Jen Blair Jen Blair

I Tried It: American Pale Ale and IPA Blind Tasting

I wish I could tell you what I thought about all the beers, but another danger of drinking eight different samples is that by the end, you don't pay attention to where you put your scoresheets and now fear they may be lost forever.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

I Tried It: Sierra Nevada Self-Guided Tour

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. 

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

I Tried It: Doc Porter's Craft Spirits

I recently had the opportunity to take one of the fully-guided owner tours that Doc Porter's offers most Saturdays by reservation. The 45 minute tours include a tour of the facility, an overview of Doc Porter's grain-to-glass process, and a tasting of all three of their liquors: vodka, gin, and bourbon.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

♫ ♫ It Was a Very Good Beer ♫ ♫

Two thousand five hundred different beers is a lot of beer. I remember reaching 500 beers back in 2014 and thinking it was a lot (SN: it is). Now there are badges for 5000 and 10,000 distinct beer check-ins. I'll probably get there one day, but for now, I'm taking some time to look back through the beers I have had thus far. 

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

Corks: More Interesting Than They Appear

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.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

My Advanced Cicerone Exam Experience in Winona Ryder SAG Award GIFs

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.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

I Tried It: Sherry

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.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

I Redesign Anheuser-Busch's Super Bowl 2017 Ads

This year, turn your chairs around to face the opposite way and aim your feet away from people because the tables have turned and your socks are going to be blown off by Anheuser-Busch's new attitude.

You can tell they're no-nonsense by the WORDS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

Dear Isinglass - How Are You a Thing in My Beer?

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?

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

The New Mailbox Rule: Get One

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.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

Under the Jenfluence Mystery Stories: Jen Stumbles Upon The Cool Spot

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?

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

Some Alcohol Brands are Taking the Wooderson Approach to Snapchat

I had to Google what Snapchat was. I tried (ashamedly) typing “How to use Snapchat” into Google and got results that either told me how to spy on my (nonexistent) children on Snapchat or were written by people younger than I am who referred to themselves as “olds” about how they don’t understand Snapchat either. Apparently everyone over the age of 35 lives in unending fear of accidentally sending perplexed-looking pictures of themselves to millions of people.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

The Devil You Know...

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.

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Jen Blair Jen Blair

Ever Wondered What Your Beer Looks Like Before It's Brewed?

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. 

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