Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Rare Beer Prices On eBay

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ebay
A GT Wharton posted an interesting survey that he conducted about the prices people will bay for rare beer on eBay. His article, entitled Market Behavior for Rare Beer: eBay Auction Prices in Review appeared today on Rate Beer’s Hop Press. It appears to be a quite thorough look at auction prices realized over a one-month period. His dataset included 887 auctions. The average price was $122 ($137 w/shipping included). $9.50 was the low price and $999 the highest.

The five most expensive auctions by 12oz volume were:

  1. Midnight Sun M: $544.77
  2. Cantillon Don Quijote: $312.40
  3. Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus 1992 Vintage: $284.00
  4. Russian River Depuration: $265.07
  5. Flossmoor Station Wooden Hell: $260.12

And here, for example, is a chart showing “Average Value of Three Floyds Dark Lord by Vintage.”
Wharton-Ebay1

Interesting stuff. He doesn’t go into the moral dilemma of selling beer on eBay and the fact that most brewers decry the practice, but from a merely numbers perspective it’s worth a read.

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For April 2011

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wikio
The April 2011 standings have just been released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. I’ve been knocked from my four month reign at the top, and Jeff from Beervana has once again assumed the #1 Spot. Congratulations Jeff. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio April 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Beervana (+1)
2Brookston Beer Bulletin (-1)
3Brewpublic (+/-0)
4The New School (+/-0)
5Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+/-0)
6A Good Beer Blog (+1)
7Drink With The Wench (-1)
8Washington Beer Blog (+/-0)
9Seen Through a Glass (+2)
10The Daily Pull (+5)
11The Session Beer Project (+1)
12Seattle Beer News (+1)
13It’s Pub Night (+3)
14Stone Blog (-4)
15BetterBeerBlog (-1)
16KC Beer Blog (Not in Top 20 for Mar.)
17The Not So Professional Beer Blog (+1)
18Yours For Good Fermentables (Not in Top 20 for Mar.)
19Beer 47 (-10)
20Beer Therapy (Not in Top 20 for Mar.)

Ranking made by Wikio

As usual, I added the relative movements of each blog from last month. This month, three new blogs cracked the Top 20 (though some had been there before) and three dropped off. Apart from #1 and #2 switching places, there was again very little movement near the top, with three through five staying put from last month and the rest of the top 20 seemed less volatile this month, too. As always, I continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously.

Socialcohol Media Influencers

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Here’s some more interesting statistical data on alcohol bloggers — beer, wine and liquor — from a software company in Silicon Valley by the name of eCairn, or eCairn Conversation. Watch this short video to get a feel for what the company is selling, essentially tools to help companies reach their core customers and “influencers.”

This is especially interesting given the recent monthly Wikio rankings, as these represent yet another metric to rate a beer blog’s influence. At eCairn’s blog, they’ve been analyzing different aspects of social media, presumably to give potential customers real world examples of how they might use their software. For example, they looked at an Analysis of 4 Networks of Community of Influencers that included mommy, beauty, fashion, deco, food, daddy, celebrity, baking, craft and fitness blogs. Then a few days ago they examined beer, wine and liquor blogs which they referred to as “Socialcohol Media,” which is a great looking term, if only I could figure out how it should be pronounced (go ahead, try to say it). Here’s their introduction:

Tagging along with previous analysis of social media Tribes and Influencers, we looked this time at the socialcohol ecosystem 😉 .

Even if the wine & alcohol industry is highly restricted and social media has its set of challenges, matters like beer, wine and liquor generate quite a bit of conversations from the virtual streets.

Here, we pulled 200 influencers from our existing communities of English speaking influencers (~1500 for wine, ~1000 for beers and ~500 for liquor) to create our own cocktail of the tops.

From those 4,000 blogs, they whittled them down to 200 and then ranked those. In the Top 20, half unsurprisingly are wine blogs. But what’s more surprising is that five were beer blogs and five were liquor blogs, and all five of the beer blogs were in the top ten, along with two liquor blogs. That means that in the top ten alcohol blogs, the majority are beer blogs. That’s huge, because up until now, as far as I knew, wine blogs were kicking our butt. Certainly there are far more of them, and still are, but what this suggests is that beer online is gaining in popularity. During last fall’s Beer Blogger’s Conference, the number of beer blogs was reckoned to be about 500, and another source I saw said about 700, the difference being the former was independent beer blogs and the latter included company beer blogs, too. So either we’ve added another 300 beer blogs in the intervening months or they arrived at their number using more generous definitions. Either way, 1,000 sure sounds more impressive.

