christian debenedetti » Uncategorized

Five Days on the Colorado Ale Trail

CDB — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:11:02 +0000

Abandon All Hope, Ye That Enter Here.

It’s been about a week, but I’m still recovering from my three-city tour of Colorado based around the Great American Beer Festival. And I’m still amazed, after more than ten years of writing about beer (among other topics) for the likes of Food+Wine, Men’s Journal, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and many others, that it was my first ever trip to the Big One, the mother of all beer events, the endless pour…

Big it is. Surreal, too. Moments after I checked into Hotel Teatro in Denver I found myself with some 160 other accredited journalists (from the beverage media trade, mostly, including some familiar faces I was glad to see) in a white-tablecloth dining room beneath the Marriott. Denver’s popular Democratic Mayor, John Hickenlooper, was about to make some remarks. I’d barely shaken off the general skeeziness of flying and my airport “breakfast” at 7AM when I sat down to a remarkably haute beer and food pairing. Buffalo carpaccio, meet Del Norte Brewing Co.’s Mañana Amber Lager. Tender Beef Cheek, meet Deschutes Black Butte Porter. Things were off to a good start, indeed…

“Beer is in our DNA,” Hickenlooper declared, as we tucked into our beer-centered lunch. A former wildcatter, he’d made a satchel of cash before the oil crash sent him into the beer biz in the mid 1980s. He opened the Rockies’ first brewpub, Wynkoop, a downtown staple, and though Hoop couldn’t join us, we later visited that spacious beerthedral he’d bestowed upon Denver with Oskar Blues‘ Marty Jones. Speaking of visionaries, Marty Jones is undoubtedly one, too. We’d merely jawed many a time by phone, and it was a pleasure to meet the man who helped launch America’s first craft beer in a can.

The same afternon we hit the Falling Rock Tap House and the excellent Great Divide Brewery before even making it to the festival itself, on Friday early evening, inside Denver’s massive Convention Center. There the mayhem unfolds at a dizzying pace. With some 14 acres of beer possibilities before you — a literally endless supply of beers to try — the mind reels. Crowds line up. The air is chilled and volunteers stand ready, the clamor growing by the second. There’s Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head with a line 70 people deep waiting to try his ‘Palo Santo’ and other wild creations. There’s Tomme Arthur of Lost Abbey with his fans and a host of hard-to-find Belgian ales. And that’s just the start: there are over 450 other breweries represented, serving some 2,000 beers. It’s a sight to behold, a sight to love. I felt like I’d come home. I really can’t vouch for the convention-goers that attended the other events on in the facility that night — a sextoy convention, and a “women of faith” gathering — but I was in Heaven.

Ten years ago when I started writing about beer, after my year-long tour of ancient brewing methods through fourteen countries in West Africa and Europe, funded by the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the American beer scene was a bit in a funk. There were 700 breweries and brewpubs, sure, but a slowdown had beset the industry like a rolling blackout, leaving scores of brewkettles cold across the land. Venture capital was drying up. Phony contract brews were carving away precious shelf space from upstarts who couldn’t spare an inch.

But the lull was simply that and little more. Nothing could stop what New Albion, Sierra Nevada, Anchor, Boston Beer Co., and so many other path-breaking American craft brewers started in the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. Today, American craft beer is riding an all-time high. There are now over 1,500 breweries across the land. Scores of publications cover the industry, with bold new regionals, established nationals, and several more on the way. And the best of the brewers bring their freshest beer to GABF. For any serious beer lover, it’s a must-attend event.

After Friday night’s session and a long Saturday afternoon tasting with an old beer-loving friend from 5280 (Denver’s solid city magazine), it was time to settle into the long beer list at the Falling Rock Tap House, where brewers and beer fanatics congregate like teammates in a bullpen. You couldn’t walk three inches with a tippy pint glass of beer before running into famed brewmasters like Garrett Oliver (of Brooklyn Brewery) or New Belgium’s Peter Bouckaert.

