Impress the hell out of everyone when you whip out bottles of intriguing beer, reel off brief explanations of what they are and share your liquid bread at the table. Fortify the ancestral tradition of feasting by complementing the food with beer.
Rock Art Brewery wins monstrous legal battle; Greg Noonan passes away; BrewDog’s Nanny State keeps drinkers off the naughty step; and a black bear makes a beer run in Wisconsin.
Arguing that Lambic should only be made in Brussels or Payottenland is as unsustainable as saying that lagers should only come from Bavaria or Bohemia.
Crisp, divinely flavored with coriander and orange peels, spicy and fruity. Typically made with unmalted wheat and perhaps oats, it is left unfiltered to produce a hazy, pale color with a billowing white cloud of foam.
When determining the Best of Show, four or five experienced judges and brewers grab chairs and enough glasses to run a tavern for a night. With beers flying quickly, the judges have scant moments to sniff, swirl, swallow and form an opinion.
Halfway through his 40s, Bob Sylvester and his wife launched a tiny shoestring brewery in a warehouse near the Gulf of Mexico. Saint Somewhere is a tiny, one-man, Belgian operation, but it has attracted a nation of ecstatic customers.
What if Captain Christopher Jones and his crew had Thanksgiving in Mexico verses Plymouth Rock? What flavors would be expressed and what ingredients would have been used for what is now a traditional American holiday?
Though it’s the northernmost brewery in the contiguous 48 states, you’d think Alpine Brewing Company was 5 miles from Bavaria, not Canada. The German-owned, German-built brewery brews Bavarian-style beers exclusively. Owner Bart Traubeck prefers it that way.
When you boil it all down, beer is little more than four simple ingredients—malt, hops, water and yeast. Join us as we close our two-part series on taking it all back to basics.
A couple decades of explosive expansion have left a tall, gleaming downtown, a few up-and-coming post-industrial warehouse districts, booming suburbs and a cultural infrastructure still growing into all that growth. Hence, most of the excellent local taps you’ll find in town come from out of town. That’s changing.
