Wow, here we are, halfway through 2020, and I realized I never wrote a BEER OF THE YEAR post for 2019. I didn’t write one for 2018 either, but now, it’s definitely too late. That’s okay. This beer deserves SO much honor, I love it SO much, that it’s possible it would have been my Beer of the Year for 2018, too.

Let's be honest: Facebook is mostly trash. But every now and then, the algorithm does you right and you see "The Annual Icelandic Beer Festival" pop up in your feed. The name of the event alone combined three things I love (Iceland + beer + festival) so with only about 4 weeks notice we bought some plane tickets, booked some accommodations, and we were on our way. 

A good brewery is no longer hard to find in New York City, if you're willing to leave Manhattan. Within the last decade, dozens of small and not-so-small breweries have popped up within city limits. Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx are rife with spots to drink the day away under the guise of your "craft beer hobby" or "beer tourism." In fact, there are so many breweries to choose from in NYC that it can be a little bit overwhelming deciding which ones to hit, and in what order, especially if you're in town for a limited time. 

It's the first annual Beer Of The Year post! In which I share with you my favorite beer from 2017. It doesn't have to be a new beer, just the one I liked the best, which is to say, I ordered and drank it many times over. Which I don't usually do.

And now that you're on the edge of your seat waiting to find out what lucky brew is the recipient of the distinguished award I, a nobody, have just made up, without further ado, I present...

Christmas shopping is the worst. It's stressful and time-consuming, and the world wide web is completely overloaded with absolute trash, making finding the perfect gift a real goddamn challenge.

So I did you all a favor and waded through quite a lot of garbage to bring forth this Beer Lover's Gift Guide! Click on any of the items below to be re-directed to a place where you can buy it for your very lucky loved one (or in the case of an office Secret Santa, mortal enemy.)

I stumbled upon Plan Bee Farm Brewery with a google search. We were looking for a good day-hike in the Hudson Valley region, and seeing as a cold, fresh beer is probably the best way to end a long day on the trail, the location for our trek would have to be near a brewery (naturally). I don't remember what hike we ended up doing, if we even did one at all, but I found Plan Bee in Poughkeepsie with that search, and reached out via the general email on their website, asking if I could come and do a video about them. A cold call, basically. Co-owner/co-founder Emily Watson responded quickly, quicker than many of my friends respond to my emails, to be honest, and we got a date on the calendar to go shoot. 

Up until my visit to Dogfish Head in Delaware, my visits to breweries had been entirely observational. I got to see where the magic happened and the ingredients that would be turned into delicious beer, but that was where my involvement usually ended. When I found out I’d get to participate in a brew at Dogfish Head, I was pretty excited, and when I found out I’d be doing so alongside the brewery’s founder and president, Sam Calagione, I could hardly believe it.

Portland, Maine is by all accounts, barely a city. With a population of roughly 66,000 (people), it's really more of a large town by global standards, and yet it's managed to become something of a craft beer mecca in the American northeast. Depending on who you ask, craft brewing has eclipsed other longstanding Maine industries like seafood and timber as an economic superpower; providing local jobs, drawing in tourists, and boosting the state's income by millions.

Before World of Beer sent me to Kansas City, MO on assignment to get to know Boulevard beer better, I had never really been to the midwest (apart from a short weekend working trip to Chicago, which doesn't really count.) It remained a mystery to me, and I was excited to see if everything I'd heard was true - are the people that nice? The barbecue that good? The local pride that real?

Yes, yes, and yes.

It's been almost a month since my trip to San Diego for SourFest 2016 at Stone Brewing in Escondido, but it feels like only yesterday. The trip out was momentous in a way, as it was my first real travel assignment as a World Of Beer Drink It Intern. The dream was really coming to life as I packed up my gear and boarded a plane all on my lonesome, in pursuit of new ex-beer-iences to document and share.

Earlier this month I was thrust headfirst into the wide, wild, and wonderful world of sour and wild ales at annual Brooklyn event, Where the Wild Beers Are. Unlike any beer event I had ever attended, WTWBA is a bottle-sharing event that requires participants to bring commercially produced wild, sour, and farmhouse ales in order to attend. The amount you bring determines the amount you receive in tasting pours, served by event volunteers at stations around the event.