Category: Front Page

Just ninety minutes from Munich by train, Regensburg is an eminently walkable city where you’re never far from a brewery, beer garden, or Bierkeller. It’s also an ideal base for visiting Kloster Weltenburg and Schneider Weisse in Kelheim, and for exploring the woodlands cradling the Zoigl tradition of the Oberpfalz. Though not a beer pilgrimage site like Munich or Bamberg, Regensburg boasts nearly half a dozen breweries, a Bierkeller, and the famous Wurstlkuchl, a tiny Bratwurst house adjacent to the Stone Bridge. But it’s Regensburg’s riverside beer gardens that really shine. Both the Spitalbrauerei and Alte Linde beer gardens serve up stunning views of the cathedral, the Stone Bridge, and the medieval Altstadt — some of the best beer garden views anywhere in Germany.

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Most pictures courtesy Jackie Lawrence

 There are a lot of competitions, like AWOG (Amber Waves of Grain) in Buffalo area we’ve always wanted to get back to, but timing and distance have prevented that. We finally did get back to Knickerbocker in the Albany/Saratoga Springs area. When New South Brew Off started Millie got to go, and that’s a good thing because that’s one of the clubs we are members of. But I was always up north helping to run Old Forge BIG Beer and Odd Ale, a competition I started. So I couldn’t judge.
 Of all the things COVID has done the one good thing I can think of is, since I needed to come home to be with Millie, I was able to judge NSBO too. So, after two weeks quarantine were over because I came from Tennessee, mead test on Long Island done, both places drained for the brutal winters, home I sped, boat in tow. And straight into prejudging for New South at Amber and Jerry Wood’s castle in Clarksville, TN.
 Clarksville, Tennessee, of the many great things Clarksville is it’s a military town: Fort Campbell, 101st Airborne.

 I didn’t bring the boat. So no boating around in Jerry’s backyard. But I’ll bet Jerry Wood’s pup: Bear the Saint Bernard, and the puppy edition Roxy, would have enjoyed the trip. Everyone say, “Hi, Bear!”
 Of course, as judges, we don’t get to see most of the preparation, for obvious reasons. We don’t need to know who entered what. Of course one of us just got home so… not possible. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: New South Brew Off”

Ayinger is affectionately known as Munich’s “country brewery,” and it’s easy to see why. When you take the train out from Munich, the cityscape gives way to the industrial margins of the city, and then suddenly you’re on a broad green plain with gently rolling hills to the north and the snowy crenellations of the Alps to the south. A mere half an hour from the city, Aying hits the spot for slowing down to relax in the countryside with a beer or three.

The brewery rises up on the outskirts of this idyllic village where wooden chalets with an Alpine flair cluster around an onion-domed church as white as the driven snow. Aying and its brewery present a study in contrasts. You can tuck into hearty Bavarian fare like Tellerfleisch (boiled brisket with stewed vegetables and horseradish) or Käsespätzle (highly recommended!) in the rustic surroundings of the Ayinger Bräustüberl in the center of the village. But the delicious beers accompanying the traditional food come from a state-of-the-art production facility that seems light years from the carved wooden balconies and flower boxes that dot the town.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Clichés about hidden gems aside, there are hidden gems, and then there are true hidden gems. De Garre is a true hidden gem — literally. The address is simple enough: De Garre 1. But it’s a clue more than anything else. You have to look hard for this place tucked away to the southeast of the Grote Markt in an alley along the Breidelstraat in Bruges. The small passage, wide enough for two people, is a bit like an Edinburgh alley: blink and you’ll miss it.

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San Francisco (CNN Business)Carbon dioxide is a precious commodity in brewing. The gas is what gives beer its fizz.

Although literally tons of it are produced during fermentation, CO2 is not easy or cheap for small brewers to capture, so it’s often vented into the atmosphere. Instead of grabbing that CO2 to carbonate beer, tanks of CO2 are trucked in from across the country to meet brewers’ needs.
Earthly Labs, a startup out of Texas, hopes to change that. The company wants to establish a recycling loop via a fridge-sized machine named CiCi — shorthand for “carbon capture” — that allows small breweries to trap their CO2, use it to carbonate their beers and potentially sell extra gas to others who need it.

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Writteb by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Munich has it all for the beer drinker. And if that’s not enough, breweries like Ayinger, Kloster Andechs, and Weihenstephan fan out at various points along Munich’s regional train network. But there’s even more beer bliss in store for the intrepid beer traveler willing to journey further afield. This cluster of historic beer towns, aristocratic breweries, and monastery beer gardens is a short trip away in Upper Bavaria. You can combine a few of these as day trips from Munich, or base yourself in Bad Tölz for some relaxing small-town charm in the foothills of the Alps.

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The Professor hopes for the best here, The big brewers have done this kind of thing for a long time. But he has his doubts. GOOD LUCK!

A proposed class-action lawsuit alleges that Anheuser-Busch InBev is deceiving consumers by positioning its Veza Sur brewery in Miami as a craft brewery.

Consumers Byron Jackson and Mario Mena Jr. filed lawsuit last week against A-B and its subsidiary, Miami Beer Ventures LLC (MBV), in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida Miami Division.

Jackson and Mena, who both live in Miami-Dade County, claim they were misled into purchasing what they believed to be craft beer made by a small brewery with Latin roots in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District.

“In reality, it is simply another one of the dozens of brands made by the largest brewer in the world, Anheuser-Busch,” the complaint reads. “It has no authentic Latin roots, and is not even made in Miami.”

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When Jagged Mountain Craft Brewery in Denver, Colorado, released their new milk stout last fall, brewers from across the country came pouring into their tap room to try it. Sure, it was the same weekend as the Great American Beer Festival, so representatives from more than 800 breweries were already beer hopping their way through the Mile High City. But the crush of pint-pouring peers was lured in by word that Jagged Mountain’s freshest beer was brewed with lactose, peanut butter, and salt to mimic a candy that is revered within the brewing community.

“It seemed like the perfect inside joke,” says Jagged Mountain head brewer Alyssa Thorpe.

The sweet in question is the Salted Nut Roll: a Depression-era candy from Minnesota that, while little-known outside the Midwest, has literally and figuratively fueled the modern craft beer industry in the United States.

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