As November approaches, I’m noticing more and more winter seasonal beers showing up in stores around town.  While darker, high alcohol beers tend to dominate the shelves during the holidays, there is a lot of variety on what’s available.

There are hundreds of lists out there on the web on what the best winter beers are. Instead of creating another list myself, I wanted to get a pulse from you Blog About Beer readers on what your favorites are.

I would probably have to say this is the best time for seasonals.  There are so many delicious options out there to try.

I have 2 questions for you to answer down below in the comment section.

1. What’s your favorite style of winter beer (stout, fruit, etc.)?
2. What are you favorite winter beers (name as many as you want)?

This time next week I’m going to be in Las Vegas for a few days for Blog World. Basically if you haven’t heard of it, Blog World is a conference for bloggers and new media related businesses. This will be my first time at the conference, and I’m hoping to make some good connections and learn some new things to make Blog About Beer even better.

If you’re going to Blog World let me know and maybe we can meet up for a beer.

Of course this blog is about beer, which brings me to the real point of this post.  When I’m in Vegas I’ll be staying at the Luxor, which will be the first time I’ve stayed there.  If it’s like my past experiences staying in Vegas, the craft beer selection will be limited to mostly bigger named beers such as Fat Tire and Blue Moon.

I have 3 questions for you to answer in the comments section below.

1. Where can I find good craft beer in Vegas near the strip?
2. Are there any good bottle shops near by?
3. Are there any good local beers I should try?

Craft beer and the state of Oregon go hand in hand.  With so many great beers coming out of the state, which ones should you drink?

If you’re not located close by, here is a list I put together just for you of 10 Oregon beers you need to try.

Some you may be able to find in your local bottle shop, while others you will probably only find if you come visit or get a friend to send you some.  One thing I’m sure of though is that they are all delicious and are worth a drink.

Note that there are so many great beers in Oregon, many more could have been added to this list.  Let me know what I missed.

1. Hair Of The Dog Adam- An amazing dessert beer that is perfect for drinking while sitting around a fire late at night.
2. Deschutes The Abyss – Arguably the best Oregon beer with limited releases.
3. Ninkasi Tricerahops Double IPA – One of my new favorite beers.  It is a huge beer that is well balanced.
4. Deschutes Black Butte Porter – A classic.  Probably my favorite porter that’s easy to find.
5. Rogue Chocolate Stout – A solid stout that’s my favorite Rogue beer.
6. Hopworks IPA – I love IPA’s and Hopworks Urban Brewery doesn’t let me down with theirs.  You have to visit Hopworks if you come to the Portland area.
7. Cascade Apricot Ale – An excellent fruity beer that’s worth a try if you can find it.
8. Pelican Kiwanda Cream Ale – A very drinkable beer that is sure to refresh.
9. Widmer Deadlift Imperial IPA – Although Widmer’s beers aren’t as good as they used to be, this is still one of their better beers.
10. Upright Six –  A dark rye beer that has a wide range of flavors.

What Oregon beers would you include on this list?

There is something glorious about watching sharks devour whatever is in their path.  They are incredible animals that seem so full of mystery, power, and beauty all at the same time.  Every year the Discovery Channel puts together Shark Week, which is 7 days full of shark packed TV.  Today we are in the middle of shark week and I figured it is necessary to share some good beers that should be in your hand while watching sharks do their thing.

Here they are in no particular order…

Shark Attack – West Coast Double Red Ale

From Port Brewing Company, this is a classic West Coast-style imperial red ale brewed with medium crystal malts, centennial and cascade hops. The ABV is 9.5% so I’d probably not suggest drinking it before going swimming in shark infested waters.  It would probably pair best with watching the Top 10 Shark Attack Videos.

Great White

From The Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, CA, Great White is a refreshing witbier style ale that is light and extremely easy to drink on hot days.  It carries 5.0% ABV, so feel free to have a few while you watch some great white sharks demolish a few hundred pounds of tuna.

