To run a brewery of any size it takes a wide range of tools, equipment, ingredients and paraphernalia. Sometimes having a furry companion around can help, too. Here are the five things that Crider and Brown can’t live without.
With the recent boom in wild ales and sour beers, yeast is having a serious moment in the spotlight. But more experimentation means breweries risk exposure to cross-contamination and infection. That’s why Avery Brewing Co. teamed up with the University of Colorado to genetically sequence yeast strains.
Most of our hobby’s engineers and sciencey types futz over sculptures and process controls. But biology nerds? They get yeast obsessed. The truly crazy are expanding commercial frontiers with hyper-local yeast companies. San Francisco’s The Yeast Bay is one of the newest.
Craft breweries of all sizes are shipping their beer to far-flung accounts. So how do they maintain the condition of their beer, please fickle customers, and simultaneously grow their brands? The answer is cold storage.
The story of the world’s first Leafcutter Ant Saison starts in the days leading up to São Paulo, Brazil’s O Mercado, an epic gastronomy fair that brings together more than 20,000 foodies, chefs, restaurateurs and a handful of brewers.
For the first time, the US hop industry has grown more hops for aroma than for the commoditized bittering acid. The biggest driver of this change has been a 40-percent increase in Cascade acreage from 2012 to 2013; over 2,000 acres in the Pacific Northwest have been converted to Cascade.
The world produced over 134 million metric-tons of barley between 2011 and 2012. But up to 95 percent of the world’s barley is susceptible to a variety of a fungal disease called stem rust that was discovered in Uganda in 1999. Dubbed Ug99, it has spread across East Africa and up into the Middle East.
In their quest to push the boundaries of brewing and redefine craft beer styles, American brewers are deep into experimenting with brewing’s most fickle ingredient: wild yeast. And as demand for Brett and other wild strains skyrockets, lab geeks like Dmitri Serjanov are stepping up to meet it.
Over the last few years, there have been rumblings that olive oil can be added to beer instead of oxygen. Like milk fortifying our bones, yeast need oxygen to build strong cell walls. The idea is that olive oil contains oleic acid, an unsaturated fatty acid that could be enough to promote yeast growth.
Most of Colorado’s breweries are more than 5,000 feet above sea level. But professional brewers at altitude are downright scientific with their methods. And the first thing they point to is the temperature at which they boil.
A group of young scientists in Germany have managed to brew a beer with added flavors that doesn’t break the Reinheitsgebot, the 1516 purity law. By tinkering with the genes in yeast, students at the Technical University of Munich have engineered the microorganisms to impart additional flavors and substances to their beers, like lemon and caffeine.
Tasting panels are trained by smelling the chemical aroma standards responsible for each flavor—as beer geeks know, banana flavor is isoamyl acetate and butter is diacetyl—in decreasing dilutions. They taste the isolated chemicals added to polyethylene glycol until small amounts can be detected.
While walking in the woods, Argentinian microbiologist Diego Libkind stumbled upon fungus clusters scattered on the ground. Taking a sample back to the lab, Libkind found a species of Saccharomyces yeast living on these edible mushrooms.
Westvleteren Trappist Ales to make US debut in 2012; scientists decipher genetic code of Brettanomyces yeast; SABMiller purchases Foster’s Group; House Bill 4061 legalizes homebrew sharing at Michigan meetings; and Prohibition Pig to open in place of The Alchemist Brewpub.
Beer and religion have walked hand in hand for thousands of years, from ritualistic brewing in ancient Turkey to the Trappist monasteries of Belgium. And just like born-again Christianity rose from the ashes of burned-out spiritual lives, so did craft emerge from a beer culture that had pretty much dried up.
In addition to their bittering, flavor, and aroma properties, hops help stabilize beer foam, kill unwanted bacteria, and, according to some studies, impart body-boosting antioxidants. Future breeds might bring an entire revolution to the brewing industry.
While we usually think of a batch in the number of glasses we can pour, not in terms decades, we can force our beer to the last payment, the proverbial mortgage finish line.
Sapporo releases beer made with space barley; Vermont’s Long Trail to acquire Otter Creek; BrewDog unveils world’s strongest beer; and be brewmaster for a day at Frankenmuth.
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.
When you boil it all down, beer is little more than four simple ingredients—malt, hops, water and yeast. Join us as we explore these humble components in a two-part series taking it all back to basics.
In this age of economic downturn, it seems more people are becoming increasingly concerned that they receive their money’s worth, and beer does not escape this new focus.
When Sierra Nevada heard about the E-Fuel100 MicroFueler, they contacted the inventors to see if there was a way they could use the gizmos to make ethanol on site at the brewery for use with their vehicle fleet.
