Also, I’ve been adding new entries to my growing list of New York City destinations. Over the holidays I plan on do some on location research. If you have suggestions of places that should not be missed, please let me know. I’ve already started a list of “places to check out” on the NYC page.

In A Year in Beer I tell the story of my first year as a professional beer writer. It’s quite a journey spanning both coasts and places in between. I picked out some entertaining episodes and I hope (if you take time to read the book) that you’ll be rewarded with a few laughs. Let me know what you think.

Just so you know, A Year in Beer is the first installment in a series of “beer novels” or “beer adventures.” I’ve already completed two others, Through a Glass, Foamy and Wasted. I’ll be releasing both of those in 2012.

Five years ago, when I started writing about beer, I struggled with how to approach my adopted subject. I didn’t just want to copy what other beer writers were doing, but I recognized that no one else was covering the local brewing scene on Long Island, so if someone was going to write those brewery/brewer profiles, then I was going to have to do it. Then I met Bernie Kilkelly, or I met his work. He was writing for Ale Street News at the time and he’d already written some very nice brewery/brewer profiles for the breweries we had on Long Island at the time. Bernie’s since moved on to other things though. And we have new breweries opening up every few months it seems. So maybe it’s time for me to do more of those profiles?

In 2006, I tried to do a few conventional profile pieces for various publications: John Harvard’s, Blue Point, the Southampton Publick House. But like writing beer reviews, the profiles were getting monotonous. The stories are pretty much the same. The details might change from one brewery/brewer to the next, but it was the same story: a homebrewer with dreams of going commercial scrapes together enough cash to open a brewery, etc. It’s a good story, but once I’d written it, I didn’t think I needed to write it again.

What I noticed about showing up at these breweries and announcing that I was “Donavan the beer writer” changed the conditions of the interview. I got special treatment because of my (small, but locally public) status. And that changed things. Because the beer scene is so small and tight knit, I found myself becoming more of cheerleader than a critic just because I thought these people were my friends. And they are my friends. But how does the critic say that their friend is brewing shitty beer? The friend says this in private, not on his blog.

I decided to go underground. I would be spectator. I would become invisible. Then I could write and say what I wanted. I would no longer be “Donavan the beer writer”. I would be “Joe Public.” I’d show up at a brewery and just ask questions like any other person. This worked alright for a couple of years, until Mike and I decided to start our own brewery. Now that I was (nominally) on the professional side of things, I couldn’t very well say that my fellow professional brewers (my friends again) were making shitty beer. And I couldn’t say that certain beer bars on Long Island didn’t know what they were doing and that they needed to clean up their act since they were my potential costumers. If I was trying to sell my beer I didn’t want to be “Donavan the dick that wrote a bad review of _____.”

But since I’m “in the business” now, I do have an interest in improving the brewing and craft beer scene on Long Island. I want the beer bars that serve RPAB beer to have knowledgeable servers and appropriate glassware filled to the appropriate level and for a fair price. I want my fellow brewers to make the best beer possible so that the average Long Island beer drinker will think, “Hey, that’s another one of those local brews, and in general, those local brews are pretty good, so I’m going to try this new one.”

Perhaps I’m wearing too many hats: writer, drinker, brewer, thinker, blogger… Am I spreading it too thin?

When Rich walked into DEKS he had a cooler with some sample bottles. One of the bottles was from a new Long Island brewery: Spider Bite Brewing Company in Holbrook (Larry Goldstein, owner/brewer).

I’d had some samples of Spider Bite at Bellport Dave’s annual charity event last summer. At the time Spider Bite will still (like my own brewery) was in the licensing process. “Best of luck,” I said.

“What is it?” I asked when Rich showed me the bottle of Got Bitten.

“It’s a pale ale,” he said.

Rich poured some sample glasses and we gave the beer a thoughtful taste.

The next evening, I was over in Port Jeff at C’est Cheese and Dave Conway-Lama (a beer geek who knows more about cheese than anyone else I know) said that he’d just sampled Spider Bite’s Got Bitten the previous evening also. “What did you think?” Dave asked me.

Got Bitten has a lot of bittering hops, but unlike other pale ales, it has an extremely dry finish. Typically, I expect a hoppy beer to balance bitterness with a fuller body and / or some residual sweetness. Some very hoppy beers go too far and are unbalanced in the sweet direction. Spider Bite’s take on the pale ale genre is different than any other commercial pale ale I know of. Their hop selection is suggestive of English pales. I image that Got Bitten would be very nice if served from a cask. Perhaps we’ll get that chance someday? At the 3rd Annual Long Island Nano Cask Fest?

When people ask me about Rocky Point Artisan Brewers, they invariably ask, “When are you quitting your day job?” Not any time soon! One reason for that is we’re still trying to convince the State that it’s a good idea to have a brewery in Rocky Point (but that’s another story).

