Did every local television station get the same marching orders this past weekend? Super Bowl: Go find a beer story. In Cleveland it was about Mickie Reinhart, who has come up with seven flavors of “hops drops,” liquid additives intended to be used in light lagers. The varieties include chocolate and coffee, as opposed to [...]

Mark Dredge at Pencil and Spoon raises the question of using hop extracts and oils in the brewing process. Part of me think it’s a bit strange to use extract but the other part doesn’t mind if it’s done to be able to give the best flavour or bitterness possible – extract seems to give [...]

‘Tis the season for predictions. The Future of Beer, or at least for 2012. The rise of gluten free beer, discovering gruit, more hoppy beers, fewer hoppy beers, old school beers, new fangled beers. There are more where those came from. They can’t all be right in 2012, but they could be in the long [...]

This arrived in the mail Saturday, a pleasant reminder this is the season for happy surprises. But also that I have a book to finish. So I’m swearing off Appellation Beer until some time in January. I might post a few comments and photos on Twitter, because there are fun events (like this and this) [...]

Start with this premise: “It seems that in today’s uncertain and flagging America, one sign of community prosperity and revitalization is a microbrewery or brewpub in town.” The Ecocentric blog examines in some detail the role of small breweries in towns where they operate. The history gets a little iffy now and then, but ultimately [...]

Look closely at the label for TAPX “Mein Nelson Sauvin” from Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn. Those are hops. And the hops that make TAPX something different aren’t from Germany, but from New Zealand. In this video Schneider produced to promote the new beer, available in limited quantities in the U.S. (my local store [...]

As Ron Pattinson is fond of pointing out, there’s little if anything truly new in beer. Not even “fresh hop” beers. This weekend in St. Louis, 15 or so breweries will serve various beers at the Schlafly Fresh Hop Festival. We’re not Portland or Seattle (see this account), but Schlafly (otherwise known as The Saint [...]

Following up on last week’s discussion of “dank” and the need for meaningful beer descriptors. Gourmet magazine “looks at marijuana’s culinary trip from wacky weed to haute herb.” We aren’t just talking about wine that smells like weed. In wine country, pot-infused wines are the open secrets that present themselves in unmarked bottles at the [...]

It was probably a half dozen years ago and our daughter, Sierra, was maybe 8 years old when she first heard a brewer and I talk about if one of his dry hopped beers seemed a bit “catty.” She looked puzzled. Daria explained we were talking about an aroma associated with a litter box. She [...]

When maps merge . . . Good analysis may follow. Now, just on the basis of this — ignoring all the other evidence, ignoring that the industrial revolution started in Scotland, ignoring that many of these breweries are nearer to sources of coal than sources of peat, ignoring that we know for a fact that [...]