A preface

Last week I asked for recommendations on beer blogs to follow. I go through phases with beer blogs, where I follow, get behind on and then shame unfollow various blogs over the years. Now that I use Newsblur as a rss reader¹ I can “thumbs up”/”thumbs down” certain categories of blogs so that, for instance, iOS articles at Macstories get highlighted² while OS X posts automatically get discarded. Separate the wheat from the chaff.

So now I can highlight certain categories from blogs and not feel as though I have to read everything. I can dabble. Since I’ve dedicated Sunday mornings to reading and posting a beer article or two I’d like to diversify my reading sources.

The list

As always, if you have a site you think I absolutely should read then let me know.

Look! I read! I’m reading right now! (yes I know the image is a year old)

• A Good Beer Blog
• Appellation Beer
• beer is your friend
• Beer PHXation
• beer sensory science
• Boak & Baily’s Beer Blog
• Brookston Beer Bulleton
• CraftBeer.com
• dontdrinkbeer
• Embrace the Funk
• Fuj On Tap
• Larsblog
• Literature and Libation
• Pencil and Spoon
• Pete Brown
• Pivni Filosof
• Shut Up About Barclay Perkins
• This Is Why I’m Drunk
• Zythophile
• |Brulosophy|

And Buffalo specific breweries/blogs:

• Big Ditch Brewing
• buffalobrewhound
• Community Beer Works (my posts hidden, Ethan’s highlighted)
• New Buffalo Brewing Co
• Resurgence Brewing Company (the rss feed has no items, but maybe some day?)
• Rusty Nickel Brewing Co
• WNY Craft Beer Magazine

I also read stories on Artvoice and the like, as they come in, but I rely on Twitter for those links since they don’t use categories that I can “train”.

Reflections as a brewery blogger

I talked to Alex yesterday about a brewery having a blog, how some local breweries do and others don’t. I absolutely don’t think that everywhere “needs” a blog, especially with the advent of Facebook. In many ways blogs are a dying medium, rss as a standard even more so. If you ever hear me bemoaning the current state of affairs and pining for “the good old days” please slap me, because the world has been going downhill since Socrates, at least. Facebook over rss might not fit my definition of ideal, but the world will go on. I’m going to cling to my subscription technology, though.

Anyway: I think that for a brewery to have a blog it has to dedicate itself to longform, or at least medium-form, writing. Big Ditch’s year in review, for example, or any of my incessant blathering. You don’t need to blog, but if you do that shapes part of your identity. Like our book club (next meeting February 18!), it doesn’t really make us any money directly, but we want to be the sort of company that does it. I’ve heard that some breweries never place ads featuring only a picture of a donkey, and never get yelled at by Blue Monk for having beers with overly long names. I don’t know how they can make any money that way, but I wish them luck.

So, to summarize and conclude, blogging: great. Not blogging: also just fine. My blogroll: maybe not big enough? Any omissions are just that and not snubs: give me some more xml/atom feeds!