Features
Culture
Trade Secrets: The Highs and Lows of Beer Trading
by Oliver GrayContents How to TradeTrade Speak In the fall of 2013, I bought a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.’s Flipside Red IPA. It wasn’t a crazy hyped or rare beer, but something in the combination of lemony hops and caramel malts matched up perfectly with my taste buds. I went back to the store to […]
Culture - Food
Pretzel Necklaces and Beyond: Beer Lovers Get Serious About a Festival Essential
by Bryan RothCindy Cox-Siedlarz considers herself a crafty person, skilled at creating costumes, scrapbooking memories and crocheting and knitting clothing. But of all her creations, one has a particularly lasting impact, and it has nothing to do with cloth, yarn or household items. Instead, this art is more about sweet and salty with a touch of savory […]
Culture - Food
Pretzel Necklaces and Beyond: Beer Lovers Get Serious About a Festival Essential
by Bryan RothCindy Cox-Siedlarz considers herself a crafty person, skilled at creating costumes, scrapbooking memories and crocheting and knitting clothing. But of all her creations, one has a particularly lasting impact, and it has nothing to do with cloth, yarn or household items. Instead, this art is more about sweet and salty with a touch of savory […]
Brewing Features - History
Slow Beer: The History of Aging Beer
by Ron PattinsonBarrel-aging may be all the rage at the moment, but giving beer time to mature is nothing new. And it wasn’t done by halves. While a modern lager might spend a few weeks aging and a barrel-aged beer sits a couple of years in wood, in the past, beers could mature for decades. Stock Ale […]
Brewing Features - History
Slow Beer: The History of Aging Beer
by Ron PattinsonBarrel-aging may be all the rage at the moment, but giving beer time to mature is nothing new. And it wasn’t done by halves. While a modern lager might spend a few weeks aging and a barrel-aged beer sits a couple of years in wood, in the past, beers could mature for decades. Stock Ale […]
Brewing Features
Brew U: Educational Institutions Strive to Keep Up with Demand
Dave Gardell has owned the Ruck, a beer bar in Troy, New York, for the last 11 and a half years. He’s worked there for the past 18. At his job, he says, he makes special effort to “have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the product I’m serving,” even “pounding the pavement” himself to […]
Chefs' Pairings - Food - Recipes
Jasmine Rice with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce
by Ryan LaufenburgerCucumber can be a difficult flavor profile to isolate, never mind to add to a beer with any success. Vegetables, being mostly water, sometimes get lost in the boldness of malt, hops and yeast in beer. The refreshing beers featured below would go great after a day of outside chores or playtime. They would pair […]
Columns
Behind the Bar
Two Breweries, Two Different Experiences
by John HollI wasn’t out of my car for seven seconds when a guy approached me in the gravel parking lot of the Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro Bend, Vermont. “You getting Damon?” he asked with a sense of urgency. No pleasantries, no greeting, just a blunt question. I replied honestly that I didn’t know, since I didn’t […]
Industry Insights
Eyes on Texas: Big Market, Lots to Gain (or Lose)
by Christopher ShepardTexans bought 9.5 percent of all the beer sold in the United States in 2015. That’s almost 20 million barrels, making it the second-largest U.S. market, after California. But California has something like 10 million more residents overall, and a legal drinking-age population that’s also bigger by about 10 million. So the average 21-plus Texan […]
Departments
Beer Weekend
48 Hours in Brooklyn
by Sarah AnneseMaybe it’s your grandmother who was born there; or it’s Francie Nolan, whose coming-of-age story, told in Betty Smith’s novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, depicts early 20th-century Williamsburg. Could be the DIY movement, gentrification or plaid shirts. Whatever your impression of Brooklyn, it has a thriving and quickly expanding beer scene. During this weekend […]
Home Brewing
Homebrewing: Experimental Design
Once modern American brewers mastered a few of the basic beer styles, the urge to experiment kicked into high gear almost immediately. It’s why we now have such extraordinary and vast choices. Nailing down the basics before tackling the adventurous and radical is sound advice for homebrewers as well. This inquisitive itch often comes early […]
What's Brewing
Classic Beers Find Second Life with Modern Audiences
by Bryan RothIn 2015, there were about 11,300 packaged beer brands scattered across stores in all 50 states, according to market research company IRI. That’s 32 different beers for every day of the year. But at a time when those numbers continue to creep up and breweries look forward to new tastes and trends, some are glancing […]
Beer Travelers
The Reinheitsgebot Celebrates its Quincentennial
Few American brewers adhere to the Reinheitsgebot—the Bavarian Beer Purity Law of 1516 that to this day mandates, in order to be called “beer,” a brew can only consist of barley malt, hops and water (although it currently allows for wheat and, naturally, yeast). But 500 years on, the world’s oldest food law is alive […]
Book Reviews
Wood & Beer: A Brewer’s Guide
by John HollWood & Beer: A Brewer’s Guide By Peter Bouckaert and Dick Cantwell $19.95, Brewers Publications Lucky are we, the drinkers, who will soon benefit from the inspirations that brewers will get after reading this book. Written by two respected brewers, this is an exhaustingly comprehensive examination into a style that gets a lot of attention […]
Book Reviews
The Fermented Man: A Year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution
by John HollThe Fermented Man: A Year on the Front Lines of a Food Revolution By Derek Dellinger $28.95, The Overlook Press At times it may seem that we’re living only on beer, but for an entire year brewer Derek Dellinger sustained himself exclusively on fermented food and beverages (not just beer) and documents the journey in […]
Book Reviews
CRAFT: THE CALIFORNIA BEER DOCUMENTARY
CRAFT: THE CALIFORNIA BEER DOCUMENTARY Directed by Jeff Smith craftbeerdoc.com, DhicPhace Films LLC This documentary begins on a personal note from director Jeff Smith—who left his pregnant wife at home for a month during filming—but the story is wisely told by brewers, owners and representatives of 80 breweries in California. While the focus is on […]
Book Reviews
Colorado Excursions with History, Hikes and Hops
by John HollColorado Excursions with History, Hikes and Hops By Ed Sealover $21.99, Arcadia Publishing The Rocky Mountain State has long been a destination for beer and nature enthusiasts, and this collection of drinking spots and hiking trails peppered with colorful prose and important tips is worth a place in any daypack. Reading in advance of an […]
Pull Up A Stool
Pull Up A Stool With John Kimmich
by John HollThis interview appears in the September issue of All About Beer Magazine. Call this the house that Heady Topper built. This July, the Alchemist Brewery was to open a new space in Stowe, Vermont, where enthusiasts and cult followers can once again pick up the famed double IPA (which is largely credited with spurring the […]