Beer adventures

In addition to serving beer at the Garden of Eve Oktoberfest this weekend, I spent some time working on a couple of my "beer adventures."  As I was gathering information for the Long Island Craft Beer Guide I published a few years ago, I wrote down a bunch of craft-beer themed stories that were loosely based on my experiences of traveling and chasing after good craft beer where ever I could find it.  One of my beer adventures, Through a Glass, Foamy, is about my first trip to England to get first hand experience of British pub culture and to taste real ale in its native habitat.  The next "beer adventure" is called Drinking in Place (a working title) and chronicles the year I spent infiltrating a local pub called Callahan's.  I (or the narrator, if you will) became a regular a Callahan's and met all sorts of humorous characters.  I have written one other beer adventure called Wasted about a trip I took to California with my lifelong friend, Peter Wright.  Peter was looking for sources of bioenergy.  I was looking for good beer, but found something else.

I thought I'd stop at those four books, but I have extensive notes for two other possible "beer adventures."  One is a fictional account of how Rocky Point Artisan Brewers got started.  And another is about my project in 2008 to become a master homebrewer.  That book has the working title Close to Home.

For fun, each November, I write a draft of a novel.  I've been doing this for ten years.  Last year, I rewrote (from scratch) a novel I'd written a few years ago, but wasn't happy with.  (It's much better now.)  But this year, I am tempted to write something brand new.  Or maybe I could work from the notes I have for those two unwritten beer novels and finish one or both of them up.

If you're interested, I've written a brief account of my time at the Garden of Eve Oktoberfest for my work-in-progress, Cottage Industry.