Let’s begin in Cincinnati, where you can toast the Reds, drink to forget the Bengals, or both. And if the weather is nice, you can do so in one of the city’s beer gardens.

The New York Times uncovered this gem: Brew York, New York, which keeps New Yorkers abreast of beer happenings in the city’s 8,000 or so licensed establishments.

If your travel plans include Colorado, think about buying a copy of The Beer Drinker’s Guide To Colorado by Mike Laur. Breweries are springing up so fast in the state (there are now well over a hundred) that Laur just released the fourth edition of his book.

Speaking of Colorado, if you’re going to the Great American Beer Festival, P.J. Hoberman of The Hop Press profiles 15 establishments within a three-mile radius of the festival venue.

Finally, is I-84 in Oregon the ultimate Ale Trail? Jeff Alworth of Beervana.com counted seven brewerieson the route (plus two more across the Columbia River in Washington State) in towns whose combined population is well under 100,000.

Bad. Luke McKinney, writing at Zug.com, tried five awful beers for breakfast, then wrote scathing reviews of all five. (Hat tip: Bryce Eddings of About.com.)

Very Bad. You might not recognize his name, but if you live in New England, you might have drunk August Haffenreffer’s infamous Private Stock Malt Liquor. Sold in 40-ounce bottles, it was called “Green Death” and “Haffenwrecker.” Wilt Chamberlain hawked the stuff in the 1970s and, more recently, the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. sang about it.

Really, Really Bad. In his novel Roy and Lillie, Loren Estleman describes the beer brewed by the legendary Judge Roy Bean: “[H]e was impatient with the process of fermentation and insisted on serving the beer green, with hops and the odd drunken spider floating on top and a taste bitter enough to cause lockjaw.”

And now…The Mash!

We start with the discovery of two-centuries-old bottles of beer at a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea. So far, the divers who found the beer haven’t reviewed it on RateBeer.com.

It’s chile harvest time in Hatch, New Mexico, and Jesse Hughey of the Dallas Observer hunts up beers that pair with chile dishes.

Overshadowed by its beery neighbor to the south, Washington State is on the verge of a microbrewery explosion, with as many as 20 new establishments about to open their doors.

Stan Hireronymus reviews Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Dan Okrent. Factoid: James Madison, who stood only 5′4″, drank a pint a day. Whiskey, not beer.

Alan McLeod (A Good Beer Blog) argues that macrobrewers still don’t get it: they rely on T-shirts and $5 coupons, not better beer, to attract customers.

Seth Levy of BeerConnoisseur.com caught up with Jennifer Tally, the brewmaster at Squatter’s Pubs & Beer. He also found out how good-tasting a beer can be despite an ABV of less than 4 percent.

Finally, scientists have found that the ancient Nubians drank beer containing the antibiotic tetracycline. To your health, indeed!

Scooping up these brands is part of Hardman’s multi-pronged effort to build his business, the Christian Moerlein Brewing Company. Early next year, he’ll start brewing Christian Moerlein and Hudepohl in Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, where dozens of breweries operated a century ago.

Sometime next fall, Hardman will open the Moerlein Lager House, a pub and microbrewery with an enviable location: next door to Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds. He also has plans for a Beer Barons Hall of Fame, whose first inductees are likely to be Christian Moerlein and Ludwig Hudepohl.

Hardman’s ultimate goal is to capture one percent of the nation’s beer market, which would put him in a class with Boston Beer Company and the Yuengling Beer Company. And, perhaps, earn him a place in the Beer Barons Hall of Fame.

Bottles are fragile, heavy (620 grams compared to 366 grams on average for a standard 12-ounce bottle), let in light that can skunk your beer, and are harder to pack in and out on float trips and hikes. Bottles don’t stack in the refrigerator. Plus if you drop a can it doesn’t shatter into a hundred tendon-lacerating shards. Half the time you can pick it back up and finish your drink!

Maryanne and Paul heard several of those arguments five years ago, when they were at Keweenaw Brewing Company in Houghton, Michigan. They also got to see one of the new-fangled canning lines made by Cask Brewing Systems, a small Canadian firm that developed the system because amateur “brew on site” brewers were having problems with bottles. The guys at Keweenaw were ahead of the curve; since then, so many brewers want Cask’s systems that they’re back-ordered until December.

One question Maryanne and Paul have discussed over a pint is when one of the bigger craft brewers will start canning. Jim Koch, the Boston Beer Company CEO, told an interviewer that he was open to the idea of canning his beer, but he’d like to see better lining technology before he commits to cans. Johnson has some good news for Koch:

Ball [Corporation]….the company that makes the cans used by the majority of craft brewers, announced plans to make a BPA-free epoxy lining within the next couple of years at a recent packaging conference, according to an attendee.

So chances are good that the craft brewing industry’s “can-do” spirit will include more and more actual cans.

To take part in the tasting, you need to do the following:

One. Buy some Colorado-brewed beer at your local beer store.

Two. At 7 pm Mountain Time, crack open the first beer “in a resounding chorus heard around the web.”

Three. Tell us what you think about the beer on Twitter (use the hash tag #bbc10 and the one for the brewery), Facebook, your own blog, or the Beer Bloggers Conference website.

You also might want to carry some ID, just in case there’s a virtual bouncer inside your computer.

Koch is always good for a few soundbites, and he didn’t disappoint. On his brand’s appeal to young adults, he said:

I think that 20-somethings are much more into indie culture. They seem to be less susceptible to mass marketed and mass produced products, unless the product has some visible heart and soul, like Apple does.

He also thinks craft beer can go head-to-head (sorry about the pun) with wine and spirits:

So a consumer can trade out of a $9 top shelf margarita or a $7 glass of wine down to a $5 pint of Sam Adams, and they can still feel like they’re getting something special and well-made. The rise of craft beer has given the beer industry a winning weapon to combat the image of wine and spirits.

And if Sam Adams doesn’t get him there, maybe this will:

Together we [Boston Beer Company and Weihenstephan] developed the first new style of beer in Germany in a hundred years. It’s the Opus One of beer….

It’s unique in the same way that Sam Adams Utopias is unique. Infinium combines elements of Dom Perignon, Noble Pilsener, Chateau d’Yquem and Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen.

Some beer geeks might roll their eyes at the the prospect, but…

There will probably come a day when Sam Adams will be in cans. Can makers have continued to improve the quality of the package….I’ve been watching it since the late 1980s and the quality of the liners keeps better. So there will come a time, I think, when we can put Sam Adams in a can without compromising our standards for the quality of the beer.

And finally, Koch offers this bold prediction:

I think it’s realistic that Better Beer can get to a third of the beer market, imports and crafts and domestic specialties….Craft can be a third of that third, which is 11%, up from about 5% today. So if we hold our share of craft beer we’ll more than double.

We wouldn’t bet against him. Twenty-five years ago, the odds against his company becoming the number-one American-owned brewer were astronomical.

In recent years, hop farms have sprung up outside the Northwest. One of the newcomers is Simple Earth Hops, located in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. It will celebrate its grand opening next Saturday. This family-friendly event will feature tours of the hopyard and farm, live music, and an evening potluck.

And on September 18, in upstate New York, the Madison County Historical Museum will host the 15th annual Madison County Hop Fest. The festivities will include a food and beer pairing, beer sampling, educational programs, hop-related merchandise for sale, and the crowning of the Hop King.