The year in beer

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A couple of self-described "beer geeks" are spending the year traveling the world in search of "great beer adventures," and they're chronicling their journey with a blog at http://www.thebeergeek.com/blog/?cat=13.

The first destination for Chris Nelson and his wife Merideth Canham-Nelson of Carmel Valley, Calif., was Anchorage, Alaska, to attend the annual Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine Festival. The Jan. 18-19 event brought together more than 40 brewers, 150 beers and a couple of thousand beer-lovers.

Before leaving their home in sunny Carmel Valley, Calif., for Anchorage, where it was a chilly 17 degrees, Nelson said: "I do think they are somewhat shocked we are coming up from California in January."

His first posting on the blog, the night before the brewery festival, described visiting a meeting of a brewers' club in Alaska where they tasted "caribou summer sausage and moose salami" in addition to a variety of homebrews.

He also gave the locals a thumb's up for their hospitality. "Beer people tend to be overly friendly," Nelson wrote, "but the Anchorage folks we have met so far are amazingly friendly."

Nelson has a Web site design business - "working with mostly wineries, which is somewhat funny," given his preoccupation with beer, he noted - and his wife is a clinical social worker. They're paying for their trips out of their own pocket and are not sponsored or affiliated with any beer companies. They plan to take one beer trip a month for the year.

On their Web site, he wrote: "While we do include visiting the sites and landmarks of the places we visit, finding that next great beer experience is the real focus of our travels. Visiting pubs, breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs; this is the essence of being a beer traveler... We are not trying to tell you where to visit or what beers to drink; rather we hope to inspire you to look for your own beer adventures."