About 4 months ago I came to a big decision in my life. Staring at 3 bills (or 25 lbs shy of 300), I decided that I needed to do something to get into better shape and lose some weight. With this decision came the realization that I needed to both diet and exercise. As far as diet goes, I had not shown any pretext for being able to show will power when it came to food and drink. As far as exercise goes, I have horrible ankles and was generally sedentary and didn’t do a damn thing that might be considered physical activity, barring the occasional Wii golf game. I was a complete slob, for lack of a better way to put it. I was growing close to going up yet another size in pants and other clothing options. I refused to move to 3X shirts…that was THE final straw in a long list of final straws that led to my decision.

With that decision I had to muster self control and start eating well, or at least better. Everything I use to eat, I cut in half and I dropped fried fatty foods that are eaten too quickly to notice the sensation of being full. I cut the amount of cheese I ingested. I ate more vegetables as snacks and dropped my calorie intake to about 1500 calories per day. I also used Wii Fit to get myself into what I refer to as “gym shape”. Before starting this journey, I would get winded walking quickly to the end of my driveway to get the trash can. I needed to get into a shape that would allow me to use the cardio machines at a gym long enough to actually make them useful and not be in pain the entire time because of my knees and ankles. Through this, I discovered that carrying 272 pounds is not good for knees or bad ankles. I lost 19-20 pounds just by doing cardio and a little yoga on the Wii Fit, but hit a major plateau.

This plateau made me examine my calorie intake again. I was still drinking regularly, but moderately (2 drinks per day) and had cut back some of the frequency of that moderation. I was journaling my calorie intake and was including the beer in my calories. I was also working out between 25 and 40 minutes a day with the Wii Fit. I hit snag and for about 3 weeks, I bobbed around 255 lbs with no movement lower or higher. I needed a change. 2 things came to mind.

1. I needed a more rigorous workout routine. Jogging in place and doing step aerobics were no longer cutting it as far as what I was doing. I could burn many more calories with better equipment and a better regimen.

2. My calorie intake was too low. 1500 is good for starvation, but with calories being consumed from my daily total with alcohol, I needed better calories and more of them to keep stimulating my metabolism.

Because of these 2 things, I made 2 more decisions. I joined a gym and discovered the beauty of cycling. As well, I decided to further limit my intake of alcohol. I no longer had cheap beer just for the sake of having beer with dinner when we went out. I also cut back on the big beers that I regularly enjoyed. 2 barley wines are far more calories than 2 pale ales because of alcohol content. I looked for more sessionable beers with lower alcohol by volume, not for sessions of 4-5 beers, but for healthier drinking. Through this whole process, I came up with some discoveries for those who love beer, but want to be healthier.

1. Alcohol is not a bad thing. In moderation, its a great thing! Learn to have some self control and don’t think that because you didn’t drink 2 on Tuesday, you can have 4 on Saturday. Beers are not rollover minutes. Binge drinking is not good for your system.

2. If you do drink more than you intend, which can happen, you can work it off in the gym. It will hurt more. Alcohol naturally dehydrates, thus causing headaches and other baddies that accompany binge drinking. Because of this, drink more water than you drink alcohol and the gym won’t be as painful the next day.

3. Knowing when I am going to drink, or planning my drinking ahead of time, allows me to plan my workouts so that calories are taken care of ahead of time. I typically ride the cycle for an hour on days that I plan on meeting friends for drinks. This allows me to be more social and not be a killjoy because of my diet. Noone likes a buzzkill at a bar.

4. Taster glasses are a miracle made of glass. If you are going to have a big beer, split it with a friend in 6 oz taster glasses! If getting drunk isn’t the point, and honestly it shouldn’t be in the context of this conversation, then what does it matter if you have 6 oz instead of 12? You can enjoy the beer for taste without over-indulging.

Dieting sucks. So does exercise. The worst thing about both is that with old school methodology, the need to cut calories and become very rigid in both practices causes them to suck more and interest can be lost. If interest is lost, then its all moot and weight loss won’t happen. I had to take a step back and decide if I was going to punish myself daily and take things that I truly enjoy out of my life in the name of losing weight. I think that you can see by my blog here and if you know me, by my actions and beer-geek-speak, I enjoy beer as a hobby, a passion and as a method to be social with friends and strangers alike. None of those things are bad if done moderately.

Weight loss can be achieved while enjoying alcohol, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. By making some small changes in my life and the way I look at beer in general, I am now very close to 40 pounds lost. The key, in drinking, dieting and even exercise, has been moderation. Who judges moderation for you? I hope it’s you and I hope you do it well. There are many resources on the internet that cover what moderation is in practice both psychologically and in actual practice. I challenge you to read them before you give up something you truly enjoy. Remember that too much of a good thing is still too much!