While I don’t see any information specifically about what formula they used to arrive at their rankings, shockingly I’m No. 1, even above Eric Asimov in the New York Times and the Wine Spectator. Honestly, as flattered as I am by that, it doesn’t feel right. Their traffic alone must be exponentially higher than mine, though perhaps traffic isn’t that important to the way they figure things out. Still, the best news would seem to be that beer blogs more generally are catching up to wine in terms of popularity online. That alone is worth cheering.

Top 20 Alcohol Blogs

  1. Brookston Beer Bulletin (Beer)
  2. Good Grape: A Wine Blog Manifesto (Wine)
  3. Alcademics.com (Liquor)
  4. Eric Asimov’s The Pour: NY Times (Wine)
  5. Seen Through a Glass (Beer)
  6. Pencil and Spoon (Beer)
  7. The Beer Nut (Beer)
  8. Catavino (Wine)
  9. Art of Drink (Liquor)
  10. Drink With The Wench (Beer)
  11. Wine Spectator (Wine)
  12. Mutineer Magazine (Wine*) [Listed as a wine blog, but Mutineer also covers beer and spirits.]
  13. Trader Tiki’s Exotic Syrups, Bitters and Spirits (Liquor)
  14. RumDood (Liquor)
  15. AlaWine (Wine)
  16. Good Wine Under $20 (Wine)
  17. Wannabe Wino Wine Blog (Wine)
  18. The Pegu Blog (Liquor)
  19. Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine™ (Wine)
  20. Palate Press (Wine)

They also note that Beer, Wine and Liquor blogging communities are fairly separate but that Whisky blogs tend to act as a bridge between them all.
winebeerliquor

The density of the American beer blogs has “higher density in the mid-west/colorado compared to wine and liquor.”
beer-geo

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For March 2011

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wikio
The March 2011 standings have just been released for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. For an embarrassing fourth straight month, I’m still clinging to the top spot. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio March 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Brookston Beer Bulletin (+/-0)
2Beervana (+/-0)
3Brewpublic (+/-0)
4The New School (+/-0)
5Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+/-0)
6Drink With The Wench (+5)
7A Good Beer Blog (+/-0)
8Washington Beer Blog (-2)
9Beer 47 (+4)
10Stone Blog (Not in Top 20 for Feb.)
11Seen Through a Glass (+6)
12The Session Beer Project (+4)
13Seattle Beer News (-3)
14BetterBeerBlog (-2)
15The Daily Pull (Not in Top 20 for Feb.)
16It’s Pub Night (-7)
17Brewer’s Log (Lost Abbey Blog) (Not in Top 20 for Feb.)
18The Not So Professional Beer Blog (-10)
19Brewed For Thought (-5)
20Jack Curtin’s Liquid Diet (Not in Top 20 for Feb.)

Ranking made by Wikio

I again added the relative movements of each blog from last month. This month, four new blogs cracked the Top 20 (though one has been here before but dropped off) and four dropped off. There was also very little movement near the top, as the first five blogs stayed in their same places from last month. And fellow curmudgeon Jack Curtin finally made the Top 20 this year. It will interesting to hear his thoughts on being successful and cracking the top twenty. Again, I will continue to stress that this is just a bit of fun and that we shouldn’t take it too seriously.

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For February 2011

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wikio
The February 2011 standings are out for Wikio’s Beer Blogs. For a third straight month, I’m still hanging on to the top spot. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio February 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Brookston Beer Bulletin (+/-0)
2Beervana (+/-0)
3Brewpublic (+1)
4The New School (-1)
5Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+/-0)
6Washington Beer Blog (+5)
7A Good Beer Blog (-1)
8The Not So Professional Beer Blog (Not in Top 20 for Jan.)
9It’s Pub Night (+11)
10Seattle Beer News (+8)
11Drink With The Wench (-3)
12BetterBeerBlog (-3)
13Beer 47 (Not in Top 20 for Jan.)
14Brewed For Thought (+1)
15KC Beer Blog (+4)
16The Session Beer Project (Not in Top 20 for Jan.)
17Seen Through a Glass (-4)
18Burgers & Brews (-8)
19I Love Beer (Not in Top 20 for Jan.)
20An Ear For Beer (Not in Top 20 for Jan.)

Ranking made by Wikio

I again added the relative movements of each blog from last month. This month, four new blogs cracked the Top 20, and four dropped off. Again, I’ll keep stressing that it’s just a bit of fun so long as we don’t take it too seriously.

