Change is good

Building a Beer-Stained Letter website – an actual live dot-com – around the blog Beer-Stained Letter has been a project in the works for a while now.

And now it's here.

Briefly speaking, this blog page remains an integral part of things (see the link on the home page), and it's where items about New Jersey's craft brewing industry (Brewery News) will continue to be posted, as well as features about folks in the industry (Beer People) and events (Beer Life) will be posted.

There are some other items, too: A spotlight on new (read that as cool) beers from out of state coming into the New Jersey market (Incursions) and heading off to see the green grass, so to speak, at breweries in other states (Excursions).

Thanks for the support over the years. Onward and upward.

A seasonal on tap

Rider students brew up beer docu

Here's the finished product of those Rider University students' New Jersey brewing industry documentary. Nice work, guys.

By the way, no brewers were hurt making this documentary. But, alas, some beer was spilled.

Cheers.

Dot com'n soon

In the coming days, Beer-Stained Letter will be accessible as www.beerstainedletter.com.

Why the change? It just makes sense.

In the world of Worldwide Web indexing and getting noticed, dot-com does better than blogspot at marking the spot. After the change is made, you'll still be able to find the blog at www.beerstainedletter.blogspot.com.

To be sure, this is just some housekeeping. But down the road look for some more changes at how Beer-Stained Letter provides original, premium – written and video – content about New Jersey's craft brewing industry.

Cheers.

March of the beer fans

It’s been a week since the Philly Craft Beer Festival, and here’s our look back on it in moving images and sound.

A word of thanks to a lot people: Greg Zaccardi and everyone at High Point Brewing for some really key support; festival organizers Starfish Junction Productions and TotalBru for letting us shoot; Glenn Bernabeo of River Horse for taking the time to do an interview; Joe Sixpack himself, Don Russell, for likewise sitting for an interview (we’ve got some more footage of Don taking about the origins of his Philly Beer Guide book that we’ll be posting soon); and Gregg Bevan of VideoLink in Philly, who, by chance, noticed our work online, and gave us a shout-out and a compliment, and lent some technical advice and even a helping hand. It was greatly appreciated.

So now here we are, a week into March … Philly Beer Week has already notched one day done (the official Friday, March 7th, start), with nine more bottles of beer events left on the wall. (Pitty about the crappy weather on Friday; hope the turnouts for those first-day events didn’t suffer.)

And down the shore, beer enthusiasts will be trolling the aisles at the Atlantic City festival (tickets are still available) today and tomorrow, so get out your funky hats, T-shirts and beer goggles and enjoy the show that is uniquely Atlantic City.

Remember when talking beer, if you describe a brew as having hints of licorice, chocolate, nuttiness, citrus notes ... well you could very well be on the mark.

Or navel-gazing.

We prefer the less Socratic Homer J. Simpson way to discuss beer:

• "Here's to alcohol, the cause of — and solution to — all life's problems.
• "Homer no function beer well without."
• "Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get."
• "Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!"

Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a sixpack and a couple of bags of Skittles.

Of course we jest.

So after AC, we’re hitting tomorrow’s Brewer’s Plate in Philly. Beyond that, we may check out the Tippler’s Tour at Once Upon A Nation on the 12th in the Philly Beer Week lineup. Why not embrace those long-lost days when beer was a go-to potable beverage because water was, often enough, teeming with more microbes than a funked up petri dish?

Then it's on to the Real Ale Festival at Triumph Brewing in Old City on the 16th, the period at the end of the sentence that is Philly Beer Week.

Beer. Live it.