The next day dawned bright, warm, and breezy, all the better for the hiking I’d planned to do with Dan and Tessa Shelton, of Shelton Bros., a noted importer of rare European beers I’d met in 1997 while on my life-changing beer pilgrimage. After I had an amazing breakfast of fried green tomatoes at Table 6, We hauled ourselves to Boulder for a hike up the Royal Arch, a breathtaking granite span in the Flatirons. The mile-high altitude — we’re both flatlanders now, despite having respectable outdoor pedigrees — and 2000′ of climbing up the mountainside had us sweating like a couple of suburban fattypants wearing Chuck-E-Cheese costumes. Fortunately Dan’s friends brought ice cold Upslope Pale Ales, which we cracked, laying around on the rocks below Royal Arch like a spray of half-dead lizards. But the beer saved us. Revived, yet out of beer, we down-climbed to the car, then noshed at Boulder’s The Kitchen, where beer Sommelier Ray Decker has put put together a fine list complementing The Kitchen’s farm-to-table fare. Safe to say everyone slept like logs on Sunday night.

My tour wasn’t over yet; early Monday morning I headed straight north an hour to the charming town of Fort Collins (a small city, really, at around 135,000 residents), where a remarkable concentration of breweries big and small holds the community together with infectious goodwill. First stop was Coopersmith, where posters from the Denver Beer Festival going back to 1990 and a photo of a regular on Everest’s summit told me I was in a solid spot. The barbecue brisket sandwich came recommended, and I wasn’t disappointed. Nor did the beers disappoint, especially a pleasantly acidic kriek, not a beer style to be trifled with.

Following lunch it was time to tour Anheuser Busch’s plant, a stop I unironically recommend. ‘What in Holy Hell?’ the craft beer lover shrieks? Blasphemy! I’m serious. For any lover of beer, this is a stop worth making for one simple reason: perspective. Take the “Brewmaster’s Tour” and you’ll see a lauter tun that looks like something out of ‘Independence Day‘. You’ll gape at a canning line churning out Bud Light at a rate of 33 cans per second. And you’ll taste something remarkable, in this writer’s book: unfiltered Bud Light. Yes, I know, it’s 40% rice. But after the so-called Beechwood aging (it’s real wood, I can at least tell you that much), and before filtration and pasteurization has rent the last of any remaining flaws asunder, Bud Light has an appealing flavor. Boycott me if you will, Beer Geek Nation. Cackle on, HopDruid74. I don’t care. It’s surprisingly good. (For the record, I suggested that the manager tell her superiors, and when Bud Light’s own version of Mahr’s ‘Ungespundet Hefetrub‘comes out and makes hundreds of millions, I’ll expect a fat paycheck, and you’ll wonder what exactly the world has come to. With Bud Light Golden Wheat suddenly a national brand, suddenly Bud “kellerbier” doesn’t sound so crazy, now does it?

Odell’s was next on my list. When we arrived, brewery spokesperson Amanda Johnson was helping set up for a cask tapping of Isolation Ale, a 5.2% winter warmer. Just two days since the Big One had wrapped up, and another event was clicking into gear. But it was what was going on backstage, as it were, that is the most exciting. Odell’s (makers of a popular Scottish ale called ‘90 Schilling’ which my writing partner for Men’s Journal Seth Fletcher and I placed on this year’s list of America’s best 25 beers) is in the middle of a massive expansion. After a tour of the work site, we saddled up to the bar for some remarkable recent creations, like Angry Robin, an English strong ale aged in Merlot barrels and spiked with a dash of brettanomyces bacteria, giving it a “barnyardy” kick. The bar filled up as the sun descended, and as we made our way through the brewery’s current line up, including the delicious session-appropriate “5 Barrel Ale (named for the company’s original system, still in use next to the newfangled gear), I learned a remarkable fact. In all, there are five married couples who met or work together at the brewery. Which is a sizable chunk of the staff. It might be the happiest place in America.

After a solid two hour bike ride along the Pouder river Tuesday morning it was time for my last stop before dashing back to Denver, New Belgium Brewery. There Brian Simpson led me through a tour many had touted as the best they’d ever taken. And while I’ve been to well over 100 breweries in my day, I am never, ever tired of exploring another. This is beer travel at its best.

