About

What is The Tap Takeover? It is a craft beer blog focused primarily on beer reviews, with some reviews of breweries as well as other assorted beer thoughts. I have enjoyed beer for many years now and like many other “craft beer enthusiasts,*” I feel we are in a golden age of beer. In New Jersey alone (where I’ve lived my entire life), we are approaching 80 craft breweries in the state and a significant portion of those opened over the last 2 or 3 years, and close to a dozen within less than an hour’s drive from where I live and work.

With that thought in mind, most of the beers I review and/or talk about will be available in the Northeast with a slight focus on NJ craft/microbreweries though I will try to include beers with more of a national distribution, like Founders or Sierra Nevada. For example, I know of Schell’s Hefeweizen because a friend on untappd checks it in throughout the summer. Since the beer is unavailable in NJ/Northeast, I of course can’t review it which is a shame because for me, few beers are as satisfying in the summer as a Hefeweizen. Likewise, beers I review from Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands, NJ will have limited availability outside of NJ. Hell, some of Carton’s beers are tough for me to get and I live a little over an hour away from the brewery! Point being, I’ll try to mix it up, but ultimately, I can only drink the beers available to me, obviously.

Let’s face it, “craft beer enthusiasts” are even more connected because of untappd, Beer Advocate, and local to me here in NJ, perhaps the best resource, New Jersey Craft Beer, as well as the growth of small, independent breweries across the country. Learning about new beers is both easier and more challenging with so much of a good thing whittle down to what you want to try. It can be an endeavor fraught with the potential for buying and drinking beer you don’t like. #FirstWorldProblems, I know.

So why turn to writing about craft beer? For the past decade and a half or so, I’ve been writing book reviews for various outlets (SFFWorld.com, SFSignal.com, and Tor.com as well as my own blog) and will continue to do so. However, I wanted to shift that review/critical focus to craft beers. There are craft beer blogs out there, and with the popularity of untappd and Beer Advocate, why go the extra step? Well, as I said, I like sharing my opinions in more than 140 characters.

Why “The Tap Takeover?” I was trying to come up with a clever beer-associated name for this blog; each name I thought was clever, was of course taken. After only a few minutes, my wife said “How about ‘The Tap Takeover?’” So here we are. Most of the beers I’ll be talking about are from a bottle or can, rather than on draft or from a tap, so apologies for the slight misnomer.

* If the term Craft Beer Enthusiast has any real meaning any more, as the term “craft beer” has lost some of the weight it had even a few years ago, especially with the giants like AB InBev buying the “Microbreweries.” The term that now seems to be in more use is Independent Brewery. Whatever you call it and whoever makes that beverage made from Grain, Hops, Yeast, and Water, I’ll be discussing it here.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoy what I share with you all.

Cheers!

UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED, ALL IMAGES POSTED ON THE TAP TAKEOVER COPYRIGHT THE OWNER OF THE TAP TAKEOVER, ROB H. BEDFORD

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For mini reviews of some beers I enjoy, check out my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robhbed/