8/26: Updates and Responses

Autumn is fast approaching and with the new season comes a new series of updates from the Menotomy Blog. First things first: I had a few replies via both email and blog commentary, but there's one in particular to which I'd like to give my attention.

Kcillini77 left us the following message:

"Just stumbled across your site doing a Google search on Dogfish Head Black and Blue. I thought your comment about Beer Advocate beer snobs being preoccupied with foreign beers to be pretty funny [sic]. While there's certainly a lot of beer snobbery going on at the site, I don't know how you could come away from there thinking there's a bias against American beer. Large American macro-brewers, yes, but generally the experimentation of American microbrewers is unsurpassed, and a quick look at the top 10 beers in the site's top 100 beers on planet Earth shows 2 Belgian beers and 8 brewed in the U.S. of A.

http://beeradvocate.com/top_beers"

Well, Kcillini is right in a way, but I think I might've been misunderstood. While the Beer Advocate website is an excellent way to do a little bit of beer research, their preoccupation with certain styles, especially styles borrowed from foreign brewers, is fairly obvious. The editors themselves are balanced reviewers, but many of the ratings at Beer Advocate are based on audience ratings; that is to say the editors aren't the only one with an opinion. This is all fine and good, but their is little doubt that certain, lighter styles of ale and lager are overlooked by all at Beer Advocate. Some of our best selling beers aren't smiled upon by the beer reviewing types and I think that's largely due to a preference spawned by micro-brewers looking overseas for inspiration. Thanks for the link, Kcillini! That's definitely a pretty fine list...

As far as future blog updates are concerned, you can bet that there will be more. The summer was a time of travel and turmoil, but I'll have plenty to say over the next few weeks as we start tasting some darker, heavier, altogether more potent beers. Until that time, we still have some excellent summer beer up for grabs. The Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager has been pretty popular this summer and we have some of the few remaining cases in the state. We're going to be keeping the Abita Purple Haze in for as long as we humanly can, too -- it's been one of our most popular beers.

However, all of the Octoberfest beers are beginning to come in, as well as pumpkin beer. The best news I've heard all week is that we'll be getting individual bottles of Ayinger's Octoberfest. In case the name isn't familiar, Ayinger makes two of the best beers in the world: their hefeweizen and their dopplebock are nearly unmatched. Watch for that this week.

More updates, soon!

Luke