Costa Rica's Craft Nets Silver in Chile.

Not bad for a brewery that's barely nine months old.

Costa Rica's Craft Brewing Company is maxing out its brewhouse and selling every drop it makes. The beer is now available in 8o-odd bars and restaurants across the country, with a waiting list of would-be clients who are ready for the brewery to add more capacity (i.e. fermenters). The early success says at least as much about the locals' thirst for something different as it does for the quality of the beers.

About that quality: An international jury in Chile thought highly of it (a jury that included Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker and beer writer Jay Brooks, among others). At the Copa Cervezas de America, CRCB just won a silver for Segua, its hoppy red ale. Congratulations are due to brewmaster C.S. Derrick and the brewery team.

The four gold medal winners: Augustijn Blonde from Belgium's Van Steenberge, the Weizenbier from Brazil's Cervejaria Bamberg, Holland's La Trappe Dubbel, and the Stout from Chile's own Cuello Negro. Augustijn also won the Best Beer award, while Cervejaria Bamberg won Best Brewery.

Besides Van Steenberge, other Belgian breweries to take home medals included Bosteels, St. Bernardus and Brunehaut. Scotland's Brew Dog won a silver for its Hardcore IPA.

Also interesting: The organizers based the beer categories on the standard BJCP guidelines, but they also added a few subcategories: Patagonian Pale, Patagonian Amber, and Patagonian Brown.

The contest's entries and awards were mainly dominated by South American breweries, although a few from elsewhere participated. The organizers billed it as "Latin America's most important beer competition," although this was a first-time event. Regardless, the award for Segua makes a sort of statement for Costa Rica and more broadly for Central America, a region that is generally forgotten amid discussions about craft beer or cerveza artesenal in Latin America.

Earning the Spurs.

Here you can see the saloon.

You can get there the back way, which is through the 2nd Shift brewhouse. Walk past the kegerators, up the flight of stairs, and through the door. Suddenly you're behind the bar.

Or you can come in through the front door, from the street of the re-created Old West town. Sadly it's just a normal wooden door, and not the old-timey swinging doors. You know, the sort where you slam them open and step inside, the piano stops playing, and all the card players and rotgut drinkers with ZZ Top beards stop what they're doing and have a look at the new kid in town.

Presently the saloon doubles as 2nd Shift's rather civilized tasting room.

When I visited Steve Crider at his New Haven, Mo., brewery last year, I thought his exceptional hop-bombs would lead him to success in the St. Louis area. When I say "exceptional," I mean that his IPAs are unusually drinkable for the amount of lupulin that goes into them. Absurd on hop aroma, large in hop flavor, yet the perceived bitterness never seems to cross that resinous threshold that prevents me from ordering more -- that's what I mean by exceptional. Then there is Little Big Hop, which can match its big brothers for flavor, yet has a lighter body and hovers somewhere around 4% abv. It's the sort of beer I wish more brewers would make, but it's not clear yet whether there's much demand for it.

In my view Crider is making some of the best hoppy ales in America right now. But maybe exceptional isn't as exceptional as it used to be in Missouri, where Stone and Green Flash recently entered the market. Maybe it takes more than hop wizardry to stand out these days.

Enter the Hibiscus Wit.

It's not easy to explain, but I get annoyed when I find a tasty Witbier made from spices, flowers, herbs or other salad ingredients. Maybe it's because I've tasted too many overspiced, sweetish, soupy ales -- many of them in Belgium, many others elsewhere by brewers "inspired" by the ones Belgium. So Crider's Hibiscus Wit doesn't fit into my worldview, because I like it. So do many drinkers in St. Louis, apparently, and their bars and distributors. They've all got Crider thinking that maybe the flowery wheat beer will be his flagship. Meanwhile his fermenters are filled to capacity and more will be there soon, if they're not already.

So now Crider is one of the new kids in town. Folks in the St. Louis area are stopping to look. It'll be fun to watch what happens next.

Free Soccer Movement.

As I write this, it's evening in Brussels and the USA is playing Belgium in a friendly at Roi Bauduoin Stadium. It's 0-0 at the half. No, I'm not in Brussels, nor can I get the game on TV. I'm in Escazú, Costa Rica, and there is thunderous thunder outside. The rainy season is getting ready to do what it does best. Which is perfectly welcome after a weekend of too much sun and sand at the beach.

To mark the occasion of the US playing an exhibition in arguably the world's most interesting beer country, I was asked to write a little something for a site called the Free Beer Movement. Dan Wiersema runs the site and does a helluva job, and he doesn't even get prickly when I act like a cranky old geezer and point out that I invented the Free Beer Movement in the first place. This was back when I was writing something called We Call It Soccer. It was a blog about American soccer. Now I know a lot of you Brits are going to read this and want to bring up the F-word, which is fine, but listen: There is nothing worse than a Yank with a Yank accent using the word "football" when he means "soccer." It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, really. Just because you invented the game doesn't mean you get to tell us what to call it, same way you don't get to tell us how to spell "tyre" or what exactly a "fanny" is.