The vast shiny whir of machinery that is New Belgium’s perfectly engineered automatic packaging line might be its central nervous system, but its beating heart is surely found in an unassuming corner of a storage warehouse behind the taproom. There, 16 massive “fouders” — massive French oak fermenters — stand in a tower of golden wood and iron bands. New Belgium has been a pioneer in introducing Americans to a Belgian Style called Oud Flanders Red (or Brown), of which the crowning example is generally thought to be (Belgium’s) Rodenbach Grand Cru. The American company New Belgium’s version is called La Folie, and it’s a polarizing beer. Now marketed through the brewery’s Lips of Faith line, it’s uncompromisingly tart, with a bracing flavor profile that can sucker-punch the unprepared. To others, La Folie is nothing short of nectar.

A friend had told me (a bit conspiriatorially) that once I’d gained this inner sanctum, I needed only to sample Fouders 1,3, and 13. And when I brought this little nugget of intel up to the brewers as we made our way back to the grove of tanks, they greeted my request with wry grins. He knows, their smiling faces said.

There we pulled samples of the vinous ales into little snifters. Each was unique, now exuding pineappley aromas and tangerine-like tartness, now chewy red wine tannins and sour cherries. For grins we made an impromtu blend of one and three, and compared our results.

I could have spent an entire day here, wandering among the massive casks. But it was time to get back to the airport. Brian gave me bottles of Le Fleur Misseur (another earthy specialty beer in the Lips of Faith line) and La Folie to check in my luggage, which was soon rearranged in complicated beer-protecting, leak-proof fashion. It worked. I’m looking forward to my next tastes of these beers, to the next trip to the great breweries of Colorado, and, especially, more whispered beer secrets on the fly and far away.

GABF Weekend Beers Sampled (partial list), after the jump.

Allagash White

Allagash Confluence

Alpine Duet

Ballast Point Sculpin IPA

Bear Republic Global Kolsch

Bear Republic Racer 5

Ommegang Adoration

Ommegang Biere de Mars

Hottenroth Berliner Weisse

Deschutes Black Butte Porter

Deschutes Brewery Black IPA

Deschutes Red Chair IPA

Deschutes Hop Trip

Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar

Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial Brown

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja

Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca

Dogfish Chicha

Dogfish Palo Santo

Elysian Jasmine Avatar IPA

Firestone Walker Pale 31

Firestone Walker Parabola

Great Divide Samurai

Great Divide Denver Pale Ale

Great Divide Titan IPA

Green Flash Le Freak

Kona Castaway IPA

Left Hand Polestar Pilsner

Maui Big Swell IPA

New Belgium Le Fleur Messeur

Odell’s Brett Barrel Brown

Odell’s Angry Robin

Odell’s Friek

Odell’s 90 Shilling

Odell’s St. Lupulin

Odell’s IPA

Odell’s Isolation Ale

Odell’s Cutthroat Porter

Odell’s 5 Barrel Ale

Coopersmith:

Columbine Kolsch

Belgian Style Kriek

Punjabi Pale Ale

Sigda’s Green Chile

Horsetooth Stout

Oktoberfest

Del Norte Manana Amber

Bend Brewing Co. Rocky Stein Lager

Estes Park/Long/s Peak Rasberry Wheat

Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

Oskar Blues Gordon

Russian River Blind Pig IPA

Russian River Pliny the Elder

Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss

Soutthampton Double White

Soutthampton Trappist IPA Reserve

Trumer Pils

Upslope Pale Pale

Victory Wild Devil

Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA

Wild Mountain Smokehouse Hop Diggity

Steamworks Steam Engine Lager

Steamworks Colorado Kolsch

Steamworks Conductor Imperial IPA

Anheuser Busch:

Bud Lite Golden Wheat

Bud Lite

Shock Top

Michelob Marzen

Michelob Jack’s Pumpkin Spice

Budweiser American Ale

Bud Lite Lime

Michelob Honey Lager

Wild Blue

Michelob Pale Ale

Dunkelweisse

Unfiltered Bud Light

New Belgium:

Mothership Wit

Biere De Mars

Ranger IPA (test batch about to be launched)

Fouders 1,3, and 13 (these are the 12′ tall oak fermenters used to age La Folie…)

Translatlantic Kriek

Dandelion Ale

Other

Saison Dupont (on draught. ick)

XX Bitter

Dying to Get Some Sleep [Breaking]

CDB — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:15:29 +0000

The Waking Dead

One night of insomnia can mean a rough morning. Three months can be fatal.

