Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and this is the fifth installment of his beer column. He Tweets at @nathanberrong and logs beers at Untappd. Drink up.

Amazing beer and great food are two things near and dear to my heart, but it’s often hard to find both at the same place. I find that pub food is generally OK, maybe the best restaurant in town serves Guinness and gastropubs are headed in the right direction.

But what about those times you want olive oil poached salmon with a Ballast Point Sculpin IPA? Where are those restaurants?

If you’re a wine drinker, you cannot relate to this. Food and wine have shared an incredibly long and successful run together and it’s time to give beer the same respect. A good restaurant cannot survive, or even have relevance, without a great wine list. But as patrons we’ve largely ignored the short shrift restaurants give to beer.
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Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and this is the fourth installment of his beer column. He Tweets at @nathanberrong and logs beers at Untappd. Drink up.

Everyone has their own way of welcoming Christmas. For some, it’s putting up a tree or shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. For me, and beer nerds around the world, it’s purchasing the first of many Christmas and winter-release beers. These beers are made to please the taste buds and warm the body from the cold temperatures outside.

Traditionally, this is accomplished from adding spices like cinnamon and nutmeg or adding bitter ingredients like coffee and dark chocolate. Some brewers have bucked this trend and instead of brewing the more traditional Christmas-style beers, they brew their own interpretations of them, which include styles like IPAs or wheat beers. Regardless of the style, these are the beers I look most forward to coming out each year.
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Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and this is the third installment of his beer column. He Tweets at @nathanberrong and logs beers at Untappd. Drink up.

My beer obsession all began with a taste - a taste I didn’t even know existed or was even considered “beer.” One day several years ago, I was at my neighborhood bar, Brick Store Pub, and I tried something that would change everything. It was sour, tart, sweet, and funky all at the same time. And more importantly, it was still beer.

I don’t remember what exactly that first sour beer was, I hadn't yet become nerdy enough (as I am now) to write them down, but one thing was clear, I was hooked on sour ales.

Sour beers can be classified into their distinct styles such as Lambic, Gueuze, Flemish Red, or wild ales, each brewed differently, but with the same goal in mind – to attack the taste buds with a sour funkiness that is unlike any other beer imaginable.

The incredible thing about sour beer is how distinct its flavor profile is, dissimilar to any other beer style, while still containing the same basic ingredients found in every beer: water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. It’s the unique yeast strains used in these beers that produce the sour tartness that beer nerds (and even some wine drinkers) are raving about.
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Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and this is the second installment of his beer column. Drink up.

The United States is filled with amazing breweries, but to me, you can’t begin to talk about beer in America without starting out West. Maybe it’s the climate that is ideal for growing hops, or the beautiful scenery that inspires the brewers, or the diverse culture that promotes creativity. Whatever it is, I say there’s no debating that the best region for beer in the United States is the Pacific or West Coast region.

West Coast beers, plainly put, are massive beers. Massive beers that are bursting with flavor, typically high in alcohol, and have unusual names like “Serpent’s Stout” and “Monk’s Blood”. The staple West Coast beer is the hop heavy, India Pale Ale. Commonly referred to as the IPA, it is also a very common beer style across the country, as nearly every brewery in the US has their own version of it. But, no one brews them better than Sierra Nevada in Chico, California, which has been brewing amazing IPAs for over 30 years, long before the craft beer explosion began.
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Nathan Berrong works at CNN's satellite desk and this is the first installment of his beer column. Drink up.

I just popped the cap off of a Terrapin Coffee Oatmeal Stout (or a “Wake 'N' Bake” to the beer savvy) and poured it into my favorite glass. I’m hoping it will give me some clarity and inspiration to write about one of my favorite topics – beer.

I can talk about beer for hours. I can talk about how beer always seems to taste a little better if you’re around good people or how some of the most respected beer in the world is brewed by Trappist monks, whose entire life consists of silence, prayer, and brewing phenomenal beer. I can go on about how certain beers taste better if you try them years after they’ve been bottled or kegged and how you haven’t really experienced a good stinky blue cheese until you’ve washed it down with a creamy stout. I can muse on how I don’t remember what the inside of the Basilica of the Holy Blood looks like, but I can distinctly recall the look, the smell, and the taste of what I had to drink at 't Brugs Beertje, one of the most renowned pubs in the world, also located in Bruges.

I can talk about beer, not because it tastes so damn good (which it does), but because of what it brings out in me. It incites adventure, in the form of traveling to beer destinations and creativity when I try new and different styles and end up being inspired by them. It fosters community, as nothing quite brings people together more than a shared brew and motivates as I’m always ready to cut the grass or climb into the attic when I know a beer is waiting for me upon finishing.
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