Greetings West Virginia Craft Beer Appreciation Society, and thanks for letting Big Swiss Brewing & Appalachian Sprits blog in your space!

First off, let me introduce Big Swiss: David Kucera of Lewisburg, WV, and Adam Patnoe (me) of Charleston, WV are working to establish a production brewery in West Virginia. Although our goal is to produce beer, the path to our brewery might include a brewpub. We are also working on some ideas that will help us create our brewery AND help other craft...

I tried to embed THIS VIDEO, but can't seem to get it to work. Anyway, here is a clip from Fox News featuring Dan Kopman of Schlafly Beer, Nick Matt of Matt Brewing, and Leslie Henderson of Lazy Magnolia Brewing, talking about the Beer Stimulus Plan...which is a proposal to reduce the federal excise tax on small breweries.

Did you know that Craft Beer, while representing only about 5% of Beer Sales, represents about 50% of Brewing Industry...

When I was a kid, that meant something other than beer.  In the past few years, though, I've been privileged to taste several top-notch (and a handful of not-quite-ready-for-primetime) home-brewed beers.  Once in Nashville, I listened to a fellow minister describe in painstaking detail his brewing process for several of the eight or so samples he had brought for us to taste.  This guy sounded like a chemist, but his beers (all of them) were awesome.  I had been thinking...