Ava on Saturday; Denver on Oct. 4

Alas, I’ll be elsewhere on those dates, but I’m sure you’ll be happy if you make it to Scratch Brewing’s book release party Saturday in Ava, Illinois, or to Beers Made by Walking’s now annual gathering Oct. 4 in Denver. The basics:

The Homebrewer’s Almanac release party begins at noon in Ava. You should own this book, and in addition they’ve got quite a party planned.

The day will be filled with free events, including book signings, garden and foraging tours, home brew demos. We’ll also have a raffle with tons of great prizes, including tickets to our Oktoberfest (and two handmade Scratch steins); a crate of four of our bottled beers (one which is yet to be released); a beer book pack; a special Chanterelle Biere de Garde home brew kit (with chanterelles!) put together by Windy Hill Hops; and a grand prize SS Brewtech 7 gal Brew Bucket conical stainless fermenter. This is a fantastic opportunity to pick the minds of owner-brewers Marika and Aaron, grab a signed book for yourself or the brewer in your life, and walk away with some great beer prizes. The event is free and will run all day from noon to 10 p.m.

Beers Made by Walking will be held at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science this year.

Over 25 of the beers were made specifically for this event by Colorado breweries that have collaborated with us. Each beer is inspired by landscapes in an area of the brewer’s choosing. Brewers have hiked up 14,000 foot mountains, trekked through lush canyons, camped in national parks, and strolled through community gardens to find inspiration. Additionally, Scratch Brewing (Ava) and Fonta Flora (Morganton, NC) will serve a few specialty offerings from their respective portfolios that include beers with foraged ingredients.

Tickets are $35 and the best deal in Denver during Great American Beer Festival week.

Monday beer links: On holiday

NO BEER LINKS FOR LABOR DAY, 09.05.2016

20160905-bones

During just a bit of traveling we bought pie at The Norway Store, established in 1848 in Norway, Illinois. But we could have purchased these big bones. And there were 4-packs of Dogfish Head 60 and 90 Minute IPA in the cooler.

Session #115: 12 really good beer books

The SessionClosing on seven years ago I posted a list of 10 really good beer books. As opposed to, say, the Ten Best Beer Books EVER! Of course, many readers missed the disclaimers (why there were no beer and food books and no technical/brewing/homebrewing books), so I know what I may be getting into by bringing it up and adding two books to that list for The Session No. 115 (“The role of beer books”).

The newcomers are The Beer Bible, by Jeff Alworth, and Triplebock: Three Beer Stories by Evan Rail. The latter is intential fiction (as opposed to the unintential beer fiction that far too often finds its way into print). There is some fiction in The Bedside Book of Beer on my original list, but more quality beer fiction sure would be nice. Yes, the former is a resource, a book you can pull off the shelf to find an answer that settles a bar bet. But it is also a book to read from start to finish, to be considered as a whole, because that’s the way Alworth presents the beers within it.

For those who don’t want the short version, here is the original list:

– The Beer Companion.
– Three Sheets to the Wind.
– Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.
– Beer: The Story of the Pint.
– Travels with Barley: A Journey Through the Beer Culture in America.
– Tasting Beer: An Insider’s Guide to the World’s Greatest Drink.
– Origin and History of Beer and Brewing.
– The Book of Beer Knowledge.
– The Bedside Book of Beer.
– Faces Along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman’s Saloon, 1870-1920.

Or you can read more.

Monday beer links: Blithe ignorance, farewell IPA, hello Huddersfield

MONDAY BEER LINKS, MUSING, 08.29.2016

THE END IS NEAR

Relationships Still Matter.
How is this for a warning? “Everybody now seems to hopefully say, ‘This time is different.’ From what I saw back then and what I see now, the only difference is people have more tatts. Even the beards are the same. And the blithe ignorance. They know what they know, but what they don’t know they assume doesn’t exist.” [Via Beer Business Daily]

IPA is doomed (well, sort of).
A ton of words here (literally, more than 2,000), rambling from time to time, or as Jon Urch writes, “subjective opinion backed up by minimal research and no meaningful data. This is train-of-thought stuff.” There are two questions that particularly interest me — and ones that can’t be answered definitively right now. a) Is it really necessary to use 5 pounds or more of hops per barrel (20 grams per liter) to provide the aroma and flavor currently in vogue? b) Are aroma/flavor stability and this aroma/flavor itself truly incompatible? These are questions I asked four years ago when I wrote For the Love of Hops (although the pounds per barrel weren’t quite as high and murk was not an essential ingredient in IPA). We still don’t have answers, but we are closer. I think there is every chance brewers will find a way to use smaller quantities of hops and to make beers with longer shelf lives without compromising flavor. We’ll see. [Via The drinking classes]

Read more

But maybe we don’t

Great brewing insight from Mike Karnowski (author of Homebrew Beyond the Basics and flavormaster at ZEBULON Artisan Ales) a couple of weeks ago at Asheville:

“Twenty years ago we had everything figured out.”

He’s right. Pick up mid-1990s brewing text and it would appear all the big questions had been answered. But as the rest of Mike’s presentation illustrated that turned out not to be true.