Very soon, we will have some new reviews up and some new beer/homebrewing talk!

This week I got to go to an event in Knoxville, TN named Codestock which, btw, was (“is” since I am writing this on a break in sessions) awesome.  Having lived in Knoxville for 2 years, I have enjoyed a beer or 3 from the Downtown Grille and Brewery on a couple of occasions, but I hadn’t really thought about it as far as taste and style adherence because I was in very social settings.  Last night, while being social, I was able to try a couple of their brews and pay a little more attention to what I was consuming and the food I was pairing with it.

The beers themselves are actually brewed under the moniker of the Woodruff Brewing Co. Head brewer Al Krusen works to deliver some solid “olde world” styled beers. The company’s standby selections include the White Mule Pale Ale, The Woodruff IPA, a Stout, Nut Brown, Porter and one of my favorite styles, an Alt.  Thursday night, at the conference pre-party, I enjoyed a pint of the Alt. Their version of the alt is a fine specimen. It is a nice balance of bitterness and malt and fits the style right on. Being that this style of beer is much like the English Bitter in a few ways, it would make a great session beer.

Friday night, since I didn’t stay very long Thursday night, I and some friends walked up from the keynote location to the restaurant and got dinner. Because there was a 25 minute wait for a seat, I headed to the bar to choose a pale ale. It was happy hour, so for $2 I got a pint of the White Mule pale ale. Perfectly hoppy and with a strong malt base, this beer was a revelation. I love pale ales and this one hit the top of the list after 1 taste. I would put it right up with Great Lakes Brewing Burning River and Olde Hickory Tablerock as favorites that I will look for any chance I can.

With dinner, I decided to go with the Woodruff IPA. I had thought I would be stepping up in intensity, but the beer, while darker and a little more alcohol, was not hoppier than the White Mule. At first, I felt a little down because of this, but once my ribeye arrived and the beer was paired with the seasoning on the meat and the delicious cow I was devouring, it came alive. The website says that the Woodruff IPA is reminiscent of Knoxville IPA’s. I was not aware there was a historical element to the beer I was sampling, but I salute the history that influences the making of this beer.

It is clear to me, after spending some real time at the restaurant, that the brewers take an honest historical approach to the crafting of their beers. It is also severely evident that they take into consideration the food that will be paired with their brews. The White Mule Pale Ale was so good, I bought the shirt. Literally. I look forward to many return visits to the restaurant to see what else these guys can do!

We have some good posts coming up soon! Please hang in there as we are adding some new people to the blog to give ideas, thoughts and reviews.

Speaking of reviews, we will have some new ones up in the next week!

Stay tuned!

NOTE: If you have a blog about craft beer and want to be on my blogroll, please hit me on Twitter: @beercentric.

I dare you to click the link above and find out about all the beery goodness that will be going on across the nation next week! I double-dog dare you!

Now that you’re done with that, notice that unless you live in middle Tennessee, you can’t really enjoy one of the couple of events that are going on in the fine state in which I live.  Looking at Virginia, I would have to travel several hours.  Even looking at “Beer City USA” Asheville, NC, which is a little over an hour away, there are only a couple “official” activities that are listed. I expected more out of Asheville, but that is another conversation. What I expect out of my area is at least a little more than nothing. We have 2 local breweries, neither of which with facilities to serve their own beer past growlers, but we have them available.  We have nearly 20 restaurants (I counted) that claim to have more craft beer than most establishments.  The distributors in our area are getting more of the beers we want….so where’s the fail?

The local economy has caused at least one place I know of that might have events based around this week to close down, at least temporarily.  When it comes to things of this nature, our area seems to only really want to visit a place that would cater to our craft beer sensibilities after they have closed due to lack of patronage.  It’s frustrating…really.

So where is the silver lining?

1. Personally, I will try to get to places I don’t normally go next week for a craft beer. It only takes 1 beer to celebrate, so I invite my friends locally to celebrate with me.
2. I will share my homebrew with people next week. Hopefully, I will get a chance to share with people who normally drink the big brewers, but if not, I will at least enjoy my own brew in my own home.
3. I will visit one of the local breweries and fill a growler with their beer. The cost isn’t much and the enjoyment is almost always more than the price.
4. I will launch CraftBeerTricities.com this month.  It will be rough to start with and is really a grass roots effort to increase knowledge and cooperation between patrons, restaurants, stores and distributors.  The gameplan is falling into place and I look forward to getting it rolling. Any help would be appreciated.
5. I will work over the next year to create relationships with local business owners in order to create events, no matter how small, to celebrate this observance.

