Anchor Steam is the best known of the eight beers crafted by this still-small San Francisco brewery. (Others you may have heard about include Liberty Ale and Old Foghorn Ale.)

I sometimes feel like the prodigal son when I’m out in the pubs or at my local beer warehouse, pulling down bottles of every strange brew I’ve never before sampled. After all the sampling, and all the experimenting, I often find myself coming home and popping open a bottle of a tried and true favorite masterpiece. Such is the case with Anchor Liberty Ale.

I’ve been drinking a fair amount of Abita beer over the last month or two. I’m trying to identify a house signature while at the same time becoming familiar with the entire Abita family of beers. It’s not that I find Abita particularly fascinating — I don’t, mostly because their beers tend towards lighter bodied brews than I usually prefer, but I enjoy the tasting challenges anyway. My latest foray into the Abita product line is Purple Haze.

While sharing his wisdom on life with Bart one day, Homer Simpson told his son to never be afraid of weasling out of things. “It’s what separates men from animals…except for weasels.” he said. I couldn’t agree more, and while I’ve been weasling out of finishing up with my tasting notes on the Abita product line, I’m finally figuring that maybe I should be un-weasel like today and pop open a cool Abita Amber and see how it stacks up against the rest of the Abita stable of brews.

I am proud to report that, yes, Alaska really does exist. Not only does it exist, but it is broken down into smaller cities and towns.

Beer is beer, and wine is wine, but what the heck are we supposed to make of cider? Cider tasting might actually have more in common with wine tasting, but wine people don’t seem to want to adopt it as their own, and so it’s become something of a step-child to beer aficionados.