By Christian DeBenedetti | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Aug 24, 2009

It’s official. Today, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office reported that Michael Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, an anesthetic most often used during major surgery. Why he was using this drug at home is still unanswered, though reports indicate that the pop superstar hadn’t properly slept for years, maybe even decades. Is it possible that Jackson’s quest for shuteye may have ended his life? The same questions surround Heath Ledger, who died last year of a prescription-drug overdose. At one point, the young actor told The New York Times he was only getting two hours a night. Director Terry Gilliam told Vanity Fair that Ledger was overusing prescription sleep aids in search of rest. “It was a combination of exhaustion, sleeping medication … and perhaps the aftereffects of the flu,” said the director, speculating about Ledger’s death. “I guess his body just stopped breathing.”

We’ve all suffered from a poor night’s sleep. According to the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, vast numbers of Americans (30-40 percent) report suffering from one or more nights of insomnia during any given year. But can insomnia get so bad that you actually die from it? There’s very little research on what happens to the human body when it goes for extended periods without sleep—after all, no lab in the country would sign off on such experiments. From what we do know, it’s highly likely that one’s body would eventually just shut down. But what’s more common, and troubling, is chronic insomnia, bouts of brief, fitful sleep—an hour here, three hours there—lasting beyond three weeks into months or years at a time. About 10-15 percent of Americans suffer from chronic insomnia, and while this type of condition is not deadly in and of itself, it can lead to a whole host of other disturbing mental and physical effects.

The ill effects of insomnia can be immediate after just one sleepless night. (Even not getting enough sleep per night can be dangerous: studies show that mortality rates spike in those that sleep drastically less than seven hours a night.) According to recent research by Matthew Walker, director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, the amygdala—the part of the brain that alerts the body to be prepared in times of danger—goes haywire when a full night’s sleeplessness occurs. That in turn wreaks havoc on the prefrontal cortex, which controls our logical reasoning and “fight or flight” reflex, turning us, as Walker says, into “emotional Jell-O.” Memory capacity and speech control diminish; irritability spikes. At the same time, some studies have shown that cortisol, a hormone related to stress and depression and linked to cardiovascular disease, is building up in the body instead of being moderated by a good night’s rest. Concentration is kaput. The muscles ache. What’s worse, the external, ordinary dangers of modern life become many times more deadly: according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are about 200,000 car accidents a year caused by sleepy drivers, killing more people than drunk driving. Essentially robbed of its power to encode or consolidate memories after just one day, the brain quickly instead begins to mimic the profile of people with acute psychiatric disorders.

Physiologically, the human body could survive without sleep for 11 to 18 days, based on research from experiments and various other stunt-based records. Taken to extremes, the results of sleeplessness get downright grim, which is why it’s been both shunned as a form of unethical research and used as torture. When lawyers for former President George W. Bush argued, in a 2005 memo, that keeping detainees awake for 180 hours—seven and a half days—didn’t constitute torture, the medical researchers cited in support howled with protest, calling it “deplorable” and “nonsense.” “Prolonged stress with sleep deprivation will lead to a physiological exhaustion of the body’s defense mechanisms, physical collapse, and with the potential for various ensuing illnesses,” responded Professor James Horne of the Sleep Research Centre at England’s Loughborough University and author of Why We Sleep. Horne says the effects of prolonged sleeplessness are painful indeed. Various brain and several bodily functions go completely gunnysack. Vision goes blurry or double; nausea sets in. By a week, hypertension and body temperature run amok; the brain may be overcome with hyperemotionality, paranoia, and hallucinations.

Yikes. So aside from torture, what could keep someone up for weeks at a time? How about fatal familial insomnia (FFI), a rare genetic malady that can strike an entire household, dooming victims to a zombie state until death arrives about 15 hellish months later? D. T. Max, whose book The Family That Couldn’t Sleep chronicled the eerie real-life saga of an 18th-century Italian family afflicted with FFI. “The symptoms of FFI are remarkable and grim,” writes Max. “Typically, one day, the sufferer find that he has begun to sweat … his pupils have shrunk to pinpricks and he is holding his head in an odd, stiff way … Constipation is common, the women suddenly enter menopause and the men become impotent … Over the ensuing months, their exhaustion is immense, beyond comprehension … Once he can no longer sleep, a downward progression ensues….” (If, panic-stricken, you’re reading this at 3:30 a.m. and sure you’ve got it, it would be wise to reconsider the self-diagnosis; fewer than 50 families in the world are known to carry the gene.

