Category: Front Page

America’s museum of record is ready to take beer history seriously. The Smithsonian recently hired its first beer scholar to run the new Brewing History Initiative chronicling the history of American brewing.

The groundbreaking new job belongs to Theresa McCulla. It entails keeping track of current trends in the industry and telling the cultural story of “the role beer has played — and continues to play — in American history,” according to a story in Smithsonian Magazine. In short, its a job that just made every beer lover have deep seated jealousy for McCulla.

“If you look at the history of beer, you can understand stories related to immigration and industrialization and urbanization,” McCulla told Smithsonian Magazine. “You can look at advertising and the history of consumer culture and changing consumer taste. Brewing is integrated into all facets of American history.”

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Guinness is planning to spend about $50 million to open a brewery in Maryland, bringing brewing capabilities back to the United States for the first time after decades away from the market.

The Irish beer’s parent company Diageo (deo, +0.04%) on Tuesday announced it would build a U.S. version of Dublin’s Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore County, Maryland. Under the current plans Diageo unveiled, the facility would include a Guinness brewery, packaging and warehouse operations, and an innovation microbrewery at the company’s existing site in Relay, Maryland. “The new brewery would be a home for new Guinness beers created for the US market, while the iconic Guinness Stouts will continue to be brewed at St. James’s Gate in Dublin, Ireland,” Diageo said.

What that means is that while Diageo will continue to import Guinness Stouts from Ireland, Guinness Blonde and newer innovative beers that are intended for the U.S. beer drinker will be developed and produced locally in Maryland.

“Opening a Guinness brewery and visitor center in the US will enable us to collaborate with fellow brewers and interact with the vibrant community of beer drinkers,” said Diageo Beer Company USA President Tom Day.

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(Maria Devan is NOT responsible for the vague reference in the subject/title! OUR fault alone!-PGA)

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There could soon be a whole new definition of the term “moonshine.”

A team of University of California San Diego (UCSD) engineering students is in a ferment, all hopped up to see if beer can be brewed on the moon.

Their experiment is designed to test the viability of yeast on the moon. The potential brewmasters hail from UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering, and call themselves “Team Original Gravity.” [Cheers! Moon-Inspired Cocktails]

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(WENN) — There are few things in life that sound more appealing than a cold, refreshing beer while you’re standing in a warm shower. It would also save you time as you get ready and gear up for that big Friday night out.
But if you’ve ever found powering down a full bottle of beer during a six-minute shower rather tough, a Swedish brewery has the answer – a double-strength mini beer designed specifically for consuming in the shower.

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CLEVELAND – Shaun Yasaki knows beer. He trained as a brew master at Fat Head’s, helped start Platform Beer Company and now he’s opening his own brewery, kitchen and tap room called Noble Beast.

“The highest quality possible. Take no shortcuts,” he told us of his product.

With staples like Great Lakes and Market Garden and a host of new companies over the years, Yasaki knows craft beer in Cleveland is a crowded field.

“It went from being able to name every brewery to constantly learning about new ones myself,” he said.

But he’s proud to be part of the local brewery boom.

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I find that the longer I brew, the more involved I become in the process and the mechanics of every detail. Learning new techniques and testing them on your own is part of the joy of having a hobby as vast as home brewing. Some new processes or techniques offer little advantage, and thus are disregarded. However, some techniques require so little effort and provide such a noticeable difference that they become standard. For me, malt conditioning is one such technique.

Malt conditioning is a very simple process which consists of adding a very small amount of water to your grain bill prior to milling. The addition of water to your un-crushed malt results in more resilient grain husks. The husks take on a more “leathery” feeling. They are less dry and brittle, which means that they will remain much more intact during the milling process.

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If you contemplated the contents of your pint glass deeply enough this year, you likely have some idea of where the United States beer industry is headed in 2017.

At the end of 2016, I was asked by the hosts of a couple of beer podcasts for my thoughts on what lies ahead for U.S. beer brewers, distributors and drinkers. This column began answering that question as early as March, when it pointed out that the number of craft beer brands and products on taps and on store shelves had tripled in seven years. By November, the number of brewers in the U.S. topped 5,000 and was continuing to grow, even if sales of the beers they were producing saw growth slip into single-digit percentages for the first time in years.

In a beer market that’s quickly saturating, just about everyone is looking for dry ground. Anheuser-Busch InBev BUD, +0.21% with the U.S. government watching closely after its acquisition of SABMiller, seems to have made the last of its craft beer acquisitions (in Texas, no less), and is looking to expand its current stable of U.S. craft brands, its stateside marketing efforts and its reach in its craft brands’ home markets.

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