So begins Alexander Nazaryan's review of The Oxford Companion to Beer, a work that just been added to my Amazon wish list--as well as, I am sure, to that of thousands of other beer geeks.  It is easy to forget that only a generation ago respectable, educated people would never admit to drinking beer--or, at least, to drinking American beer.  Today, perhaps for the first time in history, the world's best beer is being brewed here in the United States.  This is a point that needs to be made more often in a country where pessimism seems so pervasive.  It should also be remembered that the current beer renaissance would have been absolutely impossible had it not been for the deregulation which began under Jimmy Carter (who in 1978 signed the legislation making home brewing legal for the first time since Prohibition) and which continued at the state level (with the legalization by several states of brew pubs) in the 1980s.

I add simply in passing that this weekend I'll be kegging my whiskey-barrel stout, which will be ready in time for the holidays.