The idea behind the Free Beer Movement was and is simple: To get a fellow American interested in the beautiful game, buy them a match ticket and provide the beer. People are amazingly receptive to new things under the influence of alcohol. And there is just something magical about free beer, generally.

Can the craft beer world learn something from this? Is the stubborn American who thinks that soccer is boring the sports equivalent of the Bud-Miller-Coors drinker who won't try anything new? Maybe. Or maybe there is a class thing at work here, as upper-middle-class white guys think they know best about what other white guys ought to be doing with their time. I can't really say. My motives have always been selfish. I personally wanted better atmosphere at the soccer games I attended, and that meant getting more people interested. I personally want more beer choices in more bars and restaurants and shops, and that means getting people more interested in different beers.

You don't buy that, do you?

Oops. Belgium up 1-0 in the second half, says the intertubes. Surely I ought to be working.

Vive La Franco-Belge Résistance.

Here I am with all this great stuff saved up from our American swing, and off I go on a Brussels kick. No complaints I hope?

Yesterday I mentioned the Belgian Beer Weekend on the Grand Place and its merits (namely, Belgian beer and the Grand Place). But just a few blocks away, the guys from Moeder Lambic Fontainas are--in true Moeder Lambic fashion--offering an alternative:

"This small group of rebels is fighting back against bad taste in beer, by preferring hops to sugar, quality to quantity. ... We needed an excuse, an occasion on which to do it, and the Belgian Beer Weekend festivities on the Brussels Grand Place seemed liked the perfect opportunity.

This is the annual high mass of the Belgian brewing scene, with its procession of insipid pasteurized beers wrapped in lovely marketing labels with devils, elephants and fake monks; all poured into delightful glasses.

However, the truth is in the tasting. We are hoping the contrast will be overwhelming, and so are inviting you all to come along on the first weekend in September to taste these new waves alongside the Belgian resistance beers that we already support and defend."

The emphasis will be on the "other" French beers, i.e. biéres artisanales. They are seeking recruits for the Hexagonal Libeeration Front, reminding us that the resistance continues despite the French having lost the beer war back in 1664. As is well known, of course.

Featured French breweries are to include Agrivoise, Garrigues, Paradis, La Franche, Fleurac, Pleine Lune, Matten. And let's be honest: Unless you're a freak (and some of you are), most of those names are new to you. Exciting things happening in French craft beer these days. Plus there will be the usual Fontainas lineup and no doubt a couple of surprises.

For example: the release of a collaboration brew between the boys at Senne and Allagash. How cool is that? Said to be 5.2% alcohol, amber in color, 55 IBUs.

Let's go ahead and call it what it is: Brussels Beer Week.

Brussels, Mussels and September.

I often wish I were back in Brussels. Here from my bed in Escazú, I have pleasant dreams about visiting old cafés, drinking lambic, and scribbling notes. My subconscious is researching another guidebook, even if I'm not (yet). No doubt the wife and tots prefer it that way.

Right now, though... I mean, if you had to pick one time of year... hey, mussels are in season. So are beer festivals. This is the time of year that Bruxellensis happens, in that parallel universe where Bruxellensis is a regular occurrence. (Hey, maybe next year.) And the Belgian Beer Weekend kicks off this Friday on the Grand Place. I don't love all of the breweries that tend to participate, but... it's not like I go thirsty, is it? And you can't really beat the Grand Place for a beer-fest backdrop.

Just up the hill from the Grand Place party is Bier Circus, of course. This morning I got their newsletter. Mussels are on. Cooked in Girardin lambic, in Witbier and watercress, or in Rochefort and stone-ground mustard.

Back to the Grand Place for a peek at the list: Lots of clutter there, but I could do with a St. Bernardus 8, a Witkap Stimulo, or a Saison Dupont. Or several. For something different, a Cascade-hopped Armand from De Dool. Then a Hercule Stout to punctuate the evening.

For now I have some hoarded lambics and a few bottles of Saison Dupont smuggled from the States. Tonight, before bedtime, I may have to open a bottle, bending my thoughts toward shellfish and tiny snifters of 10-centiliter servings.

Of Beer and Twisters.

Back in Springfield, Missouri, there were three topics dominating local conversation: Dorial Green-Beckham, the Joplin tornado, and Mother's Brewing.

Green-Beckham is a high school football player and probably the area's most promising athlete, ever (golfer Payne Stewart notwithstanding). The tornado, as you might have heard, was America's deadliest in more than 60 years. More than three months later locals are focused on fund-raising and recovery. Mother's, meanwhile, is the sort of production brewery that my hometown of 160,000 people had lacked for too long.

