"It smells like the granary when it's filled." I think that is what I was told but it makes sense.

It pours - imagine - rather deep brownish and has a rich mocha froth and foam. The nose in delightful. Fig and chocolate, milk and bread crust. Like a rich child's breakfast in 1710. The mouth expands with both smooth and whisky sharp. Not Lowland, Campbelltown. Barely a "hodge yer whisht" from the land of my forefathers off the far eastern side of Arran. An amazing swishy mouthful of softness, grain, roast and shadow of burn. Batch 17 in the Paradox series. "Awfy braw" were Oor Wullie asked.

BAers don't do subtle. The lips tingle from the water of life.

Does anyone know the relationship between:

• The Beer Connoisseur, © 2009 HERE'S TO BEER, INC. and
• The Beer Connoisseur™ On Tap Publishing, LLC?

Look, I am up for any good trademark versus copyright hissy handbags brawl as the next guy... but wouldn't you think someone might have checked against the name as part of the set up? Especially if you are going to charge admission and then suggest that you get to control all context, as in:

...you automatically grant (or warrant that the owner of such rights has expressly granted) to... a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable worldwide right and license to use, reproduce, modify, publish and distribute such materials or incorporate such materials into any form or technology now known or later developed, and you waive any moral rights you may have in having the material altered or changed in a manner not agreeable to you.

Have beer blog data and forum posts become such hot commodities that gathering content in this sort of manner will lead to anything? The moral rights clause is interesting. "Moral rights?" you say. "What are those?" As those clever folks at wikipedia note "moral rights include the right of attribution, the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously, and the right to the integrity of the work." So if you waive attribution, it means your words might be presented as someone else's. If that were to occur, well, who would know who was the real clever person?

It's a jungle out there, kids, I tell ya. Even in Web 2.0. Do we need two connoisseurs? Or even one for that matter? I wonder if there are any hidden meanings in the inter-linguistic borrowing, as there is with aficionado with its contextual awareness of the abiding tragedy inherent in the object of desire. Maybe the sound "connoisseur" has a rude meaning in another language. I've never been able to hear someone call the publican "guv'nor" in a British 1940s movie since I worked in Poland.

I came way too late to the Google Analytics mania that is sweeping the globe. Forget Twitter and its limitations. Forget Facebook and those so-called friends. No, what people are really obsessing about out there on the information superhighways is actually what is actually happening on their websites. I've had it up for about 6 months now but was a little surprised when I rooted around for a bit today to find some facts to report your use of this site:

• Facebook vistors from Oslo spend 7 minutes and 41 seconds on average reading these posts. Oslo based visitors coming via Knut's blog spend only 2 minutes and one second during their visit.
• The most popular single post at the moment is the one I wrote last February called "So How Many Calories Are In That Beer Anyway?" It's been visited 11,661 times since it went up. You people are worried about that waistline, aren't you.
• The only other post with a similar level of interest is the one related to the recent passing glance from Instapundit, my review of Tyranena Brewing's Bitter Woman IPA from July 2008.
• I have had three times more visits from Iran than Iraq in 2009.
• Posts with search engine friendly words like "beer prices" and "buying beer in Quebec" do very well with 500-600 visits a month even though they are from 2004 and 2005... and probably not that current or even well written.
• Not giving a rats ass about the movie Beer Wars is worth only about 10% of an instalaunche or the calories in beer.
• The beer brand most sought out by search engine keyword? Duvel.

Well, I finished the book on Wednesday watching kids softball practice. The short message really is that if you are reading this blog you should buy the book. Well written, informative without being stuffy, funny yet quite personal. Likely the best beer book of 2009.

And I checked. I didn't make the credits. I didn't think I would but you never know. You never know if you are going to see a note about the whack job who was emailing about the (Inter-)National Toast for Michael Jackson on 30 September 2007, a few days into the tall ship portion of the trip. But no. No, I got something better. On page 248, when he was ten days from Brazil, experiencing one of his lowest points of the entire trip what did he write?

