Most of you probably think that maintaining a blog is easy. All you need is a passion for a subject or a good reason to rant, and a computer to log on. When I started doing this over a year ago, I kind of thought the same way. I felt like I had so much to say about beer, that I would never run out of ideas or subjects to blog about. I quickly found out that as far as blog ideas go, it’s either feast or famine with me.

I was thinking about a subject to write about for this upcoming week and I thought of all the great blogging opportunities that I either missed or just never got around to. My inner self exclaimed “There you go Richie boy! Your blog for the upcoming week has almost written itself”!

So here goes. I present “The best beer blogs that never came to be”…

The best retail places to buy beer in Charleston – Although “Charleytown” is not exactly overflowing with great beer retailers we do have a few that try to keep a decent selection. I was also going to talk about retail store dos and don’ts like “Don’t by that bottle of Heineken in the window.”

Ellen’s Guinness Stout ice cream – Not only did I miss out on the story, I missed out on the ice cream! Regular blog commentator and rabble rouser, Chris Workman will never let me live this one down.

The Worldwide hop shortage – This one has been written about extensively in the beer trade press. I don’t know if I could add anything except… The shortage really sucks! You will see craft beer prices, recipes and availability affected. It’s serious, but temporary…

High oil prices and the effect on grain prices - Just like the hops item. It sucks; it will impact beer prices and is not so temporary. Two reasons are given as the cause. Firstly, with diesel and gas prices being so high, transportation costs on the grain have increased. The other reason is said by some to be one borne of macroeconomics. The federal government was just itching to justify their reasons for subsidizing corn growers other than for votes. Now they have one: ethanol production. This ill-conceived idea will do nothing to solve our energy problems (my opinion). My favorite ethanol (in beer) comes from barley, but farmers are planting corn because that’s what is getting the subsidy dollars. There are opposing views that say the rise in grain prices is caused soley by the increase in energy costs and inflation.

Samuel Adams to the rescue! – The Boston Beer company is a class act and a true friend of good beer. They released over 20,000 pounds of hops that they had contracted for themselves and released them as to allow smaller craft brewers availability to them. Drink a toast to a great American brewery!

Samuel Adams under pressure – Last week our friends at Boston Beer voluntarily recalled quite a few bottles of beer due to the possibility that they contained shards of glass. This was caused during bottle production at their supplier. Only bottles marked N35 are affected.

Ridin’ the bus to happy hour – I have always been fascinated by public transportation, really! I cannot say enough great things about the vast train networks in Europe and how bad we missed the mark over here. With that said, Charleston is fortunate to have a pretty decent bus system. I have used it all too sparingly and only when I have dropped my car at the shop for maintenance. It’s easier and quicker than waiting for the dealer’s courtesy van. I wanted to do (and still do) a piece where I would ride the bus to and from Happy Hour at Okay’s on a Friday evening. I see it as a way to promote people to ride the bus more often and to also be safe while consuming our favorite adult beverages. It would be really great if I could get KRT’s Asst. Director Doug Hartley to join me. (I haven’t had a beer with him in years!)

Well there you have it… Some missed opportunities and some that were just simply put on the “back burner”. If there are any other story ideas that you think I should explore, please drop me an email: rireland@suddenlink.net

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.