Beerly Blogging on New Year's Day

[Delay in appearing thanks entirely to Blogger time out issues...]

Former Mac's head brewer Colin Paige continues to chronicle his Vietnam adventures with his latest post "Lost in Translation":

Half the time you’ll still wonder what the hell the translation means.
However as we have been finding out… if you’ve had a particularly humourless day, it may well be worth perusing the “English” menu before making your order with the waiter from the locals’ menu.

From Pete Brown's excellent blog (officially the second best beer blog in Britain), Pete takes a look back at the past year in a post modestly titled "2008: what the blazes was THAT about":

MY PERSONAL BEER LOW POINT OF THE YEAR
Winner: Having a very exciting meeting with a development producer from ITV where we agreed in principle to develop an idea for a series that would see me going around Britain investigating different regional beer styles and stories. Then reading THE NEXT DAY the announcement that Oz Clarke and James May were filming the same idea.

Good Blogging Vietnam!

Beer blogging continues with the third installment of Colin Paige's blog which is called "Saigon Diaries #3":

Mot – Hai – Ba – Yoh! Is a cheer that can be heard a lot here in restaurants after about 2pm. It basically means 1 – 2 – 3 – Yoh! The Vietnamese way of saying cheers! At some excited tables somebody may cheer this every couple of minutes, however then everyone must stand up and down at least some of their beer. We often get asked to join in. We found out pretty quickly that it is bad form to beat a Vietnamese man in a beer downing race. As they loose face they will keep challenging you until they win! Which of course means that you have to let them win to get out.

The fourth post makes a bid for best beer blog title for 2008, "Beer and loathing in Da Nang":

Back to Hoi An and I needed a beer. Luckily I had been put in touch with Guy, A scouser, who’s been out this way for 7 years and brother of a friend of mine from Wellington. The first thing that impressed me about Guy was his grasp of the Vietnamese language. With 7 tones, it isn’t easy. I usually think I am getting somewhere here and ask confidently in a restaurant for a bowl of fried noodles and vegetables. However, not having quite perfected the technique of swallowing my own tongue when speaking, I usually get strange looks, I have probably just said, “your mother is a hamster” or worse! As per a previous blog, Da is the word for ice. As I now know, if you don’t say it with the right tone, it can also mean “a kick in the ass”.

Beer Blogs

My second Malthouse blog is now up and is titled "From the Ivory Tower to the Brew House." It covers Croucher The Hef and Three Boys Wheat:

Brewers are, on the whole, remarkable creatures. From just toasted grain, the flower of a vine, ordinary water and a single-celled organism, they can produce delicious, sweet, life-giving beer. Given those same ingredients, most people would end up with soggy muesli which smelt of wet grass and tasted vaguely like bathroom mould. Or worse - Mash beer.

Also on his second post, Mr Colin Paige, former head brewer at Mac's, is blogging about his mission to establish a brewery in Saigon. His blog is called Colin Paige in South East Asia:

Of course, getting into the Bia Hoi! (Bia Hoi is the cheap locally produced, unfiltered and unpasteurised beer - most of it is OK, not going to win any awards, and occasionally some diacetyl issues, However the dispense is usually an unpressurized keg with a hose and a womans hand over the end of it, holding beer in with her thumb until someone makes an order) Found a great place about 100m from Apocalypse Now (Saigon CBD) , night Club, that has a fixed rent and so can still offer 2 litres of beer for 16,000 VND, or about NZ$1.20.

Finally, one of my favourite beer writers, Pete Brown, has a blog with many more than two posts. His new book is called Hops and Glory and is due out next year:

This book has ruled my life for two years - I was heavily into it by the time I first started blogging. I can't wait to get the bastard finished and unleashed on the world. I've finished the first draft and it's now with my editor, but it's far too long and we're going to have to cut about a third of it out - expect lots of IPA-themed blog entries to appear on here as they're slashed from the book (a process Steven King refers to as 'killing your babies').