It’s not about animal rights or any of that mumbo-jumbo, It’s just the fact that it’s Crass marketing. Sure, it is working, after all here I am blogging about it!

Brew Dog is quickly becoming the “Emperor with no Clothes”. Several months ago they sent me one of their other “marketing ploy” beers (not to be confused with “Marketing Ploy” – a beer offered by Three Floyds). That beer was called “Transatlantic IPA”, a beer that was carted around the Atlantic Ocean in a barrel strapped to fishing trawler for several weeks. It was $26.00 per bottle and not worth 10% of that.

Okay, are you ready???
 http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news….

Why should I go through the trouble of re-hashing and typing a “what’s new” posting at Bridge Brew Works in Fayettville? Heck, it’s a whole lot easier just to let you see their update video!

I have put together a “Beer Discovery” trip to Germany (Bavaria) for September. The trip takes through some of the best beer cities in Bavaria for the best beer-drinking experience anywhere! This is space-limited trip and will be closely escorted by me. I have also set-up three VIP tours; two of them are brewery tours and one is through one of best known specialty malt producers in the world (they also have a small brewery inside).

Contact me via email “rireland@suddenlink.net”

As the date of our impending cruise vacation drew closer, a bit of internal angst was chewing away at me. Just weeks before, I had received a response to my an email I had sent to Celebrity Cruise Lines inquiring about on-board beer selection on their ships. Having been on several cruises in the past, a good beer selection was not to be expected but this was Celebrity, you know – supposedly a cut above the others and I was hopeful. Alas, my dreams of sailing in true beer-geek grandeur were shattered upon reading their response, basically sentencing me to ten 10 days of macro-beer mediocrity at elevated prices; Boddington’s and Guinness were the best I could hope for…

Fortunately (??) for me, I was assured a “beer-palate wind-down period” during our week long visit to my wife’s relatives in Italy before our Mediterranean cruise. I was full-knowing I would have to rely on wine and a few Peronis and Morettis thrown in for good measure. Honestly, I would have solely stuck to wine but my beer-geek reputation has permeated even the Italian side of the family so they were all well stocked for my arrival and I was obligated to partake in the beer along with all of the bounty of Italy’s Agro-Pontina region. The food and wine were spectacular but I shall hold my tongue on the subject of Italian macro lager.

I don’t know if I should call it mis-information, a fib, an understatement or just an under researched response from a bureaucratic drone at Celebrity cruise lines but within 20 minutes of being on board I was sipping my first beer, a Leffe Blonde! Okay, I know, Leffe is an overly sweet and somewhat underwhelming example of a Belgian Abbey Blonde, but hey It’s all relative! The next day I discovered Franziskaner hefeweizen at the “Lawn Club Bar” on the rear of the ship. This was getting good…

The following evening (after a small batch bourbon tasting) I stopped to hear a fantastic jazz quartet at the “Enemble Lounge”, an almost hidden gem of a bar at the less traveled area of the ship. My jaw almost dropped (or maybe it did or it may have already been hanging open after the Bourbon tasting) when I discovered that the bar served three different beers from Hatachino Nest (Kiuchi Brewery), an excellent and eccentric artisanal craft brewery from Japan! The bartender told me the next day that I was the first person in his memory to ever order it!

Since my Hatachino discovery, I have found out that the Lawn Club also has Dogfish Head 90 Minute and India Brown, Brooklyn’s Lager and Brown and Magic Hat’s Luck Cat and Number 9. That may not be a list that would rank at the top on Ratebeer or Beeradocate but compared to macro-lager purgatory, I am in Heaven! The prices are actually much more in line with reality for the more premium beers with only $1.50 premium over Miller Lite or Bud.

Celebrity Cruise Lines has a long way to go however as most of the bar-staff really have no idea of what the hell it was I was drinking nor do they know how to serve it properly. The guy who brought me my Hatachino Red Rice beer opened the bottle and poured that sucker straight into a pilsner glass from what appeared to be a half a meter away! I think I waited 10 minutes and still had a 6” head on the beer. I learned quickly to politely ask permission to pour it myself. In a bit of a true professorial “beer geek” moment, I actually had the audacity to show the very attractive bartender at the Lawn Club how to pour a Hefeweizen as her current method left all of that good “hefe goodness” behind in the bottle.

One of Celbrity’s three pillars to their lifestyle marketing is called “Savor”, which highlights the celebration of food and (gulp) wine… During a cooking demonstration by the chefs, I basically silenced the room and rendered a cruise staff member speechless when I asked if Celebrity was planning to incorporate craft beer tastings into the Savor program. The response was basically “I like beer too, but no…”

Oh thank you great Dionysus! I knew you would take care of this wine and macro-beer riddled plebe on his Mediterranean cruise! Surely it would have embarrassed you so to allow such an injustice take place to one of your flock, especially while sailing within the view of great structures that have been built to honor you and your godly peers. (I must admit though that the wine did ease my initial suffering…)
Let’s hope Celebrity Cruise Lines becomes even more enlightened and discovers the World’s oldest man-made drink!