Ordinary, or what’s known as primary insomnia, is far more common. Leaving aside obvious, easy-to-diagnose causes (jet lag, drug abuse, excessive caffeine, or alcohol intake) and those of what’s called secondary insomnia (symptoms of an array of bodily ailments from sleep apnea to fybromyalgia, arthritis, cancer, Parkinson’s, and others), the root cause is often psychological, its persistence due to learned behavior. “Anxiety and depression are usually highly correlated with insomnia,” says Sara Mednick, assistant professor in the Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience at University of California, San Diego, and author of a book on healthy sleeping habits, Take A Nap. Change Your Life. “Often it’s a very normal thing—a death [of someone close], for example—but there’s a sudden crisis in their life, and one starts to have sleepless nights. But it can become a learned experience, which overtakes the thing that happened.” The risk of developing major depression from that point, one study showed, increases up to fourfold.

Insomnia sometimes passes—but sometime it doesn’t, leading to chronic sleepless nights. Most insomniacs avoidably become, in essence, their own worst enemies, mishandling the malady through habit-forming drugs or seemingly benign but flawed methodology. “Misguided ways to cope with the sleep deprivation—such as drinking coffee, going to bed earlier, having a nightcap, or staying in bed longer in the morning—only fuel the problem,” write Lawrence Epstein and Steven Mardon, authors of The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep. “As insomnia worsens, anxiety and frustration mount, leading to a vicious cycle.…”

Those desperate enough for sleep often overmedicate, Mednick says, which doesn’t treat the insomnia at all. Instead, it masks the underlying issues in a narcotic haze that can lead to addiction and even more sleepless nights. Unfortunately, desperate for sleep, the insomniac has a smorgasbord of heavily marketed pharmaceutical remedies to choose from—both by prescription and over the counter. In recent years, prescription antidepressants have found some favor in treating insomnia, while over-the-counter sleeping pills (usually a form of antihistamine) remain popular too. The problem with most of these medications—especially so-called sedative-hypnotics, obtained by prescription and also known as benzodiazepines and non-benzodiazepines—is that while they might seem to give the sufferer some relief, they either disrupt or prohibit REM sleep, the restorative kind that provides great, complicated dreams and a sense of renewed vigor and optimism in the morning. You think you’re asleep, but it’s light, and there’s the chance of developing psychological or physical dependence, not to mention a host of side effects. In all cases, these pills fail to cure the cause of the insomnia. In some cases, they prolong it. And when abused, these drugs can result in a permanent, deadly slumber.

Find this article at

http://www.newsweek.com/id/213493

New Post on TheAccidentalExtremist.com

CDB — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:21:09 +0000

New Post! Hot Air Ballooning…so magically tranquil! Unless, of course, all hell breaks loose: http://tinyurl.com/nt5p2f

Strange Brew in the Executive Branch [Now We're Talking]

CDB — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:37:11 +0000

You may ask yourself, why such a short table?

Let posterity show that the last week of July, 2009, beer and its mythical powers to unite the irreconcilable became the number one conversation in America. Earlier this week I got an email I won’t soon forget, from NIGHTLINE, offering me a chance to comment on the so-called Beer Summit at the White House, which, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will recall was convened by President Obama to diffuse the tension following his comments on the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge, Mass., Police Officer Sergeant Jim Crowley. Phew. So how could I resist? In the end, the three guys and Vice President Biden joined each other for an awkward exchange on a ridiculously small picnic table for beers, the brands of which threatened to overshadow the Very Important Reason for their little brew down in Obamatown. Here’s the result. Blink and you’ll miss me, right after Barbara Walters and Barack himself raise their eyebrows at all the considerable fuss.

Introducing The Accidental Extremist

CDB — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:39:48 +0000

The best kind of travel is the least-expected. Even if it means narrowly escaping disaster. Especially if it means narrowly escaping disaster. Ever think to yourself, “I shoulda stayed home”? Tell your story over on my new blog, The Accidental Extremist.

