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Wine was my first love. Beer is my true love.

From retail to restaurants to winery work, I spent six years pursuing a career in wine. I had the honor of being trained by one of the world’s few Master Sommeliers, and even moved to California specifically to work in the wine industry.

Wine fascinates me. It gets me excited. I absolutely adore wine.

And if it wasn’t for wine, I might never have uncovered my love for craft beer. Studying wine helped give me an understanding and appreciation for well-crafted alcohol beverages. Wine trained my palate and taught  me how to taste and pair.

One of the beers that helped me make the leap to craft beer was Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch, an usual grain and grape hybrid, made from an ancient recipe that scientists were able to recreate from alcohol residue found in King Midas’s tomb. The flavors blew me away. It was rich and vicious, almost Sauternes-like, yet bright, refreshing and bubbly.

Midas Touch was, in a sense, the gateway beer that led me to seek out and try craft beer. From there, I uncovered a passion for hops, a love of rich, dark malt and a fascination with wild yeast beers—all because someone decided to infuse beer with wine.

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Careful with the Black Patent! Might want to use less or debittered BP-PGA

The Brewers Association has just published its annual list of top craft and overall brewing companies in the U.S., based on 2012 beer sales volume.

Many would say that it’s a list full of good news, and while I agree I’m not at all surprised by it and I can’t imagine anyone else is either. 39 of the top 50 overall brewing companies are small and independent craft breweries – which is pretty amazing, yet 39 of the top 50 still only make up slightly more than six percent of the total U.S. beer market.

Slow and steady growth is good but maybe I was hoping for a bit more of an upset.

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Never mind rum raisin.

A Brazilian brewer is churning up controversy over an ad for beer-flavored ice cream that some claim could encourage children and adolescents to drink.

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No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you; I’m dry hopping Bud Light today. I borrowed this idea from one of the brewers at Anchor Brewing. He mentioned on a Brewing Network interview that this is his favorite way to see the differences between different hop varieties. They just buy a 12er of Bud Light, pop the caps, drop in a few pellets, and then taste the differences. It sounded like a great idea to me, so here we go!

There isn’t too much to talk about in terms of a ‘how-to’. Label and sanitize your caps, pop the caps, drop in some pellets, and re-cap. It’s a pretty straight forward process. I keep all my hops in mason jars, so it’s a pretty simple process for me to open a jar, steal a few pellets, and seal it back up with the foodsaver. The only real question was how many pellets to add to each bottle.

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I do not say this lightly: beer snobs might be the worst people in the world. But not even they deserve to be locked in Yankee Stadium for four hours, with the only unconventional option being this dinky and confused beer stand with four drinks on tap, all behemoth-brewed by the MillerCoors conglomerate.

Amanda Rykoff was the only person who went to Yankees opening day yesterday, and she discovered something new for 2013. The “Craft Beer Destination,” which isn’t just a way to part fans from their $12(!) for middle-shelf, mass-produced beers: it’s a destination. For Blue Moon and Batch 19 lager, the only beers it sells. Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy is at least made with beer, while Crispin Cider is pretty obviously not.

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