We’re headed north in the morning (attention burglars: somebody will be watching our house), eventually to Montana and Wyoming because my brother’s son is getting married in a week. While we’re off looking for cowboy neon signs hanging on old bars (maybe even old saloons) here are a few links I’ve been meaning to pass [...]

Perhaps Vince Cottone was not the first to use the words “craft” and “beer” together, but in his 1986 “Good Beer Guide: Brewers and Pubs of the Pacific Northwest” he put definitions of “craft brewery” and “true beer” into words when nobody else did. Cottone — who today runs Sound Systems, a company that offers [...]

“Brewers make wort, yeast makes beer.”    - A veteran brewer or a clever yeast salesman Saint Arnold Brewing in Texas just announced a ‘Moveable Yeast’ series of beers, quarterly releases with the first in August. From the press release: “The concept behind the Movable Yeast series is to focus on the flavor contribution of yeast. [...]

Today’s Wall Street Journal explains the “current flavor boom.” “The more you taste something, the more you need to taste it,” says Mitchell Davis, vice president of the James Beard Foundation, a New York-based non-profit that works to preserve American culinary heritage. “You always need something spicier, something more, a bigger high.” What does this [...]

Kelly Ryan spoke with a surprising sense of purpose considering this April evening had just turned into tomorrow in a Chicago hotel room, and lord knows what day it was 8,000 miles away in Auckland, New Zealand, where Epic Thornbridge Stout was still conditioning. “I think it needs more time in the tank,” Ryan told [...]

Two observations related only by beer: We’ve been seeing “microbrews” in television shows for many years — Sam Adams on “Friends,” or more recently Albuquerque-brewed Marble in “Breaking Bad.” But Sierra Nevada showing up in Pearls Before Swine seems terribly mainstream. From a 1975 article in New Phytologist about the early history of humulus lupulus [...]

No, seriously. Next week judges stream into Chicago to taste their way through 3,500 or so entrants in the World Beer Cup and soon they will be joined by thousands of brewing industry members for the Craft Brewers Conference. I expect only the toughest will make it up Saturday morning for “Brewing Belgian White and [...]

The brewers at BrewDog have made a list of their six favorite (or should that be favourite?) hops. You can see why co-founder James Watt has said, “We like to think of what we do as U.S.-inspired Scottish craft brewing.” 1. Chinook 2. Amarillo 3. Nelson Sauvin 4. Bramling Cross 5. Simcoe 6. First Gold [...]

Thanks to all of those who chimed in on the meaning of the word “phenolic.” Your answers prove it’s not a useful word for a drinking note. This is where it started. When I sat in for the Sunday Session on The Brewing Network a question came up: What’s the difference between phenols and esters? [...]

This kind of brings new meaning to the concept of a “brews cruise,” doesn’t it? The 827-foot long cruise ship AIDAblu is outfitted with a complete brewery. The brewhouse on deck 10 (of 14 decks) is made of glass and can produce 5 hectoliters a day (132 gallons, about 4 U.S. beer barrels). Copper fermentation [...]