Happy National Beer Day, 2023!

7 April 2023: It's National Beer Day ... in the U.S., that is.

Then, again, is not every day, "beer day"? Ah, but there's more to the 90-year-old story. Read more at: YFGF.

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Now, as to those two lovelies...

• Deathstill (left)
  • "German Style dopplebock." 8% alcohol-by-volume (abv).
  • In Dune —a series of science fiction novels (and films) by writer Frank Herbert and his estate— a deathstill is a "device used to extract all moisture from a living or dead human or creature. This is traditionally done to reclaim precious water from the dead, who no longer require it; but in Children of Dune the device is used as a method of execution."
• A Night on Ponce (right)
  • "American IPA with Citra, Palisade, and Magnum hops." 7.5% alcohol-by-volume (abv).
  • Ponce de Leon Avenue is a major thoroughfare in Atlanta, named for the eponymous 16th-century Spanish conquistador, who searched for the legendary fountain of youth in Florida. Atlanta natives simply refer to the street as "Ponce."

Both beers brewed by Three Taverns Brewery, in Decatur, Georgia, USA. Both beers enjoyed, al fresco, on the brewery's beer patio, 11 March 2023.

A series of occasional reviews of beer (and wine and spirits).
No scores; only descriptions.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Little Cottage Brewery (and pale ale)

On a delightful spring afternoon, Hymn Songs of an Alternate Universe —a 6.1% alcohol pale ale— was on draught, alfresco on the patio, at Little Cottage Brewery, in Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA. 29 May 2021.

Little Cottage —a production brewery— first opened on 15 May 2021. Its brewer/owner is Jon Shari, a successful Atlanta, Georgia-area homebrewer. The facilities, especially considering the light-industrial confines, are quite pleasant.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beau Geste

A mug of Geste, in the beer garden, at Elsewhere Brewing, in Atlanta (Grant Park), Georgia, USA. 31 October 2020.

Brewery description:

Dark Czech [style] Lager
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: 18
A tale of adventure! Stories from Prague praise a dark lager that delights the palate year-round. [Tastes of] rye bread, dried dates, and chocolate.

In style, Geste might be this new brewery's nod to a Czech-style tmavé pivo. Now, I don't know whether or not Elsewhere decocts Geste, as would be de regueur for tmavé pivo brewed in the Czech Republic. Nonetheless, the lager pours with a long-lived, creamy off-white head (via a side-pull tap); spicy hop and, yes, toasted rye-bread aromas; an off-dry body, alchemically full in such a small beer; flavors of toasted rye bread, chocolate, licorice, and dried dark fruit; and a spicy, Czech-style hop finish.

Elswhere pronounces Geste as "jest." I've added the adjective beau to my caption. The phrase "beau geste" is from the French, meaning "a graceful or magnanimous gesture." Fitting.

The brewpub is new. Its grand opening occurred over the previous weekend, on 24 October. That its brewer Josh Watterson has already produced such a sublime beer is tasty testament and auspicious augur.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beer education?

Beer (education?), alfresco, on the patio, at ...

As seen at brewery Wild Heaven Beer, in Avondale Estates, Georgia, USA, on 16 August 2020.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beer alfresco

Reaching back into the archives for the Pic(k) of the Week.

Enjoying a beer, alfresco, on a sidewalk patio in November 2009...when social-distancing was not a thing. At Max's Taphouse, in Baltimore (Fell's Point), Maryland, USA. Then called "Max's on Broadway"...the Baltimore Broadway.

In the glass: a pour of (then) 11-year old Millenium Barleywine, brewed by the former Dominion Brewing (of Ashburn, Virginia). Warming, malty, and still in condition: even then, a rare treat indeed.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Double Refreshment

Beat the heat, twice!

In the beer garden, at New Realm Brewing, in Atlanta (Poncey-Highland), Georgia, on 7 July 2018.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beer Independence Day

Independence Day drinking, in the beer garden of Wild Heaven Beer (brewery), in Avondale Estates, Georgia, on 4 July 2019.

Other than being apropos for the day, the mural's caption —"Beer Independence Day 2017"— refers to 1 September 2017, the date on which breweries in Georgia were first 'free' to sell and pour their own beers on their own premises.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Beer patio bijou

On encountering a brewpub in Atlanta, Georgia, an Instagrammer, tagging a friend, commented, "this is the brewery I was talking about ... that also has food!" In this new generation of brewery taprooms, a brewpub had become a pleasant anomaly to her. Les temps ont changé!

