Victory Headwaters Pale Ale

Right on the table, as first delivered: fresh from the Brandywine!

Well, Uncle Jack scooped me (but at least Bil Corcoran didn't!), thanks to a shorter drive home (I stopped at Iron Hill North Wales to toast the memory of craft beer saint and pioneer Don Younger), but the story's still deserving of wider notice: Victory Brewing's new year-round Headwaters Pale Ale, which is also their 15th anniversary celebration beer, was 'pre-delivered' to a table of local (and  hyper-local, Amy and Mary) beer/food bloggers, and we determined that it was pretty damned good indeed. Shocking,  I know: imagine, a new beer from Victory that doesn't suck!

Yeah, well: that didn't happen. The suck, that is. Co-founder Bill Covaleski (who told us he was there speaking to us because his partner Ron Barchet didn't want to) told us that Headwaters is a 5.1% ABV, Citra/Centennial-hopped (a "melange" of hops, Bill said), all-German malt (like HopDevil) pale ale, a type of beer Victory has not done until recently; Headwaters grew out of their excellent Pursuit Pale Ale series. Why no pale ale before? Plenty of them around; reminds me of something Dave Geary once said about why he doesn't brew a stout: "Guinness." Why fight it? Well, Victory is now in the position where their name is well-known enough to support a drinking style like pale ale. A type of beer which, I might add, has plenty to say. What'd I think of it? I thought it had a balance that reminded me of HopDevil: good body -- not overly thin -- great hop character (great aroma, especially for a bottled beer in 12 oz.), and a briskly dry finish that calls for more; I had two in short order.

Bill points out the approximate location of his Amish girlfriend. (JK!)

As you can see in the following video, the beer is all about the headwaters of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek, the source of Victory's brewing water. They are 14 miles from the source. We thought, Bill said, that in producing a simpler beer, the nuances of the water might be seen. Maybe, but I think you'll see the nuances of the Citra and Centennial hops more easily. The Citra makes this quite aromatic; the Centennial gives it a certain herbal/earthy quality.

All that considered, the thing I liked best about this beer, and what I liked most about what Bill said about it...Headwaters Pale Ale is a sharable beer. It's not an anniversary beer that's rare, or huge, or "I got it, and you didn't!", it's an anniversary beer that everyone will be able to enjoy, any time they want. I love that idea. Am I freaked that it's over 4.5%, as Jack cannily suggests? Not at all: it's a choice, and I'm all about choice. That is, as I keep saying, what the craft beer segment is all about. Cheers, Victory! I'll be at the 15th anniversary event Tuesday night; looking forward to it!



And because the delightfully hyper-local Amy Strauss sent us all pix of the likes of her and me and Jack goofing around afterwards...here's one of those. That's Ryan Hudak (In Search of Beer blog, where he has a nice roundup of all our comments on the Headwaters), Mary Bigham (West Chester Dish founder), meself, Uncle Jack's self, and herself, Amy (the Dish culinary editor, and man, was she excited about the new menu!). Fun time.

...and Mary said, "Okay, now put me under your armpit." I'm not kidding!

An Idea That Doesn't Hold Water

What is the purpose of a beer glass?

First, I would submit, it is to hold beer and make it available to drink. Beer, that is, this stuff we enjoy, we write about, talk about, argue about, occasionally sing about, and make in huge lots -- even a small batch is about five gallons. A beer glass holds beer.

Second, it should be comfortable in the hand. A beer glass that is awkward to hold can lead to spilled beer, discomfort, and a subtle displeasure. It doesn't hurt if the glass also looks good, because that's more of that subtle pleasure/displeasure thing.

Third, I'd add, it should be relatively easy to clean -- glass cleanliness demonstrably makes beer taste better (or perhaps more accurately, uncleanliness demonstrably makes beer taste worse) -- reasonably sturdy -- I'd like to grip the glass and not worry about breaking it, which I have seen happen; not pretty -- and not wicked expensive.

Fourth? I hear a lot of fourth things about beer glasses. They should be "the right glass for the beer." Some beers, apparently, need a glass that opens up to release their aroma, while others need a glass that tapers in at the top to hold their more delicate aromas in. Some beers need thin walls to...well, I'm not real clear on that reason, though I do like a thin-walled glass, as long as I don't have to clean or replace them. Some beers need small glasses because they're high-alcohol -- I approve! -- and some deserve big glasses because they're lower in alcohol -- makes sense. And when I'm buying draft beer in unspecified amounts, I don't want to see "cheater" glasses with optically-deceptive thick walls and thick bottoms that look like glasses that hold more.

