This little tool over at the BBC calculating the calories of drinks is actually quite handy. I just learned that five pints is the same as a danish, a hot dog, a pizza slice, a couple of onion bhaji and a couple of jaffa cakes. Two doubles of hard liquor are only worth a pizza slice and one jaffa cake.

That seems reasonable and, given that this works as a tool to make sure you do not over eat as you drink, a valuable addition to the web resources we have at our fingertips. By knowing the risks posed by solid food offering only empty calories, you will be in a better position to plan your nutritional intake. Unfortunately it does not calculate the other nutritional qualities of craft real ale like the relative merits of eating two donuts, four onion bhajis and six jaffa cakes a day compared to the two drinks most medical experts recommend you have daily.

The weather outside may be frightful, but Portland's annual Holiday Ale Festival promises to keep things delightful all this weekend at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

Full Sail Invites you to Meet the Brewer and the Beer Hood River, Oregon.

You know there are gimmicks and gimmicks. There are things you know will never make it no matter how good they are and there are things, like Zima, that took way too long to die. Oddly, "space beer" might actually have a purpose according to the BBC:

Japanese beer brewed from barley which was grown on the international space station orbiting the Earth, has finally been tasted. The Space Beer will not go on sale, but should help scientists decide which crops astronauts could take with them on prolonged space flights on future missions exploring places like Mars.  read more »

Busy times here in New Ulm. The elusive Schmaltz Alt is being packaged this week to be ready for a late Dec/early Jan release. They’ll be bringing a special Fass of Schmaltz Alt to the Groveland Tap on Monday, December 22nd for a 6:00pm tapping. The first batch of the new Schell Bock will be brewed this week. Schell Bock will be a limited release available Feb 2, 2009. Brewed with 10 different malts and a proprietary German yeast strain, Schell Bock will weigh in at 16 Plato and 24 IBUs.

Im not sure HBJs ever been accused of being too positive in its reviews, but Ive taken myself to task for excessive positivity at times with the caveat that when you buy beer from renown brewers or that others are raving about, youll tend to drink some pretty excellent beer. This is not one of those excessively positive reviews. On the contrary recently weve encountered two utterly foul India Pale Ales that we thought it made sense to steer you away from. After all, 5 bucks is 5 bucks (except when its 7 bucks), and if you could be drinking something delicious with that hard-earned coin rather than some gross mockery of an IPA, youd damn well wanna thank the fella that helped you do so. The first IPA to disappoint to so thoroughly is from HAIR OF THE DOG in Portland, Oregon. Now weve told you before that we think Hair of the Dogs beers are sub-par, but after reading a few reviews of their BLUE DOT Double IPA I thought, well maybe these guys can at least do an IPA. They are from the Northwest and all. Alas, HAIR OF THE DOG BLUE DOT is kind of a boozy mess. Its enormous head of foam just kept bubbling up for minutes after it was poured maybe not their fault but it took forever to dissipate; once it finally did & I could dig in, it was ugh way too bitter. Piney, biting hops, just totally raw and intense, with no citrus aroma or balance of any kind in sight. Its like they just half-heartedly ground up a bunch of virgin hops and sprinkled them into the mash and said good enough, then pumped up the alcohol to eye-watering levels (though its only 7%, it totally tastes like 10%). Tastes like an amateur homebrewers idea of a Double IPA by the numbers. Ill never trust Hair of The Dog again. 4/10 .  read more »

PR people want my readers to know things. They email me, so I post them. It's practically a public service I provide here. Jessica, from Obsidian PR, which apparently handles either the Flying Saucer or Bell's, sent me the following email. Consider yourselves invited. The Flying Saucer will present a beer tasting featuring Bells Brewery next Monday, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m. I thought you might be interested in this for your blog. The event will be hosted by Jim OConnor, a territory manager for Bells Brewery. OConnor will host the two-hour tasting, which will feature six of Bells Brewerys beers the Third Coast Old Ale, the Porter, the Kalamazoo Stout, the Special Double Cream Stout, the Cherry Stout and the Expedition Stout. The beers will be paired with four select cheeses and a dessert.  read more »

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