Love Good Beer

How do people find LoveGoodBeer.com?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 | Beer | 3 Comments

In the vein of my last post where I listed our top ten posts of 2009, I thought it might also be interesting to post our top keywords.  These keywords are what people typed into Google to find us.  I’ve read that over 90% of clicks from Google come from the first search results page and over 75% come from the top three listings, which means we likely rank pretty high for the keywords below.  This also means that any companies or brands listed need to work on their online presence and SEO.  I hope you find this list as interesting as I did:

• love good beer
• ozarks famous bbq
• stanley park 1897 amber ale
• brockton ipa
• ozarks restaurant langley
• good beer
• bud light lime
• sorghum beer
• beer cheddar soup
• beer butt chicken
• rickard’s dark
• http://lovegoodbeer.com
• rickards dark
• bud light lime calories
• cellaring beer
• greek beer
• stanley park beer
• bowen island brewery
• turning point brewery
• stanley park amber ale
• russell brewing ipa
• bud light lime sucks
• central city ipa
• ozarks bbq langley
• hells gate beer

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: bud light lime, google keywords, love good beer, Ozarks Famous BBQ, stanley park 1897 amber ale, turning point brewery

More Lime Beers?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Beer | 4 Comments

I received an email from Russell Brewing today announcing their new Cactus Lime Lager, to be sold at Cactus Club restaurants.  This news depressed me.  Does the market really need more lime flavored beers?  I hope the Cactus Lime Lager is better than their Russell’s Lemon Ale, which I have previously tried and, similar to Bud Light Lime, found it to taste like bad Sprite.  I thought I might enjoy the taste of “real lime flavor” in beer because I enjoy the occasional fruit wedge dropped into certain brews, but I really, really don’t. Those of you that do like lime flavored beers, what is it about them that you enjoy?  Some say it is easy to drink, but so too are many other lagers (also water).  I just don’t get it.

I really thought that Russell was going in the right direction with their recent IP’eh release, which I found to be a very tasty beer.  I hoped they might introduce more well brewed limited edition beers (like the Blueberry Wheat they had at the Dix Caskival) to the market, but am instead disappointed to find them jumping on the lime flavor band wagon led by Bud Light Lime.  It must make good business sense to be brewing this kind of beer, because they aren’t the only ones.  In addition to BLL, Michelob brews a lime flavored beer, as does respected Canadian craft brewer Big Rock.  I can only hope that other brewers don’t follow suit.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: big rock lime, blueberry wheat, bud light lime, cactus lime lager, dix caskival, ip'eh, michelob ultram lime, russell brewing

Great beer at the corner store?

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 | Beer | 2 Comments

I spent this past BC Day long weekend at a cabin near the foot of Mount Baker, a short jaunt across the border from where I live.  Just before the cabin on the road to Mount Baker, there is a small grocery store called Nooksack Market.  I’d visited this market two years ago on a previous visit to the same cabin.  When my wife told me we were heading to here uncle’s place, all I could think about was getting back to this market.  Why?  Because they have a fantastic craft beer selection stocked with delicious Washington and Oregon beers that you can’t get at any of BC’s best beer stores!  It was really overwhelming shopping at that tiny market because I wanted to buy everything.  I ended up buying a lot of the Stone, Lagunitas, and Deschutes beers that you can’t get here.  It was a good weekend, but I drank too much.

A sample of what's waiting for us right across the border

On the way back to Canada we stopped at the Sumas Liquor store to stock up.  This liquor store is two blocks from the border, within clear sight of the crossing.  They too had a fantastic selection and I picked more of the same great beers, plus a few Laughing Buddha bottles.  An American reading this blog might think I am crazy, stupid, or both, but the beer selection right across the border is enough to get this Canadian beer enthusiast exited.  Curse our stupid liquor laws!  If trucks carrying this delicious beer can get to the border, surely they can get across too, right?  We’ll even pay double, which is pretty much what we pay anyway.  At least we get Health Care…

The Booze Bear at Sumas Liquor Store, ha

Also, I had a Bud Light Lime this weekend and I thoroughly did not enjoy it.  It tasted nothing like beer, but like malty sprite.  I still think Bud Light Lime is horrible and implore you fans of this perverse liquid to seek out and explore other light beers and alcoholic beverages.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: bud light lime, deschutes, lagunitas, laughing buddha, oregon, stone, washington

Thanks for the Spam PR Guy

Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | Breweries | 3 Comments

Yesterday I received a couple of emails (spam) from the PR firm on behalf of Steam Whistle Brewing.  For those who don’t know, Steam Whistle is an Ontario based brewery who brew a pilsner and only a pilsner.  Steam Whistle Pilsner is sometimes available in BC at the better beer stores (Brewery Creek for example), but the average BC beer drinker won’t have heard of it, much less tasted it.  It is a tasty pilsner though, a beer I would recommend to you Bud Light Lime drinkers out there, and it is a shame it is not more widely available out west.

What I want to know is, why did Steam Whistle waste their money on hiring these PR guys? Neither email I received was addressed to me and both were clearly spam, likely sent to every beer related website in Canada.  Also, the first email was an invite to a pub crawl in Toronto on Thursday (I’ll be there) and the second was promoting a contest, where the link to the contest in the email didn’t even work (the correct link is on Steam Whistle’s website and it looks like a good contest worth winning).  I have nothing against Steam Whistle, but I do feel like this means of marketing is a problem in the beer industry.  Why hire an ineffectual PR firm to promote Steam Whistle Pilsner in BC when it is hardly available here?  In my opinion, using the PR money (PR firms aren’t cheap) to get their beer into BC liquor stores would be a better strategy.  An even better strategy would be to have Steam Whistle employees who know and love their beer establish real relationships with prominent beer bloggers (probably not us, but we’d be friends with them anyway).  Why pay a passionless suit when there is this whole free internet thing out there that companies can use to reach people with?

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: brewery creek, bud light lime, oeb enterprise, steam whistle brewing, steam whistle pilsner