Evan Benn writes today about the rush to buy bottles of Goose Island Sofie the brewery recalled because “… Goose Island Sofie uses natural products and the hallmark of Belgian-style beers — wild fermentation. This particular natural variation was new and resulted in flavors that weren’t what we expected so we implemented a method for [...]

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, And for that name which is no part of thee Take all myself. – Juliet, [...]

No. 1 Jeff Alworth (at Beervana) asks readers to comment on this hypothesis: “Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a foundational beer in American brewing and was instrumental in setting the course for craft brewing.” No. 2 George de Piro, brewmaster at C.H. Evans Brewing Co. in New York and parttime blogger, asks this question: “What [...]

The plan Saturday was no thinking about the forest. No wringing of hands while considering the BIG PICTURE, stuff like Anheuser-Busch InBev buying Goose Island or those breweries leaving markets they previously shipped beers to. Instead it was supposed to be a day to focus on the trees. In other words, what’s in the glass. [...]

Pierre Celis died Saturday. He was 86 and best known for resurrecting the Belgian White “style” and an otherwise extraordinarily engaging gentleman whose influence cannot be overstated. He was 40 years old, delivered milk for a living and had little brewing experience when he produced his first official batch of Oud Hoegaards Bier in 1966. [...]

In 2001 Anheuser-Busch began an expansion to boost capacity at its Fort Collins, Colorado, brewery 28% increase to 8.2 million barrels annually. A few years ago I toured the brewery and I’m pretty sure I heard production had reached 15 million barrels. Monday, the news that Anheuser-Busch (InbBev) bought Goose Island, which produced 127,000 barrels [...]

Relatively early in Ska Brewing’s parody of the “Brew Masters” series on Discovery Ska co-founder Bill Graham hints that perhaps what we are watching could be more tightly edited. He’s right, but for some reason I couldn’t quit watching. It makes much more sense if you saw the first episode of “Brew Masters.” And as [...]

This is my contribution to the 49th gathering of The Session. The theme is “regular beers” and my post is a bit late, but I have a good excuse. Besides, as the host I guess I can do any dang thing I want. Just to make sure all the dispatches from far flung outpost have [...]

The topic for today’s 49th gathering of The Session is “regular beer.” Since I’m the host I offered to publish posts from readers who don’t maintain blogs. This is the second of two. By Bill Farr (a semi-regular commenter here) How I gained a regular beer and wrestled with virtually every issue related to “good [...]

“Brauereisterben: The sad state of German beer culture” has been making the rounds since Slate posted it yesterday. Not exactly news to those who have been paying attention. But Slate doesn’t devote much bandwidth to beer, and doesn’t count among those paying attention. The word Brauereisterben, drawn for the term for Germany’s dying forests (Waldsterben), [...]