(Note: This post was amended Feb. 24 to eliminate babbling that got in the way of actual story.) Tomorrow’ s The New York Times carries an article about “tasting Belgian golden ales.” Perhaps surprisingly American beers claimed four the first five spots although half of the 20 beers tasted hailed from Belgium. The first and [...]

Lord knows how scientists may have manipulated orange genetics since John McPhee reported this in 1966, but here’s a little bit about the where involved with oranges. He writes that taste and aroma vary based on “the position of the individual orange in the framework of the tree on which it grew. Ground fruit — [...]

The United States became a net exporter of hops in the 1870s, so somebody must have liked varieties grown in America. In fact, exactly 100 years ago the U.S. exported 10.5 million pounds of hops and imported 3.2 million. Eighty percent of the exports went to England, while almost all the imports came from Germany [...]

Pardon this brief advertisement. The printer will ship Brewing with Wheat next week, meaning it goes to the distributors and then to stores. It could be in your hands by the end of the month. The “public service” announcement here is that you can pre-order it for 20 percent off from Brewers Publications, entering the [...]

Jean-Marie Rock began brewing beer professionally in 1972. For the last 25 years he’s been in charge of the Orval Trappist monastery brewery. He understands brewing cred. Celebrity? Another matter. He’s been to Kansas City twice recently. Posing for pictures, signing empty beer bottles, he found out quickly he wasn’t in Belgium any more. “The [...]

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 [...]

This is a Drewrys beer coaster from the 1950s. Does anybody know what happened if you said “Fuggle hop” to the bartender? Maybe I should turn this into a caption competition à la BrewDog.    

Welcome to my fool’s errand. Last week in the responses to my “The business of beer” post I started a quick exchange with Alan McLeod. I made a reference to a Beer Advocate thread I didn’t have a link to at the time and Alan asked another question I started to answer off the top [...]

Thank goodness for Google books. Otherwise if you wanted to read The theory and practice of brewing, from malted and unmalted corn, and from potatos it would cost you $602.75 plus shipping. But you can read this argument for brewing with potatoes, apparently spelled “potatos” in 1829, for the price of your Internet connection. Author [...]

We’re almost done unpacking stuff we stuck away during our grand journey. Yesterday I hauled out small beer items that decorate the tops of book shelves in the guest bedroom and office, including boxes of hops from the Prohibition era and before. In the 18 months the Glee Club box spent in hiding it became [...]