Category: Front Page

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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Although Charles Dickens was talking about the French Revolution when he wrote those words, you’d almost think that he was talking about the flow of homebrewing information today. We have unprecedented access to homebrewing information and ingredients, which is a wonderful thing. But at the same time, we almost have an overload of information, and as anyone who has ever tried to hit every booth at Homebrew Con Club Night can tell you, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing!

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Beer and women.  Women and beer.  Nowadays, when you think of the two, you probably fall in line with what’s shown in commercials: a manly drink with bold flavors brought to you by buxom, scantily-clad ladies.  While that all sounds like a good time, it really couldn’t be further from the truth of beer’s origins and how brewing was throughout most of history.  Most people wouldn’t think that brewing beer was originally a woman’s responsibility or something that fell within the homemaker’s domain.  So, in honor of International Women’s day this March 8th, let’s take a look back at the history of beer and see just what kind of role women played in it.

1.  Beer led to Civilization, and women were its brewers

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

I was as at Schloss Belvedere a few days back, the famous Viennese museum that houses the even more famous Kiss by Gustav Klimt. Alongside some of his other iconic works such as Judith und Holofernes hung several paintings dating from the year of Klimt’s death in 1918, all containing the word “unvollendet” (incomplete) somewhere in the title. Like Schubert’s 8^th Symphony –– Die Unvollendete –– Klimt’s incomplete works gesture tantalizingly toward what would have been.

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Next time you raise a glass of Belgian beer, rest assured: it’s a cultural experience. Unesco is adding the drink to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Belgian beer is known throughout the world for its wide array of tastes, from extremely sour to bitter, and is brewed in numerous cities, towns and villages across the west European nation of 11 million people.

The beer’s history stretches back centuries to medieval monks and has been celebrated in paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and in countless songs.

 

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Here we are, heading into the Holidays for 2016, and Facebook coughs up something I posted in this blog, just over two years ago: “Budweiser Vs. The Craft Beer Culture: The Long, Slow Decline of The King of Beers“. I hadn’t read it again since I first posted it and…it wasn’t bad. Said what I meant to say and, yes, it was long but not as insanely long as a lot of posts here. It got me thinking that I haven’t revisited our Belgian/Brazilian “friends” for a while. So I checked.

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The May wildfire that raged in Alberta left Spike Baker’s peated malt infused with a smoky taste. Now he’s distilled a time capsule in the form of a stiff drink.

When a wildfire that had flickered for days in the forests of northern Alberta suddenly changed course and started careening towards Fort McMurray this May, the city’s entire population was told to flee.

The order came just as Spike Baker was brewing a pale ale.

Full Sail recently sent me a bottle of their big, fat, brawny annual miracle, their Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout. My primary beer occasion, every year, is the arrival of a bottle of Deschutes “The Abyss” because, at heart, I am a Stout guy down to my chromosomes. I get excited by the release of any great beer. I get aroused by the arrival of  siome great Stout on the order of The Abyss, Perennial “Abraxis”, pFriem Bourbon Barrel Stout, Cigar City “Huhnapu’s”, Lost Abbey “Serpent”, Crux “Tough Love”, Boneyard “Suge Knite”, Firestone Walker “Parabola”…

…and Full Sail Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout.

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