As Summer approaches we are in full swing of beer festival season, so it seemed the perfect topic for the June Session. Do you have a favorite beer festival you like to attend or a particular memory of inspirational moment at a festival? Or perhaps talk about what you would like to see out of festivals or perhaps the future of them. All is fair game, I look forward to seeing where people take this topic.

So what is the Session?
Is a monthly meme or writing activity by any and all interested beer bloggers. On the first Friday of the month the host selects the topic of the month and we share our experiences on the topic. This month’s posts should be on Friday June 6th. The Session originated by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and has been going on for just over a year. For more information check out Jay’s Session page.

Because of spamming I do have registration for comments enabled, but feel free to email me geistbear(at)gmail(dot)com your Session post if you don’t want to register and would like to participate in this month’s Session. Also if you using tagging on your posts please use 'beerfestival' in the tag.

I'd like to congratulate Eric Greene for his Silver Medal in Smoke-Flavored and Wood-Aged Beer and Keith Mycek for his Bronze in Amber Hybrid beers. Great to see friends doing well in the competition.

William Brand talked a bit ago how the Silicon Valley beer scene wasn't very impressive and while I only had a limited exposure on a work trip the last few days I am inclined to agree.

I stayed at the Domain an upscale boutique hotel. It was generally a pleasant experience, great wifi, stylish rooms, and they even had a local wine happy hour for samples at the bar. That said for being in California the beer selection was rather disappointing.

Besides the generic list of mass produced domestics they had Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and Gordon Biersch Marzen. These are all very fine beers, but frankly very safe choices. If I had a hotel bar that had travelers from all over the country and probably the world. Why not expose these travelers to some of the best beers in the Bay area?

Start off with Speakeasy. They makes some amazing ales and lagers while they are starting to be seen in Arizona I don't think they are much known outside of California. Bootleg Black Lager is a favorite and the Big Daddy IPA and Double Daddy are great examples of the California brewing.

Or how about some bottles of Russian Rivers Belgian style ales Vinnie Curlizo just won the “Russell Schehrer Award For Innovation In Craft Brewing” award at the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego. I don't know that Pliny the Elder is sold yet in bottles, but I would offer that or I am sure they can find a few unique things to offer.

The 21st Amendment is also not far and they sell beer their beer in cans, why not talk to Shaun and Nico about getting cans at your hotel, change people's perceptions about beer.

Or looking to the greater California Firestone Walker is one of my favorite breweries. I have been a fan ever since a buddy brought back a six pack of Double Barrel ale from California. I can now find it it down in the Phoenix area and I can't wait until it makes it to Flagstaff.

These are just a few examples that come to mind but there is a great opportunity to introduce people to something special and unique in a boutique hotel. From the Domain's use of local wines I suspect they see that, they just need to open their eyes that beer can function that way as well.

Big Brew turned out great. Zach, John, Jim, and the brewery were great hosts. I suspect they enjoyed seeing the individual homebrewer rigs as much as we enjoyed coming down to Oak Creek to brew.

We were able to sample their Imperial Porter and Rare Earth, a Saison that was aged in Oak Wine barrels from Page Springs winery. I had Rare Earth at this year's Strong Ale festival in Mesa so I was looking forward to trying it again as soon as Zach mentioned it would be there. The wood aging clarifies and added an interesting red color to the brew. The wine character is apparent in both the aroma and flavor so it was great to get to enjoy again.

The brew day went well for me I ended up coming up with my own partial mash recipe based on some scraps at the shop and a few things offered by Oak Creek. Among them was some of hops they had won in the Sam Adams raffle, so it seemed rather appropriate that Jim Koch's generosity was further passed along.

The brews went well for myself and everyone else, we look forward to sharing the finished beers with the guys at the brewery in the future. It was a great opportunity to teach some of the breweries customers that you can brew at home.

John, a brewer at Oak Creek, was the day's archivists with his photos and he has just started blogging so check them both out.

Uerige Alt is a Dusseldorf Alt beer. While the website states the alcohol at 4.7% my bottle listed at 4.5%. It has a reddish coppery color with good clarity. White foam with good head retention and a mix of small and medium sized bubbles. There was a slight alcoholic aroma with caramel notes apparent in it's malty aroma. Malty character dominant with bitterness to balance but no other obvious hop character present. The beer had a medium body with moderate carbonation.

On the website they mention they use umbel hops a variety I am not familiar with, but seems to be more a term about the way they are raised than specific variety.

The malt character definitely fits what I would consider to be a session beer because more than one seems to be the perfect idea as you finish your first glass. My only disappointment in buying three bottles I suppose is that I sent the other two off so that my BJCP classmates could enjoy a sample as well. I suppose I'll have to find more in Phoenix this weekend, I know just the place to find more.

A quick reminder that today is National Homebrew day aka Big Brew. I'll be celebrating with Northern Arizona Homebrewers at Oak Creek Brewery in Sedona. For those of you who aren't in the area check the AHA site and you can find where folks are participating in your area. It's a great way to learn how to brew for yourself.

Postscript: I forgot to say thanks to Boak and Bailey's UK beer blog for hosting this month.