Daily Brewery Porn Returns

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A while back I had a photoblog up that featured my favorite beer-related pictures that I’ve taken over the years, Brookston Beer Pix. It got lost in the internet migration last year but it’s now been rechristened as a Tumblr blog. Each day I’ll post a new fave picture from my photo archives, of which I have literally thousands. Quite a few of them are brewery porn, which is what I call photos of brewing equipment in all their naked glory. I also have a thing for photographing hoses in the brewery, so you may see a few of those along with many more of my visual obsessions.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll automatically be notified when a new photo is posted. Or you can, of course, follow along on Tumblr, which is especially easy if you already have an account there.

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For January 2011

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wikio
I noticed today that the Wikio Top Blogs for Beer badge on the Bulletin still listed me as the #1 beer blog, so out of pure vanity I checked it out to see if the new Beer Blog standings for January 2011 were out. Apparently, I’m still clinging to the top spot. Here’s what happened to the Top 20 over last month:

Wikio January 2011 Beer Blog Rankings

1Brookston Beer Bulletin (+/-0)
2Beervana (+/-0)
3The New School (+2)
4Brewpublic (-1)
5Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (+1)
6A Good Beer Blog (+1)
7The Stone Blog (+5)
8Drink With The Wench (-4)
9BetterBeerBlog (+7)
10Burgers & Brews (Not in Top 20 for Dec.)
11Washington Beer Blog (-1)
12Beer in Baltimore (-4)
13Seen Through a Glass (-4)
14Beeronomics (-1)
15Brewed For Thought (Not in Top 20 for Dec.)
16The Brew Site (Not in Top 20 for Dec.)
17Brouwer’s Cafe (+3)
18Seattle Beer News (-7)
19KC Beer Blog (-3)
20It’s Pub Night (+3)

Ranking made by Wikio

I again added the relative movements of each blog from last month. Like last month, three blogs dropped off the Top 20, and three new ones appeared.

Again, it’s all a bit of fun so long as we don’t take it too seriously. Hoppy 2011.

Wikio Beer Blog Rankings For December

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wikio
At first I wasn’t sure why I was asked to get a sneak preview of the rankings for beer blogs by Wikio and blog about them, apart from Stan recommending me and Alan, but I got a pleasant surprise when they finally arrived in my inbox. For the category Beer Blogs, which appears to cover North America (or at least the U.S. and Canada), I apparently moved up from #4 last month to claim the top spot for December. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel good, especially because I have so much respect for the work done by the majority of the writers in the Top 20, and many of them are personal friends as well as colleagues. Who doesn’t welcome the validation that they’re doing a good job?

The new rankings for Beer Blogs will be released on Wikio this Wednesday, but here’s a sneak peek at the Top 20:

Wikio December Beer Rankings

1Brookston Beer Bulletin (+3)
2Beervana (-1)
3Brewpublic (+/-0)
4Drink With The Wench (+4)
5The New School (+2)
6Appellation Beer: Beer From a Good Home (-4)
7A Good Beer Blog (-1)
8Beer in Baltimore (+2)
9Seen Through a Glass (-4)
10Washington Beer Blog (+8)
11Seattle Beer News (+17)
12The Stone Blog (not in Top 100 in Nov.)
13Beeronomics (-1)
14KC Beer Blog (+2)
15Beer Therapy (+15)
16BetterBeerBlog (-2)
17It’s Pub Night (+3)
18Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET (-3)
19Thirsty Pilgrim (+/-0)
20Brouwer’s Cafe (-7)

Ranking made by Wikio

I added the relative movements of each blog from last month. Three blogs dropped off the Top 20, and three new ones appeared, of course, including one that hadn’t been ranked before.

Across the pond, Pete Brown re-captured the top spot in the UK’s beer and wine blog rankings.

I confess I never looked closely before at how the rankings are compiled, but essentially Wikio explains it like so:

The position of a blog in the Wikio ranking depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. Our algorithm accords a greater value to links from blogs placed higher up in the ranking.

A blog linking another blog is only counted once a month i.e. if blog A links to blog B 10 times in a given month, it is only counted as having linked to that blog once that month. The weight of any link decreases over time. Also, if a blog always links to the same blog, the weight of these links is decreased.

Only links found in RSS feeds are counted. Blogrolls are not taken into account.

Not everybody seems to put much stock in the rankings, and I think that’s simply because it’s difficult to quantify such subjective notions as quality, authority, influence, knowledge of subject, effectiveness in communication, etc. Plus, they’re just getting started in North America. This is only the third month they’ve been tracking beer blogs here. Jeff Alworth, whose blog Beervana was No. 1 the last two months (and the first two to rank U.S. beer blogs), had a great analysis of the rankings in an October post entitled The Number One Beer Blog in America. And in November, Stan Hieronymus at his Appellation Beer Blog had a lively discussion about How Wikio Ranks the US Beer Blogs which also included some interesting comments.

