Part of getting the most out of craft beer it to make sure you have the basics covered such as serving it at the correct temperature, cellering it or drinking it fresh depending on the style, and serving it in the proper glass.

I’ve been to many restaurants that have no clue how to serve beer correctly. From Russian Imperial Stouts served in frozen mugs to Saisons served in ice cold weizen glasses, there is definitely some education needed for anyone who is into beer on the proper glassware to use to enhance your beer.

You wouldn’t drink wine from the bottle would you? The same goes with beer. The proper glassware is very important.

Recently I was sent a collection of 4 beer glasses from Spiegelau called the Spiegelau Beer Classics which stated they were enough to cover all styles of beer you were tasting.

While I was a little skeptical of these glasses as first, I’m now a believer.

First off the set comes with 4 glasses; wheat beer, tall pilsner, lager and a beer tulip. Each is designed to enhance a specific style of beer and maximize their appearance, aroma, taste and mouth feel.

Temperature

The first thing I noticed about these glasses is they are incredibly thin and lightweight. Reading up on them I discovered that was actually a pretty awesome feature as it is meant to keep the beer colder longer as it doesn’t have to cool down a thick glass, thus maintaining optimal temperature for longer periods of time.

Appearance

Besides the temperature, the glasses enhance the look of the beer as there is less between you and your beer. You can actually see what’s inside your glass very clearly as it’s crystal clear, yet very durable and even dishwasher safe.

Aroma

Each glass is designed to give the right aroma to your beer, depending on the style (one of the most important reasons to serving in the correct glasses). I was pretty impressed with the way the tulip glass made my stout “pop” compared to my other tulip glasses I’ve been using. It really channeled the roastiness nicely.

Taste

A good glass will bring out the flavors of the beer that you’d miss if drinking out of the wrong glass. I’m pretty amazed at how beer in these glasses taste so much better out of them. No, I’m not getting paid to say that, it really was an improvement and I loved drinking out of these.

Overall

If you drink beer, I suggest you try out these glasses as I don’t think you will be disappointed. The set of 4 is a little expensive retailing at $49, although it’s listed on Amazon for $34.57 which is definitely worth it. I’m going to be ordering another set or two.

Over the course of my next few beer reviews I’ll also be using these glasses so stay tuned.

Click here to view these on Amazon.

Have you tried out these glasses? What are your thoughts?

Anything made with beer is usually better. That’s why I was excited to try out some potato chips made out of beer which are simply called Beer Chips®. People have been pairing beer with mixed nuts in bars for too long and I’m a fan of trying new snacks.

Beer Chips are actually made with real beer although the flavor (of beer) isn’t very strong. The ingredients include potatoes, sunflower oil and/or corn oil, sugar, maltodextrin, beer (malted barley, corn syrup, hops, yeast), salt, honey, and yeast extract.

If you like sugar, you will love these chips. They are pretty dang sweet, but I think I found my new favorite snack to eat while drinking a summertime brew. While I think these pair well with most beers, I would probably choose an IPA or Pale Ale.

The cooking process takes out the alcohol so you will definitely need a beer to drink while eating them, but that definitely isn’t a problem.

The only thing I don’t really like about them is that they are TOO good and I could very well eat the whole bag if I’m not careful. No, this isn’t a paid review for them, I just really enjoyed these chips.

Have you tried them?  What did you think? If you want to give them a try, I see that World Market carries them.

I always stumble upon new beer related inventions, and this morning a friend of mine sent me a link to one that is pretty genius and I’m sure will make the inventor, Josh Springer of GrinOn Industries, a lot of money.

His system, called the Bottoms Up beer dispenser, fills specially designed cups that have a hole and a magnet on the bottom really fast and efficiently.  I’m sure this will catch on at sporting events, concerts, or pretty much any large gathering of people where beer is served (although it looks like they are working on a home version).

Check out this video to see it in action.

And yes, the dispenser is fast. Look at the guys fill 56 beers in 1 minute.

I’m pretty amazed at this invention and want one in my house. Not like I need the speed, but it’s pretty cool.