Land Shark Lager

While owned by Anheuser-Busch (I know, I guess not technically a craft beer), Land Shark isn’t to bad, especially on really hot days.  If you happen to be watching Shark Week without any air conditioning, this may just be the beer you should choose if you have absolutely nothing left in the house to drink.

I’m just back from a successful, if not wet and chilly, Kate The Great Day at the Portsmouth Brewery in beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And what a wild & crazy morning it was. Josh Christie (of BrewsAndBooks.com fame), a few mutual cohorts and I piled into the car this morning around 3:50am and departed from Portland en route to Portsmouth for The Portsmouth Brewery’s Kate the Great Russian Imperial Stout – the beer which is considered by many to be the best beer in America (and is towards the top of just about every list for sure).

The bottle "lines" at about 8:40am

If you’re unfamiliar with the way “Kate Day” (as it’s called) works, there are a total of 900 bottles of the infamous Russian Imperial Stout for sale one morning each year. The first 450 people in line get a single page from a page-a-day calendar (well, calendar and a half). When the pages are all handed out, the beer is essentially gone. Folks then mill around downtown Portsmouth in search of warmth and breakfast until they start letting people in to pick up their bottles (limit 2 per person; $10 a bottle) in order of month beginning at 9:00am.

Our carload arrived right around 4:45am and got December 28-30 of the first year. By 5:25 all of the 450 pages were gone. Reports said that folks began lining up at 1:00am last night when the bar closed and stood in line overnight until they began handing out pages at 4:30 this morning (so all the bottles were spoken for in less than an hour).

If you miss out on a calendar page and aren’t able to pick up a bottle, not all hope is lost. The Portsmouth Brewery opened for lunch at 11:30am and promised to have a couple of kegs of Kate on tap. However, when we left with our bottles at 9:30, the lunch line was already down the street and around the corner, two hours before they opened. Our rough estimate was that if we had gotten in line at that exact moment, we might have been eating by 3 o’clock. And the brewery was sure to kick all of their Kate kegs before the day is out. Pure insanity.

Look at all those bags of Kate The Great!

However, if you’re within striking distance of Portsmouth, Kate Day is a definite don’t-miss, at least once in your drinking career. I do wish they would host the event on a slightly warmer day than March 1st, but I guess standing outside in the cold and the rain adds a bit to the mystique.

Did you make it down this morning? What’d you think? And if not, I’ll see you there next year (BlogAboutBeer.com Kate Day Party Bus anyone?). Oh, and I won’t be trading either bottle so don’t waste your time. Sorry!

In case you missed the BeerAdvocate.com Extreme Beer Fest (EBF) this year — don’t worry, so did I — the folks at FloridaSPL.com shot some video interviews with a few of the brewers on hand discussing the extreme beers their brewed for the festival. Watch them and feel like you were there. Or even more bummed that you missed it. Either way, they’re good for a watch (more related videos linked at the end of this one):

I’m a sucker for lists. The Top 10 This, the Best 5 That. So I had a bit of fun when I got my hands on the latest issue of Beer Advocate magazine (yes, they have a magazine. And it’s actually pretty good. I’d never pay for a subscription, but if you can find one of their free drop spots, pick it up) a few days ago which includes six “top 25″ lists in the “Beer in Review” section. The lists are the “All-Time Top Beers on Planet Earth”; the top 25 “Most-Wanted Beers”; the “Top Beers That Get No Respect” — these are the 25 worst-rated beers on the BeerAdvocate forums and include the likes of Bud Light (1), Natural Ice (15), Icehouse (20) and Crazy Ed’s Cave Creek Chili Beer (7) — the “All-Time Top Brewers” (which should read “breweries” in my opinion and not “brewers”, since they list the breweries themselves and not the names of the people who formulated each recipe, etc.); the top 25 “Places to Have a Pint” (which includes Maine’s own Ebenezer’s Pub (1) in Lovell, and Novare Res Bier Cafe (21) here in Portland); and lastly, the “Alstrom Bros’ Top Beers” which “made us stop, think and drink in 2009″. Six of which were brewed in New England, and two of which here in Maine (Vagabond from Allagash and surprisingly, Local Harvest from Sebago).

