The good folks at CBC Edmonton got a bit behind over the summer with posting my columns to their website. They got around to posting a trio of my summer missives the other day. They offer a range of topics, reflecting my fairly meandering mind over the warm weeks of summer.

First up, airing back on July 26, was a discussion of a new beer trend. I pondered that craft brewers were more frequently willing to add spices and other unusual ingredients to their light summer beer. Of course, spicing has long been used in heavier, winter beer, but I theorized that practice was spreading to summer – using some recent examples as evidence. Since it aired, I have become skeptical of my own theory and think calling ita trend was too much. However, it is now recorded for posterity, so there is no escaping it. See if you agree with me or think I am off my rocker on this one by listening to it here.

The two August columns have not been posted – one done live at the Folk Fest and the other on hefeweizen where we sampled Weihenstephaner.

Then there is the September 3 (misdated as Sept. 7 on their site), which was originally going to be about my theory that the Labatt brand is being slowly killed through neglect. I did talk about that, but was asked to start the column discussing the big news of that day of Big Rock allegedly being punished by Liquor Depot. So that column ends up being a bit of a hodge-podge. However, I appreciated a chance to flesh out my conspiratorial thoughts about Labatt. Listen to that one here.

Finally they posted my September 17 column (again misdated) which was a primer on how long you can keep beer. We discussed staling and what causes it, what helps promote aging capacity and did a little date code deciphering. You can hear that one here.