The Beer Connoisseur Club - YOU’RE INVITED!

Wednesday, February 18 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm 

Join us in the Sky Bar at 5 Seasons Westside for The Beer Connoisseur® Club kickoff event!

Complimentary beer will be available for the first hour (or while it lasts), provided by our BC Network brewery partners. 5 Seasons will be offering $3 pints and Brewmeister Crawford Moran will be providing a special beer from their cellar.  

When you arrive, grab a raffle ticket to be entered into drawings for free giveaways of glassware, BC Network member swag and more.

Mingle and have fun with our staff, industry partners, fellow media, fans and loyal subscribers as we unveil the details of our new beer club. Don’t miss this night of fun and camaraderie. We’ll see you there!  

RSVP appreciated but not required to:

Stacy Weenick – BC Club Director

[email protected]  

6:00pm – 9:00pm

5 Seasons Westside  

1000 Marietta St NW

Atlanta, GA 30318

(404) 875-3232

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About the Club

Craft - Culture - Community

When Rob Hill attended a special beer and wine dinner hosted by The Boston Beer Company at the Smith and Wollensky restaurant on Boston’s waterfront in 2006, he realized his drinking life needed a course correction. The president and co-founder of Boston Uncorked, an organization for wine enthusiasts, Hill discovered he had a palate for darker, maltier beers – and that beer could be a better accompaniment to fine food than wine.

Despite spending time developing an affinity for white wines in California during a career in the Navy and later as a software salesman and despite being engulfed in red wines once he moved to Boston, Hill voted for beer over wine in three of the five pairings presented that night at Smith and Wollensky.

“I didn’t know much about beer,” recalled Hill, who now oversees the beer sales at Total Wine & More. “Prior to that dinner in Boston, my memories of beer were more about my college days, travel overseas and typical American pale lagers.”

The beer versus wine faceoff dinner was filmed by Boston Beer and footage was used in a TV commercial, one that helped the Sam Adams brand change the perspective on American craft beer. For Hill, it was a life-altering event. Having never really taken to red wine in favor of the Chardonnays from California, he realized his imbibing life was finally in balance, telling himself, “I like white wine and dark beer.”

 Nitro beer sounds like a power adjunct borrowed from Wrestlemania or maybe even drag racing’s Nitro Funny Cars.

 When it comes to beer, the term "nitro", or N2, refers to an alternative method of making beer bubbly. Typically, brewers use carbonation, either by bottle conditioning or through a process known as force carbonation. Getting N2 into a beer is trickier than CO2, as it is about eighty times less soluble in liquid. There is no way to bottle condition a beer with nitrogen. It can't be produced naturally, and therefore must be forced into the beer. 

On draft, nitro beer is typically pumped with a 75 percent nitrogen and 25 percent carbon solution. This mixture is known colloquially as beer gas, or Guinness gas. The use of carbon mixed with nitrogen keeps the beer from going flat. Before it reaches the glass, it is shoved through a "restrictor plate", a perforated disk which agitates the nitrogen, producing the copious froth for which nitro is known.

No longer confined to pubs with a good beer list, it is not uncommon to find athletes consuming craft beer before, during, and after recreational sporting events, particularly distance running.

Craft has helped spawn events like the Bend Beer Chase in Bend, Oregon. Teams of six combine to run a seventy-mile relay course that visits six local breweries which provide samples along the way.

One of the longest standing traditions of exercise and drinking comes from the Hash House Harriers or H3, an international group of running social clubs. The self proclaimed “drinking club with a running problem” was conceived in 1938 in Malaysia by a group of British colonial officers and expatriates, and patterned after the traditional British game of “hare and hounds”, where the “hare” leaves a trail of paper for the “hounds” to follow. H3’s defined purposes included “to get rid of weekend hangovers” and “to acquire a good thirst and to satisfy it with beer.” The Harriers would do just that upon completion of the chase.

Now the group, named for the “Hash House” where many of the original members lived and dined, includes almost 2,000 chapters worldwide, two on Antarctica.

Mega-pregnant and massively irritated by last summer’s sweltering weather, my wife made a serious demand. “We need to get out of Brooklyn,” she said, her face mere millimeters from our third-floor apartment’s sole air conditioner.

Outside, the city was broiling beneath a grueling heat wave. To my exceedingly expectant wife, it was as if hell had swallowed Brooklyn whole. “We’re going to New Hampshire,” she said. “Start packing.”

Lickety-split, we steered north to friends, family and cooler weather. Upon arrival, I required beer. Lots of them. In rapid succession. I headed to a convenience store, salivating at the prospect of aromatic Allagash White, crisp Smuttynose Vunderbar or Rising Tide’s bright Daymark pale ale. Heck, perhaps I’d buy them all! In-laws and a pregnant wife can give a man a deadly thirst.

