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5 Social Networks For Beer Lovers

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Beer Social Networks

In the wondrous age of the interweb, we have seen many strange, amazing, and annoying trends. One trend that encompasses all of these traits is the concept of social networking websites. Sites like myspace, verb, tribe.net, facebook, hi-5, the list goes on and on.

It becomes so hard to choose with hundreds of websites trying hard get your whole life listed in their database. It makes me wonder, sometimes- why would ANYONE want EVERYONE on the web to be able to know EVERYTHING about their self? It seems as though too many people don’t take the time to consider this. I’ve just got to put this out there before I encourage anyone to join yet another social networking website. I am a fan of disclaimers.

Social networking on beer gives me more hope than social networking just for social networking’s sake (gah!). With a highly focused topic, it is clear that a social networking site about beer can be a good thing. This is true of the many beer forums as well. Such sites can help a lot of beer fans to better understand the craft of brewing and the wide spectrum of flavors accessible in the beer universe. I still wouldn’t suggest that you sign up for anything with your actual email address, unless you just luuuuv spam. And I’m not suggesting you use your grandma’s email address either. Just make one up that you will never use again except to get confirmed at the beer social networking website you are checking out.

One site that strikes me right off the bat as a good resource is the homebrew wiki (reachable at http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki). This site and wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) are both veritable treasure troves of information regarding beer, wine, mead, and basically any fermented or distilled beverage. You can find info about virtually every type of beer as well as the history of beer. Before entering the forums and social networking sites about beer, I suggest taking a surf through the wikipedia or homebrew wiki search engines.

BrewPoll.com

Now, as far as actual social networking sites, I must say that I was initially attracted to brewpoll.com through their affiliate website beersmith.com. Beersmith.com offers a free trial of their Beersmith software, a program that helps homebrewers to determine what ingredients to use for their recipes, accounting for price and amount of beer to be made, among other factors, and offers a brew calendar and reminders, too. Brewpoll.com is itself a “Digg-Like” news site where home brewers and craft beer fans can share and gather news. A voting system allows members to catapult relevant and useful articles to the top of the lists. Since this site links to “news” stories from other sites, it offers a chance to search a wide array of topics and beer making tutorials.

This site will probably be quite useful if you are a home brewer with some specific questions, like this one: Should I put olive oil in my beer? I had never thought of that on my own, but some brewers at New Belgium brewery have tried it and I found their results on brewpoll via fermentarium.com!

MustLoveBeer.com

Another social networking site on beer is mustlovebeer.com. Although it is a fairly young site with few members, it is equipped with many myspace-like features, such as extensive profile information, profile pictures, room for uploading pictures, messages, and friends. This site seems somewhat desolate at this time, but if you have friends a long way away that you want to keep in touch with, it might be a good way to do so while also meeting other beer fans with similar interests… in time. The site only seems to have 200 members or less, from what I have seen poking around on it.

RealBeer.com

Although it is not, in the strictest sense, a social networking site, realbeer.com is a fun site for information about beer. I recommend visiting this site if you are just “surfing the web” to find out interesting news flying about in the beer world, funny stories, and the like. I discovered three great stories just on one visit: a “Bones & Brew” Zoo benefit in Oregon put on by Rogue brewery, 2,000 pints of ale mis-delivered to Windsor Castle, and a historical mis-quote attributed to Ben Franklin. These were just some of the top stories on this site.

HomeBrewTalk.com

Homebrewtalk.com is a very active site which has social networking applications. This site is full of articles, recipes, updates on new equipment, and many stories about home built beer making set-ups, kegerators, and beer interest stories too. The site is funded by its members and some advertising, so they ask all members to consider upgrading accounts to either yearly or lifetime memberships ($25 a year or flat $100). Basic memberships are offered for free, however.

BeerJunction.com

Homebrewtalk.com is a very active site which has social networking applications. This site is full of articles, recipes, updates on new equipment, and many stories about home built beer making set-ups, kegerators, and beer interest stories too. The site is funded by its members and some advertising, so they ask all members to consider upgrading accounts to either yearly or lifetime memberships ($25 a year or flat $100). Basic memberships are offered for free, however.

BeerJunction.com

BeerJunction.com is a new social networking site for beer lovers that seems to focus more on sharing the love of home brewing. You can create a profile and log all of your brewing in a personal blog. One cool feature is the ability to add pictures, video and create your own groups. This community is handy for home brewers, or home brew clubs, or someone who really loves beer and wants to create a network of friends that love the same.

