Clipper City hosts the annual Free State Homebrew Guild Christmas party every year. You eat dinner and get drunk right in the production area. Pretty cool.

Bertha’s in Fell’s Point has Bertha’s Bitter, and it’s a real ale. Awesome stuff.

Blue Moon, in case you didn’t know, is brewed by Coors, and the flagship version is essentially a Hoegaarden clone. The good wits out there all use bitter/curacao orange peel and coriander in the boil, and are really lightly hopped, and unfiltered so you get all of the yeasty goodness at the bottom of the glass. Technically, you don’t really need fruit with this beer because it already has the fruit flavor in it, from the spices and orange peel. A lot of Belgian beers use wheat as a base malt, which is why they’re usually cloudier and have a tartness to them, outside of that imparted by the wild yeasts of course. Oddly, Hoegaarden is distributed by — or at least affiliated with — Anheuser Busch.

Kriekbiers, have sour cherry flavors. They add the whole fruit, pit and all, to the kettle after the heat has been shut off at knockout, and it all goes right in the fermenter. The pits and stems can give it a woody flavor. Takes a long time to age properly, but it’s really good stuff. Brewer’s Art makes one during the Spring. I remember being less excited about how it turned out this year, but perhaps next year’s will be better.

I haven’t brewed much lately, but I would be way into having a TLC brew day if you guys were interested. BBQ, brews, O’s game on a radio. I think that sounds fun, but that’s just me.