Today is beer blogger extraordinaire Alan McLeod’s 63rd birthday. Alan runs a good beer blog, called — curiously enough — A Better Beer Blog, which replaced his earlier “A Good Beer Blog.” I’m not sure what came first, the goodness or the blog. Anyway, though I’ve yet to meet Alan in person I feel as if he’s already a great, not just good, friend through our many conversations via e-mail and commenting on one another’s blogs. If you haven’t read his essay in the book Beer & Philosophy yet, rush right out and buy yourself a copy. He also published The Unbearable Nonsense of Craft Beer, with Max Bahnson, available as a Kindle single on Amazon, and a few years back co-wrote both Upper Hudson Valley Beer and Ontario Beer: A Heady History of Brewing from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay. Join me in wishing Alan the very merriest of birthdays. Cheers, mate.

Alan pondering the mysteries of Stonehenge at age 7.

A night with bald pate, circa 2002.

Contemplating a jump near Prince Edward Island a dozen years ago. Happily, he decided against getting wet.

Letting everyone know his status as a VIP at an event in 2012. [Note: photo purloined from Facebook.]