With this basic overview of sites, you should be able to have most of you questions and queries answered. By gaining membership with these social networking sites on beer, you can certainly find more people who may be able to answer any questions you have about beer.

Health Benefits of Organic Beer

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As the world we live in becomes more and more toxic, eating (and drinking) organic is the most fundamental change towards health that we can effect in our daily lives. With new poisons in the air and the water every day, it only makes sense to cut down on the poisons in any way you can. For those of you new to the concept of Organic foods, it is food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. If it is food that contains many different ingredients, such as beer, then chemical additives and preservatives are also excluded from the product. Organic food and beer help your body to process that food and drink more efficiently – with less of these toxins involved, your liver functions more smoothly. A healthy liver is something that every beer fan should promote in their lifestyle. Although organic products cost a little more, the health benefit – and the taste – is well worth it.

It all started with “health food”. A trend started in the 1960’s to really look closely at how our food was made. People started to discover that most of the food at the grocery store was either sprayed with poisonous pesticides or jam packed full of weird preservatives and chemicals. The Health food store quickly became an important part of the daily routine of eating healthy. Foods found there were local, fresh, or made in a way that was “closer to nature”. As far as beer is concerned, it was the health food stores that first started to carry microbrews, and especially organic beers.

It is true that organic products cost more, and organic beer is no exception. The question is, what price are you willing to pay for food that has never been sprayed with poisons and other chemicals? There is probably no better way to spend your money than on the quality of the food you eat and the beer you drink. Buying organic supports farmers and brewers that have a commitment to making the world a better place – and not poisoning the earth or you. If you consider the grand scale of large scale commercial farming operations in this country, we are lucky that the organic food markets aren’t more expensive.

A fundamental mindset change must take place to enter organic eating into your diet. You must realize that you don’t want to die young, you want to be healthy your entire life, and you are committed to enhancing your quality of life. Organic foods are more flavorful and some studies show that organic foods carry significantly higher levels of vitamins and nutrients. Make no mistake, beer is food. The Soil Association Scotland has shown that organic produce contains between 10 and 15 per cent more phenolics (compound that may fight cancer) than non organic. In addition to being grown pesticide and chemical free, organic products also lack the preservatives and additives that many non-organic products have.

I have been a home brewer for many years, and the change to organic, for me, was an easy one. I made the change to brewing organic beer before I started eating organic. Consistently, I found that organic beers tasted much better than non-organic ones, and that the quality of water used to make the beer was also a very important factor. Luckily for me, some friends in a nearby town told me of an organic home brew supply shop where everything was organic! I quickly became friends with the collective members there and, with access to a large variety of organic malt, extract, and hops, I was well on my way towards organic brewing. The Seven Bridges Cooperative brew store has a healthy mail order business, and you can check them out and place orders for organic brewing ingredients online at www.breworganic.com.

We are lucky that we live in this golden age of micro brews, where local and even organic beer is available across the nation. Microbrew organic beer can be found at Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and, of course you local health food co-op or small business. As always, drink it in good health.

Cask Ales

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As interest in ancient beers and brewing techniques is piqued, the world is seeing a proliferation of the technique of serving beer as a cask-conditioned ale. Cask-conditioned ale is also referred to as “Real Ale” in some circles, although there is a subtle difference between the drinks the two terms describe. Cask Ale is a very old and traditional technique for carbonation and serving of beer. Cask Ale is currently enjoying a revival due to the qualities it imbues on the beer that it produces.

A quick summary of Cask Ale conditioning: it is a process that affects the final stage of beer production. Cask ale is un-pasteurized, un-filtered, and carbonated with the natural action of the yeast that is used in the fermentation of the ale, and without the aid of artificial carbonation or nitrogenation. Some cask ales are served with the natural yeast included, and in others the yeast has been filtered out. If the yeast has been filtered, it cannot be called a “real ale”. The concept of “Real Ale” is promoted by an association called the CAMpaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), based in the United Kingdom. According to the CAMRA’s definition, Real Ale is: "beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide". One method that brewers and barkeeps have discovered to keep cask ale fresh-looking and clear is to add “finings” to the cask. Home brewers will be familiar with the term “Irish moss” – this is a “fining”, an addition to the beer which causes free-floating sediment to fall to the bottom of the beer. Sometimes, cask ale is served at room temperature, but it is mostly available at cellar temperature (50 or 55 degrees) in most pubs.