What do you think? Will it catch on?

I was recently sent a watch from Happy Hour™ which is a pretty cool watch that includes a bottle opener in the buckle. Sometimes I get stuff sent in the mail for reviews that are complete crap, and this is definitely not one of them.  I love this watch.  The only downfall is it’s a little hard to read the time since it’s pretty dark, but it’s still pretty cool.

Anyways, instead of writing a whole long post about this bad boy, I recorded a quick review where I open a beer (for the first time) using the watch.  Check it out and enjoy.

For more details check out HappyHourTimePieces.com. The cost of the Dark ‘N’ Stormy watch shown here in the video is $69.95.  It’s definitely a good price for a watch of this quality and I recommend you check them out.

Christmas is just around the corner and I’m sure a lot of beer drinkers would love to get this watch as a gift.  Thanks again to Happy Hour™ for this watch.

I admit that I’m somewhat of a gadget geek. When products come out that make sense, such as my Reef sandals that have beer bottle openers on the bottom of each foot, I get excited. I’ve been wearing my sandals when I’ve needed to open a beer, and they have been a life saver (ok, that might be extreme, but they have definitely come in handy).

What happens though when the winter comes and I’m wearing shoes and need to open a beer? I could try opening my beer with a key, but wouldn’t using my phone be more practical?  I may not always be wearing my sandals, but I always carry my phone.  That’s were iBottleopener comes in handy.

iBottleopener is a case for your iPhone 3g/3gs (iPhone 4 coming soon) that has a bottle opener attached.  For $19.95, it’s not a bad deal.  Most cases are right around that price anyway, so you might as well get one with a bottle opener right?

Here is their commercial which speaks for itself.

Hopefully they will start making these for other phone models, but I think it’s a pretty great idea.  What do you think?

Check out their website at http://www.ibottleopener.com

Brewing beer is by far the best and most satisfying hobby that I’ve run across. How great is it to spend a few hours brewing beer while drinking a few beers, then a week or two later bottle your brew while drinking a few beers, and then a few weeks later get to taste the beer you created?

When I tell people I brew beer, they always have questions. How much does it cost to start?  Wouldn’t it just be cheaper to buy beer already made?  Honestly, it can be an expensive hobby, but it doesn’t have to be.

If you’re serious and can afford to spend a few hundred to get good equipment, I suggest you go down to your local brew shop and let them help you.

If you are interested in home brewing, but don’t have a lot to spend, or are not sure if you will enjoy it enough to spend a few hundred dollars getting setup, I’d suggest getting a home beer brewing kit.

I’ve had beer made from two kits, and each had completely different results.  The first I’ve tried was from Mr. Beer, and honestly it tasted like crap.  It could have been the way that batch was made, but I would probably stear clear of it.

Last August I was in New York and tried two beers from a Coopers brewing kit. I was pretty impressed with the quality for how cheap the kit and the ingredients where to get started.  I had the IPA and the wheat beer.  While not the best beers I’ve ever had, it sure beat the taste of most micro beers out there.

Once you get the kit for $99, you can make 6 gallons of beer for about $20 (includes malts, hops, and yeast), which is a pretty good deal if you are toying around with the idea to get started home brewing.  Plus if you realize that you enjoy the brewing process, you will already have some of the key pieces of equipment so it won’t cost to much to upgrade.

Here is a video on their website that shows what is included.

The Coopers kit includes:

• 1 Plastic 30 liter fermenter with lid (and o ring), makes 23 liters (6 Gallons)
• 1 Hydrometer
• 1 Sediment Reducer
• 1 Plastic Spoon
• 1 “Little Bottler” tube and bottling valve
• 1 Tap
• 1 Airlock
• 1 Airlock grommet
• 1 Thermometer
• 30 740ml PET bottles and caps
• 1 Instruction booklet
• 1 Instructional DVD
• 1 Cooper’s Lager Beer Kit Package – which includes:
  • 1 1.7kg Coopers Lager Beer Kit Concentrate with yeast
  • 1 1 kg Coopers Brewing Sugar
  • 1 Bag of Carbonation drops

Check out Coopers beer kits here.