Pictured above, this was not that brewpub, but another, elsewhere in the same city on the same day. On a spring afternoon, its intimate outdoor beer patio was a bijou.

Wrecking Bar Brewpub, in Atlanta (Little 5 Points), Georgia, on 27 April 2018.

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Drinking in the Culture: A checklist for Beer Gardens in Europe. (Beer Blogging Friday)

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin. On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.

For The Session #134, Friday, 6 April 2018, I was that pre-determined host and my topic was ... Beer Gardens.

Beer writers/raconteurs/travellers/tickers Bob and Ellie Tupper sent in a checklist for European beer gardens — a checklist that could be referenced universally (or, for now, globally). I've posted it here, today —Monday, 9 April— because, in the beer world and especially in a beer garden, it's always Friday in spirit. Allons-y, Alonzo!

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Drinking in the Culture

The calendar, if not the thermometer, says it’s springtime, so it’s time to leave the romantic tasting rooms with crackling fires and start searching for places to drink beer in the great outdoors. The explosion of farm breweries may soon make beer gardens more numerous and exciting in the U.S. than in the Old Country, but, for now, we still look forward to returning to our favorites in Germany and Austria.

When we wrote Drinking In the Culture: Tuppers’ Guide to Exploring Great Beers in Europe [in 2015], we tried to identify the six best places in each of the twenty-four featured cities to experience the local beer culture. We succeeded in over twenty cities, but failed miserably in Munich: there were just too many. We finally compromised on the six best establishments in each of four different categories, only one of which was "beer garden." It came down to six criteria that lifted those six winners to the top of a crowded Munich field.

Here are those criteria, with a favorite or two in Germany and Austria for each of them.

• Accessibility
  We only included places accessible by public transportation. German DUI laws are even stricter than in the U.S. We found a lovely, historic beer garden near Freising last year, but the round-trip cab ride came to over $70. The Augustiner Keller in Munich is two blocks from a tram stop and the S Bahn subway.





• Prices
  The price of a German Mass (short-filled liter) can vary from 6 to 9 Euros. In general, the closer to the center of the city, the more you’ll pay. The price of a liter at the Kloster Mülln garden in Salzburg is still just above the 6 Euro level.


• Size
  Intimate gardens can be attractive, but we love a really enormous one. The clanking of steins and rumble of 200-liter barrels, overlaid with hundreds of conversations, could be cacophonic, but to us, it’s a symphony. On a beautiful weekend night, the Munich Hirschgarten comes close to filling their 8,000 seats, and the hum is like a contented beehive you can hear for blocks.


• Setting
  Traditional German beer gardens evolved in the 19th century as brewers discovered that if you spread white gravel on the hilltop above the underground cellars where you kept the beer, then further shaded the white stone with leafy chestnut trees, it kept the cellars cooler. An unintended benefit was that this shady hilltop was a perfect place to drink that lovely beer. Some gardens have particularly good vistas: you can spot an Alp from Kloster Mülln, gaze at the massive Dom across the Danube from the Spital Brauerei garden in Regensburg, or feed the deer that mooch along the fence next to your table at the Hirschgarten.


• Food
  Almost every garden will have roast chicken and bratwurst, but the biggest and best of them go much farther. Fresh fish roasted over live coals, spare ribs, enormous spiral-sliced white radishes, massive roasted pork knuckles, and a wide array of salads and sweets almost always taste as good as they look. Food vendors indoors and out in the garden at Kloster Mülln offer a variety that gives this one an edge over the others. Or copy the locals and bring in your own picnic; almost all gardens allow it as long as you’re drinking their beer.


• Beer
  As important as this criterion would seem, it probably influences us the least. Almost every brewery with a good garden brews a fine helles lager. But, as Orwell noted, some are more equal than others. Munich’s Augustiner is sweet, but achingly clean, and somehow leaves you with no ache at all the next morning. Salzburg’s Augustiner brewery looms above the Kloster Mülln garden; being able to sit within meters of where the beer is born seems to make it taste even better.


• Gemütlichkeit
  Gemütlichkeit, or friendliness, is hard to judge on a limited number of visits. You’ll almost always sit at communal tables, so conversation is optional but usually available. On almost every one of our dozen visits to Kloster Mülln, spanning decades, we’ve made new best friends, only some of whom could speak more than a few words of English.