This is my manifesto.  I will work to make this area a cool place to grab a drink and break away from the typical top 5 pilseners on tap.

What a weekend! I was more tired and delirious on the ride home Sunday than I remember being in a long time. The trip was well worth it and I had some ridiculously tasty brews and made new friends. Let me get to the good stuff.

Friday, the wife and I left the Tri-Cities about 11AM and stopped in Johnson City for lunch and because my wife said “I just need to see if they have any tank tops for tomorrow.” An hour later, she hadn’t bought any of the tank tops I had imagined she might, but had an arm full of stuff.  Thank God she has her own bank account.    After the shopping extravaganza, we headed to Asheville. Where we are located geographically is nothing short of a miracle, to be honest. I can get to Nashville, Atlanta and Charlotte in about 4 hours each way. I am also within day trip distance of Louisville and several other cool cities. The great thing about where we live, tho, is that we can hit Asheville, NC in about an hour. Asheville is a beer drinker’s dream come true and is always a stop when we head to the Hops festival.

We stopped in at Bruisin Ales to buy some things I had on my shopping list. I picked up some Stone Levitation, The Bruery’s Hottenroth, an Oskar Blues Gubna and a couple others. I wasn’t sure what time I would come back through on Sunday, so I wanted to be sure to make my purchases during business hours. We loaded up my bounty and headed East to Hickory, NC. Upon our arrival, we got settled and after running into some friends from Knoxville, decided to head to a local restaurant/bar named Amos Howard’s. I was due to meet up with someone from Olde Hickory Brewery there as well, so it worked out. We had a great dinner and several tasty brews from Olde Hickory. The list goes something like this 1. Tavern Ale 2. ESB 3. Doppelbock 4. Imperial Stout.  The Wife had the Ruby Lager, Hefeweizen and the Nut Brown. I sampled hers as well and quite honestly there is not a bad beer in the bunch!

We met up with Nikol from Olde Hickory and had a great time talking about beer and then what has to be the oddest combination of topics for a tweetup ever. It was interesting and my wife and I both feel we made a friend, so it was a win/win for us. Shortly after some random dude played Purple Rain for me on the jukebox (I crap you not), we headed downtown to the Olde Hickory Taproom to meet up with some other friends from Knoxville. Our drinking was limited at this fine venue, but we had a great time with friends before we retired to the Park Inn for some rest.

Saturday morning I woke up early and rested and ready to go. My buddy Clint, his wife and our friend Ima got into town a bit later and we headed over to the festival. The line wasn’t too bad and the staff (including Nikol) was on top of things handing out bracelets and checking ID’s to make sure we all got into the area quickly…which we did. After setting up camp, I realized that I hadn’t gotten a “program”, so I went to get one and stopped by a distributor’s booth who had New Belgium and Oskar Blues. My first beer of the day was Mama’s Little Yella Pils from Oskar Blues. To demonstrate how much I love this beer, I bought some before I left NC the next day.

The next 6 hours are a blur of meeting friends from the local homebrewer’s club, talking to old friends and chatting with brewers. I hope to do a more detailed post on the grades I gave some of the beers, but here are the highlights for me:

Beer of the day: Natty Greene’s Cask Aged Sour Ale – perfect blend of aging with lacto and talent in brewing. The beer was sour in all the right ways and was one I went back for seconds of.

Brewer of the day: Mother Earth Brewing – I had 3 of their beers AND a special bourbon barrel aged version of their Tripel that was incredibly tasty. Their Kolsch is a perfect and refeshing example of the style. My wife also likes their hippy imagery and shirts…

The beer I hoped would be there and was: Foothills Sexual Chocolate – If it were not for the 2 sours I had, this would have easily claimed the beer of the day crown for me. Perfectly malty and bitter and a pleasure to drink. I hit it early to make sure I got to it before the crowds sucked the tap dry, and that may have caused some slight inebriation on my part. 

Biggest Surprise – Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery:I had eaten at this place in Myrtle Beach SC a few years back and was not pleased with the beer. It was OK at best for me. I passed their booth and noticed they had an odd Belgian/French type name to a beer that was described as a sour wheat. I had it and loved it! I am trying to find the exact name, so that if you are in SC, you can ask for it. More on that later.

We ended the night at the Hickory Taproom for dinner and after having half of a 6″ pizza that was delicious, I headed to the hotel for bed.

I made a stop in Asheville on the way back looking for Mother Earth beer and couldn’t find it where we stopped…I know they have it in Asheville, so I will grab it next time. I picked up the Yella Pils and some Raging Bitch from Flying Dog. I will review those as time and diet (I gotta cleanse after this weekend!) allows.

