewpubs in and around Vancouver? I'm also thinking of spending a couple of days on Vancouver Island...where's the good beer there? Are there any Beer Me! readers in the area who'd like to get together and have a few?
Realbeer.com reports:
After 7,776 beers how do you make the next one special?
Greg Nowatzki consumed his on July 7, at seven seconds after 7:07 p.m., at Big Dog Brewing Co. in Las Vegas. Big Dog brewer Dave Otto made a beer especially for the occasion called Quad 7. Otto used seven different malts, seven different hops, 77 IBU’s - International Bittering Units - and 7.7% alcohol.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has the story.
The following arrived in this morning's email. I'll reserve comment except to say that a) nowhere do I presume to call myself an "expert", and b) the moment I have an opportunity to enjoy beer in Bohemia, I'll be there.
Dear Sir, or Beer Expert (hardly),
I was astounded by your audacity to call yourself a beer
expert, or at least, by your labelling the list of breweries
the best beers...
There is no such thing as the best beer, the impression
one could get from glancing at the list. I made up my mind
to judge your effort as poor and misleading from the very
simple fact that you arrived at some abslute judgments
from drinking (tasting) one beer and that from a bottle,
rather than dispensed artfully from a pipe in a beerglass
of proper size and shape. Bottled beer is an abomination
just one step better than canned beer.
Please do me a favor and stop promoting obscure breweries.
You remind me of the wine promoters, who can describe wine
in the most poetic terms of tastes that have nothing to do
with the ultimate value of wine, drinking from bottles
that travelled half way around the world. You know well
what will happen to a bottle of wine, don’t you? Exactly
the same will happen to a bottle of beer, transforming it
to a liquid very close to a genuine Bud brewed somewhere
in a stainless steel monstrosity in New Jersey.
Come here, to Bohemia, parched on a nice warm day. Then
you’ll see what beer realy is, and never mind the subtle
taste that your buds revoke after a Big Mac.
Regards from J.E.Kalfus
Czech Republic
This comes from Jake Ludington:
How to Open a Beer Bottle with a Piece of Paper
If you can’t find your bottle opener, or you happen to be sitting next to a computer printer, here’s a clever way to open a bottle of beer using a single sheet of 8.5×11 paper. Certainly safer than using your teeth.
Here's a new feature for Google Earth users: the new Beer Me! Worldwide Brewery Map. Breweries are marked like this:
[Edit 2006-01-24: Breweries aren't marked like this anymore. Instead, each brewery's "balloon" contains icons denoting the services that the brewery provides.]
— Brewpub
— Microbrewery
— Regional Brewery
— Large Brewery
— Beer Marketing Company
— Corporate HeadquartersThe icons' colors range from green through orange to red, indicating the accuracy of an icon's placement. Green means the icon is located pretty much at the correct address, orange means it's somewhere in the city, and red denotes state/province or even country-level accuracy.
Russia, China, and Japan are particularly messy, but I'm hoping that most of the rest of the world is at least usable. If you happen to have a GPS unit, you can help me make the map more accurate by sending the latitude/longitude coordinates of the breweries you visit.
By the way, don't forget that beermapping.com covers the United States in great detail, and also includes beer stores and alehouses on their maps. I owe a lot of my data to them.
Beer Me! received its Six-Millionth Visitor* this weekend! Thanks to the 6000+ of you who visit my site every day, and especially to those who take the time to send updates and additions and comments. You're the ones who really keep this site going.
*I started keeping track in April 1997; the site has actually existed in one form or another since 1991.