Mother's opened on May 14. Mother's Day, more or less. The tornado struck nearby Joplin eight days later. I visited the brewery last week, on August 24. Earlier that day, these two filthy Mother's kegs arrived at the brewery, making their long-awaited return--from Joplin. Recovery workers only recently found them amid the rubble.

The kegs most likely came from Pizza By Stout. Opened in 1978, that pizza joint was one of many local institutions destroyed by the tornado. The Stout family recently announced on the restaurant's website that they would not rebuild.

It's worth noting that Mother's held a benefit concert for Joplin on May 26. It raised $15,000.

More about Mother's: Marketing guy Jeremy Wicks has done a whiz-bang job with local branding. (Check out the logo painted on exposed brick at the J.O.B. Public House, which I liked so much I'll save it for a future post.) Draft beers have been around since May, but bottles went on sale locally just this week. The tasting room is open for at least a few hours, four days a week, which is just plain civilized if you ask me.

My take on the beers in 60 words: The Towhead blonde and other lighter offerings are all highly drinkable without ducking real hop character. The L'il Helper is too resinously bitter to be my cup of, um, IPA. But for a favorite I'll tap the Three Blind Mice, whose German Altbier influence was as clear as I'd hoped. Overall, they are beers meant for drinking.

To try them you'll have to get down to the Ozarks... although it's always possible that future success or freak tornadoes could send them farther abroad.

The Morning After: Scones at Lazy Jane's.

Sure, we could have gone for bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy, that sort of thing. But after a full day of Great Taste beer drinking, punctuated with a bacon-mac-and-cheese pizza and more beer at the Great Dane, our bodies craved something... tamer. Plus, we weren't nearly as hungover as we ought to have been.

So, we went for scones and coffee at Lazy Jane's. Pictured: the blueberry. My brother and I also sampled blackberry, lemon cream and cherry in the café and on the drive back to Missouri. Like lembas bread for the Fellowship, it didn't take much of that dense goodness to fuel our manly no-stop-except-for-gas road tripping.

Besides, we're from southwest Missouri. Almost as far south as you can go and still be in the Midwest. I'm not totally convinced those Upper Midwesterners know what they're doing when it comes to B&G. But they can bake for me any day.

Occupied.

We are at the 25th annual Great Taste of the Midwest today. And you, most likely, are not. If it makes you feel any better, it's going to rain on us all afternoon. It's going to get muddy. And here we are, without our galoshes.

I could have chosen other photos to portray anticipation. There's the Vintage Brewing tent, with its foosball table and old sofas. There's the life-size singing Elvis draft tower (from New Holland, I think). There's the Real Ale Tent, totally empty except for some firkins ready to pour and the words "Real Ale" flapping in the breeze.

But you know my sense of humor. Such as it is. How to resist the Great Wall of Porta-Potty? Yet not even the photo does it justice. Standing on one end, it seems to stretch over the horizon.

Interestingly, the Wall acts as a sort of secondary security measure. It helps to discourage yahoos from landing their boats on the shore of Lake Monona to sneak their way into the fest. Yes, that's happened before.

As Seen on TV.

One of my favorite shows on TV is Diners, Drive-Ins and Drives. When we're in the States and not hunting beer joints, Missus Pilgrim and I have been known to mine the DDD archives for local eateries. So it was a rare joy to find a DDD spot that also happens to have a serious beer list.

Iron Barley is in South St. Louis, less than 10 minutes drive from downtown when traffic is light. Rather than give you the whole spiel, I'll send you to the DDD segment, and then the Man vs. Food segment... both of which fail to mention the beer.

I copied Adam Richman and went for the Monte Christo double dog. Chased it with a Centennial Rye from the local Six Row Brewing. Basically: a grainy, peppery rye pale with lemony-citrus notes from Centennial hops. A summery beer that is also a foodie beer. Comfort food and comfort drink, together as they were meant to be.

Lots more tips and tales in an upcoming article. Stay tuned, true believers.

Tomorrow: Off to the 25th Great Taste of the Midwest in Madison. My goal: to find out what, if anything, sets the region's beers apart from the rest of the country and the rest of the world. I've asked several people already and have yet to hear the same answer twice. Do you have any thoughts?

Channeling Papa H. for the Morning.

We did not intend to sport-fish. We intended to dinner-fish. But since we caught nothing worth eating and had to toss back what we did catch, we'll call it sport.

No pretension on the boat. This is not the place to bring your tulip glass. If the local beer is cold, that will do. The earliness of the hour stopped mattering as soon as we left shore.

Generally I'm not a rum-and-coke drinker. Tastes too much like a hasty high school party. But there is something about that taste after a puff of cigar smoke and throwing back one of those wacky animal-looking fishes like something that Steve Zissou spotted from his submersible.

In my case it was a handsome rooster fish with a serious, early '80s throwback punk-rock mohawk. That's what they call sport. Fun, but I would've rather caught dinner.