If you are suffering from the usual Jan/Feb depression, no money, no light, not much to luck forward to, then what a better way to beat the blues then going to a beer festival. It probably won't cost you that much and you can enjoy the conviviality of company and the excitement trying the new.

January brings an enjoyable range of winter beer and ale festivals around the globe. 37704339.jpg The 8th annual Big Beers, Belgians and Barleywines Festival kicks off in Vail, Colorado January 10. The festival includes a Brewmaster's Dinner, a Homebrew Competition, several Tasting Events and Educational Seminars for those who love to brew.

The National Winter Ales Festival runs from January 16-19 in Manchester, England. The Festival, sponsored in party by The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) offers beer, ale and cider from the U.K. as well as countries such as Belgium, Germany, the U.S., Australia, France and Poland.

Another CAMRA sponsored event is the 19th Annual Exeter Festival of Winter Ales in Exeter, England. The festival begins at 11 a.m. on Friday, January 11 and continues until late Saturday, January 12. Go and enjoy the live music, more than 60 winter ales and cider to taste, as well as great food.

In Anchorage, Alaska, the 13th Annual Great Alaska Beer & Barleywine Festival takes place over the weekend of January 18-19. More than 50 breweries, mainly from Alaska and the West Coast, will have over 200 ales and beer on offer.

CAMRA offers two more events to round out the end of the month in the U.K. The Chelmsford Winter Beer Festival and the Pendle Beer Festival both run from January 31 to February 2. These events showcase local ales, cider and food.  So no end of choice and places to go things to do.

Thought it might be about time to compile and keep a reference list of beer organisations around the world.  So here is the start please let me know if you have any new ones to add to the list.  Hopefully, we will end up with a useful little resource. .

• American Homebrewers Association (AHA)
  Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP)
• The Brewers Association (BA) is American society with interests in the field of Brewing, particularly with the promotion Craft and Home brewing. Established in through a merger of the Association of Brewers and the Brewers' Association of America.[1] Among the programmes the BA supports, one of the largest is the American Homebrewers Association (AHA).
• Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA)
•  Deutscher Brauer-Bund (DBB)
•  East Anglian Brewers co-operative (EAB) is a society of breweries based around East Anglia, England. Founded in 2002, it was set up to assist their members to secure supplies of good quality locally grown malts.[2]
• European Beer Consumers Union (EBCU)
• Independent Family Brewers of Britain (IFBB)
• Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood (SPBW)
• Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA)
•  Workers Beer Company (WBC)

• Dutch beer-related group
• European Beer Consumers Union
• Danske Ølentusiaster (Danish Beer Consumers Association)
• NORØL (Federation of Norwegian Beer Consumers)
• Svenska Ölfrämjandet (Swedish Beer Consumers Association)
• Swiss Beer Consumers Association
•  French Beer Consumers Association
•  Austrian Beer Consumers Association
•  Polish Beer Consumers Association
•  Finnish Beer Consumers Association
•  Czech Beer Consumers Association
• The Campaign for real ale
• Zythos (Belgium Beer Consumers Association)

The Canadian food blog Taste To reviews a new beer every week,  This is a very interesting Porter review with a bit of history also.  Why not check them out on a regular basis  http://www.tasteto.com/

This particular review was posted by Greg Clow

"Of all the classic beer styles to be revived by craft brewers in the recent times, porter is one of the most interesting, at least from an historical standpoint. First brewed in the early 1700s, there are conflicting stories about how the style came to exist.

One version came about in 1802, when a guy named John Feltham wrote a history of porter stating that it was created around 1730 by a brewer called Harwood. His beer was called Entire and was based on “three threads”, a drink made by mixing three different beers that was popular with the railway and river porters of London, leading to Entire being nicknamed “porter” when ordered in bars and pubs.

It was later established, however, that Feltham’s history was based on his misinterpretation of earlier writings on the subject, and that it was unlikely that a direct connection existed between “three threads” and porter. It’s now believed that porter was created when brewers decided to age their brown ales on site rather than sending out young beers to publicans to age on their own, which in turn allowed the brewers to make larger batches and ship the casks farther, increasing their sales considerably.

In the late 1700s, the increasing imports of porter from London to Ireland inspired a number of Irish brewers - including a certain Mr. Arthur Guinness - to start brewing the style. As with many beers brewed at the time, different strengths were offered, including the lower strength “plain porter” and the stronger “stout porter”. Eventually, porter was dropped from the names, and over the years, most porter variations besides stout fell out of favour and were all but extinct. Guinness was one of the last Irish brewers to continue brewing a plain porter into modern times, but they finally discontinued their version in the mid-1970s.

That could’ve marked the death of porter, but thanks to the efforts of CAMRA and craft brewers, the style was rescued from near death, and is now a popular offering from many microbreweries and brewpubs. Many of today’s more adventurous brewers put an experimental spin on their versions, whether it be through the addition of flavours like coffee or chocolate, or bumping up the alcohol level and body to a point that they might as well be called stouts.

Anyone who has followed the work of Perry Mason from Ottawa’s Scotch-Irish Brewing knows that he’s been known to crank out some pretty experimental brews himself, but for his Black Irish Plain Porter, he sticks with a traditional interpretation of the style. It has a deep black colour with a dark tan head, and a rich, complex aroma that begins with roasted malt, and builds to include notes of chocolate, vanilla, raisins and coffee. The body is thinner than one might expect from a beer so dark, but remember: it’s a porter, not a stout. The flavour has roasty and slightly sweet malt notes off the top, followed by bitter cocoa, coffee and licorice, and finishing with a slightly lactic sourness. This latter element seems like a tip of the hat to the fact that the aging process of the original porters and stouts was often sped up via the addition of old, soured beer to new batches, which presumably gave the finished product a sour edge".

For the serious British real ale enthusiasts these are CAMRA diary events for September.

September 1 2007
CAMRA Beer Festival Tent - 1/09/07

September 4 2007
21st Chappel Beer Festival - 4-8/09/07

September 6 2007
8th Sandgrounder Beer Festival - 6-8/09/07

September 6 2007
24th South Devon CAMRA Beer Festival - 6-8/09/07 

http://www.camra.org.uk/

"If I had all the money I'd spent on beer, I'd spend it on beer".  (W.C. Fields)

A lot has been written about beer.  Beer gives pleasure to millions whilst dividing opinion regarding its health effects and the potential "damaging effect" on society.
The purpose of this blog is to compile fascinating information on beer, perhaps dispel some myths and of course to encourage debate. I also hope to publish information alerting visitors to reviews, events, and beer happenings all over the world.  I hope to point visitors to the new, the traditional, the social and the funny.  From the social history of imbibers to the technicalities of brewing.  Please enjoy and most of all please contribute.

Alan McCulloch