In the early 1980s, Anheuser-Busch chairman of the board August Busch III ordered that freshly brewed cans of Budweiser and Bud Light would be cryogenically frozen, so that they could be tasted against each other over time. More than 20 years later, Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Ellison described a scene where Busch and Doug [...]

The Saint Louis Brewery Tap Room, the brewpub where Schlafly beers were first brewed, at this moment serves a beer called Optic Golden Ale. It was made with floor malted Optic barley grown in Scotland and Aramis and Strisselspalt hops from the Alsace region of France. Will The Oxford Companion to Beer provide further detail?1 [...]

You have any idea how many books Oxford University Press published in its “companion” series before it got around to beer? A lot. Heck, The Oxford Companion to the Brontës is 640 pages. There’s The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television and The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the [...]

If you thought Jeff Alworth was unimpressed with the Oxford Companion to Beer yesterday then read what Martyn Cornell has written today. No summarizing from me. You must go read it. (Then go buy Amber, Gold & Black: The History of Britain’s Great Beers. Support proper research. Beer: The Story of the Pint also belongs [...]

If I’m going to finish a book or magazine article (or blog post, for that matter) I expect the author to tell me something new or provoke me to consider something I thought I knew about in a different way. (Of course it should be well written and focus on a topic that interests me. [...]

“Those were the times when I thought ALL Czech beer was great. That slowly started to change, but I would still drink pretty much anything that was brewed in this country.” – Max Bahnson There is much more to Prague than beer, but for a beer oriented visitor there never seems to be enough time [...]

Can you imagine two wine drinkers sitting in a cafe arguing about monoterpenes1 and asking the bartender to drag a copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine from the the bookshelf to settle a bet? Me either. However, I can envision The Oxford Companion to Beer on top of a bar, it’s otherwise elegant cover [...]

Last Saturday after I parked the car and before Sierra and I went foraging at the Tower Grove Farmers’ Market we came across the car pictured above. The bumper stickers represent Boulevard Brewing, Farm Aid and KDHX, an independent radio station that play Chris Knight as often as he pops up on my Chris Knight [...]

Intentions being intentions, not all 600 or so breweries currently “in planning” in the United States will end up brewing beer. But a little advice seems in order. Although the combination might seem curious, “Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Beer from the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery” (Revised and Updated) and “Beer Is [...]

Several years ago, Saint Arnold Brewing owner Brock Wagner compared the business of multi-national breweries with his own, today much bigger but still tiny by most measures. “We’re trying to add 10 customers at a time. The big brewers are trying to add a million,” he said. “We’re in different businesses. We both make something [...]