A little over two years ago, Sierra Nevada opened its East Coast brewery and taproom to the public. Although it may be more accurate to say that, a little over two years ago, beer drinkers were bestowed a little slice of heaven here on earth.

"Little" being relative of course - the 27,000 square foot facility in Mills River, North Carolina (about 17 miles from downtown Asheville) sits on 190 acres, 27 of which is developed. 

Beer bloggers never drink a bad beer.

On the contrary. I drink a lot of bad beer. I just don't tell people about it. 

I had never wondered about the corks in my beer (and sometimes wine) bottles beyond their abilities to put an eye out or to turn evidence of my beer drinking habits into quirky craft projects.

I was curious enough when I first wrote about the 45 Million-Year-Old beer that I contributed to its Indiegogo campaign and received my bottle a little before Christmas.

I've had a week now to digest my Advanced Cicerone exam experience. It's been weird not having to stress out about when I'm going to squeeze in studying and I feel a little bad for my box of now-neglected study materials. They were getting so much attention for so long and now they've been discarded like so many old toys.

The brand I bought fell into the euphemistically-named subcategory of "supermarket sherry," so my suspicions about the quality of my sherry choice were confirmed.

Even allowing for the fact that much of what we know about topics such as medicine and longstanding popular commercial products was the result of old-timey people saying "I wonder what this does. Death? Okay, then let's not do it quite like that anymore. How about when I do this?", getting from a fish to its bladder to use of said bladder in clarifying beer seemed like a huge leap. Like how many other things were people dumping in beer before they got around to thinking of drying a fish's bladder and then tossing it into beer?

Maybe Brew Beers Resobrewtions just to get real obnoxious with my portmanteaux obsession.

Cademon is not only asking its patrons to foot its tax payments it claims it didn't know about because it doesn't have a mailbox, but it is also asking them to foot the costs of the "perks" they'll be receiving for assisting in making those tax payments.

Or, Nun is the Loneliest Number: Sister Doris, the Last Beer-Making Nun in Europe.

I can't decide. So many good nun puns!

Thanksgiving is a weird holiday – it’s basically like a dress rehearsal for how everyone is going to get along at Christmas. This year, why not shake things up a little by pairing beer with your Thanksgiving dinner?

When you spend a lot of time looking at brewery websites like I do, you find yourself consistently running into a delay that seems to be different for each website: being asked if you’re at least 21 years old before being allowed to enter the website.

Researching the different age gates and reading about the self-regulation led me to a tantalizing thought: what happens when you indicate that you are not 21 years old?

If there's one thing you can count on, it's craft beer proprietors and enthusiasts taking a clever - some may say sarcastic - approach to craft beer's opponents.

Being able to visualize what kinds of ingredients are in my beer adds to my enjoyment of it. It's sort of like when you see the music video for a song you like in that the next time you hear that song, you'll have an image of the song being performed. 

In news that will surprise no one, 74% of craft beer drinkers consult their phones before buying beer.

This has all been a textbook case of not appreciating what I have until I don’t have it anymore, something to which almost all of us can relate. Probably all of us, but the attorney in me can’t bring me to write that all of us can relate for fear the one person who always appreciates everything he has will speak up. Anyway, I encourage people who read this to reflect on what beers they know they love but neglect to buy because there is something newer or different to try. To reflect on what beers bring a feeling of nostalgia but that they haven’t had in awhile. After reflecting on those beers, pick some up the next time you’re at a store. 

Obviously, beer is a very big part of my life as well as my husband's life. Beer was thing we bonded over first - we're both kind of socially awkward but talking about beer came easily to both of us. When it came time to plan our wedding, it would have been hard not to incorporate it into our wedding. However, as even the most minimal Pinterest perusal will show you, incorporating beer into your wedding requires a delicate touch.

Large corporations using crowdfunding platforms falls into the same category as crafty beer – maybe it doesn’t matter to some people, but it does matter to a lot of people who think they are supporting small businesses when instead they are giving money to some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world.

Fossil Fuels Brewing Company and their partner, Schubros, have perfected a recipe for a saison brewed from yeast found on a 45-million-year-old leaf that was found in a piece of amber.

If you read my latest I Tried It about Walmart’s private label beer, then you’ll recall that Walmart’s beer is contract brewed by a company called Trouble Brewing. Contract brewing is when a company brews and packages its beer using equipment it does not own and comes in a few forms. In cases such as Walmart’s, finding out more about the contract brewery - Trouble Brewing, in this particular case - sometimes proves to be a Nancy Drew-level mystery.