Hello! It's been quite some time since I got one of these blog posts up; more than a month, in fact, which is a long time, even for me. For those of you who have been wondering, let me tell you what happened. In early September, I had some minor surgery on my right hand. After several months of going back and forth with the Veterans Administration, I finally got in to see a hand surgeon, who did an MRI and then told me I had a tumor on a tendon in my right forefinger. It was benign (fortunately), but it had to come out. After the surgery, here's what my finger looked like:


As you might imagine, I haven't able to use my right hand very well for several weeks. Since I'm right-handed, this has made it very hard to hold a pen or even type very much. What little typing I was able to do, I had to dedicate to my college courses, as I've gone back to school and am taking 12 credits. Something had to give, and it was this blog. So there, that's my excuse.

The good news is that my finger is pretty close to 100% now, and I'm more or less caught up with everything, so it's time to get this blog out again! Lots of stuff has happened while I was out of action, and I can't begin to cover it all in detail, so let me do my best to hit the high points. Then I'm going to move to beer reviews. While I couldn't use my hand much for anything else, it was still capable of holding a beer glass, so I've got thirteen beer reviews to pass along. But first, let's do some news:

2nd Annual Alaska Day Beer Festival in Sitka: It's on October 18, as part of the Alaska Day celebrations. It will be held in historic Totem Square in Sitka.  All proceeds from this up and coming event will go to support the new Sitka History Museum which plans to open soon.

Quake Brewing Company has finally opened. The Grand Opening at its Wasilla location was on September 8th.

Cooper Landing Brewing is also open. See reviews of two of its beers below. Crowlers are on sale periodically at Wildman's Liquor in Cooper Landing.


HooDoo Brewing opened its new outdoor beer garden on September 16th with a ribbon-cutting by the mayor of Fairbanks.

Photo courtesy of HooDoo Brewing

Kodiak Island Brewing Company has begun offering its beers in 32 oz. crowler cans. The cans come in both single-use and refillable versions.

Photo courtesy of Kodiak Island Brewing

Midnight Sun Brewing released the second beer in its Wild Adventures series on September 16: Sporter, a sour porter brewed with wild yeast and aged in oak barrels. It weighs in at 7.5% ABV. Any day now should see the release of this year’s version of its Belgian-style barley wine, Termination Dust. The brewery has also received its order of cans for Wolf Pack Pilsner and will be releasing the canned version of that brew next Thursday at a http://kdll.org/programs/drinking-last-frontier.

So get out there an enjoy our fall weather will it lasts. It won't be much longer before we all have to start dealing with Old Man Winter.

Until Next Time. Cheers!