365 Days of Beer

In today's paper there is yet another article about the ongoing Brooklyn Brewery/Bruce Ratner/Nets arena/development debacle.

Brooklyn Brewery president Steve Hindy supports the project and is reportedly planning to build a beer garden & tourist center south of Ratner's site. They would produce 40% of the beer in Brooklyn while making most of it upstate.

I don't claim to know all the details so I will not have an opinion either way but some residents have been actively boycotting the Brooklyn Brewery while others have even been saying they will drink even more Brooklyn products in response to the boycott.

Whatever happens I hope things will work out for the best. I dislike N.I.M.B.Y.-ism but I also don't like things like eminent domain and big corporations. Somehow there has to be a happy balance. Those waterfront areas along Brooklyn and Queens aren't all that great and some kind of development should be done but the concerns of the residents there should also be taken into consideration. This is a great city and the waterfront land should be put to good use.

In other news I lost another pound and have hit yet another low. ALL WHILE DRINKING MASS QUANTITIES OF BEER!!!

One of these days I will tell you how I did it.

But that day is not today.

Last night I added 2 more to the list.

95) North Coast PranQster Belgian - North Coast brews out of California and this was a respectable version of a Belgian strong ale. Not anywhere close to those from Belgium but a good try and a beer worth having every now and then.

96) Dogfish Head Burton Baton - This I really liked. It is an oak-aged imperial IPA. Very creamy and easy to drink. If it didn't say 10% on the bottle one could easily get in trouble with this. Dogfish Head has consistently been one of my favorite brewers and they are getting a permanent link on the left side of my blog.

96 down and 269 to go. Tonight's plan is to meet up with some Marillion fans at Stout NYC after work for a few drinks. I should get to at least 98 for the year tonight and will focus on the bottled selection of stouts.

I am fast approaching the 100 mark for the year and I am way ahead of pace. I shouldn't be having #100 until April 10 but so what. Now its just a matter of what beer I want to give the honor of being #100. I could wait until the 25th to try my friend's homebrew but I doubt I can hold out until then. #105 is another milestone as it will be my 300th career beer, so maybe his homebrew will get that honor instead.

Cracka seems to think I should try to have as many new beers as possible, thus blowing through the 365. I maintain I will slow down in the summer and as I get into the 300's it could get tough to find stuff I haven't had, and there's always the possibility, however remote, that I will get bored and slack off. But I will not try more than 365 new beers this year.