It's Not Easy to Type with One Hand.

The little feller is asleep in my other arm. He's the full-time job these days. So it's with some mixed feelings that I report to you the demise of Beers of the World, a nice little British magazine that had published my work a couple of times. I had hoped it would do so again.

It really tickles my wife whenever I make some duckets from this funny beer writing thing. One source of tickling has left us. Sad news in this house.

There is some able pondering here and here about whether this demise signals "the end of beer writing as we know it," as Mr. Tierney Jones said, and Mr. Hieronymus said again. The speculation: There's just not many duckets in beer magazines, therefore not many duckets in clever, long-form feature writing about our favorite subject. Meanwhile those pesky bloggers are giving lots of clever (and not so clever) writing away for free.

So, a question: Are beer blogs the future of beer writing?

God, I hope not. Here's the thing: I sort of dislike reading beer blogs. Sorry, guys. Ironic and true.

This here laptop, you see, is for work. Even if I waste lots of time on it, and even if the work is often lots of fun. Reading blogs feels like work to me. Cracking a book or a magazine, however, and putting up my feet... now that's leisure time. That's pleasure.

Now that I think about it, I don't even like writing about beer blogging. I'd rather just write about beer. For people who really like beer. Enough then.

Tomorrow morning, obscenely early, I'm off to London for an afternoon at the Great British Beer Festival. I hope to squeeze an article or two out of it. Something that would give somebody, somewhere, pleasure. That would help justify the price of the train ticket. And tickle my wife. And if I can't sell anything, well... I've got this other project here, in my other arm.

Just hope he doesn't expect to go to a nice college.

Worth noting: The recent launch of Beer Connoisseur magazine. At the moment it is essentially a collection of beer blogs. But friend and colleague Chuck Cook reassures me that there are plans for a quarterly print version to launch in November. Here you should read Chuck's recent column on the new Moeder Lambic.