Sunday, January 04, 2009

Happy New Year

Yes 2009 is finally upon us. 2008 has passed. It was an interesting year for beer. Nationally and globally the biggest story was the InBev buy out of A-B leading to a mega-brewery. Somewhat smaller in scope was MolsonCoors merging North American Operations with SABMiller. I would say that 2009 will bring more of the same but I'm not sure who would merge with whom. On a more local scale Texas saw more breweries than ever entering our market. Oskar Blues, Brooklyn Brewery, Summit, Pike, Greenflash, Boulevard, and many more came into Texas providing us with more choices than ever. Locally Houston saw the opening of another brewery in Southern Star, and Saint Arnold's continues to make award winning beer. In 2009 we get to look forward to Saint Arnold's opening its new brewery as well as more canned beer from Southern Star. What new breweries will come into Texas this next year? I'm not sure, but one thing is for sure, they will be many, and they will continue to expand our beer palates and that's a good thing.
From my side of things this has been a good year. I've written 137 posts this year. Not bad, but I want more. I want to continue to do my tasting notes that I hope folks find useful. But I also plan to write more on Texas Beer, and Houston bars and restaurants that serve good beer. Throw in a few interviews from Texas Breweries and maybe even some writings on beer travel and I should have a pretty packed year in 2009.
Since the holiday's occurred it has been a while from my last post so here's a couple of quick notes on what I've missed:

- The latest session hosted by Beer and Firkins and they have posted the roundup from their festivities. Go check it out.
- Lastly NY Times Eric Asimov writes on Barrel aged beer. Good informative article.

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