I was looking for beer glasses this morning and came across one that is not your typical pint glass.  Now I’m sure this will confuse your friends who’ve drank a little more than they should.  I know I might be easily amused, but the glass makes it appear like you’re drinking from the bottom of your beer bottle.

The picture below shows the glass in its glory.

If you’re more of a wine drinker, don’t feel left out, they made a glass for you as well. Now you can feel like a beer drinker with this wine glass looking mug.

For $19.99 each I’m planning on getting a couple.  Yes, I may be a nerd, but these are cool.  Check them out at HomeWetBar.com.

Have you ever had a time you cracked open a beer and for some reason needed to put it back in the fridge?  If you’re like me that doesn’t happen often, but on occasion I’ve had to throw a half filled beer away after it goes flat sitting in the fridge (such as when my wife uses beer in a dinner recipe).  To fix the problem a new product was created called Beer Savers.

Basically Beer Savers are silicone caps that go on your opened beer bottle that keeps it fresh overnight.  Each pack comes with 6 colors so you could also use them to cap your beer to keep others from mixing it up with theirs. I was sent a sample pack and it fit pretty snug, and accomplished what it claims.

I’m not sure I’d use these very much, but could think of a few other uses for them that would work for me.  For example these would probably work great to put on sterilized bottles when home brewing while the bottles are waiting to be filled to keep things clean.

For $7.99 they are cheap enough to buy a set to have around for when the time does arrive that your freshly opened beer needs to be put back in the fridge while you make that unexpected trip to the store to grab propane for the BBQ.

Check out Beer Savers.

Note: If you have a beer related product and are reading this and would like your product on BlogAboutBeer.com, please contact me to send a sample for review. Thanks!

Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in a series of posts about the up-and-coming beer community website, BreweryFans.com. For the first post, which introduces the site and gives some more background information, click here.

Jonathon Lunardi here from BreweryFans.com. Luke is letting me write a guest post in honor of several milestones reached and new features available now on BreweryFans.com. Thanks Luke!

The site has been launched for about two months and it has been quite a ride. We attended the Craft Brewers Conference in Chicago and even had a booth at the conference meeting and greeting brewers from around the world. In addition to gaining traffic and brewery clients (www.breweryfans.com/why_use_breweryfans is our new brewery sales page) we of course have been hard at work building several features to announce that were ideas given to us by our users. So, the below post will include a couple stories from the last few months and will end with the new features all craft beer enthusiasts will be excited about.

Story numero uno: Getting people to the site.

Once we launched the site in March, we were fortunate enough to have beer bloggers like Luke and Ginger of WomenEnjoyingBeer.com post the announcement. We immediately started seeing traffic from their readers and Google started recognizing us as a viable beer site. We were averaging close to 1,000 users per day, which was an amazing start. I didn’t plan to do much from a marketing perspective at this point as I felt we should hunker down and focus on adding new functionality and selling our backend reporting tools to breweries. By some sort of miracle I was approached by the national editor of Thrillist.com who wanted to showcase our site to their 75,000 + daily readership. Our entire team was shocked at the opportunity and even more shocked to see close to 35,000 visits to our site per day! With that traffic spike we now have a strong registered user base. In addition to Thrillist, we have now been approached by Brewing Newspaper and Ale Street News to do an article about our site and our story. I hope they how different and revolutionary our website is and they highlight the story front and center, one can hope anyway right!?

Story numero due: The Craft Brewers Conference (CBC) is Unreal!

