Beer Chicks, by definition, do not sit still. Oh, they sit, on bar stools and booths and on picnic benches and lawn chairs, pint in hand, but neither of the Chicks — Christina Perozzi, with her dark hair and penchant for dark lagers and Hallie Beaune, with her blonde bangs looking rather like Zooey Deschanel, platinum edition — really ever sit still.

True to her name, Perozzi's on a bit of an Italian kick. “There is so much going on in Italy right now,” she says, who recently got back from a beer-finding mission there. “It's like they've been at the crossroads of all these European traditions for years but are just now getting into it; they're moving in like so many directions!”

Beaune is looking like she's heard the Italian story one too many times, but will concede that the beers coming out of the country are pretty cool. Some of them have been employed in a TV spot on beer cocktails that the Beer Chicks recently produced for one of Google's new YouTube channels, called HUNGRY, launching in July.

I must admit that to me the idea of a beer cocktail seems somewhat genre bending — aren't the two mutually exclusive? But Perozzi explains that the flavor-making esters in most craft beers are so heterogeneous, and so downright weird at times (from banana to brettanomyces) that they can't help but add complexity. “Plus you're adding alcohol — you're not watering down the drink,” she adds. Point taken, I guess.

The Chicks have followed up their first book The Naked Pint, with a sequel on homebrewing called The Naked Brewer, which will be released this fall by Perigee. For this they made dozens of brews in tiny batches, as small as six gallons. “We're chicks,” says Beaune, insisting they can't, and don't, hold their own against men in the odd drinking contest, or for that matter keg schlepping. Though they'll need all the stamina they can muster for the other thing they've got planned this summer, the third annual LA Craft Beer Crawl, a celebration of local craft featuring about 20 brewers in seven downtown drinking establishments, slated for August 18.

Patrick Comiskey, our drinks columnist, blogs at patrickcomiskey.com and tweets at @patcisco. Have a spirits question for a future column? Ask him. Want more Squid Ink? Follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

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