It all started for me in college. I never liked beer really but all I saw was typical mass produced light American lager. I was in the middle of struggling with German as a foriegn language, I had walked past the foreign study section and noticed language classes in Germany. I had the thought how much easier it would be to learn German studying there. That week I got a postcard from my Father saying he was in Germany and that he thought it would be much easier to learn German if I was there.

So we made it happen.

Fast forward a few months and I am in Tuebingen about to start NAU's Spring Intensive Program. The first night before classes even started our group met for dinner in the Greek Restaurant near the dorms. My Father suggested I try the Dunkleweizen before my departure describing it's dark color and bready character. I had to give it a try. I scanned the menu closely looking for the beer and once I found it I had one of the class tudor confirm I was reading it correctly.

The flavor was wonderful, powerful and lingers in my memory. It hooked me on Hefeweizen as a style and the malty side of beers in general.

It's not to say I didn't in time develop a taste for hoppy beers, I do drink them fairly often, but malt beers will be my first love always. The majority of my homebrew the last 14 or so years has been the malty beer, I only brewed an American Pale Ale for the first time last Fall. For our BJCP class a few weeks ago we had Bock beers and they called to me immediately. So while I may wander to the hoppy side, it was that first taste of malt that hooked me for life.

Wall Street Journal had an article on Miller's Brew Blog which isn't bad but then I wrote about it 2 years ago when it was getting started. I don't link to the site, but I have kept it on my RSS feed list and actively read the posts.

I think most of my points from my original review still apply though the site still doesn't have a blogroll, doesn't seem to be reading other blogs, and all too often covers things that aren't beer related. Mr. Schuhmacher of Beer Business Daily may not be a fan of the Brew Blog, but he ought to be as his publication is regularly referred as the source for much of the site's material.

In my original post I encouraged Mr. Arndorfer to use his platform like Scoble had at Microsoft to give the company a human face. Sadly this is still probably the biggest missed opportunity of the last two years. He could have done interviews with the brewers, quality control, and many other areas of the company given his access, but they haven't materialized. I don't know if Mr. Arndorfer hasn't thought to explore the topic or just company politics preventing it.

The interesting thing is the contrast of styles while Miller pays for the Brew Blog to operate, Anheuser-Busch has been actively talking and interacting with bloggers and podcasters at events, admittedly inviting and covering costs for many of these people. It will be curious to see over the next few years to see which method will be more productive.

Postscript - I just realized I learned more out of the one Wall Street Journal article about Mr. Arndorfer than in two years of reading his writing.

Friends and family have been sending me links to Beer Menus. It is a great mashup of beer and google maps technology. The only shame at this point is that it is limited to only New York City. But you have to start somewhere and for all the bars it's a great place to focus the idea, work out the bugs, then move to a larger scale. I suspect keeping the lists current as they scale will be the issue. There is a lot of data and updates necessary. In time I could see bars keeping a RSS list of beers that auto-updates their personal listing and while the technology exists I suspect it's still a few years from becoming common place. It's a site worth watching as a beer geek to see how it progresses, it certainly will be a handy tool in urban areas.

I'll take Charlie Papazian's opinion over his when it comes to the question of if beer is fattening. Like anything moderation is the key.

Oh yeah, Charlie is now blogging too, very cool news.

Bloggers have been talking about ethics for a while. It's nothing new really. That said beer bloggers have recently jumped into the fray and examined their position. Considering the recent talk among beer bloggers about the future of writing, a natural fact after the most influential writer passing it's not unsurprising to me. We have had time to mourn and now we are trying to figure out what's next and where do we go?

Beer writing is something I am interested in but I understand the reality clearly. The chances I'll ever actually be employed by this habit are slim at best. Travel is not cheap and we all have to pay the bills. If breweries offer to ship you beer or send you on a junket how do we approach it?

I look back to my Congressional experience and while I drooled over the trips I saw some coworkers get to make, mostly they were very work relevant and provided greater insight to their daily work. You can't understand the banking industry without going and experiencing Wall Street. You can't understand the military fully without seeing the equipment, training, and operations in person. You really don't want someone working on foriegn affairs issues unless they can understand the culture and people from another land and maybe used their passport occasionally. You couldn't understand policy locked in the beltway and likewise with brewing you can't sequester yourself.

Now yes obviously abuses can and will occur it can't be helped. But people who commit such abuses in time will be uncovered by their own admission or just their reputation catching up with them. It happens all the time.

Disclosure is my plain and simple answer. Ray Daniels had it right. As for the Bud hop trip I have heard people talking about them the last year or the current 'Here's to Beer' Exhibit, as long as people tell me Anheuser-Busch sent them on this great trip covered my travel, board, and expenses I am good. Declaration and honesty is the key. The reader is smart enough to figure out if you were biased by the experience. Furthermore as a beer writers I think we'd be remiss if we didn't take advantage of such a trip to see the origins of beer or some events. The more we get to see of the process the better we understand the final product.

PR and marketing, yes perhaps but with proper disclosure people can balance it out. Jeff Jarvis shows us a great example, if not a bit excessive on disclosure but I prefer too much rather than too little information.

Beer writing flows from a passion for the topic and writing without it would ring false. Honesty and perspective will show our love for the topic and let the truth of our voices shine through.

So I had some great beer down in Phoenix. Not a trip I had planned on making but I suppose it worked out well for all the good beer I found, tasted at Wingin It, and other good times. Blog about it soon.