1. I love the words I get to use when I write about beer.  Look at the names of different types of hops: Amarillo, Cascade, Citra, Kents Golding, Bravo, Apollo, Zeus, Cluster, Nugget, Chinook.  The hops alone are a verbiage gift that keeps on giving.  How about the words associated with the brewing process: mash, alpha acids, wort, original gravity, yeast, fermentation, racking.  Holy mash tun, I love these words.

2. Have you ever seen the documentary How Beer Saved the World?  Because it did.  Beer saved the world.  That’s some noble shit right there.  Something worth writing about.

3. There are endless types of beer.  So much so, that Charlie Papazian boldly asserts in his iconic Joy of Homebrewing that no one should ever be allowed to say, “I don’t like beer.”  I agree, Chuck!  There is a beer for everyone.  It’s a drink for the boozy people, by the boozy people.  We’ve got brown ales, pale ales, India pale ales, porters, stouts, saisons, lagers, fruity ales, altbiers…ok, that’s it.  We’d be here all day if I listed the myriad of beers on this planet.

4.  Beer is a force in any local economy.  I’ve claimed before that drinking beer can save your community.  It’s a bastion of everything good about the thriving local economy movement.  Since I’m all-in for this local economy revolution, drinking locally produced beer is a delicious political act.  Just think, somewhere within miles of your home, someone is turning your local water into beer.  Sounds like a miracle you should get in on.

5. Writing about beer gives me an excuse to drink beer.  Oh, I want to write about Heady Topper?  Then I need to drink me some Heady Topper!  Now!  And can I write accurately about Rising Tide’s Daymark if I only drink one?  Heck no.  I need a few to really get to the bottom of this beer’s essence.

6.  Beer is communal.  What has brought people together historically more than a pint of ale?  That’s right, nothing.  I picture our forefathers chipping away at the language of the constitution belly-up to a bar, muckling on to frothy steins of pre-Revolutionary beer.

7.  Beer makes you feel good.  Damn good.  My wife and I like to achieve what we call the two-beer-buzz.  You don’t get drunk, but you put enough tasty ale inside your paunch to make everything around you sparkle and shimmer.  It’s a poetic experience.

8.  Beer is easy to make.  At least on a rudimentary level.  Without too much effort, anyone can make a darn good glass of beer.

9. And finally, Benjamin Franklin may or may not have once written, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”  Whether or not this Founding Father actually penned this, it’s the freaking truth.  And I always strive to write about the truth.

So, cheers to beer, my muse!