But...possibly the most common beer glass out there right now is the one on the left in the picture above, the ubiquitous Libbey shaker glass, known variously as a "shaker," a "shaker pint" (it's not a pint, and Libbey doesn't specify a volume), a "sleeve pint," or just a "pint glass." It's sturdy, it stacks well, it's cheap, and it leaves plenty of plain area for logo application. It cleans well, and yes, it's reasonably comfortable in the hand.

As you can probably guess, ubiquity has bred contempt*.The shaker glass is ugly, we're told, it's too thick, it 'cheats' the consumer because it's not really a pint, and beer just doesn't taste as good in it. Besides, the Belgians have different glasses for every beer, and the English have 20 oz. pints, and the Germans have...small glasses for kölsch!

'Ugly' is subjective. I find the stacked rows of shakers in my cupboard quite pretty, alternating up and down, colorful logos, and they fit. Some are thick, some are not (the thickest is a "Michelob Ales and Lagers" glass, but I'm not judging...).

The glass doesn't cheat the consumer: it's never been officially a 'pint glass,' we just call it that because we want to be like the English -- God help us -- and they have true pint glasses, with a fill line, because they actually care about what they're getting in a glass. If the bar advertises a "pint" and serves your beer in a shaker glass...well, you can either bitch about it, or you can realize that you saw the damned glasses before you ordered, and should have bitched then. (I bitched about the incredibly thick-walled/based and tapered shaker I got that you see to the right...and got nowhere. I didn't buy another, though, and haven't been back since, despite very good food.)

The beer doesn't taste as good? Please. The beer tastes at least as good, and if you're concentrating enough to think you notice a difference, you're a geek, so use any damned glass you want. We should have a different glass for every beer? Sure, and you'll pay for it when the ignoropulace starts stealing those cool-looking glasses. Shakers are so ubiquitous and cheap that they don't get stolen. Bonus.

I can be just as subjective as the next beer geeker. I love the willibecker glass (like the Harpoon IPA glass above). It's thin-walled, feels great in my hand, and the ones I have all have fill lines at either 0.5 or 0.3 liters. Good to go.

But I really love that Mönchshof mug of mine. It's stylish, it keeps the beer cold, it feels great in my hand, and makes an emphatic point when I pound it on the table. But mugs like it are rejected by so many beer cognoscenti. Too heavy, you can't see your beer, old-fashioned. To which I respond: so what? Too heavy? Give me a second, I'll make it lighter for ya. Can't see my beer? Shit, man, don't you know what it looks like by now? (Besides...it keeps the sunlight off your hops, eh?) And...old-fashioned? Damn right it is! So's beer!

Do you hate shaker glasses? Sweet. It's a big world, and your shaker-hating shows me it's a pretty good one: we've gotten past being pissed about frosted glasses, and dirty glasses, and chipped glasses, and a dearth of variety of beer to put in them, and we've progressed to getting pissy about which glass we're enjoying our beer from.That's great!

Time for a beer. Out of any damned glass you want.


*Andy, not picking on you in particular: there are plenty of shaker-haters out there. But I'm in a rush to get this finished, and yours was the first link that came up. When I get a moment, I'll add some links to Jeff Alworth and The Good Doctor Beaumont, who I know feel the same way you do. See you tomorrow.

Wha' happen?

Well, it was Philly Beer Week, right? Sorry, a lot went on this week. I'm behind...again. Part of the reason is that Maud had surgery and I've been worried and occupied with that; part of it is that my father's having surgery today. I'll get back on it.

Meanwhile, I just got the latest attempt to co-opt bloggers: a "creative writing contest" open to bloggers. In 300 words or less, we're invited to describe -- well, "an event", we'll say, that just happens to feature this company's product. The best "entry" will win a prize. And, of course, the company will win gushing free blogger praise from all over. Happily, I'm not quite that stupid. No writing contests here.

