PBR on NPR? What the Hell? Pabst Blue Ribbon’s unexpected resurgence has been fueled by the thrifty, kitsch-loving habits of urban hipsters. So what’s the brand doing by courting its drinkers’ parents?
I once served a five-year-old bottle of craft beer to a college buddy, just for laughs. As he popped the top, I waited in anticipation for his first sip, which he promptly spit all over my coffee table. I deserved it.
This insidious practice of cramming a cheap lemon rind atop a luscious, aromatic glass of Hefeweizen—the taproom equivalent of slobbering ketchup all over a perfectly grilled T-bone from Morton’s—has got to stop.
How do you celebrate fifteen Great American Beer Festival medals and back-to-back GABF Small Brewery Brewer of the Year nods? You open up a new brewing and bottling plant, and start distribution of two new lines of beer.
Every time a can of beer is cracked open, it spits out a little bit of history. The can—our handy, standard, aluminum homie—has enjoyed a long and manifold history.
Ordering a can of beer has always been trouble. Call for one and you run the risk of being identified as an unsophisticated ignoramus and subjected to ridicule at the hands of even the most open-minded beer geeks.
Why is beer suddenly grabbing the attention of chefs and bar managers at the hoitiest and toitiest places in the nation, after being relegated to second-class status for so long? There are a lot of intangible reasons, but there’s a more tangible one as well: Garrett Oliver’s The Brewmaster’s Table.
These cocktails can take several forms. There are the droppers, in which shot glasses of various hard alcohols are physically dropped into pints of beer; the substitutions, in which beer is swapped in for the traditional spirit; and the original, unique concoctions.
The Belgian town of Ingelmunster may be small, but beer-wise, it’s huge. Located in the province of West Flanders, Ingelmunster is a place with a long history, jam-packed with political and religious strife and, of course, untold hectoliters of fine Belgian beer.
For us regular folk, cooking with beer has always been fair game. A few cans of Bud may serve as a delicious, industry-standard sauce for simmering fresh mussels; and any ale can lend a comforting, yeasty tang to a sturdy loaf of beer bread.
As a professional brewer, I often find myself in this situation: I hand someone a sample of my beer, they taste it, and they become delighted and curious. The next comment is, “I really like this beer. What style is it?”
