A Comment on Transparency

Folks, things have been getting a little heated on the comment threads the last few days. A blogger named Doc. Wort has been a mostly-supportive critic of mine for a couple years, but he has a sharp tongue. On the Dissident thread, he called me out for being ignorant of beer styles, and this created some blowback from readers. On his own site, he wrote a post castigating "hack bloggers," and although he doesn't name names, it seems pretty clear where his ire is directed.

I don't actually mind Doc Wort's provocations. He's a regular commenter and regular reader, and since I have so few, I feel thankful to all of you. Even more importantly, he's a good-beer lover, and any good-beer lover is a friend of mine. I blog because I love Oregon's beer and because this interactive medium creates something of a community. If you have an authentic community, disagreement is the price of admission. But at the end of the day (last call?), we are all brothers and sisters before the cask.

So cut Doc Wort a break.

As for some of the charges he makes in that post, I would like to add that all opinions expressed on this blog are mine alone. I receive no payment for these opinions, no ad money from breweries (or anywhere else), and no free beer. I do sometimes get in on a junket to a brewery or fest wherein I get a free taster here or there. (I'll be on one tomorrow when I go to a media event at Cascade Brewing/Rac Lodge.) But these are standard for the industry and I think reasonable people can see they hardly constitute enough of an incentive for lily-gilding. The biases expressed herein are not purchased, they're all mine.

Let's all relax and have a craft brew, whatsay?