Can it be? I never thought there was a chance I would spend some of my Christmas holidays In Baltimore but I got this email yesterday:

Dear Contributors:

I'm delighted to tell you that our publisher, Wiley-Blackwell, will be hosting a launch party for Beer and Philosophy and the companion books Wine and Philosophy and Food and Philosophy. The party will be at The Wharf Rat Brewpub in Baltimore on December 27. It starts at 6:00 pm and goes until closing; we have the entire place to ourselves. There will be open wine, open Oliver's microbrewed draft beer, and piles of hors d'oeuvres and finger foods. Naturally, as contributors, you are all invited to attend for free. Noncontributors are also invited to attend for the nominal cost of $25. So tell your friends and colleagues.

Cheers, Steve.

Now it's Miller...err...free craft beer time. And crab cakes! Surely that is enough to barter my days off at a steep discount with colleagues who ski, enough to risk the winter white knuckle drive with the family through squinting though an Appalachian blizzard for the Lehigh Tunnel. As you might have noticed yesterday, I got out Lew's last book Virginia, Maryland & Delaware Breweries for some tips to start the planning. I have never been to Baltimore but any US city that can win Canada's second best sports trophy must be good enough for me.

Sibling to the more popular Duchesse De Bourgogne, I got this one at Beers of the World in Rochester at the beginning of August. Frankly, I can't believe that it's lasted this long as one thing I am learning from these sour beer studies is that I could be a wee bit obsessed with these Flemish ones.

At 5.1%, not a heavy-weight by any length but not many of these are. The brewery's explanation of the beer is in Flemish but have a go, tell us what you think it says - this bit especially:

De smaak van de "Vichtenaar" kan men omschrijven als licht zurig en complex en dit door de lange gisting in eikenhouten vaten.

Translucent mahogany ale under fine tan froth and foam, the aroma is sherry and nuts, vanilla and a little vinegar. Very soft water, as the website states, makes this very moreish - surprisingly so with one of this style. Initially I thought that this was less complex than other Flemish sours I had had but it's just a bit less strident, the sour a bit recessed, the yeast milky, the malt all full of cherry and pear and maybe, just maybe, a tiny note of maple. Plenty of BAer respect.

Australian politics and law are a gold mine for most any topic you wish to compare and contrast. I have mentioned more than a few things antipodean hereabouts but today I came across a story with a number of new cultural points of difference:

A total ban on takeaway alcohol in Fitzroy Crossing will not be introduced by the State Government because of claims it is impossible to get drunk on the maximum 2.7 per cent alcohol content to be sold under a crackdown in the Kimberley town. For six months, residents will be allowed to buy only takeaway lowstrength beer under tough liquor restrictions proposed by WA director of liquor licensing Barry Sergeant. Indigenous Affairs Minister Michelle Roberts said you would probably drown before you got drunk on the low-strength beer.

At the end of the six-month trial, there would be an opportunity to extend the ban on full-strength beer once the impact of the moratorium had been reviewed. Fitzroy Crossing community members have suggested that the proposed ban would result in greater social harm, including an increase in sly grogging, more road accidents and increased criminal activity.

I, for one, am pretty sure I could get quite snoggelled on 2.7% beer given time, opportunity and thirst but that political claim got me to recalling another brash position taken by another voice of Australian governance in the 1980 case of R. v. O'Connor before the High Court of Australia. The case turned on the fine point of whether one could be so drunk as not to be criminally responsible and whether a jury could be left to decide. The ruling includes this passage by Chief Justice Barwick:

A distrust of jurors and an anxiety that they may too readily be persuaded to an acquittal if evidence of the result of self-induced intoxication, particularly by drugs other than alcohol, were allowed, may have formed some part of the public policy on which the decision rests. I may say at once that I have, of course, no experience of English juries: but I have of juries in New South Wales. Starke J., a most experienced judge in the hearing of criminal charges in Victoria, having had as well a long and distinguished career as an advocate, expressed himself in the present case in relation to the impact of evidence of intoxication upon Victorian jurors. He said:

"I, of course, have no knowledge of how English juries react. But over nearly forty years' experience in this State I have found juries to be very slow to accept a defence based on intoxication. I do not share the fear held by many in England that if intoxication is accepted as a defence as far as general intent is concerned the floodgates will open and hordes of guilty men will descend on the community."

I share his views, as if they had been expressed about jurors in New South Wales. In my opinion, properly instructed jurors would be scrupulous and not indulgent in deciding an issue of voluntariness or of intention. Indeed, I am inclined to think that they may tend to think that an accused who had taken alcohol and particularly other drugs to the point of extreme intoxication had brought on himself what flowed from that state of intoxication.

Point? It is one thing to have a national bravado about one's national capacity as it relates to the drink. But it is quite another to have it raise to the point of political principle or legal rule. Accordingly, I give you - Australia!

[You all in response, accompanied by clinking of glasses: Australia!!!]

There's a good article Custom BrewCrafters of Honeoye Falls, New York in Rochester's Democrat and Chronical today describing their unique path to business stability:

Custom BrewCrafters produces less than 3,000 barrels a year — placing the Honeoye Falls beer maker well under the 15,000-barrel ceiling of a microbrewery. But an unusual business plan requires head brewer Jason Fox to cook up scores of unique recipes for bars and restaurants across western and central New York. There's probably not a brewery in the nation that makes 60 flavors of beer on a regular basis, said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colo. "It's a pretty rare model," Gatza said. "I don't know of anybody brewing that many different beers."

