It's expensive to enter, winning is a crapshoot, and anyway, there are so many medals that a win is likely to get lost in the shuffle. Most consumers don't track these things, and if they learn a brewery has won an award, probably don't care. All of which raises an interesting question. Why bother?
Read More"So we speak of a beer with a low alcohol content, high bitterness, no residual sugar, so a refreshing beer. It was what we call in Belgium biere de saison, saison beer, brewed in the winter and drunk in the summer."
Read MoreThe North American Guild of Beer Writers announced their annual awards this morning, and the judges saw fit to acknowledge a few things I wrote last year. It's very special about being honored by your colleagues, so this means a lot.
Read MoreLike every brewery of a certain age, Hopworks once-novel IPA started to taste dated once the newer wave arrived a few years ago. In a surprising, fascinating move, Hopworks has reformulated their flagship, a makeover that changes everything (including the label) except the name.
Read MoreNot that we needed further evidence, but a recent collaboration between a brewery and a national doughnut chain definitively and conclusively confirm that the term "craft beer" is meaningless.
Read MoreIt is the third most-brewed beer in the US and yet has no significant best-sellers. It is called "rustic" but is prized for its sophistication. It is the broadest style in the world--if you can even call it a style--and yet most of the tradition traces itself pretty directly back to a single beer.
Read MoreIn one of the tinier pockets of the brewing world, a heated debate rages. What should Americans call the beer made in the manner of spontaneously-fermented Belgian lambic? This wasn't remotely an issue until about 2007, when Allagash Brewing started a program that followed the practices quite closely. There may have been some efforts along the way toward traditional lambic-style beer, but Allagash built a dedicated coolship room and committed to an ongoing program making the beer. Last year, one of the small club of Americans making these beers decided to name and codify it, and thus began the debate.
Read MorePlatonic ideals--theoretical states of perfection unattainable in the mortal world--are useful because they establish a North Star. In the real world, no beer ever receives achieves this state but, presumably, if one did, we would all recognize it.
Read MoreThe recent Facebook post by Atlanta-based Scofflaw got a lot of attention for its ill-advised tone and photo. More interesting was how it surfaced an issue that doesn't get a lot of discussion: the role class and culture play among beer drinkers, brewery workers, and increasingly, among small breweries.
Read MoreAs brewers in the United States began developing their own approach to brewing hoppy ales, a few beers became watersheds in advancing the American palate. One of those is certainly Russian River's Pliny the Elder. I spoke with founder and brewer Vinnie Cilurzo about it back in 2012.
Read MoreIn 1993, Redhook's Paul Shipman made an interesting decision--he decided to reach out to Anheuser-Busch. That phone call would eventually lead to the first investments by big beer into smaller breweries, as the company bought minority stakes in Redhook and later Widmer.
Read MoreThe difference between a ripe piece of fruit and fruit-flavored candy approximates the difference between a good New England IPA and a poor one.
Read MoreThirty-two years ago, three psychologists published a paper "On the Misperception of Random Sequences"--also known as the "hot-hand fallacy." They looked at several data sets and concluded that the previous performance of the player had no effect on the likelihood he'd make any given shot.
Read MoreThe banks closed in early May, staying closed through mid-November. Things had actually been grinding down from March, and it would take until early 1971 for them to come fully back on line, so "banking in Ireland was disrupted for nearly a full year."
Read MoreBack in the glorious 1980s amid what was surely the most hideous moment of fashion*, there was a certain hairstyle that was "all business up front, but a party in the back." And yes, I will eventually connect this to a fascinating trend in beer.
Read MoreHere in the awkward moment between seasons, when most of the world has nothing better to do than brace for pumpkin season, there exists a fine moment for think pieces. Into the breach step Boak and Bailey, with one of their typically thought-provoking posts, "Seven Stages of Beer Geek."
Read MoreOn the first commercial break, MillerCoors ran an add touting the way Coors Light is made: "Cold lagered," "cold filtered," and "cold packaged," read the animation. This is part of a long tradition of beer companies touting bog-standard brewing practices in order to impress people who don't know the first thing about brewing.
Read MoreIn the Pacific Northwest, there is a spectacular harvest product made with hops plucked straight from the bine and placed thereafter in boiling wort, a whirlpool, and/or a tank of conditioning beer. These are known as fresh hop beers.
Read MoreThere will be two cask engines pouring proper ales, a barrel of kellerbier or altbier on the bar, and taps with rauchbier, gueuze, old ale--or whatever I can find from the island of misfit styles.
Read MoreThe brewer at Kout na Šumavě spoke not a word of English--that I heard. Back in 2014, we visited the brewery and Evan Rail translated what Mr. Hlavsa said. What started to emerge was one of the oddest processes I've encountered for making světlé pivo (what we call pilsner).
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