Have you ever heard of the Brookston Beer Bulletin? Yeah, me neither. Regardless, they’ve compiled one of those end-of-the-year must haves, a top ten list.

According to author Jay Brooks, the 10 most important and influential breweries that began within the last ten years, belong mostly to the West Coast, but our very own Surly Brewing got awarded #6. Here’s the full article and list.

Regardless of what I might think my choice of beer says about me or what your choice of beer says about you, this is serious stuff to the people whose job it is to figure out what I drink, why I drink it and how that might influence my choices about new products coming on the market. Of course the folks I’m talking about are the ones who are in charge of advertising.

Check out this article from Advertising Age. You’ll have to scroll down most of the way to get to the section on craft beer drinkers, although some of the findings about certain macro drinkers is at least mildly interesting.

A beer-swilling, donut-eating co-worker of mine passed along to me some links to Men’s Health magazine wherein they discuss America’s top 25 craft beers and top 5 craft beer cities.  There’s also a another little section they do about the best and worst beers to drink (from a health perspective I guess).  Minnesota and the upper Midwest are noticeably absent from these articles.  And while I’m a bit annoyed, I guess I’m also thankful.  Men’s Health is not my go-to source for good beer advice.  Besides, I’d be a bit embarrassed for us to see Bender or Farm Girl make the list as great, low calorie, low carb beers to drink to keep one’s muffin-tops small.  Keep in mind that I’m chubbily biased.  For those of you who ARE concerned about dying at 55, you might find these articles interesting.

I don’t recall if this was posted already (a cursory search showed nothing), but damnit, it needs to be.  Flat Earth is sporting a new website.  There are no Rush tunes playing when you visit it, so you’ll have to fire up your CD player to get the full effect.