Great Pumpkin Festival at Elysian Brewing

Inside the shop, my field of vision filled with orange. As far the eyes could see, there was a sea of Shipyard Pumpkinhead, the Portland brewery’s wheat ale spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. Ignoring them, I grabbed a couple four-packs of Allagash White and a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada’s Summerfest.

“Sure you don’t want some Pumpkinhead?” the cashier asked, ringing me up.

by Jay Dedrick

Colorado, a place where the mountains meet the plains, is full of dynamic duos. Minds creating innovation indoors are able to refuel by climbing new heights outdoors. City nightlife isn’t far from country living. The state also is proud home to a burgeoning brewing industry led by true believers in the teaming of “craft” and “beer.”

A stalwart in those ranks, Breckenridge Brewery next year will mark its 25th anniversary. The popularity of mainstay offerings Avalanche Ale and Vanilla Porter has had a lot to do with carrying Breck this far, but the brewery is looking beyond its walls for partnerships that have the potential to reach new ground in years to come.

“It’s a great family to be with, a great company that’s growing,” said Matt Eldridge, Breckenridge Brewery marketing man. “And I think that’s because of the fun, collaborative spirit.”

It doesn’t get much more fun than comic books, right?

This summer, craft brew giant Sierra Nevada took its vision of craft brew on tour through America, stopping at seven cities along the way to ply liquid wares to crowds of thirsty beer fans. Billed as “The Largest Craft Beer Celebration in History,” this is no summer camp; everything about it is so big, loud and ambitious that the phrase “Beer Circus” rings true.

Like all the best circuses Beer Camp is not a one-ring affair – it's all about sharing the spotlight and featuring craft beers from across America (Portland Maine’s event featured beers from 120 different New England Regional breweries). In addition to hosting seven local events packed with diverse brews, Sierra Nevada took on the unprecedented effort of brewing 12 collaborative beers with 12 different leading brewers and collecting the collaborative brews in a special, commemorative Beer Camp 12 pack.

On assignment from The Beer Connoisseur, I went to the Portland, Maine Beer Camp to document the experience. During my research, nothing I read or saw prepared me for the scope and ambition of this expertly orchestrated circus of craft brew and craft brew culture.

In a marked departure from its traditional dark stout, the Guinness brand is introducing Guinness Blonde in September. Made with the 125-year-old Guinness yeast, the taste, structure and appearance of the lager underscore a major effort by the long established brand born in Ireland to expand its horizons.  

To be sold in the U.S. and brewed in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Guinness Blonde has a burnished gold appearance, a floral aroma from American hops and a complex flavor profile. While ales, porters and stouts have enjoyed an increasingly larger market share in the past two decades thanks to the craft beer movement, the choice of a lager by Guinness reflects the lager style’s ongoing dominance in the American market.

The idea was to create a “fusion beer,” using American techniques combined with the Guinness yeast. Because of the use of an ale yeast to brew a lager, it’s difficult to categorize the Guinness Blonde in a traditional style. “Brewers are not concerned with style choices as much as brewing the beer itself,” said Doug Campbell, the brand manager for Guinness. Campbell said the fusion process is more about creating an American lager unlike anything else in the marketplace.

At every turn, Mark Thompson, the colorful, award-winning brewmaster and owner of Starr Hill Brewery plays life with deft ease.

Thompson merges his love for music and science into the Starr Hill golden elixirs he brews in Crozet, Virginia, where he and his wife, Kristin Dolan, developed their Music Lifestyle brand of beer.

“Historically, I came into craft when craft got started,” said Thompson, who has an interesting story to tell and doesn’t mind sharing it.

As a Grateful Dead head, he followed music acts through long, lazy summers in the late 80s, where he formed a friendship with a guy named Coran Capshaw. Capshaw would eventually become the guru of Red Light Management, aligning gigs for the likes of the Dave Matthews Band, Tim McGraw and Pfish. His notoriety at large music venues opened doors for Thompson’s Starr Hill beer. Capshaw partnered with him early on after Thompson moved into the defunct Blue Ridge Brewpub, shuttered by former owners Bok and Paul Summers, grandsons of William Faulkner of The Sound and the Fury fame.

As the co-founder of an early craft brewery and a current member of the board of directors at the Beer Institute, which represents big beer, Steve Hindy has been in the right position to tell the story of the sea changes in American beer-making that are now influencing the rest of the world.

The key element to his book and insider account is right in the subtitle. It states that craft is transforming the world of beer, an interesting present tense angle to a book that is part memoir and part history.

For those concerned the book might turn out to be a back-patting session for the key players who were in on the ground floor of American craft brewing – and survived to tell the tale – rest easy. Hindy, the co-founder of Brooklyn Beer, doesn’t pull punches on the conflicts inherent in the competition among the brewers themselves nor does he ignore the difficulties and failures. On a personal scale, although he’s circumspect in his characterizations of a who’s who list of participants in the beer industry, he has a deft touch for accurate personality portrayals without being offensive or obsequious.