...And even if I had been successful, so what? Who would actually have cared apart from a handful of blogging beer geeks? What was I going to do?

I was verklempt. When one feels like an utter loser and that one's mission is a dud who springs to mind? Beer bloggers, that's who. I am sure it was really thoughts of Knut rather than me that steadied our man Pete in that hour of darkness upon the high seas but it's the general idea, right?

You should buy it. So, go buy it - still 50% off at amazon.co.uk. Review part 1, part 2, part 3.

As a Haligonian ex-pat, I learned a lot about craft beer from Garrison in its early years in the mid-90s when it was one of the most reliable Maritime craft brewers that bottled. There was a more obviously Halifax centric naming of the brands back then. I seem to recall that I had a lot of their moreish Barracks Brown. These days I don't get back to old port town anymore - mainly because I discovered that (a) Allagash is in Portland and (b) the sea and the seafood is half the distance to drive.

But I got a few beers in the mailbox the other day from Brian Titus and it suddenly life was all funny blue tartan and touristy puffins again. I am stashing the Ol’ Fog Burner barley wines as to do anything else would be infanticide. This one, however, is the beer for now. It pours a clouded deep orange amber under a white froth and foam with orange marmalade and candied oregano aroma. In the mouth there is lots of green weedy hops with some mint and grapefruit as well. The malt is pretty bread crust-eous with a bit of sultana in there, too. A very fine take on a big hop bomb without the insane booze levels that too often go along for the ride.

At 7%, I do think it is a stretch to call it "imperial" but perhaps it's the great Scottish empire that they are referencing. A beer that could stand up to a deep fried haggis. BAers have the love.

In the days back when I traveled in Eastern Europe, I had a guidebook that explained the grades of drinking establishment I might expect to find and learned there was a class of bar in Poland called a pivarnia or some such thing that catered to their manly but odd working hours - there was a gap between the end of the shift at around 3 pm and supper at about six. I learned men went to such places to stand and drink. They weren't recommended. The one time I did open the heavy door of the local example in the particular Baltic neighbourhood where I taught English, all the Daddies of the little darlings at my school turned to greet the vision of me at the door and, as one, swore at me at the top of their lungs. I was not welcome. I closed the door, stood for a moment still outside and then walked away.

I didn't fit in. I've often thought later how great it would have been to fit in that world, to have slapped the backs of the real menski Polski and shared a beer. But I couldn't. It could never be. For some reason, that feeling of dislocation popping into my mind when I read Eric Asimov's article in The New York Times today:

Studio Square was all too typical of a syndrome afflicting New York beer culture. Great beer abounds today in New York, and the choices keep getting better. Nowadays, almost every neighborhood bar has at least a few craft beers. The better beer bars offer an expanded selection, scouring the world for unknown brewers and new beers. And the mark of a top-flight spot is one or two cask beers, served unpasteurized and unfiltered with natural carbonation, rather than from a pressurized keg. Yet an imbalance exists that threatens to undercut the pleasure to be found in a perfectly drawn pint. While aficionados yearn to have beer taken as seriously as wine, too often beer is presented in a context that diminishes the respect it deserves.

Because, you know, respect is only possible in a context of "creative extensions of pub grub" or at a "small jewel, more atelier than bar." The thought of such a place makes me yearn for the reception back in Poland which I think I might prefer to face again than too precious a beer bar. Asimov hits - but then seemingly squirts foul - the real point late in the article. To install a high end kitchen and staff costs money. Which means more expensive beer. I don't want more expensive beer, thanks.

Don't get me wrong. I am really glad a place like beerbistro exists a few hours from here and that I get to end up there once or twice a year or so. Most days, however, if I want to try something really swell and beery in my food, well, I will make it, thanks. Learn to cook well if you can't - the beerbistro cookbook is a good place to start. Usually what I really want when I go out is a plate I can get a decent and modestly priced dinner for the family and have a good craft beer selection to daydream about as I sit and let life's concerns recede. Heck, my nearest to a local even has peanut butter and ice cream on the menu. Magic. Sometimes just one type of sandwich will even do. Other than that, food in a tavern is supplied so you can extend a session, so you don't have to run next door for supper and have someone else nab the primo seat you have occupied since 1:37 pm physically and mentally since last Tuesday. Pub food should be tasty and it shouldn't kill you but, really, are any of you pushing away the bowl of nuts in your favorite beer bar because there just aren't enough cashews in the mix?

