Tuesday, March 31, 2009

5 1/2 beer blogs in Baltimore

Baltimore, Maryland is blessed with five 1/2 full-time beer blogs. There may be others, but these half dozen cover the good beer scene in Maryland. They are 'what's on tap', rather than 'what's brewing'.

The first, the granddaddy of them all, is Kasper on Tap, written by Rob Kasper. Rob has been writing about beer and other things Bawlmer for the Baltimore Sun since before there was a world wide web (or a great variety of good beer, for that matter).

Next would be the granddaddy of Maryland beer, Hugh Sisson. In 1989, Sisson opened Maryland's first post-Prohibition brewpub, named, naturally, Sisson's. It was, in fact, the first brewpub in all of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. It's now closed.

Hugh has been writing a blog for a couple of years now ... except for the fact that he hasn't posted anything in over 4 months. So, for the time being, we'll count Diary of a Brewer as 'half' a blog.

The second full-time blog would be Beer in Baltimore, hosted by Alexander D. Mitchell IV: historian, author, columnist for the Mid-Atlantic Brewing News, and ... curmudgeon. It's beer with a bite. Mitchell is also the events coordinator for the first ever Baltimore Beer Week, 8-18 October.

Blog #3 is the Baltimore Beer Guy. Since there is no Beer Trail in Maryland, Brian's blog provides that service with a very useful useful set of guides and maps to find Maryland's beer bars, beer shops, and breweries. Kasper on Tap commends Baltimore Beer Guy for this. (Brewer's Association of Maryland: why is there no Maryland Beer Trail?)

Blog #4 belongs to Chuck Cook, a long-time contributor to Celebrator, All About Beer, Ale Street News, and other beer periodicals. By Chuck's count, he has toured Belgium 18 times. Thus his blog —Belgian Beer and Travel— is mostly about Belgium and Belgian beers. But Chuck lives in Baltimore, and, so, he qualifies.

And ... finally blogger #5, the new kid on the block, just up and running last week: Beer in Baltimore.com.

Dealing, per se, with beer in Baltimore County, this blog may soon be offering real-time posts and Twitter announcements about Baltimore-area beers on tap and for sale ... similar to what the Washington City Paper has done with Beerspotter Twitter. One quibble: this blog has unfortunately chosen a name quite similar to that of Beer in Baltimore. [UPDATE: see the comments section.]

Baltimore ... the city that drinks beer ... and proud of it, Hon!

Read more about the Chesapeake Region Alliance of Beer Bloggers (C.R.A.B.B.).

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention Tom.

    And yes, I'm kind of bummed about the domain basically being the same as Alexander's site's name. Bummed because I wasn't very hip to the whole name similarity at the time I registered the domain.

    I've been reading Alex's site ever since I ran into him at last year's Belgian Beer Fest where he was broadcasting live with a webcam. I showed him how I was following his updates live on my phone while at Max's. Been loving his updates ever since.

    But stupid me, re-named his blog in my RSS reader to simply "Alex Mitchell - beer blog", not even realizing his is called Beer In Baltimore. So of course I didn't pick up on this until a few days after I was up and running.

    I almost want to register a new domain and try my best to shift traffic to the new URL. It's still in consideration.

    So Alex, if you're reading this - my apologies. And if you're finally all healed up, I will hopefully again run into you and have the opportunity to buy you the finest pint I can.

    - Brad

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  2. Brad/Chodite:

    I just enabled e-mail contact at my blog. Drop me a line--I think we can work something out. I'll check with my web experts and see if we can't swap URLs or something. There really IS a problem if you're covering the suburbs and calling it "BeerINBaltimore"....... <:-)

    And the doctors say you can't buy me a pint yet--maybe a shotglass-ful which I must taste French wine-tasting style (where's the spittoon?).......

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  3. Curmudgeon? Me?!? [grumble, snarl, snort, grump, growl....]

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  4. Technically, Baltimore County is still... Baltimore :)

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  5. With all the beer blogs I just hope people are making wise decisions for you see i work in a drug rehab facility and i see all kinds of stuff and the young people of the us are the mose effected.

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