In a region of Belgium best known for orchards and vineyards, 32-year-old Raf Souvereyns is reviving Lambic production with his small blending operation Bokkereyder. Connoisseurs worldwide are taking notice.
There’s a growing wine-beer movement across the country, from the coasts of Oregon to Midwestern prairies and even Texas hill country. Brewhouses stacked high with barrels are increasingly looking and acting like wineries.
Wild Beer’s careful, considered way of doing things—harvesting native yeasts, implementing uncommon ingredients, blending, aging, experimenting—makes this remote operation one of the most forward-thinking craft breweries England has ever seen.
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.
The evolution and slow divergence of Irish Porter from the London original is a story that’s been repeated across the world. Displace a beer and, like a plant, it will adapt to its new environment.
Craft beer drinkers, like brewers, want to be challenged. From Chipotle Ale to peanut butter and jelly beer, we never know what will pleasantly surprise us, and the true craft beer drinker will try anything once.