Recently there has been quite a buzz in the craft beer world concerning Fedex and UPS discontinuing relationships with online beer retailers.  I never really had a dog in that race, seeing as how shipping always outpriced the beer I was ordering, I never clicked past the total screen that gave me the shipping cost.  I just couldn’t justify it in my mind…even for Pliny the Elder.  <gasp>

All the Fedex and UPS stuff has done for me is further bring my hatred of the distribution model of beer in America to the surface.  If you are not familiar with this system (even tho you really are), visit Wikipedia here.  It is essentially an archaic set of rules born out of prohibition that regulate how beer is distributed.  Wonder why you can order wine online and shipping companies will send it right along…but with beer, if you tell them what you are sending, they will not?  This is why.  You cannot ship across state lines into a state that obeys the 3 tier system rules because you are circumventing the middle man.  I could drive over to Asheville, NC, buy up some Pisgah Brewing beer and ship it to someone in another state….as long as I never labeled it as beer.  However, because that would leave the distributor out of the loop (thus the cash), I would be breaking laws.

Does this stop people?  No.  Does it suck?  Yes.

I have always felt like we didn’t get the beers we should get in my area.  I live at the cross roads of NC, VA and TN. I have to visit all 3 in a day to get the selection I really want to have.  Is it my fault because I am a demanding consumer?  I wouldn’t think so.  Where is the fault?

A good way to see some of the fault placed squarely where it should be is to rent or buy the movie Beer Wars.  It is not an overwhelmingly rapturous movie, however, it clearly states the issues facing smaller breweries and consumers in a world run by giant organizations.  Because of the movie I now know that:

1.  Budweiser spills more beer on their bottling line in one day than Sam Adam’s makes in a day.

2.  Budweiser either owns or has a majority of the distributors under contract in America and typically will not deliver beer that is not under their umbrella.

3.  MillerCoors and Budweiser HAVE seen losses over the last few years in market share, but still own enough of it to get eye level real estate in the cooler aisle…and where do most people find the beer they buy?  Eye level.

So it is because of this wonderful system that brewers I would love to have cross the mountain from NC to TN cannot afford to do so.  I can get what I can get and travel to get the rest.  I am not complaining, BTW, about my selection so much as just venting about a system that hinders an even greater selection.  I know now that beers I have heard hyped repeatedly online like Russian River’s Pliney the Elder, the Younger and others will never get to me unless something amazing happens to get them here.  I am constantly surprised to see things get to my area and it just should not be that way.

We are clinging onto Prohibition era laws like a baptist to the KJV.  These old laws make us feel safe because capitalism is “working”.  In this case, however, it is not.  Smaller breweries struggle to get their feet on the ground and we the consumers are making back alley trades via the intertubes to wet our appetites with new brews.

Watch Beer Wars and enjoy it.  I did.  Even for someone to whom all of this information is old hat, the movie is a good representation of the sentiment of a generation right now.

Haven’t done a real “state of the blog” in a while, so I thought I would catch any readers I have up on what is going on around here.

I recently brewed what I have dubbed “Winter’s End Wit” as a celebration of the end of cold weather.  I brewed it on a day when I had multiple friends over, an impromptu sharing and tasting of beers and cooked out.  The entire day, except for trips in to check the boil, etc.  was spent on the back porch enjoying the sun.  I had a nice looking set of what I call “sunglasses raccoon eyes” going the next day.  We had some tasty beers shared in tiny tasting glasses which made drinking for 7 hours straight MUCH easier.  I urge anyone else to do the same.  Use smaller glasses, save your kidneys. 

Back to the brew…As I almost expected, I got an intense lack of conversion with  the amount of unmalted wheat I used and missed OG by about .010 points.  This is the first time I was that far off.  The beer should top out about 4% and will make for a delicious spring session beer, which is fine as well.  Much like Bob Ross, we have happy little accidents unless something affects the taste.

I am currently gearing up for the Hickory Hops festival in Hickory, NC.  I have attended the last 2 years and overall this is by far my favorite festival that I have attended.  This year, they are preparing for about 8 new breweries and about 40 total.  If you are interested in going, get your tickets and be sure to let me know so we can meet up.

In the vein of meeting up, I want to share that I have tried to be very active in the name of Beercentric on Twitter.  I have networked and made contacts that are turning into some really neat conversations and opportunities.  My goal is to visit a brewery on the way to Hickory and then visit another brewery in Nashville in May.  I would love to visit a local brewery every 1-2 months and do a review here on the site.  If it works out, awesome.  If not, at least I will get these 2 done.  I do not have a brewery in mind yet for Friday April 16, so if anyone reads this that has a brewery, let me know if you are in the area between Johnson City, TN and Hickory, NC….that means you Asheville!