In order for us to actually make some cash so we can keep adding new features and innovation, we need to convince breweries that our online reporting backend will help them sell more beer by tapping into their fan bases on BreweryFans.com. The brewing community is very close knit, which is awesome to be apart of, but sometimes it is hard to break into the approved brewery vendor circles. One of the best ways is to go to the Craft Brewers Conference, set up a booth, and attend one of the hundreds of nightly craft beer drinking events. It was not work at all, it was a blast! I brought my entire team, Brandon, Clint, Gosselin, Mitch, even my dad and sister. We must have met close to 100 different brewers or brewery owners and gave them the pitch on why they should invest in our tools. We made several sales during the day and then partied hard while sampling a diverse beer selection throughout the evenings. I think I had a little too much to drink one night and actually took off my shoes and left them in the hotel room when walking across the street to a bar. Oooops. The CBC was a spectacular time and I look forward to our adventures in San Francisco next year.

Story numero tre: New Features for all who love craft beer…

There are a ton of new features on the site, but here are a few that we really want to highlight in this blog post.

The Beer Requester function. You can go to any of the bars or beer stores on our site and request what beers they should consider carrying. How awesome is that?! These bars and beer stores get a weekly email with a summary of the most recent beer requests. When a bar or beer store manager logs in he or she can activate a request, which emails everyone that requested a specific beer letting them know to they now serve that specific beer brand. Here is an example:

The Beer List Widget. Now, a bar, beer store, blogger, or anyone can grab the entire beer list of a specific bar or beer store and put it on their webpage. For example, Swingbridge Wine & Spirits updates their beer list on BreweryFans.com and has close to 180 beers listed. Swingbridge doesn’t want to do this work again for their webpage, so they can just embed their widget on their webpage. Here is what it looks like on their website – http://www.swingbridgebeerandwine.com/beer.html. Users can also request a beer from their webpage now as well. We hope to see thousands of bars and beer stores managing their beer lists on our site and then embedding these lists on their websites. I am curious to see if bloggers embed these widgets into their blogs when they are writing around a specific bar or location. Who knows.

We have a lot in store in the future. Please tell others to register on the site and join their favorite fan pages. Our breweries use data on who is joining their fan pages to make critical business decisions. Join fan pages, a lot of them! Check out BreweryFans.com here and stay tuned for the next installment of the BreweryFans introduction series, only at BlogAboutBeer.com!

The idea for the 33 Beers sketchbook “came to us after many failed attempts at note-taking during some of the West Coast’s many beer festivals”, says founder Dave Selden. “At some point in these experiences, laziness tended to take over, and the tasting notes stopped writing themselves. The next day, trying to recall the third bourbon barrel-aged porter became an exercise in Twitter and SMS reconstruction (“try the Allagash Curieux quick b4 it runs out!!”). We knew there had to be a better way.”

Thus the 33 Beers Sketchbook was born. 33 Beers is designed for quickly taking down the important details of a beer. A unique “flavor wheel” is included on each of the 33 pages of note-taking space, and provides a quick, visual way of describing a beer’s flavor (and recall it later). Simple check-boxes for serving method (draught, can, bottle, etc.) and other key information (IBUs, ABV, name, price, where you had it and a 5-star rating system) make the beer note-taking simple, straight-forward and quick, so you can get back to the sampling faster.

Best of all, the 33 Beers Sketchbook is both inexpensive ($4 each or 3/$10) and highly portable. Thinner than a cell phone, it fits in the front or back pockets of most pairs of jeans. The book is also printed on 100% recycled paper using US-grown soy-based ink. The book is available at 33beers.com or select retailers nationwide (see the website for an up-to-date list)

The good folks at 33beers.com were kind enough to send me one of their sketchbooks for review (yes FTC, it was free) and I can certainly attest to its portability and ease of use. I’ve personally never been one to take notes on my beers. For me, it was also a matter of: “if it’s not good enough to remember on my own, it’s not worth taking notes”. Or probably more to the point, as Dave said above, whenever I tried to takes notes on what I was tasting at an event, after the first sample or two, my notes would very quickly peter out.

The 33 Beers book, however, is easy to bring with you and since “reviewing” a beer takes a matter of seconds, I could definitely see myself getting into the reviewing habit. If it’s something you’re already fond of doing, than I definitely recommending picking up a sketchbook for yourself (especially since it retails for less than the cost of a pint at the bar). Enjoy!