Barkeeps doctoring the beer you say? One historical note about Cask Ale is that it is easy for barkeeps to do just that. In older times, barkeeps would add additional hops, finings, or even illicit herbs to doctor the beer. Some unscrupulous bar owners would take ale that was going bad and water down good ale with it and put it on sale, and others would add wormwood to the concoction to make the ale seem stronger.

Many fans of Cask Ale site their beers more subtle fizz as a main selling point. The lesser degree of carbonation, they claim, allows the more subtle flavors of their beer to be enjoyed. Guinness, the famous stout, imitates this more subtle cask ale carbonation, although by the means of different technology.

The degree of carbonation in Cask Ale is actually controlled via a device called a “soft spile”. Once the cask reaches the brew pub, the barkeep hammers this soft spile into the corked hole in the keg known as the shive. By judging the flow of foam through the soft spile, the barkeep eventually takes out the soft spile and replaces it with a hard spile, which allows no more seepage. Once this process is complete, the Cask is ready to be served, via a gravity feed.

Cask ale is becoming more and more popular in the United States, where it is still uncommon to find. The New York Times reported that one beer distributor, Union Beer Distributors, has had their accounts more than triple for cask ale sales in 2007. UBD is the leading cask ale distributor for the New York metropolitan area, and a strong indicator that cask ale is a fast growing trend, at least in New York City. Let us keep in mind that New York City sets trends internationally. Keep your eye out for cask ales at your local brew pub, you may be pleasantly surprised by this taste of the past.

Beer Book Review

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With the rise in popularity of craft, micro, and home brewing, a slew of books have come out in recent years on these subjects. Some focus on cultural aspects of beer, some on nutritional aspects, and some focus on recipes. I will go over a few of the more popular titles on the shelf today, and relate them to my personal experience.

There is a book by brew scholar and professor of brewing technology at U.C. Davis Charles W. Bamforth called Beer: Tap Into the Art and Science of Brewing, in 2003. This book goes into scientific detail about all aspects of the brewing process, with a mind to a layperson’s understanding of the topics. This is an excellent book for those interested in the details of the process of making beer. This is a good place for a starting home brewer or beer fan to learn more about what they are drinking. Professor Bamforth also gives lectures from time to time, so keep an eye out for his name in your neck of the woods. This book may be a bit simplistic for the home brewer or beer fan that is already intimately familiar with most aspects of beer production. Still, if scientific terms speak to you, it is a worthwhile read.

Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher contains a cultural overview of beer, an amusing embellished timeline of the history of beer, and many recipes. Just to give you an idea of the breadth of beer covered in this book: Corinthian Steinbier, An English Bragot, c. 1500, Juniper Rye Bock, Black Pepper Porter, and Mister Boing Boing Cherry Barley Wine are all represented, for better or worse. The book also contains recipes for beverages other than beer, such as Finnish Sahti, Mead, hop-less Gruits, and wine. Randy’s writing is one of the most palatable ingredients in Radical Brewing – witty and full of humor. I recommend this book to any brewer. Even if you prefer traditional brews, this book is sure to open your eyes, and due to the amount of recipes, a keeper as a reference manual.

The book Wild Fermentation by Sally Ellix Katz is a wild foray into a subject which, for brewers, seems very dangerous. Most brewers do not want to mess with wild yeasts, due to the ease and commercial availability of good quality ale yeasts. But this book covers much more than just beer. It covers a wide variety of foods made with the assistance of fermentation, such as vegetable ferments, dairy ferments, and even ventures into the realm of vinegar making. The book does have chapters on beer and wine as well. This book is a little much for me to handle. The chapters are compelling and informative, but it is all just too much for me to handle at once – it is like learning 5 different trades in one workshop. I recommend this book to those who are capable at multi-tasking.

My favorite book about beer, by far, is Sacred and Healing Herbal Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner. This book is a gem containing a well-referenced codex of ancient beers from around the world. The poetry and humanitarianism with which Buhner delivers into our hands the wisdom, folklore, and recipes of the ancient brewers is both astonishing and informative. Buhner makes one particularly thrilling correlation between a beer trend that is 700 years old and political maneuvering of the protestant movement in Europe – but I won’t reveal it here because I’m not that kind of person. Buhner also writes from a fairly neutral viewpoint, taking in with deep understanding the cultures about who’s brew he is writing about. This book has been dearly loved in my home brewery, where ever it has been, and my first handed-down copy had so much wort spilled on it that I had to buy a new copy recently. This book goes over the cultural aspects of beer primarily, and also contains some bizarre recipes from the ancients – some of which taste quite good! If you are a home brewer or a fan of beer history, you must get this book.