Anyway, on my recent first trip into the wilds of that bit of New York between Syracuse and Buffalo (nice cabbage fields, by the way) we did not check out Custom BrewCrafters but I think it was because we would not be passing by in the evening, the only time when the retail store is open during the week. [Click on the map. We were close when we were at Letchworth and it's not that far from Beers of the World.] Despite this, I was struck by the prudence of that business call as well. Take-away craft beer need not bow to the 24/7 world. Next time.

Pete Brown: Before and After Setting Sail

Plans for the international support the National Toast for Michael Jackson are taking off. Events so far are planned for across the US, London, Glasgow, Oslo and even my backyard. Getting the word out has been greatly encouraging for everyone but sometimes difficult. You all should be aware that Pete Brown, author of Man Walks into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind is off on the adventure of a lifetime researching his new book by traveling with a cask of India Pale Ale from its brewery of birth to the great sub-continent itself. But how to contact him? He's already started out on his voyage. Good thing I earned that Morse Code badge in cub scouts:

Alan: [clickity-click-click..., various shortwave radio noises] Ahoy Pete! [...click-clickity...] Are you there, Pete? Over!

Pete: [time passes......click-click..., faintly] Who the hell is that? The captain had to interrupt my coal shoveling! I have a deadline for a freelance piece in Coal Stokers' Weekly in two hours!!!

Alan: [(silence)...click-click-click...] Jeesh, sorry. Have you heard about the National Toast for Michael Jackson to be held on the 30th? Can you take part? Where will you be? Over!

Pete: [...clickity-click-click...] The day of the mass toast, I’ll be a day out of Tenerife on a nineteenth century tall ship with a barrel of IPA bound for India, the old-fashioned way. I wouldn’t have been doing it if it hadn’t been for Michael, and I think he would have approved. I’ll certainly be raising a glass, whatever time zone I’m in.

Alan: [...click-click-click...] Fabulous! I'll let you get back to your boilers. By the way, did you hear about the scandal in dwile flonking? Over!

Pete: [...clickity-click...click..., fainter] Sorry...unclear...that did not come acro...message...as if you said dwile flon...dw... flonking!!! I'll have to upda...article for...Flonking Monthly!!! [...transmission lost...]

When I started writing these beer posts back in May 2003, I thought I would run out of things to post about in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. But over time I realized the truth of the blogger's creed: you don't necessarily have to have something to say to say something. But this sort of snuck up on me. I haven't kept a record of the number of beers I have tried or anything and my other place, Gen X at 40, is slowly creeping towards its 4,000th post. What could I have done with all that typing time back? I could be quite a moderately reasonably mediocre trombone player.

You know, I should mark it with a special beer or something. Or figure out my favorite post or photo. What do you suggest?

If there are two concepts I hate they are tipping point and paradigm shift. Two pretty much overlapping ideas that boil down to over simplification. Real change, even when it appears sudden, develops over time and is based on a lot of factors. Well, I saw something today, while trolling Google for a beer story, that I never imagined I would see: a good beer story in Time Magazine. Time!

La Cave à Bulles, recently opened in the heart of Paris, is one herald of a French microbrew revival. "In the last 10 years there has been a real bustle of activity in the French brewing world," says owner Simon Thillou, who carries 150 beers from among France's 250 or so microbreweries. They blend distinctive aromas — Corsican chestnuts, Ardennes blueberries, Rhône-Alpes cèpe mushrooms — to create unique beers that reflect their terroir. For seasoned beerophiles and curious epicureans, here are some of the best places around Paris for the amber liquid.

Wow. Has Jeffery T. Iverson been writing the magazine's beer column called "Brewing Up" for long? Is it in the paper version? I have no idea. How would I? I would never have thought to go looking for one where I found it.

As has been mentioned at Lew's, the BeerAdvocate and elsewhere, it has been announced at The Beer Hunter that a national toast will be held in the US at then end of the month in honour of the late Michael Jackson. The event is being held as a fund raiser for the US National Parkinson Foundation, a research foundation fighting the condition which he had and about which he was planning to write more.

I suggested this afternoon to Stonch that the a simpler version of something similar can be done by beer fans everywhere for many other foundations and associations undertaking the research worldwide - even in your country, blog reader. Please do get to a participating pub and support the US National Toast on September 30th by giving to the National Parkinson Foundation. You may also consider giving to and even organizing a local drive - especially if you can't get to a pub holding an event. Here are a few of the national charitable organizations you may choose to support locally as part of global support for this tribute to MJ:

• The Parkinson Society of Canada.
• The Parkinson's Disease Foundation of the UK.
• The Parkinson's Association of Ireland.
• Parkinson's Australia.
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research - Michael's a Canadian after all, you know.
• The Associaçäo Brasil Parkinson even! I've read the referral logs, guys - I know that there are Brazilians out there.

So if you, the international jet setting reader of A Good Beer Blog that you are, are planning to something, let us all know so that we can share your good idea.