Who watches DVD bonus features? I actually feel badly for the directors and actors who have to sit in a miked room and make banter in real time as they watch their own movie. Movies are talkies now; they speak for themselves. I generally feel the same way about beer. The producer has released the final product and it’s up to the beer-goer to get from it what he will.

But it would be kinda cool if each bottle of beer came with an audio commentary. Like you could hear the brewmaster introduce what he was going for as you crack off the crown. As you pour it into your glass, the brewmaster’s voice share anecdotes about creating the recipe or the first brew day for that beer in far greater detail than any label could ever fit. I mean, the copy on those neck labels are basically just Tweets.

Then, as you get deeper into your beer, maybe some of the other brewery voices chime in, like the owner’s reaction to their first sip or how they feel about the online reviews. Maybe the brewmaster has a great story about what someone told her about the beer as she poured it at a festival. Beers have stories aplenty, and the most important one is the one you create as you drink it, but for funsies, it’d be cool to hear all the back stories the brewers could fill us in on.

Of course, the other bonus features associated with DVDs would be even more awesome. Wouldn’t you love to try the pilot batches, including the outtakes of ones that didn’t make the final cut? Out tastes! And since no film isn’t also accompanied by trailers these days, we’d love to try some coming attractions from the breweries. That way, if you cellar a particular beer, when you drink it five years down the road, you’d wax nostalgic about that great seasonal beer from three or four years back.

What bonus feature would you add to your beers? And no, no matter how many “extras” you “load” it with, rewind isn’t considered a bonus.

Admittedly, some of the songs I bought because of the subject matter. I’m looking at you Garth Brooks and George Jones, whose duet “B Double E Double Are You In” may or may not be a country juggernaut (but it’s infinitely better than the Toby Keith/Willie Nelson duet “Beer for My Horses”… Really, Willie?) Speaking of Beer Runs, Todd Snider’s Western ditty is easily a favorite.

And that’s just the thing. Most of these songs I just have. The Brodys were never famous (outside Davis, CA) but their song “Beer Truck Driver” should’ve topped the charts. Of course I have “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” performed by John Lee Hooker.  I’m guessing my wife has George Thorogood’s version (since he’s her cousin). Another awesome blues tune I have is only vaguely beery: “Get Off the Table Mabel (the Two Dollars is for the Beer)” by Bullmoose Jackson and the Flashcats. Similarly, don’t ask how an album by NY hockey-punk band  Two Man Advantage ended up in my CD collection, but since they formed in a beer-league, three of their cuts make my list. (Sample lyric from “Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow”: Life’s a bitch without no beer, so buy enough to last all year.)

While blues, country, and rock are duly represented, I really love folk drinking songs. It’s possible—probable—that my German ones all sing the praises of bier, but my Irish one contains one of the best pub songs ever, Beer, Beer, Beer (about the man who invented beer, Charlie Mops… who made it out of hops)

Incidentally, how do we feel about songs with the word “brew,” be it the jazzy bitches kind, the psych-rock strange kind, or the special one that 2-Toners Bad Manners served up?

Alas, Ludacris’s hip hop album, Chicken-N-Beer, is not the Holy Grail, as it contains no tracks about the former or the latter.

There’s not shortage of by, about and for beer. What are some of your favorites?

But the beer poured that night did not come from the brewery that hosted the party to ring in the new year. Instead, all of the kegs and casks came from the brewery’s in-state competitors. Wait… what?

In what industry would a business host a party for insiders, enthusiasts and potential customers and serve its competitors’ creations and not its own?

Along those same lines, another local brewery recently ran into a problem with its bottle caps not fitting properly, and it discovered this issue only after a third of its bottles had already been released. Three area breweries immediately stepped in to offer help. They loaned the brewery a corker, supplied corks and cages and provided advice on the corking process.

Why would breweries down the road from each other want to help another brewery put its beer on shelves beside their very own bottles?

This summer, a tropical storm flooded The Alchemist Pub and Brewery in Waterbury, VT. Head brewer John Kimmich had to empty sixteen tanks of his beer “down the drain just to get them [to stand] back up on their feet.” Fortunately, he found four secondary tanks that were still standing and under pressure.

Steve Miller with Harpoon Brewery sent sixty-four kegs two days later to The Alchemist to hold the rescued beer. Matt Nadeau at Rock Art Brewery stored the Harpoon kegs filled with The Alchemist beer at his facilities. Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead Brewery helped bottle The Alchemist brew coming from the Harpoon kegs that Rock Art had stored. All of these breweries have operations in Vermont, and all of them make beer.

