A casual review of one of Utica area’s newer breweries.. Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Salt City Homebrewers in Syracuse, NY. Former member of Escambia Bay Brewers, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers. Ken has been writing on beer-related topics, and interviewing professional brewers all over …
Continue reading “Brew Biz Werts and All: Grow Brewing”
Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard My Kind of Beer Around this time last year I penned a series that began with an account of my tastes in beer, followed by an exploration of the kinds of beers I like. The series ended with a list of twenty-five beers that had …
Continue reading “Fifty Beers for 2025: The Full Pour”
Back in January I sat down with All About Beer Podcast hosts Don Tse and Em Sauter to talk about beer travel with co-guest Chris O’Leary of Brew York. The timing was fitting: I had just arrived back in Oklahoma after a 24-hour journey from Vienna and an autumn’s worth of beer travel in Europe. …
Continue reading “The Joys of European Beer Travel”
Written by Franz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard The Wirtshaus is a Central European institution deeply rooted in medieval times. During the early and high Middle Ages, inns with taverns sprung up along trade and pilgrimage routes, offering food and accommodation to weary travelers, along with stables to quarter their horses. The vast majority …
Continue reading “The Origins of the Contemporary Wirtshaus”
Gaffel Kolsch is another of a number of fantastic European beers that receive short shrift from many liquor stores and taverns, which instead offer inferior mass-produced ones that are not much better than their American counterparts.
I brought this to my beer tastings this summer. I knew a true Kolsch has to be has to be from a few select breweries in Cologne area of Germany. Many brewers in America brew what the call a “Kolsch,” but if this one beer is any indication… any I’ve had so far are but an OK attempt. Water chemistry is what it’s about and I have a feeling just throwing in minerals may NOT be the same thing as the water naturally being that way.