Friends often ask me to review their brewing recipes and strategies. With all-grain brewers, this usually amounts to minor tweaking of ingredients and proportions. For extract-steep and partial-mash brewers, though, I encounter common issues with regard to grain utilization, tricky ...
We, as beer lovers, are constantly being introduced to the next great infatuation, permutation or trend as the brewing industry rapidly rambles on....
I have always had a particular fondness for the emphatic malt character, smoothness and underlying elegance of noble hops in ordinary German biers. I was especially enamored with bocks and that pure expression of malt. Bocks are beers of extraordinary ...
In recent years, there has been a particular fondness for brews with “extreme” qualities. Intense hoppiness, rugged roasted flavors, wild funkiness and alcoholic potency all fit this bill. Sour flavors have most recently become a desired affection. Berliner weisse features ...
Fall always offers a chance to kickstart that homebrewing motor. We can take advantage of the cooler fermentation temperatures and move from heat-slaying brews to something more rich and substantial to pair with invigorating weather and culinary traditions of autumn. ...
The appreciation for Belgian beer and Belgium’s brewing culture has never been more keen than right now. One could even argue that it is currently the most influential force in North American brewing. This well-deserved affection has helped sustain and ...
Hobbyists thrive on rapport, with like minds sharing knowledge, triumph and struggle, reminiscing about wide-eyed beginnings and visions of the great frontier ahead. Homebrewing engenders much camaraderie, but inevitably it can also uncover some philosophical divides....
The lineup of beer styles available today is quite impressive, but the lines between them are often blurry. The difference between porters and stouts might only be a matter of brewer’s discretion. These two form a virtual continuum, the minor ...
I am an unabashed lager lover. My first beer epiphany came from a glass of Hacker-Pschorr Dunkel in the mid-1970s. A few years later, homebrewing brought the giddy realization that I could brew my own. Much has changed on the ...
Those of us fortunate enough to have experienced the North American beer renaissance would never have imagined anything like this in the 1970s. But there was no stopping the growth of craft beer once the ball was rolling . Now ...