Think of it as the online home for misadventure. Stories about the wheels coming off and what happened next. Cultural gaffes. Cautionary Tales. Submit them, especially if they’re funny. Make them compelling. (And yes, make them true, or risk the lash of karmic whips). This is the place for off-the-road tales of the outlandish, the ridiculous, and the embarrassing. Basically everything that daily life is not. Snapshots, videos, links, cartoons, postcards all welcome. We can use your name, or not. Your call. And Happy Trails!

Reel Food [Comebacks]

CDB — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:28:02 +0000

It’s a rare film about haute cuisine that manages to come down to Earth and stir deep emotions, too; Big Night is an easy exception, but there are many more misses than hits in the ouevre. And great documentaries about food are rarer still. So I was pleased to see the excellent documentary LE CIRQUE: A TABLE IN HEAVEN on the schedule for HBO on Monday, December 29th. This is a great one to watch at home over Christmas break, and you’ll want a good bottle of red wine to go with it.

Completed in 2006, the film, which debuted at IFC’s Stranger Than Fiction series in April of 2007, documents the rise-and-fall-and-rise-again of restaurateur Sirio Maccioni and his famed eatery, Le Cirque, once the most celebrated restaurant in New York. Catering to celebrities, Presidents, and, famously—thanks to Sirio’s legendary hospitality—seemingly anyone who walked in the door, Le Cirque became a symbol of the good life, dreams achieved, abbondanza.

The film opens with scenes of Le Cirque 2000’s heyday at the Palace, when Henry Kissinger was a regular, and jumps to its closing in 2004, beset by the cold financial realities of Post 9/11 New York. Much of the rest of the film depicts the fraught lead up to its glittery reopening 2006, on East 58th street, and the internecine conflicts among Maccioni and his three sons that tear at the very fabric of the family. And then there’s the bruising two-star review from Frank Bruni after the party’s over, since upgraded.

“As his sons prepare to assume leadership of a revamped Le Cirque,” the IFC premiere night notes read, “the two generations battle over the relative merits of catering to celebrities, spotlighting a cutting-edge chef, and always including prosciutto with melon on the menu. An extraordinary exploration of a family business caught in the world’s spotlight.”

Ultimately, for me, A TABLE IN HEAVEN resonates as a study of one family and its paterfamilias, the charming, implacable Sirio. As the larger-than-life headwaiter turned toast of the New York dining scene confronts his own sons and a changing industry, Director Andrew Rossi and producer Charles Marquardt (both veterans of 2004’s celebrated CONTROL ROOM) never veer into schmaltz, but instead unfold the tale with grace befitting their subject, especially scenes shot in Maccioni’s homeland, in Tuscany. Highly recommended.

The Savior and the Storm on K2 [Heroism]

CDB — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:07:20 +0000

On newsstands and online tomorrow, November 20th, I have a new cover story for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE: the Best of Adventure Annual (December/January double issue). It tells the tale of the unsung hero of August’s disaster on K2, the worst climbing accident in over a decade and one that generated front page and primetime news around the world for days on end. But this is the first time Pemba Gyalje Sherpa himself has gotten his due for his extraordinary selflessness. Below, a teaser.

In the same issue I also profile Olympic Silver Medal-winning snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler as well as French Crazypants “Speed Flyer” Francois Bon, who parachutes off of Death Zone summits wearing skis—on purpose. The 12 pp package also features the tales of teenage Brit explorers who trekked from magnetic pole to magnetic pole; daring Amazon river scientists tracking pollution; a journalist tracking the human slave trade; and a profile of Emma Stokes, a field biologist who discovered 125,000 previously unknown lowland gorillas in the Congo, among others. Please pick up a copy!