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— "We're Bob and Ellie Tupper, “DC’s original beer geeks” (Washington City Paper). We spent 35 years seeking beers all over Europe, amassing a database with over 32,000 entries, before writing Drinking In the Culture. In it, we describe the best places in Europe to visit in order to “drink in” the rich connections between beers and the societies that brew them.

We're currently working on Brews & Snooze, a guide to breweries and B&Bs of the Mid-Atlantic region, featuring places where you can visit a brewery and walk, not drive, back to where you're spending the night. In some cases, the journey back to your room involves only walking up a couple of flights of stairs. We hope to have the book in print by the end of the year."

The Tuppers maintain their own website and blog, called, punningly enough, CultureAle. The essay above —but illustrated with photographs— they'll be posting there soon. Until then, of course, you could read their book.

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Beer and the Great Outdoors. A Match Made in Heaven. (Beer Blogging Friday)

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin. On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.

For The Session #134, Friday, 6 April 2018, I was that pre-determined host and my topic was ... Beer Gardens.

Dave Gott —Vice President of Legend Brewing Company, in Richmond, Virginia— kindly sent in an essay on beer gardens in general and his beer garden in particular. He stated that he is "not a writer." I disagree.

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Beer and the Great Outdoors. A Match Made in Heaven.

I guess I don’t have to start this saying “I like beer”. The mere fact that I am taking the time to write about it is proof enough. I am a beer drinker, not a writer. However when asked to write about my two favorite pastimes; drinking good beer and being outside, I put my two index fingers to work and in the old cop at the typewriter style and started banging away.

I have been in the beer business for 27 years and the question I get the most is “what is the best beer”? My pat answer has always been “a free one” but I have begun to reconsider that answer and hone in on to a little more detail. A free one consumed on a nice sunny day when a warm breeze is blowing and you see the world as the glorious wonder that it is. Especially when there is no yard work to do.

Whether it is a deck, a porch, a true beer garden or just sitting in the grass, there is something special about that first beer outside in the spring. Hell, the Norwegians even have a special word for it. Utepils meaning outdoor lager.

The current craze of outdoor seating in our breweries and restaurants today is an expression of a much older tradition. In the German Biergarten, dating from the 19th century, beer, food, and music were enjoyed in an atmosphere the Germans called Gemütlichkeit. A word used to convey a state or feeling of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer. Drink a few steins and say that five times really fast.

At our Pub in Richmond, Virginia —Legend Brewing Company— we have a deck that seats 200 and has a spectacular view of the James River and the city skyline. We also have a beer garden that seats 80 at the front of our Pub. Let’s face it, you can’t have too much of a good thing. Our Portsmouth location has a beer garden overlooking the Elizabeth River with a view of the big navy vessels in dry dock. These are places where people sit, talk, trade ideas and get to know each other all under the big blue sky with a nice cold one in hand. The troubles of life fade away on that aforementioned warm breeze and all the world is at peace.



So what makes a good beer garden? My friends, the answer is simple. You do. It is neither the wood deck, slate patio, or spectacular view. It is the coming together —the community, and camaraderie— we share over our favorite beverage. Gemütlichkeit.

So, I bid you cheers and goodwill. The warm weather is coming and outside we will go! With beer in hand, of course.

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— Dave added that he has been in the beer business since 1991 and with Legend since 1996. He attended Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia, where he received a degree in Earth Science and Philosophy, and drank a lot of beer. After college, he worked and traveled extensively overseas and drank a lot of beer. The rest is history.

I would add that Legend is celebrating its 24th anniversary. Opened in 1994, it is, by far, Virginia's oldest operating 'craft' brewery. (The only Virginia brewery older is Anheuser-Busch's Williamsburg plant, which began operations in 1972.)

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What is a DC beer garden? (Beer Blogging Friday)

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin. On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.

For The Session #134, today, I am that pre-determined host and my topic is ... Beer Gardens.

Keith Chamberlin, a non-blogger in Washington, D.C., kindly sent in a report on beer gardens there. I've posted it here.

