Well Fed Network

Posted by Donavan on The Spirit World.

The first installment of Brewsday was published on December 20th, 2005; which means that this is my fifty-second Brewsday post. This completion of a full year of Brewsdays prompted me to take a look at that inaugural installment where I peered into the crystal ball to predict what I would be writing about. For the most part I followed through with everything I promised except that at some point along the way I decided that writing about the organic chemistry of beer would probably challenge the patience of more than a few of my potential readers.

In the last year I’ve discovered what I don’t want to write about. I started off last December doing reviews of Christmas beers: the twelve beers of Christmas. This year I might drink the twelve beers of Christmas, but writing tasting notes for beers isn’t all that useful for the writer or the reader. Besides, if you want tasting notes there are plenty of other sites and blogs that will give you beer tasting notes. The only time tasting notes are interesting is if you have a glass of the beer in your hand while you are reading the notes. I suppose I could say the same about pub reviews: that they aren’t interesting unless the reader can actually get to the pub being reviewed. However, I have some ideas about how to approach writing about beers and pubs that might make the exercise more interesting for reader and writer both.

The clue to this way of writing about beer culture can be found in that original Brewsday installment. This is what I said:

“Basically, my intention is to give you a personal tour of a place I call Beer World. Each column will be like a letter home, written on the run, telling you about the different beers I find and consume and a little about what I learned while drinking those beers. (If you are of a literary turn of mind, think of Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller and replace drugs, Buddhism, and sex with beer, and you’ll have some idea what I’m shooting for.)”

So we’re starting off on a new year of Brewsdays and I’m going to take this mission of taking you on a tour of Beer World seriously. I want you to grab a fresh pint glass and some walking shoes; we’ve got some ground to cover.