Author: Professor Good Ales

All the IBUs. Half the ABV. Welcome to the India session ale (ISA). Emerging styles always generate some controversy as to their proper nomenclature. (Maybe it’s an Amero-Anglo-style bitter?) Whatever these nimbler hop bombs are, the result is a flavorful beer that won’t knock you on your keister the way a pint too many of the big IPAs or bigger Double IPAs might.

Stone Brewing brewmaster Mitch Steele, who literally wrote the book on the IPA style, IPA:Brewing Techniques, Recipes and the Evolution of India Pale Ale, loves this new direction.

“[Session IPAs are] kettle hopped (for bitterness up front) and dry hopped (for flavor and aroma after the boil) using similar quantities and varieties as a standard American IPA,” said Steele. “The brewers challenge here is twofold: first is achieving a good flavor balance in a beer that is so low in alcohol that there isn’t much else to balance the hop character with, and second, ensuring that the dry hop character doesn’t become overly vegetal, due to the lower alcohol content of the beer.”

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Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project has struck up a partnership with a specialty importer in New York City that will allow the Denver brewery to sell its beers there while Crooked Stave will distribute some rare and unique beers in the Denver area.

The distributor, Brooklyn’s 12 Percent Imports, is focused on bringing a handful of boutique Belgian beers into the United States, but it also handles distribution in New York City for a limited number of small or unusual U.S. breweries.

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“This is an amazing wheat,” I remarked, sipping an unfiltered beer at Topeka’s local microbrewery.

“Well, we are in Kansas,” my drinking buddy replied.

How true.

In a state known for sunflowers and wheat crops, it became clear that the beer in my hand should be fresh, vibrant and special—it should be the color of thick sunlight playing across a wheat field.

At Blind Tiger Brewery & Restaurant in Topeka, Ks., three of the six flagship beers are wheat based. The Raw Wheat and the Country Seat Wheat use grain purchased from a local farmer in Berryton. When John Dean, co-owner of the brewery, buys wheat, he easily recognizes its quality.

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Researchers at Granada University in Spain have found that beer can help the body rehydrate better after a workout than water or Gatorade.

Professor Manuel Garzon also claimed the carbonation in beer helps to quench the thirst and that its carbohydrate content can help replace lost calories, The Telegraph reports.

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Memphis homebrewer and craft beer aficionado Charlie Patrick attended Saturday’s 16th anniversary party at the Flying Saucer. He tried 14 beers in all and filed this dispatch from the Downtown craft beer bar.

PGA NOTE: Yazoo’s collaboration Rufus is also a brew brought to you by Nashville’s King of the Sour: Brandon Jones, who posts at embracethefunk.com, and whose posts often appear here at Professor Goodales.

The Flying Saucer Memphis celebrated its 16th Anniversary in style this past Saturday. The concept was a tapping of sixteen special brews over sixteen hours. We went to check out the festivities. Here’s a rundown of the beers and our brief reviews. A special shout out, by the way, to our server, Sam, who helped us along the way.

Blackstone Tripel

Blackstone Tripel –

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Homebrewers are America’s beer saviors. After Prohibition killed the production of quality beer in America it was the trailblazers in the homebrewing movement that brought good beer back to the barren American wasteland.

The biggest names in good American beer today — Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn Brewery, Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head to name a few — were born out of the homebrewing movement.

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