Spitting on the head of Britain's national drink

I'll assume you've heard that beer is not allowed at The Royal Wedding™, yes? It was pissing me off more and more, and I was feeling more and more Paine at the very thought...when I saw this. Pete pretty much nails it, so go read. And no, I won't be watching a single second of The Royal Wedding™ unless some evil jackass puts a gun to my head and puts me through some reverse Ludovico technique...I'll be at a beer festival (TAP New York, to be precise), so watching the little bluebloods formalize their fornicating would be inappropriate.

Stonch closes the blog

One of the blogs that has been on my blogroll almost from the very first day I started STAG, "Stonch's Beer Blog," (later "Jeffo's Beer Blog") has closed up shop. From January 3, 2007, when he started his blog, Jeff Bell went from being a City lawyer who was grinningly fascinated by beer -- he had a webcam inside a fermenting tub of homebrew at one point -- to being the landlord of The Gunmakers, a London pub with a changing lineup of cask ales, lagers (good ones, because Jeff does love a good lager, bless him), and the occasional cask cider. Quite an evolution, and he took us along for the ride. It was one of only three blogs I followed. And now, on January 3, 2010, he made his last post.

I'm sad to see it go, but as Uncle Jack said, the man went out at the top of his game. He's got other things to do. Good on you, Jeff: cheers!

Speaking of madly posting...

Pete Brown's been on a tear recently. After months at sea -- literally -- he's back posting, and suddenly making up for lost time. I've been enjoying hell out of the last week at his blog, called... Pete Brown's Blog. (At this point, if you don't know who I'm talking about, it would be best if you hit that link and read his entire blog, then headed over to Amazon, bought his books (Man Walks Into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind, two of the most original books on beer I've read recently, and certainly far and away the funniest), read those, and then come back. I'll wait. If you do know who Pete is, just...go get a beer.)

Done? Well, in the past week or so, Pete's blogged on how binge drinking is down in the UK (and surprise! that decline is getting no press coverage), how boneheads at InBev have driven Stella Artois into the ground (see, Pete, like me, enjoys drinking the occasional Stella and doesn't mind saying so), a great post on taking beer and ourselves too seriously (titled "For Christ's sake, cheer up!"), the upbeat news that Scottish & Newcastle has been bought to be broken up ("It does mean that the likes of Greene King, Fuller's, Wells & Youngs and Marston's are now the largest British brewers. I quite like that."), and the latest, a warning that bloggers are being solicited to write advertorial (thoughtfully tagged with the label "Corporate whoredom").

All in a week. No tasting notes. No ga-ga hand-waving over some new beer from an over-hyped brewery. No bar visits. No pictures of his dog. No re-hashing of other people's postings.

If you're not reading Pete Brown's blog, what the hell's the matter with you?