Author Archives: Tasha

Great American Beer Fest Part I: On Being First Timer and On Beer

Walking into Great American Beer Fest (GABF) for the first time, the first thing I truly noticed was the din. The sound differential between the room where I had my wristband checked one last time and the room containing all the beer was substantial, and I found that reasonably surprising because there were so many people on both sides, and the doors were open between them. Just goes to show how well even small barriers work as sound dampening.

I arrived later than expected; the start time on my Friday ticket was 5:30 pm, but I was delayed until about 7:00pm. There was still a line to get in at that point, but the lines I experienced later were far more intense.

For example, the Saturday morning line involved several people holding signs like this one, announcing where the end of the line was.… Continue reading →

Accidental Cider Share

Bill and I have been traveling a bunch recently. When we travel, we tend to rent places from Air BnB. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth reiterating. It is, at this point, rare that we stay in a hotel.

It’s not just the fact that we can make our own coffee, make our own breakfast, and almost always bigger than a hotel room for the money. It’s that the space we get is more usable, overall. When we stay in hotels, we spend most of our time visiting with friends in coffee shops, breweries, or restaurants.

But when we stay in places we find on AirBnB, we have many more options. Like visiting a nice local bottle shop, and deciding to buy several ciders (and one beer!),… Continue reading →

Thinking about Beer Blogging

As I mentioned a couple posts back, I recently attended a conference for beer bloggers (aptly, if uninspiringly, named “Beer Bloggers Conference”). It was my first time attending, and not long after, I was trying to assess if I wanted to go back, and if it’d been what I’d expected.

I have still not figured it out, but I realized that the answers to four questions might have been useful back when I was trying to decide to attend in the first place or not. So, I emailed thirteen other bloggers and asked those questions after this year’s con. Ten folks’ answers are fairly short, so I’ve included all of those in this post. For the three bloggers who answered one or more questions with greater depth there will be a post each in November (while I work on NaNoWriMo again).… Continue reading →

What I’m Reading Now

I just started a new job on Monday. It’s nothing glamorous (the hiring manager was, in fact, emphatic about that), but it’s with great people and at a company (Cicerone) I am highly interested in. It’s also about an hour away from my house on the bus, so I have had to start contemplating reading material.

Combine that with having had had several folks mention they’d either love to know what I, specifically, am reading (usually due to the things I write about here), or that they, generally, just get a kick out of seeing what anyone else is reading. And a new tag/series on MetaCookbook, “What I’m Reading,” is born.

Currently, I’m reading The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food by Garrett Oliver.… Continue reading →

An Unexpected Travel Frenzy Lead to Onion Soup… Sorta

I was in town for only a week between trips just now. While Bill and I travel often, this sort of thing is much more commonly his domain than mine. In fact, he’s nearly in the same boat. Just as I was leaving for San Diego, he was sent by work to New York City to do some things over a weekend. This time, though, he was the one back sooner.

As we have a once a week vegetable delivery from a local(-ish) farm, this sort of travel can lead to excessive veggies in our fridge. Combine that with our farm telling us to please use or freeze the onions as quickly as possible, and our having done a surprisingly good job gardening to get a recipe for me finding myself last Friday staring at a bunch of food that I either needed to deal with before we left this morning, or hope was going to be good when we returned.… Continue reading →