Category: Front Page

After watching the field-crushing performance by Jack Nicklaus during the 1965 Masters, Bobby Jones, the tournament’s legendary co-founder and a man idolized by Nicklaus himself, had the following to say about Nicklaus’ performance:

“He plays a game with which I am not familiar.”

That sentence runs through my head quite a lot when I hear homebrewers talk about brewing – especially when they’re citing professional brewery practices to justify something they believe to be essential to homebrewing.

When Jones gave his famous quote, he wasn’t being humble or even falsely modest: he was simply pointing out that the game of golf was so different compared to when he had competed (equipment, the advent of professional golfers whose sole vocation was the game, course design) that the two could hardly be compared.  He was complimenting Nicklaus, to be sure – but he wasn’t necessarily conceding that Nicklaus was more skilled or talented.

So it is with homebrewing v. professional brewing.  What is necessary, desirable, or appropriate for one is not necessarily so for the other.  They’re playing a game with which we homebrewers are not (well, are maybe not) familiar.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Skimming place names on a map of Belgium is like going into a prodigiously stocked bottle shop. Where do you start in a country with a beer heritage as rich as it is in Belgium? Trappist beers, witbier, saison, Flanders red, oud bruin? What about all those famous towns like Chimay, Roeselare, Poperinge, and Westvleteren –– to say nothing of urban beer havens such as Antwerp and Leuven?

For me, the choice was relatively easy: I had never had the opportunity to taste lambic, those Belgian ales discussed in hushed and reverent tones among adepts of the zymurgical arts, beers that rarely make it beyond the immediate vicinity of Brussels.

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Beer can taste better when presented along with music, according to a recent study published this May in Frontiers in Psychology. The study found that music may be used to add value to multisensory tasting experiences when there is a previous connection between a person and the music.

The effect of multisensory information on the taste of food and drink products is of growing interest. Research has shown that what we see and hear can greatly affect our perception and enjoyment of flavors. For example, a different color on product packaging leads to different flavor association.

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While we’re right to be wary of light when it comes to finished beer, worries about heat are – persistently and irrationally – overstated. While heat does have an effect, it isn’t an inherently damaging factor in its own right: it needs help. And, by and large, if you’re producing good, healthy beer then you don’t need to worry quite as much.

BRIGHT VS. HOT
Light is our enemy. We’ve all tasted skunky beer. Skunking is an effect caused by the interaction of UV light with specific compounds found in hops (though not hop extracts, as I understand it). This has led some to conflate light with heat, which is a bad idea for at least two reasons.

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Image courtesy tripadviser.at 

Written by Franz Hoder for A Tempest in a Tankard

Where were we?

In Exploring Vienna’s Beer Gardens, we headed out to Vienna’s iconic Prater for some Czech Budweiser and roasted pork knuckle. After that, we hiked through the Vienna woods and capped it with an Augustiner beer fresh from Salzburg at the Bamkraxler (A Beer Garden in Vienna’s Wine Country). Time for another one of those epic tram rides –– this time to the western corner of the city.

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Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

 

In Exploring Vienna’s Beer Gardens, we headed out to Vienna’s iconic Prater for some Czech Budweiser and roasted pork knuckle. After that, we hiked through the Vienna woods capped it with an Augustiner beer fresh from Salzburg at the Bamkraxler (A Beer Garden in Vienna’s Wine Country). Time for another one of those epic tram rides –– this time to the western corner of the city.

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Here

Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard

Not a cloud in the sky and the streets are starting to radiate the heat of the late afternoon. So much to see in Vienna. But I could use a cool drink right about now. Perfect time to head to a beer garden.

“A beer garden?” some of my Viennese friends ask, usually with slightly raised eyebrow. In writing this series on beer gardens, I’ve come to learn that many in Vienna don’t refer to beer gardens as beer gardens. The preferred term is “Gastgarten” (guest garden), while “Biergarten” has a distinctively southern German ring to it. I’ll revisit this fascinating semantic world of Gasthäuser, Wirtshäuser, Beiseln, and Gastgärten at a later date. For now, though, it’s probably a safe bet for us English speakers to just call the drinking establishments in this series “beer gardens.”

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I  occasionally receive beers via FedEx from Stone Brewing. As with boxes that say “Deschutes” or “Laphroaig” or “Durant Vineyards” on them, I grin like, well, a Fool when they arrive. I’ve been drinking and enjoying Stone beers ever since they first went into wider distribution and sold them for the last 18 years. These are beers I know, trust, depend on, and they have only very rarely fallen short of their own impossibly lofty standard.

And, sometimes, they beat the living hell out of even that standard.

I’m gonna get right to the heart of the matter in this post…

Stone Brewing “Ruin Ten” Triple IPA is easily, adamantly, certainly one of the five best beers I have ever tasted.

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