As it applies to reviewing beer, far too many people lack the attention span to read or write anything longer than a tweet. They react to clickbait headlines without reading, would rather tick beers and move on, and take as fact any information that’s delivered to them immediately in blurb or list format.
With the opening of Mantra Artisan Ales in Nashville later this year, Maneet Chauhan joins a growing number of well known chefs like Rick Bayless and John Howie who are turning their attention to the brew kettle.
Beginning with the Boston launch of Drizly in late 2012, more than a dozen beer delivery services have popped up, from hyper-local Brewber, serving just one neighborhood in Baltimore, to those serving a region or cities across the US.
Known for pioneering canned beer packaging, Oskar Blues was looking for a new way to push the aluminum container’s limits while solving some of the glass growler’s inherent downsides. They ended up with the Crowler.
The authors of The Comic Book Story of Beer move swiftly across time and continents, dropping in on the scenes that advanced beer from accidentally fermented “gruel” to a contemporary cultural touchstone.
Imperial Pumpkin Ale mixes it up as one of the brewery’s first labels featuring art. A nod to Tim Burton and the spirit of Halloween, the “foggy autumn night sky at a pumpkin patch” is a departure from the minimalist look of other Reuben’s Brews labels.
Buoyed by the meteoric rise of Not Your Father’s Root Beer, 2015 has undoubtedly brought us the Summer of Botanical Beer. But where will it all end? Or will it?
Ed and Meagan Musselman bought an old Coke plant with plans to open community-focused businesses in the landmark property. It already houses a coffee-and-tea shop, and a restaurant is in the works, but the founding venture was the one foremost in Ed’s mind: Dry Ground Brewing Company.
The Age of IPA has signaled an end of creativity and experimentation. Based around a handful of hot, new hoppy styles with similar characteristics, we’re in a time of creeping homogeneity.
Northern Germany was once home to dozens of top-fermenting beer styles. Most drowned under the tsunami of lager that flooded the region at the end of the 19th century. A few tenacious ones managed to cling on past WWII, fewer still until today.
To divorce recipe amounts from purely physical measures, think of grain as a percentage of the total grain bill. Combined with the target gravity you can use a little math to re-create a recipe that’s theoretically independent of system efficiency and volume.
Whether you spell it spätzle or spaetzle, this German noodle or dumpling is a perfect accompaniment to classic dishes like Sauerbraten, Rindsrouladen and other dishes served with a sauce or gravy. This substitute for potatoes or rice can also be found in Austrian cuisine.
The idea for the 67 Old Fashioned came while having a beer and a shot after work. A sip of the cocktail is very whiskey forward, but when you exhale you taste the Mosaic hops and the gentle IPA bite from the demerara syrup made with Dallas-based Community Beer Company’s IPA.
Tria’s Taproom Wings are cured overnight in garlic powder, dried sage, cumin and salt, then preserved in oil for a second night before being fried to order. Finally, buffalo hot sauce is swapped for a green chile sauce made from tomatillos, jalapeño, Spanish onion, garlic, cumin, coriander and parsley.
To complement a list that mixes German imports (think Schwaben Bräu, Hacker-Pschorr and Hofbräu) with North Dakota staples like Fargo Brewing and Drekker Brewing, Würst serves up loads of hearty German fare.
Troy Casey, the founder and brewer of Casey Brewing and Blending, operates out of a barrel room on the edge of the Colorado Rockies, from which he turns out limited quantities of Brettanomyces-spiked Saison and Belgian-inspired wild ale.
Bale Breaker Brewing is the creation of siblings Meghann Quinn, Patrick Smith and Kevin Smith, whose family started growing hops in Washington’s Yakima Valley back in 1932. They founded Bale Breaker in 2013, with help from Kevin Quinn, Meghann’s husband.
In the decades following Prohibition, breweries came and went in California’s capital. More recently, the recession closed a few mainstays. But when the economy recovered, the beer scene exploded, reacquainting the city of saloons with its beer-soaked heritage.
Today, lemony Berliner Weisses and salty-sour Goses are the rage, while new hop varieties and brewing techniques allow bitter, aromatic IPAs to dominate tap lists and beer fridges. Given the speeding popularity of both categories, it was merely a matter of time before sour met hoppy in a head-on collision.
Bitter is what overseas observers have in mind when they dismiss British beer as “warm and flat.” This is a shame not only because the subtleties of Bitter can be a delight, but also because craft brewing as we know it was built on its back.
Many breweries have tried to build on the likemindedness of musicians and craft brewers. Rock Brothers seems to have gotten it right. Since 2012, Rock Brothers has partnered with Hootie and the Blowfish, 311 and other bands to release several award-winning beers.
