A bitter Englishman records his beer journey of more than 40 years, the last 23 of which have been in the USA …
Sensible Beer Talk is Back
Ding’s Rants
Recent and/or Popular Posts
Legacy drinkers and the
assault on Belgium, England and Germany
Birdboy Brewing Co.
- Phoenix Rising
in Fort Wayne
Beer Promotes Community in Goshen, Indiana
Purity, skin in the game, and when Capitalism spits on you
An Englishman and a Scotsman walk into an American brewery
Session Beer - an amalgamation of years and years of thoughts
Never meet your heroes.
The death of elite beer bars?
Come Into My Parlor. A chat with Chris Bryant of Parlor City Brewing
Shipping beer from Belgium to the USA. Recent experiences
Fortlandia - a true nano production in Fort Wayne, Indiana
More than a decade removed, beeradvocate still banning!
Defining Craft Beer. OH NO, not this again!
Ding’s Six Pack
The 6 Most Recent Reviews
House Saison
(for Fred Eckhardt)
When people make grandiose statements about beer I usually take it all with a pinch of salt. In most of those cases I know a lot more about beer than they do, and I have significantly more experience. There are of course plenty of people whose...
Chouffe
40
The Blonde 40th anniversary beer. The usual Chouffe presentation. Lemon colored, lightly clouded body with an initial high, white, bubbly head. Retention and lace are not great, but there is a thin film left on the surface of the beer. Light, hoppy...
Wijnberg
2020
2020 Vintage, will keep for 5 years according to De Ranke. Tea colored pour with a bubbly head that fades quickly - as expected. No retention, no lace. Fair enough given the style. Nose is surprisingly non-descript. Perhaps a little funk (that I...
Straight West
Coast Ghostin’
Light, golden hazed pour with a white head that when forced out of the bottle, is good. Decent retention, some lace. There's a lot of raw cereal malt in the nose. Tastes are really clean with a strong lime undercurrent. Really light with some...
Saison van
de Bruwer
Lovely lemon colored, clouded pour with a dense head. Excellent retention and some lace. Looks classically well-made. Nose offers a dry funky note, as expected, simple and requisite with the style. That has the potential to sound trivial, but as we...
Bruxellensis
Local Brett Beer
33cl bottle, imported from Belgium. Orange, hazed pour with a modest head. Nice retention but not a great deal of lace. Nose is immediately apparent with a serious dose of funk right off the bat. A touch of white pepper up front, but it's mainly a...
The Past. The Present. The Future.
Here’s the complete blog archive with all of the posts from 2011 until today. In addition, you’ll see posts broken down into more specific categories in the Blog Menu. What kind of content can you expect here at Ding’s Beer Blog going forward? What’s the newer content likely to look like? What kind of opinions and writing can you reasonably expect? Here’s a heads-up.
The Past.
No BS please, frankly I’ve seen it all before
I am not a kid either in terms of my chronological age or my beer experience. There’s a lot of movers and shakers in beer these days that were not born when I was drinking Bass from the wood with my dad, that were in elementary school when I was traveling to Belgium twice a year for beer, and that were only just starting puberty when I was critiquing the fledgling US craft beer scene two decades ago. (Don’t worry, I know that most of you don’t care). So what? Just don’t bother me with your BS.
The Present.
I’ll drink (almost) any beer at least once, but …
Drinking something that you know that you probably won’t like just because it’s there, or just because it’s the current flavor of the month is frankly, dumb. What does that mean for me and DBB? Well, likely that I’m going to come down hard against hazy ‘IPAs’, that I’ll be ultra-critical of the non-descript, lazy ‘fruited sours’, that I’ll be hating on milkshake ‘IPAs’, and more often than not pissing all over pastry stouts. I’m a traditionalist, a defender of classic styles, and not a fickle, Johnny-come-lately.
The Future.
The Fort Wayne & North-East IN beer scene critiqued
With the re-launch of the website you’ll likely find an emphasis on the beer scene in and around Fort Wayne and north-east Indiana, as I get back to reviewing and commenting on the beer (and the beer scene) that’s close to me. Expect to read my opinions about what’s going on here, but don’t expect blanket praise. If you’re a local brewery or brewer you’ll need to earn the kudos. Local beer is most definitely not necessarily good beer, and expect no punches to be pulled; no beer given a pass.