Category: Front Page

Written by Emily Corwin for npr.org

While beer sales have been down, nationally, since the great recession, the craft beer industry has been going strong – growing 15 percent in 2011, according to the American Brewers’ Association. The newest kid on the block in craft beer is the nanobrewery – a very small scale commercial brewery that produces fewer than 2,000 barrels a year. To put that in context, the Brewers’ Association defines a microbrewery as producing fewer than 15,000 barrels a year, and a large brewery as exceeding 6 million*.  Hess Brewing in California keeps an online list of nanobreweries and estimates about 93 in operation nationally – although that list is probably not comprehensive.

Written by Emily Armstrong for craftbeer.com

(LONGMONT, CO) – It only happens once every two years… After hibernating in the Left Hand warehouse for 12 months, the brewery has emptied its cellar and released Barrel Aged Wake Up Dead for the winter season. This dark and complex beer begins with the brewery’s infamous Russian Imperial Stout and ages in whiskey barrels before blending it to woody perfection.
Continue reading “Barrel Aged Wake Up Dead is Back for the Winter”

Written by Victoria for foxnews.com

A Colorado brewery that created a limited-run beer flavored with bull testicles for a beer festival is making the ballsy move to offer it all year round.

Wynkoop Brewing Company’s Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout will now be sold nationwide in cans–available in (what else?) two-packs starting this month.
Continue reading “Bull Testicle Beer to be Sold Nationwide”

Written by Jay R. Brooks for The Contra Costa Times and Mercury News

Many people reach for Champagne or sparkling wine to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but there’s a growing trend in another bubbly direction: beer cocktails. Originally, a cocktail was just one type of mixed drink, a subset of the genre, such as a julep, flip, swizzle, fizz or toddy. Several cocktail recipes were included in the 1862 “Bar-Tender’s Guide,” and the term took on its more modern meaning over the next few decades.

But it was Prohibition that really led to a surge in popularity of the cocktail. With no legal alcohol to serve, speak-easies had to make do with illegal hooch. Mixing bathtub gin with sweeter, more flavorful additions made the booze more palatable — and probably more profitable.

Scarcities during World War II nearly killed off the grander cocktails, making way for simpler mixed drinks — gin and tonic, for example, and rum and cola. By the 1980s, classic cocktails were nearly as dead as good beer.
Continue reading “Brooks: Beer Cocktails”

From CBS

A cattle ranch in Texas swears by a secret ingredient that makes its beef juicer: Beer.

Texas T Kobe ranch in Wallis pours beer into the hay its cows eat, CBS affiliate KHOU-TV reports. The ranch says the yeast in the double IPA helps promote digestion and improves the flavor and texture of the herd’s meat.

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HERE

Mac Rusling turned his 40-year hobby of brewing beer from home into a career when he opened Brewhaha Homebrew Supply Company in December. Photo by Jacob Fuller.

PGA Note: this is about a homebrew store in a state where homebrewing is illegal. In neighboring Alabama, where it is also illegal the police came in like a pot raid, confiscated everything: charges pending after the raid.

Written by Jack Fuller for jacksonfreepress.com

Mississippi home brewers may not have the law fully on their side, but they now have a place to buy all the hops, barley, yeast and equipment they need to create and bottle their own beer.

Mac Rusling, a former commercial airline pilot, opened Brewhaha Homebrew Supply Company, a one-stop shop for all things home brewing, Dec. 19 in the Lefleur’s Gallery Shopping Center (4800 I-55 N., Suite 17A, 601-362-0201, brewhahasupply.com).

Brewhaha is a no-frills kind of place. The beige walls to the left and right of the entrance are lined with 8-foot high shelves stocked with ingredients, recipe books and equipment. On the back wall sit two refrigerators filled with 
more ingredients.
Continue reading “Home Brews and Latin Flavors”

Arwen Lehman

Written by Hannah Sentenac for Miami New Times

As we transition into 2013, “experts” in every field are making their annual predictions about what’s bound to happen in the new year. But does anyone really care about who’s planning to get preggers (like the world needs another Kardashian) or which social network’s gonna go bust? Not so much.

Screw the unnecessary prognostications. There are only a few things worth guessing about ahead of time, and one of ’em is booze. So Short Order spoke to Arwen Lehman, AKA the Craft Brewja, on the popularity of barrel-aged brews, numeric triples and why cans are where it’s at in 2013.

Continue reading “Booze Hound Craft Brewja Arwen Lehman’s 2013 Beer Predictions”

From the AP

MOSCOW — A big question for many Russians in 2013 may be “How do I get a beer around here?”

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Written by Daniel Fromson for The New York Times

A CREATURE is lurking here in Chad Yakobson’s warehouse, inside the oak barrels where he ages most of his beers. Its name is Brettanomyces, and it’s a cousin of the domesticated yeasts that humans have brewed with for thousands of years. Often called wild yeast — a reference to its natural habitat (fruit skins) and to its volatile temperament — “Brett,” as it is widely known, can lead to unpredictable fermentations and gushing beer bottles, aromas politely described as funky, and fear. Most brewers work hard to keep it out of their tanks by sterilizing every piece of equipment. Continue reading “Brettanomyces, a Funky Yeast, Makes Flavorful Beers”