I’m going to start out by being perfectly honest. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the Funky Buddha almost from the day it opened 4 years ago. I always loved the fact that it was somewhere I could get a great beer, but the hookah smoking crowd has never really been my cup of tea. That all changed one Saturday [...]

I was very sad not to be able to make it to the Great American Beer Festival this year, having already committed my measly 2 weeks of vacation elsewhere. So, for a week I lived vicariously through my beer nerd-filled Twitter & Facebook feeds. Saturday’s big award ceremony was thankfully streamed live online by the awesome guys at BeerTapTV, and thanks [...]

I recently spent a week in North Western Massachussets, and got to drink a boat load of delicious beer. I have had reviews of them all drafted out since we got home three weeks ago, but life got in the way! Here’s the first one, New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk – American Strong Ale: Pours a very dark brown/black into the [...]

This week my pre-ordered wet hops from Brewmasters Warehouse are finally in! I have a pound of Citra and a pound of Cascade coming that are certainly destined for great things out of my brew pot!! I had thought we might do two separate beers and single hop them, but it seems I underestimated the equivalencies between dry and wet [...]

I recently completed my first cross-country homebrew trade, with Brandon who writes the Thirsty Zymurgist blog. I was pretty nervous to send my brews cross country to Oregon to be tried by someone I’d never met before, but I figured it was good practice for the Iron Brewer tasting coming up next week; what the heck! Brandon sent me three [...]

Whilst I’m on vacation in the rolling green hills of western MA, some wonderful people have offered to write some guest posts for me. Today my friend Tom (not a beer geek), who writes the fantastically informative book review blog Completely Booked, chronicles a trip to Total Wine and the subsequent beer tasting with his girlfriend Vicki. To this uninitiated [...]

My friend Amie (@CatLadyBeer on twitter) stopped by last weekend to say hi and try out a couple of our brews on the way home to Gainesville, and to drop off the score she picked up for us in NoFL on the way down (including a Harpoon 100 Barrel Series ESB I plan on cracking open tonight!!). She also very [...]

This is the 4th or 5th BrewDog offering I’ve tried, and frankly, I’ve really liked them all so far; yes, even Dogma which a lot of others are not too fond of. This was an abomination. A dismal failure. Sorry James and Martin, I wish I could say otherwise; but this is by far the worst (non-macro) beer I’ve had [...]

What a treat! My “Liquor correspondent” Brent joins us this A.M. for a write up on one of Rogue Brewery’s liquor offerings If you missed his review over on his blog of Rogue’s Whiskey, you can catch up on it here!______________________________________________________________ Pink Champagne? White Zin? No no no, this is something special, something from the west. Wild, exciting, a "Rogue" [...]

This is going to be a bit of a cheat review – simply because as you can see above, I broke the craft beer drinker’s cardinal rule of pouring into a glass. Frankly, when it is still 85 degrees at 8.30pm, I reserve the right every now and then to use a coozi; no glass. So there. Brent and I [...]

  After brewing some interesting beers over the past months, Brent and I both decided it was time to brew some drinkable, sessionable and wide-appeal beers. I decided to do with an Oskar Blues "Dales Pale Ale” clone and Brent did a Dogfish Head “60 Minute IPA” clone. Of course, because a) We are not Brian Lutz or Sam Calagione [...]

  (Photo via http://www.cornercafeandbrewery.com) It was hot yesterday. Goddamnit hot. Well, it is July in SoFL and what else should I expect? Nothing, that’s what. But, you know what I can do about it? I can drink beer; it makes it hurt less. As you can see in this picture, I’m less than impressed by the heat, and am soooooo [...]

I’ve definitely been lacking on the potable side lately, and seeing those that almost drained the keg on the 4th July and Daily Beer Review’s Rob seemed to really like my most recent attempt, I thought I would post the recipe for posterity! Read Rob’s review here, and then follow his blog while you’re there! This was a recipe where [...]

I love barbecue, and I love screwing with traditional recipes. This combines both! I think this recipe started a couple of 4th of Julys ago when I was looking for some “all American” food to whip up for an Independence Day celebration; I took a recipe from Bon Appétit and messed with it until I had a recipe based on [...]

It seems that over the past year since I went back to school to get a degree in Urban Planning, that my minor has developed into something to do with American government. It started out that I took an Intro to American Government Class in my 2nd semester, simply because in reading the syllabus it looked like it would give [...]