THE SESSION #128— BEER BLOGGING FRIDAYThe Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants, along with a short pithy critique of each entry.
Deep Beer hosted The Session #128 — Beer Blogging Friday for October 2017. The theme chosen is Bottle Shops: Good, Bad & The Ugly.
The Round Up
First, I want to thank all of this month's contributors. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your bottle shop adventures. This episode of The Session again takes us all around the world — Burma, Bend OR, San Francisco via Portland OR, Belgium, San Jose CA, into many ventures and experiences of the Bottle Shop: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.
Luke takes us to The Golden Place in Burma. If you are traveling to Bend OR anytime soon, you will want to read Jon's post. Nick takes us to Brussels Belgium, Finland, and Bierothek Nürnberg. I love his declaration and could not agree more, I really do like bottle shops and they cost me a lot of money. Derrick reminds us that while there are great bottle shops around the world, sometimes its the one just around the corner that is most important. As I read Brian's post it seems that we were living in parallel universes on opposite coasts. BTW — do you know what a CONE-IPA is? Read Brian's post to find out.
Luke Corbin of Luke Corbin.com
I thought that a reflection on my local bottle shop here in Yangon (Rangoon), Burma, might stand as an interesting counterpoint to most of the other pieces in the round-up. So there it is – the Golden Palace, a hole-in-the-wall bottle shop on the corner of 46th St and Bogyoke Rd in downtown Rangoon. Easy to walk past – doesn’t look like much, does it? But this deceptively small cave has plenty of goodies within. Let’s peer inside.
“So there it is – the Golden Palace, a hole-in-the-wall bottle shop — easy to walk past — doesn’t look like much — but this deceptively small cave has plenty of goodies within.”
Jon Abernathy of The Brew Site
The two Bend bottle shops are The Brew Shop and Broken Top Bottle Shop. For each, the bottle shop portion is not necessarily their primary business; The Brew Shop is first a homebrew supply shop, and a bottle shop second, while BTBS is a beer bar/pub first, with bottles the secondary addition.
“Knowing the beer, and keeping a good rotation—that’s pretty essential to running a good bottle shop. Also looking for new beers and keeping your regulars informed as to what’s new is a key component of that.”
Nick Chase of Lautering.net
I first ran into a bottle shop in Brussels. The characteristics of those shops is that they have a huge variety of different brands and types and only some bottles of the same beer. When you enter a bottle shop you immediately realize "I have not enough money with me" and start putting some bottles back into the shelf while you then have a second thought: "I have the credit card with me".
“When you enter a bottle shop you immediately realize, I have not enough money with me.”
Derrick Peterman at Ramblings of a Beer Runner Running
Why Royal Liquors is One of the Best Damn Bottle Shops Around
A good opportunity to give a shout out to my neighborhood bottle shop, Royal Liquors in San Jose, CA. It may not have a big-time reputation as other places in the San Francisco Bay Area and since it’s just a couple miles from my home, you could say I’m a little biased. It’s still one of the best damn bottle shops around, so let me tell you why.
“There’s a lot of good stuff at Royal Liquors, some of it kept “hidden” in the back. I call this place the “inner sanctum” and you can to find some prize bottles there. ”
Brian Yaeger at BrianYaeger.com
Bottle shops are great because — besides the obvious, which is that it’s where you go to buy good beer and get recommendations from the employees who ought to be the most credible, local experts — they’re the closest beer lovers have to treasure chests.
“One of the most fun things you can do at a huge bottle shop, especially one that’s in a less populated town or even in the less trendy neighborhoods, is getting down on your hands and knees and moving bottles around to rifle through dusty, forgotten and forlorn bottles in the back that less eagle-eyed whale hunters have missed.”
Jack Perdue at Deep Beer
To complete the journey, there was my treatise about bottle shops, some of the questions I would ask shop owners and some hacks I've learned from working in a bottle shop for nearly ten years.
“This crucial duty, the one that earns him the beer guy title, is choosing exactly which beer to order. It is for the sole reason that the beer guy must be befriended, because after all, he holds the key to the exclusive beery castle.”