But how should we be deciding such a complicated question? If not using weighted links from RSS feeds, what should the metric be? And for purposes of discussion, lets set aside what I assume will be the many arguments why we shouldn’t bother at all. What else should be included? Traffic? Should there be a BCS-like poll taken?

Also, I know there are other ways in which rankings are done, such as Alexa (which once you drill down to “beer” is all but useless for our purposes), Google PageRank (mine’s never changed in 6 years), and several where they only track blogs that register, making those ones also pretty useless. And for Twitter there’s WeFollow, which seems to never change. Anybody know of any others?

In the end, I think it’s good fun so long as we don’t take it too seriously. Maybe it makes me work a little harder now that I know I’m being judged against my peers. Doubtful, but it’s still something I’ll continue to at least look at. Like most people — I assume — I’m driven to do a better job all the time, constantly challenging myself to be a better writer, communicator, taster, etc. Comments, Facebook “Likes,” Re-Tweets, traffic, Google analytics and people coming up to me at beer festivals all provide different kinds of feedback about how I’m doing at my chosen profession. Having one more way by which to measure myself can’t be a bad thing. And especially not this month, where I got an early Christmas present. How cool is that? But congratulations to everybody on the list. I know it’s a cliche to say we’re all winners, but in fact I think that’s true. Over the past six years that I’ve been blogging, the number and quality of beer blogging has vastly improved. And that’s a good thing for beer, and for all of us. Happy holidays.

Ken Grossman One Of CHOW 13

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sierra-nevada
Ken Grossman, the co-founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing was chosen by the food website CHOW as one of their CHOW 13 for 2010. They describe the 13 folks chosen as “honoring the people pushing the food world in new and adventurous directions.” Last year — the first year for the awards — Sam Calagione was among the thirteen. This year it’s Ken Grossman.

CHOW’s pithy reason for giving Grossman the award is “[f]or starting the war against crappy beer.” If perhaps not the very first, Grossman certainly was one of the first, definitely a true pioneer, and he’s undoubtedly been one of the best at doing just that — winning the war, that is. A very well-deserved honor. It’s also great to see a food website include beer without fanfare as if it belonged; which of course it does. Still, that feels like progress.

ken-grossman

Red Lobster On Beer

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red-lobster
This was originally mentioned in a Beer Advocate thread, started by Will C. of Virginia, and then spread out via Twitter as a worthy topic by Todd and Jason. I found it interesting, as well, as it concerns one of the national restaurant chains attempts to promote beer to their customers. The chain is Red Lobster, a seafood restaurant I haven’t eaten at since maybe the early 1980s, and even then only once or twice. I’m not a big chain restaurant patron, less so when it’s seafood, which I’m also not a great fan of.

But I have to at least give kudos to Red Lobster for trying to educate their customers about beer. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, but my sense is that regular Red Lobster customers are generally not hardcore beer geeks. Most of the people I know who love great beer, are at least somewhat passionate about the food they eat, too. So that suggests that the average Red Lobster patron could probably use a little beer edumacation. So they’ve set up an interactive Beer Tasting Guide showing each of the main year-round beers they carry on a chart with beer color on one axis and “flavor” on the other. When you move you mouse over each of the beers, a window pops up with additional information about that beer. It’s one of the better uses of Flash technology I’ve see involving beer.

redlobs-beer-guide

The downside, of course, is that of the seventeen beers on the chart, only the five Samuel Adams beers, and possibly the Guinness (depending on which one it is) are worth ordering, at least to my taste. The biggest blunder, though, is equating flavor with IBUs as the Y-axis seems to suggest. Obviously, they’re not remotely the same thing, and none of the beers on the list could really be considered hoppy by any stretch. There would obviously be numerical differences between the beers, but from a taste point of view, not so much. They also seem to suggest all dark beers are malty and light beers are also “crisp,” which is likewise not exactly true, at least not all the time.

Red Lobster did, however, buy the new proprietary Samuel Adams beer glass and put the Red Lobster logo on them for all their restaurants, which is a plus. And according to their beer page, they have some regional beers in select areas, though those choices, too, are nothing out of the ordinary. Still, this is the sort of thing that’s to be encouraged, I think. I’m not a great fan of misinformation — of which there is certainly some here — but it’s a start. Perhaps it will at least inspire Red Lobster’s customers to ask more questions, a move which could ultimately lead them to better beer.