I have continued sporadically with the 3 word reviews on Twitter and will do a post compiling some of those real soon.  I need to find a more concise way of doing them, just so tracking them is easier with hashtags.  More on that later…

Again, if you don’t follow me on Twitter, my handle is @beercentric.  Do it…you won’t regret it.  You may become apathetic, but regret will never happen. 

A link to http://sessionbeerproject.blogspot.com/ was broadcast on Twitter this morning by @maggiejane.  After checking the site out and really enjoying the content and appreciating the intent of the site, I decided to share it as well.  The Session Beer Project is a great initiative that is aimed at getting bar owners to have at least 1 session beer (besides Guinness) in their bars.

A session beer is a libation that is less than 5% ABV by most definitions, but according to the site 4.5% and can be consumed in higher quantities because of the lower alcohol.  This would be an incredible movement to get behind so that one could enjoy themselves more safely without sacrificing flavor or being forced to choose one of the major US lite beers that are normally the choice of the masses in these cases.  Get behind the movement and visit these guys often for information on tasty brews!

After completing an extensive interview and finding pics that didn’t make me look like a complete chubby louse (Thanks Rich!), DrinkwiththeWench.com has seen fit to feature me today as their Featured Beer Blogger.  This is a really cool honor.  I follow anyone she features in my Google Reader and appreciate the chance to be me in a different format.

Enjoy the read and special thanks to The Wench for this opportunity!  Cheers!

I have really come into some good practices in my brewing the last couple or three beers.  I am getting a system down, trying some newer things and having some success.  The Christmas Stout turned out really nice (IMHO) and I will actually get to taste my Rogue Dead Guy clone next weekend.  On Thursday I did a partial mash Rye IPA using a sparge bag and a new method for rinsing the grain and mashing out.  I had issues keeping the mash temp just right, but didn’t lose much on the original gravity.  The Pacman yeast has been bubbling away since Friday afternoon and I look forward to seeing what it has done when I go to dry hop later this week.  This week when I brewed, I started noting some things in my mind that I wish I had known originally, but am very glad I learned.

Sanitation – This is one of the most important things.  Period.  I knew this.  However, what you have to do is get your method for sanitation down.  Know that you are going to make a bad beer when you are starting and the odds are that it will be because you sacrificed something in sanitation.  The best thing to do is get into habits quickly when it comes to sanitizing and cleaning your equipment.  Boil the things you can boil and keep sanitizer handy.  It only takes 15-30 seconds in the sanitizer to re-ready something, so don’t skip it.

Experimentation – Do not ever be scared to try something.  I am not a kit guy.  Kits are absolutely wonderful things and make incredible beers, however, I would rather formulate the recipe myself.  I like the idea of putting different things in beers and I like the thought of hopping beers in a different way than I have had before.  I am not that far along in this area, but I have little fear when it comes to throwing an ingredient in as long as I do my research and learn the ramifications first.  There are tons of places to feed the experimental drive of anyone.  Use Google to your advantage.  Find active communities on the internet that allow you to learn from other brewers.

Software – Speaking of the internet…use it to find some good beer recipe software.  I have used both Strangebrew and Beersmith.  Of the two, Beersmith is far and away a better tool.  Strangebrew is a great tool, especially for beginners because the learning curve for the software itself is not that steep.  The downside to Strangebrew is that it doesn’t seem to be updated anymore.  It feels dated (putting on my software reviewer’s cap here).  Each time you reinstall, for whatever reasons, you have to email the owner in order to get a new code.  It happens quickly, but it’s still a pain.  Beersmith, on the other hand, is sleek and very tight as applications go.  It is easy to use and has a huge database of ingredients from which to build recipes.  Neither application is that expensive, so go buy one now.  You can try both, if memory serves me correctly, for a limited time.

Your System – No two brewers do things the same way.  One of my brewer friends sanitizes the floor, just in case he drops something.  Another started immediately with  a conical fermenter, completely jumping past the typical bucket and carboy setup.  Both have found success, regardless of the differences in methods in comparison to mine.  Everyone will do it different, create different things and inevitably, unless they are just not good, will brew good beer.  The devil is in the details and he can drive you nuts if you worry about how others do their brewing.  Find what works for you.

Perhaps more than anything I have learned was stated in the first book I ever read on the subject.  Charlie Papazian states clearly “Relax.  Don’t worry.  Have a homebrew.”  No truer words have been said when it comes to the wonderful art that is homebrewing beer.