I know this post is a little late, but I figured I would make it so I could add in the pictures I took...
So Sam, Clay, and I decided to go check out the 3rd Annual RVABrewBQ (Ercell couldn't make it- he was invited!) so we could taste samplings from the ELEVEN (11) different breweries in Richmond!
Each brewery had a couple of different beers, as I said a sampling and the customers/ tasters were killing it. Within a couple of hours of arriving around 1:30 or 2 there were a number of breweries who were down to only one offering, and Bold Rock was completely out by 3:30. Does this mean that ciders are more popular than beers or do cider drinkers just drink more than beer drinkers? I don't know, nor do I care to find out. I'll keep drinking beers, and the occasional cider, and enjoying them all.
Train of thought- back to beer- the whole ticketing system was alright; tickets were a dollar, two tickets got you a sample pour and six tickets got you a full pour. All in all not a bad deal as most places around Richmond charge around $5 or $6 for a full pour of any local beer, but you usually don't get to talk to the brewer while you drink it. I'm not going to go into detail about the specific beers as a) I drank a bunch of them b) like I said, I waited too long to write this, and c) my taste in beers isn't on par with current beer drinking trends and I don't want this blog to crash because I rail against IPAs.
Overall, it was a great time with a lot of great food (lots of really good bbq- we ate at both Alamo BBQ and Boardwalk), a lot of great beer, and what seemed to be a lot of happy beer-drinkers getting to enjoy the summer weather and drinking outside! My only hope for next year is that Richmond has more breweries so there are even more options. It'd be great if breweries could figure out a cost-effective and efficient way to bring a larger sampling of their brews.
Anyway, look at the photos- I took them, and tell me what you thought of the festival if you went. If you didn't go, why not? What would entice you to go?
What do you think of my photos? Are they any good?
Does the Virginia Beer Blog need to find a new official photographer?
Are there more questions I should be asking?
Less?
Questions?
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Google Trends: Beer vs. Wine vs. Distilled Spirits
I was checking out the fantastic Virginia craft beer site vabeertrail.net, and the aggregation functions of the site got me thinking about the overall growth of interest in craft beer in the state. As far as I know, beer has always been a challenger to wine's popularity in Virginia. I figured that with the explosion of interest in craft beer, maybe beer was catching up to wine.
I turned to a nifty site Google put up a while ago called Google Trends. It's important to note that this data is from Google web searches, so it really only reflects the interest of users searching the internet with Google.com.
As you can see in the Google Trends chart, interest in beer and wine ebb and flow in a similar pattern. Wine does have peaks during the holidays that beer doesn't always share.
I don't want to assume too much from this data, it's just interesting to look at and consider how far beer has come in this state. Beer is closer to wine as of June 2014 than it has been since 2004.
Google Trends Report
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