Cask conditioning

Micahel Jackson said that in 2001 there were 60,000 pubs in the UK and 1/2 of those had cask conditioned ale. It's catching on here, too. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/dining/24pour.html

Beer News of Interest

Is craft beer taking off? In Japan it seems to be...
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/travel/21beer.html?8dpc

Adventures in brewing

Ah....it's that time of year again. The wine makers are in full swing and the beer makers are lustily rubbing their flat spare tires and dreaming of what will be...For me, I'm dreaming of the smell of hops and malt from the kitchen as I prepare my next batch which is going to be a Christmas beer in the German bock tradition. This is my first try at a lager so we'll see. Right now I'm calibrating the temperature dial on my refrigerator to try to get an idea of what temp a particular setting gets me.....

Here's my recipe:
9# amber malt extract
1# crystal malt
1# black patent malt
1/4 #black carafe #1
1.5 oz hallertau hops for flavor
.5 oz hallertau hops for aroma
S-23 yeast two packets

um, did I leave anything out?