The Beer Babe » Hop Press Articles

New England Craft Brewers Scoop Up GABF Medals

The Beer Babe — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:41:10 +0000

Kegs have been tapped, beers have been poured, cups have been dropped, and medals have been won at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival (GABF). While the event participants and organizers were nursing their hangovers, I was doing some thinking on my front steps while watching the first autumn leaves fall. While I have heard some local news about winners at this year’s GABF, I began to wonder about how New England breweries stacked up against the rest of the country.[Read more...]

Greatness brewing in Gardner, MA

The Beer Babe — Wed, 18 May 2011 14:51:13 +0000

As I wound around corners on Rt. 2 in Massachusetts heading towards Gardner, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have made friends with several homebrewers who are brewing excellent beer, but I’ve never actually attended a homebrew festival or competition before, let alone been asked to be a “guest judge” for one. I decided, as I drove up the little gravel driveway at the Garnder Deer Club that I’d just be open-minded and hope that the rain held out. [Read more...]

Craft beer and intoxication: What doesn’t add up

The Beer Babe — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 05:05:41 +0000

Here’s a question that I posed to myself after talking to a few friends this weekend.
Craft beer, on a whole, is a bit more expensive than macro beer, but also tends to have, on average, a higher Alcohol by Volume (ABV) per bottle or can as well. So, if you do the math, is it economically better to buy macro beer at volume to achieve the same amount of intoxication, or to drink fewer, higher ABV beers?
This may seem like a ridiculous question to ask – most craft beer drinkers that I know don’t drink only to get intoxicated, and most are not drinking craft beer for any kind of drunken economic advantage. But i realized that I’ve never actually checked it out for myself… so I decided to follow through a little experiment to see what I’d actually come up with – just in case I ever had to make the argument someday. [...Read more]

Seeking the Extremes – It is in our nature

The Beer Babe — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:35:17 +0000

It is human nature to seek out the rare, the new and the novel and I am certainly no exception. Marketers and product producers count on this type of behavior – and it’s no more common in beer than it is in clothing, video games or other optional (non-commodity) purchases. The argument, then, is whether or not these brews are less artfully crafted than their session counterparts and get by on their novelty alone. [Read more...]

A Thanksgiving Without Beer – A Run-in With “Blue Laws”

The Beer Babe — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:38:11 +0000

Sitting in my Aunt’s living room on Thanksgiving, I looked at the only remaining beer – some warm Budweiser that my Grandmother brought over – and sighed. Funny how the Pilgrims that we were thanking might have ruined my plans. How did I end up at a Thanksgiving with no beer? [...Read more]

Beers to Bring to Thanksgiving Dinner (Hop Press Edition!)

The Beer Babe — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 02:40:10 +0000

Every year on my blog I write a post about what beers to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t do this soley because the variety of dishes served at this meal are just waiting to be paired with some great craft beer, but instead beacause its an opportunity for beer education. What better way to pass the time at the dinner table than discussing new and different beers that (in all liklihood) your family isn’t familiar with? Beats Grandma asking about your ex in front of your new beau, or talking about another family member’s digestive status…. [...Read more]

Tasting the End of History

The Beer Babe — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 02:42:35 +0000

Imagine, if you will, a strong, strong IPA with lots of malt. So, something like a Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA or a Stone Ruination. Then, subtract a little hops but leave that extreme beer flavor… and follow it with a healthy serving of moonshine. [...Read more]

The Hop Press – Tasting the End of History

The Beer Babe — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:31:05 +0000

There were many valuable learning moments to be had at the first-ever Beer Bloggers Conference – and a lot of topics for thought. But one of the things that I know I’ll never have the opportunity to do again, and was incredibly lucky to eperience, was to taste Brew Dog’s 55% alcohol beer, The End of History – served in a bottle stuffed inside a road-killed stoat (or as they are known in the US, an ermine). While this might sound like an awful idea, I thought of it as one of those things that will just stick with me for a long time whether it tasted good or not. [Read more...]

The Hop Press – Bringing women into a craft beer blog’s audience – as people

The Beer Babe — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:53:49 +0000

Bringing women into a craft beer blog’s audience – as people

Note: This post is in response to a session held at the first annual Beer Bloggers Conference in Boulder, CO. For more information on the conference, check out www.beerbloggersconference.org.

I’d like to share with you my thoughts on a mini-controversy that arose during the Beer Bloggers Conference about women and beer. An invited panel was to discuss how to make women more welcomed into the craft beer world (as the segment of female craft beer drinkers rises) but brought up some touchy subjects that were offensive to some – mostly whether or not there were specific, non-sexist things that one should do to attract women to their blogs. I thought long and hard about what my take on the subject really was, and had long discussions with several bloggers at the event to try to clear my head about this. And I think this is what it boils down to for me: Personally, I don’t believe that women who drink beer need a separate place or radically different treatment in order to become embraced as an integral part of the beer community. Instead, I think it takes a little awareness of our own messages that we’re sending through what we bloggers write and how we design our blogs.

[read more...]

NH Brewfest – Red Hook Brewery, Portsmouth NH

The Beer Babe — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:44:20 +0000

What I remember most about last year’s NH Brew Fest at Red Hook in Portsmouth is being wet. It rained pretty steadily all night, forcing the samplers under tents and leaving me with an ultimately unreadable and soggy notebook, muddy shoes but high spirits. I had a lot of fun – including meeting a brewer from Dogfish Head in person (who later gave me a tour in Milton when I finally got down there that way – so despite the crowds and the persistent dampness, it was a fun time – the music blasted and people reveled all night long. [...Read more]