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DC Beer Gardens

In pursuit of what is a DC beer garden, I checked out several places. Of course, the most obvious one is Biergarten Haus at 1355 H Street. The manager claims it to be a German beer bar with an American twist. They can handle up to 700 patrons, 500 being outside. They have TVs for sports in a covered outdoor area, a rooftop deck and only German beer, except during special occasions like Dyngus day. The beer selection has a good variety of German suds including Salvator dopplebock, Weihenstephaner hefeweizen and Kostritzer schwartzbier, among others utilizing 12 taps. The look of the front bar reminds me very much of a woody German beer hall and I have eaten in the beer garden in good weather and the food is authentic with the red cabbage being excellent. It is popular and a treat for DC beer goers.

A newcomer that has been around for about 1 year is the Midlands Beer Garden at 3333 Georgia Ave. Their claim is an American craft beer garden. The place looks inviting with roll-up doors with approximately half their occupancy indoors with picnic tables outside for a total of about 250 people. They have 7 static taps, 7 local rotating and 7 imports that rotate. The imports are mostly German and Belgian while the 7 locals are small local beers and are typically not the most common ones to find.

Garden District beer garden is a small patio beer garden that doesn't open during inclement weather as most of their seating is outside. There is a little inside but it is tight! They only have German beer and American craft beer, about 8 taps, and their food is focused on good bbq. The seating seems to be enough for 100-150 people and is a good location around other restaurants and bars as well as the Black Cat music venue.

Another DC beer garden that is not quite in DC is Denizen's Brewing Company. I include them because it is a brewery and a unique place. Close to the Silver Spring Metro they are open year round but the beer garden only in good weather. The beer garden also has beer service on the patio when busy as well as two indoor bars. The food is decent and has rotated with different vendors a couple times since opening. Inside there is an upstairs and downstairs bar with the brewery on the lower level. The outdoor seating with 24 large tables, each holding about 8 people and there is cornhole for adults and kids. They like to be called a local watering hole and their slogan is 'unified by beer', socially bringing people together.

DC and the surrounding metro area has many other rooftop beer patio and gardens that are worthy of a visit with the local craft beer scene being about as good as it ever has been. Come for a visit!

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— Keith added that he is a DC homebrewer and beer advocate who's an engineer during the day.

Thank you, Keith!

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A sad beer garden story (for Beer Blogging Friday).

We walked in one early Sunday afternoon, happily anxious to sit outside at this, a recently opened bar, with "Beer Garden" in its name.

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A forlorn fable

There was no one in the bar except for two bartenders, talking to each other. We stood there for a minute, awkwardly unacknowledged. Eventually, we asked, "Hello. Where's the beer garden?"

Motioning with a thumb, one replied, "Out there," and returned to the conversation.

We walked out there, down some stairs to a crushed-stone patio, walled in with a high fence and the stone side of a propinquant business. The garden, as it was, comprised a few picnic tables (there was one with an umbrella), one unblooming Crepe Myrtle (strange, as the rest of the city was awash with the trees' glorious blossoms), and a few flower boxes attached to a wall, in which sat a few scraggly specimens. A water hose, lying nearby, was apparently unused.

Then we sat and sat, until we realized that we would not be served. Walking back inside, I saw the two still engaged in conversation, now standing at the opposite end of the bar to one additional customer.

"What beers do you have?" Again a gesture, this time toward a board above and behind the bar, listing several local draught options. "Do you have a printed list? I won't be able to remember all for my friend outside." "No," was the one-word answer.

I made a decision and carried my beers outside. We each drank our beer, and, when finished, returned our empty glasses to the bar, paid our tab (tipped?), and left...into the bright July sunshine, not to return.

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Is that all there is?

To us, a beer garden has a mythical ethos, like a German outdoor sibling to the coziness of a British pub. But there, that day, the fable seemed extirpated, the expectation denied. Had we been so wrong? Is a beer garden simply a place for beer drinking minus any trappings except for an outdoor setting?

So, today, we're enlisting the aid of others. Help vivify our myth.

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Beer Blogging Friday

Teh Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin. On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.

Today, for The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #134, I am that pre-determined (read: volunteered) host. And I've determined that my topic is ... Beer Gardens. Today, I'm asking all beer bloggers to write on beer gardens. If you do, tell me about it by:

• Providing a link in the comment section here, below, or
• Posting a link at my earlier, anouncement post —What (and where) is a Beer Garden? Announcement for The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #134— or
• Tagging me on Instagram (tcizauskas/), or
• Tagging me on Twitter (@Cizauskas), or
• Posting a link and comment on my Facebook page: (YoursForGoodFermentables/).

