Get ready to gas up the car and find a hotel room in Idaho Falls June 7.

That is when the Mountain Brewers Festival returns to the spud state.

Did you guys know that Colorado has a lots of craft brewers and it's fun to go on a brewery tour, and taste all different kinds of beer?

And beer enthusiasts don't give off the elitist vibe some wine drinkers do? And brewpubs serve fried food? Wow! Who knew?

This week's Time magazine has a relatively amusing — if ten years too late — travelogue from Joel Stein about going on a brewery tour in the Denver area.

Boise Ram brewmaster Kevin Bolen got some killer news over the weekend when his Lochsa Lager won a bronze medal in the Vienna-style lager category at the 2008 World Beer Cup in San Diego.

Bolen and assistant brewmaster Jake Schisel can add the World Beer Cup win to their growing list of awards — which include three medals from the Great American Beer Festival since 2000.

New Belgium Brewing is getting ready to offer their incredibly popular Fat Tire Amber Ale in aluminum cans to thirsty imbibers this summer, but it is unclear at this point if those cans will show up at Boise-area package stores.

Company officials said the beer will go out to limited markets this summer but haven't yet made any final determinations as to where that will be, spokeswoman Alicia Hassinger said Thursday.

Raise a pint and give a cheer to Victor-based Grand Teton Brewing Co., which celebrates its 20th birthday this year. And to kick off the celebration, Brewmaster Charlie Otto and the rest of his crew has brewed up the special XX Sweetgrass Double IPA to mark the occasion.

I can't think of a better way to celebrate the birthday of one of Idaho's finest breweries than with an imperial IPA, which seems extra decadent in this hop starved era.

East Coast craft brewing titans Samuel Adams showed once again this month why they totally rock by helping out small craft brewers across the US who are struggling to find and pay for hops.

As reported in the Idaho Statesman and other media organizations over the last several months, there is a major hop shortage in the beer world this year — meaning if you can even find hops, they are incredibly expensive. But Sam Adams is helping out the little guy by selling hops to small breweries.

The latest in a series of Frank Zappa tributes from California’s most excellent Lagunitas Brewing Co. is now available in Boise and pays tribute to — you guessed it — 1967’s “Lumpy Gravy” album.

The good news is no lumpy gravy was used to brew this beer — beef or turkey-fat based gravy might be good on mashed potatoes but probably not so great with beer. Although it might taste better than some of those fruit beers being sold these days.

Anyway, the “Lumpy Gravy” tastes like an imperial brown ale to me — with sweet but mellow malt flavors (with some roasted grain in there too) flowing smoothly down the gullet with a decent hop bite to balance the malt. A double deuce, complete with a replication of the record cover on the label, is $3.19 at the Boise Co-Op. Supplies are limited, so if you want one, go get it.

The eternal question if beer or marijuana is worse for society is discussed, debated, and ultimately answered by Lewis Black on Comedy Central’s “Root of all Evil” tonight at 11:30 p.m.

This court spoof program is pretty damn funny — comedians represent both sides of a pop culture debate like lawyers, giving opening statements and arguing their case.

I stumbled upon on interesting article from the New York Times over the weekend about a study which says scientists who drink beer are less likely to publish a paper than their peers. And the more beer they drink, the less successful they become.

Publishing a paper doesn’t mean much to normal folks, but to scientists, it can be the pinnacle of career achievement — the ultimate egghead bragging right.

But do we really need a study to tell us that people who drink lots of beer maybe don’t do so well with their homework? I don’t want to go all Ben Franklin here, but isn’t this self-evident?

You'd think that someone who writes a craft beer column and a blog on the same subject would be able to ace an AOL-sponsored "how well do you know your beer?" type of quiz.

That's what I thought until I took the quiz this morning and got only 10 answers right out of 15.