The fact is beer may go with good food but good food need not go with beer. To think otherwise strikes me as something approaching an argument the temperance union may have tossed around when it moved into a new town a century ago. It says beer needs something else to make it OK. Like nicely dressed wait staff or small portions on big plates. Like the old rules which in some Canadian provinces that lingered long after prohibition including the one that said you can't get served if you don't have a seat. Last time I checked, good beer really didn't care what your betters thought.

I've had a Bear Republic stout, the red and the brown as well as a pale ale and liked them all... but then there's this one made with, you know, rye. You have to wonder about rye beer, that less popular and less interesting cousin on beery family tree. The only one that ever blew me away was Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. but that was a big 10% bomb with plenty of other things going on. With that one, you knew you were drinking a wall of beer with the rye crunched by the sweet malt and jangling hops of what I seem to have called "Messiahive flavour" - I was so clever back in 2006.

Hop Rod, by comparison, is still a stiffening 8% but it has the overall volume turned down a bit, letting the rye sit with the grapefruit and twiggy hops. It pours a cloudy reddish chestnut ale under a massive tan head that holds. There is malt with raisin and maybe apple but it sits in support of the bitter. The bitter sort of reminds me of Angostura, not just herbal but dry and barky. Not at all out of balance or fully arid by any stretch but a tad barky in its cumin spiciness. But barky may be exactly what you are looking for like the BAers who are in love.

So is there a Belgian yeastily spiced beer made with spicy rye?

More weird news as LCBO shelves in Ontario are getting bare a few hours before the impending strike. Favorite panicky line so far: "...people left with their arms laden with bottles and cartons as if preparing for doomsday." Sure, it's dooooom when you can only get domestic beer, right. See, the wonderfully named alternative monopoly, The Beer Store, will still be open but they can't sell spirits or wine. Other things to recall as we walk forward into the unknown:

• The LCBO controls the wholesale trade as well so restaurants, bars and hotels would lose the ability to sell if this goes on enough.
• The also have some weird snitchy data products which seem rather intrusive if they can drill down to the individual purchase combinations.
• It's the first hot patch of the summer and Toronto city workers are already on strike. The grumpy don't like being dry.

I have to admit that my favorite media moment in strike 2009 is the item on the CBC's website this evening - displayed clickably above - which shows Ontario booze buyers in such a frenzy that they are wearing down coats and wool hats as they race to fill their cars with a summer's worth of gin and plonk.

Well, the LCBO is not quite yet on strike but when you are in a monopoly market these things can catch you unaware or, worse, unprepared. What's this all about you ask?

A trend toward part-time and casual jobs, and a management proposal to be able to issue 90-day layoff notices at any time - to any employee - remain the top two bones of contention, union leaders said. "This is about workers being poorly treated — part-time and casual workers," union vice-president and treasurer Patty Rout told reporters near a parked trailer ready to become a strike command centre. "Twenty years ago, all the jobs were full-time," she said. "Now, 60 per cent are part-time or casual, people making $10 to $17 an hour, making less than $20,000 a year.

See, as far as I know, the LCBO is the biggest buyer and seller of booze left in the world. Last year it made a profit of 1.35 billion dollars on sales of $4.13 billion which adds up to 33% annual profit. It also made $841 million in sales taxes in 2008 for a combined revenue flow to government of $2,191,000,000 or about 168 bucks for every Ontarian on purchases of $317.69 per Ontarian. Not bad.

So, OK, I panicked and did a semi-Yule-like spree on the first hot evening of the summer. But not for me. No. Not at all. For the wine drinkers in my life. Like I want them casting a thirsty eye upon the stash.