In 1987, 1988 and 1990 Alaskan Brewing won gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival for Alaskan Amber (known as Chinook Alaskan Amber the first two times). Michael Jackson featured Alaskan Amber in his 1993 Beer Companion in the Altbier chapter. On Saturday it captured a silver medal at the 2012 World Beer Cup [...]

Pete Brown charged us to write about The Beer Moment for Session #63. The announcement provoked a few questions about what the heck he expected, and this week he added a little more direction. But I’d already decided that since I’d be surrounded by brewers and others involved in the beer industry during the Craft [...]

Brad Smith has posted an interview I did with him a little while back for the BeerSmith Podcast. I’ve only listened to a bit of it — I was there, I’ve heard enough of my stories — but I was struck immediately by how many times I uttered the “um” sound. Perhaps I was trying [...]

That’s Urban Chestnut Zwickel in the plastic cup, raised to toast Jackie Robinson on Jackie Robinson Day. The thought occurred to me Sunday at Busch Statium that it is the ballpark that makes ballpark beer worth ballpark prices. Yes, I should have figured that out years ago. The second photo, below, shows what’s on tap [...]

Two suggestions on Session Beer Day: – If you are in the vicinity of St. Louis, a cask-conditioned beer listed as Session IPA on the menu at the Schlafly Tap Room (pictured at the right). This year’s batch is 4.1% ABV, perhaps 35 IBU, generously dry hopped with Galaxy and Simcoe hops. Very new world [...]

  File this postcard under “beer nightmares.”  

In a few weeks, the Brewery History Society will honor Peter Mathias, author of The Brewing Industry in England, 1700-1830, making him its first Honorary Life Member. You, like I, probably won’t be in London April 19-21 for the society’s annual meeting and surrounding events, but you should wish you were. The schedule is here. [...]

Sometimes beer and blogging mix and sometimes they don’t. This past weekend I was way too busy at the Bluebonnet Brew-Off in Dallas to write deer diary notes on Twitter, let alone blog. And that’s a good thing. I’m not sure that you’d say an easy way to get a treasured stein from Bluebonnet is [...]

Damn you, Eric Asimov. My plan was to follow the lead of Jeff Alworth and avoid posting the rest of the week, but sometimes words are written that demand conversation. Today in his blog and in a story (well, the story would be tomorrow if you prefer newsprint) Asimov writes about the 1982 vintage in [...]