Drie Fonteinen to stop brewing lambic...but it's not all bad

Joe Stange has a beautiful post at his Thirsty Pilgrim blog about Drie Fonteinen owner Armand Debelder's decision to stop brewing his own lambics. He will, however, continue to blend, which is what 3F was known for originally anyway, and he will also continue to distill. Go read the details, it's a nice story that should bring a smile to your face.

Talk about a wild hair...

I admire this. This guy Drew gets a wild hair up on a Friday afternoon, and bolts out of Pittsburgh with his girlfriend, hell-bent for Chicago and beer. On the way they visit Jolly Pumpkin, Dark Horse, Arcadia, Bell's, Hopcat, and Founders, then grabbed a quick one at Goose Island, before getting a deep dish at Lou Malnati's and...getting on the road straight back to Da Burgh.

Look, go read it. My hat's off to these two: this was one balls-out beer trip.

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!

Stan's back

Stan Hieronymus took his family on an amazing trek over 18 months. I love Stan and Daria, and I love how they travel, but...I missed Stan's blogging.

He's back. I can see work is going to be more difficult for me as I will be spending more time reading his blog again. You should too, Stan's one of the best.

Ah, the Vitality of Youth

I've got a guest post up at What Does John Know, Malt Advocate publisher John Hansell's blog, about young spirits; specifically, rye whiskey. Young rye whiskeys seem to come across better than young bourbons to me, and I was just openly speculating on why. Have a look, and take a good look around while you're there; there's an incredible amount of news, notes, and informed discussion about whisky.

Today is St. Nikolaus Day

Jon Abernathy has a beer advent calendar going (again) at his blog, The Brew Site. He asked me if I would guest-write one entry for him, and I in turn asked if he could reserve today for me. He agreed, and I think you'll agree that it turned out nicely. Cool idea, a beer advent calendar, and a look at some of the smart and pretty labels brewers use.

It's not just October, it's Porktoberfest...

Our Girl Suzanne has posted the first helping in her third annual paean to pigmeat: Porktoberfest. Bravo, babe! Big yum. It's more than "the other white meat," folks: it's sausage, ham, chops, bacon...

Sincere apologies to the vegans among my readers, but...it's not like this should surprise you here...

Is "Craft Beer" a revolution? Is it a success?

Maureen Ogle takes an outsider's view of the beer industry, continuing a process she began in her 2006 book, Ambitious Brew. She looks at it with the dispassionate eye of a historian, and comes up with contrarian viewpoints that make Andy Crouch look like a mainstreaming cheerleader.

Witness her latest blog postings, which are cuts from an essay she wrote on craft beer for All About Beer's 30th anniversary issue (which I'd urge you to buy so you can read what she kept in the piece). There are three of them, and the 2nd and 3rd seem to largely say that contract brewing was controversial but is no big deal -- I got no problems with that thesis at all. I agree, and I regret the amount of money, time, and good feeling that was lost in the industry misunderstandings that revolved around it. I've said for years: it's about the beer, not where or who it's brewed by.

What I do disagree with is her first posting, a more general take, in which she writes:

The problem, [the late Michael Jackson] argued, was that the bottomless “pocketbooks” of the Big Six (at that time A-B, Miller, Stroh, Heileman, Coors, and Pabst) enabled them to “dominate the advertising scene” and thereby obscure consumers’ awareness of brewing’s lager-, porter-, and ale-stuffed nooks and crannies.
This “public ignorance” posed an “acute problem” for craft brewing. “No small brewery is itself an island,” he reminded readers. “None can succeed for long unless the . . . idea of small breweries is understood and appreciated by the consumer.”
He was wrong. Thirty years in, most Americans don’t know about or drink craft beer, and yet craft brewing is alive and well. [emphasis added]

I don't buy that. We got into a small, very civil discussion on her Facebook link to this post, in which I argued that craft beer is now widely known, to which she countered:

I base that on my experience doing beer events for various non-beer groups (I do a lot of paid speaking). Very few people at them have ever heard of the beers on offer, all of them, of course, local craft brews. Also, the term "craft beer" has zero meaning to people outside the craft drinking/brewing niche. Again, that's based on my experience w/people who are NOT connected to or interested in beer.

Well...my response was that people who aren't interested in American football may not realize that the forward pass revolutionized the game, but that doesn't make it any less of a revolution. In short, does the knowledge or opinion of people who don't drink beer, who are not "interested in beer," really have any meaning in this? I don't feel that it does.