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A better story

Not a blogger, but an active Twitter-er or Instagrammer? Just tag/hashmark as above. Or a beer writer without a blog? You can participate as well. Here's how.

Once the day is done, I'll post summaries and links in a roundup. But, please, today, tell me a good Beer Garden story, like the one pictured below. At least one better than my sad one.

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What (and where) is a Beer Garden? Announcement for The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #134.

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.

On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session, choosing a specific, beer-related topic, inviting all bloggers to write on it, and posting a roundup of all the responses received.


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For The Session: Beer Blogging Friday #134, on 6 April 2018, I am that pre-determined host. And I've determined that my topic is ...

Beer Gardens

What is a beer garden? Or what isn't a beer garden? Or what should a beer garden be? Or where is a beer garden?

Is a beer garden a place of foliage and shrubberies? Or is it a plot of concrete with umbrellas? Is a beer garden an outdoor bar? Or an outdoor Biergarten pavilion with Gemütlichkeit und Bier? Or is a beer garden to be found at a brewery with a hop trellis de rigueur?

Is a beer garden to be found outdoors, or can it be, alternatively, an interior third place, an arboretum with beer? Is a beer garden a real thing or is it a Platonic ideal, an imagined gueuzic nostalgia? Or is it a place indeed, once or often visited, not Bill Bryson in the woods, but Lew Bryson in a beer garden? If so, where is it? Tell us (with or without Lew).

According to the Beer Bloggers Conference, there are over 1,000 active "Citizen Beer Blogs" in North America, over 500 "Citizen Beer Blogs" throughout the rest of the world, and another couple hundred industry beer blogs. So, jump in folk. Please contribute!

How to play

On Friday, 6 April, post an essay on beer gardens to your blog. Then let me give you credit. Provide a link to the story by:

• Providing a link in the comment section here, below, or
• Tagging me on Instagram (tcizauskas/), or
• Tagging me on Twitter (@Cizauskas), or
• Posting a link and comment on my Facebook page: (YoursForGoodFermentables/).

How to contribute WITHOUT a blog!

A blog itself isn't even necessary to contribute.

• Compose a 280-character tweet and then link to me and/oror hashtag with #BeerBloggingFriday.
• On Instagram, post a beer-gardenesque pic and then tag me and/or hashtag with #BeerBloggingFriday.
• On Facebook, write a comment about beer gardens and tag me (YoursForGoodFermentables) or post a comment at my page.
• Or, if so inspired, you could write an essay (300-500 words are ideal and 1,200 would be the most you'd want for a blog post, short-attention-span and all that) and send it to me bye the 6th. Use this form.

On a warm summer evening, I love to watch the light filter through the leaves of the dogwood and viburnum, with a beer in hand salad on the table, listening to the conversation of friends. "Why is it," I wonder, "that food and beer taste so much better together when we're in the beer garden.

— Dinner in the Beer Garden, by Lucy Saunders.

The topic is beer gardens: whatever they may be, wherever they may be. And even your backyard, Olmsted-esque or humble, might be a Moon Over Beer garden. On Friday, 6 April, tell the world about it. I'll round up all the contributions, whether they're blogged, emailed, tweeted, or 'grammed.'

Thanking you in advance,
Yours for good fermentables,
Thomas 'Tom' Cizauskas

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Pic(k) of the week: A Monday Night Saturday afternoon, outside.

On a warm winter's Saturday afternoon, folk enjoyed freshly-brewed beers, outside on the veranda, at Monday Night Brewing.

As seen on 11 February 2017, in the West Midtown neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia.

There, but not seen in this photo: dogs a-plenty, a chef cooking, and enthusiastic queues for beer. See all those: here.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Life is Good (with beer and cigar)

"I'm a single-malt man," he told me but, even so, life was looking pretty darn good for this gentleman, wearing his tartan colors. On a warm, sunny, Friday after Thanksgiving late afternoon, he was enjoying a stogie and a beer.

On the beer patio at World of Beer, Arlington (Ballston), Virginia, USA. 23 November 2012.

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Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, often posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject.

Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons. For non-commercial purposes, no permission is required (but kindly link back).

Caveat lector: As a representative for Select Wines, Inc. —a wine and beer wholesaler in northern Virginia— I sell the beers of Abita Brewing (of Louisiana).