PEMBA GYALJE SHERPA On August 1, 2008, at just about 8 p.m., a massive serac cleaved from a glacier near the summit of K2, the world’s second highest mountain, and barreled down a section of the Cesen climbing route called the Bottleneck. In an instant, one climber was dead, key safety lines were swept away, and 17 climbers were trapped above 27,000 feet with little chance of escape…

RELATED COVERAGE:

Katie Couric segment

AP video

A1 NYT

The Lede (NYT)

A Toast To Thirst

CDB — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:47:01 +0000

This week’s New Yorker features an unexpected treat by staff writer Burkhard Bilger. Call it the Barack Obama of beer articles: a ten-page analysis of the craft beer industry—and one of its provocateurs, Sam Calagione, of Dogfish Head—that sucker punches conventional wisdom. There’s much to savor here, with passages such as the following:

“Calagione strapped on a pair of safety glasses and peered into the oak and hickory embers. “If there are no second-degree burns, I’ll call this a success,” he said. Then he heaved in a rock, sending up a shower of sparks. “Let me know if they start to explode,” he told one of the cooks.”

Bilger’s descriptions of Calagione’s unorthodox brewing methods, including the use of Palo Santo (a rare, aromatic Uruguayan wood three times harder than oak) to ferment a burly stout are riveting—and brings back a lot of fond journalistic memories. My oft-beer-writing-partner-in-crime Seth Fletcher and I wrote about Calagione’s use of Palo Santo back in the October issue of Men’s Journal in which we named the resulting beer one of the best in America, only after tasting it with Calagione while huddled at the tiny copper-topped bar of Dieu De Ciel, a brewpub in Montreal’s Plateau district. We’d ventured up for the Mondiale Du La Biere Festival, and arranged to meet Calagione, well armed with samples—including the Palo Santo-aged beer. Another interesting passage for me was Bilger’s on-site interview with Brasserie D’Orval brewmaster Jean Marie Rock, who I met, too, in 1997 while on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship doing research that would become the basis of my first published article, from the (now defunct) Brewing Techniques magazine (and an award-winner). A toast to Burkhard, Sam, and beer drinkers everywhere who’ve been calling for full respect of the good stuff for a long time. I’ve got to sign off now, or I’ll be late for a tasting at Gramercy Tavern. On the menu? Beer, of course.

Better Than Lipstick on a Pitbull

CDB — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:44:29 +0000

A recent little item of mine in the Times that opened my eyes to an industry I didn’t know much about: pooch couture. It’s not as bad as it sounds…!

Click on this little fella for the multimedia presentation from Thursday Styles.

Raise a Glass to Fall [Diversions]

CDB — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:59:01 +0000

thirsty much?

The sky may be falling on Wall Street, but we’ll always have beer. It makes us happy; it’s inexpensive; it’s readily available. What’s not to like? And fall is an especially good time to drink it. The Great American Beer Festival is in just a few weeks; the traditional Oktoberfest in Munich started just two days ago—and will go for another 13—but there are plenty of reasons raise a glass of beer right now, and close to home instead.

For the last five years I’ve had the incredibly good fortune to join my friend Seth Fletcher in rating the best beers in the land (or sometimes the world) for MEN’S JOURNAL, a somber task we approach with monkish restraint (OK, we enjoy it mightily, but if we actually finished the hundreds of bottles we sample each summer the story would never happen. Much returns to Earth from whence it came. And we have notebooks, piles of them. We swear.)

This year’s list is on newsstands now, and this time, the premise was deceptively simple: if you like ‘X’ mass beer, try ‘Y’ craft variation. Are you a Guinness drinker? Then try Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter, available in 19 states and counting. With an eye toward America’s smallest, most artisanal craft brewers—some with only a handful of employees—we dedicated ourselves to coming up with a list of exceptional American (and in one case, Quebecois) craft beers that are a bit harder to find, but so worth the effort. Many of these beers are available in NYC, on tap or in bottles at bars like The Blind Tiger, Bar Great Harry, DBA, Against The Grain, Spuyten Duyvil, The Diamond, the Brazen Head, and more. There’s also a mini-profile of beer provocateur Vinnie Cilurzo (of California’s Russian River Brewing Company). Enjoy!

- Our previous offerings: 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

- The hard-to-please imbibers online at BeerAdvocate.com discuss our picks (via www.beeradvocate.com)(cheers, guys).

- Photo album: Outtakes from my 12 month tour through 14 countries, 59 breweries, and 330 beers on the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship in 1996-7.

- Interesting piece by Nick Kulish on the German beer scene today (NYT).