A Beer For Strange Climates

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  • A Round of Christmas Ales (& Others)

    A Round of Christmas Ales (& Others)

    For 2019, with the full range of American craft beers within reach, I determined to taste a representative lineup of the Christmas and other seasonal ales and stouts put forth on the East Coast. Unlike the disappointment of pumpkin ales, the festive holiday brews by and large satisfied and delighted me. My favorite amongst them?…

  • Northern Neck Burgers

    Northern Neck Burgers

    It’s the afternoon of the Saturday before the time change, and it’s a calm, cool day, with a bright sun that warms us only a little bit as we sit at a picnic table outside NN Burger in Tappahannock. The pups are leashed up and watching the boys play cornhole. You can tell it’s all…

  • Gone Fishin’

    Gone Fishin’

    Sometimes you need a break…a real Saturday morning evoking your childhood–complete with a bowl of Lucky Charms, sleeping in, and watching cartoons. Okay, so I didn’t do any of those things last Saturday, but I did walk over to the neighbor’s dock, where my love was tying a swivel to the line on a second…

  • Toast to a B-17

    Toast to a B-17

    An incredibly tragic accident last week took a legendary airplane, her crew, and her passengers into a fiery landing up in Connecticut. Though I didn’t know the pilots of the Boeing B-17 Nine-O-Nine, many of my friends did–and we all felt their loss as keenly as a collective heartbreak. Historic aircraft fly on the wings…

  • Make-A-Wish

    Make-A-Wish

    We’re always up for a charitable way to mix philanthropy and beer (or wine), so when my friend Lori put it out there that she planned to hike 28.something crazy miles to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, we asked, “Great. Where’s the beer?” She answered, “Down in Greensboro, you silly kids.” Actually, she and…

  • King Bao & Brews

    King Bao & Brews

    Actually, the title of the story is purposefully misleading: I did not drink any beer at King Bao on East Colonial in Orlando last week–mostly because they don’t serve any alcohol. That should in no way stop you from enjoying the pillowy folded pancakes of joy the next time you’re in the neighborhood. Try any…

  • Alhambras in Zafarraya

    Alhambras in Zafarraya

    The drive over the tracks took us up and around the mountains…just getting out of our friends’ house near the shadows of La Maroma, the grand mountain in the Sierras de Tejeda. The lady turns purple in the sunset, but we had the full afternoon sun upon her as we set out. This corner of…

  • Summer Beach Shandy

    Summer Beach Shandy

    It’s not the beach of our dreams, or even our memories. But it’s a strip of sand, and a breakwall, then another strip of sand, and another breakwall, and on ’til the channel that runs into the creek behind my mom’s house on the Northern Neck. Mirra loves to go to the beach–she’ll suck up…

  • Surrey Hills Brewery, Dorking

    Surrey Hills Brewery, Dorking

    It’s a bit of a puzzle to find, tucked in behind the Denbies winery on the outskirts of Dorking, Surrey…but worth it to track down the Surrey Hills Brewery taproom for a fresh taste of what they have in the works. I’d had several of their more broadly distributed beers, either at Cobbetts or other…

  • Fat Tire Oasis at DEN

    Fat Tire Oasis at DEN

    One frigid February morning, I stood with freezing feet in ill-advised loafers on the slushy ramp outside of the last string of the B concourse at the relatively new Denver International Airport. It was bleak out there, amongst the Mesa Airlines Beech 1900s, as I took pictures of a preflight inspection for a training module…