Both the beer and the details herein.
The press release Deschutes Brewery sent out for Hop Henge Experimental IPA describes the beer as “our annual exercise in IBU escalation, combining several new hop processes and techniques to create a unique and unexpected beer.”
Notice that although Hop Henge checks in at 8.75% and includes, according to the [...]

Don Russell and Jack Curtin (twice, in fact) point out a few of the problems with “The Best 25 New Beers in America” from Maxim magazine (in pdf format).
Like that some of the beers aren’t exactly new. In fact, isn’t Pyramid Haywire Hefeweizen 25 years old (new name aside)?
Jack, in a wonderful turn of [...]

Joe Stange has the scoop.
Drie Fonteinen to Stop Brewing, Keep Blending, Start Distilling.
Go read it at the Thirsty Pilgrim.
I’m posting it here simply because Armand Debelder and Drie Fonteinen represent artisanal at its finest, and Joe has the details about how Debelder will keep his beer from changing (much).

Sometimes it’s not always that easy to walk back into a conversation 10 days later, so let’s clean up a few loose ends from the posts about “world class” and “world classics” and move on to whatever this blog is supposed to be about.
The term “world class” is useful mostly to marketers. There is no [...]

This is my contribution to The Session, hosted this month by the Beer Chicks. They gave us many options, since “New Beer’s Resolutions” includes an invitation to “share with us your greats and mistakes of 2009.” I’m keeping my mistakes to myself. I fear enough will be apparent when Brewing with Wheat hits [...]

In the course of six revisions after his first Pocket Guide to Beer Michael Jackson elevated (and sometimes later demoted) only 20 beers to “world classic” status. He didn’t use the term casually.
As Alan fairly points out this was the opinion of but one man. One more qualified to comment than any, but just a [...]

Before we discuss Michael Jackson’s predictions about American beers and “tomorrow’s classics” how about a recap of how he rated “world classics” for 18 years? Andy’s pondering sent me flipping through seven editions of Jackson’s Pocket Guide to Beer.
After considering the concept of “classics” maybe we need to return to the topic of “world [...]

This email arrived about the time the European Beer Star award winners were announced and various discussions about innovation broke out.
At what point does a brewery become World Class? If you win a gold medal at the GABF does that make you a World Class Brewery? World Class Brewer (the dude or dudette)? [...]

In the midst of the discussion about the Wine Enthusiast list of top 25 beers, Jeff Alworth posed a question:
Stan, just to throw a hot potato back at you: if, under penalty of death, you were compelled to come up with a list of the world’s 25 best, what would it be? Actually, I don’t [...]

I haven’t done a very good job of explaining why I occasionally seem to be a crazy old beer drinker, dashing out onto the lawn (perhaps with a beer in my left hand, shaking my right fist) and shouting, “You kids with the beer lists get out of here.”
I don’t hate lists. In fact, we [...]