Rather than break my blogging vow of silence again and copycating your copycatting . . . please add:

- people who you don't know, and who have apparently never posted a comment, volunteering to write guest posts.

YES!!! Got one of those today. And also, worse, when they work for a PR firm that just happens to represent a brewery. All for no $.

Imagine the egg on my face. I just got back my new business cards, which identify me as a celebrity beer expert guru. I'll just scratch out the "guru" part. You're right--it's a bit much.

A-lister.

We're gonna name a beer Swank Tax; thanks for the idea!

Don't worry, I'll knock $1.57 off for you and any other gurexpleberties who might want a growler-fill.

Dip the top in wax, too, please. With sparkles embedded in it.

♦ those who do not call it black bitter, the only sensible name proposed for the stuff;
♦ Anyone who suggests what should not be written and who should not write about beer;

Erm, Mr. McL, is there not an ever so slight contradiction in those two?

"Call"? By that I mean sing... "wooa-oh black bittah bam a lam..."

How about we come up with a phoney baloney history for "real," black bitter? We could send out PR emails about it, and charge an extra $3.42 for it, after it's made—gotta cover the cost of the swing-top. "Real" black bitter, as we all know, is so amazingly tasty, you only need one—no need to get tipsy.

Whaddya think? Maybe I should just give-up this whole beer writing thing, all together—Although I am a bit of beer celebrity, now, If I do say so myself. Remember don't hate the player, hate the game.

Real black bitter is from Vermont. It's from there because Ethan Allen created it by taking what he had learned at Pendennis Castle with what he heard from the people of Cork while on the HMS Soledad. Plus he is the first person recorded to have actually called out "bam-a-lam" which was a little used but critical war cry of the Green Mountain Boys.

Cha-Ching $ $ $!

I'm not positive, but wasn't the Soledad the sister ship of the HMS O'Brien?

And, while we are at it, comment spammers who share that it "was hard for me to believe that there wasn't a single website devoted to IPAs, but now there is..."!!

If a man had to choice between a "Beer celebrity" and a porn star, most would definitely choose to be a "Beer Celebrity." Keep up the great work Alan!

Frankly, I would like to see some statistics to back that up. And a country by country breakdown.

I will post the recipe of CBW's
'Imperial mild soured oak-aged black bitter with coffee', Swank Tax, to our website, and we shall crowdsource the details with our fans. We will buy our malt from the smallest maltings ever--someone's yard and basement--and will hand-malt it ourselves, by staring at it intently, and with bitterness, until it is 1,400L, and we will only need to add a gram to a 46.5-gallon batch to make the highest SRM beer ever, so black it actually dims the sun when poured outside. All the hops will also be grown locally, hydroponically and organically; their terroir will give them the aroma and flavor of Durian fruit and Tarrigon and 89%AA. We will mash hop, first wort hop, bitter, finish, hop back, whirlpool, dry hop in primary & secondary and at lagering with them, and there will be a full cone in each bottle, final IBU estimated at about 200. Adjuncts will include an ancient cereal grain from the last remaining 2-acre plot in Tashkent, basswood honey from Poland and a sugar from S.E. Asia; additives will include wormwood, kava kava and rhinosaurus horn. We will ferment it exclusively with yeasts harvested from bottles of Westy 12, yeasts cultured from spontanenous fermentation we will perform in the fruit vineyards of Niagara county, and yeast from English ales recovered from shipwrecks. We'll make this as a steinbier using authentic Greywhack stone from eastern NYS, including adding the caramelized-wort-laden stones to the primary fermenter. Needless to say, the beer will also be barrel-aged in 7 different types of barrels, including a Tobasco barrel and a salt-cod barrel, then blended to achieve the perfect balance of flavors. It should come in at about 70% ABV, and will be flammable.

We will hand-bottle it in 33cl black bottles with black corks and black caps under black wax with gold sparkles, hand dipped. We'll hand-print the labels, which will be made of spent-malt paper, dyed black with (black) squid ink and printed with red ink made of our blood. The labels will have nothing on them but a gvt warning and a QR code. We'll sell them only to our "best friends of CBW" club, via lottery, only on full or partial lunar eclipses during leap years. While they will retail for $20/bottle, be assured that $1.57 of your purchase is being donated to a worthy, community cause. We will also hold back three cases so we can sell them ourselves on eBay (under an alias, of course) for $400 a bottle, all the while gleefully wallowing in Benjis like Scrooge McDuck and yelling "bam-a-lam!"

Did I miss anything?

Locally, hydroponically and organically grown hops are so November. I would have thought you would have obviously needed ethical hops. Grown in an active war zone. So ethical that peace is declared.

But I once owned the KISS comic from Marvel that had blood from the members of KISS in the red ink. You inclusion of that is genius.

Price is too low.

You're right, $20 is way too low, so is 200IBU.
Also, I forgot to add the coffee in my haste; obviously we're using the beans that some animal excretes, whazzat, a coati or something?

Love love love the hops concept; we're on it. I think hops grown on or around Depleted Uranium ordinance would be especially excellent, and I see a sweet future in the Iraqi hops industry.

And indeed, I was thinking of that KISS comic, nice catch.