Derek Dellinger, over at Bear-Flavored.com did some research by polling for information from the brewers of nationally ranked IPAs.

I'll let you discover the answer over at his site in this article.

Back? What do you think? If you had to choose a limited number of varieties to fit that "ideal" number - what would you choose?

An experiment that we must ponder: What is it with brewer's and facial hair? Is there an aura? A special contribution from the hair? Solar powered thinking machines?

But it can't just be solely the beard. The number of fantastic brewers of the distaff persuasion proves that. Maybe the beer is a vital substitution for something. Maybe it's a extra sensory organ amplifying a less responsive faculty. Who knows, but Denny and I are here for you, dear reader.

It's pumpkin time and as sure as my name is Drew Beechum, the internet is awash in question about pumpkin beers. So to aid in answering some pumpkiny questions, I present to you a column all about the long hard slog to convert my sister to the ways of craft beer. This column first appeared in BeerAdvocate the Magazine in the fall of 2011. Since that time, my sister has gone on to brewing a ton of different beers and haunts the Tampa Bay craft beer scene better than I could. If you happen to see her say hi from her little brother.

Inspired by Janis Gross and her Facebook post today, I feel that its important to say a few words about repetition. So digging back through my archives, I want to present to you the unedited version of my BYOB column in BeerAdvocate Magazine. (You should subscribe - it's a damn good magazine even if I'm writing for it!) This is from around July of 2010 - "Practice Makes Perfect"

Since time is always tight, how about something quick that will impress your friends, neighbors and fellow brewers? Mary Izett of Fuhmentaboudit on the Heritage Radio Network gave a talk at this year’s AHA Homebrewer’s Conference on “Alternative Fermentations”. The talk was filled with different projects you can tackle when you have a few spare cycles. To demonstrate, she poured a Strawberry Peppercorn “Short” Mead.

Not much beer stuff to report so far this Philly trip, but a few interesting things for y'all.

As I get ready to head out to Philly for the NHC, I thought I'd announce a shift in the book plan that we're engaged in, now. Feedback from y'all has been overwhelming and a sudden inspiration took over. You see, Denny and I are but two semi-techy-geeky guys who like to play with our beer. It's right there in the site's motto! When we announced the book originally, there was an incredible response of people looking for more experiments and ways to answer the strange questions you can only come up with while you're obsessed with a hobby.

I wrote a while ago about my experiments to increase sulfate levels in my Rye IPA. My latest batch, with a sulfate level of 300 ppm, is far and away the best of the many batches of this recipe that I've made over the years. So, now what I need to do is brew it again, exactly the same way, to find out if the changes in sulfate were the reason or if I just had Ninkasi looking over my shoulder when I made the last batch. That's what I'm doing today...brewing exactly the same recipe, with exactly the same ingredients, down to the same bags of malt and hops.

For the first decade or so of my brewing career, I brewed nothing but 5 gallon batches. I went on the Brewing Network all the way back in 2007 to discuss my doofy way of brewing and to defend brewing 5 gallon batch making!

Here's why I defend the world of 5 gallon brewing and these days 1 gallon brewing:

Today's fun ingredient - Tea! The last time I brewed with tea was for the San Diego NHC in 2011. As part of the giant fleet of saisons that I made for the conference, I made the Jasmine Dragon Saison. It used one of my favorite teas - jasmine infused pearl green tea. Now this isn't the same stuff I used in the Dragon, but a very similar tea made it's way about 2oz (weight) of tea to a cup of vodka. That soaked and was shook for a business week and then strained.