Cross-checking the lists with my own drinking experiences, I’ve personally had more than half (14, if my count is right) of the “All-Time Top 24 Beers on Planet Earth” and 8 of the “25 Most-Wanted Beers”, including the top 3. Not bad since probably 80% of the beers and the breweries on all of these lists (except the list of swill) aren’t available in Maine. Here are the All-Time Top 25 and the 25 Most-Wanted (after the jump… just click it). How many have you had?

All-Time Top Beers on Planet Earth:

1. Trappist Westvleteren 12 (Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren)
2. Pliney the Elder (Russian River Brewing Co)
3. The Abyss (Deschutes Brewing Co)
4. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout (Founders Brewing Co)
5. Pliny The Younger (Russian River)
6. Trappistes Rouchefort 10 (Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Saint-Remy)
7. Dark Lord Imperial Stout (Three Floyds)
8. Founders Breakfast Stout (Founders)
9. Trappist Westvleteren 8 (Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren)
10. Stone Imperial Russian Stout (Stone Brewing Co)
11. St. Bernardus Abt 12 (Brouwerij St. Bernardus NV)
12. AleSmith Speedway Stout (AleSmith Brewing Co)
13. Peche Mortel Imperial Stout Au Cafe (Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel)
14. Dreadnaught IPA (Three Floyds)
15. Bell’s HopSlam Ale (Bells Brewery)
16. Sculpin India Pale Ale (Ballast Point Brewing Co)
17. Masala Mama India Pale Ale (Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery)
18. Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier (Brauerei Weihenstephan)
19. Troegs Nugget Nectar (Troegs Brewing Co)
20. Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock (Privatbrauerei Franz Inselkammer KG / Brauerei Aying)
21. Bourbon County Stout (Goose Island)
22. Supplication (Russian River)
23. Portsmouth Kate the Great (Portsmouth Brewing Co)
24. Darkness (Surly Brewing Co)
25. Duvel (Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat NV)

Top 25 Most-Wanted Beers:

1. Portsmouth Kate the Great (Portsmouth Brewing Co)
2. Dark Lord Imperial Stout (Three Floyds)
3. Trappist Westvleteren 12 (Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren)
4. Pliny the Younger (Russian River)
5. Pliny the Elder (Russian River)
6. Darkness (Surly Brewing Co)
7. The Abyss (Deschutes Brewing Co)
8. Sexual Chocolate (Foothills Brewing Co)
9. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout (Founders)
10. Supplication (Russian River)
11. Black Tuesday (The Bruery)
12. Dreadnaught IPA (Three Floyds)
13. Cable Car (The Lost Abbey)
14. The Angel’s Share – Bourbon-barrel Aged (The Lost Abbey)
15. AleSmith Speedway Stout – Barrel Aged (AleSmith)
16. Furious (Surly Brewing Co)
17. Temptation (Russian River)
18. Trappist Westvleteren 8 (Sint-Sixtusabdij van Westvleteren)
19. Beatification (Russian River)
20. Sanctification (Russian River)
21. Sculpin India Pale Ale (Ballast Point)
22. Masala Mama India Pale Ale (Minneapolis Town Hall Brewery)
23. Bell’s HopSlam Ale (Bell’s Brewery)
24. Older Viscosity (Port Brewing Co/Pizza Port)
25. Great Lakes Barrel-Aged Blackout Stout (Great Lakes Brewing Co)

No surprise I guess that a whole lot of those beers show up on both lists. Discuss…

The February issue of Maxim Magazine hit the shelves late last week and for once included an article worth reading which wasn’t about hot girls. It was however about beer. The four-page spread was a run down of what Maxim decided are the 25 Best New Beers in America. No real explanation of what “new” means, since some of the beers on the list are decidedly not all together that new but it was a surprisingly good list all the same — especially given the source — and only one of the twenty-five brews is from one of the “big three” breweries. There also doesn’t seem to be any specific order to the list that I can decipher, but here it is:

• Porkslap Pale Ale – Butternuts Beer & Ale
• Drifter Pale Ale – Widmer Bros.
• Hoss (Rye Lager) – Great Divide
• Hoptober Golden Ale – New Belgium
• Haywire (Hefeweizen) – Pyramid
• Helios Ale (Saison) – Victory
• Noble Pils – Sam Adams
• Ten Fidy (Imperial Stout) – Oskar Blues
• Torpedo (Extra IPA) – Sierra Nevada
• MarzHon (Marzen) – Clipper City
• Bud Light Golden Wheat – Anheuser-Busch
• Sexual Chocolate (Imperial Stout) – Foothills Brewing
• Brew Free! Or Die (IPA) – 21st Amendment Brewing
• Green Lakes Organic Ale (Amber) – Deschutes
• Indian Brown – Dogfish Head
• Upslope Pale Ale – Upslope Brewery
• Old Stock – North Coast
• Blue Ball (Porter) – Intercourse Brewing Co.
• Calico (Amber) – Ballast Point
• Union Jack (IPA) – Firestone Walker
• Fat Squirrel (Brown Ale) – New Glarus
• UFO White  – Harpoon (Boston)
• Local 1 (Pale) – Brooklyn
• Tumble Off (Pale Ale) – Barley Brown’s Brew Pub
• Phoenix (Pale Ale) – Sly Fox

I think it’s interesting to note that five of the twenty-five beers on the list (or a full 20%) were canned beers; certainly speaks volumes to the nationwide trend. What do you think of the list? Anything you’d add or subtract if you were a Maxim intern compiling lists of microbrews while the paid folks were off shooting Amanda Bynes for the cover?

The following is a guest post written by Dave, a craft beer drinker and occasional craft beer writer at sevenpack.net. If you would like to write a guest post for BlogAboutBeer.com, please give me a shout.

When I think “beer book” I envision an oversized book found on one’s coffee (or beer) table, filled with glossy pages of beer bottles standing next to their beery contents poured exquisitely into proper, typically brewery and/or beer labeled, glassware (i.e. beer porn photos). Sure the photos are accompanied by tasting notes, and occasionally brief descriptions of the beer’s history, but with so many beers the words seem to mesh together after awhile (though some books do pull off the beer and pictures theme quite well). Well The Naked Pint is nothing like that. Okay, “nothing” is a bit too strong because the book does contain some tasting notes. Besides the few ink sketches however, there are no beer photos to speak of, so you will have to go elsewhere for your beer porn.

What The Naked Pint lacks in pictures, it makes up for in beer knowledge. Do not get me wrong, this book is not the end all be all of beer tomes. It does however give the craft beer beginner a very good start into craft beer culture. It also provides a good reference point for craft drinkers who want to learn a bit more history about the beers they have been drinking, or venture into other aspects of craft beer culture.

The book starts out simply enough with beer’s ingredients, how those ingredients become beer, and what those ingredients add to beer’s taste. The authors also discuss lagers vs ales, IBUs, ABVs, beer bar etiquette, mouth feel and criteria for a great beer. The book then moves onto beer styles. The styles start with the most accessible (Pilsners, Hefes, etc) and culminate with the most adventurous (wild ales,
IIPA, etc). I found this to be the best section of the book, and fortunately it was the longest. The styles were not overly esoteric, with someone being able to bump into them at a good beer store or craft beer bar. The book describes each style’s tasting points and it delves into the style’s history, introducing both sides if there is debate about said history. Then it lists two to five beers (depending on the style’s popularity) representative of the style, with short one to two sentence tasting notes. Though all “representative beers” are probably not available to all readers, I felt obtaining one per style would not be too much of a hassle (though MA has pretty good beer distribution, so people’s experiences will vary). In all, enough information was provided to whet my appetite but not so much as to bog me down with the minutia of style information. I found this kept the book moving and provided a nice jumping off point for further style history investigation if I was so inclined.

