BEER, WINE & SPIRITS: Spend a happy hour online with a scroll through some of the Web’s best beverage blogs

Once solely the domain for the angst-ridden prose of idle teenagers and the ramblings of bored office workers, blogs, or online journals, now include a vast number of sites that exist to educate and inform rather than confess and complain. Among those are a host of wine, beer and spirits blogs, written by all manner of real and imagined “experts,” from enthusiastic amateurs to up-and-coming sommeliers and cocktailians and longtime industry insiders.

These beverage blogs offer a virtual treasure trove of information, opinion and review. The trick to exploiting this valuable resource, of course, resides in first separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff.

When selecting which blogs to follow, passion and frequency are key aspects to consider, since the devoted blogger is more likely to yield useful information than the once-a-month scribe. A minimum of a post a week is usually a good guideline, with greater leniency given to beverage professionals whose quality of information and insight often outweighs the lesser amount of time they are able to devote to their blogs.

Breadth can be both a positive and a negative in a blog. If, for example, you are interested in information on one specific spirit, such as whisky or absinthe, you’ll do better bookmarking something like Kevin Erskine’s excellent The Scotch Blog or the relatively new The Real Absinthe Blog. On the other hand, if general knowledge and news are your interests, Rick Lyke’s Lyke 2 Drink or sites with multiple contributors, such as Drink Shoot or Martini Republic, may be more your speed.

On the wine front, unless you are willing to pay for access to something like the Wine Spectator site, blogs by high-profile writers appear to be few and far between. The most notable exceptions are New York Times writer Eric Asimov’s The Pour, which on occasion strays into beer and spirits, and British wine scribe Jamie Goode’s wine blog.

Conversely, blogs by smaller-name writers and amateur enthusiasts abound, and many of them are very good.

Also worthy of a visit or five are the award-winning Dr. Vino and the Good Grape Wine Company, which is not a company at all, but a beautifully designed blog maintained with great passion and enthusiasm.

Beer is frequently covered on blogs by professional writers, but the topic is increasingly taken on by amateur enthusiasts.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that many of the best are actually maintained by personal friends of mine—the beer world is, in many ways, a small one—but that should not detract from the fact that they are, in the end, still excellent resources.

Stan Hieronymus, who writes for the site Appellation Beer, is highly adept at covering a wide range of beer-related topics, while the straightforward What’s on Tap—The California Craft Beer Newsletter and East Coast writer Lew Bryson’s Seen Through a Glass are more regionally focused.

Another beer-focused gem: The Brookston Beer Blog by writer and longtime industry observer Jay Brooks.

The best news of all: The vast number of sites means that if a certain beverage blog doesn’t suit your tastes, the next one is but a click away.