Another point: is it the knowledge of the term "craft beer" that we're talking about? Because I don't like the term (even though I use it every day), and I don't think that most people who are aware of these beers use the term. They either know their local craft (like, for example, the thousands in Boston who drink Sam Adams or Harpoon and don't give a damn about anything else), or they call them "microbrews," a term just used today in the Wall Street Journal to refer to beers from small American and Italian breweries.

Microbrews (or 'mircobrews,' as I've seen it misspelled so many times on teh Interwebs that it's hardly funny anymore; likewise, "Rouge" and "nector") is the term a lot of people "still" use. I put "stupid quotes" around the word "still" because I don't really know why the beer police felt they had to change it, except to de-link it from the old definition as a brewery that made less than 15,000 bbls. a year, a size that Sierra and Anchor blew by decades ago. It's a perfectly good word -- by virtue of public acceptance -- if you want to distinguish the (practically) uniform light lager output of the major established breweries from the more varied output of the not-so-major...er, 'micro' breweries.

So I'd argue that we should disregard the awareness level of the specific term "craft beer" and instead find out if these non-beer people -- or more importantly, and validly, people who do drink beer -- are aware of any beers other than the majors; Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, Fat Tire? How about non-mainstream types of beers from mainstream brewers, like Blue Moon? How about mainstream beers from non-mainstream breweries, like Yuengling?

Because while there are certainly still people out there who know nothing at all about these beers (or at least profess to know nothing about them for political purposes...), it seems less and less likely that their existence remains a mystery to the majority. I recognize the pitfalls of sampling a pre-selected audience -- I lecture the geekerie about it often -- but the buoyant growth of the segment, the assumption of knowledge in a growing number of news stories like the one noted above, and the continued introduction of beers like Bud Light Golden Wheat all are evidence of a wider knowledge...at least, among beer drinkers in general, and people interested in beer.

If people aren't interested in beer...well, really, who cares what they think about beer? I don't say that to be cavalier, I just point out that it's kind of like asking the average American citizen about...Austrian elections. If they don't care about beer -- as long as they're not one of that group who is trying to take beer away from us! -- why should beer care about them?

Discuss. Or discuss. Or discuss.

Let the Second-Guessing Begin: FooBooz lists Philly's 50 Best Bars

Fearless FooBooz has posted a list of Philly's Top 50 Bars. Whining and moaning has commenced already in the comments. Full disclosure: I was a contributor, sent in my top ten list.

Bars that I'm surprised are missing: Eulogy, Triumph, Bridgewaters, Cuba Libre, Belgian Cafe, and Earth, Bread + Brewery. No Irish places, not even The Bards? Where's the love for 150-year-old-but-damned-lively McGillin's? Brauhaus Schmitz, Swift Half: just too new. I will also admit to being pleasantly surprised to see Chick's Cafe and Atlantis on the list; cheers to that. And I can't help thinking that if Teresa's weren't out in those nasty, nasty suburbs, it would have been much higher on the list (a case could be made that it doesn't belong on a list of Philly's top bars at all, of course, but come on).

But really...Eulogy? And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony of me saying that, but it's true. Interesting dynamics here.

Good list, though, and a great map to go with it. Let the games begin; comments are open.

And Now...whiskies that are over-priced

John Hansell's What Does John Know? blog has a good -- if somewhat inevitable -- companion post to last week's "What Are The Good Whisky Values?" post. This one asks which whiskies are over-valued. It's just been posted, but there are already some trends appearing in the comments. Early front-runner: Johnny Walker Blue.

Good Whisky Values

My friend and colleague John Hansell has an excellent whisky blog, What Does John Know? The answer, of course, is quite a bit, given his 20+ years of passionate whisky tasting and collecting, and 18 years of publishing Malt Advocate magazine. John's completely wired into the whisky business here and in Scotland and Ireland, and Canada, and Japan... You guys think I get samples? John gets samples.

The blog post I particularly want to bring to your attention is one he called "What are the good whisky values?" He asked his readers, and there are some excellent suggestions for finding good whisky bargains in a market that's split between continuing increases in price and a buying public that's hurting for bucks. If you'd like to spend a little less while continuing to drink well, check it out.

