Written by Andrew Knowlton with Sam Dean, for bonappetit.com
Growlers are big right now with beer geeks. The refillable half-gallon bottles let you roll on up to your favorite brewery/fancy beer store/Whole Foods and get a tap-fresh jug o’ suds. They’ve got that back-to-the-basics “artisanal” vibe. Hell, they even have a handle.
Too bad brewers (a.k.a. the pros) can’t stand the things.
The last time I hung out with Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery and editor-in-chief of the Oxford Companion to Beer, the touchy subject of growlers came up. In short, he thinks they suck.
“It’s more of a love-hate relationship,” Oliver told me on the phone last week, on tour to promote the Oxford tome. “Brewers love the opportunity to get some beers that are not in bottles in front of a general public, and certainly beer drinkers love them.”
But? “Brewers tend to hate them. Growlers are basically beer destroyers. They’re often unsanitary, and the refilling process mixes in a lot of oxygen–the tiniest amount of oxygen kills beer so quickly. Then, if you walk across the street with say, an IPA, in full sunlight, with a clear growler, the beer will skunk before you get to your car.”
Continue reading “Why Beer Growlers are Bad for Your Brew”
A beer that will get you drunk and high sounds like a lethal combination, but it could be bubbling up in your neighbor’s garage.
More of a Black IPA: not an Imperial, mouthfeel and taste-wise. But 8.8ABV? You’d never know. The brewers at Fred Karm’s Hoppin Frog have performed this magic act many times in their various brews. They manage to hide the ABV well, and that takesd talent.
Some hop astringency that clings to the roof of the mouth, though the deep malt sense moderates that. My take: it could use just a few more later additions vs. early, though there is a very, very slight grapefruit-sense to the hops. Just could use a tad more.
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