Hey, regular gal and guy beer drinkers, if I wrote a tasting note and described a beer as phenolic, what would that mean to you? This is a serious question and I’d appreciate any comments off the top of your head (no Googling) — remembering that a sentence is better than a treatise. (I promise [...]

This kind of brings new meaning to the concept of a “brews cruise,” doesn’t it? The 827-foot long cruise ship AIDAblu is outfitted with a complete brewery. The brewhouse on deck 10 (of 14 decks) is made of glass and can produce 5 hectoliters a day (132 gallons, about 4 U.S. beer barrels). Copper fermentation [...]

Truth is sometimes I turn these lists into a post so I have the links saved for more careful reading later. Why Should Terroir Matter . . . from a speech by Randall Grahm. I don’t care about “saving” high end wines, but thought provoking. I suspect most of the time we should be happy [...]

(Note: This post was amended Feb. 24 to eliminate babbling that got in the way of actual story.) Tomorrow’ s The New York Times carries an article about “tasting Belgian golden ales.” Perhaps surprisingly American beers claimed four the first five spots although half of the 20 beers tasted hailed from Belgium. The first and [...]

You can buy used spirit barrels from Port Brewing (aka The Lost Abbey). Cheap. Until you try to figure out how to get one home. Particularly when home is Vermont or Florida or another place not San Diego.    

Watch to the end. Think about it.    

In case you missed these blog posts last week . . . Can you make money blogging about drinks? That was one topic of discussion at the Wine Writers Symposium last week in northern California. (You could have taken many of the panel topics, plugged in “beer” instead of “wine” and it would have made [...]

Lord knows how scientists may have manipulated orange genetics since John McPhee reported this in 1966, but here’s a little bit about the where involved with oranges. He writes that taste and aroma vary based on “the position of the individual orange in the framework of the tree on which it grew. Ground fruit — [...]

Pardon another brief advertisement. I’ll be a guest Sunday on The Brewing Network Sunday Session. The show begins at 5 p.m. Pacific. We’ll be talking about Brewing With Wheat (I have a copy in hand, Alan, and it weighs 11.8 ounces), the book and the physical activity. You can even ask questions live by joining [...]

Wait, did you hear that Oh this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me She said “There’s one thing you’ve got to learn Is not to be afraid of it.” I said “No, I like it, I like it, it’s good.” She said “You like it now But you’ll learn to love it later.” [...]