The statistics don't necessarily tell the entire story and need to be sussed out a little. According to Nielsen data, craft beer sales have increased by 6% this year. Two years ago, craft beer sales increased by 19%. The market share of the top 10 craft brewers has slipped to 39%, from 50%.

But wait, the number of craft breweries in the U.S. increased 14% between 2014 and 2015. But if craft beer is declining, how are the number of craft breweries increasing?

If you don't like the first or second or even third sour beer you drink, I encourage you to keep exploring different sour styles because there is such a variety out there.

Jeff Shrag, President of the Missouri Small Brewers Association and co-owner of Mother's Brewing Company, summed it up perfectly: "This is about the slow annihilation of craft beer in America. They are going to do it by a thousand tiny cuts."

Unsurprisingly, 15 of the top 20 beers on Zymurgy's list are IPAs or Pale Ales. Enough with the IPAs already, people. Expand your drinking repertoire, please. There is a whole wide world of beer out there that isn't all hop bombs. 

People have asked why I was taking the Cicerone exam and what I hoped to get out of it. I’m not in any industry at all where a Cicerone certification is particularly useful beyond impressing people and saving time trying to prove my beer knowledge to people who dismiss me or don’t take me seriously, usually because I’m a woman and/or they assume I “like” beer because my husband does.

Beer is not just something I drink and rarely has been – it’s living history, a seemingly endless educational opportunity, and a way to bond with people and places, however unlikely. One of my great joys in life is thinking about and experiencing the perfect beer to capture a day, a mood, a feeling, an occasion, a place. 

I’ve heard and read a lot of stuff about what you should do and should not do the morning of the exam: don’t eat, don’t drink coffee, don’t smoke, don’t wear perfume. I’m a brat when it comes to being hungry. My day is 15% eating snacks and 85% worrying I may be too far away from snacks at any given time, so not eating the morning of the exam was not an option for me.

A word of warning: as great as American craft beer is, I would buy the commercial examples listed in the BJCP Guidelines rather than buying an American craft version of a style because there is a high likelihood that an American craft beer that purports to be a style like an ESB is probably not going to be the best way to train your palate and brain to recognize the classic beer style.

Beyond the expense of the exam itself the other costs can up quickly. However, the good news is that if you don’t have a lot of cash to throw around, it’s still completely possible to have all the study materials you need for next to nothing.

My road to Cicerone was a long one full of hard work, failure, and self discovery. In this series of posts, I'll talk about how I approached the exam, the resources I used, how I conducted tastings, how the day of the exam went for me, and what I learned along the way. 

"I came in a fan and I'm leaving a fan."

I've enjoyed beers from all 10 of these breweries, but have only visited two. Which ones have you been to? Which ones would you like to go to?

You don't have to look very hard to find multiple examples of shady behavior by AB InBev similar to the ones described here.

It's possible that antitrust authorities will approve the $107 billion merger between Anheuser Busch INBEV and SABMiller by the end of the month.

I’m an avid Untappd user. And I’ll admit, I’m a badge junkie. I obsessively document each beer I drink and consult my beer list when determining whether I’ve had a beer before or not because it’s not always so easy to remember what beers I’ve had when I have 1900+ distinct beer entries. One thing I rarely do anymore: rate the beers.

After offering refunds for off flavors in its 2015 Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout and Barleywine, Goose Island identified the cause of the tainted beers: Lactobacillus acetetolerans, a rare form of bacteria first classified in the 1980s.

"AB InBev has already agreed to sell SABMiller's Peroni, Grolsch and Meantime beer brands to Japan's Asahi Group Holdings Ltd and to divest eastern European assets, three people familiar with the matter said on Friday."