Sympathy for the Devil

It looks like no one's commented on anything on Uncle Jack's blog for five days. Come on, folks: he's a good guy, it's an entertaining blog (though now that his dog has taken over, it's gotten a lot more serious and content-oriented). Go read Jack's blog. More important? Say something! It's the only decent thing to do.

Angsting about Tasting

Saw these two posts about "tasting notes" and "beer reviews" at Beervana, and the one Jeff references in that post, at It's Pub Night. It seemed fitting to notice and comment on them before I post a small flurry of tasting notes.

Jeff's concerned about accuracy in beer reviews. He looks at some of the verbiage sprayed about on beer rating sites (and magazine reviews, and blog reviews, and judging slips...) and is -- rightly -- concerned that it's sometimes conflated for pizzazz. Me too. Then he references Bill's genius invention at IPN: a random beer review generator. Hilarious. Go ahead, go play with it. I did, it's funny. (Hint: if you don't think it's at least faintly amusing, if you think it's insulting...start drinking more water. And stop writing reviews for a while.)

But then Jeff drops one of the best things I've seen written about this whole business:

Even very good beers may not offer you a lot to hang your hat on; what distinguishes them is not their distinct elements, but a totally vague quality of harmony produced when all those elements come together. How do you describe that? I miss the mark more often than I hit it, but this post reminds me of a directive I try to use when writing about beer. Don't write to impress, write to communicate. How would I tell a friend about a beer so that she would get what I was trying to say? It's useful to include adjectives, but they should reveal the beer, not conceal the reviewer's inability to describe it.

Jeff, first off, what's wrong with saying "This beer has a totally vague quality of harmony produced when all those elements come together." I kinda like that, and I'd write it. I don't trust "hints of wet smoke, teaberry, DAP putty, and demerara sugar mingle with a strong intimation of the late addition of Chinook hops." Even if the reviewer does get that -- much like my deeply-questioned remarking of tasting carrots in PBC's Rowhouse Red -- that's their mouth. It's not mine, or yours, or Sweet Fanny Adam's mouth. So how much is that worth?

But "Don't write to impress, write to communicate" is good stuff. I can't believe that one of his commenters -- "Dr. Wort" -- actually advises him to use the Lovibond scale to make more accurate descriptions of color. Great, let's just all do it by the damned numbers. Useful.

Beer tasting is subjective. There's no way to get around that. Period. Never will. That's why medals are usually awarded by blind judging and concensus, by panels. Best you can do. I don't present my "reviews" as anything but my opinions. I don't say you're right or wrong if you agree or disagree; frankly, I don't care, in the end. If you find them useful, and I hope you do, that's great; if you don't, I can understand that, too. They're descriptive, not prescriptive.

I hope you find the following reviews useful. I'm not going to worry about it, though, and neither should you.

What if they had some Beer Wars...and nobody came?

The Beer Wars movie has been a huge buzz in the beer blogs for the past two months. A documentary about the big vs. little brewers, a must-see, down with the barriers, Sam Calagione and Greg Koch!

I declined to get involved. One, I thought the price of $15 for a one-night showing was ridiculous, particularly given that there were relatively few details forthcoming on the movie. Two, I was actually paying attention over the last 15 years. Which led directly to Three, the movie's topic seemed to be about eight years or more behind the times. There was nothing to write that wouldn't be pure speculation, which would only fuel a frenzy that already looked manufactured. So I skipped it. Didn't write, didn't go.

After reading Harry Schuhmacher's post about the movie, I don't feel a need to write anything further. Go read it. As he points out, other beer bloggers -- "(Andy and Jay and Stan and Maureen, for example, who are among the most respected beer bloggers out there)" -- have already talked about it, and their opinions are good ones; I found myself nodding in agreement as I read them. But Harry's... Harry's read like my own thoughts.

Give peace a chance.

Yes, the Super Bowl. Oh, and drinking with Ron Pattinson, too.

I did manage to catch the last quarter and a half of the Super Bowl. I drove up to far northern NJ Sunday evening to meet Ron "I Love Dusty Brewing Archives" Pattinson, who was in the country for work. His real work, that is. Where's the man find the time?

I'd loaded the entire Beermapping.com database into Minerva (my Garmin GPS), and I was checking as I approached Ron's hotel. So when he walked into the lobby, and we shook hands and exclaimed over finding each other, I got right to business. "Don't know where you want to go, but Defiant Brewing is only about four miles away, and they're open for about an hour yet." Yes, he said (well, what else was he going to say?), and away we went.

