Author: Professor Good Ales

Going by advertising alone, beer makes everybody better looking, funnier, and more charming. It surrounds you with interesting people and exciting times and will quench your thirst on a hot day all at once. But anyone who’s ever tried to recreate the magic of a beer commercial knows the result is too often soaked in fried food, antacid and shame.

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No, it’s not marijuana. It’s a close cousin, known as Humulus lupulus, better known as “hops.” You know it as a key ingredient in beer, but its fat, resinous flowers are also prized for their flavor and their medicinal properties. We’re just starting to unlock the biochemical secrets of hops, and discover why this plant is so magical.

Looming hops shortages spell potential price increases for users both large and small, and people are beginning to panic. We’ve been using and trading hops for centuries, and not just for brewing beer — but it’s only now, that we’re in danger of running out, that we’re starting to understand the history of hops and its relationship with people.

Hops History

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

It’s that time of year again –– time to dust off your steins and head to your nearest purveyor of fine lagers to celebrate Craft Lager Day.

But where to go to find a decent lager outside of a well-stocked bottle shop? After all, not too many craft breweries outside of regions with historically high rates of German immigration feature lagers in their lineups. For starters, lagers suffer from an undeserved image problem on this continent. On top of that, lagers are notoriously difficult to brew. The clean fermentation profile of lager yeast leaves nowhere for faults to hide.KansasCity BierCo (Logo) And from a purely monetary perspective, lagers tie up fermenters for much longer than ales –– weeks if not months longer.

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Venture through a dank railway tunnel, then turn on to a small industrial estate in south east London and you’ll find yourself at a fine example of a British brewery. But there are no rambling roses or tumble-down ancient buildings crying of English tradition here. The Kernel brewery is little more than five years old and the beer produced in this urban hideaway combines old traditions with new thinking – and a little experimentation.

“We rely on that process of hypothesis, experiment and result,” says brewer Toby Munn. “We can create our own little experiment and do all kinds of different things, which is fun.”

Munn shows off the fermentation tanks, where yeast gradually turns sugars into alcohol over several days, and a room full of barrels and large French “fouders”, which were previously used in wine-making.

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This time of year – every year for the past six – I’ve compiled my most memorable experiences from travels around the Pacific Northwest – my heart and ‘hood – to come up with those I especially want you to know about. I say this just about every year because just about every year it’s true: This was a real banner year. The creaky Washington paradigm of “Nothin’ but Brits” is beginning to crumble. Oregon and Idaho breweries are not just pushing the envelope as much as ignoring the very existence of an envelope. Good breweries, promising breweries, and some right out of the wrapping paper have become great.

You’re going to read some names, here, that you’ve never heard or read. Two in particular – Tin Dog Brewing of Seattle and Big Block Brewing of Sammamish, Washington – are barely larger than the changing rooms Nordstrom’s. John Julum’s operation at Big Block, especially, is easily the most intelligently conceived, laid-out, and strategized nano-brewery I’ve ever come across. The whole brewery, because of his neighborhood’s CC&Rs, is in his garage! And he routinely has ten or twelve beers on tap, all amazing and all in decent quantities. This level of ingenuity is what sets the NW apart from the rest of the US and 2014 was the year of its full flowering, when breweries like De Garde, in sleepy Tillamook, Oregon, are birthed fully formed and hit the ground absolutely flying.

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Written by Franz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard

Take two engineers, a linguist, a surveyor, a school administrator, a mycologist, an entomologist, and a historian. Add a dash of homebrewing expertise, BJCP judging experience, Scotch connoisseurship, and a general love of hops and malt. Mix all of this together with a beer-laden table on a Sunday night shortly after Halloween, and what do you get?

The Oklahoma Six-Pack Project.

The task: Choose six favourites in a blind tasting of some one-and-a-half dozen Oklahoma beers.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

A spectre is haunting the craft beer world –– the spectre of Sir Maltalot. Laid low by a tsunami of IPA, the wild yeasts have set in to consume his legacy. Extreme beerists have entered into an unholy alliance with sharp-fanged sours, enlisting sturdy barrel-aged beers to confine Sir Maltalot within their cavernous depths. Buried under layer upon layer of rum, oak, bourbon, and peppers, his spirit lies in wait.

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