This 2009 Yuletide Beer Photo Extravaganza and Gift-a-thon is a little different. It's a little quieter than recent years. It's a little lonely. I was wondering why that was so I wrote a poem to express myself in the style of a certain salty 1800s epic:

The Rime of the Ancient Beer Blogger

There was an ancient beer blogger,
With contests one, two, three.
"By thy coffee cup and dressing gown,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?

The Gunmaker's doors are opened wide,
And I am going in;
My friends are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din."

He holds him with his pudgy hand,
"There was a contest..." quoth he.
"Hold off ! unhand me, blogging fool !"
Eftsoons a tale dropt he...

[An interjection here to shortcut and avoid 53 more stanzas about the smelly old beer blogger outside The Gunmaker's Pub. Seems that there was a blog of good omen that brought luck to beer bloggers which was treated unspeakably ...]

...On trips to Rome, or brew at home;
This blogger we did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the ancient's hollo !

In London's mist, in tavern loud,
He perched the barstool fine;
Whiles all the night with cask ale bright,
And drank the white Moon-shine."

"God save thee, ancient beer blogger!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !--
Thou look'st so lost?' "...He mumbled out:
"I forsook Stonch, such great loss!!!"

There! The poetic arts have been the balm that have brought it all into view, made it all so clear. See, when I decided to slim down the photo contest, I figured Jeff was far too busy to even be bothered. But lo and behold, we have not had a single entry from the UK so far and only two from outside of North America. And we have one UK-only prize, two boxes of assorted BrewDog. This is what vanity leads to, you know. This is what you get for rushing. Make me think of another poem...

No beer blogger is an Island...

But, on second thought, I'll save that one for another day. Here are more entries in the photo contest. Ed Gittines of Southbury, Connecticut sends in these five including a very good view at Fenway Park:

Scott Grenier of Clinton, NY sent these three photos of hops from an abandoned 1860's hop farm here in Central New York. He says the hops are an old variety of Cluster and are pretty tasty in an English style bitter or brown ale but that they can have a pretty intense grapefruit flavor when the beer is young.

I got this further update from Scott in an email just now:

Each fall I harvest around 3lbs of hops from the property, dry them, and brew with them a few times a year. Historically, the hops grown here were English Cluster and the ones I harvest are essentially the same variety, but have gone feral. I have brewed a number of beers with these hops, including a brown ale that I brewed according to a 1870's recipe from the Oneida Brewery? (Utica) that used hops grown from this area. I am pretty sure it is the first time someone had used these hops to brew a beer in around 140 years - And the beer tastes great! It is pretty amazing how much beer history is located here in CNY - though most people have no idea. All around this area you can find old hop barns, kilns, and hedgerows full of hops waiting to be picked.

Prizes? So far we are looking at the new book from Stan Hieronymus, a prize basket from Roland and Russell, stuff from Shipyard, beer from BrewDog, the new book from Pete Brown, a tripel from Clipper City, a shirt from craftbeerclothing.com, some swag from Creemore Springs and a not yet defined something from Deschutes Brewing. Great stuff... yet I need to work on more prizes. I know it. You know it.