In Atlanta...

...attending the annual meeting of economists. Atlanta is cold -I don't think it even got above freezing today - what is up with that? In my mind there was only one good thing about going to Atlanta and that is warmth (though my opinion of the city has gone up).

Anyway who cares about the meetings themselves (and anyway I am stuck in a hotel room all day interviewing newly minted PhDs), so let's talk about beer.

So far two local ones: Atlanta Brewing's complicatedly titled Red Brick Peachtree Pale Ale and Sweetwater Brewing's 420 Extra Pale Ale (why 420, who knows?). I was unimpressed with the Sweetwater Pale (not bad, just ordinary), but I liked the RBPPA quite a lot. Very nicely hopped with Crystal and Cascade hops (just the combination I am trying to perfect in my kitchen) and well balanced. It is really more of a Northwest pale in that it is a little bigger than a typical pale. I should say that I had the RBPPA on tap and the 420 in a bottle, so the hope might have been brighter in the RBPPA partly because of that.

What interests me most is that these were the only two local offerings I have found (suggesting their popularity among the brewers' lines) and they are pretty close to the Northwest style chart.