With the styles out of the way next came talk of glassware, stocking one’s fridge, and brief points on aging. One thing that irked me was the fact the authors write that only a wine fridge will do for beer storage and not some college dorm fridge. Ahem. Sure it is not as pretty as a wine fridge but it certainly is less expensive, especially if such a fridge was left over from said college years. Anyway, only a minor gripe.

Next the book rolls along into beer and food. The book discusses beer and food “pairings” and though it gives some specific examples of pairings, it gives more general hints then anything else and leaves the topic with a “try it yourself and experiment” vibe. The book also provides a bunch of recipes with beer as an ingredient. The recipes look promising, if not a little daunting, but I have yet to cook any of them.

From cooking, the book moves to home brewing, discussing the tools, vocabulary, and steps of home brewing. The book even includes some home brew recipes. As the book concludes it discusses ideas on how to entertain with beer (tasting parties, beer dinners, etc) and further beer reading resources.

Though the book is written more for the “new to craft beer” person, I still found intriguing little tid-bits of information scattered through out. I also believe the book makes a nice quick reference source due to the book’s general knowledge and extensive index. I do wish the book provided a full list of all the beers mentioned in the styles section, because that list would make a real handy reference too (maybe in a follow up version). The book also got me more interested in beer history, which led me to include The Zythophile and Shut up About Barclay Perkins in my RSS feed. Overall I enjoyed reading the book and found it quite entertaining.

There’s a great piece over at Chow.com entitled “The Beer with the Green Label” (and no, not ‘green’ as environmentally-friendly, although they do plenty of that too) which describes the sort of fall from grace that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has seen among beer aficionados across the country and how the brewery has been dealing with the backlash.

It’s an interesting point being made — not that anyone thinks that Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a bad beer, in fact far from it (the article also describes that it was either that beer or the brewery in general which inspired some of the country’s favorite and most adventurous brewers, a la Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione and Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo, to start brewing) — but that the country’s beers (and beer drinker’s palates) have just become so off-the-wall that the once pioneering Pale Ale is now too tame. Says Chow.com author Roxanne Webber,

“perfectly balanced” is having a hard time competing with macadamia nuts. Now that hundreds of small-batch and wacky beers are being made (often trying to outhop each other with extremely bitter flavors), the moderately hoppy, medium-bodied ale seems boring by comparison. You can get it at any corner liquor store. It’s on tap next to MGD at nearly every bar. It’s too mainstream for somebody who wants exotic, and too ubiquitous for somebody who equates quality with rarity.

The article then goes on to quote some people who wonder,

“Has the recipe [for Sierra Nevada Pale Ale] changed?” muses Joe Carroll, co-owner of the craft beer bar Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn, New York. “Have they dumbed it down to get a larger audience? Or are we so used to drinking super-hopped-up beers in the last decade so now Sierra Nevada Pale Ale seems like Budweiser?”

When the fact is that no, of course it hasn’t. The recipe for Pale Ale is the same as it always was – bottle conditioned, and whole-hopped. However, other than some seasonal specialties like the Christmastime favorite Celebration Ale, before this year, Sierra Nevada had not added a new beer to its year-round lineup since 1992; before that, 1980.

So has Sierra Nevada lost some of its value, its street cred?

“We are used to being cynical. When something gets big, it’s usually not very good anymore,” says Dave McLean, owner of Magnolia Pub in San Francisco. “But that cynicism shouldn’t apply in this case. Among people that appreciate good beer, [Sierra Nevada is] still every bit as important to today’s beer landscape as it was 30 years ago.”

I don’t think so either. While sure, I love trying new, exciting and “extreme” beers and often pass over a Pale Ale to get to them, it’s absolutely a beer (and a brewery) which never fails to please. When I saw the Sierra Nevada Kellerweis on the shelves for the first time this summer, I jumped all over it (and was very happy I did – it’s a great beer) and always love picking up the first 6-pack of Sierra Nevada Celebration every holiday season. So what do you think? Do you still enjoy a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale every-so-often, or is it just too boring in the new world of extreme beer?