Those are Michigan hops on the right. How can I tell? It’s a trick. I shot the picture in 1995 when we were on our way to visit Kalamazoo Brewing, as it was known then, and talk with founder Larry Bell for a story Daria was writing for Brew magazine. We stopped at a roadside [...]

Hold your horses, Wired magazine. This headline, “Craft Brewers Reformulate Beer to Cope With Hop Shortage,” might leave the wrong impression. Think Samuel Adams Boston Lager is being reformulated? Sierra Nevada Pale Ale? Coors Blue Moon White? New Belgium Fat Tire Ale? Deschutes Black Butte Porter? Bell’s Oberon? Etc. Etc. The beers that most people [...]

Next weekend in Washington, D.C., the Brewers Association plans to show that beer belongs at the table with the grownups. OK, maybe that’s not the best analogy – suggesting beer might otherwise be served at the kids’ table won’t go over well in most circles – but you get the point of SAVOR: An American [...]

Host Thomas Vincent of Geistbear Brewing Blog has announced the theme for The Sessions #16: Beer Festivals. He writes: “As Summer approaches we are in full swing of beer festival season, so it seemed the perfect topic for the June Session. Do you have a favorite beer festival you like to attend or a particular [...]

Perhaps we should have headed to one of the nearby casinos last night. It takes a certain amount of luck to open seven bottles of Thomas Hardy’s Ale and find them all outstanding. Particularly when the last one is 40 years old. By the time we got to the 1968 the sun had set on [...]

Doesn’t look the message to wait until July of 1969 is going to be a problem . . . The time has come to open the 1968 bottle of Thomas Hardy’s Ale. Daria gave me this bottle for Christmas more than six years ago, and the immediate question was what to do with it. It’s [...]

Travel guides are worthless without trust. So, you might be thinking, why should we trust a couple of British blokes who showed up for a holiday or two on America’s West Coast and then presumed to write about our beer? Oh, sure they seem clever, for instance describing American IPAs as “hoppier than a one-legged [...]

Did you hear the one about an Illinois man who plans to be buried in a coffin designed to look like a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon? Bill Bramanti, 67, isn’t in a hurry to use it — for now it makes an excellent cooler. Saturday he threw a party for friends and packed the [...]

Boak and Bailey have posted the roundup for The Session #15, writing “there are many roads to good beer.” Their recap includes 43 participants. Perhaps some host will ask us to explore the detours as well. Just kidding, Alan. Thomas at Geistbear Brewing Blog will host the June session. Look for his announcement soon. I’m [...]

A press release from the Hop Growers Union of the Czech Republic indicates the European protected designation of origin “Zatecky Chmel” (Saaz hops) was used for the first time in the processing the 2007-2008 hop products of from Zatec. Hops from 138 villages in the Czech Republic were labeled with the Zatecky mark. The majority [...]