Why would you not want one fewer player in your market, even if it were temporary?

The brewery that held the New Year’s Eve party a month ago had a good reason for not serving its beer. Because it was new, the brewery was still in the process of obtaining the required permits from the state’s alcohol-governing body to serve its beer. If this is the case, why hold an event featuring competitors’ beers in the first place?

Writing about the Vermont beer industry in particular, Kimmich tells us why. “The… brewing community in its entirety is one of the most unique entities in the world, a group of like-minded and caring people that want nothing more than to share their passion for beer with the public.”

Fortunately for all of us, it is this passion that makes brewers’ biggest competitors their biggest supporters. How has your local brewing community shown support for its members recently?

California is not the only state with laws restricting who may fill growlers and how it may be done. In Maine, breweries similarly can fill only their own growlers, and they “must be sealed…with a seal that is tamper evident.” Maine brewers also cannot sell growlers past 10:00 p.m. Prior to 2009, they could sell growlers only from a separate brewery store with a separate entrance.

North Carolina laws permit breweries to fill any growler “provided a label is affixed to the growler” that displays, among other information, “the brand name of the product.” Breweries may refill growlers sold by other breweries if they “relabel the growler prior to filling it” and “remove, deface or cover any permanent or non-permanent labels prior to affixing a new label.”

On the other end of the spectrum, the Montana governor signed a bill last April that allows retailers, including bars, restaurants and bottle shops, to fill just about any growler. Previously, breweries could fill other breweries’ growlers, but the new law made it lawful for “an on-premises retailer to sell or furnish beer…in growlers… Growlers may not be filled in advance of sale and may be furnished by the consumer.” Georgia, Virginia and South Carolina have similar regulations on the books. For example, Green’s Beverages, which has several locations in South Carolina, has “full service growler systems” and even a “frequent filler” membership program.

You may ask why anyone would care who fills a growler and whose growler they fill. In the case of breweries filling growlers other than their own, the brewery listed on the container would not want consumers to mistakenly associate their brand name with the beer inside the container should it not be their own.

Brewers already lose one tier of quality control when they release kegs to bars and restaurants. The originating brewery typically lacks the ability to monitor beer storage, beer temperature and the status of a retailer’s draft lines. If a retailer fills a growler for a consumer to take home, the brewery surrenders another level of assurance that their beer is properly served. The retailer may not fill or seal the growler properly, and the consumer may provide the retailer with an unclean container.

A dirty growler filled from a dirty draft line and without a proper seal may create the perfect storm to cause an uneducated consumer to write off drinking beer from the brewery listed on the growler again.

Educational initiatives like Ray Daniels’ Cicerone Certification Program have improved the consumer experience at beer bars and restaurants across the country, from bartenders pouring into the appropriate glassware to servers recommending an exceptional pairing for dinner. Similar educational programs presented to retailers and consumers about growlers may alleviate most of the previously mentioned qualms that breweries have about others putting their beer or another brewery’s beer into these glass containers.

And maybe I will be able to make use of all these jugs taking up precious beer-storage space in my house. How many empty growlers do you have laying around?

What we have here is a full-blown trend, and it’s TBD whether that’s a good thing. For folks fond of saying, “I prefer dark beers,” the push toward higher SRM numbers is welcomed. Pushing the boundaries is awesome. But are they going dark for the sake of darkness?

I remember first tasting The Bruery’s Black Orchard, a black wheat beer partially spiced with coriander and orange peel, and smiling as I realized it was essentially a Black Witbier. Black and white in the same beer? Look to the cookie!

Cut to 2012 and three of the first new beers to glide across my tongue and down my gullet were BridgePort’s Dark Rain, Grand Teton’s 5 O’Clock Shadow, and Widmer Bros. W’12 Dark Saison. They are a “Black Pale Ale,” “Double Black Lager,” and “Dark Saison,” respectively. They’re all good with varying degrees of tell-tale roastiness (5 O’Clock Shadow cleaning the others’ clocks in the chocolate/coffee-like department). Of them, my biggest beef purely stylistically is Dark Rain. Many have argued, successfully even, that “Black IPA” is not that oxymoronic because IPAs have a characteristic all their own despite having its color—pale—placed right in the category. But Black Pale? In this interview at Not So Professional Beer Blog, brewmaster Jeff Edgerton saves it by saying, “I argued that we should keep the ABV in a lower range to make this beer a bit more sessionable than the CDAs and Black IPAs that tend to be in the higher range. ‘Black Pale Ale’ seemed to be the most honest and accurate descriptor for this style.” At 5.6 percent ABV and 60 IBUs, it strikes the tastebuds as an American Pale Ale but with a kick of roasty astringency, but how is that not a hoppy dry porter?

