Author: Jeff Alworth
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Classic Beer -
Classic BeerCantillon Classic Gueuze: Everything Is in Everything
January 1, 2018 - Jeff Alworth A few years back, I landed in Belgium’s Charleroi airport during a November cold snap. The woman at the car rental desk shot a look at the frost-covered ground, gave a shiver, and complained about the chill. But later that afternoon, as I stepped off a busy Brussels street into Brasserie Cantillon, one of the... View Article -
Classic BeerSchneider Weisse: Wheat Beer’s Last Stand
November 6, 2017 - Jeff Alworth The village of Kelheim, smack dab in the center of Bavaria, does not appear to be hallowed ground. It has the same tidy, charming appearance of so many little towns that dot the Bavarian countryside. True, there’s a larger-than-average brewery just to the east of the town square and, true, it does announce itself as... View Article -
Classic BeerGenesee Cream Ale: Smooth Character
July 1, 2017 - Jeff Alworth Select a type of beer and think about which one started or revived a tradition—Pilsner Urquell, Rodenbach, Fuller’s ESB. These are your classics. We tend to discount American beers made in large plants and sold in cans and not unreasonably; most tend to be targeted at the mass audience or are pallid imitations of more... View Article -
Classic BeerTaras Boulba: Delightfully Belgian
May 1, 2017 - Jeff Alworth If you found yourself in one of the beerier precincts of Portland, Oregon, six or seven years ago, there was a good chance you noticed someone wearing a T-shirt with a single, strange word, punctuated for emphasis: Smeirlap! This was an insider’s reference to a particular Belgian beer—but not, as you might expect, Cantillon Brewery,... View Article -
Classic BeerWestmalle Tripel: Evolution Over Decades
March 1, 2017 - Jeff Alworth Belgians, in the realm of beer at least, are slow to give up their traditions. As late as the 1960s, they were still resisting the charms of industrial lager, and when you pore through the gem case that contains Belgian ale styles, you still find many ancient treasures. And until fairly late in the 20th... View Article -
BrewingEmergence of Tiers
March 1, 2017 - Jeff Alworth For a few decades, beer has had a dividing line so bright it jumps out at the grocery store. On one side are traditional mass-market lagers, on the other “craft beers.” Containers are roughly the same price in each category, but quite a bit different on either side of that line. If you’re an old... View Article -
The Beer Bible Blog - Web OnlyMore on Westmalle
December 19, 2016 - Jeff Alworth In the forthcoming issue of All About Beer Magazine, I discuss Brouwerij Westmalle’s Tripel, one of the most important beers in the Belgian canon, in my Classic Beer column. Until that beer came along in the 1930s, amber and brown beers were the overwhelming norm in Belgian brewing. (There was another early blond, Witkap Pater,... View Article -
The Beer Bible BlogThe Riddle of Scarcity in New England
December 1, 2016 - Jeff Alworth My wife’s family is scattered across New England, from Wrentham, south of Boston, to Norway in Maine (just a few miles north of Poland Springs, for you mineral water fans). Every couple years, I get to visit for a week around Thanksgiving, and it has allowed me to keep my finger on the pulse of... View Article