Paul was the pioneer of nanobrewing on Long Island and has been making his system work as a weekend brewer for several years. He’s built up from brewing on a Sabco 10 gallon system to his present 3bbl system. So this next step is going to be a big one for Paul. Also, I really like the plan for Blind Bat to become a farm-brewery. With Regina, Paul’s wife, who is an organic farmer, taking care of the farm side of this things and Paul doing the beer — it sounds like a dream come true.

I wish Paul all the best as he takes Blind Bat to the next level!

My absolute favorite pub in all of England and Wales is the Fox and Hounds Inn in Great Wolford. I’ll give it a proper write-up soon, but here’s a picture of the beer engines on the bar there.

Not only did I try Ubu by Purity Brewing (on the right), but had a few of their other offerings at some other pubs. Ubu was really, really good.

My overall impression was that the condition of real ale in England has markedly improved in the last five years. More to come…

Also, I had a couple of things in my inbox when I got back. Alert readers pointed out two spots that I’ll try to cover for my guide: Breukelen Bier Merchants (182 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11221, 347.457.6350) and Long Island Ale House (2016 Route 112, Medford, NY 11763, 631-569-5515).

A few days back we had been talking about time travel when I pointed out that it wasn’t at all obvious that time was even something that could be moved about in. There was the usual banter about Einstein and his theory of relativity and how time was equivalent to space, mathematically speaking, but even though physicists like to pretend that bodies can move in both a forward and backward direction along the time axis, in reality, we only ever experience movement in one direction. This fundamental (experiential) asymmetry is why we can tell the difference between the past and the future.

“Let’s do a little experiment,” I said taking out my notebook and a pen.

“What kind of experiment?”

“Time travel,” I said. “What time is it?”

Doug checked his watch. 5:38 pm, Tuesday, August 9, 2011.

I wrote down 5:45 pm in my notebook and the following note: “Dear time traveler, When you get a moment, would you mind popping back to The H Bar at the time listed above. For your trouble we — the members of the Rhipidon Society — will buy you a beer of your choice. Yours—” and here I scribbled my signature.

“What’s the Rhipidon Society?” asked Doug.

“A Dick reference,” I said.

My response left Doug nonplussed, but I didn’t take any notice. Doug looked around the table to see if anyone else was confused by my remark. The Preacher shook his head at Doug and said, “Don’t ask.”

“What’s this all about?” asked Gary.

“You remember when we were talking about time travel the other day,” I said.

“Only vaguely,” said Gary. “I think I had too much to drink that night.”

“Too much is never enough,” said Doug.

“I’m going to prove that time travel is impossible,” I declared not hiding the look of smug self-satisfaction that had formed theatrically on my face. “In precisely [here I checked my time piece dramatically] precisely six minutes, a time traveler will either walk into the bar looking for the members of the Rhipidon Society, or not. If he shows up to claim his free pint of beer, then that will prove that time travel is not only possible, but affordable in the future. If no time traveler walks through the door then we can safely conclude that time travel is impossible.”

“Lester Winston, a scientist at the Institute for Advance Studies, used the same experiment to decide not to spend his career trying to invent a time machine.”

This last bit of information was offered up by Beerlover Ponch (more about him later).

“Surely, you mean the Institute for Advanced Study,” said the Preacher.

“No,” assured Beerlover Ponch, “I mean the Institute for Advance Studies, and minus a d which is located in a disused barn on a now non-functioning farm in rural Nebraska. The Institute was the creation of Lester Winston and had only one member, himself. And he decided that trying to invent a time machine was futile using the same method as our illustrious colleague Donavan here.”

“I don’t follow,” said Doug.

“Neither does the Preacher,” I said. “But salient difference is that he probably understands the nature of the paradox posed by these examples.”

Anyway, we were enjoying nice glasses of locally craftbrewed saison (shh! Arr pea ay bee) and we got to talking about beer culture here on the Island.

“Whatever happened to that drinking club that you started with Mike and Rich?” Bart asked.

“It turned into a homebrew club,” I said.

“Ouch,” Bart said sympathetically.

“It is, what it is,” said Mike.

“You know it’s not a bad idea,” said Bart. “A drinking club, that is. Not everyone in the craft beer world wants to brew.”

“There’s room enough in the world for the non-brewer to collectivate and make their voice heard,” I said.

“Is collectivate even a word?” Sherri (with an “i”) asked.

“No,” I said. “When I lubricate, I neologize.”

“It’s the glass’ fault,” said Mike.

“Or what’s in it.”

What is good for craft beer on Long Island is lots of small breweries making lots of different kinds of beer. To bring this about we craftbrewers cooperate with each other. And I do include non-professional brewers in the category of Long Island craftbrewers. It’s the gals and guys brewing beer at home that have always driven the craft beer movement in this country. The home craftbrewer is the future professional brewer. Of course, not everyone who makes their own beer at home will open a nano- or microbrewery or brewpub, but learning the process and honing one’s brewing skills on the small scale is essential before making that grand leap into the brewing business.