Month: December 2022

Judging American Wild Ales and traditional European Sour Ales can be a tricky business. Being familiar with the wide assortment and possibility of flavor compounds and a keen ability to understand how they work (or don’t work) together takes experience and training. Which can be challenging when suitable commercial examples are hard to come by in some areas. Additionally, homebrewers that utilize a mixed fermentation, Brettanomyces, and/or souring bacteria in their beers can be a fairly passionate group. Producing beers that can sometimes be years in the making with expression as intricate as stained glass. Given all this, judging can sometimes be hard to navigate for the novice or uninitiated. To help with this, the BJCP Communications Team decided to ask a few experts their views on best practice when judging these styles.

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by Ryan Pachmayer & Sachin “Chino” Darji

November typically heralds the arrival of Biere de Noel, or Christmas beer, on store shelves. Charlie Gottenkieny, co-founder of Bruz Beers in Denver and two-time AHA Homebrewer of the Year, explains that the modern style harks back to a special beer that brewers offered to their patrons each holiday season, usually with a stronger-than-typical punch. Christmas beers are not always high ABV beers bombs however, and its not uncommon for a brewery to make their holiday offering special by bumping up the flavor and alcohol on their flagship beer. “On the continent they started spicing them,” explains Gottenkieny, but “less so in England,” where holiday beers tend to be maltier and stronger than their everyday pints, old ales and British strong ales that are often called winter warmers. Consistent with their brewing culture, American brewers tend to spice their Noel beers with a heavier hand and bolder flavors than the Belgians do, setting up a trichotomy in world culture of holiday beers.

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Tis the season, once again. Chances are you’ve fended off the icy grip of a frosty December night with a cup of mulled wine at some point in your life, especially if you’ve been to Europe around this time of year. But mulled beer?

Last year I related the story about my first sip of Glühwein (mulled wine) in the western German city of Saarbrücken. Aromas of baking spice, roasted nuts, and pine boughs drifted fragrantly in the bracing winter air, leading me not only to the Christkindl market in the main square, but also setting me down the path of annual Glühwein parties and get-togethers.IMG_5371

A few decades on, I did what might well come naturally to a catholic imbiber like myself: I heated up a bunch o’ beer and spiced it. Turns out the whole endeavour isn’t without historical precedent.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

~Or, what do Melville’s white whale, a cathedral in Prague, and Weihenstephan’s Vitus have in common?~

I’ve been drinking Weihenstephan’s lush and expansive Vitus for years now, especially when the weather turns cool. I can’t get enough of that subtly spiced honey and orange zest layered over rich banana custard. But I hadn’t ever troubled myself with looking deeper into the beer’s namesake, St. Vitus, despite my fondness for another material object connected with Vitus’s memory: the imposing Gothic cathedral that looms over Prague.

But then I came across what was, for me, a puzzling reference to St. Vitus in Moby Dick. I immediately had to know what connected the dots between Moby Dick, a cathedral in Prague with some of the most wondrous stained-glass windows I’ve seen, and that elegant Weizenbock from Weihenstephan.

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