Stopped into Honeygo Wine & Spirits last night, and quickly discovered that they rock single bottles at fairly cheap prices, allowing beer geeks like me to avoid committing to the cost and risk of buying an entire six pack of beers we have not tried, but still try new beers. One of the cats that works there — John — was beyond affable, and helpful and does his job well enough that I walked out of there having spent $50 on two sixers and two bombers of high quality beer goodness. He also runs the shop’s Twitter account (@honeygowines) if you’re interested in updates.
There’s a lot to be said for being able to make a genuine, and descriptive recommendation in terms of selling a product, and as much as that recommendation is a give to the customer, a true beer lover also takes recommendations from his customer, and that goes even further in developing the kind of trust that conscious beer buyers really appreciate. Hope you’re local beer shop is as well staffed as Honeygo seems to be. Big ups to Brad at Beer In Baltimore for recommending it to me.
I bought two mixed sixers — one of all Märzens, one of various stuff I wanted to check out, including the pic for this post. The Märzens you’ll get to hear about in my now annual post about what’s good Oktoberfest wise. And this year I actually know how to steward and judge the beers BJCP style to let you really know subjectively, but also “universally” which one is the best this year.
See if your local beer resource will let you do a mixed sixer. It’s a great way to enjoy some beer variety while you’re at home watching a movie or the ballgame.
Pencils down at 4 p.m. on the dot… and my hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder were in agony by that time. It sounds silly, but the worst part of the BJCP exam was writing with a pencil for three hours. We started at 1 p.m. with the expected purpose of the BJCP question and the expected judging level hierarchy question. Then 15 true/false questions about the judging rules and process, followed by 9 essay questions, and four tasters.
It should seem pretty obvious that water profiles have a significant effect on a brewer’s final product. The mineral content of the water used to brew beer can affect mouthfeel, flavor, aroma, and appearance. Every sensation we experience when drinking a beer can be changed and even improved with an altered water profile. It’s between 85% and 97% of your beer! Oddly — as you may have noted in