I’d be remiss in not mentioning that while there aren’t a ton of Double Black Lagers (yet), singular such lagers, Schwarzbiers, are terribly traditional and terribly delicious. Other than something in a Doppelbock, Grand Teton’s may be the ideal wintry lager.

Funnily, perhaps there are signs that the black tide is ending as it begins. Two years after unleashing Juxtapostion, practically dubbed a Double Black Pilsner, Stone’s latest collaboration beer is More Brown Than Black IPA, thereby dialing back the black. They’ve already done a handful of Black IPAs; maybe it’s time to ricochet toward pale.

So, are you a fan of all this blackening? How much more black can craft beer get? Think it’s none more black, or that we’re just getting started? And if the latter, what style would you like to see blackened like Cajun shrimp?

Los Angeles is just now, once again, getting its feet wet in the craft brewing industry and timing, as they say (including Newman), is everything. He’s looking forward to exploring LA culture—beer and otherwise. Having helped put Vermont on the beer map, the state that boasts the most breweries per capita (over 20), I asked Newman about brewing in LA, which most likely has the fewest breweries per capita (under 6) of any major US city.

All About Beer Magazine: How’s your new brewery coming along?

Alan Newman: We’re 3 months away from TTB permitting. The brewery should be up and running before approval. When a new owner buys they have to reapply. We’re a new owner. Michael… moved the brewery from Torrance and I don’t think it was fully licensed, but it wouldn’t have mattered.

AAB: How’d this come about?

Newman: By coincidence. I like the LA market. And I’ve known Michael for 15 years. Over dinner with him, talking about what’s going on, he said, “Why don’t you buy mine.” It was just that simple.

AAB: So if Alchemy & Science isn’t brewing beer under its own label, is this a farm situation, perhaps like Tenth & Blake from MillerCoors (that owns Leinenkugel’s, Terrapin, etc)? Or maybe like Craft Brewers Alliance (Widmer Bros, Redhook, Kona)?

Newman: I’m not trying to be evasive. I’ve never had a conversation with (Tenth & Blake) ever. Nor with Kurt (Widmer) in years. I believe that craft beer is really about meeting the need for the customer profile. I’ve always felt that one of the things we had going at Magic Hat was that we operated independently. Were we? No! We had venture capitalists. But to the world we appeared independent. The more you can keep things small, the more you can accomplish things.

This is our (A&S)’s first project. This will operate independent of anything else we do. It will share a marketing staff and some back-end stuff, but when it comes to brewing and selling beer, all that will be done independently by people at Angel City.

AAB: What’s Boston Beer’s involvement?

Newman: I deal with (founder) Jim (Koch) and  (CEO) Martin (Roper). We have a weekly conference call. They’ve yet to say no to anything or push back on anything. I pretty much have a clean sheet of paper. They’re a great financial partner. The advantage of them over past equity partners is they’re not looking for a short way to grow the business. It’s very different than even with a flip intention in mind.

It’s the best of both worlds. We operate on an indie basis. Do they know what I’m doing? Sure. Sometimes I go to them for advice because they’re smart people. I personally have nothing to do with Boston Beer people.

AAB: The press release for this has the phrase “Legacy Solutions.” Is that something Fritz Maytag and Ken Allen grappled with in selling Anchor and Anderson Valley Brewing, respectively?

Newman: We’re pretty opportunistic. The goal is to not overeat and get so stuffed that we can’t get up from the table. We don’t know where that number is. Can we operate two entities? Four? I just don’t know. Over time we’ll start sorting that out.

There are probably more potential deals that we can handle, and some we’ll turn down.  The only thing off our plate is anything that’s Sam Adams related.

My conversations with Jim didn’t start until after that (Maytag’s and Allen’s sales). Both were long done by then. But there needs to be a caretaker for some of these brands. Otherwise it falls to the private equity people. Totally different set of methods. There are going to be more (Maytags and Allens) that want to get out, and to maximize their out.