I'd never been in Pearl River in the dark before, and I was a bit disoriented, but Minerva found the place. Neill Acer wasn't there -- hell, the man's gotta have a life, right? -- but the woman behind the bar took good care of us, tapping beers right off the tanks with those neat little clip-on taps Neill found. I had a Highland Stout (good, more body than I expected), a Little Thumper (nice, malty, a bit sweet), and a Muddy Creek Lager (darker and hoppier than expected, also good). 10 oz. mugs, so I was okay.

She was very good about letting us continue right up till closing time, cleaning around us, but we had to go. I aimed us for Andy's Corner Bar in Bogota, and Minerva whirled us there. We chatted about beer styles and beer writers (why can't they be bothered to do any research, Ron asked), and about Ron's history with the area -- he lived in NYC in the 1980s -- but when we got there, and crunched up the frosty sidewalk...Andy's is apparently closed on Sundays, which I didn't know. Damn.

I was going to head back to the hotel, figured we'd drink some of the bourbon I'd brought for Ron (he returned the favor with a a nice bottle of genever and a sweet little bottle of korenwijn), but then I remembered a place I'd come across when writing the New Jersey book, the Railroad Cafe in East Rutherford. It was old and a bit battered, and quite comfortable, and not far, so we went.

Surprisingly empty for Super Bowl night, but open! We grabbed space at the bar, I got a Guinness, and talked Ron into a Railbender -- I was surprised to find Erie Brewing's flagship at a bar in East Rutherford, but it was sufficiently different that I thought he'd like it. And he did, smacking his lips.

And...the game was on. The score was 20-7, Pittsburgh, which was just about exactly where I thought it would be: I was banking on Pittsburgh's defense, but didn't think their offense would explode. Then, of course, things quickly went into the crapper as Kurt Warner and the Arizona defense combined to completely upset the applecart. I think Ron was amused as I kept apologizing for focusing on the game, but I was completely wrapped up, and woo-hooed quite a a bit when Holmes pulled in that amazing toe-dragger to win the game.

That's when we found out that the fellow next to us wasn't just a fellow Brit ex-pat, he was a partner in Erie Brewing (or said he was, anyway: you never know in a bar), and was drinking a bottle of Presque Isle. He bought Ron a couple more Railbenders (I was on Diet Coke by this time), and we talked till 10:30. At which point...I had to call time. I'd been up since 5 AM, and still had a 100 minute drive home. So I took Ron back to the hotel, wished him a fond farewell -- he's really a hell of a nice, entertaining guy -- and drove home. I had the windows open, singing loudly by the time I got there to stay awake, but I made it. Nice to meet you, Ron!

No Super Bowl for you!

I'm leaving for north NJ in a few minutes to meet up with Ron "Overturning Beer Dogma Daily" Pattinson. He's flying into the States for work this afternoon, and tonight was the only night we could get together, so I'm skipping the Super Bowl and, well, here's how Ron put it.

"I've a flight of eight and a half hours and then I'm getting pissed with Lew Bryson. Doesn't leave much time for blogging."

Short, precise. And maybe we'll find a place with Wi-Fi and do a joint blog. Look for something on bourbon. As for missing the Super Bowl...you guys ever drive during SB? I'm gonna have the roads to myself, which in NJ, is kind of a mystic experience.

Why We Drink: Not just me

I just saw that Maureen "Ambitious Brew" Ogle linked to my "Why We Drink" post with a thoughtful post of her own. She's good at that: the thoughtful part, that is, though she's very good about linking and giving credit, too.

What's even better is that she got it:

I don't think Lew was advocating drinking to excess, or even making drink the center of one's life. Rather, I think he was expressing frustration at the notion that having a drink is the same thing as being a drunk.

Bingo. And as she says later,

The idiots among us ("Oh, I don't drink. I [don't] need alcohol to have fun.") don't (or won't) understand that good alcohol tastes good, and things that taste good produce pleasure.

That feels good. I mean, having written something that someone else gets so well. It was nice to get linked to on such a deeply thoughtful blog. Which leads up to...I can't believe I didn't link to it before now. I'll fix that.