As many of you are aware, I recently put out a call for help and asked if any one was interested in hosting a WVCBAS Blog. Well many of you came forth and offered your services and I am going to take each and every one of you up on it.

Actually I am very happy to announce that we actually posted our first submission today. Dana, aka The Hoppy Preacher, has posted his first post on his blog, Almost Heaven(ly) Hops. Dana, a Presbyterian Minister by trade and beer geek by choice, will discuss...

So, my wife and I are in Washington DC for the next several days. We are here because she has to attend a class at Washington Hospital Center today and tomorrow. That means I am on my own for the next two days.

So, what's a boy to do when he is all alone in the big city? Well, does a pub crawl of course!

I have an itinerary of several brewpubs, beer bars and other beer centric locations mapped out based on recommendations from some of you and from Beer Advocate's Beer Fly Reports. I plan to...

I recently picked up a copy of the inaugural edition of a new beer magazine called The Beer Connoisseur. It is a pretty good rag with several good beer reviews, features on a few breweries, some beer and food articles and a great feature on Anchor Brewing, Fritz Maytag, and the start of the American Craft Beer Industry. Hell, they even mentioned WV's own Forks of the Cheat Winery in an article titled "Life Outside of Beer". But one article in particular got me thinking. It was the very last...

Looks like the ad agency thinks Miller Lite is piss too.

 

This is an actual ad that was pitched and turned down by Miller Lite Execs. Cant say I blame them.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNs_F4E1CNk&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwy6XMN30CA

The Moon Under Water
by George Orwell
Evening Standard, 9 February 1946

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of "regulars" who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer.

If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its "atmosphere."

To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian. It has no glass-topped tables or other modern miseries, and, on the other hand, no sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks or plastic panels masquerading as oak. The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull's head over the mantelpiece —everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0nTTonvEM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev5OZS75qaY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPHumGDA7I4