Michael (Bowe) just had his 60^th birthday. He was tired out. He got close to the finish line but got so worn out getting there that he just couldn’t take it home. You’d have to ask him, but he felt we’d protect the legacy of his own brand.

AAB: So what do you have in mind for Angel City?

Newman: Our hope is to become one of the breweries to drive the category. Our goals are quite simple, same as I had at Magic Hat: To become part of the community. LA is not my home. I’ll be out here almost full time to understand how Angel City becomes part of the renaissance in downtown LA. How do we become a good corporate citizen and drive its growth and become a favorite son. I don’t have a magic wand.

AAB: Is Michael out entirely?

Newman: He has a consulting relationship. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna do next in life. We have a good relationship. But his relationship moving forward is loose at the moment. We don’t have a new brewer yet.

AAB: You won’t find it at Office Depot…

It’s hardly going out on a limb to guarantee that for those of us who live, breathe, and oh yeah – drink – these amazing beers, plenty of new brands and styles will delight us in the year to come.

And the one to come after that, Mayan predictions for the end of mankind be damned.

But that’s not the future of beer; that’s the here and now. As I opened my dedicated beer chiller to select my first beer of 2012, I felt as if my extended arm and pinchers were like a roulette ball in search of where to land. Would it be the bomber of a root beer ale, the wax-dipped cinnamon-smoked apple cider, the gold foil-topped oaked barleywine from a teensy batch that many geeks are clamoring for? Nope.

It was none of the above.

It was the 12-oz bottle of Pale Ale that sells for $6 a six-pack. Beer that tastes like beer. The classics. The jeans-and-a-T-shirt of beer styles – pale ales. And don’t tell Ray Daniels, but I’m drinking it straight from the bottle!!

Infinitely more brands of pale ale sell way better than the most vaunted sour beer (it doesn’t take an MBA to understand volume). Sure, the beer I’m having happens to have many gold and other medals to its credit from GABF and the World Beer Cup, but last I checked, those are still auspicious.

It’s a nice reminder the beers that first made us fall in love with craft beer are still delicious.

With over thousand beers available across the world from which we could choose, we each brought beers brewed within thirty miles of where our respective houses stood. This was entirely unplanned.

Not only were the beers made close-by, but some of their ingredients came from just down the road from the mash tuns and bright tanks. One of the beers had local honey added to it before it was aged in bourbon barrels, and another one was brewed with wild fruit harvested from an adjacent county.

Let’s compare this experience to the ability to find “local” beer just a few decades ago.

In the 1960s and 70s, because Coors still limited its distribution, “a common rite of passage for college men in the Midwest and even the East was a road trip to one of the 11 western states in which Coors was distributed to pick up cases of the beer.” Similarly, President Gerald Ford grabbed cases of Coors in 1975 to bring back to Washington on Air Force One.

In 1980, there were 48 brewing companies in the United States. The road trips were not as long anymore, and the definition of “local” beer shifted to mean that it was brewed along your particular coast or maybe within a three-state radius of where you resided.

By 2001, the beer industry had ballooned, and there were over 1,400 operating breweries in the country. Drinking “local” for most people meant that the particular brew was crafted within the borders of your own state.

As of last month, 1,927 breweries existed within the United States, and another 855 were in the planning stages. The Brewers Association reports that “[m]ore than 50 breweries in over 20 states have opened in the past two months.”

Having a “local” beer now means taking a short trip in your car during your lunch break or riding your bike down the street on a Saturday afternoon to enjoy an IPA brewed by your neighbor.

And instead of importing hops, malts and other ingredients from another part of the country or abroad, your neighbor may be using ingredients harvested or cultured within your state. Last month, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head introduced the brewery’s Delaware Native Ale, or “DNA,” that features, in addition to Delaware hops, peach and pear juices, a wild yeast strain that Dogfish employees discovered in the state. An 18th-century mill in Delaware even “came alive for the first time in 50 years to mill 400 pounds of barley for the limited-edition beer.”

Similarly, Mother Earth Brewing Co. in North Carolina is currently brewing a one-barrel batch of its “All-NC” beer. The pale ale uses Cascade hops from Echoview Farm and malt from Riverbend Malt House, both located within the state.

“Super local” has become the new “local,” and as much fun as beer trips can be, I’m glad that I didn’t have to travel across the country to bring back a good beer to share with my brothers.

How far did you travel this holiday season to bring back beers that you wanted to share with your family and friends?

Shaped like a mini-keg on its side, the appliance sits on a refrigerator shelf and makes “a true draft beer experience possible in a few easy steps.” After charging the system’s battery, all you have to do is “insert the beer refill’s pouring spout, place and rotate the beer refill into the tap system to lock into place, close the system, pour and enjoy.”

The Draftmark tap system costs $49.99, and one-gallon refills of Budweiser, Shock Top and Bass Pale Ale will be available for $13.99 each. After you break the seal on a refill bag, the system is supposed to keep the beer fresh for thirty days.

A-B InBev likely developed Draftmark in response to two other macro breweries’ home draft systems—Heineken’s DraughtKeg that has been on the market since 2005 and MillerCoors’ Home Draft that was introduced in 2009. Both of these systems similarly promise fresh beer for thirty days.

Craft breweries have also catered to enthusiasts who want the draft experience at home. For example, Bell’s releases 5-liter mini-kegs of its most popular brews including Oberon, Two Hearted and Hopslam, and Olde Hickory distributes the same-sized containers of a few of its year-round offerings like its Ruby Lager, Table Rock Pale Ale and Piedmont Pilsner. In Bell’s case, the brewery recommends “to finish the container within 24-48 hours” because it fears “the carbonation will start to suffer.”

Perhaps the most popular method of enjoying draft-style beer at home, however, is by way of a growler. Depending on your state’s alcohol laws, you can now even fill up the 64-oz glass jug with craft beer straight from the tap at a grocery store. Whole Foods has “growler stations” at more than thirty-six of their stores, and at one of its New York City locations, “growlers make up half the beer store’s business.”

Nonetheless, macro breweries like A-B InBev, Heineken and MillerCoors have not jumped into the growler game. And a growler, unfortunately, will not keep a beer fresh for anywhere close to thirty days after you open it.

Consider this paragraph near the end of A-B InBev’s press release for Draftmark:

Draftmark also brings a level of casual sophistication to home entertaining, allowing beer drinkers to be more involved in the experience, from selecting the right glass, to learning the perfect pour, to choosing from a variety of beer styles.

This sounds like a bottle party I attended this past weekend where a few other passionate beer enthusiasts shared hard-to-find bottles and growlers full of taproom-only beers. Though we used small tasting glasses throughout the night, we all instinctively poured the growlers at forty-five degree angles for the perfect head, and the variety of styles represented would have made a BJCP Style Committee member’s head spin.

A-B InBev promises that Draftmark will enable you to have this experience with beer that lasts up to thirty days. Regardless of whether your festivities this holiday season will include macro or craft beer, home tap systems or growlers, we can all be thankful for the opportunity to share a draft beer experience in the warmth of our own homes with friends and family.

That’s the way I feel about getting drunk. I love getting my buzz on, but hate being intoxicated. As adults of legal drinking age, whenever we’re at a beer festival, craft beer bar, or just a fellow beer geek’s house, we become that proverbial kid in a candy store. With childlike wonderment, we want to experience everything on offer, forgetting about the tummy aches we suffered when we overdosed on sweets. Take the Great American Beer Fest for example. There are almost 2,500 beers available to sample… only one ounce at a time. But try to get through them all and you’d end up drinking around 400 pints (though you’d be dead before even tasting your way out of the Pacific region). Even putting the collegiate members of the crowd who drink for sport aside, diehard beer fans still want to experience as many stellar beers as they can, and you can’t blame them. One might never see that rare beer again.

With multi-tap bars springing up in most cities and towns, there’s likely a veritable beerfest near you on a daily basis. Rotating taps equal new hopportunities. Even if you loved the first pint you ordered, there are so many tantalizing options on the board you order a different one the next round, then a third, until you wake up wondering how many of those great beers you barely remember appreciating. And moreover, why’d you eat two bacon-wrapped hot dogs or all those pigs in a blanket some time after stumbling out of the bar?

Hangovers are the consequence of experiencing too much of a good thing. If you ever drink yourself to the point of them, the upside is that it means you still have enough youthful inquisitiveness and vigor to explore the world of beer. The downside is that you’re still a knucklehead who needs to admit you have limitations.

How often do you get intoxicated? Do you catch yourself saying, “I’m never drinking again?” Or have you already accepted that maybe you have to only have a few beers instead of several? Or that most bars will let you order half pints since there’s more than three beers on tap you need to try.